Poetry

I have bones to pick with existence –

who forced me to be here as a vulture,

coughing up marrow of my personality’s frame?

Who poised my skeleton in material decay

to walk among the inhabitable

spaces while my hands are raised in the air

in prayer or self defense –

there’s a pale girl who isn’t sure which

one she should be asking more of.

There’s a bird who is picking away

at the scoliosis in my spine, the serotonin

(or lack thereof) in the palpable scars

gasping across the folds of my frontal cortex, how about

my nervous system backfiring

like a space shuttle that ran out of fuel.

There’s empty music from the empty room across the hall

that roars and reminds me.

I kick at a speck of dust

because it is licking at the fireplace and I watch it

burst in the heat and sink into the flames.

Audrey Lee is a current senior at The Episcopal Academy in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania and will be attending Franklin and Marshall College this coming fall. She is the winner of the 2016 DeSales University Poetry Contest and her writing has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and Columbia College of Chicago. She has attended programs by the University of Virginia and Ithaca College, and edits her school literary magazine, The Epolitan. Her work has been featured in or is forthcoming from The Claremont Review, Rookie Magazine, YARN: The Young Adult Review Network, Canvas Literary Journal, Moledro Magazine, Blue Marble Review, Eunoia Review, Half Mystic Journal, Paper Swans Press, and Teen Vogue. This summer, Audrey will attend the University of Iowa Young Writers’ Studio and intern at Apiary Magazine. Find her at audreymorganlee.weebly.com.

Old scars peeling back and
big aspirations to love you
again have kept me from
blooming and sparking into
the wildfire I’ve been told I
can be
but you’re the one who told
me that you were water that
would inevitably douse my
flame and for some reason
I so desire that.

Jacob is a student at an arts high school in Pittsburgh PA who attends for writing all sorts of genres. His favorite, however, is poetry.

a tinsel giggle erupted from my mouth,
consdensed air escaping a soda bottle

i never liked gritty sand in my toes
or crunchy peanut butter over white bread

never liked stray cats,
blood in their wake
like rainbow oil puddles

but i did like pre-storm skies
yellow-stained paper almost
brown at the edges

i liked when my shoulder blades spread,
making room for battered wings
flapping above the
metronome of an ocean
splash-hissing me to a rhythm

until

the stars grew tired,
my wings coated in salt

and

i said thanks
before dutiful slumber
until the day’s discolored page
was turned.

Morgan Almasy is a sophomore creative writing major at Red Bank Regional High School in New Jersey. Last year she attended the Interlochen Center for the Arts’ creative writing summer program and will be attending this upcoming summer as well. Almasy has been recognized by the national Scholastic Art and Writing competition, earning a gold key, four silver keys, and an honorable mention.

Before, was Absence:

A drowsed opiate ether,

She defied all dimension

Save expanse.

Then, came Light:

A rabble-rouser,

His tongue lacerated

The night with scalding flame.

Third, was Sound:

A harkening cry,

She spliced silence into waves

From whence melody was born.

Late, came Matter:

A narcissist,

He churned the torrents into seas

And conceived a mirror of his beauty.

Lastly, was Life:

An eternal continuation,

She birthed man and animal

As brothers.

Now, is Existence:

Malleable in the palm

Of any who hold

A pen.

Beth Proctor is a sixteen-year-old poet from Lincolnshire, England. She enjoys writing, baking and learning languages other than her own. Her work has previously been published in the Busta Rhymes anthology.

Do you know about the Dahlia flower?                         No
And how it grows back                                                     Black
In the concrete, I see it tower                                         Loud
Proving nature’s law wrong                                            Human
Only one seed                                                                    Grows
But now it starts to go                                                     Fast
Now we have to show                                                      Vast
That is has in fact                                                             Passed
Do you know about the Dahlia flower?                       Me
I’d know it if it wasn’t in me                                           You

Isabel Leonard is a student at California State University Northridge.Originally from Portland, OR she moved to California for college. She competes on the track and field team at CSUN and studies psychology. She believes the biggest asset we have is our ability to think.