Jess

16

Canicule

A season to swell in the humidity everyone loathes
A time to peel off cold months clothes
I revel the heat, yet I wallow in anxiety at the thought of it ending
Then I wait for these feelings to pass, but the dog days are still impending

To stay within the confines of my mind is what I plan to do
To keep within the borders of my thoughts two months through
I have no goal but to just lay down and daydream
To toil in my wishes and reflect upon my well being

The season is so hot and I act like I’m dying
I have to redeem myself and keep on lying
About my false perception of productivity
I do nothing but waste each opportunity

Kat

15

nothing is unbeautiful
(august 2014)

pt. 1

______Nothing in this world is as vivid as his kitchen at one in the morning, warm and small, four white stools at the table- three carved glasses full of tequila, one for me, two for him, and a jug of orange juice to share. He shoots the booze like water and I almost die with each sip. He makes me eat bread to hold the alcohol down. The entire world is beautiful and I believe in innate happiness- he's sitting in the chair next to me, facing me, and he and I are both so human and im laughing because nothing is unbeautiful. I tell him, 'earlier, when we were watching Toy Story and you were laying next to me, I loved you.' He cries and tells me he's never cried from happiness before. 'You were so small and so complicated and I loved you,' I repeat. I pause and watch his cat, seven weeks old, bat at her brother with one tiny paw. 'But I haven't said I love you yet, okay?' 'Okay,' he says. He loves me but I wont let him say it. He has a red metal coffee maker and a cupboard full of power bars and Hostess cupcakes. He drinks almost a gallon of orange juice a day. The walls of his room are dark blue, with four guitars, a bass, and a ukulele hanging from them. Hidden inside the acoustic is a bag of purple diesel, pungent and sweet smelling. He has a daft punk poster and a Matisse print and there's a note on his wall that says, 'today you should DO SOMETHING!'
______The whole house is dark, save for one light, the one in the kitchen, shining on us both - it feels like we're at the center of the world. It feels for a moment like everything matters. Nothing is unimportant. It is one in the morning and you are fifteen and drunk, sitting in a boy's kitchen, and nothing is unbeautiful.

pt. 2

______She was two pounds, ten ounces when she was born. We named her after Amelia Earhart, in case she needs to fly away.
______She grew up to be Amy, twelve years old and standing five feet even in brown slacks at the door of the kitchen. Her bangs have grown past her eyebrows, a blonde fringe quickly encroaching on the inky softness of eyes, and her fingers, which have not yet outgrown their childlike thickness, are heavy with the frosting of a Hostess cupcake. She uses the heels of her hands to prop her small body into a white wooden stool and leans her elbows on the counter as she licks her fingers, one by one, methodically. I watch Amelia, Amy, as she does this. She does this every evening and I have yet to be unfazed by the miracle that a human is. She is so small and so complicated and no part of her vast soul is unbeautiful. She worldessly climbs up onto the windowsill, stretches, opens the cabinet with an unholy creak and reaches sideways for a mug, one leg swinging through the air as her whole body strains. She doesn't let me help her. Once she has in her hand one white mug, she hops down from her post and fills it to the absolute brim with orange juice. She gives a slight smile, as if out of victory, and drinks it with a loud slurping sound. I have been alive for thirty-nine years and I have never seen anything more glorious.
______Amelia does not need to fly away just yet.
______Amelia, no part of you is unbeautiful. It is eight in the evening and you are happy to have a hostess cupcake and half a liter of juice- there's still a bit of light at the horizon, vaguely purple and struggling. You acknowledge me with a nod of the head just as you leave for your room and no part of you is unbeautiful.

pt. 3

______The only things left in our house are emptiness and a chair. It's more of a stool, really; a person sitting in it couldn't touch the ground with her feet. It was painted white years ago, but it's been worn down enough to let wood grain show through. I'm leaning against the wall across from it, picking my teeth with one gold earring, seventy-six years old.
______I haven't said a meaningful thing to another person in years- maybe I've run out of meaningful things to say, maybe I've gotten too old. The hallway's whistling right now- this house is turned into an organ by the wind, it murmurs, it sighs. My house, at least, has something to say.
______I haven't said a meaningful thing to another person in years- I'd like to fix that. I'd like to say something to you. I'll tell you the only thing I've ever really learned:
______No part of this world is unbeautiful.

