2020-2021 - JUST POETRY

Chaos Theory

Just one week, just one day. Just one sharp-tongued hour &

this accident wouldn’t have worn your name. Another minute,

it is not your father who almost stutters into the crossfire.

Another second, it is not your hand the arrow pledges itself to.

Then again, you can only clasp hypothetical sentence to your

heart for so long, only regret as the tick of the clock outruns you.

For all your knowing, time is a hypothesis your home will fail

to prove. An economy where evening always follows the mourning.

Tell me what this means to you: tonight with its constellation

of grievances, tomorrow with its mantilla of blood. No one could

claim better witness than you. Face of stare, mouth of ruin–

the montage calcifying before your eyes. Even now, there is no

time to forget the way you inherit catastrophe, no forgetting

the way time bolts without a conscience. What more can come from

this besides collapsing body down the barrel of the hour? Watch it

like war story, severed palms, perfect victim in the doorway. Indeed,

this poem should end with you haunting yourself through another

motherless alley. For what is destiny if not a time-stenciled road,

or mankind if not the most volatile of metaphors.

Patrick Tong, IL, Adlai E. Stevenson High School

Chaos Theory

Just one week, just one day. Just one sharp-tongued hour &

this accident wouldn’t have worn your name. Another minute,

it is not your father who almost stutters into the crossfire.

Another second, it is not your hand the arrow pledges itself to.

Then again, you can only clasp hypothetical sentence to your

heart for so long, only regret as the tick of the clock outruns you.

For all your knowing, time is a hypothesis your home will fail

to prove. An economy where evening always follows the mourning.

Tell me what this means to you: tonight with its constellation

of grievances, tomorrow with its mantilla of blood. No one could

claim better witness than you. Face of stare, mouth of ruin–

the montage calcifying before your eyes. Even now, there is no

time to forget the way you inherit catastrophe, no forgetting

the way time bolts without a conscience. What more can come from

this besides collapsing body down the barrel of the hour? Watch it like war story, severed palms, perfect victim in the doorway. Indeed,

this poem should end with you haunting yourself through another motherless alley. For what is destiny if not a time-stenciled road,

or mankind if not the most volatile of metaphors.

Patrick Tong, IL, Adlai E. Stevenson High School

to glory of country mine

At ten and two there is a gap in my

head when I place my flayed palm across my

chest, against the crooked plane of air-hollow

stitches and smeared red paint. Livid

above. all else. Flying darts

come to a standstill and weep infested

cityscape worlds in the darkness: one,

two lands of rising suns rolled down until

their people grow twisted and black. Livid,

above. all else. Our eyes are

pitch to the sky and drip sluggish into

the floor, when we take their tiny bodies

to thrust in stride and place them onto

curdled steel, blooming Viet red. Livid,

above. all else. Stones thrown

into a mass grave straddling corrupt lines,

and steel bars made for the little ones

who once had the chances to slip between

the gaps, breathing dead white sand air.

Carolyne Geng, CA, Amador Valley High School

To Unlove

you spoke so sweetly that

my veins craved your voice—

citrus laughter & apricot whispers

in a quiet classroom.

on the days you chose to be

serious (seldom & stone cold),

your forehead creased when you spoke,

like a paper swan birthed by rusty thumbs.

rain kisses dissolved you,

stillborn bird. peck at damp seeds,

fetuses of soft papaya, wish

you had a skull.

sky licks the wounds of broken road.

I am on my way to the ocean, praying

that it does not match your eyes.

a road worker, chartreuse-vested,

waves me on through a crying windshield.

I tickle the brakes to spare

his fluorescent heart,

but the gravel still churns to dust.

Macy Perrine, WI, Marshfield High School

Morning Mist

The flaxen light is brightly cast

And glimmers through the water beads

Upon the green and bending mast -

New scanty sprouts this dew doth feed

Like little eggs cupped in its nest

Or pearls clutched with mollusk's might

The tiny drops do happily rest

Between the frond's embrace so tight

When waves are high and gusts are tense

The ship and sails are shaken so

And little droplets pool, condense

Till hull and deck have sunken low

The oars have brushed the sandy floor

The dew released and finally free

To drift downhill, secure no more,

And sink into the mossy sea

Kayleigh Lin, NJ, Freehold Township High School

Fiat Lux

We are driving down another road and the

ravens are flickering on trees.

