AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL POETS
"JUST POETRY!!!"
the NATIONAL POETRY QUARTERLY
Live Poets Society of NJ
P O Box 8841
Turnersville, NJ 08012
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Winners 12-13
WINNERS
12-13
JUST POETRY!!! & the Live Poets Society of NJ...
legitimately good poetry since 1998
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EASTERDAY POETRY AWARD 2012/2013
($500 Scholarship Prize)
The Winner, as selected by our readers, is Alicia Lai the "Best of Issue" winner from the Spring 2013 issue. Anna is from the State College High School in Pennsylvania. Congratulations Alicia!
after the Holothuroidea...
You may be swept and insomnical, so I am bound
to get caught in the yielding of it all. In late July,
your organs slide out like a present for a carnivore.
We have trained a parrot to sit inside the hollow
of your ribcage of a stomach; give Polly a cracker,
it coughs. Give a cracker.
Give, give an ungurgle; poor man’s starvation: because
there is nothing further in your stomach to reveal—
it has always been a net you could not lace tight enough.
When is it proper to spill your innards, because osmosis
is selfless and this is about losing it. Maybe I am losing it,
Venice. But you are always submitting, forgetting.
You gave up four ribs at the gateway to the canals,
because they could not let in a skeleton without
a respiratory system. To breathe, underwater, they said,
holding your head to the wet sand,
and then you twist away.
You fold back; you ease
open; the aorta splits in bloom.
Alicia Lai, PA, State College Area High School
My Bullets
It has eyes in its mouth....
Lots of them; little golden eyes which wink
but never close. I like to watch them
peel off of the roof and tear toward us
like tiny tongues of fire. I try to catch them,
to ignite, to be an envelope of light.
There is no sky.
But I wait for it to rain to wash my hair,
so I can clean my face with someone else’s tears.
Like this, I can pretend the sky
is there.
I swallow bullets.
They are cold and leaden,
and roll smoothly down my tongue.
I hide them inside me
and turn them into diamonds.
Alexandra Mendelsohn, NJ, Bergen County Academies
Two in the afternoon and...
overcast plate glass glows translucent
beyond my silhouetted form
at the back corner table.
Someone takes the other chair.
The sandy scrape of time-stained wood
washes up with waves of idle chatter and china
clattering on the current certainty that
I will sit in silence.
Shades of self-absorbed other pass
shop and street alike, distance distorted
through sleet on the window --
but never mind.
The constant heat in my hands is enough.
A foreshadow of the moment left
a crack in this sepia mug that is not mine
yet nests in my palms
and sends spirals up to steep the air
with some stranger drift of
home.
Rachel Xu, PA, The Lawrenceville School
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“BEST OF ISSUE” WINNER Winter 2013
Apathy?
Beyond the horizon, mills blow faint breeze,...
As barrooms open, easily seeing
It is Saturday, when libations pour.
Depressed rues start, the wind now carries chill,
Memories from a painful yesterday.
Fourscore beards ago, I was a young man,
But as it is, blackbirds grow into crows.
Who can tell but I, the every man who can
Belong to countryside and tavern clans?
For rising, pleading my thoughts to matter,
I fight the rivers of torrential chatter.
Beyond the pubs once frequently seen,
The hospital is a corner for the coroner.
Please take me away, I pray in the crowd,
Among the hypocrites, proud, true, and crazed,
I have no string, the maze I will never
Decrypt the aspects of my sinking ship.
I step so slighted in my house, bearing curse tight.
Oh! The fright, yes, my love might be saved,
Only if the lowlight hearse takes me tonight.
Keegan M. Gormally, IA, Fort Dodge Senior High
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EDITOR'S CHOICE WINNER Winter 2013
Helena
And when my daughter calls my name...
Will I remember the broken nerves
The acrid, metallic notes of veins
Memories of heart-shaped violets bruise
Transversal scars met with indifference
Only a boy with ink-stained eyes to erase
The lyrics of Melpomene’s melancholic melody
Spit out artificial sweetener which conveniently
Crusts over my tongue
Carve out black flesh, bleed acid
Sakura blossoms beneath moon-bleached bones
Coal-smeared webs whisper of reality
And he speaks urgently in the past and present tense
Of selfish loves and stitches
Torn from slit flesh
Will I remember any of it
When she wants to watch glass mason jars catch
What tears from burdened clouds
Simplistic cadence to lull a battered mind
My child borne of sunshine and verse
Francesca Rainosek, TX, Mount Carmel Academy
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EDITOR'S CHOICE WINNER Fall 2012
Maybe You Should Be Getting Back to Juanita
blondes you banged like the sea. latinas you stripped...
of catholicism like clingy undershirts. heads
you stole by the sweet lick of weed on your neck.
teeth in your grin i pop out like pills. your black hair
loose in fingers as i pluck out the grass on sunny days.
or on rainy days which are the same days.
dragged over your shards: girls and green insects.
green like the ends of your teeth after they've squatted
in my drawer during an eclipse of no time.
i sew all your teeth back into your gums. i gather
you and roll you into my lap. i fold you
into separate pieces. i see your arm twitch
in the washrag pile. i kiss your sweet neck, sweet grin.
i tuck you with the birth control. your body, it's empty.
except for the teeth.
Shauna K. Moore, LA, New Orleans Center for Creative Arts
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“BEST OF ISSUE” WINNER Fall 2012
They Dreamed They Were Oysters
Sun, rotating turret, osculates sea. I breathe....
Sand takes on expanse. Gull, swooping hawk—I’m safe,
Cloistered in earth-moat; hell-trench, water-snakes, snapping
Turtles—I’m safe. You know me? Do you know my pearl?
Closing out lightning’s teeth, my shell a steeple.
Have you slept on my stained-glass tongue? Have I given
You everything: nutrients, time, a mother’s love,
A father’s support? Have I shared too much, suffered
To sheathe you? Adorn some minstrel’s daughter’s wrist, then,
Her heavenly neck a bone-net clogged with refuse.
Her wrist is a gate that will not open for you.
You will never enter the body, never sleep
On the tongue or snug inside bone. You dream of bowels?
No one will swallow you. No one will hold you. Joy,
Nobody waits in the dead of night to begin.
Jacob Oet, OH, University School
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Quarterly "Best of Issue" Winners can be found at
www.justpoetry.org/winners_12-13/Fall_12-13
www.justpoetry.org/winners_12-13/winter_12-13
www.justpoetry.org/winners_12-13/spring_12-13
www.justpoetry.org/winners_12-13/summer_12-13
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Live Poets Society of NJ
P O Box 8841
Turnersville, NJ 08012
info