Poetry

A crowded room
too much nothing
to be entertained

The riddled grand
piano
Never been
and never being played

The ashtray
overflowing
In and out
the people going

Stuck in ended lives
Yet still knowing

 

 

Ritika Singh is seventeen years old and lives in Andover, MA.

we are the girls made of sky,
the scent of midnight woven into our skin
and stardust makeup adorning our eyelids.

constellations spread across our cheeks,
comets and shooting stars woven into our hair
as we dance in circles around these distant earths.

beautiful girls,
constructed of starlight and poetry,
moonlight and wondering,
ethereal and wild and oh-so free.

more goddess than human,
we glow with a certain kind of light
the one that you can’t help but bask in
and worship our infinite galaxies.

 

Izzy Frangiosa is a fifteen-year-old sophomore from northern New Jersey. She enjoys reading, writing, playing softball, and watching movies with her friends. She hopes to one day pursue a career as an investigative journalist.

 

i thought i told you
to keep the cat out of
the microwave. he’s
gotten in there again and
we’ll have to pay, worse explain
the deep scratches on the sides
of the little oven. finally
he has stopped spinning on
the flimsy turntable but look at him,
wrinkled neck craning to get
a better view through
the stained window. it seems
warm in there, away from
the icy roads
where just last week
a car going ninety sped off
the nameless cliffs and was
swallowed by the aching
earth. the microwave
catches heat in
the static darkness, away
from outside where each
brittle branch reaches out like
a lonely arm.

 

Amanda Huang is a junior at Millburn High School, where she is a senior editor of her school’s literary magazine. Her work has been nationally recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and JustPoetry. She has been published in the Rising Phoenix Review, the Word magazine, and in TeenInk. She loves poetry because it is a beautiful and creative outlet for her thoughts and feelings.

 

you look just like your mother,
they told me and I looked
from her thick ringlets of dark hair
with eyes like ink and skin like coffee
to my father’s fair hair
with eyes shut to the struggles he married into
his skin the shade of privilege
and I wished I looked more like him

your lunch smells like dog food,
they told me and I looked
from my warm, welcoming bowl
of Indonesian rendang daging sapi
savory beef stew saturated
with the same spices they
stole 
and imperialized upon with my people’s sweat,
to their dry, pre-packaged boxes
of unseasoned crackers, dull deli meat
maybe canned fruit if they were lucky
and I wished I didn’t have to eat lunch at school

you must have gone there with the Peace Corps,
they conclude and the hairs on my neck
rise with the desire to defend my motherland
what they see as a decrepit third world country
engulfed in poverty and problems
inhospitable to its own kin, a nation on its knees
begging for Western intervention
and I wished I was back on an island shore
not their gentrified Bali beach destination
but complete with scattered waste, ramshackle rafts, and callous fishermen
far from their pre-constructed box that
I am still working to crawl out of

you ought to feel oppressed by your culture,
they pity and I crave to dissent
and try to explain as I have to the masses
that my country, not yours, has had a female president
that it is my mother’s choice to wear a hijab
just as it is mine not to
but I bite my tongue for ignorance is a wall;
one that cannot be knocked down with my breath
and so I save my words.

Mutiara is a psychology undergraduate at Brandeis University. She enjoys writing about her experiences as a minority in the hopes of reaching an audience that typically feels underrepresented by mainstream media and works of writing. With her work she hopes to evoke an urge to initiate a large-scale dialogue about societal issues and injustices.

 

When I wrote today I wrote a thousand words
that I wasn’t proud of but I was
proud to have started because
when you run, you lose when you stop
and I didn’t stop, I ran the length of the thousand miles,
and even if they are the words that were written a thousand times before

I wrote.

 

 

Valeria is an eleventh grader in India. She has published her writing on various websites such as Teen Ink and the Marcus Harris Foundation Blog. Works in various genres, especially legal thrillers and poetry, interest her. She would like to take her writing career forward in the future.

With a line borrowed from “Thinking about Death” by John Koethe.

I can’t pretend to find the right emotion; I’m no actress. That’s why they hired you.

Small smile here, please. Pucker your lips, just a little. Eyebrows up. There. Pleasantly surprised. Now hold it. I’ll help.

There is humor in the death of a fly at a spider’s hand, and now your face knows it. Amusing, to have lived a short life and died a long death.

There is sadness in the celebration of a birthday, and now your face knows it. Depressing, that experience is only a byproduct of life.

There is brevity in the permanence of death, and now your face knows it. Comforting, that you need only be remembered for so long.

Perfect.
Action.

 

 

Anishi Patel is a young writer from the Bay Area. She edits for the Siblini Journal and her school’s literary magazine, Soundings. When she’s not at speech and debate practice or writing newspaper stories, Anishi enjoys taking long drives with Herbie, her orange Jeep Wrangler and drinking macchiatos, the Peet’s kind.