HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

 
WHEN THIS ALL ENDS 
 
When this all ends, 
I’ll see my friends 
and I’ll travel the world 
and find each it’s ends. 
When this all ends, 
I’ll go to a party or two 
because there’s so much to do 
and I’ll end world hunger  
with an impossible stew. 
When this all ends, 
I’ll find a cure for cancer 
using a magical dancer. 
She’ll be a beautiful dancing machine 
that doubles as a mood enhancer.  
When this all ends... 
I’ll probably stay inside  
because we don’t realize how good we have something until it’s taken away. 
We just like the option of not having to stay  
locked up in our houses from day to day.  
So when this all ends... 
You can find me in my bedroom. 
 

Anne Lily Kump 
Frank Sinatra School of the Arts High School

 
THE BOOK OF MY CHILDHOOD 
 
Today, I picked up a book in my room  
The words were old and fading  
With words I could barely recognize 
Tattooed into its skin  
 
My fingers traced over  
The well-worn paper 
The cracks creases and crevices  
Creating chasms 

They run deep within the pages  
Words and pictures falling into them  
And rivers of memories flow inside  
 
Each line is a proof of love 
And every line that fades  
Is a souvenir that was left behind  
 
Today, I cried over a book  
It contained a special story  
I cannot figure out where it came from  
Or why I had loved it so  
 
But today I will always remember 
The indented line 
where the spine has cracked, from years 
of forgotten love. 
 

Laura Hickson 

NYC iSchool

 
LIGHT DOESN’T EQUAL RIGHT  
 
Let me take you back to where this began, where light skin became the “right skin” since it got you into their house, though it never got you off of their land 
They saw melanin as the beast, so when you looked more like them, you no longer were  treated as bad as the least 
And they knew that it took some of their kind to make you look like their own,  
but you still didn’t belong with them, you were too tainted for the whites, but not black enough for it to be shown 
Now here comes Freedom, never knocked on our door, but told us to play a game of cat and mouse
So we fell for the bait, we fought in wars, held onto her empty words,

got out of the chains, fell into their ropes that hung us from trees, or if we were lucky enough into their jailhouse. 
But freedom, you knew her all too well, as she graced your presence, you stuck your nose in the air as black brothers and sisters were being degraded and segregated, you cheated on your black culture and felt no remorse in your affair
Racial passing became your nicotine, your cocaine, your morphine, your meth 
No matter the cause you will never say you are black, but claim the title and the race of white till your very last breath
See they marked in our brains, that black can only be seen as a monstrosity,
Took away the love you had for your kind, turned it into self loathe, turned your blackness into an atrocity.
But don’t worry, your light skin will protect you, in ways that your DNA can’t, so you pity the dark-skinned black girl, who’s rich skin can never go unnoticed, who’s big lips and 4c hair could never enchant
Who desires  to be looked at and much like you, will do anything to not look black,
She’s  the designer and bleaching her technique,  skin is her dark fabric, and  she needs white linen to create the perfect frock,
so she uses every bleach cream to erase every word and burden that her once brown skin carried
While the color is gone her burdens are not cause then she births a black boy,  
who will look  at his skin, look at brown women, the same way she once did,
and think that light women are the only women that can be married
So the white, light and wanna be “right” women are these men’s trophy wives,
While our dark-skinned girls become an exhibition for them to view, to touch, but creatures they will never keep in their lives
But does the cycle continue, will black men and women continue to give into this false claim,
That you need a light women, to stand by you or your accomplishments will go down in vain
That the less melanin you have is the more successful you can be, that we have to look like our oppressors to no longer feel oppressed
When will we learn that our melanin was originally royalty, that our statue in life wasn’t meant to be a minority but that we were rulers of the majority
When will we repaint our own image, stepping away from division,
But letting these vibrant shades of black, let this be our momentum in making 
provisions,

That our black excellence will take us farther when we finally get their voices out of our head,
When we learn that light skin and white skin isn’t a preference, but a colorist delusion that they have sewn in with a racist thread.
 

