It's National Poetry Month and we want to introduce you to the some very talented teen writers this month.
This year's 2016 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards recognized 16 high school seniors who received the program’s highest national honor, the Gold Medal Portfolio, which includes a $10,000 scholarship.
Throughout April, we will showcase a poem from this year's writing portfolio winners. This week, we are celebrating the work of Hannah Miao, age 17 (Chandler, AZ) and Shayla Grace Cabalan, age 18 (Indianapolis, IN).
l-R: Hannah Miao, Shayla Grace Cabalan
Find out more about the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and LinkedIn. And don't forget to use #GoldKey!
Cornflower Blue by Hannah Miao
The summer the creek overflowed,
we watched as raw-skinned
boys shied
and shoved
each other with silt-blown hands into the
crack
of nature that had
beguiled the once unsullied earth.
We grappled with the
beer bottles, hushed cigarette stubs, the sun-swollen
days of greasing our palms in the dampened mud to create a
connoisseur’s confection of sweat
and dirt, scuttling hands uncertain of the tangled
weeds beneath. Your father warns us
about the
journey through the stream, confirms his fears
with yellow gazette clippings of the last time
the river spilled over, its brim a
briny ten-gallon
hat pouring the excess into the fluted swell of
children’s lungs.
I wonder if he knows about
the green boys, the fearless explorers,
the Columbuses and Vespuccis
whose scrappy legs sink ever
deeper
still.
----
Tug of War by Shayla Grace Cabalan
"Only Tug of War"
in the dream, London is empty,
and i stand solitary along the river Thames
in a bright yellow frock coat and bright yellow rain boots.
in my right hand is a withered old parasol,
and in my left is a Bible.
in the dream, a tourist ferry approaches me,
its blue and red sides faded and chipped
like the skin of my lips in the winter. There
is no one on the ferry, but when it crashes
against the bricks, I feel compelled
to climb aboard.
in the dream, the tourist ferry jostles and
shakes like a bed in a fraternity and
the windows are all shattered, glass
lying in piles on the floor. a small
doll lies forgotten in the middle
of the floor, and she scares me,
so i throw her
overboard.
in the dream, i climb up to the roof of
the ferry. London is on both sides
of me, and the breeze sets my
hair afloat. everything is muted,
grey, and colorless, and ahead of me is
Tower Bridge, rising like a black
obelisk in the distance.
in the dream, he appears from behind me
in a crisp red suit made of autumn leaves
and we look so peculiar, he and i
angry red and bright yellow in a
greyscale landscape. he smiles at
me through sharpened teeth
and asks me for a dance.
in the dream, i put down my parasol
but press my Bible to my breast,
and i tell him that i don’t dance
anymore; he tells me that’s a
shame. he eyes the Bible
on my breast like he
wants to throw it to
the Thames.
in the dream, the parasol flies
away and doesn’t stop till
it reaches the clouds. i tell
him i am weaker now
than i used to be
and i am ready
to make
a deal.
in the dream, he gives me that
sharp-toothed smile again
and says that he knew i
would come around.
there are good people
in this world, and then
there are the worst, and
we both know where you
are on that spectrum my dear,
he said with a playful
and cheerful
grin.
in the dream, he kisses my eyes
and i feel like i have been
blinded without really
losing my sight. he takes
my hands and pulls me
into a waltz, and i know
none of the moves.
in the dream, we pass beneath
Tower Bridge, and there are
hands around my waist, pulling
me away from the waltz. she
is ethereal and lovely, and
she walks on bare feet,
and she tells me i am a
prophet, but i have
to choose a
side.
in the dream, he is angry. he
grapples with her, but she
is much stronger, and she
tells me to stand aside. water
droplets baptize my forehead
as we pass beneath the bridge,
and i stand aside and open
the Bible, but the pages are
all blank.
in the dream, they fist their nails
into the tender skin of my arm,
and they pull me East to West.
it’s like something out of a
cartoon, and eventually they
pull so hard and so fast they
divide me in half, right
down the
middle.
in the dream, he says,
‘Fine. I will keep this
half’. and she says,
‘I will be back for the
Other half soon’, and
she kisses my eye
as if to make up for
some sacrilege,
and then,
i wake up.
in the real
world, my chest heaves and heaves
sweat gluing my hair to my face, hands trembling,
the remnants of heat still cursing those digits to the point where
i fear even moving them. in the real world, there are no adventures and no
waltzes.
Only
tug
of
war
remains.
