On Jan. 20, three winners were chosen in the Office of Multicultural Student Life’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Poetry Competition, with the theme this year being “A tough mind and a tender heart.”
Insomnia
By Julia Snyder
First Place
I read
in the wee hours of the night
the pages seep into my brain
and I think of nothing but narrative
not war not death not terror
only narrative
insulating my mind from my thoughts
and real life carries on through the fog
in the morning.
The Woman and the Man
By Samantha Hilyer
Second Place
Compassion and steel
Trials
Of balance is her reality now
She is a warrior
Delicate but unbreakable
She will not stop
Just because
They said it was impossible
Glacial and sensitive
Tears
A sign of weakness his father said
He is a warrior
Trying to keep warm
His dripping trails of empathy
A silent
Resistance
Prisoner of Flesh and Mind
By Nicole Fratrich
3rd Place
Prisoner of flesh,
Prisoner of mind,
Men mutilate what their eyes cannot comprehend.
I, too, betray myself and
Surrender my roots to distant memory.
But tenacity is almost tangible—
The construction of
An iron gate that finally separates
Fact from fiction in the mind.
The ignorant and ruthless man
May try to strip me of my dignity.
He may shatter bone
As the harshest obscenities roll off his tongue…
But I am the voice of my people.
I am the steadfast guard of my thoughts.
When the wave of attackers draws near
To penetrating my defenses,
I will not relent; my mind is my most reliable weapon
Against the cruelest heart.
Myself, I remain.
True to my integrity, I press on.
And when the war concludes,
I will bestow upon my foes
The kindness they barely seem to deserve.
I will wipe clean their trespasses against me,
Much as a servant rubs a blotch out of a window pane.
Prisoner of flesh,
Prisoner of mind,
Men mutilate what their eyes cannot comprehend,
Until they too experience the battle for acceptance.