Biannca Boucher

Central Park East High School

 
LITTLE BLACK MUSLIM GIRL 
 
I don’t know. 
It’s the answer for the many questions you ask. 
Are you tired? 
I don’t know 
Are you okay? 
I don’t know  
Who are you?  
I don’t know 
Then you get mad 
Why don’t you know!? 
I don’t know?  
Maybe it’s because I’m 15 years old.  
Maybe it’s because I've been sheltered because the world seems to be a bit too cold. 
It could be because I go through the motions of school every day while it drains me.  
Or it could be because I can't sleep.  
So I stay up at night asking questions so I don’t have to dream. 
Dreams that would probably never come true because can you imagine a little black girl flying and succeeding too?  
 
It could be because I’m never allowed a rest.  
Every day is a battle with society and its restrictions it applies to me. 
I’m not sorry for covering my hair for my faith but for god sake, I’m not going to bomb your place. 
 
I don’t know who I am because between the shackles of society that chains me 
down and the weight of my dreams that crush my crown. 
I’m just a little black Muslim girl who never got the chance to rise from the ground. 
 

Saran Soumano   
Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics

 
MY NAME: A STORY OF RIBS 
 
Adam  
The first man.

How can you forget your own name?

When I introduce myself, I bring history with me.  
My throat catches on the A, my vocal cords lock and restrict the vibrations coming out of my mouth, sending it down my neck and spine, forcing each syllable of A-duhm AHZ-men KRIN-skee from my lips like vertebrae being 
pulled from my throat.  
 

But,  
My name is from the Ottomans. The fur traders of the Middle East. The ones who ventured hundreds of miles to get their pay, only to be met with solemn existences and violence.  
 

My name is from Eastern Europe too. It’s from the villages of Poland, Belarus, Russia, Ukraine. Where people are named after their father, the rivers, the mountains.  
 

But that predates the oral histories from my grandparents that I have memorized. Maybe that is why it may seem that I forget it.  
 

See,  
My name is a suspiciously picked pomelo, chicken soup at a Saturday night dinner, Chinese restaurants on Christmas,  
 

My name is a dancehall in Uzbekistan, the dirt caught in a partisan’s boot, and a house with a tin roof in Tel-Aviv.  
 

But those places exist in the wrinkles of my brain and the wrinkles in the yellowed photographs on my grandparent’s bookshelves. Maybe that is why I have a hard time forgetting it. 
 
Now,  
My name becomes a part of the content cacophony of English bedizened with Polish and Hebrew around the dinner table. It’s made diminutive with -cik or -ush depending on my grandmother’s mood.  
 

My name comes from a long and unidentified line of those who could not say their names too. Names have been changed as have words in sentences, in order to make the listener comfortable.  

Stuttering is thought to be genetic. It’s a familial weight that just adds to my generational legacy.
 
How can you forget your own name?  
 
I can’t forget my name. There’s too much at stake. 
 

Adam Osman-Krinsky  
Bronx High School of Science

 

PETRICHOR  
 
Tell it to me slowly.  
 
Know that we are lying in the grassy meadow 
drawing each moment in honey glazed fingers  
sipping in the v-shaped flight of birds  
 
on angel’s breath and stain glass shards  
sailing across the ebbing lethe  
divergent mountains sacrificed their height  
 
tell me of beads of rain racing down the car window  
kissing the stars in the ravine in our victorian melodrama  
of a dull word lightened by wonder  
 
know that soon i will be numb on the barren field  
the sun will scorch on my cracked lips  
the mechanical whirring will be too much  
 
Tell it to me again and again  
before i fade away 
 

Gabriella Calabia  
High School for Math, Science and Engineering

 
GHOST 
 
I wanted to burn something so I did, 
torn loose-leaf that only smoked till I breathed 
and it singed my fingers.  
I tried to lift the scrap 
but it fell into countless pieces,  
infesting the lines of my fingers.  
 
That’s how I learned ash is softer than snow.  
 
I want a blanket of ash, so at last I can sleep,  
alone in the ruins of infinity.  
Let this white sweater turn to gray.  
They will wrap me in it,  
but it will fall apart 
and get trapped between my skin and my skin.  
 
When I awoke, I could not push aside my blanket.  
 
I fell asleep in a snowbank once, 
and when I woke all was gray and burnt.  
Not even the snow protected me 
so I’ll burn down the mountain.  
I’ll be warm again, 
if only for a little while.  
 

