2021 Writing Contest Winners
Student Poetry
First Place: Mornings
Lynn Le
A old lady that sits on a couch, next to a large window, concentrating on
A bird on a bough, chirping to the sound of nature
And the dahlias with beautiful colors of orange and pink.
Everyday she must get up to take a morning walk,
On a routine path, retracing the steps of previous days.
Once finished, a morning walk can’t go without a meal.
A bowl of pho, hot and fresh with herbs,
While the apple trees, blackberry bush, and vegetable plants await her.
A change of clothes, to a traditional gray ao dai,
To the unoccupied bedroom where a photo sits on a small altar.
Plated with fruits, small glasses of water and
Her two hands push flat together with a burning incense.
As the aroma of sweet wood spread
Praying, murmuring a few words
Then gently stuck the incense into a small bowl of rice.
She stand up to look at the face who stares right back,
Walking away with a slim smile.
A bird on a bough, chirping to the sound of nature
And the dahlias with beautiful colors of orange and pink.
Everyday she must get up to take a morning walk,
On a routine path, retracing the steps of previous days.
Once finished, a morning walk can’t go without a meal.
A bowl of pho, hot and fresh with herbs,
While the apple trees, blackberry bush, and vegetable plants await her.
A change of clothes, to a traditional gray ao dai,
To the unoccupied bedroom where a photo sits on a small altar.
Plated with fruits, small glasses of water and
Her two hands push flat together with a burning incense.
As the aroma of sweet wood spread
Praying, murmuring a few words
Then gently stuck the incense into a small bowl of rice.
She stand up to look at the face who stares right back,
Walking away with a slim smile.
Second Place: Cloud Painter
Ashley Chung
There is a painter who lives on a cloud
He paints the cerulean blue of the skies
The soft golden haze of the sun
The bright and fierce embers of the stars
And the pale silvery sheen of the moon
But he does not paint the clouds
The clouds that remain a dull and colorless white
The clouds reflect his soul
Resembles the mist that clouds his heart
The cloud painter paints the universe
Gives color to the world
But deep inside his own soul
Remains a pure and undiscovered light.
He paints the cerulean blue of the skies
The soft golden haze of the sun
The bright and fierce embers of the stars
And the pale silvery sheen of the moon
But he does not paint the clouds
The clouds that remain a dull and colorless white
The clouds reflect his soul
Resembles the mist that clouds his heart
The cloud painter paints the universe
Gives color to the world
But deep inside his own soul
Remains a pure and undiscovered light.
Honorable Mentions
Won't You Stay My Neighbor Ella Ray
At 5:55 I sat up to stretch
And heard the rumbling of your truck of the month start outside my window
How comforting that you are up
It calms my anxieties
Soft red backup lights cascading across my bedsheets
Beyond my dust-ridden blinds
Subtle sign of life
Off to work, on schedule
30 mph, down 75th pl W.
My periodic friend of the moonlight.
And heard the rumbling of your truck of the month start outside my window
How comforting that you are up
It calms my anxieties
Soft red backup lights cascading across my bedsheets
Beyond my dust-ridden blinds
Subtle sign of life
Off to work, on schedule
30 mph, down 75th pl W.
My periodic friend of the moonlight.
To Measure the Pulse Of Conflict Shobhit Mehrotra
Is it too much to ask if people,
Are forbidden fruits of change?
Tempted to grow themselves from each of their roots
Amidst the weeds of oppression?
Or do they flip the ancient scriptures?
And recognize Eve’s true purpose
To hold heads high and proud?
To ponder a society’s journey through this and that
Thick and thin
Justice and injustice;
Isn’t through its mantle of success
But rather the purity of its chancel
Where the ash and death of the prejudiced is laid bare
So when dawn alights
The moon will watch agape
As the partiality of night
Lets in the impartiality of day
Society will witness a nation that is not yet finished
Witness a nation in which thrives peace
And witness it suddenly surcease
It will realize thus
That its freedoms are tainted
Its “impartial entitlement” far from sainted
It’s the altar all this while...
That had feinted
Not one single area of the world
Is free from conquest
Exploitation, or oppression...
The bed-time hymns sung softly amidst African trees
Punctuated by the harangue of Polish roscoes
Wading thick-soled through ambient thymes…
A far cry from the
Nimble red, blue, black heels marching towards the ballots
Each of their wearers kindled with that ancestral flame
Alight in each of the prejudiced
To see their legacies reclaim Everest
To rewrite testimonies of ancestral reverence.
Marching in solidarity, demanding deliverance
On their ancestors hymns for equivalence
“The fruits of our progeny… the venerated chant from afar… is to see through what we could not”
“Oh labor indeed, our histories toiled with incessentantly!”
“Oh the slavery, the filth and mud engulfed that our legacies!”
“Believe in us!” they cry
For you to alleviate our tears!
We bear on you not to deviate!
Follow the path of a seed we have sown!
It is the only way to see
An oppressor overthrown!
