For Alicja

By Sawyer Willman

It’s been almost three years since September and

there’s something about that I don’t exactly believe:

                                (watching the Baltic sunrise at 3am, the amber

                                And glass shells we found in our eggs later that day)

                You probably can’t even imagine how—

                There are no oceans and in any given year the most water

I see is the pond behind my sister’s husband’s house.

How much water is in a cloud, Alicja? How much water in a sky of them?

When I think of the way water moves over stones on your beaches I think

of the way stones skip over water on these ponds. Something

about that troubles me, but frogs hop also, and as long as the ripples

stay in the pond I don’t worry too much.

What does it mean though? --I’m sorry but the thought

of it won’t leave me. Why is it your water travels so far

to lap itself in completion over the stones, embracing them

on its own terms, while my stones must go of their own volition,

in search of water, bounding not so timidly, then

                                (timidly, four, five, six, seven times and)

                on and on until some small circle of water will take them?

Is it the stones or the water that carries the difference?

I think you lied to me, Alicja, when you said you had an answer.

2nd prize

Curvature

By Jill Abruzzio

the girl was ten,

not so ready for the world and loose

confused limbs-

fuzzy hair and comfortable shoes,

leaning unconsciously to the right,

pushing kids off sidewalks,

scraping her knees too often-

and seeing little spurts

of what she thought looked like raspberry jam

appear like a friend

uninvited, not too uncomfortable,

but not so much of a problem.

she died in magazines every night,

a heavy sigh on every page,

a hyperventilation of hope.

she would sleep those pictures

and dream those lives- a woman

with graceful elbows

with the curve of her arm slipping smooth into her breast.

her feet were tiny and glossy red

wrapped in a bodice of high voltage leather.

a torso which appeared

small, a bandage of black curvature.

a dainty hand would extend,

and someone’s would reach out for it.

she would wake with her hair in knots.

She would tear it apart with a comb bit by bit,

and wonder if

perhaps

what her grandmother said was true:

“Brush your hair, one-hundred times each night,

and it is said your prince will come and save you.”

she knew it was the only thing to do.

so after the dust of the old school bus

the hum of the bleach-scented lunchroom

the number of questions she already knew

the tests, the grades,

the crooked glares,

the nausea of riding home.

she went,

she prayed,

she begged,

she bathed, and she brushed her hair.

100 times, 100 times.

But, I guess the Prince just never made it there.

3rd prize

Chemistry

by Matt LaMotte

I sit here in class learning of elements

While nobody talks about the elephant.

The teacher talks, and talks,

While the students want to walk, and walk.

She teaches us about matter

As the kids think “does it matter?”

Oxygen, hydrogen……

Here we go again.

It is not to say I don’t like it this way

But it makes my day, when I get an A.

Density gets the best of me

While electrons are free.

I look at the element table,

Then I am able

To do what I need,

In order to succeed.

After all, this class

Has a lot of mass.

Honorable Mention

Flamingo

by Hannah Weston

This pearly oracle predicted soon

I will be carrying the bones of

a flamingo, that are heavy,

and misted with blood – probably from when they were twisted and cracked

spewing blood like an animal’s

hiss.

It will be messy.