Richmond Art and Writing Region of the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards Gold Key Recipients in Writing Isabel Li, Maladaptive Daydream, Maggie L Walker Governor’s School, Gold Key Recipient, Educator: Ed Coleman 2021 ADEYOLA, AMINA Amina Adeyola Age: 16, Grade: 11 School Name: Appomattox Regional Governor’s School, Chesterfield, VA Educator: Cindy Cunningham Category: Poetry In Moonlight, Black Boys Look Blue See how they dance, full and wild. Melody beneath bare chests. Here, boys still hold tight to skin, but no one here to steal it. No disappearing boys. Little hands wrapped in black sky, reaching for stars stamped with only their name. Light melts between fingers, rains onto eyelids. These boys Know nothing of paradigms, only each other. Utopias found between their veins. Gold chains hang from chapped lips as if their own emir boys— They spin, moonlight resting on callow shoulders, their steps soft against concrete. illuminated feet follow summer wind. Wrapping arms around, leaning near boys. When laughter is buried behind the night sky, I tell myself, dear, the moon has left you a long time ago. But here they are holding it in their skin. Indigo-breathing boys. ADE YOLA, AMINA Amina Adeyola Age: 16, Grade: 11 School Name: Appomattox Regional Governor’s School, Chesterfield, VA Educator: Cindy Cunningham Category: Poetry The Mansion for Two she scrubs her concrete counters with citrus. staticky heartbreak sings in a language not hers. the house with empty chairs neatly tucked under a kitchen table. a bowl of dates ready to be toyed between teeth. she waits for clicking on the marble. fingers pruned and cut with fruit. her hands, the ones that refit a ceiling fan where a chandelier once stood, now rest on a granddaughter's cheek. lemons boil on a gas stove. she says into the air, “water can only do so much for a scent that was birthed from the soil. remember, bathe in that stubbornness.” AMARAM, ADACHI Adachi Amaram Age: 17, Grade: 12 School Name: Appomattox Regional Governor’s School, Chesterfield, VA Educator: Gail Giewont Category: Poetry To the Scalpel To The Scalpel Has anyone compared you to Moses before? Parting seas of red. Well, in your case you split black— and red gushed from a three-year-old’s chest. But you know— same thing, right? Is red your favorite color by the way? I just wanna know what color dress to put her in. Can’t do black. She said a princess never wears black. What type of music should be played? Classical is too boring, pop seems weird and I heard enough gospel at the wake. I want something that really connects the two of you— I was thinking I’d just play her flatlining————————— on a loop. Until it captures the cold that crept into that sterile room. The way her air-deprived lungs crumpled when they gave up and collapsed. The grey that frosted over her brown skin, as her ghost drifted from her body between parted blue lips. I will loop it until it captures the last wheeze that danced out of her constricted trachea The last jerk and sigh of her exhausted heart. Until people stop with the I’m sorries. Until Walmart refuses to sell my mother tissues. Until my dad stops taking a shot of Hennessy for every slice | you put in her. Until maggots feast on her pretty pink nails and use her mouth as a disco hall. I will play it until I rip you from her obituary and bury you inside my wrists so I can lie beside my little sister dressed in your favorite color because princesses never wear black. AMARAM, ADACHI Adachi Amaram Age: 17, Grade: 12 School Name: Appomattox Regional Governor’s School, Chesterfield, VA Educator: Gail Giewont Category: Writing Portfolio Brutus is to Caesar As Bleach is to Black Brutus Is to Caesar as Bleach Is to Black Stark fluorescent lights illuminate plaster tiles gradually dotted with red a white sink blemished with a bloom of crimson Bright bulbs reveal a face besmirched with unwashable Black She gazes at fragmented pieces the cracked mirror reflects the crack of the whip on a Black Toby’s back or was it Kunta Kinte Her countenance whispers identity crisis through glass implanted in her sliced hand like the limp one that held Skittles and iced tea betraying fingers tremble at screenshots of web searches key terms: antonyms of Black Black that bleeds births and blesses Black that bleach can’t wash away Black she contorts and rebukes Black the masses want to hot comb straight She wants the same She breathes Et, tu