This spring, UCSB’s Division of Humanities and Fine Arts hosted a contest to highlight creative student voices across the UCSB campus. The following are the winning submissions in the Poetry category.

1ST PLACE WINNER

Saved by Sunday

By Kiana Perez Granados

I consume, like a suffering blob I inhale my

surroundings and I sleep with debris in my

stomach,

Three cups of coffee and clones of box meals

that trigger typhoons, so I run it off on a

Sunday,

clouds hover like impending forces of doom

but the laundry is in the washing machine

and I have fifty two minutes

to heal my wounds, to let the rain lick me

so that I am dressed in mid-morning dew,

and music knocks on my soul

gently, politely, hurriedly

professing a melancholic love

and this is the first time

I feel my solid body melt;

The iron woman

can feel, again,

And by minute fifty three

I am glad to be alive,

to spend the dollar seventy five

on a drying cycle,

another hour to kill

with coffee on the couch,

mindless but cautious

of the precious cargo

that is a fragile sense of self,

false security stumbles

“I feel my solid body melt;
The Iron woman
can feel, again”

— Kiana Perez Granados

not far behind,

I hear it slip

on the train of my robe

can I continue on

like this, in bliss

on a Sunday

and suddenly

I am in a car

in the presence of

Earth’s angels, sensational

and divine with real voices

Kiana Perez-Granados, right, is a third-year UCSB student majoring in both English and Black Studies, with the intention of specializing in Creative Writing. After graduating, Perez-Granados would like to attend New York University to pursue an MFA in creative writing, while continuing to write poetry.

not the phantoms I am used to

it is magic and natural

like I could be good at it,

the unspeakable

day of rest,

like I have done it before,

like it waits patiently

six unbearable days

each week for eternity,

a day God sets aside for me,

marked in orange on his calendar

for the flame in my room;

my final ritual,

a dancing wisp of light

to guide such days,

as I sleep,

back to Heaven.

2ND PLACE WINNER

Sharp Things

By sofia mosqueda

How long until the edge of a blade is softened? I wonder.

How long until I can relinquish your heartbeat from my breath? You live in my shadow as I walk, and when I look over my shoulder, I see your face on another man: a reminder

of how much I hate the taste of war.

Metal between my teeth, tearing blood and bone—

my body mapped with red and raw and ruin.

Your violence was always disguised as tenderness.

I imagine myself as a knife sharp enough to cut through memories,

but I am a curtain of snow seeping into the cracks veining the Earth,

disappearing as I lose myself to water.

I feel a rumble in my chest when I think of you;

thunder crying in my tarred skies,

the resonance immortalized in my ribcage.

They ask, how often does lightning strike the same place twice?

I think the second time you touched me, I obliterated.

I want to be as loud as the bombs hurled from your lips—

“I feel a rumble in my chest when I think of you;
thunder crying in my tarred skies”

— Sofia Mosqueda

my words sending vibrations through every particle,

every nerve—

but I will always be the empty, shaken silence of what comes after.

With each exhale, I hoped you’d disappear—

Sofia Mosqueda, right, is a second-year UCSB student majoring in Writing and Literature. She plans pursue the Professional Writing Minor in its Editing track. Mosqueda would like to pursue a career in magazine writing.

your face evaporating in the fog of my breath,

dispersing in the atmosphere until you are no one, nobody, nothing—

but severance is an art form not even I can master.

I was cut from my mother, but I am a vessel of her agony,

and when she looks at me I am a mirror of all the sharp things she could not soften

and when I look at you, I see a man in his truest form and I want to scream get away get away get away from me

but I am a blood-soaked field and you are war.

THIRD PLACE

Our Cataclysm

by isabella ponce

Like deep sighs

that breathe into the air between us,

you and I,

together we weep in blood-studded tears,

for though they are weightless, skimming

the cheeks that cradle them, caress them,

they weigh us down, the earth grasping

at our feet. Hold the other,

hold each other,

feel the wisps of sorrow

that emit from our bones —

hollow,

empty. Silent

from loss, from pain, from hiccups,

airy pockets that fill our lungs.

Inhale.

Let those deep sighs and

blood-studded tears happen;

let our arms wrap around our intertwined

bodies

so that we are not alone;

let the bones ache and the stars shine, two

stark winks of white

against an oxblood sky. There is

a storm

that unravels the threads

that are our life’s tapestries,

heavy fabrics of cobalt, ochre, and rust.

“There is a storm that unravels the threads that are our life’s tapestries, heavy fabrics of cobalt, ochre, and rust”

— Isabella Ponce

The winds tear at the seams

and rain washes away the stitches.

Exhale.

Loss runs deep between us,

carving canyons in its midst,

filling up the chasms

with our cries. Blazing

blue light strains to break free

Isabella Ponce is a second-year UCSB student majoring in English and is obtaining a double minor in the History of Art Architecture and Educational Studies. After graduation, she hopes to get her teaching credentials and pursue a career in educational.

from behind our sodden eyelids; we are

made of what we have consumed,

what we have ripped apart

and shattered. Fragile

slivers of glass prick at our irises

and together they weep drops of a

sunset sea.

Like deep sighs

that breathe into the air between us —

creating a feat of nature —