Rachael

16

Unknown and Untitled

You met her in Times Square
in the late afternoon when the light brings out both beauty and unfortunate passion
She, with her long, red hair freckled with wildflowers
and her fullmoon sunglasses shading her eyes from yours
because you so desperately wanted to capture a glimpse of her soul,
with that cigarette dripping ash from between her fingertips
and her back pressed against the wall
When you say you met her, you mean watched her stand from across the park
Bellbottom jeans that looked like they had been torn straight from a 70’s model
rung colour over the paving stones and resounded in your brain,
giving you an idea of what her voice might sound like as psychedelic patterns
dripped before your eyes, between your lips
letting you taste hers, until a girl of flowing black skirts
spiked black hair and a pocket watch took her hand and they smiled, kissed,
their bare feet carried them from your view like two shadows on a slide projector

Sofia

16

My Summer With Old People

The sun-tired corners
Of her eyes
And the sides of her smile
Face toward the light.
Sweet, stuffy air
Flows toward
Me
And I look for
The colored scent of
tomatoes.

"They're fragile,"
She tells me.
He kneels in the dirt,
Picking the weeds he can
See.
Pulling the vegetables that he
Can't.

They live for her.
Every cucumber
And piece of arugula.
She is the
Definition
Of "not a moment to
Lose".
She cares for one section
And drives off
In the green Subaru to
A different garden.
And they
Wait
For her return.
He sits in his
Rocking chair
And he
Waits
For her return.

I am a visitor.
They all see me as something
That keeps some of the
Weeds out.
I walk past him
And ask how
He is doing
Today.
He answers and tells me
That it
Sucks
Not being able to see the
Damn bean
That's right in his hand.
And he asks where she is.
He probably just wants to
See her face.
He probably just
Wants her to sit down
With him
And smell the summer squash
Grow.
Because you don't need to see it
If you can feel it right next to you.

But as the intense white
Light
Burns golden
And the garden grows until
It grows colder,
The acres orbit her
And she centers
Herself next
To him.
Because though
She can love him
While everything
Is depending on her
And needing her,
For him, the summer
Sun is less
Frustrating
In the fall.

Rachel

17

hello sleepyhead
did you have another
nice insomnia? you look
pretty grey in the under-eye
area. that’s okay. you & I
sometimes like grey days
better than blue ones.
good morning moon
still hanging around?
coming and going is hard for some people
staying is harder for me.
oh. look at my hair.
I am a frizz-bomb
sleepy bed head? tousled-sexy?
no. I could put it up.
sleepyhead, in the mirror: your breasts:
the kind he says
they’re lovely
and probably thinks
they’re smaller than I expected
the push-up bra dilemma,
choose the purple lacy one
remember, stopping, an evening
eyes sweeping over sandals
trying on the bra and
feeling: pretty
ahh, good morning.
sitting on the toilet
porcelain is cold.
morning pee is the best:
watch your stomach as you drain
con-caving inwards
ribs peek out like
waving, wiggling fingers.
hand-washing is a sudsy ordeal
if you remember the soap
gotten into the dirty habit
of forgetting it,
and of drying
hands on pants instead of towels
oops: bare legs
oatmeal thighs
yucky yucky
mmm. breakfast time.
slip on short-shorts unwearable outside
“Dancer” and silver sequins on the butt.
I am not a dancer
dancing is not like conceptual art
or experimental poetry
it’s more like tax-returns,
not everyone can do it.
I console
myself
with everyone,
then feign
uniqueness
with a three-cereal-combination
I once met identical twins
except the haircut
one of them was named Unique
I laughed.
nobody else understood the humor of it.
I wonder what
embarrassed-eyes
look like
because they never
look right at me,
something (besides dancing) that
I am terrible at:
avoiding faces.
I pretend
it is
a special morning.
hurrah! another day
is here! I am growing older!
the apocalypse is growing nearer!
if I ever marry, I am one day closer to it.
my period is coming sooner!
O, Welcome,
June 22nd
I have been waiting
all my life
for you to come
(and go).

