Ashley

17

summer's ablaze
and for days
I'm in a daze
burned by sun rays
reading summer cliches
the lazy phase
where cattle graze
and grass decays
under my gaze
my eyes a glaze
in a craze
to pass arounds heys
of our yesterdays

Nailah

17

Avocado Days

Avocado Days revolve around the kitchen table
that stands on three wobbly legs supported by
department store catalogues and envelopes from the IRS

We are comfortably unhappy, swiping laden knives over whole grain bread
I forgo the avocado because when I was little I decided
it’d be the only green thing I’d never eat
My bread is heavy with strawberry slices and honey, lips
thick with sweetness

We three and our voices rise and fall and rise
like the belly of the cat sleeping beneath the table
who swipes a sandpaper tongue against my ankle and lays in wait for scraps

(Aggressively vegan friends are fun to live with
until they hate on you for that leather jacket your mom got you when you were fourteen
But your hair has never been smoother, skin never clearer
so you hide the tub of strawberry lemonade froyo in the back of the freezer
and watch them while they make homemade lotion in the kitchen sink)

When we first came here, the spout spat rust and
we played ‘Blackberry, Blackberry’, chased each other’s mouths
shotgunning fruit and smoke and sugar
There was a record player that worked and a radio that worked and a dishwasher that didn’t
We drowned in incense smoke and the smell of sweat, strung up
a curtain of beads because we couldn’t afford to replace the hinges so we just
took down the door

(If you need a smoke, the fire escape takes you straight to the roof
where Ursa Major whispers the yolk of a velvet fruit and a pebblestone girl
and we watch the great page turn)

Jenny, I think we’re all happier as hippies.

Somehow here I’ve become something I’m not when I’m at home
Here I am a boy called Noah and my name doesn’t mean the same thing anymore
and writing is always a prelude to aching wrists and not frustration
Here falling asleep means a patch of sunlight and a pair of eyes between brown and green, pulse hammering behind your ear, and wondering if this is really what you want

I don’t know that I know what I want
or that I could totally pull a Genesis and send a great deluge through the valleys of my life and start all over again with a couple of cool kids in a new place that’s green
I don’t know that I know I have the universe in my hands or maybe I’m afraid to say it out loud

Maybe I’m afraid those eyes and that patch of sunlight aren’t willing to be my friends until October comes and I find the guts to say anything

But there is a girl here who scribbles on my skin, cups my cheeks in her alabaster hands, and sighs spring into my balmy winters until eventually I am the summer night she knows – I want to thank her for not letting me forget

And here I can kiss Kafka on the cheek and forage for Stanislavski’s fingernails between the fine China
sing Assata Shakur and Huey P. Newton to sleep and throw glitter in the dryer just to see how the clothes come out
or eat sliced pears with the cat that sleeps underneath the table
figure out that nothing really needs figuring out
and become best friends with Not Knowing
tuck myself into bed at night and love the way I kiss my own cheek before I go to sleep

Jenny, I think I might’ve grown up
and I think you oughta come over sometime
maybe on an Avocado Day
I’ll walk you down to the market with our arms laced together
you in your dresses and me in my dark skin

A street vendor sells avocadoes for three cents a pop
and boxes of strawberries ten cents each.

Nanako

14

Starry Sky

I think
About who I want to be
I realize
Who I want to be
I can be
Who I want to be

It's only for a short while
But I want to spend it with you
Before reality pulls me back
Before this magic disappears

Why are you so far out of reach?

I need to spend
My Summer
With You

Meghana

16

Visions on the Playgrounds of Summer

Tired popsicle heads bounce back and forth between the worlds of grass and perspiring skin
Little feet dance, unhinged, on the slate of cement dreams. They follow the pulse of some unknown melody, familiar only to the naïve of heart. They are free, like the swings which carry their bodies.
They don’t know of the chains which
fetter them and they don’t have to.
To them, growing up is a fable.

Not far from here lies the playground of
the parents, lacking the swingsets and
slides yet bursting with adventure nonetheless.
Their play is work; their work is watching the children play.
They feel the sun beating down
on their lukewarm chests.
They wonder how the time passed by.

Soon the children will feel cold. Cold despite the suffocating heat, cold although the yellow circle in the sky burns. They will lie on the grass,
the very grass which held the bodies of the melting popsicles years ago, hungering for something more sustaining than food. They will want to understand the unknowable arches of the moon, though it evades them, refusing to reveal its truths. They will want to write poems in the dark of the night, to escape from the phony light
of the burning sun. They will know the word "phony," holding Salinger’s "Catcher" close to their chests like a bible and they will wonder when, or if, in this life
they’ll be able to catch someone, when in this life
they will be able to catch themselves, save
themselves from falling.
They are teenagers.