Aerin Franklin 
Brooklyn Technical High School

 
200,000 TESTS AND 120 DEAD  
 
You can think COVID won’t get you  
But it could get you at any moment  
So I am isolated  
 
December 18, just a month ago, I turned 17  
Shelley, Showkat, and Ibrahim  
Bro, Ma & Babba, all suffer from COVID-19  
The virus is touching everyone but not me  
 
December 18, NYC dealing with COVID-19:  
Day 293 200,000 tests and 120 dead recently  
I don’t like tracking numbers, but numbers are all I see People have their whole 
homes for quarantine But not me, just my room, all lonely  
Every other room is deadly  
 
You can think COVID won’t get you  
But it could get you at any moment  
Now I live in a house filled with it  
 
Suddenly I am doing groceries  
Apples, Chicken Nuggets, Soda, Prunes, Tangerines Out in the cold, snow still on 
the ground, 30 degrees  
 
Suddenly I am carrying the family  
“There is death in my body” my older brother says December 23, what a week  
14 days, 5 hours of sleep each  
 
But how can I sleep? At the end of the week  
The nurse told my dad to go to the emergency  
 
Suddenly, I’m writing dad’s health records  
before he goes to the hospital  
 
Writing mom’s health records in case she goes to the hospital, “Let this not be the 
week. I am not in the mood to lose,” my older sister says  
Luckily, it becomes the week of the Ali family’s recovery 
The vaccine is here, the masks are still there  
Three vaccines, variety  
 
Better days are coming  
Days where we go to Spain  
Loved ones come over for holidays  
Times where you aren’t worrying about another COVID case  
Better days, better days, better days 
 

Rubya Ali  
Edward R. Murrow High School

 
TO THE FIRST BOY I KISSED  
 
I lied. It wasn’t my  
first kiss. The first happened years ago,  
when I couldn’t have been half your height. I was younger than your sister then,  
still wearing pink princess dresses,  
little polished shoes, 
two pigtails held together by all the rainbow’s colors.  
I don’t want to remember his name  
his furrowing eyebrows and dyed hair and thin lips are enough reminder.  
I don’t know what I said to him, only what he did place his hands on my neck as you would a chicken to slaughter. Tighten his grip while his face closes in.  
I can smell him, the dust of an old cage,  
chamomile that threatens to strip you of consciousness. Nothing like your peppermint and strawberry lip balm.  
 
To the first boy I kissed,  
I lied. I wasn’t squirming because it tickles. I was scared.  
The last person that put his hands under my waistband cooed and held and grabbed.  
Perhaps he wasn’t as violent as I remember but like his kiss, his hand marked and  
destroyed. It’s a thousand burns eating away your skin, consuming your sanity.  
I didn’t know what sanity was then,  
I only knew to yell  
Stop. To push him away before I was reduced to ash.  
Yet, my words choked at the smoke,  
my hands only clenched together, color of blue flames. Decade passed,  
I’d built up enough of me only to be burned again, my words still lodge at my throat, suffocated by fumes of dying flesh,  
my hands still seek comfort in harming one another, 
gripping even there is purple:  
I guess I still don’t know what sanity is, knowing only fear.  
 
To the first boy I kissed,  
I lied. I did not like it.  
I did not know how to say no.  
I can still taste the last “no” I said;  
bitter, desperate, fearful. He didn’t stop.  
While tears formed under shut eyes. I laid there paralyzed. I couldn’t feel the warmth of the bed, the coursing of my blood, only the shadow that chained me- his strokes, slimy fingers, and that look in his eyes, a feral cat who’s found its prey, killing it with every bite but not letting it die. When you pulled me onto your lap,  
clasped your arms to my side like a vice,  
forced your hands under my pants. I  
froze. You looked so much like him.  
 
I didn’t want to say no,  
I didn't want to be a victim again,  
I wanted to like it. So I told you  
yes, I did like it.  
If you looked, you would’ve seen the fear in my eyes, perhaps you didn’t want to know.  
If you listened, you would’ve heard the hesitation, perhaps you couldn’t hear beyond the affirmation. I don’t blame you,  
I knew you meant me no harm.  
I needed to say no but I didn’t,  
I lied.  
 
