The Take Home Trophy Poem by Aria Ligi

Into the night they come,
These purveyors decked in Kevlar, mortar, and silent munitions
They hang their hats on our sadly stooped heads
Smiling inanely, as if expecting the eyes to greet theirs
A conciliatory gesture announcing consent
Yet our gaze conveys nothing

How can we do more than stand
When our limbs are so many distended fragments
The fingers swinging on clear milky hinges
We cannot even signal defiance
Or exclaim a deluge of banalities
No air swells our beings, It has been displaced
We are vacuous, vacant sacks
Hung precariously from rusty blood soaked, iron hooks

No release, nor unabated cries
Our bodies stiff, apoplectic,
The epidermal tissue lays pieced together with children's glue
The fluids have congealed, heavy weighted pylons
No more human
A mass distortion to be displayed in glass cases
And over fireplaces where holiday wreathes are hung
Christmas Carols are sung
And the adoring faces of family smile, carefree and full of love.