Rachel

17

I used to want to get to know
the insides of you
but now it’s august
and I’m over that.

instead I would like to know
your favorite junk food and the worst
TV show you watch
if it’s long island medium or 90210 or
the bachelor and if you say it’s
desperate housewives I will be upset
because desperate housewives is a great fucking show.
I want to know your favorite porn site
and whether you do dumb things like
read your horoscope or need to see
the weather every morning or if you are secretly
horrible at pool or if you can’t
stand kumquats.

isn’t it unfair how well
your hand fits with my hand?

and how you laugh at all
my jokes and have perfect
skin and make me think of
trees and greasy green booth diners
on a highway?

I’m done with all this
tenderness

isn’t it unfair how
people are so tender? how my head
slips like moss into your shoulder
and people keep on touching each other
all around me, on the forearm
and the cheek, and insisting
they aren’t lonely? I like my body
when it is with your body,
and some of the people
paying tolls at the bridge and
at a Chinese restaurant and wearing indigo and
kissing

Rachel

17

"Isaac"

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YOU KNOW WHAT HIS NAME WAS?

Isaac
His name was Isaac

the baby when the baby baby
baby
came
she laughed
laughed
ha ha
ho ho
he he
baby
never
came

would fuck for hours
in clean
sweaty
white
grey
sheets, two
bodies trying
to mold each other
like clay
that summer

I made a man,
said God

I made a man from clay

molded a man
from dust and
to dust among
dust and bunnies
and bunnies and
men and bunnies
hunt men and
where are the
men Isaac
Isaac where are
all the men

the Abrahams
and the Jacobs
and oh
the Noahs
of my past,

how Noah and I
tight-roped
along the river
“the water looks so good right now”
“you look so good right now”
and tore off his striped
t-shirt, the hairs
of his chest
goosebumping
straight out
belly button in the moonlight
a reminder of where we came from
and jumped into
the good-looking water
Noah
and the flood
oh yes
and the whale
Jonah? the boys and the bible stories
collude
intrude

I am distracted
again

Isaac
laughing laughing
howling cajowling

“tell me more tell me more”
Isaac wants to know
the whole history of the world
of a girl
I climb
his shoulders
picking cherries
from his hair

I LOVE YOU
(laughing)

the story is three strangers came
told Sarah she would have a son
100 years old, Sarah
laughed
she laughed
and Isaac — the name
of the baby
was Isaac
means
laughter

as much as he laughed
he never found release
as much as he laughed
he never finished
anything

would walk in on the boy
reading
in the kitchen
a stack of dishes
mid-wash
a tower in the sink

“I feel like I can’t focus”

daddy issues
was the root of it
the time his father
took him up to the top
of a mountain
to say

baby
look at the view
look at the
other mountains
we didn’t climb
and the sun
we didn’t climb
and the trees
we didn’t climb,

holding a knife
over his head,

the blade of it
reflecting
mountains
sun
trees
unclimbed
unconquered

and all in the name of faith
a father that loved
his God
over his Son

down below,
Sarah learned what was happening
and died of a heart attack
aged 116

it is impossible for a mother
to love a God
over her Child

I’m sorry if this sounds bad
but it is true,

“you always think that if things are true
you should say them” Isaac says

I do think this
so I do not understand what he means,

and I continue
lying in bed next to him
talking about nothing
talking about
how crazy I think it is
that all of history
culminates in this
in us
in this moment

and Isaac laughs
and I ask him why he’s laughing
and he says he feels
like crying
but he can’t,

and he takes me
tight-rope walkers
along the river
up the crest
through the trees
up to the top
of the mountain
to say,

baby
baby look at the view
look at the
other mountains
we didn’t climb
and the sun
we didn’t climb
and the trees
we didn’t climb
and he said,

“I want to jump
but I can’t”

and I laughed

he he he
and ho ho ho
and ha ha ha

and teetered on the precipice
and understood.

Rachel

17

I don’t know whether to call this boy-man
a boy or a man
because a man means he should know better
and a boy means his mother should take the blame.

I don’t know which of us
tasted like weed
it felt like the boy-man, but retrospectively
I think it was my own tongue
coming back to me

I wish I were a chameleon
I mean about the fruit-roll-up tongue
unraveling to catch a fly
like throwing the scroll of a holy book
down the stairs,
I mean I wish could make my skin
the same color as
walking home from a party on Riverside
after curfew.

