JUST POETRY!!!


the National Poetry Quarterly


JUST POETRY!!! the National Poetry Quarterly



best of issue





Spring 2024 - 2025



Beijing Boa


deep crimson scales colored by students writhing atop the pavement

like twisted marionettes sprinkled in front of paradise as the lights dim.

flesh melting into ruby lakes, soaked and cold. as torn limbs undergo

metamorphosis into the city flags.

the thunderclap staccato continues, accompanied by screaming crescendo

when the boa buries shrapnel in my sinews.


tessellated shield over bleeding knives, the arm-of-the-state.

tighter. tighter. i wrench against stone wrapping around my shoulder,

wishing to slaughter its jasper skin so that my pen may touch vellum.

my fingertips press into the grand army, unpenetrated latticework.

though my hands cry auburn rivers, i can finally feel


coil snapping my neck. vertebrae crying out requiems.

serrated and gleaming in their betrayal, having pierced

a bittersweet frequency. i had wished my throat a knife to slice

this hollowbreath noose opening my neck, but the only blades that remain

are the sharp edges of a shattered mausoleum.


my epitaph, spit onto weeping willows, and too dead to die again.

they’ll flay my scalp to chin. burn the rest of my rotting parchment.

revel in my curling ash thickened by the charcoal air.

as they forget my body ever thrashed, ever lived at all,

Thomas Guo, CA, Bellarmine College Preparatory



EDITOR'S CHOICE





Spring 2024-2025



apocalypse and you


in my mind, apocalypse and you are inseparable

unsmoked emotion choking the air like a destiny

and i tell you i will die long before the earth does


the smoke crawls up the bitter coast, sick

and heavy and hearts are heaving alongside tired lungs

and you’re with me, so long as flames burn grayscale


the wind tastes of tragedy, but the kind unremembered

i realize i’d love you when it all meant ash and forgetting

intimacy borne of death and i ignore its quiet cruelty


clouds and shadows coalesce in secret passion

the sky would lose its language and so would you

until we could only speak to the night and each other


blackened bark molders into a forest’s crumbling corpse

there’s an ever-present pain that not numb, just unfeelable

and it kills us to touch with no wilderness behind it


memories and landscapes alike learn the weight of soot

a dull neutrality pulsing in the white eyes of death

how grim is it that annihilation will let me love you best?

Nola Grace Borden, WA, Olympia High School



ALL OTHER CERTIFIED National winners
SPRING 2024 - 2025




(Un-)forgotten - Emily Liu, CA, Hillsdale High

chocolate chipless cookies - Raneem Abu-Nimeh, CA, Granda Islam School

The Silence That Remains - Addison Harris, AR, Siloam Springs High School

...& shadows must dance again - Emily Finkel, NJ, The Frisch School

How Dandelions Bloon in the Dark - Beatrice Pawley, IL, Central Catholic High School

If I Let Go - Navya Patel, NC, Cedar Ridge High School
No beauti - Trinity Stewart, TX, KIPP Sunnyside High School

Picking Your Skin - Nora Perley, PA, Julia R. Masterman High School

this poem will self-destruct - Carolyn Mitchell, TX, The Hockaday School

Her other fragile inheritances - Penny Wei, MA, Dana Hall School

blood-stained porcelain on a late thursday night 7 years ago - Kritika Sao, TX, Round Rock High School

The Other Side of the Coin - Charles He, MA, Milton Academy

Mingle - Guo (Toby) Chen, CT, Loomis Chaffee

Your Ghost Grows a Garden in My Throat - Shawn Ray, TX, Bridgeland High School

My Devils on Angel Dust - Humza Rizvi, NJ, Edison Academy Magnet School

elegy for my history textbook, stamped with four blotchy red letters - Ashley Mo, CA, The Harker Upper School

Love / Period - Naisha Randhar, TX, The Hockaday School

how rainbow was invented - Premrudee Mepremwattana, NC, East Chapel Hill HS/International Comm. School

Manmaking - Ayanna Uppal, NJ, Germantown Friends School Philadelphia




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