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The INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL FOR TEACHERS OF ENGLISH WRITING SKILLS August 2000 ‹Senior Writers¹ Winner‹Daniel Bradley, Flint, MI‹"The Last Stitch" August 2001 ‹Young People¹s Winner‹Sonia Ochoa, Saginaw, MI‹"Grandma¹s House" ‹Senior Writers¹ Winner‹Cynthia Bowen, Austin, TX‹"Hollow Ground" August 2002 ‹Young People¹s Winner‹Evan Heiter, Ann Arbor, MI‹"Would It Have Mattered?" ‹Senior Writers¹ Winner‹Irving Berkowitz, Bronx, NY‹"Just a Memento" August 2003 ‹Senior Writers¹ Winner‹Wes Clarkson, El Paso, TX‹"A Khaki-Colored Poet" August 2004 ‹Young People¹s Winner‹Joshua Maiche, Havana, Cuba‹"Tear It" ‹Senior Writers¹ Winner‹Ronald P. Waters, Philadelphia, PA, "I Thought About You Dad" This year two winners were chosen from the Seniors category since there were not sufficient number of young people to submit. The August 2005 winners are: Eric Gichira, Nairobi, Kenya María Eugenia Marzioni de Della Torre, Rafaela, Argentina We encourage submissions for the August 2007 Special Literary Edition. All submissions are due by May 31, 2007. For educators, what better incentive for students than to know that their work may be showcased on two web sites for a year as well as on the cover the periodical? What better text to use with budding writers? For more information, visit the Robbie Dean Press web site for submission guidelines. WORKS BY OUR 2005 SPECIAL LITERARY EDITION WINNERS: Almost Perfect 2006 Young People's Award Winner The house was quiet. The thick, red drapes that obscured half of one of the room's white, smooth walls shut out the outside world, muffling any sound that managed to penetrate the hushed, enclosed silence. A tiny room bathed in a harsh. A vague, jumbled stack of books occupied most of the space on one of the two small, cluttered tables. A girl sat silently reading beside the only light in the room. Her face was calm and composed, rigid almost, but her expressive, tell-tale eyes were red, and grimy, slat-streaked tear trails covered her face like a mask. Tangled black hair scruffily tied up into a pony-tail, a velvety cushion for her throbbing head. She read on, her warm, brown, overlarge eyes gazing out from behind thick, half moon glasses, immersed in a quiet world of her own, a world where nothing could go wrong, where there was no anger or pain or tears or parents. A lump came to her throat, and she silently put down her book and rose to her feet. As she turned around, she could see, though her vision was blurred, the old, dusty sturdily built wooden bookshelf, half thrown into shadow. In the dim light she could faintly make out her collection. Books all shapes and sizes shined like stars in the half-gloom. She knew that they each contained a separate world, a web of feelings and intertwining emotions, an outlet from the harsh, real world, a glimpse of a new cosmos of her own. She could even stop time itself. But suddenly, something had really happened, and her comfortable, happy life had come crashing down, suddenly revealed to be a ruined, ugly mix of depression, frustration and fear. They despised her. They had told her so themselves, not even bothering to disguise their contempt at her feeble efforts to please them. They had driven her, pushed her to do far more than she could. They had forced her to carry on, day after day, until her life had become an unruly tangle of hopelessness, disappointment, anxiety and despair. Life had lost its meaning. It had just become a static, repetitive system, as every day she sought a reason to keep going. So she had blindly turned to reading, compulsively clutching at her precious literary treasures it like a lost child, groping in the dark. It was, she now realized, the only thing that had stopped her from going mad. But they were taking it away. She remembered the flood of wretchedness that had swept over her when they had finally revealed to her their true thoughts, the ugly expression on their faces: icy coldness of their voices. She'd cried. Of course, she'd cried. They'd never once shown, in thirteen years, that they hated her so much. "You deserve what you get." She could remember every excruciating detail, every rise and fall of their voices, even though she had tried to hide behind the protective shield of her old, imaginary world, clinging desperately to it even though she could feel it slowly trickling away, like water through her grasping fingers. Suddenly, one of them had suddenly snatched it away from her, snatched away her imaginary world, and flung it, in frightening display of malignant hatred to the opposite end of the room where it hit the hard, cold wall, scattering its pages like a handful