Kat

15

marianne: a meal in three courses
(june 2014)

course one: oysters in lemon sauce
(on oysters and women)

oysters lived in the soft of her throat like unfeeling freckles;
callous lemons tipped their velvet flesh to sunlight so
that they may flicker, shiver, eyes like candles retiring,
vacating raspberry jam-jar sockets for faraway places.

silk is hidden behind the knees; down is swathed in
scales of skin, an irregular bird, half-plucked. body,
break like water. warmth from fly-away veins will fade as
all we are left with is light and marrow, rich like white chocolate.

the cloister of cold water is steeped like tea; how much less am
i in the dark than she? a tongue in her teeth will curdle and
quiet as a woman is made a tableau by the water,
dusky and exquisite, beyond time. like syrup, blood clots.

a woman is cooked and served like oysters in sauce, a once-living thing
for us to watch. we search through the stillness of ceded oysters
and women, and we find our enlightenment missing. body, break like water.

course two: still life with meat
(on a butcher's shop)

I like where the liver lives in the body- skin, swollen like a bruise, and
adipose like apricots, a sheath for the tenderness of brown- it's where
the heart should be. an ox is strung from our ceiling, and its back
arches and the liver lays over the organs like a wafer on a tongue.

what happens to a liver when it dies? does it become a dier? if my
liver really is where my heart lives, will enough drinking break me?

"it's all just meat to me," said my father, the butcher, some time before
he died. I guess he's just meat to us to now. when they cut up a cow,

they cut off the nose first: we have a blue bucket full of the sticky
black velvet, a bucket full of soft faces. my father said he could skin
a pig in the dark. how do you write an epitaph for a man like that?

"we're all just meat," says my mother after the butcher's death.
I guess it was all just meat to him too.

she chose peonies for the funeral: their petals were like tendrils
of muscle.

course three: flesh fruits
(on barfighters and fruit)

hands in repose: skin splits and flesh glistens like the inside of a
pomegranate. knuckles, taut like plum skins, make way for the
glossy pulp beneath, and the pits rear their heads. bone breaks.
hands in repose: two flesh fruits opening, throwing skin wide

and casting seeds aside to settle in the pavement outside O'Malley's.
-maybe trees will grow from them. but the legs are still heavy with fat, tart
with unripeness, but the curb is wet and candied with juice and it's burning in
the place where the mouth becomes throat. four hands find peace as they fracture.

our bodies become metronomic with hits. how the chaos of
lunatic wind burns above us- how sorry that we're
hungry in the vat of carrion, of fruit laden and foul,
how we only find our calm in this cloying.

Luc

14

Trees in anguished fashion sway
Water streams upon the quay
Blankets, chairs, tables away
When the summer rains come

Flowers drip beneath the roar
Birds and bees forget to soar
Laughter, cries, screams no more
When the summer rains come

Oh when the summer rains come
And dancing feet on the roof
Slanted so no window shun
With proud east wind nose aloof

No snowstorm, no desert, no lights and no breeze
Can ever compare to the bending of trees
When the summer rains come

Jo

15

When Magpie Calls in Summer

His black bib
spread over his
White breast
as a gentleman
taking tea.

Ebony beads—
eyes fixed— a twitching of
optical senses—
waiting for insects—
emerald ash borer beetle, amber yellow jacket, —
to happen by.

Claws for scratching—
mounting fencepost—
garden bench—
or sturdy clematis vine.

Coal-black feathers
caught—
in the sun’s reflection,
a flash of crimson and vermilion—
moving with alacrity.

Jo

15

Walk Along the Dune in June

Woodland fetzers
stretch to the horizon
violet heat
tumbles behind.

