Hermit Crab Challenge Second Place Winner: “Mad Lib” by Eliza Gilbert
Many thanks and congrats to Eliza Gilbert, second place winner of our Hermit Crab Challenge!
“Mad Lib,” has the sweet spot balance of irony and emotion, existing in a place where humor and vulnerability meet. The poem finds itself in clever turns of wordplay, rhythm, and repetition, Gilbert doubling down on her double meanings. With its smart and self-aware craftsmanship, it was a poem that remained memorable through the reading of many kinds of poems throughout the judging process for its signature, smarts, and style.
Mad Lib
I am not afraid of _____ (plural noun). I am not afraid of sinking _____ (adverb) into a cauldron full of quicksand, not afraid of pool sharks, not afraid of the _____ (onomatopoeia) of the furnace in Gran’s basement. When the _____ (mythical monster) comes romping ‘round my bedside, I give it a quick kiss on the _____ (body part) and implore it to marry my _____ (unhappy single relative). When _____ (long-lost childhood friend) arrives at the _____ (hiding place) weeping, covered in _____ (viscid substance), I take them to the lake and scrub their cheeks with algae bloom. There, in the wet greenness of forever, everything becomes suddenly, inordinately all right. I am a good sport, but a better _____ (very fast animal). I sleep under the bed. I sleep without _____ (name of blanket) or _____ (name of parent). Everyone at school thinks I am _____ (rumbling adjective), because I made the class _____ (tanked animal) levitate that one time. Gran says when I grow up, I will be an _____ (invasive species). She says I hurt her _____ (vital organ). I am uncareful with my _____ (precious things) and ungracious in the _____ (important juncture). I am the bane of all _____ (plural weapon). I am _____ (reptile). I am (cosmic phenomena). I speak only when left unspoken to or made to sit close- throated in the _____ (bad place). Out in the grass, touching everything, the _____ (twinkling instrument) calls me home from the treeline. I see _____ (stage of decomposition) people. I see them in the _____ (violent dreamscape), and we shake hands, sit on logs, drink _____ (fruit juice) with the longest straws. Every inkblot that’s ever flashed before me has looked like a _____ (hypothetical apocalypse), but I tell the shrink it resembles _____ (celebrity chef). I spar with to _____ (minor god); exhale _____ (noble gas). I spend words like _____ (units of time).
Eliza Gilbert is an undergraduate at Vassar College. Her poetry can be found or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The Threepenny Review, The Iowa Review, The Adroit Journal, and others. She received the 2023 Iowa Review Award for Poetry as well as LitMag’s 2023 Virginia Woolf Award for Short Fiction (2023). She was born and raised in New York City.
