Winners of the Poetry in Performance Contest (Congrats!)

These poems were chosen for the Poetry in Performance Contest sponsored by City College! They will be published in a literary journal!

806:

 Anna Tseytlin: The Woman

Laura DePaolo: Goodbye

Joaquim Ross: The World is Changing

Petra Dijur: Paper Cage

Stella O Flynn: Untitled

Kiera O'Neill: That Plastic Bottle

809:

Amelia Poor: Amelia Poor Is

Becca Greenberg: I Didn't Know 

Marlee Newell: Untitled

Noa Goveia: Social Justice 

Alice Wu: Astronomical Creature 

813

Aya Alsabri: If Only I Knew 

Enzo Roberto: In Action 

Luna Zhang: Frail is Not a Fairy Tale 

Gabby Carpio: Words Kill the Kind 

Yael Atiae: Cold as Stones 

Syeda Muntaha: Trust 

Landen Giambalvo: January

Joaquim Ross   THE WORLD IS CHANGING

Look around 

The world’s burning

But still you hear factories churning

            You think you can do nothing

      As animals are huffing and puffing

But you still sit there 

    In your lawn chair

    Thinking of all the things you would lose

         From those big factories that make those horrible fumes

    The earth tries to give us signs

       But we blow them off with a roll of our eyes

The consequences will be severe

But people sit with their beers

While some keep on trying as hard as they can

There will always be those who like to sit down and get tan

But we must keep on going

And never stop slowing 

The earth is counting on us

To do what's right and bring harmony

To an urgency

that is certainly

Going to destroy this world

And while some may look past it

We must do better, 

because the world is fading,

and it needs our saving

Luna Zhang- Frail is Not a Fairy Tale

Mentor text: Fat is not a fairy tale

I am thinking of a fairy tale,

Soft Shang,

Powerless Charming,

Fragile Beast,

where the hero is not

muscular, brawny

showing off their strengths.

I am thinking of a fairy tale,

Cowardly Philip,

Afraiddan,

Princess and the Freak,

where the hero

has scrawny little fingers,

and body thin as a stick.

I am thinking of a fairy tale

that is unwritten,

for an unborn teller,

for a not yet conceived listener,

for a not yet won world,

where everything slender is good:

the stick, pole, string, and the hero

Mission Earth by Noa Goveia (809)

Every day, animal species are dying in vain,

Disappearing like toxic water going down a drain

Fires are burning, the seas are churning

Hurricanes are drowning us in rain

Every second, a polar bear’s home melts into a warming sea,

It won’t be long before they exist only in our memory

Our air is polluted, this can’t be disputed

Oxygen will soon be a precious commodity

What can be done, we ask in despair

Is the planet we love beyond repair?

Our generation must quickly evolve

To fix what generations before us failed to resolve

The burden is heavy, the mission is clear

Fight for the earth because the end is near