[Poem text provided below for reference. Accurate text formatting with line breaks and justification displayed in image.]
Charlotte Hughes, Grade 11, Heathwood Hall (Columbia, SC)
Elegy with Deer Teeth
(after Emily Skaja)
After you’re gone I drive so fast I break my speedometer. At a hundred and ten
miles per hour, the corn stalks lining the two-lane road flood into a rural
monstrosity, beak & talon. So I am dumb & forget my fleece-lined jacket &
bring the knit one. Outside the school gates I do not call myself anything and
inside I am Hughes, Charlotte F. I write down my memories and then mince
them like meat. I say there are things I don’t want to remember. Meat lives in
these fields & hunters harvest it. I hear rifle shots between classes & pretend
it’s the sound of textbooks dropping. You don’t need textbooks now & I try to
tell myself later that I’ll find what preachers call peace or at least I won’t want
to drink dead-eye coffee like water or flip off the next UPS man who rings my
doorbell. Other than a cornfield, there is no place a girl can run. The corn cobs
are desiccated & now dead & a crow laughs at me. God, girl. I pick a corncob
off the stalk & bite into dust & I am revolted by the invasion of privacy. But I
ask for heavenly food.