I am ashamed of the strangest things:
body odor, lace underwear,
saying too little, crying in public,
being naked,
my tongue.

I don’t want to call this boy-man
anything except the boy-man
who threw me against a wall and made out with me;

I bet he is a nice boy-man who loves his sister
I bet he is not thinking about her
and has had two drinks too many
I understand what it is like

not to touch somebody for a very long time
to creep into your room
and watch cheap suburban girls
eat each other out
on your computer screen
thinking all the while
about your ex-boyfriend
whispering, I love you,
and then remembering that it is in the past;
I understand this, boy-man,

that you feel it has been forever
since you were last thrown
against a wall, and I bet
you miss my lips until
I’m trying to push you
off with them—
did you know the tongue
is the strongest muscle in the body
relative to its size? I’m dwelling
on tongues, I know,
because I can’t get yours
out of my mouth,
and I have bruises to show it
greyish purple all up
my arms, I told my mother
I fell of my bike
since I know I would be punishe
d for being thrown against a wall, boy-man.
I’d never be allowed out at night again,
to sit on somebody’s fire escape
with somebody I have loved
for a long time,
watching the stars and feeling like
the world is a very good place

(and yes we were high
out of our minds),

when you pin me there
in your strong muscles,
boy-man, pushed up hard against me
one of your palms
on my quivering neck, I go
limp against your mouth
like undoing drawstring pants

I don’t want to fight
with anybody, boy-man.

Walking away is harder
than writing a poem about walking away,

and I have imagined this scene
so many times, the stranger
on Riverside, after curfew,
that I am no longer scared of it

boy-man:
am I supposed to fight you off now?
I am not a lion.
I am 17 year old girl,
self-righteous and bossy

and feeling obligated to mention
my halter-top
even though there is nothing inherently erotic
about shoulders,

except sometimes, boy-man
I see my boyfriend’s shoulders
all silhouetted in the moonlight window

and I want him to grab me
and throw me against a wall
and leave bruises,

he touches now, a gentle
forefinger on my
forearm, asking where they came from.
I cannot bear to tell him
about you, boy-man,

the way you will not go home
to tell your sister about me.

Rachel

17

"lovers"

I remember one time
when I fell asleep in your bed
in the afternoon

and the sun,
it poured through the window like kisses,

I had this dream
that we unfastened our lips from our faces
and I painted mine Seduction,
the first lipstick I ever bought,
now long gone.

We took the lips
and put them in plush, white boxes
and then in glass cases
where they were kept safe, and soft,
and people could look at them
through the viewfinders of their $5000 Nikons.

“Lovers,” read the plaque,
the year, the materials, the city.

Meanwhile,
we were lipless
and could no longer love:

you had no mouth
to be the sun;

I had no mouth to tell you to come back
when you went away.

Isabelle

14

Santa Ana Winds

It hasn’t been long,
since we were hanging on
what seemed to be,
yellow butterflies
on that one ride.

They recommended we
stay seated,
‘cause it wouldn’t be so easy
to stay in one place.

You in your tanked shirt
and me in all too tight shorts.
I didn’t think I’d like the ride so much,
but then again
I didn’t think I’d like you,
so much.

Strip away the platform,
and take in the wind,
the sun,
the life
that we were made to live.

‘Cause it somehow got so bright
with you in the daylight.

And maybe we’re strapped in,
but I can feel us twisting.
Interlocking fingers,
seeing the highs,
and I thought it wouldn’t be divine
but for one climb you were mine.

Count me in for V2,
‘cause no matter what I’ll be with you.
I didn’t look out for the fall,
but my stomach knew,
the wasps coming through.

So, fend the screams off,
we can conquer them all.
But, until then
won’t you give me laughter,
wish me love.

