WINNERS

WINTER 2011 - 2012

“BEST OF ISSUE” WINNER

As selected by our readers

($500 SCHOLARSHIP PRIZE)

Las Cruces

Were they kind to you, my son?

Did they whisper sweet nothings in your ear

Promises of redemption as they

Strung you up?

Was the world with you, my son?

That fateful day

When all was perfumed with to-be

And yet-to-be and already past

Did you smell the crowd,

Feral, sweating –

A hint of frankincense or myrrh.

The road ahead is not easy, my son.

Too many weddings at Cana have passed

Without incident, without joy, without miracle.

And yet I am here

I am with you

The candle still burns

The bush is unconsumed

And the stars shine in the fathomless

Savagery of the night.

Scott Remer, OH, Beachwood High School

EDITOR’S CHOICE SELECTION

($100 SCHOLARSHIP PRIZE)

Nassau and Beyond

I’m with you in Princeton,                                                                                      Where you’re too much of a stranger to know me but I can tell you who is 18 and who is faking so that you don’t get any more questions, you writer of death                         poetry I chatter-upper of Hispanics  on lunch break who think I’m among them and wanting to sex them  I’m with them for a moment that is thicker than the times            when I am with you. With you on Palmer’s Square, ripping away Math Prep, contact Will, Learn Italian from Sandra ‘12 I take them all down and it’s not all so great here, I say, maybe it’s your company. With you on Witherspoon where                                  you are never hungry but the bread smells good and the yogurts all fresh you say taro root is the flavor of misunderstanding so I taste. I’m with you in Princeton,               where you decide not to go Pre-Med and here in this one place that celebrates    Einstein’s birthday there is a church on Nassau where once a loon burned                 down the balcony. Polo men are ugly like aliens coming out of This Side of Paradise  there are few birds here, McCarter Theatre did you know is where Our Town began because these people are too smart for slowness so when they finally stop their halting feet get published.  At Shop of the World I buy a golden                                    Saraswati she costs me fifty dollars you say who the hell                                                 is she I say goddess of knowledge                                                                              you laugh and go traipse inside an eating club, drink, and I am with myself in Princeton    a golden stranger in my hands.

Bindu Bansinath, NJ, North Brunswick

“BEST OF ISSUE” NOMINEE

Woman in Art Nouveau

They’ll show her paint a-splatter, Pollock’s streaks of yellow-red-black

yellow like disease, red like blood, black like darkness

smother it in clear coats of angst, call it Fractal, Billion-Dollar Art

And the sweat of mediocrity will drip from her skin, said inferior

to those of a man who spilt his rampant emotions on paper

as if Art was an accident to a man, to a man—

And they’ll bring out untouched canvas, call it Genius, Emptiness Portrayed

frame it in gold, spoon it in silver, feed it to masses agape

as if that plain caviar was anything more than little beads of disgust

and disgust from her mouth will come a-spilling in tiny little words of rust

flowing, flowing, just as volatile than Malevich’s white tempera paint—

So they’ll think that a woman can’t create like a God, can’t even be

as good as Picasso’s geometric shapes on paper—and a sin it will be

if she curved the lines, see with naked glass and watercolor eyes

She was not as lunatic as the Modernists of her time

And they’ll say she suffers twisting lines and leaves into hair

filling them with smoke like voluptuous Athena figures rising from the sea—

stark contrast to the box-man almost poorly-drawn, almost politics

a challenge to the tastes of the norm. But with the bent stroke of a brush

and Nature’s bowed form, she will bring back an ancient Art simply reborn.

Geil Merana, CA, Clovis High School

“BEST OF ISSUE” NOMINEE

Mourning with Isis, Queen of the Nile

An unmerciful flooding is the only circumstance

which can return us to chanted beginning.

That, you must understand, picking up the pieces of corpse (of brother, of body)

laid into geometric shapes near a roaring Mediterranean.

My brother is gone as well. We can share each other if you are willing.

But remember I am mortal, my loss was in a kaleidoscope

city, yours one of tearing and desert need.

Pieces of your brother-lover Osiris mark where pilgrims still emerge

in Tunisian dye on the banks of a yellow lotus

Nile, while my own grief is justly contained within some marked Canadian plot,

neglected at best. Forgotten at worst. There are no gold-tooth incantations, no psalms.

And rebirth remains only the destiny of deities,

Horus emerging gilded from that goddess womb

as a testament to bone, life, absence, star.

Still my brother will never touch

between my legs like yours did,

and I will never have a sun for a child to remind me.

It isn't unfair. It is actually more than noble. Your priestesses are robed

in satin and European pearls, dancing savage toward water:

while I seem to be the last in my personal procession of loss. 

Cathy Guo, CT, Daniel Hand High School

“BEST OF ISSUE” NOMINEE

Letter To My Father

Daddy, the umbrellas have begun to unravel

I am fucking an older man his name is Time and

his moustache tastes like wire

The storms are purple electric in New York tonight

Seventh Avenue is brimming with leather

the girls in their boots and eyelashes

My wedding gown is made of water, Daddy

I dress and undress and it still does not cover me

There is skin murmuring beneath it: 

yours, mine, Mama’s-- Time’s touch is a mumbled pause

Only the rain can hear(our skin 

is similar in the way it absorbs sound)

Through the mirror this dress becomes the 

bone of a mutual beginning, sliding off my hips

I don’t want to be married

In my dreams, these storms are swaddled in cloth

and you are dripping with silver

Diana Mellow, NY, LaGuardia High School of Music and Art

ALL OTHER CERTIFIED NATIONALWINNERS WINTER 2012

The Purple Butterfly - Leah Katz, CA, Shalhevet High School

Battle Drums - Yinan (Nancy) Wang, NJ, East Brunswick High School

Tempest - Caitlin Zufelt, ID, Skyview High School

A Stone-Hewn Wonder of the Past - Abigail Wharton, WA, Home Schooled

Future Unbound - M. Alexander Turner, UT, Viewmont High School

Two Tendrils - Paul Finger, NC, Queen's Grant High School

Telephone Wires Singing - Elizabeth Tello, GA, Berkmar High School

Once was Lost - Lorin Allen, LA, Patrick F. Taylor Science & Technology Academy

Bubblegum Scum - Michelle Berry, CA, San Dieguito Academy

A Poetry Reading - Hayley McKie, MA, Alonquin Regional HS

Vancouver, 1990 - Nina J. Lu, MD, Montgomery Blair High School

A Dying Lass to Her Daughter - Ailey Irvine, UT, Weber High School

For Titan - Christian Baker, IL, Woodstock High School

Eyeward - Ryan Dieumegarde, GA, Mill Creek High School

Being of Mystery - Saria Brown, GA, Allatoona High School

drops falling on my head - Karina Kak, CA, Evergreen Valley HS

Our Propensity to See with Little Eyes - Hendley Badcock, GA, Brookstone School

lazy eye - Julie Pham, NY, School of the Arts

Bushwhacked - Maya Gouw, NC, City of Medicine Academy

burnrate - Braden Root, TX, Lindale High School

The Deception of Nostalgia - Elysia Webb, OH, Beavercreek HS

We Could Be - Michelle Lew, CA, Monta Vista High School

Weightless Burdens - Tess Bartell, MN, Princeton High School

Paradoxical Happiness - Jonathan Yi, NJ, Northern Valley Regional High School Old Tappan

Anxious Atrophy - Gullnar Syed, VA, Midlothian High School

THANKS TO ALL!