SARAH BRUCE: Special Commendation Winner, Student Poet Laureate Awards

You can see from the three most recent posts how difficult it was for me and my first reader John York to select the final winner for our first NCETA Student Laureate poetry award. Reading Sarah Bruce's "yellow," we were captivated by Sarah's often surprising turns of imagery and phrase. We found her last line especially memorable. Sarah continues to write poetry. Her "Swaddlling" follows her prize winning poem. Reading this poem, I know I'm hearing the voice of a real poet. (I like her play on "a room of one's own"!)

Sarah Bruce is a native of Raleigh, currently studying in Richmond at VCU and majoring in International Studies. She enjoys wandering around parks. She reads the newspaper every day that she can. And she loves to watch the sunrise before going to bed.


yellow

we all die young
and we all grow old.
we all take more capsules and pills than we’re told.
I don’t wear my yellow sweatshirt
anymore.

tricycle children pull out their hair
like the little-girl-grandmothers rocking in chairs,
spectacles smeared
with chalk and a fountain pen.

lips curling in, spine twisting out
as my ancestors
teach me to drink.
venerate me; I have wrapped myself in string.

the color of lead is the color of all my dreams.



Swaddling

I
My suit jacket
is smothered in the dust
of communion wafers as I
nestle under this pew. I need
to be small and safe,
a sanctuary within a sanctuary,
in a womb of my own.

II
A bed once cradled me, soft
like a nascent fire's
first breath. I lay
for hours and hours
in something like slumber,
my forearms draped
over my ribcage and hips.

III
Three decades ago,
before sundown in the summer,
I would catch fireflies
in my jar. Mother told me
to release them peacefully,
but I envied the peace
that they already had.






(Judges Special Commendation winner Sarah Bruce with her parents.)