Poetry of the City: Works by Scholastic Gold Key Award Recipients

Visitors viewing the 2015 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards exhibition in the Ruth and Harold D. Uris Center for Education. Photograph by Ariel Greene

«In celebration of the 2015 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards exhibition, now on view in the Ruth and Harold D. Uris Center for Education, the Teen Blog will feature guest posts by Scholastic Gold Key Award writers from New York City through the close of the exhibition on May 17.»

We were awarded Gold Keys, the highest regional honor, in the 2015 Scholastic Awards.

F-Train
By Skye, 7th Grade, Saint Ann’s School, Brooklyn, NY

A woman spilt
her coffee on the floor of the
F train
and apologized for
the inconvenience.

SPECIAL INGREDIENT
By Jennell, 12th Grade, The High School of Fashion Industries, New York, NY

Prescription dreams are no good
For self-medicated realists
Water is enough to make them bloom
No added sugar and no GMOs
For self-educated revolutionaries
Water is enough to make them grow

New York, New York
By Claire S., 12th Grade, Packer Collegiate Institute, Brooklyn, NY

I.) The men here will always be sorry. They live in the dimly-lit bars near the East River, nursing beers, while their wives wait at home, dreaming of affairs with Italian ex-lovers. The wives shed their velvet hair and first chances, doves stripped of their feathers, starving for warmth. The men here have broken eggshell voices, rotting apple mouths, apples are not meant to be eaten, mouths are not meant to sacrifice paradise, but that gets into faith, and here, there is no such thing. The men here drink champagne, tequila, rubbing alcohol, walk in the snow, stitches from the sky coming loose, stars quiet and hiding behind the skyscrapers. The men here swipe their metro cards, get on the F train at two in the morning. For a moment, they swear they see God drenched in pale blue light, waiting at the platform, going to Harlem, but then they blink; it is merely a homeless man curled up on the ground, screaming in his sleep, a plastic cross around his neck.

II.) The women here will always be sorry, clench white jaws around things that remind them of home, wooden stilts and river tadpoles, clean snow, fresh start, the gentle rocking of folklore and homemade herbal medicine. Here, they take aspirin to cure headaches and red throats, to cure anything at all really, to keep in time with fast movements, speaking the language of angular cities and clubs crowded with fifteen-year-olds, fake IDs and quarter collections. The women are still surprised when they see Woody Allen, and learn about the little things; that cherry blossom tree on 74th street Bethesda Terrace, three dollar turtles in China Town, doing shots with strangers, blue glasses from Roosevelt thrift stores. They learn to live in the beauty of the ancient sea, digging for oyster pearls, shallow waves lapping quiet as a lullaby, silver-bellied fish darting into coral reef. They visualize a world farther west, where, somewhere, little girls pluck bright berries from the ground, eyes like bright blue paper cranes, drinking fresh honey from bee hives while the sun stands perfectly still.

III.) The girls here try to speak trailer park and Alabama tragedies, while their poetry uses sultry words; salt, rust, and wanderlust. Through Bay Ridge, Amy and her boyfriend drive in his beat up Camry, pupils dilated like magic eight balls, stars glowing hot like bright neon signs. Amy remembers being eight, ten, twelve, remembers fifteen as locked bathroom doors and did I say yes did I say no did I mean yes did I mean no. James from Bedford-Stuyvesant hops a subway turnstile, notices how he can slip into shadows, mouse holes, eyes like a starving dog’s, thick and oily. Old women describe virginity as church bells through ghost towns, the golden taste of past tense, remember passion in the brightest form; Aphrodite rising from the foam, the language of broken wind chimes, unfinished things. Fathers remember glory days, records broken in highway motel rooms, jasmine perfume clinging to white cotton shirts, sunflowers collected in empty water bottles. Mothers sigh, “It once rained rocks for forty nights to create all the cement in New York City, didn’t you know that?” Snapshots: east river dreams, undressing in the dark, and researching the feeling of home, just a velvet version of being alone.

For more teen writing, please visit the exhibition in the Uris Center for Education!

Close-up of work in the 2015 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards exhibition in the Ruth and Harold D. Uris Center for Education. Photograph by Ariel Greene

Related Link
Scholastic Art Awards Gold Key Award Winners