Two NDA Students Selected As Toledo Museum of Art’s Poetry Contest Winners

Published: May 10, 2024

In February, we shared that Mrs. Gallaher’s sophomore Honors English class visited The Toledo Museum of Art for a workshop of Ekphrastic writing and that students would be submitting ekphrastic poems for the museum’s ekphrastic writing contests. We are proud to share that two of our NDA students were finalists in the youth category!

Faith by Elise Busse '24

the night is dark and darker still
ravenous black swallows the indigo swell of the waves
their frenetic lines traced with fleeting glints of gold
a halo of warmth against
my salt-stained skin,
never enough to soothe the cold nameless grief
I carry like a grave inside my ribs.

the sea is larger than anything I’ve pretended to believe
the trembling hands of the waves beneath me the surest hold I’ve ever felt
I look into the fractured glass and the only face that stares back is
my own.

Mother’s Hands by Emma Fister '25

My hands clap from beyond the grave;
     can you hear them? I’m waiting
for you to hear them, for you to hear me,
     to come and meet me in the land
without night or day, or stars or sky.

My hands are broken and chipped,
     wood that has lived beyond life
to arrive here: cracked but clapping.
     Can you hear the clapping
Can you hear my summon, far from you?

The day you were born, I clapped,
     and my hands thunder from the grave.
The day you will die, I will rattle my coffin
     until the earth churns up around me
and I am free. Free to walk on cat’s feet

all the way to your funeral. I will arrive
     with my arms held in my hands:
clapping, clapping, clapping. I will start
     the lighting from your grave;
I will spark death with the flint of my fingers.

You cannot stop the storms that I begin,
     you can only come back to me.
You will join me, here, where hands clap
     into silence, where flint strikes sparks,
where my clapping hands summon godly fires.