NJCTE Writing Contest Award Reception, Scotch Plains, April 2013.
Alyssa McPherson ’13 and Flannery James ’14 shared the Gold Medal for Poetry in the annual high school writing contest sponsored by the New Jersey Council of Teachers of English. In addition, Alyssa won the Gold Medal in Creative Nonfiction. The award ceremony was held on April 23, 2013 in Scotch Plains, NJ, where the winning pieces were performed by trained orators. After this photo was taken of Alyssa and the keynote speaker, poet BJ Ward, Mr. Ward announced, “Now I can say I had my picture taken with Alyssa McPherson.”
“The Painter’s Wife” by Alyssa McPherson
(for Winslow Homer)
The gale came at his call and he
ran, clambering over rocks and
clinging childlike to scarred crevices,
mounting the cliff and
opening his arms to the
wind.
He wished to suck the surging
waves and moaning air into
pale canvasflesh. The
gale came at his call and he
opened his mouth to swallow
its rage.
He ripped savage gray and
misted melancholic blue
and hurled it across his walls.
The house watched warily the
creeping tide. It knew the dangers
of this love.
He sat hunched in dirty
moonlight, dabbed feathered
finger into pools of melted
color. Wind rattled speckled
glass and he stroked its cries
into ragged imagery.
Nightfall and he staggers
in, painted adulterous
grayandblue. The house
says nothing, but sighs and
opens its arms to him,
never begrudging him
his tumultuous mistress.
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“Patagonia” by Flannery James
“Say please and thank you,”
my father whispers in my ear.
“¡Habla en voz alta, chica!”
the bus driver barks when I mutter
por favor and gracias under my breath.
“Siéntate aquí y habla conmigo,”
the old woman waves me over
with a claw-like hand,
but I only see the fierce jut of her eyebrows, and
none of the kindness beneath them.
I feel like una ratón under the piercing gaze
of a desert hawk, and like a field mouse,
I burrow into the corner of the seat
until the bird slides away, riding the thermals
on stiff, silent wings.
I press my nose to the window, gaze out
at the bare landscape, the
cracked, dusty leather of the ground. “Vicuña,”
the guide says, and I mouth the word,
lips shaping the syllables but not releasing it
to bound over the arid terrain, nose twitching,
eyes bright as constellations and deep as the night sky.
When they appear, they materialize out of nowhere
and everywhere, dry grass and stone giving way to
soft fur, delicate, lovely legs.
We stare at each other, and a quiet exchange
passes between us, one shy creature to another.
Then I breathe. “Look,” and the moment is tumbled away
by the desert wind. “Look. There,” I try again,
but my words are barely more than the whisper of the breeze,
lost in the roar of the engine, and
the herd is steadily growing farther away.
“¡Mira! Las vicuñas!” My shout
brings the bus to a shuddering halt,
and my ears fill with the music
of applause for la ratoncitawho has found her voice.