Brute. BERSELLI, CAROLINE Caroline Berselli Age: 13, Grade: 8 School Name: Short Pump Middle School, Glen Allen, VA Educator: Caroline Velazquez Category: Poetry The Girl I Grew Up With The Girl I Grew Up With Sometimes in the dead of night I still feel like I can hear her laugh I still feel like I can talk to her till my lungs run out of air Sometimes in the dead of night, I still feel like she’s here Sometimes when I sleepover at a friends I still feel like I can turn to her and ask her, Truth or Dare? I still feel like I can do her makeup and hair Sometimes when I sleepover with friends, I feel like if I turn on my side My eyes would meet with her restless ones and we’d talk till dawn Sometimes when I walk past her lifeless house I find my feet in the crabgrass, ready to ring the door And then I remember that she wouldn’t answer Sometimes I think about the girl I grew up with And wish she could be here BESSENGER-VOSE, JULIAN Julian Bessenger-Vose Age: 13, Grade: 8 School Name: Sabot at Stony Point, Richmond, VA Educator: Sarah Lile Category: Humor The Cockroach of House 13 The cockroach scuttled to the far side of the fruit, making sure not to make eye contact with his fellow insects. He carefully nibbled at the edge of the apple, keeping a wary eye out for any approaching humans. He didn’t want to get crushed by what his kind calls a “clickety-clack-clack” (shoe) this early in his life. The cockroach, unlike his friends, is very careful not to eat any more than he needs: better to live another day than to eat all you can, as his uncle Roachatoli always said. Too bad he got caught by the house cat, Arlo reflected as he scuttled away through an opening in the wall. Arlo was a very odd cockroach. His name was odd. His eating and sleeping habits were odd. But the most peculiar thing about him was that he had katsaridaphobia: the fear of cockroaches. Most unfortunate, being the very thing you’re frightened of. He was always careful not to look into a mirror or any of his fellow roaches, lest he be struck by the chills and an odd sensation to attempt to crush himself or another roach, depending on what he saw. One time, when he was very little, he made the mistake at looking at his reflection in a spoon. When he saw his hideous body, the way his head fused seamlessly into his body, he promptly attempted to pull the spoon down onto himself. After trying and failing to commit suicide, he fainted, either from exhaustion or fear. In addition to this, he had another rather unfortunate flaw: he loved humans. He always wished to be in their company, and he tried for several months to actually get onto a human, taking numerous courses of action, that included, but was not limited to, Jumping from the stairs onto a human, using a strand of web he got from a spider to use as a rope to swing onto the mother, and, as a last resort, hitching a ride on the back of a cicada to drop onto one of the children that lived in the house he occupied (this failed, owing to a bad crosswind, a poorly timed jump, and the simple fact that humans find cicadas just as frightening as cockroaches, and far easier to spot at a distance). Nowadays he contents himself to hiding under furniture, looking out at the humans when they weren’t looking his way. As he scuttled further into the tunnel, he came to an opening, where numerous shops were stacked precariously on top of one another to the ceiling of the cavern, from which hung glow worms that one of the ant colonies purchased from an adventurous Monarch butterfly known simply as Joe the Monarch. Arlo liked the Grotto, for that was the market’s name, because it was the one place he could spend time with creatures that weren’t roaches without the danger of getting stepped on. As he went through the Grotto, he spied many familiar faces: Antony, the owner of a moving company; a termite everyone called the Terminator, whose profession was carpentry, Spindra, the owner of a rug factory, and the nameless leader of the Black Ghost gang, the one group keeping the Red Ant army from invading, along with a posse of ants. He turned off into an alley by the grocery store, and walked for an hour or so, finally coming upon an opening in what he figured was the attic. He approached the cicada there, who on seeing him, turned a dark shade of green. “What’re you doing here?” He asked Arlo. “If you want me to take you on another suicide run to get onto a human, I’m not-” “No, it’s nothing like that.