Caitie (Caid) L. Young (they/them) is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer in Northeast Ohio. Caitie earned their MFA in Creative Writing from Kent State University (NEOMFA program).

“My choice for the winner is "Here is the Thing About Roses," a piercingly insightful, rhetorically complex, discursively rich marvel of a poem that deftly handles the heavy subject matter of gender, sexuality, and faith with critical humor, vulnerability, and verve. As the speaker is made to endure a car ride with the kind of aggressively average blonde man everyone hopes she will eventually end up with, we feel acutely the polarized ends of an endless argument over gender performance, sexuality, and relationships, and the pressure to claim one's right to their lives.

 

Through the symbolic journey of a road trip and the sharp rendering of interior detail—"he reminds you of your brother's childhood / best friend—overweight, short blond hair, high school / football star, angry at his father, too close to his mother, / has a verb for a name—archer, gunner, hunter—not / dissimilar to names like grace, faith, rose"—the speaker navigates their/her refusal of a normative, red state, megachurch-approved life with the one they/she has chosen. Written in the style of Hanif Abdurraqib's discursive metaphysics and Chen Chen's intimacy, this is a promising entry in contemporary American poetry, and a poet to watch in the future.”  –VAR, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal

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