Excerpts from Stuyvesant’s 2020 Scholastic Writing Award-Winning Pieces

With fierce competition between 320,000 submissions of original works, students across America compete to gain recognition from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Among the winners of the Gold Keys, Silver Keys, and Honorable Mentions stand many of our own Stuyvesant writers. Featured are excerpts from some of their winning pieces.

Excerpt from “Uncle Sam’s Alphabet Soup” by Meera Dasgupta, junior

Poetry, Gold Key

“Z” for zeal

Something progressive in a world where we are

alphabetized.

Categorized.

Where small children know how to spell

“G U N” over “L O V E”

because every lock-down could be a death sentence.

America has become a soup that we simply have to shove down our

throats and swallow.

Well,

not unless we push away the bowl and write our own damn recipes.

Let these words be an omen.

Excerpt from “Where I’m From” by Clara Yuste-Golob, junior

Poetry, Gold Key

I am from dreams and songs, the ones I carry

through the day like lucky charms.

The Cape Cod dream and the Indigo Girls’

whole discography are the lucky pennies

lining my pockets—you could shake me out

and I’d jingle with guitars and ocean spray.

I am from the way I can never write about a place

or a home until I’ve left it, my memories like windchimes

forming stanzas from gentle collisions.

According to my poetry, the present is a myth.

I am from never being where I want to be—

insomnia following me into the morning.

I am from too many words to pin down and collect,

I am from innumerable names and those unnamable.

I am from the light of the Big Dipper sneaking in

through a door left ajar.