To the girl that lied,  
it’s okay. You’d heard it from  
the adults and your best friends,  
but it’s really okay.  
It’ll be okay.  
This isn’t a lie. 
 

Yan Zhen Zhu 
Brooklyn Technical High School

 
BREATH, AND WIND, AND SOUL 
 
My grandfather passed away  
When I was two, 
But I was precious to him  
Because he named me 
Xu ZiXiao  
My Chinese

name

To remind me  
He was once

here

 
Xu, our family name 
Which isn’t common here,  
But is back in China 
Zi  
The color purple 
My favorite

color

Xiao 
The traditional Chinese flute 
To remind me  
One day I will sound

beautiful

By my own breath 
 
And my English name,  
Iris 
A name of many meanings 
Greek goddess of messages and rainbows, 
Graceful flowers blowing in the wind, 
A close up of one’s eye… 
For they say 
That the

eyes

Are windows  
To the 
soul 
Yes, my name has many meanings 
To remind me 
Breath,  
And wind,  
And soul. 
 

Iris Xu 
Punahou School

 
AMTRAK

Inspired by Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird 
 
I  
Among the red paint-coated box cars,  
The only moving thing  
Was my head as I listened to James Taylor  
Then I felt the subtle current of the AMTRAK below me.  
 
II  
Few thoughts penetrated the quiet of my mind  
A quiet like the train  
A mechanical hum drowning all else out.  
 
III 
We tunneled through the winter freeze.  
A small speck over the Potomac.  
 
IV  
A sleeping grandma and her tired grandson  
Are one.  
My sleeping dad and the tired locomotive  
Are one.  
 
V  
I do not know which to prefer,  
The high-speed blur of naked trees  
Of scrap yards or industrial landscapes 
Or the beauty of the leisurely chug of the train,  
Where the Chevy pickups on the interstate accelerate ahead,  
Or where the fatigued dining car eats DiGiorno’s.  
 
VI  
A young drunk lies on one seat  
His belly sticking out.  
The shadow of his IPA  
Comes in and out of focus.  
The conductors  
Sitting in a circle  
Count the snack car profits underneath the table.  
 
VII  
O’ men of Charleston, Florence, Fayetteville  
Why do you imagine New York?  
Do you not see how the sun shines  
On the townhouses of nameless towns  
As you drink yourself to sleep?  
 
VIII  
I know noisy streets  
And the screeching of the subway;  
But I know, too,  
That the AMTRAK is involved 
In what I know.  
 
IX  
We stopped at Union Station in DC  
I went out for a walk  
But Dad came and yelled at me.  
They switched the gas engine for a diesel one.  
They bring the canines on to sniff for drugs or bombs  
The dog’s drool hits the floor.  
 
X  
The snow in North Carolina  
Leaves behind a tree on the tracks,  
Even as I tried to stay awake  
My eyes fluttered in and out of consciousness  
As the sunset outside turned into a quiet nothingness.  
 
XI  
As we rode into South Carolina,  
Our train’s horn pierced through quiet Kingstree.  
One by one, seats turned upright,  
As we woke up  
I saw Mom had fallen asleep on her Macbook  
And the Conductor announced our stop.  
 
XII 
the train is so quiet sometimes you don’t notice it  
And the sky outside so dark you don’t notice it  
But the Cheerwine on the table is sliding around.  
And so we must be moving.  
 
XIII  
I was groggy all day.  
As if I hadn’t brushed my teeth.  
And I wanted to sleep now,  
but my dad talked to the cabbie all the way to the hotel.  
We rode a freshly paved highway into Charleston.  
I could smell the Atlantic from there.  
And I can still see the AMTRAK from here. 
 

