Josephine

15

"Puppet Dance"

There was the chill
And whir
Of machinery and conditioned air
Of shade, of roofs, of shelter
Sunlight from that world beyond
With heat, with breeze, with life
That seeps in through the cracks in reality
By lawn mower, by dogs, by souls
Time caught passing by moving shadows
Fading, moving, clear reflection
Staring back on windows

Another day
Life
Eternity
Watching that car and that man and that dog
Occasionally switching scenes to the painfully quiet
Or the painfully loud
As the world comes crashing in
Puppets breaking in the wind
Living in delusion
The strings are tight and the bodies loose
Or the bodies loose but the strings tights?
Regardless, tangled

But I am sheltered
From heat, from entanglement, from knowledge
Drowning in the silence
Of seeing, of watching, of wishing
And noticing
As I act and feel
That I do not
That the strings are loose, but my body tight
That the freedom stilled my shadows
That I have become the weak
And they, the great

Katie

15

Carnival Revelations

summertime ferris wheels spin like my mind
my thoughts are cotton candy melting on my tongue
sugar sweet and barely there
freshly spun and still so young

it would be easy to drift away from life
like balloons my fingers once let slip away
but ending my life is a selfish act
to my friends, whose lives are remaining today

it hurts to shatter my love’s glassy eyes
his life was dedicated to my stare
our favorite ride is the spinning teacups
he’d be devastated if I wasn’t there

my daughter deserves a chance to be born
to capture those eight o’clock fireflies
our warm July evenings and sunsets of pink
will never occur if her sad mother dies

merry-go-rounds are repetitive rides
but at least they're always foreseen
though predictable now, later is not
at this innocent age of fifteen

J.

16

Burgers flipping,
Cones dripping.
Summer haze,
Barbecue glaze.
Endless laughter,
Hot dogs after.
Smell of grass,
Clinking ice, hard as brass.

Mollie

17

After You Caught Me Trying to Cook Summer

There is chocolate on my feet. Cinnamon
in my hair. Vanilla between my fingers.

I don’t need sugar when I’m around you;
I just appreciate it more.

This August sun has melted the chocolate in my soul;
I am drained of it.

We used to say,
“Chocolate fixes everything.”

But do not be trapped,
don’t mix yourself into my recipe.

I want you to run, take the wind for a walk my darling,
I know how to deal with my own despair.

There is cinnamon in my hair and I can’t wash it out.
Rain doesn’t help, nor do tears,

and we’re out of vanilla.

Take me to the edge of the bridge
and hold my hand while I look down

and think what it would feel like to jump.
This will make me all the more sure

that I don’t want to jump,
because I want you, all of you darling,

spreading like syrup around me; hold me
until the walls break.

The windows cut maps into your shoulders
when they break from your flailing arms.

I will trace the maps
with cinnamon fingers,

and find my way to you with a blue pen.
The scars from the broken glass will heal,

but that blue route will stay inked on you forever.

In the mornings, I’ll sing out an open window,
but the birds and the neighbors will be deaf to my call.

When the door closes on your arrival,
you will stretch a chocolate smile.

Summer will have passed, and the sun
will be too far away to melt it.

You will hold my lungs open for breath,
and pluck my vocal chords

into the kind of love song no one can ignore.
 

Mollie

17

Waking Thoughts of Summer

I thought this might be insanity,
this state in which I am floating above the clouds.

I thought I might sing out my window
let the fields tell me what I need

in rainsoaked,
hackneyed verse.

I thought I might skin my knees today,
and then maybe you would love me more.

I thought I might tear the books apart
so that I could reorder their pages

into something that doesn’t make me cry.
This I thought I might do

in a room with translucent walls
so that you would have to watch.

I thought I might kidnap the sun
so that I could make her turn her back to me;

I am so tired
of this nauseous brightness.

Some June mornings,
my dreams continue after I wake up.

They writhe in my shadow all day.
This waking sleepfulness won’t stop.

I thought I might sleep until the leaves fall,
but you took my hand and led me to an empty field.

I thought I might drown in the stream there,
but you found a four-leaf clover,

doused my fingertips in the soft touches of tall grass,
and reminded me that summer only lasts so long.

