THE WALT WHITMAN ASSOCIATION’S ANNUAL HIGH SCHOOL POETRY CONTEST POETRY FINALISTS FOR 2021
The winners of this year’s contest (L-R): Spoorthy Reddy, Leah Lentz, Owen Capistrano, Payton Weiner, and Danny Cavanna, with Rocky Wilson and Gloria Stridick
FIRST PLACE WINNER – Bernadette M. Stridick Award
Bloom
by Owen Capistrano, Grade 11
Cherokee High School
To my mother’s mother
Who looked for light through clouds
Who’d cross an ocean without a father’s sail
She touched rich soil with lips of love
A tree would grow from a seed she held
From there the youngest limb would split
A blunt farewell was said
But with love a mother prays
Roads traveled on with aching bodies
A gray jungle
A golden bridge
To a garden
To make her own
What was grown between picket fences?
From the Earth that made them, my body rose
Born but I couldn’t open my eyes to see the sun
Only lived in the dark
Saw siblings grow taller
They ran without me
Time wasted in dim
Too much to count
It took time under clouds and for eyes to pour
To shine across my mother’s face
Through roots spring truth
I’d learn from what I knew
Wouldn’t keep it deep down, no more
What it took for this pen to move?
A flower had to bloom
First place winner Owen Capistrano, Cherokee High School ’22, with Whitman Association Poetry Contest Chair Gretel DeRuiter.
SECOND PLACE WINNER
A Letter to My Best Friend
by Payton Weiner, Grade 12
Haddonfield Memorial High School
I’ve been meaning to ask you about the caterpillars
Do you think they watch the butterflies?
Do they whisper their “wow”s to each other as they dream about everything they will become?
Do they wonder if the beauty is already inside of them?
Because it has to come from somewhere
Do you think they know about the law of conservation of matter?
I’m not telling you to change
Just metamorphose
You have everything you need to grow your wings
And I think you are finally ready for Alaska
Go find the mountains you have always wanted to climb
And the flowers you have always wanted to watch stand on their tippy-toes to kiss the clouds
Buy your big backyard to hold all of your dreams
Sit on your front porch to study the birds, where the babies can ask you what it is like to finally
get up and fly away
Live in a house that you can call your own
Even if you are with someone
Large enough for a full-toothed smile
But never too big where empty rooms make you feel incomplete
Keep your doors unlocked and your shoes slip-on
I don’t want you to ever feel stuck
And write and write and write and write
No one should ever question your metaphors
Ask the sky for the aurora borealis
If you ever want to think about the past
But only ever to remember
Never to regret
Run down dead-end roads with infinite destinations
Bike in a sundress and pigtails to almost transcend time’s linearity
Collect flowers for your hair and windows for your wonder
Make fires to help you think and read books to keep you warm
Search for a waterfall
If you ever want to cry
Never too often
But you know it’s still okay to cry sometimes
I hope your laughter makes the wind blow
And you never count the yesterdays
That nothing ever makes you want to leave
That nothing ever makes you no longer want to be a butterfly
But if you stray from your cocoon and don’t end up reaching Alaska
—the only place you believe has any scintilla of magic
I hope you can still make it somewhere
Somewhere far, far away
Somewhere that is just for you and doesn’t make you think of any of us
Not even me
THIRD PLACE WINNER
The Blue Bird
by Spoorthy Reddy, Grade 10
Lenape High School
A blue bird
flew with the wind.
It sat on its perch
as it must have a thousand times before,
as it gazed up at leaves and berries and feathers.
As it gazed up at the sapphire sky
and down at a sea of green and pink and yellow.
As it gazed down at a muddy road that expanded.
As it left a colorful feast for the eyes behind
and returned to the warm pastels
that thinned and faded as the clocks ticked.
As its eyes were covered with a dark murky fog.
As it looked up, once again, at a towering giant
from its place on the small black stones.
A blue bird
flew with the wind.
It sat on its perch
as it must have a thousand times before,
as it gazed up at gears and glass and metal.
Local poet Rocky Wilson reciting lines from Song of Myself.