Iskander Khan 
Bronx High School of Science

 
MY LIFE IN SONGS 
—inspired by Hanif Abdurraqib’s "The Year My Brother Stopped Listening to Hip-Hop” 
 
I was over my head and 
only knew how to do class- and 
homework because I was raised that way 
and near the end of middle school 
Noah introduced me to XXXTentacion 
his hit single “Look At Me” 
and I discovered Lil Uzi Vert 
at home on my own 
they made me feel like no song has and 
I just fell in love with the genre 
but I was still over my head 
and it took me three years to 
realize I was SAD! and I 
didn’t know anything about 
myself and I guess I liked the 
music because I thought it would 
help me fit in but I realized 
I related to it and saw in it 
my flaws and sins but there were 
certain days that were special like 
city girls when I approached love in the city 
stargazing and I went wild and 
I might be forgetting some or 
that might be it and now 
I think I may be driving solo 
my whole life and to this day I 
wake up in the morning and I ask myself 
who am I? someone that’s 
in torment, torment, torment 
 

Justin Liu 
Stuyvesant High School

 
LK  
—inspired by Hanif Abdurraqib’s "The Year My Brother Stopped Listening to Hip-Hop” 
 
I was 14 
& it’s only been a year  
& three months & twenty-three days but 
it feels like ages ago when I waved to you from across  
the Broadway-Lafayette Station platform holding the blue 
fluffy ball you won me by throwing  
two basketballs into a hoop at Coney Island  
& looking at you until the D train  
arrived & I could still see you through the window but as  
the train moved you got farther  
& farther away  
& now you’re across the world  
but your name comes up on my phone every day & so does 
your face so we count three  
two one & kiss through the screen &  
you send me songs like   
She’s A Rainbow by The Rolling Stones  
which you said was about me even though I don’t come in  
colors everywhere but you still think I do &  
your shirt with their logo that you gave me lost your  
scent because I wore it so much but  
I remember when you put it in my bag before you  
walked me back to the hotel at 1 a.m.  
& we went into the empty mall to look for  
a photo booth because all the subway stations were closed  
but we wanted more pictures before we  
said goodbye again & now sometimes when I shuffle your playlist 
Wouldn’t It Be Nice by The Beach Boys comes on & it really would be  
nice if we wouldn’t have to wait so long because it’s been seven  
months & twenty-nine days since I last saw you & I  
don’t know when I’ll be able to again so I close my eyes &  
we’re together again on the yellow grass after just waking up  
& the sun’s rays are actually visible & you’re singing  
along to Starman by David Bowie 
 

Sasha Burshteyn 
Stuyvesant High School

 
WAXING  
 
I went outside, for the first time,  
To watch the moon set, right after the sun;  
White buds sprouting from each of 20 stems;  
And the hurricane, threading through the eye of a needle,  
Was blown out like the candle that watched like the evil eye  
Mars, a face, a hope  
 
The explosion spinning ‘round and ‘round until  
The wind stole it (pale glowing petals lost in the dark)  
And forced its dust down to rest on other sunken dreams,  
Whose only incarnations are black vernal pools  
on a silver beach, with tin walls keeping at bay the water  
 
Sometimes I wonder if I went out before  
the more empty-than-full silver sphere had  
sunk beneath the skeletal trees,  
blooms forgotten on a chair,  
if I would have noticed that Polaris  
drew a diamond pointing to  
Mars, my face, the hope  
 

Felicia Jennings-Brown 
Bronx High School of Science

 
PILLOW FELT LIKE POISON  
 
The pillow felt like poison to my hand  
My body 
My soul  
I had so much left to say 
To write 
To push for 
If I went to sleep 
Would that mean my dreams would die? 
Would that mean everything I pushed for 
Strived for 
Fought for  
Would end up to nothing but a pile of dust 
The pillow felt like poison to my hand  
My body  
My soul 
All those demons, those thoughts those dreams would end up like dust in the wind 
As they wouldn’t stop clouding my mind 
As I closed My Eyes 
These Eyes 
But are they my eyes? 
As when I close them I see others 
I see colors  
I see memories that won’t  
GO!!!! 
Why you may ask
No one but my subconscious knows 
The pillow felt like poison  
The pillow felt like poison  
The pillow felt like poison to my hand  
My body  
My Soul 
 

Nicole Manning  
Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics

 
STORYTELLER 
 
I put on a play in my old house 
In my cape, jumping on the old couch 
Putting up lights when it's cold out 
Mom and Dad, both seats sold out 
 
See these are the things 
That shaped me 
The smiles and laughs 
It would be weird to see it leave  
 
These are the things that make  
Life feel like a game 
The moments you do twice 
They're not the same 
 