In the evenings I braid her hair. She blinks,

curls her lashes with asphalt dust.

This is where the end begins: in the east,

streetlights stuck on gold. I still my

hands with soft flour and sweet bean paste.

The crows hunger for soot. I search

the horizon for crooked ribbons, untangle

them strand by strand. Dawn comes

and goes again. We pass the faded signs.

My mother breathes in mildewed

rooftops. Says home is never far. I cup feathers

and ley lines, the edges of a Polaroid

dream. So the beginning swallows the end

once more, and she waters the anterior

bones. I grip my shrapneled bloodline like a

steering wheel, roll down the windows

for some faint birdsong. I want her to bury this

foreigner’s false elegy. Please, don’t tell.

Vivien Song, CA, Amador Valley High School

Matisse Chapel

a soft Mediterranean breeze with a hint of Mistral kisses

sweet lavender wedded to the white washed chapel walls.

sunflowers nod their consent to the artist’s sacred muse,

Sweet Monique Sister Jacques-Marie

DivinelyhumanHumanlydivine

healing her ailing Fauvist friend,

extending love to all whose hearts beat

the master once bathed in baptismal waters

saw that the light she radiated

inspired Creation

Enter the architectural canvas

virginal walls punctuated by prismatic glass

splashes of Riviera blue, burning yellow, fertile green

Mary’s outstretched arms offer her baby to the world.

vibrant vestments

wake up the whiteness of space and time,

to inhabit it is to breathe the essence of Human

Kind ness and Love

Evan Shidler, NJ, Millburn High School

Breath & Bone Sister

I once caught a glass girl with her face

stuck to chip-mirror. Body tumbled in crossfire,

breasts sunken like sighs. In the hospital

I hold broth on her tongue, skeletal doll limp

and dripping through my hands. Goddess of small thrills

retching up bits of meat & rice, weighing

each calorie on a fingernail, red grains blinking

from the scale. Today she sucks rambutan seeds

suspended in white flesh, swallows Eli Lilly, Zyprexa pills–

names of girls still perfect & crystallizing

in her lungs. Two fingers held down like a pistol

down her throat until it blooms red

on a napkin. She assembles herself backwards

into our mother’s womb, melts any remaining flesh

so she can soak in this darkness. Remember that girl

playing at our father’s knee? That girl burying

bullets in her blood? I watch her choke

gunpowder down her ramrod throat in salvation,

hungry for nothing, girl in starvation.

This doll quiet as breath & bone.

Anne Kwok, MA, Milton Academy

Ephemeral Come August & we drench our bodies in desire, simmering & expectant. Crack the smooth edges of possibility into amber light, gleaming with warmth & our oaky shadows. Everything unknown, everything turning between our gaping mouths is whittled down to this: our shivered breaths falling from alabaster souls until they become swollen heartbeats. Childhood siphoned from aching bodies. We lay gaunt & afraid, clinging onto each other like mist & rain -- pressed like hunger, dark & visceral, distance stretching as a wavering whisper. Our open hands grasp the sky like how god holds the dawning universe – trying to taste freedom with our bodies. Throw our knees heavy against sober concrete, memories of faded sidewalk chalk still tight, still flush within ourselves, shadows still lingering against spine. We only realize the beauty as it disappears. Sarah Mohammed, CA, The Harker School

Aubade - Christina Wang, GA, Milton High School

Garden Lament - Ashley Kim, NJ, Bergen County Academies Waves - Emma Shoemaker, TX, West Brook High School

a walk down lafayette street - Emmy Song, MD, Montgomery Blair

Fault Lines - Erin Brennan, MI, Detroit Country Day School

Smoke Boys - Abbey Jean Wrobel, UT, Venice High School

O U T E R S P A C E - Christina Duan, PA, Central Bucks HS West In Conscious - Isha Rajput, CA, Henry M. Gunn High School

avenue - Brock Daumler, WI, Green Bay East High School

The Eyepatch King - Libby Terrell, VA, Western Albemarle HS Wonderlust/ You'll Understand When You're Older - Ashley