Effie

16

Guava Dance

Sunny California,
won’t you warm me up
with your golden rays of light?
You can carry me away
and leave me atop
green grass mountains;
distract me from my
smog and smoky clouds,
so I’ll breathe only sweet air.
I’ll watch the palm trees sway
in distant valleys, full of
little people in little cars.
Won’t you bring me someone
to share this golden summer with?
Someone to watch the orange-red
fill the sky like watercolor
when we rise and fall asleep,
waiting for moments to never end.
As songs play in the distance,
flutes sway, guitars shake,
drums beat to a forest song.
Fruit in the guava trees
will hang low for us to eat
and we’ll dance in its shadows.
The grass will sigh beneath
our feet and the dirt will fly,
as the leaves swish like
sounds of laughter.
Our hair grows lighter,
beach bonfires last longer.
The waves lap against ankles
while we splash in warm, salty water.
Existing in limbo, without
thoughts distracting us from
before or after,
we are here and now.

Juan

15

The Amiable Warmth of the sun

My old friend,
Levitation of the soul,
That fires up the sky.
Your orange-yellow envelopment,
Hugging what’s underneath;
Giving strength to the world.
Where have you wandered this year?

Ice a normal sight to see,
Crystal hail returned to beat me down again;
The arctic air biting my once copper flesh.
To stay under shelter,
I must yield

A masterpiece of you,
Once again art from my own hands.
Cozy colors of you on paper,
Oh warm my heart to the core.
Craving for you in shelter,
Must I yield?

Remain in Shelter,
Till your return?
Wish to have you forever.
A question aroused,
A question answered.
Anything to have you,
I no longer yield.

Vivid recollection of memories,
Spine chilling sensations.
Reaching out for an extension,
I attained height.
Belt in hand,
I reach out for the sky;
And once again I am with the sun.

For eternity I’ll be with you,
I have no fear of losing you again.
Must I never feel the chill of your opposite,
May we never be so distant.
For I am here beside you,
Enveloping the world with your beauty,
Enveloping the earth’s crust with your warmth.

Jesse

15

The Summertime Morning Gentry

The morning gentry, an idyllic folk,
on this vernal morning I watch them.
I love them for their heat,
ever-constant like the dead that
pray in the most loving way in the night.
One day they’ll love me too--
when I’ve eaten half a stick of butter in their name.

A girl made old too soon wrestles with a part
of her knows she can only kiss.
He wrestles back, and she cannot help
but leave the coffee shop above the books.
She wishes, I know, to love again
in a collegiate way--
to graze textbooks with her fraction of the morning gentry.
She’ll be spending all day in this bookstore, because
her hyperactive burden needs to learn.
“You look like a friend of mine,”
I’d like to tell her.

A mother and a daughter come in
wearing the same blue shirt--
they’ve just gotten back
from the city.
She’s just recently turned sixteen, and
as such, has left a letter of request
and mild persuasion
on her mother’s oak-veneered desk every day
since her birthday; I think
it’s working.

The local bagelry still gets all the love.
Like the yard of a new teen
who made it through half of the lawn before
the mower ran out of gas and he ran out of water.
This place, this rejected kidney donation
of a home, sits, it breathes.
Meanwhile, the owner of the thrift shop across the street
starts on today’s loaf of stale sourdough--
his employees, his only business.
They are fine with it though;
the kids love the low prices
on this season’s latest garden gnomes, strangely
similar to the ones my mother grew up owning.

In the park where
I first scraped palms as a child,
pop-art versions of me and my mother
feel like thinly-strung puppets, they breathe.
As I watch, I feel like laughing; but I stop myself,
because I’ve recently been told by a girl
who was caught laughing too loudly
in the library
that our racetrack is not a racetrack, but
rather a shallow and
uncharted martian sea, terrifying in unlimited numbers of ways,
so why laugh at something like that?

The college graduates around me
are all on diets;
as they sit at an early brunch with proud mothers,
because the ones paying need to get to work by nine,
and the other ones claim to be studying
for an entrance exam.
I pass, smile, resolve to let them in their peace--
One of the younger ones stares, lauds me from afar
for my books, saying
she’d love to read one sometime.
But she has more pressing matters to attend to--
so I leave,
long ago having come to a resolution with the fact
that her first post-collegiate vacation will
be to an island I will never see.

