2025 Misfit Poems Prize Prize FIRST PLACE WINNER: “Appalachian Conjure” By JH Grimes
It’s time to congratulate JH Grimes who was selected by Marianne Chan as the First Place Winner of the 2025 Misfit Poems Prize with his poem “Appalachian Conjure.” See what Marianne Chan had to say about her first place pick below:
“Appalachian Conjure” is a misfit, because it is not only a poem, but a spell–one that summons a place into being. The speaker’s Appalachia appears before our eyes like a vision. The poem progresses as a car ride would progress through the mountains, conveying the spirit and atmosphere of a place, the movement of a winding road, the people one might encounter, the porches, the water. The speaker of the poem says, “What is this place / without space / to be filled in.” Perhaps this place is Appalachia, but is it not also the blank page of poetry, a space to be filled with one’s idiosyncratic memories and ghosts and wishes? Each time I read this poem, I felt both enchanted and unsettled by its witch’s dance, its formal control, and its imagistic beauty. I will read it again and again.”
Appalachian Conjure
Oak inverted into pond reflected back onto sky. It’s not so
simple. I do not speak about the earth. The river where the devil
met those little girls. Where the devil met mauve taffeta. Where
the devil met June bugs tied to strings. Where the devil met
strings tied to fingers. I whistle through water while crawdads
click-slide the current. Air tugs on my arms. Over the hills there’s
a junkyard. Overhead a whole swath of bitter-salt-green. What is
this place without
space to be filled in.
Crowded room surrounded. by miles and miles
of field. Mountain’s edge, night’s hedge,
cliff’s myth, churchyard.
The winding road
beside the house with the emerald
tin roof. All those boys
who risked that speed, wrapped
their cars around the mailbox.
Wind wails a note
echoing baby.
Is there, through the woods,
a porch?
Wherever a baby might be.
Country store and those men’s fingers
clutching banjo necks.
Silver in their eye,
they pluck the past from the wood.
From the tensioned head.
Something always being born.
Dusk always walking
through the mist journeyed
from the stream.
Somewhere over the hill always jazz
horns, loud, they’ll bust you,
and those little girls always
swerving through the grass. like the river
just whispered them a secret.
What you might wish
to be one of those girls.
I tell you
you’d wish all your moons gone
if you’d just once been them.
JH Grimes
JH Grimes is a trans Appalachian poet based between Virginia and Minneapolis. The author of keepsake (Bottlecap Press, 2024), their work also appears in Poetry Wales, poets.org, Devastation Baby, Meniscus, and elsewhere. They are the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Norma Lowry Memorial Prize, and the Roger Conant Hatch Prize for Lyric Poetry. Currently an MFA candidate at the University of Virginia, they work to center the trans experience in explorations of class struggle, climate disaster, and queer intimacy.
