FIRST PLACE WINNER

SUMMER 2010

($500 Scholarship Prize)

Paper Shadows

 

Warped reflections

Of eyelashes, of pupils, and time calloused hearts

Stick to the bent heads of nails,

Catching the sugar in sap

Sweetness frozen to concave tin

While honey reads life as a bible

Pollen ink on petal parchment

Written by the worker bees

Returning from the hive of God

Where the drones die free of their sins

And the failing queen follows the current to salvation.

 

So now, in this theatre of war,

The Armageddon of souls,

I pray to paper shadows

And watch through the lens of inhibited vanity

As the sunlight taxes the touch of gold

Casting candied reflections

Of eyelashes, of pupils, and time calloused hearts

Madeline J. Delaney, VT, Vergennes Union HS

 

SECOND PLACE WINNER

($300 Scholarship Prize)

Cutting Petals

I put those red, red roses you left me, love, 

in a vase full of water like crystals melting.

I kept cutting the stems shorter because

my mother told me that’s how they survive:

When you chop off their green legs at the ankles, 

then the knees,

eventually the thighs,

they rejuvenate.

I wanted our love to crystalize in this quartz-water vase,

and freeze eternal: a wedding photo behind glass.

So I cut and cut and cut

those verdant stems

and your roses stayed red, so red

[bleeding towards the sky]

But now I’m cutting petals 

[there’s red silk on the table]

and I don’t know where to stop.

Katie Ailes, PA, Strath Haven High School

THIRD PLACE WINNER

($150 Scholarship Prize)

Until Winter

We got to the end

(the end of what doesn’t really matter

{a trail, a road, a path, a book, a day, a decade, a sentence})

So we stopped

(more of a slow progressive ending of further movement)

and turned about

(not quickly, just enough to get a good view)

And we thought

(more like pondered)

about what to do next

(and what not to do).

So we sat

(cross legged)

and we sat

(feet extended)

and we sat

(laid actually)

and we stayed there

(until we froze).

Robyn Suchy, NY, Smithtown High School East

EDITOR'S CHOICE SELECTION

Red Woodwork

I look closer, tucking away my breaths

for this pale specimen

with wings like rice paper

antenna are furling palm fronds

flattened against the house,

oblivious to the phenomenon of

blanched moon-white against red woodwork

pressing closer, hoping for quick oblivion

This morning when the sun rose

my identical next-door rose to greet it

and I burrowed deeper, sheets spread over me

deflated sails missing the wind

I imagine fields of snow folding inward

feeding with white mouths on our footsteps

licking frozen our eyelids

lacing together the lashes with frost

the thought of my brittle skin and bones makes my breath catch

Often, the closer you hold me, the harder I

twist away

Leigh Nishi-Strattner, OR, Woodrow Wilson HS