Feb 16, 2013 6 min read

Two students had their writing selected as American Voice nominees in the 11th annual Scholastic Art and Writing Awards of Southwestern Pennsylvania. Along with excerpts from their short stories are Silver Key poetry winners by two other students.

American Voice

“Aftermath”

By Katie Caranzarite

Geibel Catholic Junior-Senior High School

“Are you ready for school next week, Gaby?” Dr. Newman asks, getting on with his questioning routine.

“Mmm-hmm,” I answer in a hard tone. I take my cell phone from my pocket and examine the screen for the time. Dr. Newman has gone fifteen minutes over the allotted time period.

My therapist jots something down in that heinous white binder he always has with him.

“It’s your senior year. Excited?”

I amazingly restrain from rolling my eyes. “Yep.”

“How’s your asthma been lately?”

“Fine.”

“When was your last big attack?”

“I don’t remember.”

Dr. Newman glances up at me. “C’mon, Gaby.”

I inhale, puffing my cheeks up with air, and then exhale with a loud whoosh. “Last night.”

“Okay, why?” He asks. His patient tone – never tense, never frustrated, always insanely calm – makes me want to yank my hair out.

Oh, I don’t know, maybe it’s because I have this little thing called asthma? Do you think that could possibly have anything to do with why I had an asthma attack?” I’m being obnoxious on purpose. Can’t he see I don’t want to be here? I don’t even know why he tries.

“Memoriam of a Soul Departed”

By Tara Wadsworth

Laurel Highlands Senior High School

It was a dreadfully dangerous day in a valley most secluded when a most horrific and unthinkable tragedy occurred. It was such an extraordinary heartbreak that at the very moment it transpired, all life seemed to stop. During that single moment, which seemed to stretch out for an eternity, birds silenced their sweet melodies, crickets and their cousins halted their peeping, and even the wind, which had been wailing incessantly, gave way in suspension. During that single moment, the entire world seemed to take a collective breath, almost as if to compensate for the being that had just had its own stripped away, for an entire entity had indeed just lost its life. Sadly enough, there was no one around to witness such a tragedy. No one that a human would bother to distinguish, anyway, and they themselves had been absent. There was therefore no one to morn this great loss, no one at all. That is, of course, if you did not include the trees, squirrels, insects, weeds, and so on. But, on this day, especially the trees…The morning had started out particularly unsettling, with heavy brooding clouds that stalked the valley. The insidious vapors appeared to billow into the heavens endlessly like smoke recently released from the blazing depths of a fire. To the creatures below, they seemed nothing more than a minor nuisance, boding no more than an unpleasant day of heavy rain and perhaps rather strong winds. Little did they know, by days end, they would lose one of their own.

As the onlookers had suspected, rain had begun to fall from above in quite heavy quantities, thoroughly soaking the earth into a sodden mess of wilted grass and broken up dirt that soon turned into mud. By midday, the clouds had begun to stack unbelievingly higher. They now began to take the form of enormous thunderheads, and this is where the tragedy begins.

Poetry

“Swallow”

By Sasha Edwards

Washington High School

Connecting holes in fragile paper

Is a boring and quite lonely act

I absentmindedly twist the edges

Until no edges are intact

I know he hears my made-up voice

But my heart goes down my digestive tract

As I tell him of unimportant things

Because urgency the conversation lacked

His voice rang thick through radio waves

When I pressed my ear to the telephone

Way back when things were uncomplicated

There is one fact that I wish I’d known:

When he longed for me and my embrace

Way back when, I wish it had shown

When I said I loved him and he knew I didn’t mean it

He almost cried. Oh, I wish it had shown

As I scolded him for being closed-minded

He almost died. How I wish I had known!

But I swallow my heart and my composure cracks

Because I know we’ll always be alone

My heart’s lonely existence remains a fact, but

The acid wears farther now that I’m grown.

“Rain”

By Morgan Boyer

Peters Township High School

She’s the mother of the puddles beneath

Your soggy slippers,

The teacher of the fine wine

And the grandmother of the cheese,

Rain is the officer, who cast the crystal mush,

That was once snow,

Onto the side of the closed road

She is the aunt of the lemonade you sell on long, July days,

And the niece of the baths you dread.

Rain is the sister who assures that the corn flake stain

Is off of your sweatshirt before school,

Rain is the cousin who catches that fried fish.

Rain is our mother, our sister, our teacher, our guardian,

Our aunt, our friend

She has been there for us each day,

Until the curtain calls for The End

“Oil-water”

By Morgan Boyer

Peters Township High School

The loss of one’s senses from a familiar warmth of snickerdoodles or a wool-woven scarf;

the ability to be born with your heart tapped onto your naturally crocheted skin,

the loss of catfish of usual size that would easily be caught for casual sport,

the ability to pay eleven dollars for a bottled water out of desperation for a fresh-water savior,

to one’s parched tongue in the desert of a silent-street city;

The loss of cells which behave as they are born and multiply

and the ability of cold-money consuming lobbyists to pay a feeble fine for killing a child,

breaking ties bond by love, twisting its wires and gnawing at it like a mouse;

the loss of life-breathing air, what gave us the will to fly like birds, walk on two legs, paint Europe,

the ability to send a black-cloaked snake in a fog-form into the lungs of billions,

the loss of our humanity and natural make-up, the loss of one of the great painter’s favorite hue,

the ability of Oil-water