Teen English Division - Honorable Mentions
Emiko Ardolino (Springfield) "Bounds"
Amanda Bennett (Sunderland) "Neurotic Dog Theorem"
Carolyn Como (Gill) "Beggars Know What They Have"
Katherine Davis (Longmeadow) "The Bus Driver"
Crystal Estervina Delgado (Springfield) "If You Look at Me"
Grace Delmolino (Hadley) "Essence of Winter"
Julie Lonergan (Springfield) "Chinese Chopsticks"
Robin Palmer (Leverett) "An Ode to Stairs"
Bounds
Reach for the sky.
Your fingers touch?
Then something’s wrong.
(Pick up a hammer
and swing it up.)
Emiko is 15 and lives in Springfield.
Neurotic Dog Theorem
“This damn dog!”
The mother would yell,
As her best china plate
From the hutch, it fell.
The dog would just look
At her, wagging its tail.
She had to forgive him!
“The look” worked without fail.
“You come here right now!”
The father would scream,
As the thick-headed dog
Took a bath in the stream.
He’d come out and shake,
Then run, point a bird.
All bad feelings forgotten,
Now “Good dog!” is heard.
“How could you?!” wails baby
When the dog chewed her toy.
Its arm hanging, awkward,
Provides facetious joy.
But not at all to baby,
Until smothered in kisses,
Takes back her threats,
And her abandonment wishes.
This is the story
Of all families’ dogs.
Whenever they act
Like bears, tigers and hogs,
We find a place within our hearts,
To forgive their any crime,
If only humans could feel the same
About your sins and mine,
Then such love and peace we’d enjoy,
Melody, harmony, rhyme,
If we’d forgive in good time.
Amanda Bennett is 13 and in 8th grade at Frontier Regional School in South Deerfield. She lives in Sunderland. Poetry is a way for her to express herself and she often uses it as an outlet. She started writing poetry in second grade and just hasn't stopped. Thank you Mrs. Bielunis for getting the ball rolling!
Beggars Know What They Have
The beggar man’s clothes
Are all tattered and torn
While his colorless eyes
Seem to be worn.
He seems to have had
Nights without sleep
Without strength
To count any sheep.
But a beggar knows what he has
He may not have money or clothes
He may not have friends
But what he has he knows.
Carolyn is in the sixth grade and has been writing poetry since she was five or six years old. In addition to writing, she also enjoys sports.
The Bus Driver
He sits alone
and tries to clear the screaming voices of children
to whom he cannot relate
He is thinking not
of monsters and fairies
candy and sweets
magic and dreams
dragons and princesses
or what he will receive on his next birthday
And the school children
sitting in the back
making jokes about the lonely bus driver
cannot relate
For they are thinking not
of the large stack of bills sitting on the table at home
hoping that his next paycheck will cover his tiny grocery list
wishing that one day he will have a better-paying job
praying that he and his wife could someday get along
and realizing that he doesn't have enough money
to buy his only child
even the smallest birthday present.
Katherine wrote this poem when she was 17 and attending school at Williston-Northampton. English and poetry have always been her favorite subjects.
Crystal Delgado
If You Look at Me
When you look at me,
All you must see
Is someone who is rude and
Always bossy.
You feel I have a lot of
Attitude
But what you don't know
Is I've been bruised.
I've experienced things that you
Never knew
I built this wall to protect
Myself
And I refuse to be
Harmed by anyone else
If you think I act tough,
Know it's because my life's
Been rough
I've seen things I
Shouldn't have
Had times when I felt like I couldn't
Make it
But I did.
And I'm still standing
Strong
So your misconception of
Me is wrong
When you look at me,
I bet you think,
"She's a mess."
But I don't stress, if
I don't spark hyour interest.
Essence of Winter
Frost obscures the windows;
A filigree of ice and frozen mist.
Iron lamps of glowing amber
Shine crystal-bright through snowy skies.
Sidewalks glaze with watery icing;
They shimmer in reflected moonlight.
While snowflakes glitter on the lawn.
A brown-haired child stands inside
Looking through a glass-paned door;
He wipes away the mist and frost
To gaze at the blanket of a large white world.
The sky is brushed to black
By smoky fingers of the night
And the child leaves his window
As frost reclaims the glass.
Outside, the snow stops falling –
Was it because no one was watching?
Grace lives in Hadley. She loves writing fiction and poetry and has been writing for many years, and is currently working on a novel.
Chinese Chopsticks
The chopsticks slip and my mouth
closes on empty air.
Lobsters, similarly paralyzed, beg not to be cruelly plucked out—
insipid as they languish in the fluorescently lit fish tank.
A waiter comes, ending my melancholy reverie and bringing
tea in desperate need of sugar.
My eyes focus in and out—
the mushrooms in my soup,
the brush strokes on the wall,
the freckles on your nose.
Listlessly, the lobsters look on
sighing at my inability to have more
than one grain of rice at a time.
My mouth opens, preparing—
I close it, reaching instead for an egg roll
but your fingers graze mine as you do the same.
I have memorized all the village scenes
on my teacup, there is nothing lift to
look at so I must
look up.
Your chicken lo mein on
your plate is arranged into
my initials and
I have no egg rolls left to protect myself.
Love is no certain truth, nor as profound as it seems,
because all that I really want
could be found in a single one of your freckles.
A man walks toward the fish tank
and selects the biggest lobster,
ready to cast it out alone
as its claws wave toward the far
corners of the room
and the pot begins to boil.
Julie Lonergan, a senior at Springfield Central High School, has a passion for writing. She is the editor of her school's literary magazine, Aerie, and this year helped to start a new magazine with a focus on comedic writing. She plans to attend a four year liberal arts college next year, and is considering a major in Creative Writing.
An Ode to Stairs
Stairs.
They’re so full of inbetweenness.
The choices:
Up or down?
Walk --- Or slide down the banister?
Galumph and gallop
Elephant-like?
or step daintily, princessy?
(Not that I think all princesses
don’t galumph some time in their lives.)
Those many steps.
Like life.
How many times have we looked up and above
to the staircase top
and given up?
Or taken that first, tentative, unsure step
that will lead us upwards to achievement?
How many times have we tripped
and fallen down the stairs?
Or looked to the reassuring support of a banister?
Stairs.
All that inbetweenness.
Robin is 13 years old and in seventh grade at the Amherst Regional Middle School. She lives in Leverett. She was interested in poetry in second grade and wrote a lot of poems the next few years, and then joined Ani Tuzman's Dance of the Letters writing group and continued to write poetry.
