In the most competitive year in the contest's history, the English department received over 40 submissions for Newton Country Day's 2024 Poetry Contest. This year's topic was "Doors, Locks, and Keys." When the judges convened, each judge had a completely different top 3. But they looked deeper and, after hours of consideration, came to a decision. Students' submissions varied widely in style and content, but each poem illuminated an important aspect of our shared human existence. The following students were recognized:
- First Place: “The Quiet Burrows in My House” by M. Crowley '25
- Second Place: “The Door on Marlborough Street” by G. Goodman '27
- Third Place: “I hope there comes a day when you will let me go” by E. Cressotti '25
- Honorable Mentions (in no particular order):
- “Where do the Words Go?” by N. Donovan '24
- “Knocking” by A. Goodman '25
- “My Bedroom Door” by M. Huber '25
- “The Keyless Door” by J. Hirsch '25
- “The Weathered Leather Door” by M. Brogen '24
Congratulations to all!
First Place
“The Quiet Burrows in My House” by M. Crowley '25
It's quiet again
I used to say I dreamt of
Being sealed inside a locked glass window
Old sick smell
Wet crunchy dead sticks shoved between my red toes
Walking to chorus in February
Wind right through me
Worn linoleum and acid crackling baseboards
In my new gumwood house
Waking up in my stomach
Windows like tumors
Like burnt hair and mismatched teeth
From waking up
A mouth wrapped in rice paper
Feverish stories disassembled in the fire
An F# chord on my tongue
Your palms on the cheap countertop
Maybe, tonight,
I'll dream of fingerprints and eddies of seagrass
Of curling fossils and English countryside glare
Of hugging redwoods and crumbled abandoned spanish doors
The rose stone hallways I filled with jasmine
I'll leave myself there
Second Place
“The Door on Marlborough Street” by G. Goodman '27
Everything hurting me fades when I
Walk through that door.
Polished wood surrounding clear glass panes,
Entryway from a breathing place into a living one.
It opens with a creak, and someone is there
Emma or Julia or Jen
With a hug and a smile and a radiance that surrounds me
Like a handmade sweater, warm against the spring chill.
I walk up the narrow steps
One flight, two
Past the elevator that has been out of order
Since a time when
people I never got to meet
Walked these stairs.
The fraying carpet gives way to a chevron doormat,
Black on white turned to
Gray on faded gray, dulled by the salt of a Boston winter
And the heavy feet of strangers
Turned to friends.
This door is smaller, wooden, open
As if it has never been closed.
There is no lock here, instead
The footsteps of twenty teenagers
And five adults who never bothered to grow up
Come in, come in.
Some are newcomers, or once-comers,
Unknown by most, and welcomed anyway.
Others have been here a hundred times.
This couch is more theirs than their own couch is,
Resting place for card games and Super Bowls and donut-eating contests.
We talk, we eat
We laugh, we cry
We pray.
I feel I could say anything here,
Draw out my deepest hopes, my fears,
Shred the last scraps of my reputation away,
And still, within this door,
I would be loved
For no other reason
Than the fact that I showed up.
Our conversations settle in my chest like stones,
Filling me, but leaving a void nonetheless.
It seems that here is the only place
Where I can taste
Diluted drops of some eternal truth
A promise, long forgotten,
Of joy, joy, joy.
I walk away,
Down the emerald-coated stairs,
Out again through that smeared glass door,
which locks behind me with an automatic click.
Past the laundromat still alive with glow
Even though it’s almost 9,
Into the car.
We roll away, oblivious to the way
The hundred crashing sounds of a city at night
Are smothered by the windows.
I don’t speak. What is there to say?
I have been healed, just a little bit,
And steeled for yet another week
By the armor of God
In the fellowship of friends.
Third Place
“I hope there comes a day when you will let me go” by E. Cressotti '25
when I’m gone, if i could make just one request
for i feel that you have made me live most of my life at rest.
i'm well aware that you’ve attached yourself to me,
but if you’d allow it, there’s somewhere else i’d like to be.
for when I’m gone, i hope i’m sprinkled in the sand
i hope i’m taken up by desert winds and whisked away to farther lands.
i hope i’m molded into spires and turrets: into something grand,
i hope i’m trekked throughout the city, without a care, without a plan.
and once i’ve seen the world please burn me into glass,
and i will brush the lips of those I couldn’t meet with in the past
and when i’ve quenched their thirst i hope that i am trashed,
my pieces strewn on seashores and collected for a stash.
and if i’m too sharp to keep, please throw me to the sea,
you’ve always known a life afloat was of interest to me.
and though i’ll drift quite far away please don’t you worry,
i trust the clouds to pull me up and drop me where i ought to be.
but i’m now long gone, and yet you’ve kept me locked at home,
it seems you cannot bear to forfeit a single speck of me to roam.
but i beg you, please, to set me free, for whatever i may do,
and regardless of the form i’ll take, i’ll make it back to you.