Jennifer Williamson, St. Lawrence University
The Writing Contest for Young and Adult Writers
Runner up in Category: Poetry Age 12-20

Lover

Hollow pond
   where the dragonflies dangle
         and skate
and Virginia Woolf grunts and spits
      in yesterday's dark forest

this no is fuzzy as
   slush   the slow-paced fold of time
      scratchy prayers your lucid scream
the thousand moist panics of
         your dance

and in the under-hollow of your mind
         a library of offenses an
      index there is no there is no

deliciously-tenaciously
         the willow bends
   and I hang on
while the dragonflies dangle by
   furious wings

I look at you    and you are made
      of light

Medusa

I sun swallower,
      denizen of the night vistas
O I, pretty hair maden

O galazy-drinker
O snake charmer
little stone woman, I
with a million mouths

eater of men       a round owl
   wearing my warm diamond
         wearing your wound

Dare to look at me and
         I will make the air ache:
      slow your atoms to crawls

Until you come at me       blood-faced
   wielding your Perseus

Why is it    vague boy    that you think
I can't handle a mirror?

Town of My Farewell to You

Swifting down the dirt road to me your arms
were the wide-mantled ghosts of birds

Recalling the times I almost begged
you to engulf me; sick of being exposed

Sick of the burden of not being
inside something

tired of losing the core of things
in the webs and tangles of a town

You asked me did you (do you?) believe
I loved you

I say such loving eats the heart

do you think I wore this town
without pain?