Noemi

16

My country is turning against one Another tonight.
My brothers and sisters, fighting.
A war none will win.
A war that's already been fought
Many years ago.
Although my brothers and sister don't look like me, they are my family.
Though some may be darker than me and some may be lighter,
They are my family.
My family has brought tears to each Others eyes
Through poison bombs thrown into Crowds
They have been cuffed and beaten
Tonight my family will fight once more
And tomorrow I know will be no Different
You want to hear about my summer?
It was't popsicles and poolsides.
No,
My summer was watching humanity fight humanity.
This country is a broken home.
There is no protection of the peace.
Who do we call when the ones who are supposed to protect us, turn against us?

Liana

15

Time to Face Reality

a day without a deadline
a week without a worry
joyous, blithe, and free
books to absorb, time to spend
a full agenda with nothing to do
expanses of months to behold-
like a row of lawns, soaking or dry
The days stay golden
until the hours tick by slower,
play succumbs to boredom.
One minute I am uninhibited,
and in an hour I’ll be tetchy.
I remember to forget the work.
I dread the call, the ring, of cold.
A day with dead-tired students.
A week with a workload.
A year without the sun.
Ages without pure fun.

Liana

15

At the break of dawn
I breathe out a puff of air
And the sun sighs too

Paloma

16

"I can't believe it's over already"

Gillian

14

Memories are made, some great, some worse
We feel infinite as the time goes by
Stars are our friends that sometimes light up the sky
Summer flings that last but a moment
As we fall in and out love like ripples in water
As we fill our hearts with whispered nothings
As we walk in step with sand underfoot
As we lay down in the grass
Not a worry or a grimace
Listening to vinyl that was from but a second ago
The newest songs blare in our heads
Lyrics branded into our very eardrums
As we feel the suns heat
As we whisper our goodbyes
As we feel the confidence growing
As we get knocked down only to rise back up
It comes unannounced
A stranger at the doorstep
The date we feared but forgot about
It’s coming to an end
As we take down the independence we had
As we replace the crickets lullaby
As we crawl back into our skins
As we become our awkward selves once again
All too quick and soon
Reality’s shackles click back
Another summer gone
Another victory won.

Aaron

14

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.

Jasmine

16

Limitless Azure Skies
Warm July sun baking my ears
Drowse washing over me like
Rolling Ocean Waves, Frothing and Cool
Ice Cream melting onto my toes
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Sand, a cushion for my tanned toasty toes
Seashells prickling my feet, delightful Crunch
Faraway Laughter
Seagull's Call.
A Sunny Eternity,
Stretching into the
Beyond.

Maylene

14

Not unlike a ghost, just a breeze,
a haze or a blur,
the moment blew past everything,
as would a word that had escaped the mouth,
but, if only for a second, I
had held that word in my hands,
cupping it in like summer fireflies.

The sun, a scarlet plate,
threw around its infectious gown, a welcomed plague,
that poisoned the clouds into pink or orange or purple,
which dyed my bare arms, legs, face orange,
as I dangled my legs in the pond--
the ultimate doppelganger, adopting as its own face,
the face of the sky,
and the heat, the humidity, the flies:
all the eyes and mouths and skin of summer.

The moment passed, and now I look down,
seeing the pond reflect me,
and tell me the words I
already know, have known,
but never really felt;
but now, in my other self under the pond, I
breathe them in like bubbles,
in rhythm:
Summer, summer, not around you,
but inside you.

Sabrina

17

Ghazal of June

we walked on stolen roses waiting for ribbons and late orchids
to tell us of the thunder last winter, of the permanganate orchids

who were the first to notice the coroner’s sign of four crossed on
the door, sizzling on the cast iron along with ornate orchids.

I remember using forgetfulness as a silver lining and asked to
to refund the memory that sometime across we ate orchids

and broiled them in wrought iron pans, taking the juices
out and smearing them with butter, discarnate orchids

that stole the iambs and homemade pepper jelly
to make a rainstorm. Chance potentate, orchids

where we walked on the battered pier,
lost ourselves in fourth estate orchids

and cameramen on byways, the
stolen roses sizzling on the cast

iron, taking the juices to
make a rainstorm.

