Ezra Fox                                              
Grand Prize: West Trade Review Prize for Poetry 2025; Selected by Rick Barot
What The Darkness Renders On The Question of Passing                                         


Origami of half-truths.
      Wet stone of shoulder,
             salt-lick of streetlight.

Consider the man who lingers
      longer than necessity demands —
          dusk seeping through collar,
              soft as bruised peach.

The pronoun: a migrating bird
      wingbeat,
          restless.

His eyes searching for permission:
      a hand grenade threaded with lace,
          pin pressed between milk teeth.

Body out of reach 
      to his throat's wilderness.
          Above us the moon 
            ensnared in telephone wires.

Consider the nightfall,
      how it renders us incomplete.
          The muscle memory of keys
              between knuckles.

Our shadows threading  
      their needles through
            the skin's assumed fabric.

How some bodies learn 
      to read darkness differently.

  Consider the truth of my body.
    How some revelations
          can turn a compliment
              into a closed fist.

Then consider, how many
    have been harmed for less.


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Image by Rafa Barros from Pexels
Ezra Fox lives and writes in San Francisco, CA. Ezra's writing explores the tensions between lineage, queer identity, and spirituality as they intersect with concepts of impermanence and non-duality. A Lambda Literary's 2025 Writers Retreat Fellow and recipient of the Lili Elbe Memorial Scholarship for promising transgender writers, Ezra's work appears in TriQuarterly, EcoTheo Review, Zócalo Public Square, Zone 3, and elsewhere. They were also a finalist for Bellingham Review’s 49th Parallel Award for Poetry, and Birdcoat Quarterly's Editors' Choice Prize in Poetry. Learn more about Ezra at ezrafox.net, and follow Ezra on Instagram @ezraxfox.  
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