I surpass an old man on the sidewalk-- he smiles
as I turn back, hoping that I took nothing of his as I grazed his left side.
He’s been telling his wife that he sincerely believes that
he has one more poem left in him--
one more lyrical, more steady than he has ever felt.
And I believe him-- his Pulitzer
was my reading for last month,
and this song that he’s got
will constitute my reading
for another month;
an account of
some adolescent imbroglio set deep within
a tropical fruit that he brought back
from his last visit
to some island I will never see.
I turn back from
my new elderly friend, because a girl with two city-bound
train tickets tucked deep in her messenger bag
resolves to take on her
fourteenth-to-last day shucking oysters
in this place, she breathes.
She dreams not of islands,
those ones she and I know that neither of us
will ever see,
but of peripatetic dissonance, a hermitage
for itinerant souls.

Now in the library, I try to imagine
you in your natural section, browsing what
it is inside you that makes me want to learn every word in the language
and wonder what you’ll pick.
I once thought Dickinson,
for your eye color is strangely reminiscent of vinyl siding,
plaster, trees beyond.
but this library is expansive,
as I’ve discovered is your mind,
and I now wonder over Kafka.

The fifth book on the fifth shelf
in the fifth aisle of this library
is called “I Want to Kill the Dog,” and I’ve stopped believing
in human creativity as a cyclic concept.
In this place, the morning gentry,
my tuxedo-clad army,
my sterile, comfortable summer home,
my middle-aged army of men with newspapers jammed in the front of their pants,
my people,
are doing better than ever.
But I have you to hate for never sending a postcard in reply,
and I have started to act like the music
in a coffeeshop;
because, dear, lately I have been thinking--
maybe I am not what
I was,
what the Post-It note on my forehead said I would be.
Perhaps I am only an overzealous photographer, and
cameras with shattered lenses
are incapable of higher-level thought.
It is nearly my lunchtime, and you have been awake since four a.m.

Yuxiao

18

Yesterday the sky was pastel
your sandals a flash of laughter
on hot cement and the wind, it
wrapped around our limbs
without a word when we spoke
in clouds.

We danced so long
the streets of our city stained
with sunlight.

Yesterday our hours trailed
shredded petals on the ground.

But today time crawls caged
by the clock, shrieking, and I am chilled
at our city like ice shining
the sheen of things that bleed
colorless

And my stories are lies
and truths but I love
the one in our park where your shadow dances with mine
until night collapses,
swallows both together
and the oaks weep leaves

I love how the sky suffocates o

Hope

17

The Summer Rise of Slumber

Every year the summer solstice tilts
on the side of my face, giving me no choice
but to put on my submarine helmet.
I was raised to believe in feeling the sun
through a thick wall of glass and to never
breath outside between the hours
of lunch and bedtime. My ancestors have always
been those who stalked around the outskirts of
the water. Summer afternoons returned with
scrubbing of muddy feet and dirty fingernails.
They were always emptier and happier inside.
A familiar life we share as a family,
my mother, my brother, and I. The three of us
used to be the best of friends, I used to not mind
it too much. On mornings, she brushes our helmets
twice, checks our oxygen, and makes two platters
of pancakes. Neither of us can swallow her guilt
and build battle fortresses instead.

The first day of summer is always the brightest,
filled with homemade lemonade and the
newness of our submarine helmets. As days
go on my brother would ask if we could go
swimming in the backyard pond. Every night before bed,
I would watch him tape his one straw from dinner
into his scuba diving helmet. I can’t stop thinking
about his hands, burning under his desk lamp, hoping
to one day cool them in summer. But my mother only
gets worse by the year and told him to go swim
somewhere in the house. I don’t understood why she
does this to us but I never refuse her glass smeared kisses.
I love my mother when we sit on the steps and look
out the window for stars. We each would sip
simultaneously and smile. Every time she
swears she can feel our heartbeat with her stomach,
warm with lemonade and hope. But never for savor,
always just for a taste of something she always had.

