Written by: Ava Venuk
Second Place Winner of the 2026 Wallace Stevens Poetry Contest
The waiting room
has free glass-bowl almond packets.
As if stolen,
I slip one hundred sea salt calories in my pocket.
A woman calls me in.
Her office is a green couch, a noise machine.
It’s the first time I’ve heard the ocean uninhabited.
Okay, to me she says,
What is your life
plan?
I would like to write someplace
and live with a garden or
write with a garden and live
someplace or
garden someplace
and write to live.
Or water my own window-basket of peonies,
though,
I am not sure
they would grow.
She writes a yellow notebook.
Failing the LSAT at XtraMart
I circle B A C D or E
between lottery tickets, Marlboro Reds, and
Couldya put twenty-on-ten?
There’s scratch-off-dust on every page, green shards of fraud
and false hope I get to sweep away.
Fourpackof5percentmentholjuulpods
thanks.
And Rick takes a penny to those papers for hours.
He wins 20 dollars and spends it on another
and another.
I keep cashing and scanning, scanning and cashing, each time he winks and asks for
a winner.
I bubble C and C and C, all three in pen
‘cause all I’ve got is black ink and fifteen lottery pencils inscribed
“Your ticket to possible.”
I can’t erase with either.
Pack of Lucky Strikes and a 25, honey.
25’s the “150 Grand a Year for Life” except 150’s before taxes,
and no one ever wins.
