The Leonard L. Milberg ’53 High School Poetry Prize annually recognizes outstanding work by student writers in the 11th grade in the U.S. or abroad. Read the winning poems from the 2023 contest below.
First Place
Vivian Huang
Irvine, California
Femininity Test for the Rotting Daughters
i.
Leash wraps your neck, ropeburn kissing
each mark on your brittle skin. Remember:
keep your hands to your side or Mama
will warn your future husband: crazy woman who likes
to dance with crippled knives as heels. Womb runs
apart in the iced bathroom, stone-cold & metal. Put
on that wedding dress, honey. Smile a little so your
fingers turn purple & you go feral. The men
in the white coats want to diagnose you as neighbor
who needs repairs so you become their darling. Remember.
ii.
Twix & cherry pop boobs are what you want. / It costs a finger & an eye but it will be worth it. / I am rooting for you. Tomorrow, I will look / at the snow & believe your worth. For now, / be a good girl, why don’t you? & straighten up. / Your face is beginning to morph & wrinkle & look like / Mama’s husband. I learn to convert to euphemisms / just for you, sweetheart. / Be a good girl & trace your alien name / on sleeves while she shapes / your body. Become America’s sweetheart & smile / for me, honey.
iii.
Willow trees carving clocks
for you until body blooms,
pomegranate red. Fairy godmother
turns it to a swamp, & you unfurl.
iv.
I call you darling, watch your struts on the cherry-
land snow where the neighbors
are shit-talking you. Lab coats plastered to thighs. &
there you are, acrylics in your mouth & hairspray
in your hazy flesh, fairy tales etching away
your swollen body. Like Cinderella in a bone.
Second Place
Elliott Kate Cooper
Mount Pleasant, South Carolina
A Letter to My Little Brother, Who Cries When Daddy Cuts His Hair
Every month, you drag a chair to the kitchen,
sit back, let him pull you into place as he cleans
the scissors, wets the comb and combs it all
out, blonde strands darkening beneath his touch.
I linger in the entryway. See the shiver spill
down your spine at the water weight. Every month,
a puddle of curls on the tile, our only
Southern snowfall, frost catching on your bare
shoulders. Sting of cold metal against
your nape. He’s never nicked skin, not
in the hundred times you’ve endured
this ritual, just presses a calloused thumb
to your chin and tilts your head back. You know
those hands could have you Isaac-bound
in seconds, throat bared—is it better or worse
when he cradles your head like a newborn,
lets another curl sway to his feet? He hums
something whisper-pitched and pretends
it isn’t substitute for a choir; bows his head
over you, fingers carding through his work, calls it anything
except prayer. You and I, we spent
three years in Catholic school, cracked Carolina
earth beneath our feet, and we weren’t allowed
communion. No wafer, no sweet
rot of wine. I wanted nothing more, back then,
than to be holy. To shed my body and melt
into something clean enough, included in this
salvation. Daddy’s chopping up the sides now, careful
around your pink ears. You’ve set your face to stone, grin
and bear it, boy, but I’m the one haunting
the doorway every damn time—who told you
hunger was an absence? My body is filled
to the brim and spilling over. Clinging closer
than skin, as these quiet snips carry us to a new
hour. Last week, you curled up next to me,
elbows and kneecaps colliding like children
nostalgic for the womb, and you whispered—
Tell me something true. So here: I used to sit in that chair
too, peel off my shirt, my chest flat and always
familiar, a homeland I never thought I’d have
to abandon, and I learned the feel of his hands
choosing to be gentle, despite. Don’t know
when he stopped, when he handed me off
to Mama, quick car ride to a salon, stranger
taking his place and claiming this communion
for themselves. Don’t know when, but I watch the two of you
and I feel his touch like a phantom limb, a missing lung.
Can you hear it in my breath? Stutter and stall and static
as I stand in the threshold of the kitchen and don’t dare
to come closer, trapped like an echo, borderline drawn
the width of his palms. Can you tell me when I became
a daughter? When Mama’s mouth folded to frown as I pulled
on my hair, asked for another cut, just one more, a little
shorter this time, just gone and gone and gone and you
slip away when he’s finished. Turn the shower to blistering,
step beneath the spray. I hover still. Look at him
too long. I once made the mistake of asking, mine, too?
and suddenly, a calamity, a flurry of questioning
and reassurance so I bite my tongue, these days. Stare
at the tangle of hair on the floor, the soft ruin of debris—
Third Place
Sarah Li
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Ode to That Old H-Mart
Yes, that’s right
The old H-mart
Not that fresh new one, with its polished floors and endless shelves,
Basking in its own shining glory
I’m talking about the old one, the dirty one, the one parked in Elkins Park with its parking lot full of twisty turns and bad drivers,
The one with concrete stairs blackened by gum stains and with a back section that overpoweringly reeks of seafood, due to years of crabs and lobsters and fish flopping out the last of their last lives in tanks lining the walls
Mmm.
The smell of childhood.
But I don’t love you because of your cramped aisles filled chock-full to the brim with hoisin sauce and Pocky and Meiji gummies and dried seaweed and heaving bags of rice,
Nor for the Paris Baguette next to the grocery, where I grew up drinking bubble tea and eating soft Japanese milk bread,
Or even for your sweet asian pears and salty kbbq, your yellowing floors and scratched signs, the bright “paid” stickers that decorate the floor, or the free samples of kimbap and potstickers flung forth to passing customers every weekend
I love you because in you, I can become the monolith, can live into that stilted paradox that haunts my every word
Because only people who really belong have the luxury of wanting to stand out
Among your rickety racks of food, I can blend into the sea of old grandmas in vests and young college students in flip-flops and rich mainland girls with their luxury bags and necklaces,
Our brown eyes and dark hair (except for those who bleach it, because who doesn’t want to look like a kpop idol?) all looking the same to others
In you, people assume I speak Mandarin and I don’t have to disappoint them with an oh, sorry, I don’t speak Chinese (like chinatown)
I can be just that other Asian American girl, can be part of the community and can be an egg tart instead of a banana (everyone loves an egg tart!);
A sweet pineapple bun (that, disappointingly, doesn’t taste remotely pineapple-y) instead of a Twinkie
Under the chill of your AC and the cool of your freezers that house sweet tāngyuán balls and thick slices of nian gao and a thousand varieties of fish balls for huǒguō, my American fire fades from red-hot to orange to a pale yellow,
And I can be no one and everyone at the same time
Read or download the winning poems (Word doc)