Spring 2023 Online Contest Winner: Materialism

By Bradley Trumpfheller 

Pablo Picasso, 1906

A still life of a glass a lemon-squeezer half 

a lemon and a little pot with drinking straws
and the light, so Picasso described one 

of his paintings in a letter. Of heavy red carpet 
a chair and a disfigured mug of cold coffee.

A family of objects remains death-related, too;
my mom had at least three moms. 

Of a black clock plastic conch shell her room 
was down and to the left a piano little statues 
another dog asleep in the hall and famous

paintings. A letter is about a life, she wrote 
one to her birth mom who had died

young already, so how to keep it still, salt

hazel the rosary of minutes lemons men go 
poppy missing in docks and kinship diagrams 

and laws are passed to shut adoptions 
so she is listing out the world of salt formica 
a can of coke and paperwork in her legal 

mom’s office. The opposite of life is maybe
debt or pastel ownership she didn’t have

any posters on her wall just a photograph
of herself as an infant in the bin when 

no one possessed her and new paint 
the blood-colored carpet in her new white 

room oxblood her freckles itched.

About the Author:

Bradley Trumpfheller is a trans writer and the author of a chapbook, RECONSTRUCTIONS (Sibling Rivalry Press). Their work has appeared in Poetry, The Baffler, The Rumpus, Cleveland Review of Books, and elsewhere. They have received support from MacDowell, the Michener Center for Writers, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and currently live in Texas.