I put on a play in my basement  
Mom and Dad's smiling faces  
But now I don't know if they faked it 
Guess everything is complicated 
 
Slowly losing  
Who I am inside 
It gets harder to say goodbyes 
But as we grow up 
It gets easier the more you try 
 
But I'm ready for 
Your return back 
Maybe we can 
Relive what we had 
I still care about you 
Like if it was the first day 
You make me have 
No words to say 
 
I worked really hard  
Let me show you my play 
And I don't want to do it twice 
Because it's not the same 
 
There goes another Friday 
Added to the ‘100 bad days’ 
But if ‘life doesn't have consequences 
Are you living your life?’ 
That's what Ms. Garry would say 
 
But when I show you my play 
Will you pretend you didn't know if  
I make a mistake? 
Life’s gonna get really bad 
before it's okay 
But maybe you'll forget it all while  
you're watching my play 
 

Miguel Juarez 
Bronx Academy of Letters

 
 
ANTICIPATED VISION 
 
We are expected to act like grown adults 
Always hearing 
“I shouldn’t have to tell you to wash the dishes. Get up and do them” 
Told to “Get off your phones. It distracts you”  
When it is actually the only thing making us happy 
Treated like babies who aren’t allowed to fall when trying to walk 
It takes time 
But to some it shouldn’t 
 
We are taught to go to school and get good grades 
But we don’t have enough support at home 
Don’t ask us how school went for us 
Don’t ask how we’re feeling
Teacher calls to make a complaint about their student 
But little do they know, this complaint stems from home 
In order for a plant to grow it does need to be taken care of 
Right?  
 
We want to make mistakes and learn from them 
But instead we tuck it under the carpet and walk away from it 
As it grows and grows  
Filled with dirt, guilt 
We don’t realize until you see the carpet physically 
Breaking down  
Just like how our mental health is breaking down  
Like our body, trying to break down our own food to give us energy but 
We don’t get energy instead we get 
Anxiety, depression, mental illnesses 
It's not talked about in our homes 
It isn’t seen as important 
 
To the people we should trust— 
I’m sorry we weren’t enough 
 
To the people who made us— 
I’m sorry we are not who you envisioned us to be 
 

Kujegy Kamara 
Bronx Academy of Letters

 
RUN 
 
Run 
Don't stop 
Just focus on the pitter patter of your feet  
Ignore how cold the midnight air is on your face 
Just run 
For yourself 
Run 
Until your feet give out 
Get on your knees 
Crawl your way to freedom 
See those vibrant flashes of light across your blurred eyes 
Tie back your long coils of hair 
Crawl 
Become the savage beast you've needed to be 
Crawl 
Until your jeans rip and tear 
And your knees turn that sick purpley-blue 
Use your hands 
Grip at the concrete  
Inch your way to freedoms touch 
Don't bother tying your hair back anymore 
Let it mix into the dirt 
Grime 
Sweat 
And blood    
Use those weak hands  
Make them strong for once 
Grasp at the concrete until your hands become a crimson mess 
Becoming so numb they don't feel anymore 
But you still do 
You still will 
 
Scream 
Scream your defeat 
Scream 
Until your voice is begging for silence  
Laugh at your cuts and bruises 
The monster you’ve finally been able to wake up  
Of freedom you’d never be able to reach 
Laugh until the devil rips out your tongue 
Smile 
Clutch at your broken parts 
Let them know they served their purpose 
Hum yourself a familiar tune as your eyes close 
Sleep  
 

Iman Rahman 
William Cullen Bryant High School

Third Prize 
 
PLAYGROUND SECRETS 
 
I wonder if that moon shine you call skin stains easy 
Like maybe those freckles are specks of mud that settled and faded in solidarity with your small, innocent eyes, your dreamcatcher eyelashes, and the hair I wish you’d let fall toward your furrowed brow like when we were kids. 
By and by, I find that the sharp of your features doesn’t extend past your face; you’re just textured honeycomb in this nest of bees, and not everyone wants you in their cup of tea. 
Like the red of an unsettling eclipse, there is something desperate and harrowing in those scabs of yours—raw and gruesome metaphors I hope you never understand. 
Even in safety, you override yourself: stepping back when you want to move 
forward, never saying what you want. 
I hear the whispering winds rattling inside you instead of the voice I’d recognize from way back when our teeth were crooked, but we smiled openmouthed anyway. 
 

