Third Prize, Form & Form-Breaking Poetry Competition

In “grindr villanelle,” Matt Broomfield creates the unlikely hook-up between the queer dating app Grindr and an unruly version of the challenging, delicate, French-derived villanelle form. Broomfield also marries contemporary language and experience with the ancient Egyptian gods Ra and Osiris, the notion of the world-egg, and the Greek mythological river Styx, where the speaker doggy-paddles, “still boasting of hook-ups.” Despite (or because of) the levity and the erotic quiver, the poem holds a real bottom note, the sadness of being so broken that hope lies in being broken open.

—Diane Seuss, Judge

Matt Broomfield
grindr villanelle

catch me doggy-paddling the Styx, still boasting
of hook-ups that could crack a nation’s back with a
blue sky grin. August. the world-egg broken,

seasoning the skin of the slick boys ghosting
on seven apps sideways. charm in the quiver.
sometimes in the deathtrap the jaws have opened.

are you poz. are you the god Ra. are you hosting.
here’s all I got for the best of my liver:
blue sky. grim August, the world. egg broken

yolk sweat in a graveyard comedown, steady coasting
from the rave into cool pooled light with a shiver:
sometimes in the deathtrap the jaws have opened,

Osiris in psychosis so softly-spoken
none believe he is the sky, nor the great river
blue. Sky, I grin, August. the world egg-broken.
sometimes in the deathtrap the jaws have opened.

Matt Broomfield is a British poet, essayist, and journalist. He has recently been published by the Tahoma Literary Review, Stand, Agenda, Glass, the North, and the Best New British and Irish Poets 2021, and won the 2022 Lucent Dreaming Prize. His debut collection, brave little sternums: poems from Rojava (Fly on the Wall, 2022) is based on the three years he spent living and working in Syrian Kurdistan in solidarity with the women-led, direct-democratic revolution there.

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