HONORABLE MENTION
Light Skinned
by Yasmeen Matthews, Grade 11
Cherokee High School
Speak for us, they say.
Words paired with pretty smiles as the cherubs hold out pale hands for me to take.
Let them hear your voice.
Speak for us, they say.
Words paired with the imploring dark eyes of our brothers and sisters.
Let them hear your voice.
SPEAK! They say.
Voices surrounding me, pleads and begs from both sides.
Let them hear our voice.
Make them understand.
I claw and fight to bring peace,
But peace comes as a cost.
My voice
That small simple thing they wish for me to use is drowned out by their needs,
Drowned out by their wants.
Speak, I whisper to myself.
The lines on the page are a reminder of the voice I have that will never leave me
I speak for both sides,
Dark and light.
I stand here before you as a mix of both.
Light Skinned.
And for those who don’t know, allow me to tell you what it means.
It means I see both.
The hate that comes with being born black
and the love that gravitates towards those that are white.
It means I hear both.
The whispers of my family wondering why I don’t look like the rest and the words of students
who use that word born from hate to describe me
The lines on the page are a reminder of the voice I have that will never leave me
I speak for both sides,
Dark and light.
I stand here before you as a mix of both.
Light Skinned.
And for those who don’t know, allow me to tell you what it means.
It means that I chose neither,
It means that I wish for you to be Light Skinned.
A mix of dark and light that sees it all,
Sees the love and the hate,
The privilege and injustice
It means I want you to speak, to use that voice
It means we have a choice
We can either let history repeat or change it
Today I stand before you as a sign of harmony
Of hope and a better life
Because as a mix I am treated with both fear and worship
It means that I refuse to take your voice like you try to take mine
So I call for you to speak in the way that amplifies your voice
Just like how I learned too
Leah Lentz of Shawnee High School (Class of 2022) reads her winning poem in front of Whitman’s grave
HONORABLE MENTION:
notes of a former pessimist
by Leah Lentz, Grade 11
Shawnee High School
“there are too many sad stories,” they grumble,
and i remember being 10,
watching as cnn reported that flight 370 had gone missing with all
those moms and dads on board,
and i think of driving to the beach
with the windows down and too many people in the car,
of how gently my father used to comb my hair,
stopping to untangle every knot by hand,
of how every day a hot lifeguard rescues at least one incredibly lucky woman,
and i think i disagree.
“there’s no more good news,” they commiserate,
and i remember being 11, agreeing that the world was truly damned,
and i think of when my teachers let their kids sit in on class
like they were tiny auditors deciding
whether this is really their dream school,
of all the ghost hunting shows that get renewed because everyone, just a little bit,
wants to see a ghost,
of seeing my grandmother for the first time in over a year and being able to talk to her,
and i think that some people just like to complain.
“where is the love?” they moan and sigh,
and i think that maybe, years ago,
when i was a 15 year old nihilist,
swearing that nothing had any meaning,
i would’ve said “there is none! there is none left for us!”
but i don’t think i can anymore,
not when the love is in every neural signal,
extending from the dendrites,
quicker than a bolt of lightning,
stronger than a sycamore tree.
HONORABLE MENTION
I Inhale
by Danny Cavanna, Grade 12
Haddonfield Memorial High School
I inhale
The cherry trees outside of Mrs. Chism’s kindergarten classroom are towering around me, and I am just 5, and the world is mine to conquer.
I grow up on these tree-lined-dappled-with-sun streets; in my soul, the small moments are collected.
The first day hugs, the soccer balls sailing into the net, the caterpillar’s cocoon clinging to the already-bloomed azalea bush—a butterfly soon to emerge.
I exhale
The rosy hue is long worn off and I am scared, cowering.
I cry in the science hall bathroom because my math test is a bad grade waiting to be returned, and my parent’s reaction, a hurricane on the horizon.
The slits in my best friend’s wrist break me to pieces but, she lives
18 now, and I don’t know what to think
In front of me my entire life awaits, it suffocates.
I want to set fire to the path that’s mine, and run the opposite direction.
In between not quite who I was raised to be but, certainly not myself.
I inhale