In celebration of National Poetry Month, Columbia University Press is pleased to announce the winner of the ninth annual Columbia Granger's World of Poetry® Student Poetry Contest.


by Juliana Pan of Issaquah High School, Issaquah, Washington
      inspired by "Jigsaw" by Melissa Stein


To forget history is an act of betrayal.

He feeds her hawthorn sweets. Covers his daughter's eyes.
Beneath the table, they fold themselves into the street's
reddened screams, enclosed in paper-thin walls.

Citizens pile at the lip of the river, no more
than bodies stilled, gunfire blurring their faces
into artifact before the water could hide them.

Two soldiers laugh their bikes down the street, trade
swigs of sake to drown their guilt, the pity
they didn't take on the mothers.

The makeshift suitcases they carried
between them, surviving children held by the hand.
Beneath the table, he chops off her hair.

Don't worry. They won't recognize you.

In class, we spend longer reciting the names
of dust-bitten treaties than the children
left to bleed their names into the river.

In class, we memorize each date, sanitized
of the blood water, in preparation
for the multiple choice on our next test.

History is a flashlight our teachers pass out.
We aim the beams forward, moons spilling
across small patches of the world at a time.

We never see mothers through the pictures
of the memorial's stone on Google. We never watch
the white-haired bury the black-haired.

White chrysanthemums spill from their mouths.
Candy wrappers crinkle in her pocket. Bába, why
is this happening to us? Bába uncovers my eyes.


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