easterday poetry award
winner 2016-2017

"BEST OF ISSUE"

FALL 2016-2017

Ambling in the City, Post-Pilgrimage 

Today I wandered the streets and thought I saw

a crow again, the first since time left us

to wake on ledges at noon, content to cuss

out Coltrane and nixon, to thaw

and pool with each other, devolving raw

into opaque ink blots, this crow from lust

and dissolution appeared behind bus

nineteen, feathers unkempt, I heard its caw.

Yet, a second passed and it was gone,

a plume of smoke left in its wake, and words

escaped my mind again as they have done

since our departure. We lose form like brown-

ing iron, worse now on ledge, eyes skyward

yearn, but an unseen hand tilts my head down.

Sean Pierson, MA, Worcester Academy 

EDITOR’S CHOICE SELECTION

remembrance

The glass of the myrtlewood pulls

me into the wrinkles

of her palm. I watch her breath float outside

the window with a crisp

tenderness that fills the cold room with a new

warmth-- like peaches in autumn, and rosemary leaves

in butter. I watch my eyes wander-- returning

to the azaleas in the front and the rhododendrons

in the back, the salt of the house stinging

my sinuses with the potency of rusted

nostalgia the mildew clings to my brow

making the edges of my eyes tingle--

it’s almost as if my memory has been rounded

with all the years of floating across seas-- stuck

in the undertow of all the love I’ve let leak

and loyalty I’ve left stranded. The new day

has begun to break and I feel the limbs that I have borrowed

stir with the gaze of the clouded eye once again I’m back

with the myrtlewood and the glare of the glass

has begun to percolate the sand I have buried myself in.

Adam Nayak, OR, Cleveland High School

ALL OTHER "CERTIFIED" NATIONAL WINNERS

Verglas - Haley Jernaill, HI, Armand Hammer United World College of the American West

DearJulia - Amelia Van Donsel, MA, Waltham High School

To Understand a Person - Cynthia Liu, MD, Montgomery Blaire HS Watercolors - Evangeline Crouch, LA, Benjamin Franklin High School The Happy Man - Micaela Camacho-Tenreiro, NJ, Colonia HS The Last Dance - Kaylen Bond, PA, West Chester East High School Grave Disconnect - Noshin Quazi, TX, Cypress Ranch Living in the Notes App - Michael Yufa-Zimilevich, MI, Frankel Jewish Academy Sonnet 1 - Savannah Zona, FL, Boca Raton Community HS Light - Jaewon Moon, FL, Miami Palmetto Senior High The Beauty of a Bird - Sofia Babool, TX, Greenhill School at times i think myself a Worm - Jessica Wood, CO, Denver Christian School A Litany of "Isms" - Amanda Liu, NY, Ward Melville 

"BEST OF ISSUE"

WINTER 2016-2017

Sclerosis

Let me wear the fresh score like a sheath,

cornflower blue nested along copper skin.

I will make the pages my sweetest entity in funneled rooms,

scuffling skimmed light into the disorder of mangled sheets.

Let me track clover and thistle in the Common,

the sixteenth and dotted quarter notes shreds of a stranger’s jaw.

I will pretend not to notice the couple arguing in Spanish,

watery brandishes & inkblot vowels like maple. Let me sip

on rayon. At two in the afternoon I recall thorns and diaries of hoary

beakers., the mother of wild things. I will smooth my fingers over

the flecked chalice, prying open the chapped motifs of a sonata,

each grainy breadth swallowed into blush and forte.

Let me breathe Baroque, Classical, Romantic. I will sprawl the

hearth blindly across tempo markings and play for a citadel of flame.

The dynamics will haggle like high-hipped gypsies, ageless and

trembling. They will beg me for a name, craving a New York debut.

I will refuse, praying to an artist in his own knolled

dislocation. They will forget me, waiting on panache & a flame born

anew. I will annihilate cornflower blue, choking on whole notes,

spewing dandelion & parched remains.

Jennifer Boyd, MA, Notre Dame Academy

EDITOR’S CHOICE SELECTION

Homemaking

My grandmother taught me how to whittle the moon

So we could hold it without surrendering, how to

Roll knuckles like phone static across doughy

Oceans, make tea kettles blossom blankly with steam.

