WINNER OF THE 2024 GRIERSON VERSE PRIZE
Emily Wheeler is a poet and English teacher from Virginia, USA, and earned her Bachelor of Science in English from Radford University. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in many magazines, including Blue River Review, Exit 109, Wingless Dreamer, and From Arthur’s Seat. Emily has always had a love for reading stories and writing poems, and she writes to capture the small, intimate moments in living. She is currently completing an MSc in Creative Writing from The University of Edinburgh.
‘I am incredibly honored and grateful to have won the Grierson Verse Prize 2024. This poem allowed me to portray the tender, intimate moments of friendship as we grow older and explore the return to a place of nostalgia, like a parking lot, and the ruminations that accompany them.’
Social Media and Website:
Linkedin: @emilywheeler (here’s the link if it doesn’t work: www.linkedin.com/in/em1lywheeler )
Instagram: @__.emilyanne.__
Website: https://emilywheelerpoetry.weebly.com/
An Ode to Drinking Champagne in the Parking Lot of a Local Church
For Kenn
How we giggle and tut about
mothers’ eyes shaming us from inside their minivans
as we twist solid porous corks out
knowing that if they were in control, we would be banned for life.
Twin thunderous pops
of carbonation and flutter in my hair
all soaked through your shirt, freedom in these little drops.
We have, but these celebrations to bear
and tomorrow, when the sun has soaked up the aftermath
of our teen years and four-year college degrees dumped into the soil with ease
I’m sure we’ll start to feel the grey static tensions of adulthood’s wrath,
but for now, still in the parking lot of a local church, shouting into the cool evening breeze,
champagne tingling, sparkling on our tongues
and laughing, till there’s no air left in our lungs.
Love this poem. Takes me back to
my teenage years.