yellow, withered autumn leaves. They did not understand that, to her, they had just destroyed another world, another reality, another universe. Something had snapped. Wave after wave of cold, fierce anger had washed over her. She now gently rubbed her arm, surveying the scratched, bleeding skin and the massive sore bruises, black, aching blots on a smooth sea of brown. She winced at the sharp pain that hit her as she moved her fingers over the wounds. All that would remain would be a line of scars that she could easily explain away. I tripped while I was running and fell on the gravel. Plausible. Her ugly, grey, military style school shirt, with its tight-fitting, long button-up sleeves would also do to hide them, even if the rough, starchy fabric was uncomfortably close-fitting, clinging to her like a stiff, strangling, adhering shell. Her eyes strayed to the empty suitcase, a gaping, open mouth, lying half-open on the floor. She still hadn't packed, even though she knew that there was only a short while before she would leave to her new school. Boarding school. A place where she would be away from her home, her family, her friends for the first time. Maybe that was a good thing. She aimlessly sifted through the untidy mountain of clothes that cluttered the bed and her fingers, blindly feeling through the coarse, rigid fabric suddenly encountered a cool, strangely smooth surface. The photograph was perfect. She could clearly see the young girl, hardly eight years old, who stared back out at her. Her hair was short, trimmed and neatly brushed, and her smooth, unblemished skin seemed to shine. Her large, brown eyes sparkled with confidence and, as all her family clustered around her, you could almost see her basking in their warm affection, her tiny lips curled into a smug smile. There was now something subtly wrong with the young pre-teen's face; an uncharacteristically contorted look of angerS or sorrow? The thin, chapped lip quivered.. Just a small movement, less obvious than the faint rustle of a dead, yellowed leaf as it gently snaps from its stem and drifts to the ground. When she looked up again, there a cold, hard glitter in her eye, and her face had again regained her abnormal, mask-like composure. She forced herself to laugh, noticing for the first time how unnaturally strained her voice seemed. Then she crumpled the photo and lobbed it in the bin, where it landed with a faint metallic clang that seemed to reverberate again and againS She waited until the last echoes had finally died away before she finally gave in to emotion and threw herself down on the bed and cried. - Reshmina William - Student, American British Academy - Muscat, Oman The Senior Writer's Winner: Second Chance Senior Writers' Winner for 2006 When is going too far too far gone, That I can't back track to right my wrongs, Only hoping in the end to have her in my life again, See.... I never should have let her go cause all that mattered, Was balanced evenly over her morning smile, When reality reflected her leaving, It came tumbling down in my mind feeling like empty despair weighted on my once strong shoulders, The burden too much for my now lonely heart to carry, Forcing it to shatter into many hurt pieces, Pride falsely tried to keep me together, While my ego attempted to hold it all in check, True Love is an emotion if you ever felt once for only a brief second, That the moment it was gone it's a void that takes time maybe never to be filled, So if it's possible, I wish for a Second Chance at something I never was worth the first chance to get, Realizing now Pride & Ego are my enemy, It's only Honesty from the heart that adds up significantly to count, Could have been more understanding now that I see how cruel life is like without you, Would have listened better not simple just heard you, Intent on showing growth with the thoughts you communicated, Should have fought harder to keep you, To sustain US, To let you know rather than guess what you meant to me, I wish we had spent more time building, Rather than me dwelling on the differences that existed between us, If I had it to do all over again, We would converse less, Communicate more, Dedicate moments in Love to making Love while sharing Love, Expressions to one another of our Sincere Intimate Love, Leaving it to those outside us to try to decipher and define our Love, Cause thru Hindsight's Explanation having a Truthful Passion for your Righteous Love is all that in the end matters, And now that it's over with you no longer here in my world, I wish.... I dream.... I want you back more than ever believing in this, A Second Chance. - André Shuford - Philadelphia, PA |
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