MIDDLE SCHOOL CATEGORY
Katie Bateman
1st Place Winner
Grievers, the Glade and an Unsolvable Maze
I begin my new life standing up
Surrounded by cold,
darkness,
and the stench
of dusty air.
I suddenly hear a lurching shudder
Of metal against metal
rises.
me
beneath
floor
the
As
I fall down at the sudden movement
I’m on my hands and knees
Sweat beading on my forehead
Despite the cold air.
jolt,
With another the room jerks upward
Like a lift in an old mine shift.
The lightness elevator sways and
back forth
Turning my stomach sour with nausea
As a smell of burnt oil
Invades my senses.
I want to cry
But no tears come.
I can only sit here
Alone
Waiting for what horrors that are sure to come.
Amber Palma
2nd Place Winner
Revelations
Revelations
Words and words
A poets mind
Shall fill the holes,
Click, click
The keyboard keys
Word for word
Begins to ease,
Calm beginning to
Tragic end
Something that can
Scare the dead,
Millions of words
Float through my mind
But only one completes the bind,
Revelations
Liam Peterson
3rd Place Winner
Revolutionary Tilt
The Earth revolves and tilts to make the year
First it’s winter, first season of the year,
Glistening, the snow, untrampled, with all its beauty
But when it is trampled it is just ugly.
The Earth revolves and tilts to make the year,
Then comes spring, releasing winter’s fear,
Beautiful, the new flowers, and the fireplaces sooty,
But the weeds can make the flowers ugly.
The Earth revolves and tilts to make the year,
Next there is summer, great for roaming deer
The rippling waters, full of beauty, may hold secrets, like hidden pirate booty,
But when people disturb it more than ripples, it will just get ugly.
The Earth revolves and tilts to make the year,
Finally comes fall, bringing signs of winter’s fear,
The changing leaves show great beauty, but the ground is rooty
And the barren trees, and the leaves trampled, are ugly.
HIGH SCHOOL CATEGORY
Ambrielle Army
1st Place Winner
Mushroom Cloud Watching
As God’s breath exhaled across the earth.
Fields, planes, and cities alike shed their delicate petals
Among the ashes of the forgiven.
They crumble so peacefully,
I can barely hear their lovely tears.
Scorched at the roots,
Life itself shall not awaken,
And the beautifully optimistic and innocent practice we used to call
‘Progress’ withers in the dust.
We may be alone, but the world
Is more precious now.
The last flashes of blinding light have
Danced across curious eyelids,
Leaving only lightning to appease Nature’s boredom.
We await the day when our divine symphony
Filters out into the final song of silence
Our world has so deserved.
Our day marks closer with each tumbling snowflake.
Here, in this desolate world of our spinning,
A gentle smile plays across its lips as its heart
Surrenders the final sacrifice.
And here, there are more ends than beginnings.
Paige Frarey
2nd Place Winner
Time.
The silent thief.
Dragging away
flickering glimpses
of memories.
Tenuous memories.
Stealthily abducts my thoughts.
A burglar creeping. Tiptoeing around. Identity unknown.
Takes.
Steals.
Rips.
Tears.
Snatching.
Always snatching.
A crystalline bracelet.
A bracelet of memories.
Sparkling with the remembrance
of better times.
When my grandma lived
we sailed on the lake
of forgotten memories.
The sky painted with fire.
D r i f t i n g.
Floating on a lake of indigo.
Weaving through waves of gold.
Aimlessly wandering
along aisles of dreams.
Defying the realms of possibility.
Getting lost among waves of silver.
Hopelessly misplaced
in retrospection.
We leap.
Fly.
And
p
l
u
n
g
e
into
the azure lake.
Scattering the pebbles of wishes.
The water biting.
The frigid chill tilts my bones.
Bitter as the burglar’s soul.
Swimming faster.
Racing.
In hopes to leave the thieving behind
in the ripples of sorrow.
Stalking.
Lurking.
Lingering.
The lake sparkles like an opalescent pearl.
Its dazzling brilliance
stunning.
Competing
with the glimmering radiance
of the sun.
The memory of
the house of
3
6
7
6
Obliterated from my mind.
The longer the burglar stays,
The more I lost sight of
two little girls
who
sway on a hammock in the shade of a willow tree.
The hammock silently swings
with the recollections
of the forgotten iridescence of a certain kaleidoscope sky.
Natalie Newton
3rd Place Winner
History
Lost words,
Separated by the spacious chasms of time.
Long since bounced off a wet tongue,
In potent words piercing the silence,
The long since lost their sting.
The parts of the story,
That used to mean the most,
Parts where you pause, let the breeze whistle quietly,
Or the rain drizzle rhythmically,
Or maybe the transparent silence arise,
To let the feelings set in,
To let the air thicken with the reality,
That what you say has substance,
Disappears slowly
First went the words.
Then went the faces.
The glances.
The places.
The secrets.
Time passes swiftly.
Selfishly confiscating moments in its wake.
as if in a moment, in a year,
in a span that allows the hair to gray,
the skin to wrinkle and eyes to fog,
the parts you like pause for,
to let the feelings set in,
to let the air thicken with the reality,
That what you say has substance.
Vanishes
In the end all that you recall,
Is the consciousness of your mind,
The madness of the moment,
The sensations still resonating underneath your skin
The nervous gasps for breath,
The chill of a cold breeze across your cheek,
The perpetual beat of your own heart,
The rest is history.
