from River Heron Poetry Prize final judge, Alina Stefanescu:

"I kept returning to the rawness of this grief--and the way the poem attempts to speak both to a daughter and to a culture that deeply invested in violence and harm against daughters. "How do I mother the shrapnel kissed sky?" What does it mean to mother in a country where mothers are either pedestaled or excoriated with little breath in between? The poet asks us to imagine connection, and I did. The work of imagining in this poem, in this time, on this planet, continues."

Sheree La Puma is an award-winning writer whose personal essays, fiction, and poetry have appeared in or are forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, WSQ, Chiron Review, Juxtaprose, The Rumpus, Plainsongs, Into The Void, and I-70 Review, among others. She has a micro-chapbook, 'The Politics of Love,' due out in August and a chapbook, 'Broken: Do Not Use,' due out this Fall. She received an MFA in Writing from California Institute of the Arts and taught poetry to former gang members.

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