JUST POETRY!!!


the National Poetry Quarterly


JUST POETRY!!! the National Poetry Quarterly



best of issue





Fall 2023 - 2024



Portrait (1915) and Sonnet (Deconstructed)


An abstracted jar filled with a brushstroke-quick green

liquid, plaque identification, absinthe. The table from

the top and side simultaneously, the viewer’s shadow

clasped onto the back wall in darker paint, the outline of

a jagged tophat, the collar of a trench coat. C’est ne pas

une pipe, to the mind. I stand here holding my mother’s

hand. Cancer, to the mind. The singular viewer’s shadow

dominating the back wall, looming over the coffee table

and her hand feels somehow less permanent now. To

console oneself that the lack of trench coat and tophat

is reason enough to doubt the shadow’s identity

—layering of darker paint, tumor-thick—staring, split

—perhaps the shadow will move if it feels it is unwelcome

—our shadows melded into one wide-brimmed, split,


disjointed tophat and the scalpel-sharp tips of a trench

coat collar. One the investigator and absinthe-drinker

from the two absinthe and drinker. Two, deconstructed.

Mitosis rewinded, reversed. Renounced and revered

chronologically. Ten years but no sign of death over the

maid—the treachery of images. We skip the vanitas.

Vanessa Y. Nui, NY, Special Music School



EDITOR'S CHOICE





FALL 2023-2024




Still Life with a Ceramic Bowl


The last time I recall your fingers clamping a ceramic bowl

half-filled with red bean paste. Winter drifts by your eyebags,

darkening from the upcoming blizzard. Skin aching from a

wound, a test of trusting pain as payment. Pain for a breath.

Your palms tender from hand warmers, slipping faster than

time dissolving a family, past poker nights because I don’t

know mahjong, past Xi Yang Yang with English captions, past

jade baoding gemstones too big for my hands. Think again.

I will translate faint Chinese characters to fortune, sprinkle

dou sha baos like a proverb, an ointment to our teeth, biting

for comfort, clenching for a ritual as the telephone rings

a confirmation—a surgical incision. The morning I saw a

Northern Cardinal upon a broken branch, I tell you to look up

from the kitchen table. You push a towel against your stye,

as if you burn hardship with a feather. When you clutch your

right eye to open your left, it disappears. Your face hiding beneath

doubt, I glance at you to find compensation lost in silence.

If only I can describe the bird to you in wholeness rather than

fragments, our voices echoing mistranslations. Tonight I blink

sharpness—your shadows against the concrete wall, unmoving life.

Chelsea Zhu, MD, Richard Montgomery High School



ALL OTHER CERTIFIED National winners
fall 2023 - 2024



Ends All Indigo - Mila Ponce, IL, Homewood-Flossmoor High School

closings - Leo Rael, NJ, Cresskill High School

Ghazal for Radium Girls - Naomi Ling, MD, River Hill High School

Crawling on an ocean of Wasabi peas and memories - Zara Al-Zand Forzley, CA, Lycee Francais de San Francisco

what we may be - Rachel Xu, FL, Eastside High School

Nectarine - Anna Goodman, NY, New Paltz High School

Metamorphosis in Molotovs - Sean Burns, NJ, Sayreville War Memorial HS

Sweet Barrel - Morgan Montoya, IL, Walter Payton College Prep

hardwood floors - Suchita Vanguri, GA, Wheeler High School

through death, she is my freedom - Alyssa Amaker, SC, Richland Northeast HS baby teeth in a fairy box - Katharine Stafford, TN, Rossview High School

ghazal for bloodied homeland - Grace Zhang, TX, The Woodlands College Park The Cities in My Heart - Gwendolyn Lopez, CA, Pasadena High School

my father speaks with an accent - Anna Furdui, MD, Liberty High School

Blind Dame as I - Sofiia Znakharenko, CO, Smoky Hill High School

The 'me' in mother - Ellis Schroeder, GA, Druid Hills High School

the ultimatums in a cemetery - Capra McCormick, AZ, The Gregory School

In the Summer - Jamie Kim, NJ, Eastern Christian High School

I Talk to Aristotle in Physics Class - Stella Van Buskirk, CO, Northridge HS

loose pennies in sidewalk cracks - Ela Kini, NY, Hunter College High School



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