Poetry 99: high school winners

First place

I Need an Eraser

The occasional bargain

of gruesome anger vulnerable to

a habitual addiction.

Repetitious expectations

deepened until dissipation.

Again and again,

straw hat, shirts, and tropical tide doors.

Occasional, suspicious privileges

approached impetuously.

The foreseen incarceration,

when fleeing from probation.

My life is a broken pencil.

Useless.

-Jayden, 17, Table Mountain School

Jayden is an 11th-grader at Table Mountain and is on track to graduate early. He enjoys visiting with family, fishing, shopping for clothes and listening to music, and says that he feels good about helping out the community when doing probation cleanup days.

Second place

I Got It

The sorrowful phone suddenly went calm

lifeless sound encouraged panic.

Cold hearted inspectorate is closing in,

the Wickford Bay door sprung ajar.

Ting-ting of numbers rapidly being punched,

humble ringing returned,

the elite Wisteria light began to shine,

pessimistic feeling of nothingness vanished.

-Jeremiah, 17, Table Mountain School

Jeremiah is a senior at Table Mountain who loves playing football and basketball and working out. He also enjoys spending time with family and friends, hiking and listening to all kinds of music. Jeremiah placed first in the CN&R’s Fiction 59 contest last November.

Third place

Memorial

I want to be remembered

as someone who knew

how to craft letters

into art,

how to make

a memory, an image, a dream

burst from a page.

I am soft, sensitive, tentative

and that is not usually

to my advantage,

but I hope

that my wavelength

does not go unnoticed.

Today,

I am more than just a whisper

or a single breath

or a fallen feather.

I am a hurricane

made of pens and paintbrushes.

Hailie Lozano, 17, Oroville

Hailie is enthusiastic about art. The Las Plumas High School junior said she screamed in the car upon getting word of her poem being chosen for publication, and as someone who writes poetry, draws, paints and loves to read (currently she’s enjoying Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series), she thought it was appropriate that her picture be taken in front of a colorful local mural.

Honorable mentions

Salt Coated Dreams

You count the numbers on the wall. Whole numbers

No halves

Like when you cut the melon in half

It’s seeds are rich strings

Grappling to hold together

The massive sides

Trying to

Diverge and detach

Trying to disassociate

To fall as far as they can

beneath the soft summer ground.

And you can feel their age,

As the sun brings out the mold

And the smell is sickeningly sweet

Unbearably calm and negligent

Their deep scarrings

From raccoons

Or midnight sleep walkers

Trying in desperate lengths

To get what they don’t want

In their salt coated dreams.

-Seven Ione Mills, 15, Chico

One Nation Under God

My mother

Also my father

we traveled from Mexico to the U.S

I wish I could have gone farther.

Raised to fear God

forget my roots

and the kingdom I came from.

Ashamed of the person I became,

because to the U.S I came.

In Mexico, I should have stayed

I belong in the south.

These are some things I think,

yet can never say out loud.

No one is to blame.

This is the way I was raised,

because to the U.S.

I came.

-Claudia, 17, Table Mountain School

Lost and Alone

You are the fixer and I am the breaker.

Feeling as useless as a rock, sighing and breathing.

Dwelling on the past, and what we could have been.

And to think I just shrugged and left you.

Emotional and vulnerable, like a lost child.

Filling the boxes, missing the smell of the tide.

I miss you still, all I do is wonder.

At first I thought it would last.

Now to me it was all a blunder.

I feel like a cave, empty and dark.

I am lost and don’t think I will ever find my way back.

Aaron, 17, Table Mountain School

Enchanting Bay

Hear the rhythmic thundering

Of breaking waves upon the cliffs.

See the graceful gulls plunge to

The tumultuous surf

Whilst their schooling quarry

Lurks beneath the glassy surface.

See the rocky shore

Pummeled by endless swells,

Rested upon by idle seals,

Whilst gentle amber rays dance

And sparkle atop the surf.

-Alden Ingelson-Filupa, 13, Chico