2007 SN&R Student Poetry Contest

Middle School:

Copies of Normal

When they were born,
They used all copies of normal,
As if to make someone the same,
The same as everyone else.
The most normal person you know.

When we were born,
They hid all copies of normal.
As if to make someone different,
Someone strange, someone real.
The outcast that’s only solace
Is those of her kind.

Never do they lose,
For we never win.
They’re all copies of normal,
Made fake by society.
We are not copies,
We are born to be someone,
Born to be real.

—Raven Hayes
8th Grade, Cavitt Junior High School, Granite Bay

Where Is Home?

I swept past the land now known as home.

Back to the land I once used to roam
I’ve traveled so far just to find
another war.

My heart ached with longing
To go back in time, and save the land
from pain and destruction;
My eyes filled with tears
at the sight before me,
that the land I once loved was the host of war.

Pain and destruction now filled the land
that once caressed me on its grassy plains
the land I once loved was home to terror.

Frightened beings roamed the streets
looking for the long-lost land that we all missed.

So I sat here and asked myself, while I wrote:
“Where is Home?”
But I need not ask
for I knew it wasn’t this land I once loved.

It is where the heart is.

—Samantha Brophy
6th Grade, Brookfield School, Sacramento

No One

No one notices the old cat in the alley
No one notices the flowers behind the house
No one notices the dog in the back of the truck
No one notices the elderly man crossing the street
No one notices the small thrift shop behind the mall
No one stops to notice the wonderful things around them

—Taylor Deschger
6th Grade, Sacramento Country Day School, Sacramento

Freedom

Freedom is the catalyst of our lives
It drives the soul to explore new places
A human engine that’s not motorized
Allows us to ascend to new spaces
Freedom desir’d infects many people
Our founding fathers became phyletic
Europe cringed when ruled by the steeple
The lords were the least bit sympathetic
Freedom itself fends off complacency
Without it our country would be third world
We would not have such great technology
Our country’s the best, urban and rural
It motivates and it can cause great pain
But most importantly, free minds will reign

—Nathan Lentz
7th Grade, California Middle School, Sacramento

For A Child Being Born

I’m sitting toward the back of a crowded bus
in a seat with torn vinyl, insults written on the side in permanent pen, there to stay.
I stare straight ahead,
at the kids making faces at each other,
chatting about their new cell phones,
and their recent horrors:
getting dumped, not knowing what to wear, having to sit next to ‘that kid’ in Math…

I try to zone them out.
The smell of thick exhaust reaches my nose, hazing my vision.
I think of everything else, everything outside of the bus:
People starving, killing, polluting…

a child is being born.

I say a prayer for the child,
a prayer that the child doesn’t turn out like the boy sitting next to me
throwing spitballs at his friend.
That the child will take notice of the world around them,
and possibly, one day,
say a prayer on a bus,
filled with people unlike them,

for a child being born.

-Nicolette Daskalakis
9th Grade, Harper Junior High School, Davis

My Stuffed White Tiger

Those brilliant blue eyes stare with Cascading seas of a One decade celebration
Those brilliant blue eyes stare at me with Despondent memories
Of the loss of a loved one
The silky white fur reflecting his image
An image only in memory Only to be remembered Never to actually be seen again
The black stripes across the sea of white Just show the blackness left in my heart
Just shows the pains and sorrows left
The charlatan nose replenishes the scent of smoke The scent of one trying to quit
Trying to be covered with sweet smelling cologne
The scent never to actually be a focus again A focus of nothing left
The flimsy whiskers a drowning Of the rope overtaking the breath
The breath and rope of the end of a life
A dead life chosen to be taken away by the dead
This physical stuffed lie Is all that is left of the one so dear
So close to me
Now whose memories only bring the tears
The memories seen from
The brilliant blue eyes, The silky white fur,
The black stripes, The charlatan nose,
And The flimsy whiskers
This is the end, the only thing, left to hug No more the action onto the actual one
Gone, never to be seen again Can’t say good-bye or say I love you
Never really could and never really will Too quick to bear
Only can hug the memories left behind Now fading
Me to stay in pain forever But just to hug onto the small stuffed white tiger

—Jenny Ann Cox
8th Grade, T.R. Smedberg Middle School, Sacramento

High School:

Me

I am me and forever will be,
A masterpiece of abstract art.
My very breath is poetry.
No outline to define me.
No sculptor to align me.
I am all but never one.
Creation and creator,
The paint and the painter,
Pen and paper.
Free to swim upstream,
A queen of spontaneity.
Heart over head with my head in the clouds.
The only constant is my identity.
Forever yours truly, I will always be.
I.
Am.
Me.

