Poetry

 

A body wilts

over time. If aging is a catalyst

and death a point of collision,

we constantly react,

desperately resisting forces of nature.

Our bending limbs must snap someday.

We’ll weather

whether we want to or not. (Fade with me,

into uncertainty, into a sunset that never ends.

A room with sharp edges and no windows.)

We can no longer deny age

when our fathers decay to gum, no teeth,

welts on their foreheads

like death’s branding label, marking what

is his, what has always

been his. We know collisions

with too little energy

do not create a reaction. Why does

it surprise us now

when our cells produce less

bone marrow, our skin refuses to cling

to our skeletons, like it

once did? Our children will have children

and these human beings

will come into contact with absolute orientation.

Time spills

through the gaps of our fingers, like silica,

harbingers of the end.

And when we reach the point of collision,

all we can do is hope

that the remnants of our reaction

yield something sublime,

something untouchable by time itself.

 

 

Vivian Lu is a junior at Cherry Hill High School East and the Editor-in-Chief of Bitter Melon Magazine. Her work appears or is forthcoming in National Poetry Quarterly, deLuge, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere. Her writing has been honored by the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the Live Poets Society of NJ, and the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association. Beyond writing, she is the Founder and Executive Director of The Axon Project, a nonprofit organization that seeks to increase accessibility to neuroscience education for high school students.

i keep the time

from slipping

by pouring it away.

pouring it into the kitchen sink

where it sluices

between coffee grinds and egg shells

it’s all rushing away anyways

i am four five seven eight eleven thirteen sixteen sixteen sixteen

a rush of birthday candles

‘what do you want to be’, they asked

and i had no answers for them

‘an artist?’

i am a child

for whom time is swirling too fast

and my mind is whirring too slow.

so i keep the time from slipping

by pouring it away.

because maybe if i push it away

it’ll come back to me

like everything i’ve never found.

 

 

Lauren is a senior at Avon Grove High School. In addition to writing, she enjoys piano, violin, and drawing.

 

 

 

I crave the blinding white,

The sheer intensity of it;

Burning your corneas,

Creating a

low, moaning hum that passes through your spinal cord

And turning your fingerprints and everything they’ve ever touched

Caressed or fondled to powdery, meaningless ash.

I relish in the white hot pain.

 

Or perhaps what I desire most is the murky black

The foggy forgetfulness of it;

Temporarily suspended in time.

Here you don’t just float for a moment,

Traipsing in and out of fleeting truth and

Demanding realities.

Where I go

You no longer exist.

 

 

Eleanor Colligan is a junior currently living in Chicago, Illinois. She loves to read and write poetry.

I trusted that the sun
would rise again
I trusted it would do so
but I suppose it grew weary of
the pressure of my dependency
and the monotony of its cycle
for it did not rise today
as it had for me every day before
Today.

I trusted that the flowers
would blossom this spring
as they had every spring
but they seemed to go the other way
to cave inwardly
and trickle shamefully
into the ground
afraid to be exposed
in sunlight that didn’t care to shine.

They trickled further
all the more calloused
in their wrong-way-wayward ways
that I had never seen them follow before
Today.

Bryce Langston is from a small town in central Florida. He writes because he enjoys finding and capturing the symbolism and metaphors in everyday life. Bryce’s hobbies include playing guitar, playing tennis, and reading.

 

 

There’s a neon palm tree

standing uphill

from where I emerged,

half-awake,

a moth brushing off a synthetic chrysalis

draped in imaginary green and white.

It’s just another fixture,

gaudy and bright in the then-discovered early morning.

The dull red of sunrise

sits atop the mountains,

the kind of color that reminds me of midnight,

of times not meant to be seen–

Geese out on the pond,

afraid of my heart in the dark,

my shoes full of dew.

I don’t remember looking up

which is why the stars surprise me, still flickering

in the pale gray sky–

the brightness of a planet,

still and steady

catches the corner of my eye,

like the palm tree, like me,

a satellite masquerading

as a star.

 

 

Norah Brady is a fifteen-year-old wanna-be poet, author, and actor. She’s most at home anywhere she can write, preferably with two cats and quite a few books. You can find her work in Rookie magazine, Stone Soup, and Write the World’s 2017 collection: Young Voices Across the Globe.

I sit in the prenatal black of

A chaotic new moon,

Waist-deep

In the marsh,

 

It clings to my legs like

A salmon to its home-stream,

Slip-sliding up

the cliffs and

Crags of my shoulder blades

As they extend cupped hands

As pixie-stars fall ash-like

As fingertips touch green

 

I feel snakes.

 

They pulse peristaltic,

Tasting the glow of my palms,

Maws encircling

My fingers like rings,

My wrists,

My shoulders,

 

I am the feeder and the feed,

Yet I feel no fear as

The new moon wilts

And tumbles into the pit.

 

Tobi was the youngest speaker for the 2016 TedxValenciaHighSchool. She has been published in Adonis Designs Press, Basil O’Flaherty (2 pieces), and Phosphene Literature Journal, Chautauqua Journal, Panoplyzine, and Rattle. She also won a Silver Key in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Tobi writes for many reasons; one of them is to inspire change. She wants to change the world, and in her opinion, change doesn’t have to be big. Maybe she can bring a new perspective to light. Maybe her words can bring joy. To her, any small shift can be change.