Winter Competition Poetry Winner: “blizzard” by Jennifer Choi

a flock of bald eagles descends,
          swooping down from the northern sky,
                              crashing onto asphalt roads, refracting streetlight beams.
          with sharp talons, they tear roofs apart,
                              pecking relentlessly at pillars with their beaks.

a house, stripped of its skin,
vomits out the foreign objects inside it,
its bare white bones exposed for all to see.
                      the ㄹ consonant from the “일등 supermarket” sign
                      tumbles in the snow,
                      & every tree bends its knees,
                      draped in coarse hemp robes.

on the frozen river, minnows lie still,
hearts stopped,
mouths agape beneath the ice,
as if corpses left in suspended animation.

                                             the bald eagles batter styrofoam walls,
                                            sending bits of foam swirling like snowflakes.
                                            they circle the scene,
                                            leaving cryptic white symbols
                                            etched into the distant rice field that no one can decipher.

pinecones sink into the snow,
while icicles, like eagle talons,
hang frozen from the roof of a collapsed prefab building.
          only claw marks & pecking scars remain in the sky
          above the ravaged village,
          where the bald eagle flock soars leisurely. it’s the first blizzard in ten years.

Jennifer Choi is a passionate high school student. Her work has previously been published or is forthcoming in Altered Reality Magazine, Academy of Heart and Mind, and Culterate Magazine among others.