JUST POETRY!!!


the National Poetry Quarterly


JUST POETRY!!! the National Poetry Quarterly



easterday poetry award winner 2021-2022



Farmer, Gravedigger, Jane Doe


We were buried in the cornfield.

The husks of our bodies are stuffed with cotton and wrapped in linen,

lowered into the stream where the other sacred things lay.

Peer over the edge of the chalk-white wall, look at the rustling in the stalks,

something has made a home in the roots, something is stopping us.


In September we wait impatiently for the sky to break open and

for some omen to dawn upon us and tell us that this is absolution.

But sunrise is an officer knocking at the door. I’m hidden under my duvet

with a flashlight and a eulogy and newspaper clippings.


I write I’m sorry and it is my greatest act yet.

I write myself a missing person’s report. I tape it to the wall.


This time, I walk through the field and end up right where I started.

Over here, nobody gets what they want They dog-ear the warm bodies

next to them in bed, at school, on the street, six feet under.

They surrender right before the best part. I’m no better.


I curate a love-shaped loneliness, folding the sheet over

the empty side of the bed, lowering the hollowed linens into the stream,

I chew the pit in my stomach only to spit it and stick it

with all the other things I have failed to overcome.

This is where we’re buried, underneath the roots.

Ivani Atre, TX, Lone Star High School​​







"BEST of ISSUE"



FALL 2021-2022



a roadtrip of felled resurrection/reconnection


the requiem of spring is a mordent in

pitches of aureate nimbi and thundering magma

it's obsidian that grates against the rough calluses of

graying artisans who swelter below hollowed pavilions

in midsummer, bronze-skinned and untiring, their

wood chips are ethereal clay to mold into aesthetic

ether, tailor-made for higher melodies,

soliloquy on the twelfth opening night as the oratorio leaps

in fervent grace, breathing drafty spirits into a sordid
aria like the jukebox warbling on her secondhand playlist as

we coast aimlessly along waterfront I-95, staring at your

gossamer-tinted reflection in the car window and

overlooking graffiti mired against deserted freights below --in the trunk, dad's welding kit roused forth with clunky groans
adjacent, my sheet music is pleated between crumpling
stage play scripts, sheltered in good faith from mellow foliage
and ruby-throated mirth, an incandescent flicker buoyant over
the wick of terracotta flush and/or postponed (im)possibilities

for the edge of tomorrow this family has not yet un(dis)covered

Rachel XU, FL, Eastside High School






"EDITOR'S CHOICE"



FALL 2021-2022



Roots


After we settle upon the soil of the Shanghai airport,

I watch as my mother exhales. Her limbs

boneless, burdenless, slackening in the way

tree branches shrug off the weight of winter snow.

On the road west, she contemplates the scenery--

the silt-lined banks of the Yangtze,

sparrows spilling into the sky from the roofs of factories,

lacquered apartment buildings standing brittle

against the afternoon sun.

Her childhood haunts,

furrowed and gorged like the creases that

have worked their way onto her face. Once,

she had stood on the shoulder of that very road,

hair chaste and loose, one hand clutching her

father's traveling bag. The underside ripped,

rubbed raw from years of wear and worry.

She had been young and graceless, uncertain

of the future but faithful in its infinite paths.

Her smooth, girlish fingers extended, to grasp at hope,

unaware that home was already left behind.

Cathy Maio, TX, A&M Consolidated High School










"BEST of ISSUE"



WINTER 2021-2022



Farmer, Gravedigger, Jane Doe


We were buried in the cornfield.

The husks of our bodies are stuffed with cotton and wrapped in linen,

lowered into the stream where the other sacred things lay.

Peer over the edge of the chalk-white wall, look at the rustling in the stalks, something has made a home in the roots, something is stopping us.


In September we wait impatiently for the sky to break open and

for some omen to dawn upon us and tell us that this is absolution.

But sunrise is an officer knocking at the door. I’m hidden under my duvet with a flashlight and a eulogy and newspaper clippings.


I write I’m sorry and it is my greatest act yet.

I write myself a missing person’s report. I tape it to the wall.


This time, I walk through the field and end up right where I started.

Over here, nobody gets what they want They dog-ear the warm bodies

next to them in bed, at school, on the street, six feet under.

They surrender right before the best part. I’m no better.


I curate a love-shaped loneliness, folding the sheet over

the empty side of the bed, lowering the hollowed linens into the stream,

I chew the pit in my stomach only to spit it and stick it

with all the other things I have failed to overcome.

This is where we’re buried, underneath the roots.

