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 top prize-winning poems from the 2025 contest below.
First Place
Amy Lin
Belle Mead, New Jersey
There are three ways to read this contrapuntal piece: each side forms an individual poem, and reading both sides from left to right together forms a third poem.
contrapuntal for my unshaven legs
in america, i used to mow
wài pó’s sunflower fuzz
starting from my thighs. i
would seize the sky
with a pair of wagon-red scissors
while she’d sway—
clipped fine weeds, dark
soil quivering
like ink caps
on ochre shins.
but they always returned,
she’d tell me,
& when they did, my friends would mouth:
yúnnán women are born
overgrown. i wanted
to carry unbound gardens—
to tame my guilt-stemmed body.
so i leave mine be.
Second Place
Jake Welton
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
burning haibun for crested ibis
mama, just so you know, i have a newfound hunger for meat. our ancestral altar displays peking duck, the gullet still raw & coughing up quills. you say it must be slit, that another child is merely another throat begging to be stuffed with fat. mama, look at the way my blood congeals in the bathroom sink—porcelain decorated with slices of skin like wilted petals. mama, my nape has bent into a blood-tipped crescent, & my fingernails have curved into talons. i am every prayer a drowning mother has for her son: submission. mama, i met a boy whose name was a lie i carved inside of me. he said he would pull every bone out of my body, as if it were a breeding call. i burn my pubic hairs under his covers as smoke signal for sex. mama, when he tears apart my tattered clothes, all he unveils is a gray & aborted plumage. i am allopreened all night. i am told i deserve this. mama, why do i gnaw off my feathers & pretend i am a woman? why do i castrate myself until birdsongs seep amniotic from the wound? my head is a stillborn crest where the scalp is exposed & bleeding. by the light of a starving moon, i birth rejected testosterone & measure it by wingspan. i devour a new man each night to replace this lack of body. mama, there is gasoline cradled in this ungodly mouth, & i choose to piss it out. mama, our dirt-caked television displays mandarin ducks doused in oil, & your instinct is to light a cigarette. one day, you will douse me in oil & strike a match against your papered tongue. one day, you will deadname flight as faggot. one day, you will watch your rotten child go up in flames.
//
mama i hunger for gullet still raw & slit
another child another way my blood congeals
in the bathroom sink—petals blood-tipped crescent
a drowning mother has her son: a lie i carved
inside of me. he said he would burn my pubic hairs
as sex tear apart my aborted night. i am told i deserve
this pretend i am a woman castrate myself stillborn & starving
i birth rejected testosterone & measure lack of body, there is gasoline
mouth, & i piss our dirt-caked mandarin
your instinct is to douse me in oil & strike faggot.
you watch flames.
//
gullet congeals son:
lie i birth testosterone
mouth piss mandarin
Third Place
Ela Roso
New York, New York
Second-Hand Smoke
low tide on the sound
tonight, sea draining
till the bone-white
bottom is bare.
tall reeds & bugs
rising out the
dark dunes.
on the beach
rings of smoke
float up to the sky
my father, death
hanging from his lips,
speaks in low tones
the language of men;
knees in the sand,
I know
the spit turns
the fire;
even the empty tide
erases nothing.