The DC Center is pleased to announce the winner of the $100 first place prize for the 2011 Smokin' Words Poetry Competition: Sam Sax!

Sam Sax is a queer Jewish Bay Area based poet and educator. Oakland's first queer Grand Slam Champion, he runs 'The New Shit Show,' a reading series aimed at producing consistent and innovative writings. You can see more of his work in RATTLE, Muzzle Magazine, The Evergreen Review and elsewhere. He can be reached at samhsax@gmail.com

Sam's winning poem is reproduced below, with his permission:

for cigarettes

you fuck. you death drive. you thicken in my chimney
'til the whole house is full of soot. you bleached fang

in a brown skirt. angel dressed in your smokestack
gown. you wearing the most vile cologne that somehow
everyone seems to falls in love with

the worst friend to have on your best night
the best night unfolding like a portrait in the chest

you family heirloom. wicked inheritance.
draped in a necklace of white paper cups.
you passed down through the blood.

your guts made from the thick toxic stuff
they use to keep bugs off the tobacco. you dirty
bathwater drawn to me as a moth to headlight.

after sexed yourself
invited yourself to dinner
spoke at half my family.s funerals

funny how you dangle different from the lip of coffin
than the mouth of a cowboy. how i found you in a photograph
between my mother.s lips six months pregnant with me.
funny she swore she never smoked during my pregnancy. you
swallow money like a toll bridge to brimstone. how you laugh
at the woman on my street whose throat has clawed its way
out her mouth like a mad deity. you fire we fed our children.
you spineless suicide

you felt so large in my eight year old fingers
when i held you to my untrained ear
you whispered in your chemical clear:

for the rest of your life
i will let you burn me alive and swallow my ghost
but know this is a blood pact, asthmatic boy.
know i have brought men with more backbone
than you can stand to their knees like a drunk
zeppelin in a quiet city.s searchlight. that
i am mined from the most vile parts of the dirt.
that you will learn to fit me in your mouth easier
than your family sam. i am the throbbing bloodline
in a powerless plant and even the largest of moths
turn to powder in my hand.

Thank you to all who entered the competition! Brought to you by The DC Center and Split This Rock.