Soon the parents’ skin will turn crinkly and old as if it’s forever being bathed under water.
Baptize, baptize, baptize.
This water is fluid memory, full of reminisces of moments past.
"Johnny," she calls to her grandson on the swingset, but she doesn’t know if it’s his name.
This is old age.

Nailah

17

Athena in Death

i. There is a sculpture.

ii. I am more awake than I am alive.

iii. I have only ever met one woman with grey eyes.

iv. The days are muggy and soft. Stepping outside is like being thrown under a blanket, freshly stifled with warm breath. Breezes are blessed. The sun does not bake as much as it warms us – slowly so very slowly. Everything is in transit.

v. Athena in Death is captivating. She rises on the knee left unweakened, alabaster fingers still clutching her spear. Arrowheads plucked from her breast beg for forgiveness at her sandaled feet. There they pay their penance.

vi. I have been left alone.

vii. The wary morning slips off her robe and now wears a blistering day. I run into the coppering afternoon. Launch myself into the red brick street. I am as awake as I am alive.

viii. She does not ask for an apology nor is she apologetic. She is wise. This death will not last.

ix. Her owl looks on from its perch on her discarded shield.

x. She has taken a different form.

xi. So will I.

xii. So will you.

xiii. Sweat forms in pearls on my back – we breathe from the deepest parts of our lungs. I am unafraid in the day.

xiv. She is with me.

xv. Athena was a man with a woman’s shape. But when Paris loved not her beauty but Aphrodite’s, she was fabulous in her rage. Can men not be vain? Can women not be ferocious?

Icarus in Love

xvi. You lay in wait for an exquisite pain.

xvii. We wear our hearts in our eyelashes tilt our heads back slide open our jaws and devour the light or do we drown in it.

xviii. Icarus in street clothes sits alone his face decorated with burn scars hidden in his hoodie. He stares at the sun on a parking garage rooftop and weeps for he will never come so close again. Yet still he stares.

xix. You have no waxpaper wings.

xx. The clouds shift change direction, and there, a dusky yellow hipbone. A morning blue breast. The copper brick church strains to touch her again.

xxi. My body is no wonderland. The heat sloughs off my skin – I bleed light and truth and cranberry juice My veins pump flames do not touch me in love or in fear – you will be burned.

xxii. His father does not know how to bring him home.

xxiii. Icarus in Love is a man begging to be blind but his lover would sooner spit in his eyes than take them away.

xxiv. Art imitates life imitating art imitating life. And we are not alive.

xxv. She wraps herself in a shimmering black veil. My hands are flecked with stars of powdered sugar. Your mouth still tastes like rum.

xxvi. I am not the sun.

Shriya

14

the roaring sea
it splashes against the shore
over and over again

i close my eyes and sigh
as a gust of wind blows past me
whispering in my ear, humming softly

the cool breeze
it runs its fingers through my hair
cradling me in its arms

the vast sky
dabs of pink, shades of red
wisps of violet, traces of blue

the sun dips below the horizon
colors splash the sky
the ether’s oeuvre

the shoreline
embellished with grains of sand
kissed by billows of the sea

the crystal clear water
pure, majestic, sublime
glistening in the dying light

i sink into the soft sand
and hug my knees
i lean over and glimpse at the water

the reflection
that trembling lip
those hopeful eyes

the image melts
i see my summer
i see the past

_ice cream dripping
_swimming with the fish
_dancing with the sea

_my sister splashing me
_my brother racing me
_my cousin daring me

_our laughter
_my delighted, little heart
_those carefree days...

memories
those wonderful moments
that hurt so bad

reminiscences flood my mind
i am neck deep in recollections
drowning, flailing my arms...

the pearly tear
streaming down my face
plopping into the sea

we both cry, the water and i
the salt stings our faces
it burns our eyes

but it feels good to weep
to let out all that sadness
hidden deep within the walls of our hearts

brushing my hand against my damp cheek
i force myself to rise
and drag myself out of the cool water

my heart rips into two pieces
as i turn to depart
as i leave my summer behind

i glance over my shoulder right before i go
i raise my arm and move it to and fro
"i will miss you" i whisper softly

the sea waves back to me
ripples of love touch my heart
i caress the sand as i walk away

even as i shed tears,
i can’t help but smile
i wink as it blows a kiss to me

one last goodbye

Chloe

15

intervals

summer flits and flies
like butterflies
and dances too fast to count-
summer
is something in the wind,
a wisp of sunshine
and freedom
that lingers in the autumn air
but we are talking about summer
so
summer has no beginning nor an end,
no middle, either;
summer simply is-
enjoy while the season lasts
for summer is all too fleeting...

