Third Place – 2025 Beverly Hopkins Contest for High School Students

“I love the Abecedarian form and this poet does a good job of presenting the form in a new way and making the poem itself relevant to our current moment.”

Niki Herd, 2025 Hopkins Contest Judge

Alphabet Homily

by LUCY DIVIS
Metro Academic and Classical High School

A
Besotted
Choir, made to serve.
Distorted by the church.
Every patron is
Faithless. They do not know their faceless father, their
God is
         Helpless. Has yet to help us.
         In a system of
         Justice, they would sooner corrupt it: turn to be a
         Kakistocracy. Sooner kill a mockingbird than it will
         Let a
         Man walk free. A people who are supposed to be
         Nailed to a cross; not because
         Of aggression or retaliation, but instead a crime of
         Pigmented skin. The pig men still live, not repented, in sin.
                  Question: will they ever be unrestrained?
                  Relocated beyond this pain?
                  Standing               
                           Tall
                           United, we think. But di-
                           Vided, we fall, victim to the 'individual'.
                                    Without a prayer, but raised as the son of our
                                    Xerxes.
                                             Yet here, we are still. Here, we are at our throne's
                                                      Zenith.