Hills fringe
sandy dunes
hares
slipping beside
the stunted
Beech.

A knoll,
a butte,
a hummock.

All of sand
churned from
Earth
one century at a time.

Jo

15

All Windmills Catch the Wind

High above the land
a platform of
alder timber soaked
in brackish water.

The molen spins—
swings its square shaped arms
in circles
trying to catch
invisible current
bleached by sunlight.

Seizing the wind
one breath
at a time—time stands still.

Capturing the unseen—
transferring it gracefully
to the celebrated land—from solstice to equinox.

Sunny

16

Playing Pretend

When swinging in unison paved our destiny,
and conquering the jungle gym endowed the greatest pride
we were the big kids;
big enough for two-wheelers.
big enough for Harry Potter,
big enough to be the teacher,
when we played pretend.

But that was before.
before nothingness was imaginable
and before you faded away
Before my father stopped asking
and my mother started,
before scars began appearing
and before affection became pain,
I could still play pretend.

When the wind was at my back
but the breeze in my face
my mighty pink sneakers
punched holes in the clouds,
You kept me a child,
playing pretend.

But that was before.
Before I stopped healing
and before you faded away
Before dreams become nightmares
and before pain turned numb,
I could still play pretend.

Now my playground is littered
with cigarettes and stones
I’m too small to swing on swings,
and too small to reach the sky
Too small to hold your hand,
and too small to play pretend.

Sunny

16

On the first day of first grade,
my mother had to hold me by my hair
to keep me from turning cartwheels
in our two-room apartment.

But braiding my hair didn’t do me-- nor the vase of lilies
any good,
for as soon as she let go,
like a slingshot,
I cartwheeled off again.

And that was how I arrived in Mrs. Valentine’s classroom--
racing towards a new best friend,
giddiness and zeal overflowing on
my bruised knees and wayward hair.

“Hi!” I chirped, to my new best friend,
while spastically waving my little hand.
And Tommy Griskin,
he waved back,
and chattered a few phrases.

And my hand froze in mid-air,
and dropped
like a lead balloon,
as suddenly, not with a gradual dawn,
but with all the force
that desecrated the Tower of Babel,
I realized,
not one of my new best friends
spoke Chinese.

Sunny

16

All this world is for you;
....... for you to inquire
....... for you to pursue
....... for you to lose
....... yourself.
All this world,
....... this infinity,
....... is for you
........to wander
........and peregrinate
....... and find more infinities
...... to be baffled by.
So do not be discouraged in mysteries,
....... but rather,
be forever delighted.
....... For to know,
and to learn,
means being
without answers,

but not confused.

jordan

14

Summer, hot but awesome
Summer, full of fun and games
Summer, filled with joy and entertainment

Ellie

14

Misguided

As it goes, rather say flies,
it accompanies you.
Stalks you in the shadows, pulling from you the humanity in months passing.
Months, which turn into centuries- even once you lay
sleeping in the meadow of cement and misery,
Continuing on once we all represent a stone head.

Blinking, you might miss it.
Eyes widened, you surely miss it— for the acres of metamorphosis that come ahead
will blur with your petrifying ducts.

The ticking alerts its victims, who don’t realize
until it’s too late.
They lose track of the flurrying-- and when it’s not there at all
only the sun can progress our minds--
Flood us foolishly while falsening the pretences of precision.

Every moment, memorial, memory
belongs not to us, not to our ancestors, nor our descendants
but to our misguided alliance
with time.

Ellie

14

The Game

The movements— hands
circle and shade- an object- in possession
of a child.
One who swirls above: she holds dear to her
what her mother holds dear
the dearest of all being what in which she holds.

A piano, rounded by fury flooding through laughter
Shunning the figure the form makes while
just the sound causes waves of suppressed irritation to drown away—

She’s drenched with water from a—
a fountain! Well where else?
Imagination doesn’t come on command.

It cannot be summoned.
To ‘play’ pretend would be to forfeit the game.
Yes, the game- which you lost by the way.

