Hello CHS! After reading all of your amazing submissions, we have the long-awaited results of our first-ever poetry contest. Even if you didn’t enter, you probably saw all the tan posters stuck around the school.
Each poem was judged on its originality, imagery, emotionality, and overall craft, which made the judging process really difficult. We hope the selected pieces represent a wide range of styles and voices. We want to thank everyone who submitted, because that really helped make this contest a success.
The competition was really fierce, with over 50 submissions. Unfortunately, we could only choose 5 to publish here today. To the winners, congrats on having your poetry recognized and published. For everyone else, take a minute to read your peers’ writing talents!
Without further ado, let’s present the winners!
Honorable Mention: Lies by Raaga Kanthale
deceits
You crave to be the free bird, but not his untold lore,
You crave to be the ethereal sky but not its secrets
You crave to be the autumn leaves, but not the goodbye
You crave to be the victim, without knowing the blore
You crave to be the poet, but not their unspoken truth
You crave to be the flowing water, but not the filthy depths
You crave to be the falling sunlight, but not the far-flung travel
You crave to be the moon, but not the craters.
You crave to be the mud, but not the dirt
You crave to be the rain, but not the tempest’s wrath
You crave to be the other person but not his woe
You crave to be the free bird, but not his lore.
You crave to be the book, but not the crumbled pages
You crave to be the time, but not the deaths
You crave to be the typewriter, but not the tears it held
You crave to be in the shadows but not the secrets.
You crave to be the violin, but not the tortured strings,
You crave to be the flowers, but not the withering ones
You crave to be the painting, but not the hidden layers
You crave to be the free bird but not the lore.
Honorable Mention: The Box Opener by Diya Badlani
Despair can be seen all around my being—my existence really—as I simply tarnish the area with pathetic muck
And globs, so no one can even step foot towards me without becoming rotted, ill, starved; smothered with all
The evils this world is subject to.
Every helping hand becomes poisoned from this muck.
The muck follows me everywhere but today some of it secretly arrives in a special, garnished, bow-tied Box,
With a big fat red label haplessly stamped on it reading, ‘H.O.P.E’.
Obviously, it’s still muck. It has to be. Every time I opened a similar container with a spark in my Eyes—with a
flame burning a little brighter—it was all smothered by muck.
And yet foolish me can’t help but clutch the box dearly, curiously, desperately for a possibility that there won’t
Be only muck.
I dream that this box be filled with wonders.
With swirling stars and a night sky, not black but immersed with blues. With dark, rich, light, cobalt, neon,
Indigo, navy, prussian, ultra-marine blues.
All twirling to the gentle drums of the off-white moon made of soft cheese.
And the stars, they are pieces of the cheese moon that broke off. That are so creamy and so sweet and they feed
the stomach pangs from all the way down here.
That is what I dream.
Not hope—never hope. But simply dream.
Because at least you know dreams are fake.
Finally it is time to open the box, only at the end of the day so the rest won’t get ruined.
I peel the pretty bow off, unseal the stained and re-used wrapping paper until all is left is a naked wooden box
underneath.
The rusty clasp looks the same as all the other times, and the box is chipped from destroyed hopes.
Flick.
Nothing.
Somehow that’s worse than having muck in there. The emptiness stares at me with an air of pity.
But as I stare I realize this emptiness has something.
It’s saying sound waves.
It’s screaming colors at me.
It’s begging me, “Wonder beyond the sights, and the sounds, and the touches, and the taste, and the smells!
Wander from the past and the future back to here. Where you were always meant to be.”
And I wake up.
And there is no muck.
There is only me, and myself.
Third Place: Just The Way the Cookie Crumbles by Kira Giffin
Soles slap against hardwood
Walk much slower, frankly I should
Silver handle in my grasp, cool air floods the space
Labored gasps remind myself of my single competitor race
Light blue jug, farm animal on the label
Bessie, most call her, the star of many fables
Blue box, brown plastic, a treat encased
A mirror in my mug, I see face to face
As I tear, ravage, devour.
How I act, akin to a child’s witching hour
Bubbles in the milky abyss
Like a maze it searches through, moment of bliss
I take the first bite, flavor on my tongue
Gluttony is a sin, but I am young
Snap. It falls into the deep cream lake
Is it fault of my own?
