2013 - Carnegie Mellon University

College Prose
First Place: “True Love”
by Laura Stiles.........................................................................................23
Second Place: “White”
by (Paul) Victor Nunez..........................................................................35
Third Place: “American Jeans”
by Connie Chan.....................................................................................39
High School Prose
First Place (tie): “What Will be Done When the Sun Sets Red”
by Kyle Droppa.......................................................................................44
First Place (tie): “My Soul and I”
by Sarah Ryan.........................................................................................49
Second Place: “Living the Dream”
by Elijah Dumaine-Schutz....................................................................51
Third Place: “He Had a Nightmare”
by Nathaniel Brodsky.............................................................................54
Honorable Mentions..............................................................................58
College Poetry, 1st Place
One Shade Too Many
To all the girls who ever judged me
By: Kristen Swanson
Brown, brown, brown,
why are they always trying to pull me
down, down down?
Spanish girls thought because we all had brown
eyes, that we share Latina pride.
My father left when I was almost two.
Maybe he went back to Mexico–
nobody knew. They thought I
was trying to act tough and bold
because I was Mexican like them.
They thought because we all had brown
hair that looked black when the light
hit just right, that the root of our hair
was longer than the square root
of any number created out of thin air.
We were sistas, homies, tighter
than the braids gripping their scalps—
immigrant children, bilingual beauties.
They thought because we all had brown
skin—they said calling it that is almost a sin.
“We aren’t brown, girl—we’re tan”,
we’re the caramel light mocha that melts
in your mouth. The sun-kissed chicas
all the boys dream about. A tan that
never fades—we don’t need the sun
to make our complexion a perfection.
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