Natalia Velez-Rios 
Stuyvesant High School

 
SECRETARIAT  
 
The secretariat decorates himself with paper ribbons 
one from each race stapled crudely onto his mane 
a reminder of crueler beginnings 
 
The secretariat bends over to tighten his shoelaces 
then hears the gun fire a single bullet 
racing towards the sky 
 
The secretariat runs past mules, 
having no conscious thoughts 
except the ending of it all 
 
The secretariat stares down from a steel bridge 
places his hands on the rails 
and leans down for the last time 
to taste the ocean water. 
 

Chiamaka Okorom  
Central Park East High School

 
Second Prize 
 
DAY SIX 
 
Remember that our hands do not belong to our wrists 
nor our wrists                                        to our bodies nor we 
to each other. Black sheep take           themselves into the fold  
unknowingly and never run again. Perhaps blinded, perhaps 
at night we mistake white wool          for open air.  
We do not choose                                 ourselves or each other. 
 
Remember that all our joints pull in different directions 
and wish to be separated and one day   
the sheep outlive                  the shepherd.  
The gate remains forever between opening             and closing. 
Once free we turn foreign,           salt-hungry, wider 
than water, yet still our names                stay tacked to our ears. 
 
Remember that God makes Adam with His own hands 
and takes the earth                              upon them like second skin.  
There is a moment, I think, when Creator  
and creation                                         lock fingers 
and never forget it. 
 

Serena Deng 
Hunter College High School

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MOTHER’S BINDI, MY BINDI  
 
the point at which creation begins (1),

what does it matter, ma!

piercing orbs cut in two  
sewn unfastened by unruly tentacles,  
and in between lies

why does it matter!

a single tear-drop of a million  
women  
their cries rippling (2),

get rid of it!

they watch with their third  
and warn of the trap  
capturing clouded light,

you don’t need it anymore!

just as the eyes lure in radiance  
and deviously encage it,  
the burden of a spiraling trap  
of disowning what brings tenor in life  
makes way.  
.  

a moment of heat, brief security,  
like the wind coerced into a cocooned gossamer veil,  
I felt as I walked with her, gripping her fingers,  
our leveled staccato footfalls  
losing tempo  
as eyes peered up at 
the middle of her 
forehead and pierced 
through the veil,  
wavering my steps,  
why do you still wear it ma! I had asked,  
“they look at you funny and keep  
asking me these silly questions!”,  
questions that I had no answer to  
so I screamed with my lidded mouth,  
clenched my 
anxiety tightly 
within my fist, 
and floundered,  
because how was 
I to know the 
reason why you 
cling on to that 
dot as hard  
as it clings on to you,  
like it gives you meaning just  
as you give it meaning,  
a mutual bond, agreement, of 
sorts to remember where you, 
and I, and it begins,  
when, I wonder, did 
my feet fall into step 
again into a 
metronome,  
and clenched 
fists turned to 
slacken fingers 
that align the 
speckle between 
my brows, and 
offer another 
dimension  
to my vision. 

1 In the Nasadiya Sukta (Hymn of Creation), the middle of the forehead is said to 
be the point at which creation begins, the seat of concealed wisdom, and the focal 
point of the subconscious mind that serves as the third eye.  
 
2 In the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, which was partially religiously 
motivated, hindu women were easily identifiable and targeted because of the bindi 
on their forehead. They were brutally raped and murdered, and yet they continued 
to square their shoulders, tighten their sarees and raise their heads in an attempt to 
fight back. They were not going to have their culture torn away from them as easily 
as one can tear off a bindi. 
 

Paromita Talukder  
Bronx High School of Science

 
First Prize 
 
LEGOS  
 
We both brought all of our Legos to the play date and began to build.  I can’t remember if there was an instruction manual— if there was, we forgot to bring it.   
 
But there we were, two kids,   
building our future together.   
 
Your red Legos, I never really saw them at first.   
Your pain and frustration.  
Maybe the bright city street lights that illuminated the night  
gave off too much reflection,   
and made them seem pink.   
Maybe it was me who subdued their color   
and temporarily made them that way.   
 