Sabrina

17

The Asphyxiation of Strawberries

Saddles are for corpses, the kind
that tousle their fingernails in formaldehyde
and use chalk to pencil in weathers

for their microcosmic thunderscreams.
They taught me to use sonar as a
substitute for sight, a rapped tongue

for testing braille markers on the
bathroom walls, because in essence
that’s what resurfaces after the

wicks burn out and we are told that
the real artists and sidewalk versions
of ourselves are selling paper knapsacks

to the storm clouds before the television
crowds come and force all the strawberries
back into their own lonely oblivion.

Marie-Rose

14

Alive

We are children in the meadow:
the kind of meadow that Julie Andrews spins on,
singing the hills are alive,
alive with the sound of music.

We are children, alive.
Healthy, strong, growing, blossoming.
The meadow is alive beneath our feet,
heaving the chlorophyllic breaths of Mother Earth.
The grass tickles our frolicking toes
as we are alive,
alive on top of it.

Our mother’s soft eyes squint to see us
as our tripping legs carry us towards the faraway line,
where the blinding blue meets the green.
We’re slurping the sun,
our limbs -- baking potato skins,
golden brown.
Sunshine tumbles through our pores
and sprays from our hair,
but we want more, more.
We are hungry, thirsty, always.
We are alive,
alive.

Yelena

17

"Morrison/Rimbaud"

Nothing is the same, everything is changing
All has been said
And there isn’t time to know this world...

The shadow behind the curtains
Handed him a bear with invisible lyric
He dreamed of golden colors while awake
And wrote them in film.

Illumination and darkness
Emerging from the cave
There is no idea, only exquisite song
He himself carried the condition of existence
And the girls’ genius transformed into
Knitting machines, after the golden ring
My grandmother’s words silenced
Betrayed her own mind
A life unfulfilled and unreconciled

To end so quietly.

Yelena

17

"Contemplating Youth"

In a pale blue evening
The dust of the golden sun is lost
Lost like the youth of
My cavernous palms.

How I wish to tell you what I know
But my dying mind is dying so.
Moment by moment, I watch you work.
You exalt, somehow, in an earthly way….

Wise old trees, blankets for the languor in which you hide,
Will soon become the past season’s leaves.

They are clever.
They are light.

I think about infinite space while you sleep,
How fleeting appulses gently turn the tides
That are still crashing behind my ears.

Remind me again, where do you go at night when you sleep?
Who does your vagrant mind follow beneath the sheets?
The curtains are calling,
Where are their voices?
Where is their pallor?
I sit here, waiting for your return…

In a pale blue evening
When the dust of the golden sun is lost
Lost like the youth of
My cavernous palms.

Jennifer

15

Cicadas Again

Summertime, the shine
of the polished pine stair

on the backs of my thighs,
and air conditioning, weary of
its constant whirs.

Down below the pots met with wood, and my
toes lingered before stepping

up and out and down , the next

ledge below is tiny, as they all are.
But the voices

drifting up from the den
like soft fog from a morning valley sifting

into my vacancy - a crude reminder of the day. My
hand
slid down the balustrade, causing eruptions of memory
dust to wiggle into my nails.:

the sound of their scratching
oblique, across

the mind-smoothed
surface of your face, harvesting what
they can, summer

is nearly over, and autumn
is the time for gathering. I never really

got the point, the summers gold and seasons

change. A clock keeps going with batteries. I was
supposed to be a battery--an automated system.
To tick on and around, with the same blank face.

Same two fingers pointing defiantly at the time, I liked it.
Just like the mold that grows around I liked it.
The mold tells a tale

of what happens to memories that aren't aired out

And that's what I want to find out. The wooden stair edges
flickered beneath my toes then arch then heels. Sunny rectangles
shone thru the windows, today is like then, but

it is today.
The memory arrives. It becomes

now. The steady line of your voice joining
the chorus in the den, resounding across the
towns, brings summer.

Aansa

16

Feel the blissful sigh
of memories leaving me
and the lack of intellectual consistency
relieving me
temperatures on the rise
long days with no goodbyes
everything's slow and memorable
easily adjustable
a few endless months
the ice cream haze
blurry eyes before
the end of the day
and no strain
no stress
the last part of the tumultuous cycle
do nothing, feel nothing
say nothing, keep relaxing
no ones asking
no more stares
nothing worse for wear
long sunsets
and endless nights
longer sunrise
and infinite days
spinning into a haze of memories
of surreality
disbelievingly
the leap is taken
the faith unshaken
and everyone part
of this bold process