INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE LITTLE BROWN GIRL WHO HOLDS THE FUTURE
by Thomas Kneeland
Runner-Up of the 2026 Online Poetry Contest
Judged by Diana Khoi Nguyen
“In the words of the poem, “There’s treasure there/ Soil of a hundred fires & a shard of nautilus shell.” This poem sweeping in its precise scope: from the ocean’s depths and churning waters to fish caught in a net, painted “on pockets of a guayabera.” Its varying repetitions like overlapping waves along a shoreline: ephemeral and unforgettable.”
About the Author
THOMAS KNEELAND is a poet-scholar writing at the intersections of ancestry, ecological memory, and intergenerational trauma in Black, Afro-Latine, and Afro-Indigenous lineage. A recipient of Prairie Schooner’s Edward Stanley Award, Kneeland is author of We Be Walkin’ Blackly in the Deep and an Assistant Professor of English at Anderson University.
