Here's the third prize winner from last year's contest (read the first-place poem and second-place poem) to remind you that the deadline for submission to the 2009 Fire Escape Short Fiction and Poetry Contests is June 1st. Please pass the word to teen writers between cultures.For Your Pathos
by Miranda, China/USA, Age 17
you will pound mettle into me
before our years are over—
I sometimes wonder
if this is your intent, or
perhaps
you have failed even yourself.
at one time
yours were my only margins,
and I fit snugly
between the lines of your page.
your stark nakedness of mind
was protected only
by the thin threads that bound us.
but soon, you snapped and were felled
by your own
thin daggers.
I resent you
because you remind me
of what is impossible.
This week's Poetry Friday is hosted by Susan Taylor Brown.