Zack Lesmeister is a mixed queer Vietnamese American poet from St. Louis. They are the 2021 recipient of the George B. Hill Poetry Prize and the Charles M. Hart Jr. Writers of Promise Award. Zack has studied at Emerson College, and currently is a First Wave Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying Creative Writing.

POETRY

"What We Hold" & "Michael; December 24th, 1985"

By ZACK LESMEISTER

Each silver sequin pinned like petals / of jasmine, frozen in time.