Tonight though I can feel the heat on my skin,
I just know we are escaping outside. I tiptoe
to my brother’s bedroom and find him
in a cradled position with his back towards me.
I pick up his scuba diving helmet and place it
in front of him. He was feeling it too I can tell.
Hand in hand we walk down the steps preparing
for the worst … thankfully we left our pancake fortresses
in each corner. Target seems to be beyond the front door.
Pass the windows, pass the doorknob, my brother stands
behind me, we never have been this far without mother.
But then comes this air. We swallow a glass full,
taking seconds as we run to the pond. My brother
doesn’t hesitate and takes off his submarine helmet.
I watch him for us. Splashing and discovering but I keep it on
for my mother’s sake. I sit on the edge of the pond and
wash the tips of my toes. My brother pulls my ankles in,
which is followed by my entire body. The two of us take up
the whole pond now. I don’t scream or smile but sink deeper,
letting the water just touch the rims of my head. I hug my brother
and silently thank him for this salty holy water I can now call home.
I stand up, enough of summer for one night and start to run to mother.
My brother continues to float and falls asleep.
He took more after my father’s side.

I go up the stairs, pass her room, to my bed.
But I know I can’t sleep now. My thoughts are heavy
with the water, fish, and laughter that has been living
in our minds for so long. I lay down and try to lift
my neck up to look out the window, one more glimpse
of tonight’s stars I tell myself. I take off the submarine helmet
and place it in a corner. With each breath I take, I regain
ownership of my body. I pull myself up the windowsill,
finally able to feel the slumber of a summer night … cool,
warm, and dry enough to breath without a submarine helmet.

Hannah

17

Summer's Kingdom:

When flowers bloom
At the light of day
And lavish green embroiders all the land

I sit and stare at heaven's face
Of sapphire's gentile caring eyes
Will I look upon the dirt
To know the ground which molds our earth

With loving hearts
And withered knees
Till souls do dry up all the seas
And fallen happy hold their peace

Please look,
The merry child says
With threads of innocence winding through
I'll tell you why the sky is blue
If you will ask me how I knew

Natalie

16

Summer is

set on the cusp of a breakdown
the lull of black liquor
shinning so sharply at night
the moon flying home colors

despite previous assumptions
July falls right in between Wednesday and Thursday,
the whole month blacked out
the stars burning, alive
but that one star
the brightest of all
sat still.

there you are still driving
see, there between bad similes and too much coffee
driving over the yellow spine of the earth
still trying to find something worth driving towards

pulling in at 5:30
sliding soft steps over wooden floors
pretending you were asleep
but ever so suddenly dust begins to settle
on an old yellow friend
and you just can't keep your fingers from flying
across her worn fret board
your thoughts
so restless they begin to scratch their way out
alongside the sun
you too
wake up.

Hannah

17

Camp:

I find it here,
Unravelled by the striking darkness,
Or screams of mating insects by still water.
Here, is where the movement comes to die,
But rather explodes from unknown captivity.
And in this place,
The music can shatter car windows,
While I hear the rambling of rascals in the background.
Then at midnight, one is faced with a choice:
Sleep or Poetry,
But how can one choose when the two must co-exist for human survival?
Because a man sleeps to validate his energy for words.
It is here,
Where communication dwells within the eyes of young lovers,
And teary dreams.

Aaron

14

"A Texas Summer"

The summer chill is hot and wet,
The sun, it never disappears.
All through the night, the sun stays set,
Every summer, every year.

Go outside and play a game,
We’ll see how long you stand,
‘Cause the sun will have your name,
Like a footprint in the sand.

The breeze is warm, without delight.
The weather’s wet, without a reason.
And as you sweat, you’ll try to fight
The humid features of this season.

But through the sun and all the heat,
Something cool may still remain,
Like all the people that you’ll meet
On every hot and dry terrain.

And every trip with mom and dad,
And every treat that cools your beak,
'Cause summer's really not that bad,
When it’s the good you only seek.

Britney

15

A Summer Crash
Close your eyes count to three, crash of a wave and a nice breeze. Close your eyes count to ten, a flood under neath us we are about to sink in.

Britney

15

Sea of Wonder
Are you underwater, trying to scream and talk but no one can understand you. trying to look through water but still can't see clearly. noticing yourself drowning in the sea of wonder.

britney

15

Summer Romance
To feel lips pressed against mine, to lay in the grass and look at each others eyes, to see you happy but see your story of pain. i love you so, don't push me away. to be next to, I feel like I'm in a movie, although i can't pause the moment but continues gradually. for the day comes to an end, my thoughts of memories and happiness while i go to bed.