She spoke a milky language that curdled on my tongue

Like the type of silence that can muffle gun fire,

So I learned to fold clothes like a prayer

To apologize for cracked eggs, for broken homes,

Clasp my hands on stacked shirts, on stacked

Bodies, the bodies of children who were slapped

By the sunset. Unforgiving, unforgettable

Moth-footed children, partitioned by red, spilling

Over on my breath. I picked at dust, my lips,

The day grandma rolled hills onto my palm,

Mapping hemispheres in floured batter. Child,

Trace the moon of your hands to find home,

She said, her voice as endless as a promise

Stretched from her fingers to mine.

Joyce Zhou, IL, Neuqua Valley High School

all other "Certified" National Winners

The Forgotten Holocaust - Allison Chen, AZ, Hamilton High School ... - .-. . -. --. - .... - Sydney Amspacher, PA, Villa Joseph Marie HS Precocial - Mishaila Thackston, TX, Byron P. Steele II High School On Martyrs - Luke Taylor, NJ, Bergen County Academies "and here the imprudent love letters shall lay" - Emma Henderson, AL, Vestavia Hills High School My Lady's Lake - Molly Davis, PA, St. Basil Academy Wiped - Brady Alexander, KY, J. Graham Brown High School tell me what is 2 a.m. - Ally Decker, OH, Troy High School Some dreams stay with you - Alma Bitran, MA, Brookline HS Devil's Children - Mehwish Amir, TX, Harmony School of Science A Puff of Smoke - Victoria Choe, NJ, Livingston High School Drifting - Matthew Yu, TX, Plano East Senior High School Imperfections - Javares Selby, GA, Davidson Fine Arts Magnet School Eternity. . . - Fatimah Sunez, TX, Plano West Senior High School Roots - Sydney Andrews, ID, Homeschool The Sea - Inna Tintchev, DC, The National Cathedral School for Girls The Taming of Animals - Emily Hanson, WA, Bickleton High School 

​

"BEST OF ISSUE"

SPRING 2016-2017

on the NYT left in my BMW-X5

in Teurel, last week, Victor Barrio was narrow, was San Fermin red, was gored and suffered

panic. i’m driving

i stop my car and think (of) the impact.

someone called the video porn. another: a moment fleshed

in amber,

and Hemingway’s turning over in his average

grave.

somebody should ask him how Pamplona can

triple, because he wrote it so nice.

somebody should record the Spaniards’

shouts.

they call the sport País (country). In English it loses its capitals. In English it conjugates all

wrong. i’m driving

i stop my car and think (of) the impact.

someone halts their black sedan. another: a worn Harvard

sticker,

and Barrio’s disturbed in the footbed by

the car’s short

stop.

A. A. Reinecke, CA, Campolindo High School

EDITOR’S CHOICE SELECTION

hiraeth

fragments of heaven in small pockets of earth

mellifluous liquid chasseing around pebbles

ephemeral effervescence

canopies of lacework leaves filter

kaleidoscopic sunlight into mirrored gold

the caress of the wind

breathing in, in, inhaling,

exhaling.

a sonorous sound of silence aching to be inundated

but filled with perpetual whispers

petrichor in the early morning

the earth breathes in, in,

and out.

with its damp morning breath

earthiness that was

black and rich and home to all that lives.

I breathe in, in, and inhale

so tangibly close to home

and I exhale and it slips, escapes my grasp

my own lost shard of heaven

Caitlin Chen, FL, Seminole High School

ALL OTHER "CERTIFIED" NATIONAL WINNERS

A Scream in the Night - Marina Mancoridis, PA, Julia R. Masterman folding dumplings - Jacqueline He, CA, The Harker School

