2022 Poetry Award Winner: Haylee Millikan

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Ode to My Brother, My Dealer, and Instacart Workers in 2020

There are things this year I learned 

I would unlearn without pause, like that 

I want a woman to shop for my groceries, 

her hands gently turning lemons to check 

for blemishes. That love can be cruel, nonchalant, 

I already knew. Now I know I can be cruel, 

like a lance. Or a virus. 

There’s only so much anyone can take. 

In August, my cocaine dealer’s mom dies. 

He calls and leaves a message— 

Haylee come see me again. I miss you. 

In August, my brother finds another liter 

of vodka empty and hidden where 

my dad thinks no one will look. 

In August, two becomes three becomes two again. 

There is no chance any of this will break me. 

Not that I’m unbreakable—just too fragile to admit it. 

I will keep whispering my guilt into my inchplant. 

Some transference of grief. 

Some beyond-sane notion of okayness 

that doesn’t require a refusal 

of the world’s brutal, rushing ending.

Taking the Abortion Pill, August 2021 

Birth will someday be easy. 

Or so they say. 

On the floor of my living room, Knees tucked up, 

Orange carpet I bought 

On sale to warm the space 

Burning me as I writhe: 

I am giving birth to death. 

No one bothered 

To warn me. The bitter metal 

in my mouth only 

My tongue. 

Something inside me rotting. 

Someone bleeding. 

Out.

On Begrudgingly Listening to the Red Scare Podcast Episode on the End of Roe, May 2022

I am too angry to write anything 

but this poem. Oh, where is it? 

I must have misplaced some allegory 

about a parrot, parroting. 

Though, I guess the term squawking 

might be sexist. 

I am wary of spreading (spawning, fertilizing) 

more wanton and lazy misogyny 

but goddamn. 

Fuck these bitches. 

Can I call you bitches? 

I suppose it makes me feel better 

to pretend I am better than you 

at navigating. The captain of a ship 

crossing a sea of men. 

I just want to check in— 

am I coming across as intelligent 

but still haughty? Sorry, *a hottie. 

The Darwinian ideal most wonderful 

is just an expectorant. 

But I want to be an object 

of obsession, want to be 

every man’s sundew. Is that not 

what I was made for? 

I’m seriously asking. 

I was trained to keep giving— 

trained to keep asking— 

do you want to fuck me? Because 

I’m not sure I want to fuck me, 

like this, 

desperate and crawling— 

what’s the line?—

for a hundred miles in the desert. Repenting. Repenting. 

I once ate the body of a man they call god 

and still I defer to no one. 

If conception is a miracle 

then what does he have to do with it?

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Haylee Millikan is a poet, artist, and scholar originally from Spokane, Washington. Their poem “Final Crises” was shortlisted for the Spring 2022 poetry contest at Five South; other poems have been featured in Vallum: Contemporary Poetry, Digging Through the Fat, Susie magazine, pioneertown., zines by Off Menu Press, and elsewhere. Haylee has read or performed her work across the country, including at Kickstarter HQ, Folklife Festival, Hugo House, and as the closing act of TEDxUW in 2016. Haylee is a full-time act checker for Spotify and Parcast Studios, and her freelance clients include the New York Times Op-Audio and 70 Million. She is an alumna of the New School, where she received her MA in Creative Publishing & Critical Journalism and a graduate certificate in Gender & Sexuality Studies, and of the University of Washington, where she studied philosophy and creative writing. Haylee lives in Long Beach, California, with her two Flatbush rescue cats and a chronic illness. Find them on Twitter and Instagram @hayleelujah or on their website, hmillikan.com.

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30 January 2023