Katie

16

SWEET TIME

Toes touch water,
Tentative first step morphing
Into flying leap.

Under the water, we are weightless
At limbo between sky and water,
Immersed in blue.

Time, the gentle ebb of the waves
Twists around us,
Making weeks seem like hours,
This day, eternity.

Slap of feet on burning cement,
Sticky popsicle juice mingling
With chlorinated water.

Time, sweet time
Slipping through our fingers, like the water,
Elusive as the shadows we chased in the sun--
But the memories clung,
Sticking like the popsicle residue
That defined those summer days.

Chloe

15

Residence

The resident cardinal is outside
again
Red feathers flying
in the shape of wings
Black eyes and beak-rim-
Cutouts against blood-
Dried, perhaps?
It is the dead of summer
Now
Blood drips down again;
Melted by the heat of summer.
The resident cardinal is outside
again
Melting down.
Flies fester in the feathers.

Anna

15

velvet

the sea was far,at the other
sparkle of the planets
it was because of a brutal hierarchy hidden
beneath the world
there where the light shines, long
contrasted with the rude vitality
of a strange country which
existed
for only
waves were grinding forward
they raised deep within
a secret and entrancing world
made more intelligible by shrinking
he didn’t dare say it aloud
he stood there, flying
on the wind like grains of sand
brought back to the heat only by their own
falling inevitability
it was really the sea, his sea, for him
perhaps he had been dreaming of a lot,
of
waves throwing themselves forward
and the sea rumbled ceaselessly,
Then suddenly all was calm
it came when
the sea was low, its mysterious
nostalgia for the days when, with nothing
to hold them back
might reveal its
secrets
but you had to face the horizon and watch
the tall waves and watch the

water, free, unfettered, unrestrained
so much water under siege
beset on all sides by foreign rocks
it leaped from place to place
water, streams cascading between the
dark valleys
a smell unfamiliar
of the mountains, of cities, of girls and
the cries of seagulls
of the wind, and of the
seafloor amid the forests of seaweed
a shining blue, deep, too close, its tall waves
swirling endlessly
flickering across the
sand as hard as asphalt, wet and cold
waves were coming from the open sea, he could
see them raging and
the sun was strong, suspended alone
pools of water sparkled shivered
the flood was silken
sinking came naturally to him
soft as velvet
drowning was too harsh a word
the waves laid tender fingers across his
cheeks, his
lungs, his stomach, his head, and had for
a long time, through the pane of water
whispered
and before him like the side of a mountain
rose the reef to touch
reaching one trembling hand towards shelter
and he could hear the
lovely words over and over The sea
the dream that hasn’t ended yet

Olivia

16

Lofty Goals and Epiphanies

Should I be ready for a new year
in the middle of summer?
A question
I may never remember
Should I hold aloft
the memories of travel?
A thought
I may never realize
Should I try something new
like food and company?
A test
I may never pass
Nary a word passed my lips
before it's censured
Not by my ensemble
but by an idea
that perhaps, I should think
Of what? Of what I forgot
How do you know? How do you not?
Maybe it's gone? Maybe it's caught?
I could run,
not away but forever toward a goal
I could fly,
not in a plane but always toward a wish
I could speak,
not of words simply, but of ideas and exhibits
and drawings and philosophy and of dreams and
of memories of knowledge of interests of
hopes of thoughts of feelings of plans of
opportunities
I sit back
I read my words
I realize I'm sitting down
I think about why I sit hunched over
like a hench
I smile, I giggle my little giggle
What am I thinking about?
About how my brain turns to mush in a few months
and how I should be listening to rain rather than music
planning gatherings rather than group texts
walking in the sun rather than in the dark
I sometimes feel like my quiet days
have my noisiest epiphanies

Anna

15

suspension

if you could pick a day
any day
just one day
Which would you choose?
not today
a nothing day
another summer
when that month
spent in European luxury
seems years away
already
fading fast
when everyone you know is
away
too busy to text
too busy to care
and the threat of
impending academia
looms on the horizon
twenty days
now nineteen
when its too hot to stay inside
and too cold to swim
the cold front
they promised
can’t come soon enough
already
you crave winter
the cold sting of frost
and snow that whispers
as it melts the mascara
so painstakingly applied
and yet you
fight against the image
knowing with it comes
long days spent trudging across campus
nights spent in your dorm room
alone
without food
you’re too tired
to start the trek to the dining hall
wishing this year isn’t the same as last
wishing
with all your heart
for summer to bring
its bittersweet sweaty caress

would you choose today?
a day spent bathing in
nostalgia
suspended in a paradox
would today be
your forever?