I tried hiding all of my dark blue and black ones,   
suffering and sadness they stabbed me as I sat on them  
tucked into my back pocket.   
I feared you’d touch them and they’d stain your hands,  
Making you run away trying to wash it off.   
But you saw them jutting out   
And the last thing I expected was that   
You’d turn them pastel.  
 
We sat there, fitting our pieces together,   
Sunshiny yellows offsetting murky greys.   
Some days burning hot,   
Others, freezing cold  
Knees on the lonely gravel of the park.  
 

Jalexie Urena  

NYC iSchool

 

Foreign Language Award 
 
CHÈRE CONDITION HUMAINE  
 
Bienvenue à notre réalité:   
Où les pâquerettes ne poussent plus   
et les jonquilles ne jaunissent pas;   
où nous courons dans l'autre sens   
en cachent les yeux, en fermant les bras.   
 
Mais j'imagine, au fond de mon esprit   
une vie remplie de regards aimants,   
où les plaies ouvertes d’un monde brisé   
seront guéries et moins sanglantes.   
 
J'espère   
que le désespoir disparaît et que   
les larmes de l’enfance seront plus là   
malgré tout ce que nous avons vécu.   
 
Un jour on vivra dans ce futur:   
lorsqu’une rêverie de renaissance sera   
réalisée   
et c’est à cet instant   
qu’un petit enfant se réveillera,   
et qu’un soleil nouveau se lèvera -   
un moment dans lequel   
l’essence de notre humanité sera réécrite   
et notre raison d’être sera renouvelée.   
Amène-moi à ce temps-là.   
Je t’en supplie.   
 
Dans l'attente de votre réponse,  
 
 
DEAR HUMAN CONDITION,   
 
Welcome to our reality:   
 
Where daisies no longer bloom   
daffodils never turn yellow;   
where we turn our backs and run   
shutting our eyes, closing our arms.   
 
But I imagine, in the back of my mind   
a world filled with kindness,   
where the open wounds of a broken world   
are healed and less raw.   
 
I hope   
that suffering disappears and that   
the tears of our youth will be no longer   
despite everything we have been through.   
 
One day this will become our reality:   
the dream of rebirth will come   
to fruition   
and at that moment   
a child will awaken,   
and a new dawn will rise -   
a moment in which   
the essence of our humanity will be rewritten   
and our raison d’être will be renewed.   
Take me to that time.   
I beg you.  
 
Awaiting your response,  
 

Alexandra Oh  
Bronx High School of Science

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‘成都印象’  

鸡女士的绿鸡蛋  
与臭鱼和糯米粉一起出现  
独处一隅，而不和  
所有其他商贩相临

 
柔软的可口蘑菇床  
坐在琥珀蜂蜜的罐子旁  
不断地吸引我的  
所有美味的饺子和甜点的气味  

还有泡菜在  
坛子，桶和盆里  
在盐和醋混合的泡菜水里发酵  

列出一些中草药  
卖新鲜水果的推车  
挂在天空的红灯笼  

珠宝卖家大喊价  
汽车和摩托车在街上绊倒  
所有的气味和声音（混在难以述说的环境中） 
透着寒冷的秋天的空气  
或炎热的夏天，清脆的春天或严酷的冬天 吸引来自世界各他的游客 
 
 
IMPRESSION CHENGDU  
 
Green eggs from the chicken lady  
appear alongside smelly fish and glutinous rice flour  
Removed from, not next to  
all the rest of the vendors  
 
A soft bed of tasty mushrooms  
sits by jars of amber honey  
Tempting me, unfailingly  
all the smells of savory dumplings and sweet treats  
 
And there are the pickles  
barrels and tubs and basins  
Fementing in, briny juice  
all the salt and vinegar  
 
Carts selling fresh fruit  
Red laterns hang in the sky  
Jewelery sellers yelling about their prices  
Cars and motorcycles strumming in street  
 
All of the scents and sounds  
permeating the chill autumn air  
Or the Simmering hot summer, crisp spring, or harsh winter  
Attracting Visitors from around the world 
 

Rose Marabello  
Bronx High School of Science

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