Or just a mistake.
It courses through the valleys of the cinnamon square
Lost in the liquid, just bobbing there
Indulge in my urge,
A distance I keep, I am submerged.
My past has made me into a thorny creature
Dunking those who care for I, with leisure
Introspective I must be
For with this broken graham cracker I see
I push those who care so dear
Far away with pain, out of fear
Milk is the self preservation I obtain
As prior people have left lasting stains
So the white fluid is the preservatives in me
Potential decay of a relationship my thinking spree.
For I see loved ones as a craggy cliff
A steep slope to be guided by instinct, the thought makes me stiff
From the same very trail, pebbles lie in my shoe
To have someone care, is like a rat stuck in glue
So the survivalist takes over,
All succumb to the woe
I believe I protect myself, that I know.
Second Place: Honeysuckle Summer by Joana Jayanth
Among the ending daze,
Stepping lightly upon water, wheat—
Gleaming gaily in the day-end of a tricoloured sky,
There they are, amidst the wild violet and dandelion
Knee-high grass and other root-winding fellows.
Yellow-pale and soft as baby’s skin;
With their trumpet-noses and singing golden bells.
And yet spring ends, and so too does joy:
The children come with their giant feet,
And they roll like thunder, down valleys and hill,
And beneath them fall little kingdoms:
Green clover and wiry chickweed
Soft henbit, prickly foxtail
Dancing dandelion and bowing violet
And yet, barely glint in a falling shadow
To careless hands streaked bloody from prick and thorn
And boney fingers dripping with leaking baby-fat.
There, our honeysuckle in the dying evening,
For them the brass blows over the beyond.
And the children:
Eyes long plucked-out, ears crushed,
Hasty fingers wrench them up from loamy homes,
Bodies bisected; nectar-jewels wrenched from noble brows.
Their blood is sweet, the viscera plant-flesh and green
And the epidermis of fragile spider-web gives a cry as it goes
The quiet wrinkle and wrench of bones as they crumble,
As the children with gaping jaws drink their fill.
And the husk lies still
Flayed and torn and half-discarded in the sunshine,
Wrinkled and weathered and buried,
Within the cradle of summer-beginning.
Drumroll please… FIRST PLACE!!
American Sonnets to my Grandmother by Taryn Thomas
i. Sonnet to a Closed Casket
where are you now? (not here in this olive
oil room with the smell of fresh bread and blood
wine) maybe outside with the cicadas–
you’d be happy, they whisper-sing for you
(certainly not in that cross-carved door to
Death, through which Heaven sounds like a foghorn)
you must be back in the kitchen, flour
and berry jam staining your hands (white and
red, Christ’s body and blood spilt across the
marble floor, “i’m so sorry” through my tears)
you are flying with the sparrows, playing
with your fledgling wings like you showed me to
church-steeple-people with my baby hands
(it must be closed because you aren’t in there)
ii. Sonnet to a Flowery Grave
are you gone forever? (you’ll only be
gone as long as the roses sit by your
headstone; when they wither, you will be back)
i feel so alone among these black crows,
greedily pecking, fighting, over crumbs
of your memory (are my tears worth their
weight in gold because i trade them for a
whiff of your perfume) you must be helping
from Heaven — your crabcake recipe tastes
like your very own wrinkle-creased hands placed
mercy meal on the table (i know it
will help if i sprinkle crab scraps on your
grave: please taste it, better than ambrosia
and nectar angel-food, and please come back)
iii. Sonnet to a Mossy Tomb
did i really know you? (the glittering
silver ring on your finger, opal and
diamond) i kneel by your tomb, gleaming
stone cratered with time, the lichen-carved name
tattooed on my bleeding lips (i see your
imprint waltzing in the dark, in the world
of never-seen color-spirals beneath
my eyelids — remember you told me that
God speaks through those private visions of Eden)
i pray to the Lion and the Lamb, tears
blotching your epitaph, that i wish i
had more time to love you (but i hear your
voice carried on the wind, whispering
your heart into my ears like a psalm-song)