Morgan

16

'"The Middle Months"

Light is flashing behind the blinds
and thunder is grumbling in my (empty) stomach.
I've never awakened for a night storm,
only heard the "how did yous"
from those who saw with sanded eyes,

but this time I awoke
(nestled between dreaming and present)
and found you pressed to my drooping side,
breathing, ticking to the rain drops.

It's Monday now (another week has slipped
through our knuckles)
and soon you'll peel yourself from my side
for another day of retired
dreams (everyday nothings)

while I stay here, hunched over and sweated
to these sheets. I'm shriveled again (aren't I?) -

time sands us
as we lay side to side, you (dreamed, drowsy),
me (dreary, diminished),  and in these early hours

I'm selfish: I want more days (a thousand
raindrops in a jar) and younger bones,
bones like fluttering kites-

but I'm wasting mind down, from my ears
to bed-stuck heels.

This middle hour I'm watching lightning strike
scarred shave cuts on your face,
your resting brow,
the stubble of your chin-

you're older now, no more child's glow
to your wrinkled skin,
but you'll wake before sunlight
yolks the sky

and leave me with these thoughts
(thoughts like raisins).

Here I am

wishing for you sadly (silently)
to remember me
..........when I was full, well,
..........to teach me to be a memory again,

but it would take the rest of your days
to weed my dandelion eyes
(wouldn't it?)

Anna

15

ischia

maybe this is one of those
teenage romances
there we fall
deeply
deeply
and are torn apart
cruelly
that’s how reality works

maybe we’re really in love
maybe you’re my one and only
and while the summer heat
washes
in Ischian waves
across this country I call
home
the air conditioning will cool our fevered brows
insanity
is thinking this is real
is thinking this could be real

you’re a figment
a character in a romance novel
badly written, badly drawn
perfect
in every way

and maybe we’re in love
maybe I’m your one and only

if I sleep, will I see you?
if I sleep, will we be together?
tell me
now
the truth
Please
and I’ll sleep
forever
if only for a maybe

Justin

16

The pen scratches its way carefully across the page in precise marks, writing a picture of illustrious beauty in sharp grays and whites. And a host of greens and earthy browns climb from the graphite marks, and grow, like the intertwining grove of a child-like romantic. The buds blossom in flashes of color. Emerald greens, ruby reds, and a myriad of minerals color a landscape as precious as a diamond.

The pen scratches its way carefully across the page in precise marks, writing a nature of compassion and harmony. Wildlife is born into the warm and inviting forest, and frolic in perfect sincerity. Deer dine on the dew-ladened carpet. Hares rush through the underbrush, playing a never-ending game that only a rabbit could understand. A great variety of birds flash in varying colors through the trees, singing a song of intricate harmonies, which rises in elegant crescendos, ascend in heart-stopping fortes, and is supplemented by the deep melodies of toads.

The pen scratches its way carefully across the page in precise marks, painting subtle sagacity. Men stumble upon the grove, men with minds set on mastering and subjugating the place under rule of axe and gun. But a wily intelligence overpowers their conscience as soon as they enter the grove, and, confused, they find something… an ethereal fox that leads the the lord and his liegemen a dance away from the grove till mid-afternoon, until the artful Reynard disappears in a shower of silverish greys. The hunters lose themselves in a boundless wit too great for them to fathom.

The pen scratches its way carefully across the page in precise marks, and the masterpiece takes shape in radiant beauty, charm, and wit. Let us step back for a second, and admire the shape of the painting from a distance. The shape is a face, a face that smiles kindly back at us. But there is something missing… something indescribable. I guess that someone like you cannot be described by that pen scratching its way carefully across the page.

Kailyn

16

Summer was for soul searching, you said
as you cut open the flesh of a peach
and picked out the pit with your nails.
I doubted you then,
for I could not see beyond the edges of my summer reading books.
I could not see the summer as the empty beach it used to be.

I only heard the ticking of the clocks,
the sweep of an X over days of the calendar.
How could I breathe, I asked,
if I was suffocating from standards wrapped invisible around my neck?
They were numbers always.

800 on the SAT.
150 pages left to go.
30 days of freedom wasted.
2 hours to midnight.
4.0 GPA.

I could not search, I told you then,
I could not look away from the 100%
from the gold medal,
from the race and the scoreboards and the finish line.
You swallowed a slice of juicy peach.
I watched it drip down your chin as you looked at me.
What happened to the days, we'd muse,
of the times I could dig my toes in sand
and cup a seashell to my ear?
What happened to the days and the nights,
of staying up past bedtime to finish that movie
that had my heart pounding?