And then they ask how-
How can you lose when you aren’t even playing?
and that’s the fun of it,
because to win would be to know and knowing
would be to lose.

Because it flees when you call it to you.

Ellie McAfee

14

Home

And when it comes around again,
on the other side, the side against the tree
representing home.

For us, no mere house tells of the home we live in.
Beds in that are interchangeable--
but when we awake: surround the glass water
and the trees of glaring greens marked blazed blue.

An escape from the world that works us to tears-- simpled to card games
and a heated stove,
smells of pancakes and hot chocolate swells.
Music flooding where she used to excuse blood
with candle light feathering calamity to the burns of society.

Lazing upon the pricks of the dock
staring out onto the empty lake,
before 6 a.m,
a reflection so clear the wrinkles of a day’s work show clean
so fair it would seem like a crime to reach out a finger and
poke,
leaving ripples in the dispassion of time.

And when it comes around again,
on the other side, the side against the tree
representing home.

Ellie McAfee

14

Home

And when it comes around again,
on the other side, the side against the tree
representing home.

For us, no mere house tells of the home we live in.
Beds in that are interchangeable--
but when we awake: surround the glass water
and the trees of glaring greens marked blazed blue.

An escape from the world that works us to tears-- simpled to card games
and a heated stove,
smells of pancakes and hot chocolate swells.
Music flooding where she used to excuse blood
with candle light feathering calamity to the burns of society.

Lazing upon the pricks of the dock
staring out onto the empty lake,
before 6 a.m,
a reflection so clear the wrinkles of a day’s work show clean
so fair it would seem like a crime to reach out a finger and
poke,
leaving ripples in the dispassion of time.

And when it comes around again,
on the other side, the side against the tree
representing home.

Sophie

15

"A Parting"

"I suppose this is goodbye," said the girl in the heat of late June.
"It's a shame we have to leave each other, like this and so soon."

"I agree," said he to her, glancing at the ground.
To this she replied bashfully, "Maybe I'll see you around."

"I suppose you may," said he with truth, "But seldom do I, outside of school, see my former youth."

She nodded her head understandingly and mumbled, "It depends."
"Sometimes I forget to remind myself that we're not actually friends."

The mood became distinctly somber, complementing the grey of the sky. She was overcome with sadness and unrest for some reason she could not identify.

"Well, thank you, sir, for all your help," she forced herself to add. "Don't mentioned it," he returned, sounding himself rather sad.

But the girl was far from finished expressing her gratitude.
"Your lessons and inspiration have changed my attitude."

She could see that she was smothering him, but still, she went on, "Your influence on my character has made me truly strong.

"I won't forget this year, sir, no matter how hard I try."
On that queue, she left him, pairing each step with a sigh.

Their paths had crossed just that once–never again did they meet–but the impression that he left on her was one which no one ever beat.

Alexandria

17

Summer, Summer, here then gone.
Days are short, nights are long.
Away from school,
Imprisoned instead
With the ennuied thoughts
Inside my head.

“Summers are fun, enjoy these times.
You won’t be able, when you’re thirty-nine.”
Mother, mother, I hear your call.
But, no, no, I want the Fall.
With leaves of orange, brown, and red.
And away from my family,
the hiding, the dread.

With family oppression,
And bigoted views,
No one would wish,
To be in my shoes.

Summers are lonely
And increasingly sad,
Friends are off traveling,
Oh, I might end up mad.

No summer romance,
I’m always confined,
Never leaving the house,
Never leaving my mind.

Oh, my dear summer,
I have always loathed thee!
Bring back my school,
And a cool autumn breeze!

Many love you,
I know that they do.
But from the lonely and bored
teenage recluse.

Please do leave,
and give me my friends.
For I only do love you,
when summer ends.

Morgan

16

"The Watchman"

The sun pokes petals over the horizon
and casts yolky glow on the water.

The man sits with toes in the sand
and hands pressed to his lap

as joggers, treasure hunters, and tired faces
pass by-

he remembers each one
for the moment they meet his view.