Ivani Atre, TX, Lone Star High School






"EDITOR'S CHOICE"



WINTER 2021-2022



the reclothing


Era inevitable: el olor de las almendras amargas le recordaba

siempre el destino de los amores contrariados –

Gabriel García Márquez, El Amor en los Tiempos del Cólera (1985)


men who loved in pieces were wicked, taste like the

thick-skinned frijoleros with their grizzled mutton chops wearing

moccasins of grime. What does one tell a twice-born


widower? we’d cull handfuls of fallow silt to grope the

words into being before they had a chance to trickle through the

quarter-sized holes in your cotton dungarees. When los prietos come up


to the surface, sweat stains bleeding into a map of featureless blotches

against their meerschaum skin, I would supplicate at the feet of pickers with

blackening calluses who wound themselves in plantain burlaps, porous


hulls sunbaking on the porch outside to clench each kernel between my

two front teeth, sprawl those soiled latex gloves against our peeling

drywall. If not me, who else? This sort of work is for the omitted – to


phagocytize the ill-bred blossoms in tight little gulps, drizzle

sweet-smelling spirits onto mud-caked bank notes: cyanide affection

that tapers off towards ripening torpor.

Rachel Xu, FL, Eastside High School






"BEST of ISSUE"



SPRING 2021-2022



Recipe for America


The fish was rotten. It was drizzled in the discrete coating

of hidden crosswalks and high expectations and the fuzz

from the week-old orange on the shrine.


Add salt to taste – I scraped chalk off calloused hand

sand straightened my hair to fit the baseball cap, a zodiac rat

scavenging for “identity”.


The dragon’s tongue runs deep, strangling my words with an

oriental vise. Ls and Rs tied knots in my mouth, leaving it broken

and vulnerable to racial scurvy.


jǔ mù wú qīn¹ – I was the stranger, the candle under the streetlight: underwhelmed, overpowered.

They drove us out with their guns and their trucks, so we disappeared
to the archway and built temples to repent for our existence.

The apartheid harvest brought brittle tea leaves and durable death threats soon after, winter frost swept the rice kernels and soybean stalks
into the cold white snow.

I think my sizzling wok with peeling laminate is better than my “American Dream”. They are both in desperate condition,
but only one makes good food.

¹ “Unaccompanied” or “without a friend” in Mandarin

Kenneth Su, AZ, Hamilton High School






"EDITOR'S CHOICE"



SPRING 2021-2022



cyclical rot

the seeds are still unsweet three days later—teeth sour,
brittle and fragile. the side of my cheek hurts with that dull
thrumming ache of decay. the skin on my lip is dead,
curving up, smiling. i think of watermelon grins seed-flecked
and summery sunshine tangerine peels rotting sickly sweet
like my vacations of seasonal joy: youth, spring, and
recklessness, true as gymnasium planetariums. the worms
eat their way into the flooring—summer crumbles away and
now it is time for me to fall into the ground gone for the long
sleep. the canned fruits go and all that is left is mossy
white and droplets of red, the six-month promise. the pomegranate
is sweet and it curdles milk. my mouth stings with rot.
Joyce Ma, GA, Northview High School






"BEST of ISSUE"



SUMMER 2021-2022



Continuum


1.


I wasn’t the girl who escaped first, but I fluxed fluent the god-thick

membrane of faces, tongue-seamed the alphabet & slit syntax into seraphs,

& wondered, if hell is an empty room, is language just a pupil-less eye?


When I look behind me, will oblivion still simmer like when I first

met it, blue as peeled skin? To be alone is to be eternal, & there’s

nothing promised to us but remoteness, selfdom as an ultimate smallness.


2.


The way a sentence isn’t made only of symbols & spaces,

birth isn’t random. It was because god speaks in a thousand

tongues that I was born autistic, & I wonder how I’ll


pay for each word, what I must give to run & run & run,

& I won’t stop running until I’m alone, unattached.

Who could think stringing words to a myth will save us?


& who could think god is more than

a startled nymph? & who could think anything more

than emptiness can exist between infinity’s red teeth?


& still, we expand in halo-orbit, stuck like eyelashes

in bigger finitudes. & still, there’s only a single

direction to run. & one by one, we walk away.

Jenna Nesky, MD, George Washington Center for Arts and Technology








"EDITOR'S CHOICE"



SUMMER 2021-2022



Food for Thought


Let her eat,
this woman who fed letters to tiny beaks cacophonous ovals of anagrams.

She who teased with turmeric and cumin and saffron, who served

alphabet soup until words formed in muscular organs. Again, again,

they came salivating at her branch she soon suckled a nest full of

twittering parasites, yet I was never peckish. She gave them berries,

words, but me meals, lovely paragraphs. She stood on white heels

under the moon in need of a bulb change, breathing sweet greatness

in my ear and stirring liquid wings with a twig. The birds and I flew away both orotund and sharp, destined for brick walled institutions,

but each time she tried to follow, to stretch virgin pinions, smaller beaks showed up, showed up, and once again she must

a for apple b for banana c for crevices with fuzzy green fungus,

plate more salt than pepper, plate licked clean of blood and meat,

plate of rolling bones.

She cannot fathom the spoon positioned toward her instead of away

from her and so I plead with you,

Let her eat.

