Poetry Prize Winners

Our students sure have a way with words! This year Hannah Coon '23, Lily Slepoy '24, and Stephen Peschel '22 were three of 20 winners selected to take part in the Storm King Poetry Festival. Their work was selected from 150 student submissions across 23 schools, which totaled more than 400 poems. This was Hannah's second year taking part in the festival, and it should be no surprise that Hannah has also been Millbrook’s Poetry Prize winner for two consecutive years running. Enjoy reading Lily's, Hannah's, and Stephen’s submissions for the Storm King Festival below.
 
Hannah Coon: my poem as a spider
 
my poem as a spider
my poem crawls its arachnid body up my throat—
saliva-slick & eight-eyed.
                                                                                       tucking its octuplet legs under my tongue,
it builds a web in the back of my mouth
to catch insect-words.
                                                                                       all the things i am trying to write
become tied down and venom-drunk.
my poem eats its own body &
                                                                                      refuses to be beautiful—
bares its fangs at profound and
hisses when i try to dislodge it.
                                                                                     my poem is too much like me:
stubborn & auto-cannibalistic,
wounding & wounded.
                                                                                     i try to come up with a name for something
that doesn't want to be written,
but the spider-poem holds the word hostage,
                                                                                    keeps it wrapped and voiceless,
keeps me tongue-tied &
sick with silence &
                                                                                    sick with hunger &
sick
with silence
 
 
 
Stephen Peschel: No to War
 
Gray skies with planes in the air
 
Strange places, strange people
 
We wait for the signals with fear 
We think, why are we here?
 
We are just pawns in chess
But in this game of chess, 
Oligarchs play with our lives.
With their wine and cigarettes in their mouths,
In their luxurious homes,
Which were paid for by our money, they smile And laugh at our 
Prison.
Where the only escape is death… 
Ours or theirs. 
Leadership is dying.

I sit and vomit on the dirt 
Where my comrades lie and die. 
Behind every fallen soldier lies 
A broken family.
I just don’t want to kill people.
These are faces like mine.
These lives are like mine.
My voice will not stay silent.
 
I look back and close my eyes.
I am dreaming of a better world
Without pain and unnecessary suffering.
I fill my eyes with kerosene
To blind myself from the atrocities of war.
 
War has no winners.
 
Motherland Ukraine… I think about you.
 
 
Lily Slepoy: Bubbles in the Kitchen after Danez Smith
 
I want grandmas on the front porch taking out raptors 
-Dinosaurs in the Hood 
 
Let’s make a real Jewish movie. 
But I don’t want it to be about the Holocaust.
We all know what happened in the Holocaust. 
And I don’t want it to take place 5,000 years ago either. 
As good as The 10 Commandments was, one is enough. We know (kinda) 
what happened then too. 
Besides, 
we shouldn’t have to go back to ancient Israel to find a story other than tragedy. 
I want this movie to show a kid in Hebrew school, 
bored out of her mind,
 but patiently waiting for that bagel she knows she’ll get before she leaves 
I want to see bubbies in the kitchen making matzo balls 
Talking trash about people in Yiddish 
And don’t you dare hold back on the Yiddish insults either, that’s the best part
Show me the Bar Mitzvahs 
The weddings 
The funerals 
There is one problem though 
How will we cast it?
“I think so and so’s Jewish ”
“No, they’re half Jewish”
“But their mom is Jewish ” 
“So then they’re Jewish ”
“What? that literally makes no sense”
It can be an Adam Sandler Hanukkah song typecast
But I really just want to make this movie for the scene of the girl in Hebrew School.
Just to see how happy that bagel makes her. Her face full of joy. 
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