—Caitlin Wilkerson
Junior, C.K. McClatchy High School, Sacramento

The Things I Carried

Red as cherries in river between the white chalk
The way the glint of light hit his face
Made the welt as high a mountain
Overlooking high up top of the peachy cheek
He fell the way of valorous knight in the slow motion after an epic scene

Beckoning of my stance reckoning my fall
Fear of nothing with the slow force of the punch
Of the imagination barrowing toward me
Flick of the reflex lead the void of the punch
Responding like in training left prod point of pressure in the body
Connecting swiftly in the motion of my body pushing down on the pressure point
On his knees nursing a rib came the brunt of a leg

Waylaid against his left cheek bone
Came an a nail biting crack
Lights out nothing Black
Sorrow, guilt, pity, nonexistent, a shadow
Silently no emotion just a shadow
Done it has been met
Thirst of vengeance quenched, met, made…done

What I carry is my identity, shadow, protection,
But most of all a weapon
Training, discipline, knowledge and a Sicilian’s temper
No emotion

—Anthony Saich
Junior, Union Mine High School, El Dorado

A Rude Play With Apologetic Actors

Disappointed eyes
Words from my mouth
Manipulative lies

For this I am truly apologetic
I’m just trying to remap my world
You are just viewing before I set it
Into ink
Give time
For unseaworthy vessels
To sink

Again I give you my regret
Just watch a little longer
The conclusion has not been set

—Kyle Fritz
Sophomore, Pioneer High School, Woodland

The Tragedy At The Rock Show

The drum and bass pumping through their veins,
The guitars and keyboard go right along,
The sound from the throat telling the story
A thousand broken dreams of love and hope,
All mixed together in this darkened room.
As the crowd moves in angry stomps and kicks,
Some bones are broken during the dancing.
You see them across the room as you dance,
A familiar face in the moving crowd.
You call the name of your favorite dream,
But they can’t hear you o’er the screaming voices.
They fade into the moshing crowd,
And you wonder when they will reappear,
Only to find that they have disappeared.

—Rachel Newton
Freshman, Union Mine High School, El Dorado

You don’t know what food I like the best
You don’t know what I do outside of school
You don’t know where I am going on Thursday
You don’t know the drama in my life
You don’t know where I want to go on vacation
You don’t know how many pets I have
You don’t know what my dream job is
You don’t know pieces of my past,
Pieces of my present, pieces of my future.
You only know half the glass of my life or maybe you know less
You don’t know me
And I don’t know you
Let’s keep it that way

—Lew Kroger
Junior, Elk Grove High School, Elk Grove

Sonnet II

The need for knowledge caused a young boy’s prayer
Whose life was changed by a Bible passage:
“Ask of God” he read in Palmyra fair
Nudged by the Spirit, as he read the page
In the Sacred Grove of beautiful trees
Joseph Smith kneeled in a faithful, humble prayer
Overcome while he was down on his knees
By unearthly powers that found him there
Saved by the Spirit, and gratefully awed
He looked up to find a pillar of light
And in that light he saw Jesus and God
He asked them which church was to be right
They answered him saying they were all wrong
And told him how on Earth, he could belong

—Morgan Paulson
Freshman, Union Mine High School, El Dorado

fair trade

“I miss my wings,” she complains
scratching at her shoulder-nubs
with a dull knife;
my mouth was stolen long ago.

so I can’t tell her
create them
out of pulped heart-strings
bitch.

she kisses my face.
I cannot bite back.
“encouraging silence, charlie.
we all must move on.”

she takes me.
when I come
—fuck!—
I can only scream mute

she hears my voice in the next room.
smiles.
yanks a molting feather
from my arching back.

“some things we just have to barter.”

—Kathleen Jercich
Senior, St. Francis High School, Sacramento

College:

Waiting on a Summer Day

Sometimes, when the world is humid
And its praise filters down and coats my voice
I can reach up to touch you soft, languid features and I am reminded of the velvet fields
        from which my body sprung.
If there is no essence to this patter, no rhythm to my undulated rhyme
I take heart in the fact that you so often rejoice and bask in the glow of my ill-fated
        appraisal
And I know that your true divinity is nothing more than understated charm and elegance.

—Aurora Harrison
Sacramento State University, Sacramento

First Day

my chest heaved with pleasure
i had learned a new word

Mother

—Omar Sahak
Cosumnes River College, Sacramento

Other World Protector

The sun is my savior and my soul
His rays fulfill my need for control
Winter long, with all my heart, I yearn for His presence
When He finally bursts in, He paints away the blue, dismal shadow left by the cold
And I am blinded by beauty
Magnificence in others, and in myself

—Victoria Whittington
American River College, Sacramento

the weight

they cry until it feels good
they lie in wait
they laugh until it hurts
they wait in public
with those who wait
they wait as life
rushes
to progress and errant frisbees
floating
from one-paycheck-graced
caste-pedestal worker bees
they wait
for the human touch
they lie in wait on sun-streaked
days, meditating the blues
to release their hungry
inhibitions
they wait
while children play
naïve of broken lives
like onion layer-on-layered caprice
bleeding lives, courting death,
who patiently waits

—Henry 7 Reneau
UC Davis, Davis