JUST POETRY!!!


the National Poetry Quarterly


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JUST POETRY!!! the National Poetry Quarterly


  • winter 2024-2025
  • spring 2024-2025
  • summer 2024-2025
  • Easterday Poetry winner 2024-2025

best of issue





Winter 2024 - 2025



recIprocate


reach, reaching, to Skies: a familiar face wrapped in cumulus cloths

Your eyes, the Weltschmerz sinking down, to my soul

drip-a-drip-a-drip from my eyes up to Your Skies, etched by Your face

wrapped in Your influence, hold me closer, closer

i need Your embrace, for i shall surely rot without You. You, meine Liebe


Stars stare down upon Us, They realize not Our love

earth and Sky, dreamed as forever apart, though mountains

reach up and meet with sparse Clouds

sink down, meetings proposed yet never followed-through

Time, He tick-a-ticks with my theorized love and halts with Your attempts

grandfather Clock rests above the Stars, i wonder if the

Tick judgment is Tock from His own Tick

sorry, i can't think can We talk later

can We do everything later, can We postpone it to B.C.E.


Sky to earth, are Your attempts to me or a Doppel?

i look in a mirror crafted from my own skin: It petrifies and shatters


oops sorry im such a klutz


stone Shards stare up at me, Love taken by my Fermium


i look at Me, earth to Earth, the One worthy of the Sky

Du, Du liegst mir im Herzen, i lullaby in my self-dug grave

Brooke Harvey, FL, Gulf Coast High School



EDITOR'S CHOICE





Winter 2024-2025



womanufacture


take a piglet: a hairy, milk-swollen, tangled mess of a thing. tear her

grasping lips from mama’s warm teat, let mama watch as you shock her into

nothing— bleached cornhusk shade and clotted dirt and dust-drunk freedom.


now— make sure mama sees this— work your cruel blood-wrought hunting

knife along the tender crook of piglet’s throat. stipple the downy hay with

wild sprays of rust-flecked ipseity, until she is exsanguinated of herself.


water heated to 150° F should scald away the floss, but for those stubborn

hairs, use a razor-barbed scythe (women’s). boys don’t like hair, you know.


is she pretty yet? no, the steaming knot inside her is leaking ugliness.

split her along the belly and let her guts slip out in rotten coils of

snarled sock curls and the lacy straps of your very first big-girl bra.

now flay her fragile chest, snap the spongy ribs

and watch the g(l)ory seeping through the grain of the wood beneath.

be sure to save the lipstick-smeared heart, for there are men who’d pay to

crack it open, crush the pulpy red seeds between strip-whitened smiles.


we call this last part cleavage. saw through muscle and bone and silicone

breast implants. portion out her body and package her baby pink parts

in vacuum-sealed plastic. sell her to the butcher, one pound at a time.


only one pound, did you say? so thin! pretty woman— tell us your secret!

i try to be beautiful like you, but it’s like putting lipstick on a pig.

Alex Cox, MD, Holton-Arms School



ALL OTHER CERTIFIED National winners
Winter 2024 - 2025




​Haunted Hickories - Ariel Davis, NY, Susan E. Wagner High School
Genesis on Eggshells - Reagan Barr, Il, Grant Community High School
to be free - Maureen Wilson, OH, Middletown High School
Tumbleweed - Mia Ha-Rozewski, HI, Pearl City High School
Chrysanthemum - Maya Hatch, IL, Edwardsville High School
Waiting at the Checkout - Kelly Yuan, NJ, High Technology High School
Holy War - Jyotsna Nagarapu, TX, Texas Academy of Math & Science
in entering - Caroline Jiang, NY, Bronx High School of Science
Medusa - Averie Lee, MA, Concord Academy
L'Inconnue - Annie Li, NY, Stuyvesant High School
Burial - Onyx Plunkett, PA, Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12
Please use a lighter - Guo (Toby) Chen, CT, The Loomis Chafee School
to you who watches - Vanya Tara, RI, Moses Brown School
Memory Bathing a 5-year-Old Boy - Molly Glenn, SC, Augusta Prep Day School
don't dream of a new home - Rowan Hunt, AZ, Red Mountain High School
sip and sip and finally spill - Mikayla (Miki) Chan, CA, Polytechnic School
- Pratheeksha Ganesh, NY, Hicksville Senior High School
When I Go to War - Joanne Hwang, NY, Stuyvesant High School
the trade-off - Rebecca Flaum, CA, Vacaville High School
What Became of the Poet - Mercury Minh Ta, KS, Wichita High School East
Daydreamer - John Isaac Mendez Vega, TX, KISD Early College High School
The Presence of Man - Allison Zhang, CA, Polytechnic School
Broken Nous - Ethan Smith, IA, Schole Quad Cities Homeschool Program
Ex machina - Juliet Dong, MA, Acton Boxborough Regional High School
Ouroboros - Dylan T. King, CA, Clovis East HS Center for Advanced Research & Technology


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