The wicked leaders
Harbingers of chaos and retribution
Those who puppeteer their constituents
Through cajoles of issuance
The virtuous leaders
Harbingers of peace and prosperity
These are the kinds of people our History sews a suit for,
Craft it so that it doesn’t burst at its seams,
And mantle it on the shoulders of time
Yet more often than not, our History shall drape atop the suit
Bands of suppression
Docked with the mournful whispers of sufferers
Immigrants, and refugees... those who are denied opportunity
Especially in this day and time
Where the dregs of prejudice prey
Society’s partial lay awake to the horrors dealt by God’s Man
They lose themselves in folds of depression
They torment themselves away endlessly Time and Time again in the halls of temple
An unrealized guise of dishonor to those who have gone
Who fought hard for freedom
Inches closer as death does its part
Their lives ebb away during the day
Damp souls of muted gray
That flit away from the living
At dusk, they toil in the sanctum of Death
Listening to ancestral whispers from beyond
They morun woefully… and much inwardly
As the whispers approach forebodingly,
A gnawing ache preys the mind
“Was it too much to ask for a complete legacy?!”
Those who have gone carry hope to depart fully from the cruelty of their old life
And escape the burnt, charred altar covered in ash… their ash
To transcend into a new life
So that there
They can memorialize the forgotten
To treat a society’s people equally
Is to overturn stones stretched across infinity
There is little chance for success
But it is a chance nonetheless
Toiling endlessly unto death
Is tantamount to discrediting legacy at its last breath
Wars are inevitable in fights to freedom
Conflicts incite conflicts
Yet people incite people
And it isn’t without notice
That to erode inequality
We must fight for our future
In reverence to our past
So that antiquated hymns
Endure sublime
Are forbidden fruits of change?
Tempted to grow themselves from each of their roots
Amidst the weeds of oppression?
Or do they flip the ancient scriptures?
And recognize Eve’s true purpose
To hold heads high and proud?
To ponder a society’s journey through this and that
Thick and thin
Justice and injustice;
Isn’t through its mantle of success
But rather the purity of its chancel
Where the ash and death of the prejudiced is laid bare
So when dawn alights
The moon will watch agape
As the partiality of night
Lets in the impartiality of day
Society will witness a nation that is not yet finished
Witness a nation in which thrives peace
And witness it suddenly surcease
It will realize thus
That its freedoms are tainted
Its “impartial entitlement” far from sainted
It’s the altar all this while...
That had feinted
Not one single area of the world
Is free from conquest
Exploitation, or oppression...
The bed-time hymns sung softly amidst African trees
Punctuated by the harangue of Polish roscoes
Wading thick-soled through ambient thymes…
A far cry from the
Nimble red, blue, black heels marching towards the ballots
Each of their wearers kindled with that ancestral flame
Alight in each of the prejudiced
To see their legacies reclaim Everest
To rewrite testimonies of ancestral reverence.
Marching in solidarity, demanding deliverance
On their ancestors hymns for equivalence
“The fruits of our progeny… the venerated chant from afar… is to see through what we could not”
“Oh labor indeed, our histories toiled with incessentantly!”
“Oh the slavery, the filth and mud engulfed that our legacies!”
“Believe in us!” they cry
For you to alleviate our tears!
We bear on you not to deviate!
Follow the path of a seed we have sown!
It is the only way to see
An oppressor overthrown!
The wicked leaders
Harbingers of chaos and retribution
Those who puppeteer their constituents
Through cajoles of issuance
The virtuous leaders
Harbingers of peace and prosperity
These are the kinds of people our History sews a suit for,
Craft it so that it doesn’t burst at its seams,
And mantle it on the shoulders of time
Yet more often than not, our History shall drape atop the suit
Bands of suppression
Docked with the mournful whispers of sufferers
Immigrants, and refugees... those who are denied opportunity
Especially in this day and time
Where the dregs of prejudice prey
Society’s partial lay awake to the horrors dealt by God’s Man
They lose themselves in folds of depression
They torment themselves away endlessly Time and Time again in the halls of temple
An unrealized guise of dishonor to those who have gone
Who fought hard for freedom
Inches closer as death does its part
Their lives ebb away during the day
Damp souls of muted gray
That flit away from the living
At dusk, they toil in the sanctum of Death
Listening to ancestral whispers from beyond
They morun woefully… and much inwardly
As the whispers approach forebodingly,
A gnawing ache preys the mind
“Was it too much to ask for a complete legacy?!”
Those who have gone carry hope to depart fully from the cruelty of their old life
And escape the burnt, charred altar covered in ash… their ash
To transcend into a new life
So that there
They can memorialize the forgotten
To treat a society’s people equally
Is to overturn stones stretched across infinity
There is little chance for success
But it is a chance nonetheless
Toiling endlessly unto death
Is tantamount to discrediting legacy at its last breath
Wars are inevitable in fights to freedom
Conflicts incite conflicts
Yet people incite people
And it isn’t without notice
That to erode inequality
We must fight for our future
In reverence to our past
So that antiquated hymns
Endure sublime