WordsWork Network Poetry

My mother slices an apricot with a shaky hand
the knife seeps through the flesh of the fruit
and stops at the pit.
She pulls a piece to her mouth
and lets the fruit sit on her tongue,
lets her taste buds absorb the sweetness
as a trickle of juice
spills out the side of her mouth,
her fingers still clenched around the handle of the knife
and for a moment,
I think she forgets where she is.

--Courtney Frisch (Adlai Stevenson High school)

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Second Place

Freeze Frame

Sun tea on the cement edge
Swallowing the sunlight
Turning gold like

Yellow violets in a RadioFlyer
Freshly picked ready
To soar away through

Steel chains of a swing
That bend with Mary's fingers.

--Diana Johnson (North Gwinnett High school)

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Third Place

Confessions

I had planned to begin confessing
Confessing to the pope hisself'

I was going to tell it fantastical tales.
Tales of being a young maiden growing up in the foothills of the Alps in Austria.
I owned a goat, a pair of rabbits, and a pig named Albert.
Unfortunately one winter I found my neighbors had slaughtered Albert for food.
So I slaughtered their son.
I mean, really.

Traveling with German men to Luxembourg
About how we got snowed in
and
almost
had to create our own scene
from ravenous

I rode a mule for a while
She was much kinder than Weibke the pony.
Though they don't call them stubborn for nothing
So she stopped on this incline

She would not budge.

mean that beast wouldn't move for anything.

I had to leave her there, you know, continue on foot.

I met some Russians on the way
I had since been separated from the Germans.
They had me pinch their ruddy cheeks
in exchange for a wrap made from a reindeer.
Was this sin father?
Was it prostitution?
Forgive me father.

I forgot where I was going
I ended up here

Well, after I made a short stop
And sat pressed against a wall
in a red vinyl booth
sipping co'colers
and munching on a queso-ish lifeblood

Did you know they have Mexican restaurants in The Vatican?

Under your jeweled blanket
I will kill your Pope.

--Lauren Reynolds (North Gwinnett High school)

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