Youth Poet Award Finalist: “untitled” by Elizabeth Shvarts
A performance artist, entrepreneur, and writer hailing from Staten Island, NY, Elizabeth is the 2022 NYC Youth Poet Laureate and the 2022 YPL Northeast Regional Ambassador/National Youth Poet Laureate Finalist. A fierce advocate for educational equity, she is a Daily Point of Light Award-nominated, co-founder/co-director of Bridge to Literacy, a global, UNESCO-recognized U.S Department of State-funded nonprofit that fosters a love of language through literacy-based mentorship in 150+ youth across 6 continents.
untitled
in this one the garden never
becomes bouquet
in other words: leave the blossom
tree alone
there are enough carnations
meaning
cellophane corpses when was the
last time
you two had a conversation I’m tired
of playing telephone
instead I circle the cul-de sac
scuffing asphalt
like brush stroke like some days
I want to cut the song at breath
I shirk the shearing someone else
can
scrub half- heartedly sink to your
knees
don’t scrape the marble god knows
what you didfor pharmacy receipts for marriage
certificate
meaning pomegranate seeds by the
spoonful
not to be sold meaning abundance
is our birthright
meaning our limbs aren't kindling
who told you sunbeams burn
outside the binary
what is a body but a future in motion
gamble on the promise that
constellations guide us
home towards an existence that
lends itself to thriving
too bird bone to fossilize
too beating heart to eulogize my
body our body
a temple and in spite i am soft
strong
i am still i am here
we are here
when did you trade playdoh for
Lego blocks
do you wince when we trade
eulogies for playground songs
YOUTH POET AWARD FINALIST “untitled”
A performance artist, entrepreneur, and writer hailing from Staten Island, NY, Elizabeth is the 2022 NYC Youth Poet Laureate and the 2022 YPL Northeast Regional Ambassador/National Youth Poet Laureate Finalist. A fierce advocate for educational equity, she is a Daily Point of Light Award-nominated, co-founder/co-director of Bridge to Literacy, a global, UNESCO-recognized U.S Department of State-funded nonprofit that fosters a love of language through literacy-based mentorship in 150+ youth across 6 continents. A 2021 National YoungArts Finalist in Play/Script and Scholastic Art &, Elizabeth is an avid writer with work recognized by or featured at The New Yorker, PBS, the United Nations, the Apollo, Lincoln Center, NY1, Grist Magazine, the MacDowell Foundation, The Earth Institute at Columbia University, Alliance for Climate Education, and more.