Category: Nicholls

Est. 2016

The Albert Davis Fiction award, established in 2016, is awarded to a work of fiction submitted to Mosaic in a single publication year. The prize honors long-time English professor, Dean, Novelist-in-Residence, and Pulitzer Prize nominee, Dr. Albert Davis.

Dr. Davis has worked for nearly thirty-five years at Nicholls state University, serving as Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dean of the University College, Head of the Department of General Studies, and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. For his service to the University, Dr. Davis was named the Alcée Fortier Distinguished Professor in 2003, and was awarded a Distinguished service Professorship in 1994.

His novel, Marquis at Bay, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and The National Book Award by his publisher, Louisiana state University Press. He is also the author of Leechtime, a novel, What They Wrote on the Bathhouse Walls, Yen’s Marina, Chinese Bayou, Louisiana, a collection of poetry, Virginia Patout’s Parish, a poetry chapbook, and other works. His short works have been published in a number of prestigious literary journals, including The Southern Review, The Sewanee Review, and Louisiana Literature.

by Grant Candies

Diesel-flavored stones
Feed the ever hungry maw
Civilization

by Vondavious Breaux

Bound by blood and shackles,
Abandoned by hope, the fear of unknowing.
My physique stings from the engraved lashes.
I have been deprived and brought to a land unfamiliar.

It seems Shango cries alongside me;
His spirit dances on the coast, thundering.
Each boom resonates, a drum.
His ballad calls out to me

Son of roots and dirt, you no longer remain near the edges
Of your homeland.

A tool is what I have become, a worthless tool
To these beasts who give no profit.
These men of flesh demand obedience;
Day after day constant beatings relentlessly
Eliminate any contemplations of escape.
I see men of my kin become submissive,
Licking the boots of our captors.
Hatred resides within my fragmented heart;
The intent to kill weighs heavily.

I vow vengeance;
My spear is not yet dull.
I will bide my time;
I cannot stand alone.

Spirits of Africa, I pray for your heroism.
May my pleas be answered and you select me
To rectify redemption.

by Yaye A. Ba

Vole, vole, respisre et profite du bon air
Tes couleurs jouissantes touchent mon coeur,
Tes aillles semblent qu’elle ressamble tous l’univers,
De la perfection!
Je vois, vert, jaune, rouge, et rose
Rose; la couleur de mon ame.
Quel arc en ciel!
Qui m’ emporte au ciel
Ciel de l’eternite.
Papillion, vole vole, avec moi
Je suis la tienne.

by Chrystal Coon

Watch the azure skydrops kiss the sleeping earthchild. Her auburn lips aglow with rainbows. Her eyelashes swept with gold. The sea floor has become her prison, her home. Cursed by our destiny to stay confined until we one day meet. Guarded by a group of seven, but not for her protection. Condemned because I was born, imprisoned because we should not be. My touch would spread wildfires among her gentle trees. I know she weeps when she thinks of me. Her longing is unbearable, vibrations touching across time desperately trying to reach me. But there is not a way to her, not one easy for someone such as me. One touch to her world and I would fizzle, snuffed before all my fight gave out. The distance is too vast. We can’t continue like this.

by Abigail Giroir

Third Place: *The David Middleton Poetry Prize*

I walk through her fields—new
earth, untouched—her legs
heavy stalks of sunflowers,
golden buds extending, pressing
their faces to light.
Scarlet-blossomed poppies
field her belly, quivering,
fragile life filling her up and over—
opiate balloon. Nightshade,
black and glistening, pearls
along arteries—purple
infection. Thought like thickets
dense and deep, pierce
thorns behind her eyelids—
impenetrable grove.

I’ll never cut her hair or her legs.
And when her body stretches, thrives, ignites,
I will let it.

by Corey Sonier

Second Place: *The David Middleton Poetry Prize*

I no longer see myself
in the crinkles of your nose
or the creases on your palms,
for I am no longer there—
as if I ever was.
Did you leave your love
on the windowsill,
or in forgotten shoes
by the door?
Only left with memories of
hearts that never touched,
never quite resonated,
always a beat out of place,
not quite a melody.
Songs we tapped toes to
were never quite our own.
dancing with phantoms
on two left feet.

by Krystal Dean

First Place: *The David Middleton Poetry Prize*

She’s been your friend since the first time
she turned around to ask for a pen
and you couldn’t decide
what color to give her first
red for her cheeks or green for her eyes
so you gave her the whole box
and later told your mother you lost it.