He doesn't speak-
his lips are cracked and tired

of words sounding strange 
the more he says them,

but he reads the water's edge
like poetry 

and spends his mornings
with the sun.

The passers notice him
at the beach's midriff

wandering eyes jetty to jetty,
lips quivering in the wind,

but they don't see things
like him

and he doesn't care to share
with their full-up minds:

only the barking gulls took liking
to this lonely man

and each morn they walk by his side,
never too closely,

though he has never given a crumb
to their begging beaks-

they are in good company
with the bare footed man.

He sits and watches-
watches the sky with birds at his side,

the sun fluttering upwards
and flooding his bones,

as he breathes morning's heir
without moving his lips.

Madeline

15

The Life of Summer

I see the leaves hit the ground,
Autumn has come, the leaves are brown.
I see the leaves are hidden from sight,
Winter has come, nothing but white.
I see the leaves growing again,
Spring has come, soon it will begin.

What comes after that, it’s no secret at all.
It is the best time of year, for summer has called.
The leaves, they are dancing through the soothing, sunny breeze,
free from what all the other seasons will bring.

The birds, they are flying, singing their songs,
everything stands peaceful; nothing is wrong.
The sun, it is thriving, like never before,
everyone is wanting and waiting for more.

The children, they run, in and out of theirs doors,
not thinking or worrying about work or their chores.
The towns, they are buzzing, with people all around,
everything is alive, bursting with sound.

Each person takes it in, through that warm, calming air,
feeling without a worry and living without a care.
The fish, the lions, and bees, they all can feel it too,
for every creature on this earth loves it just as much as you.

Yet, everything good always finds an end,
whether a minute, a year, or maybe even ten.
And summer, yes, would count as one,
though the best, it feels, has just begun.

The birds, they soon grow quiet, all amongst the trees,
and the sun, it falls down; life begins to freeze.
The children, they are back, behind those once swinging doors;
the towns, they are silent and filled with remorse.

Summer has left, and everything with it,
the leaves have turned brown, we hate to admit it.
We count down the days until it all will come back,
with hopes that next time will be greater than the last.

Madison

15

Mosquito Kisses

ii. Waiting replaced with occupation,
I count in twos
july,august;
me, you;
before we catch up to ourselves,
replaced anticipation.

iv. My skyscrapers are tower fans that devilishly tickle my feet.
The sidewalk is too scared to.
Whining in the tune of
Mister Hardy serving soft serve
And Mister Softee revving his cycle
With the sweetest desert haze
Of thumbtack-sprinkled corkboard,
I wish that your bronzed Gold Bond knees
Would send seismic waves
through mine.

vi. I am the cockroach of the season
To follow you with your moon leash
made of sand.
Mosquito bites line my ankle cuffs, I trip over the chain.
We will disintegrate in the sun,
is what I think you told me.

viii. I place my journal on top of your Holy Bible
right in your reach,
but you hover over the chocolate chips
in your vanilla ice.
Only I see that it crumbles.

ix. I stopped the twos
when my bike pedaled against the dense air.
My gears chuckled
at my scabbed ankles,
are those mosquito tickles?
They reminded them of some other night off the town,
some skyscraper that made them laugh
what seems like forever ago.
I knew that it was good to feel excitement
through a numbing seat.

x. I kissed the radiators goodnight
with help from the sun
you named the devil.

xi. I sucked up the chilled coffee grinds
and cut my hair
to show the bottom half of my new lobes.
Did you know that there is another world
down the block?

xii. I ordered spumoni
and spent your extra 25 cents
because I know you hate it.
But I don’t.
It was creamy and smooth and sweet,
It did not crumble.
I let it drip on my olive skin to make it even darker
because I know you don’t like my tan.
But I do.

xiii. I was a mermaid with legs today.
I danced in my pool
To a song I found under a rock.
You can come too,
if you can reconcile with the sky.

xiv. I count in twos
july,august;
me, me;
gifted with friendship bracelets
made of mosquito kisses.