A Real Man - Clara Pohlman, NE, VJ &Angela Skutt Catholic HS

Alkaline - Amanda Wells , Oh, South High School

all our lives - Lizzie Axley, AE, AF North High School

Tell (A Blooming Confidence) - Leah Fleurimond, FL, Broward Virtual School

conglomerate - Rai E. Kirtley, IN, Terre Haute South Vigo HS

Not Unexpected - Molly Hemenway, NH, Exeter High School

Trials of Justice - Grace Hu, NY, Jericho High School

Study of Charybis - Heather Yenna Kim, NY, Roslyn High School

I dreamed of you last night - Ashley Maddock, SC, Cardinal Newman School

Lexis - Ananya Venkat, TX, Taylor High School

Choker - Katie Skirzenski, NJ, Mendham High School

To Water a Plant - Peter Choi, DE, St. Andrew's School

White Birch, White Tailed Deer - Ana Kusserow-Lair, VT, Vermont Commons School

Instrumentalists - Jennifer Miller, FL, West Port High School

An End to Man's Struggle - Jackson Richter, NY, Browning School  

"BEST OF ISSUE"

SUMMER 2017-2018

memorial day

thick, citrusy. you could not read this poem if you tried. in

Zhi Jiang, our mouths gaped like wide, elliptical

orange peels, the ones that aunt roasted for us

to eat. we thumbed them down

our throats & tasted streetlights tucked under

the rent. you cried when the sour stung your tongue, so

aunt gave us cheap soy milk to rinse it down.

on qing ming jie, we kneeled

on the roadside and this is why, you said. give me a candle,

a husk. we swallowed the yangtze & all its blanched-bone

lips, brown light shuttering on the banks, but yangtze is a word

you can’t even say: t z e curved like fingernails, like

ripe moons. in august we watched a little boy fold himself

into the river. the water (a jellyfish, a swan-neck)

moved spinelessly to fill his negative space & you held

my wrist to help cup

the water. we kneeled on the white-blue roadside with

oranges & milk in the hollow of my throat,

the Chang Jiang heavy in you, and when we looked up

the face was mine.

Sarah Feng, CA, Pinewood School

EDITOR’S CHOICE SELECTION

Ode to Keys that Never Meet

To the first and the eighty-eighth

You are the estranged brothers, the guinea pig and the ignored

Flanked only on one side too high, too low

To the thud of heavy furniture and the plink of porcelain

Occasionally smacked by chubby toddler fingers

Who flinch at your shrill grind, your booming clang

To the wires whose sound is forgotten

My ears do not care to reach your starved, high frequencies

The soles of my feet do not itch to feel your calloused vibrations

To the pristine ivory bookends who

Pity the fortieth, pushed and bruised,

Rather, mourn the ‘middle C,’ lacquer worn and faded

To the Capulet and Montague separated by strings of pearly melodies

Never was there a love more pathetic than yours, you crowning

jewels, Wedged apart by eighty-six valleys of opal, summits of onyx

To the ones who are not accommodated

Because that’s far too many ledger lines

To you who bite back at their intolerance—

For when they finally reach you, you demand

That they turn around.

Grace Zhao, CT, Greenwich Academy

all other "Certified" National Winners

My Brother's Ascension - Rebecca Oet, OH, Hathaway Brown HS

Of Smog and Steam - Megan Yang, CA, Troy High School

Palette for Rebellion - Faith Harron, ND, Century High School

The Day Petty Walker Died - Sophie Edwards, CT, Fairfield/Ludlowe

Windows with Sills of Gold - Mehwish Amir, TX, Harmony School of Science High School

Orange River - Emma Hughes, FL, Clearwater High School

When Out for Coffee - Alissa Martinez, FL, Melbourne High School

Evergreen - Yanka Kostova, NC, Carolina Day School

FDR Memorial - Sophia DuRose, FL, Osceola County Arts

The Persistence of Memory - Emily Tian, MD, Montgomery HS

Popsicles are predators - Samantha Yaccarino, NJ, Nrthrn Highlands 178 - Seni Nkeng, MA, Brockton High School

Dreams of a Forgotten Soul - Emmy Song, MD, Montgomery Blair blown away and tumbling - Matthew Yu, TX, Plano East Senior Standby - Isabella Ampil, NY, Hackley School

Mrs. Pontellier - Brian Chou, CA, Benicia High School