She’s your friend.

She was your friend in junior year
when you laid on the roof to watch the moon rise
but you didn’t tell her that the only stars you could see
were sprinkled beneath her eyes
over the valleys of her cheeks
and the crooked, crinkled lines
of her nose when she laughs.

She’s your friend.

And your Icarus heart
takes you too close to the stars, to the skies,
to the heat of her laughter
and your wax frame dies
melts down your feathers
and you aren’t even surprised
as you fall into the sea.

She’s your friend.
And she has him.
And you will always just have freckle-dotted skies.

by Allison Curth

It was the summer between my sixth and seventh grade years a little over halfway through our family road trip out West. I had insisted on making a stop at Mesa Verde to see the ruins of the cliff-dwelling Anasazi. We stayed in a lodge on the grounds of the National Park in a room with a balcony overlooking a field of shrubs and a mountain not too far off in the distance. When we weren’t out exploring the Native American ruins, that balcony was my favorite place to be. Up in the mountains of Colorado, even in the summer, there was a constant crispness in the air, unlike the muggy sauna of Louisiana.

During the day, my brother and I would test out our hand-carved souvenir slingshots from the balcony, cheering on our rocks in friendly competition to see whose would fly the farthest. But at night, I had the balcony to myself. At night, the air turned cold and the darkness gave the Park a renewed beauty. I strained to see the field of shrubs in the darkness, but the mountain glittered with city lights. The stars themselves seemed to dance just for me, yet they did not disturb the sacred stillness of the mountain. Seemingly to make the night more magical, a shooting star soared above me. But something about it made me gasp as my stomach twisted into a knot. I knew shooting stars to last a second or so then disappear, but this one did not. In the following seconds, it continued to get bigger and bigger to the point where I could tell it had already entered the atmosphere and was heading straight for the field of shrubs. I stared wide-eyed at the fireball as it sped toward me. Like nature’s own firework, the blazing rock smoldered as it disintegrated into nothing. It never even got a chance to hit the ground.

I had just witnessed the end of the life of a rock from space. It could have been part of a comet bigger than the entire earth. It could have been the remnant from a collision of rocks, billions of years old. But now, I was the sole witness to its demise. It had become nothing but dust and a few glowing embers that were soon extinguished as they floated towards the shrubs. The stillness resumed, but my adrenaline was rushing. I ran inside to tell everyone about what I had just witnessed. “That fireball in the sky! Did you see it? It was amazing!”

“No. What are you talking about?” Dad asked as he put down his reading.

“That thing that just burned up! I think it was some sort of rock from space.”

“Well, we must not have been able to see it from in here.”

And as quickly as they had looked up to greet me, they returned to their mundane activities, oblivious to the magnitude of the moment I experienced seconds earlier on the other side of the sliding door. They didn’t understand. They hadn’t felt the stillness of the mountain or the calm crispness of the cold air. They weren’t there when the stars danced their routine just for me. They weren’t frightened by the broken silence of the dramatic fireball as it raced toward the field of shrubs. They hadn’t experienced the meteor meeting its end. But I had. On the balcony at Mesa Verde.

by Mark Robichaux

The fire extinguishers did not provide a sense of security when compared to the potential of a missile canister exploding. All around, my reload team, platoon sergeants, first sergeants, sergeant majors, and even a few colonels and lieutenant colonels held their breath as our forklift driver lowered the live PATRIOT missile canister onto the launching station. Any ping of metal made everyone flinch. Once the canister was in position, Specialist Jackman and I climbed on top of the launcher with our torque wrenches. Before any of us could begin torqueing the bolts to secure the can to the launching platform, it had to be grounded; otherwise any stray static charge could cause the can to explode.

“Grounded!” we yelled, and began the work of tightening the four bolts around the missile canister until the torque wrenches clicked.. Every time the torque wrench hit the can, a wave of panic would wash over everyone.

An hour or so later, my team and I gathered around the smoking area drenched in sweat but relieved that the live missile reload had been a success. The cigarettes we smoked after didn’t seem so unhealthy.