Teen winners

First Place

thieves and spies
   I watch stories and things romanticized
    because I get high on
    heartstrings and
    I fall
    into other worlds and put
    more
    into cherry blossoms
    than reality.
    From way up there
    through starlight, I can see
    the stories and they are many and they are
    round and whole.
    Down here we swallow pieces:
    chopped
    and frayed.

    I heard them say they’d carry me home on the backs of thieves and spies;
    past the crooked, crossed endings and
    through dried grass
    to a cherrywood cupboard
    that is dark
    and small
    and in it I will spin the stories
    that aren’t mine.

—Sara Cook
age 17

Sara is a senior at Chico High School who says she has been writing for a long time, though this is the first contest she’s entered. She credits her creative-writing teacher, Laura Carey, as a big influence.

Second Place

foreshadow
    i’ve stopped at the intersection
    and i can hear the click. click. click.
    of snapshots
    but i am not famous
    and in the comfort of my home
    i take a sip of coffee
    and i can hear the camera lens zoom
    in. out.

—Shane Goins
age 17

Shane is an avid reader and writer. He’s no stranger to entering writing contests, but this is his first published entry in the CN&R. He also won a short-fiction contest last year. The 17-year-old is studying through the Hearthstone Charter School and lives in Chico.

Third Place

When I Was Young in the Valley
When I was young in the valley,
I watched hawks circle the bluffs. I looked toward the
Mountains, and dreamed of faraway places.
When I was young in the valley,
I watched fish in the
Stream splash around me, soaking me with
Sheer delight.
When I was young in the valley,
I climbed around rocks and over logs,
Listening for the rush of clear water over smooth stones.
My mind was ever ahead of me. I feared not present, but
Future danger.
When I was young in the valley, My heart was in it,
And it stayed that way.

—Lucy Greenfield
age 13

Lucy was a kid winner in the CN&R’s Fiction 59 contest in March, and now the Chico Country Day School sixth-grader is 13 and winning in the teen category for poetry. We expect we’ll be seeing her name for years to come.

Honorable mentions

To the Soil
spring up, THWUMP
sprouting through
soil; you wished
you could when you
were less small

beaming across your earth-colored face
you shut your eyes

that day I learned the waltz
one, two, toe
could my hands have
been clean?
forget your reduced standards
(like everything else)

your eyes are squeezed now
what’s it that you’re missing?

we were as moles
we learned to waltz

you find that there’ve
always been daisies in your yard
right outside the left-front window
you go to get your ears dirty

and it was good you say
and it was good

—Celia Eckert
age 15

Sunday
The wind is blowing the trees, the sun is shining
There’s not a single cloud in the sky.
It is hot outside
No school
The water’s running
People swimming, sleeping or reading
Stores and restaurants are crowded
And, I’m sitting in a chair.

—Rhian Owen
age 13

Modern America is
sleek black tea kettles. Cabinets
silver, I see thick-leaved plants
through the frosted glass

a pile of green apples

sitting despairingly upon the table

you sit, tap your fingers

should the salt shakers be emphatic blue
you wonder, or green
in your large apartment

the economy’s bad, you know
’cause the newspapers say there’s no jobs
health care’s bad, you know
because you hear it’s socialism

to worry about salt shakers would be selfish
anyways, mismatching ones
would look more sensitive
for you are in touch
with Modern America

—Celia Eckert

Daisies
it is
swirling into an elephant or this
or a standard encyclo-pedic dictionary
or that

today golden pollen comes in waves\lacks its luster
it is cold today;
the bees are
slow

the way it is seen
it must always come to this
your hands slipping through the air
mad grasps at what you imagine are
jaune’s specks folded into neat
spheres

these days only daisies know;
reach your fingers up
they alight one after another
upon knowledge barred from the hand that
drops, shy and young onto the folds of today’s warm
wool skirt

—Celia Eckert