Mule
Selected by Leila Chatti from a shortlist of 51 poets, itself drawn from 706 entries submitted from eight countries. Judged blind.
Mule
Don’t you love that the magnolias
are in bloom and the Hair Doc is
still in business? The March petals
grip the stems, translucent pink,
like tears with a hint of something
bleeding.
The a.m. traffic report—all clear
to the Embarcadero.
The sailboats wait on the bay,
their masts all erect and orderly.
Thursday,
the surgeon will cut me stem to stern,
excavate my womb, poke my omentum.
Whichever ovary seeded my beautiful boy—
goodbye, peace, landfill.
Today the nurse with perfect biceps
is firm but kind. His mask-voice
sounds down-the-hall when he tells me
the test will burn.
It will feel like it’s in your brain, he says.
I tell him to biopsy for amyloid
while he’s in the neighborhood.
He chuckles sweetly as he jams the swab
toward my cribriform plate.
Making him mask-laugh distracts me
from the fire up my nose.
When I carried my boy I felt worthy.
This body I have counted on, ordered about,
this pain threshold I have bragged on,
this mule of my matter—
Here.
Let me kiss your burning muzzle.
Let these sergeant-barking frontal lobes
for once just hold you,
pet you.
No need to fetch or carry. Stay.
On the Poem
What drew me to this poem is its honest, plain-stated tenderness. I admire a poem that says what it means, that doesn’t try to obscure its truths. This poem sings with the language of medicine alongside that of the everyday — Embarcadero
and Hair Doc
, omentum
and amyloid
. This poet has a keen eye for detail and knows when to call up an evocative image, and when to simply say what is. When I carried my boy I felt worthy.
This poem is a tender ode to the body, to the self, when it is not necessarily easy to do so — we need more poems like this.
Leila Chatti
Final Judge · LemonLight Prize 2026
About Dawn McGuire
Dawn McGuire
Winner · LemonLight Prize 2026Dawn McGuire is a neurologist and poet, and the author of four collections: Sleeping in Africa, Hands On, The Aphasia Café, and American Dream with Exit Wound. She grew up in Eastern Kentucky and was educated at Princeton University, Union Theological Seminary, and Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Her scientific work focuses on two areas: developing biological and gene therapies for conditions such as Huntington’s disease and Multiple Sclerosis, and reducing disparities in stroke and other neurologic conditions. Her poems have appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Journal of American Neurology, among other literary magazines and anthologies.
She has won the 2013 Indie Book Award for Poetry, the Troubadour Prize (UK), the National League of American Pen Women, and the 2011 Sarah Lawrence/Campbell Corner Academy of Language Exchange Poetry Prize for “poems that treat larger themes with lyric intensity.”
Dawn is Adjunct Professor of Neurology at the Neurosciences Institute of Morehouse School of Medicine, and divides her time between Atlanta and Northern California.
The Four
Bus Ride
Knoxville, Tennessee
Another Man’s Clothes
Phoenix, Arizona
A Million Tiny Miracles Every Second
East Sussex, United Kingdom
Home Is Not An Address
New York, New York
The Field
The 2026 LemonLight Prize drew 706 entries from eight countries. One hundred poets were longlisted on 21 June. Fifty-one were shortlisted on 5 July. From that shortlist, Leila Chatti selected the winner and four honorable mentions reading blind — she saw the names for the first time today, alongside the rest of us.
The 250-copy limited-edition anthology of shortlisted work sold out six weeks before printing. It mails in September.
The Anthology & The 2027 Prize
Ink & Ribbon Press is a nonprofit poetry publisher on Bainbridge Island, Washington.