Winner of 2022 Marymount Poetry Prize Revealed! 

Did you know that MMC’s Department of Writing, Literature and Languages hosts an annual poetry competition for high school students? This year, we received over a hundred submissions!  Selecting one winning poem proved to be a very hard job indeed, but, after careful deliberation, our jury decided to award the 2022 Marymount Poetry Prize to “moving/dream” by Ziyi Yan of Greenwich High School. Ziyi Yan’s poem manages to be at once mysterious and colloquial, surprising and universal. It juts out in associative directions and, like a boomerang, finds its way back to the root of the issue: the pain of trying to make a connection. Here’s our winning poem for your reading pleasure: 

moving/dream 

two things are unique                to a home: 

writers’ block and wetting the bed. in sleep 

my adult teeth pushed       each other 

from my mouth like dominos. you held  

me, a wrinkled fetus         with long hair– 

we can laugh at that. but really, you held  

old jeans like a plea. my stomach bulged 

from the fabric              and i forgot why 

we took turns apologizing. 

/ 

whenever my sister wants to play  

a board game, i say     i need 

to write. actually   i scratch out 

my hair and watch videos of celebrities  

kissing           in the next room. i crawl 

to her bed when i’m sure she’s crawled 

to yours. in a false dawn        you nestle  

me to your stomach, so i feign deafness  

as you open the curtains. 五分钟走, you  

snap.           in haste, i paw everything 

out of my underwear drawer– 

/ 

i never wrangled our knocker to choke 

your screaming.         instead i sprawled  

on the porch, winced at how even wood 

whined under me. the time you waste  

in driving me has dribbled  

down my chin, groping for taste. mom 

we whittle this house       

to a pyre.         tonight 

my mouth is dried raw and i’m sorry 

i mocked you   for this: 

we’ve locked our keys in the new house.  

your jeans in my closet are     moving.  

* “五分钟走” translates to, “we leave in five minutes.”