Why is my hand so used to writing
over copies of tests under florescent lighting?

I stepped outside today,
felt the summer sun bathe my damp hair.
I heard the birds chirp disharmoniously, not caring who heard them
as long as they got their message across.
I let my hands toy with a rock,
felt the rough edges and the dimples of rains long past.
I looked at my legs, pale and pasty,
now speckled with ruby red bites.

This could not be summer, I thought,
without the birds and the bees and the bugs.
I slapped one dead against my knee.
Splattered to black ash.
And I picked.
I picked at the surface for a long time.

Aurora

15

My Neighborhood in Summertime
(A Parody of the poem Chicago by Carl Sandburg)

Land of Lazy Backyard Barbeques,
Chlorine-Ridden Wonderland, Sea of Sweaty Tarmac,
World of the Bored Avid Gardener;
Green, sunny, lazy,
Neighborhood of Post-Hippie Soccer Parents:

They tell me you are bored and I believe them,
for I have seen your children pedalling through strange backyards for the thrill.
And they tell me you are posh and I answer: Yes, I watch four cars pull into extended driveways.
And they tell me you are lazy and my reply is: I have seen the teenagers lie on towels in the soft
sun all day.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them
back their sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lolling head so satisfied to be quiet and sleepy and joyful
and lazy.
Laughing head back as it rolls in lush brilliant grass, here is a warm full-bellied senior citizen
chugging along in a fast paced world;
Sleepy as a seven year old trying to stay up till New Years’, content as a dog with a bone,
Napping,
Running,
Grinning,
Laughing,
Barbecuing, swimming, biking,
Drowsy smiles exchanged, popsicles dripping on frayed jean shorts.
Under the sweet bursting fireworks of July,
Smiling as a contented child smiles,
Eating and grinning that we are timeless,and in our fingers we grasp the youth that others can
only dream of,
Grinning!
Grinning with sun-stained cheeks pulled back in the euphoria of being the Land of Lazy
Backyard Barbecues, the Chlorine-Ridden Wonderland, Sea of Sweaty Tarmac,
World of the Bored Avid Gardener, and Bellinghams’ Neighborhood of Post-Hippie Soccer Parents.

Sara

17

Newcomb Hollow

They sat
with skinny legs dangling
over beach grass and crab shells
and stretched and pointed their toes down
to brush painted ripples
in the sand

They took their mothers' sun hats and peach scarves
down to the water
and scrambled over
time worn wood fences
and found a log
on which they perched their bones

They wore their best smiles of a lady
and paraded around
in the orange glow of setting sun

They forced laughter like their mothers
until the giggles of young girls
came gurgling out

and they knew what summer meant

Hallie

17

For Room 303

For girls with pointed toes
with expectations too big to fit in their palms
with toenail polish to cover the bruises

We stare in mirrors shaped like struggle
clothes skin tight, sweat stained
we pull our taffy bodies until they taste right
taste like determination
sprinkled with bitter envy
and the intense flavor of a promise
that tomorrow we will only be better

For girls with photo album eyelids
with postcard hearts
with wine stained memories

We walk under sherbet suns
bare legs bare arms bare sky bare soul
the time when late afternoon heat
blends into early evening sundown
and Market Square sits in lethargic bustle
we watch passersby
through these photo album eyelids

For girls who dance and cry
with mascaraed eyes that look into yesterday
with love to give and love to receive .

Hallie

17

When sleep wouldn’t come
because my mind reeled
with Schrodinger
and next to me lay a body
whose lid I was afraid to lift
content to leave it
dead or alive

The kind of tent
you can feel every blade of grass through
and a layer of blanket
is followed by
a layer of stars
constellations are drawn
with clumsy hands
and soft snoring

We found joysticks
through smoky haze
and relived our childhood
while burning it away
at the end of rolled up
sentences

My bottle of discontinued
off-brand tears broke
and roofs and blankets
were all you could offer
and I can never thank you enough
because you couldn't give me tea parties
but folded in each others arms
we did the best we could

Our city lights are dimmer than many
but each footfall echoes a flash
and we illuminate town
with juvenile wisdom
and slouch in torn diner booths
afraid of nothing but tomorrow

Voices carried across ponds
holding in their melodies
reconstructed personhood
skipping clear toned stones
creating pavements of laughter
to cross the water
in imitation holiness
that is almost better than the real thing

As always, the first to awaken.
I never cease to be amazed
at how distant the morning seemed
but on bench swings
or breakfast tables
or cross-legged on straight backed chairs
I relive every night with memory
just foggy enough for love
and just clear enough for regret