Janaki Nair, OH, Solon High School





all other
"Certified National Winners"



FALL 2021-2022



A Cantaloupe Dressed in a Tablecloth - Hannah Ascher, CA Brentwood School

Trials and Tribulations of a Thursday Evening - Bree Horn, CO, Saint Mary's Academy
Placid - Nicole Fang, MD, Richard Montgomery High School

Safari - Georgia Slavec, MN, Delano High School

Silverleaf - Ryan Smith, NJ, Delbarton School

blinded into Victory - Viera Pulver, NJ, Oak Knoll School of the Holy Child

Harvest Moon - Dana Bahng, NJ, Cresskill High School

The Red Queen Hypothesis - Kenneth Su, AZ, Hamilton HS

NYC: Not Your Companion - Kaitlyn Cui, CA, Northwood HS

white woman (crocodile) tears - Olivia, CA Homestead HS

Urban Space - Mia Tan, VA, Mills E. Godwin High School

Gypsy - Evy Shen, GA, Statesboro High School

lately - Maxine Campbell, UT, Hurricane High School

Eve - Zoe Jagiela, MN, Breck School

three exclusion acts - Daniel Liu, FL, Lake Highland Prep

inevitable destruction - Inchara Hosanagar, NJ, Newark Academy

Morning Glory - Malleeka Suy, CA, Long Beach Polytechnic HS





all other
"Certified National Winners"



Winter 2021-2022



Porcelain Figurine - Sabrina Zhang, CA, Polytechnic School

Evening on December 25th - Nolan Lee, NJ, Delbarton School

Mustard Redwood - Daniel Kim, MD, Heights School

rescue - Chloe Schiffman, NY, New Explorations in Science, Technology, and Math

Fate's Jester - Davin Ban, NY, Francis Lewis High School

funeral rain - Megan Peng, CA, Torrey Pines High School

Pandora's Curse - Athena Neeld, NM, Loving High School

Save Two Bullets - Kenneth Su, AZ, Hamilton High School

girl in ebb tide - Saanvi Agarwal, CA, American High School

Psithurism - Corine Huang, CA, Stevenson School

The Beholder - Pascal Garcia, TX, Westwood High School

The Role of Mother - Sonia Siddiqui, TX, Elkins High School

Temptations - Viera Pulver, NJ, Oak Knoll School of the Holy Child

i met god in the woods - Sara Hebert, MS, MS School of Arts

The places on which we paint - Theodosia Mannie, NC, Julius L. Chambers High School

sunset through closed blinds - Freya Matheson, VA, Wakefield HS








all other
"Certified National Winners"



Spring 2021-2022



Vanity garden - Krish Asija, MA, St. John's High School

the quiet delight of pneumatization - Elizabeth Demick, MI,

Anchor Bay High School

leaky souls for what - Venkat Subramanian, NJ, Bridgewater-Raritan

honeycomb harvest - Shannon Huang, NJ, Biotechnology HS

The Star Sailor - Michelle Yim, CO, Pine Creek High School

Paramour Inamorata - Sierra Williams, NY, Curtis High School

a recalcitrant reliance to devotion - Lynn Clemons, VA,

Rockbridge County High School

Gallery Sonnet - Gegoria Slavec, MN, Delano High School

Daredevil - Cameron Smith, GA, Pike County High School

ares - Alissa Sherbatov, NJ, Bergen County Academies

The Wizard - Sarah Gallaher, WA, Cedar Park Christian

Phantom Kaleidoscope - Erin Min, NY, Croton Harmon HS

Cavity - Taylor Lipp, IN, Hamilton Southeastern High School

Untitled #82 - Yueran Yu, CT, Miss Porter's School

Hymns of Warmth - Michelle Wang, FL, YWPA

inkdeath - Elinor Brunner, UT, West High School

When I Looked Upon the Moon's Shadow - William Chen, WV, Winfield High School





all other
"Certified National Winners"



Summer 2021-2022



Pack & Unkindness - Kenneth Su, AZ, Hamilton High School

spring unsolicited - Sandra Lin, FL, Bell High School

mnms - Lillian Lemme, CO, Denver School of the Arts

insatiable - Viera Pulver, NJ, SYA France

floursack girls - Diane Sun, WA, Interlake High School

Summer - Kaylene Lin, CA, Carlmont High School

The Sun Rises on Easter Morning - Taylor Lipp, IN, Hamilton Southeastern High School

New Acorns - William Chen, WV, Winfield High School

Misstep - Fiona Lu, CA, Hillsdale High School

the end justifies the means - Madilyn Tran, NH, Windham HS

My First Birthday Was in an Orphanage - Kashvi Ramani, VA, Academies of Loudon and Rock Ridge High School

notes that are green - Teresa Zhang, NY, Emma Willard HS

Impatience - Dina Miranda, CA, Long Beach Polytechnic HS

Night Swimming - Sarah Franklin, CA, California School of the Arts Daer Mother - Andrea Zhou, NY, Great Neck South

Girl as Earthen Vessel - Brooke Nind, CA, Westlake High School





live poets society of nj
P. O. Box 8841,
Turnersville NJ 08012
info@highschoolpoetrycontest.com
copyright 2024