Schilling, LA, Fountainbleau High School

Coming Soon -- Snake Year - Jin Yan Ye, NY, Brooklyn

The Gallows - Gabrielle Sheehan, NY, Spencerport High School Stars of Abraham - William Deans, CA, Branham High School

a dragon before hedges - Lian Zhu, CA, California Academy of Mathematics and Science

Jigsaw Falling Into Place - Abigail Connelly, VA, Western Albemarle

First - Irene Hwang, NJ, Bergen County Academies

Sonnet for the Nervous System - Heather Jensen, AZ, Red Mountain

Skywriting - Chloe Shader, MD, Atholton High School

Baby Blue - Madelyn Dawson, NY, Staten Island Academy

I am - Patrick Wang, GA, Northview High School

raw - Sadie Zeiner-Morrish, NJ, Kent Place School

Playground Realities - Samara Huezo, TX, Madison High School The Riddler - Yejin Suh, NJ, Glen Rock High School

Performance of Womanhood - Isabella Petrie, TX, Transmountain Early College High School

Behold the Dead Poets - Jocelyn Hittle, PA, Twin Valley HS

such beautiful creatures are we - Jordan Watt, NC, Fuquay-Varina Mother Knows Best - April Wang, CA, Beckman High School

nostalgia - Amadis Davis, KY, The Gatton Academy

First They Sold the House - David Egan, CA, Flintridge Preparatory School Of Two Minds - Lara Katz, CT, Pierrepont School

Undead Mistletoe - Abby Lewis, GA, Norcross High School

The Ocean and The Tide - Alistair Alonzo, WI, Clinton High School good blood - Katherine Vandermel, NJ, Bergen County Academies vacant roost - Gabriela Comp, IL, Jonnes College Prep

our cry for help - Chloe Blue, MI, Northwest High School

1934 - Sezim Minbaeva, TX, Cedar Ridge High School

Born together, walk separate - Sinran Gill, VA, Salem High School

If The Fish Are Poetry - Hannah, MA, Beaver Country Day School Man, 23, perishes in the Atlantic - Stella Li, NJ, West Windsor - Plainsboro High School North

Pulp - Sylvi Warshaver-Stein, NY, Hunter College High School Honeymoon - Jasmine Strolz, VA, Tabb High School

Behind the Curtains - Rivers Whiting, UT, Wasatch High School Hold my Arm and Take me to Confession, Mama - Veronica Crawford, AP, Yokota High School

The Inevitable - Dayanara Baez, IL, Romeoville High School

Out To Sea Again, Little Vessel Man - Emma Laslo, NY, Loyola

As Rain - Grace Noh, PA, Upper Dublin High School

If You Run in the Direction of the Wind - Jonathan J. Brown, CT, Connecticut International Baccalaureate Academy

you're the wrong muse - Ariana Eftimiu, NJ, Northern Highlands burnt orange. - Meghan Campbell, TN, Oak Ridge High School

Non-Jungian Archetype - Humza Humayun, TX, Early College High School (Farmer's Branch)

Attempt #2 - Kevin Kong, FL, A. W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts

The Executed Were Not the Guilty - Julianne Smith, SC, Charleston County School of the Arts

Chiaroscuro - Aditi Raju, CA Dougherty Valley High School

Uncle & the Universe - Sung Cho, PA, Methacton High School

Old Man Walking - Claire Vlases, MT, Bozeman High School

Sitting at the lakefront... - Helen Han, IL Adlai Stevenson High School Lost Tongue - Elyse Thomas, FL, School for Advanced Studies Wolfson

Covered in Roses - Christine Gross, CA, West Hills High School

The Lake - Emma Suzuki, NJ, Fair Lawn High School The Spoliation Of Morality - Dax Hawley, MO, Truman HS

Song of Napalm - Katherine Vandermel, NJ, Bergen County Academies

Expedition in an Afternoon's Nap - Kim Tran, FL, St. Petersburg Collegiate HS

Two Oceans - Hope Wiczen, PA, Mohawk Jr. - Sr. High School

Tell Me - Ashley Renselaer, CA, Windward School

The Magnificence of Silence - Daniela Walbridge, MI, Huron HS

Learning Through Dying - Ray Lantrip, GA, Wayne County HS

Haiku: ... - Mia Cheung, NY, Shanghai American School Pudong

freshmints - Megan Peng, CA, Torrey Pines High School