Poetry

Perennial

By Kate Castellana

we ride twelve feet tall on heat waves like they’re coastal swells:

growing up in california

has born an unquenchable thirst for the sky in my throat

and on my powdery tongue

i wait all year for rain

like my cousins across the country wait for christmas;

stick out my tongue to catch acid precipitation like they catch sugary snowfall.

i learned how to love with a dry mouth and

that’s the miracle:

something’s still growing.

Kate is currently attending her second year at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. She has contributed to and works as the layout designer for her university’s literary magazine. When not at school in the Pacific Northwest, she goes home to sunny southern California, where she reunites with the three great loves of her life, including iced matcha lattes, the smell of lemongrass, and chocolate-chip waffles.

All the Words That Cannot Lie

By Cate Pitterle

When loss tugs, I write.

The words sway like dancers

Under a cloud-shot September sky,

And I’m not sure where they come from—

Maybe from the calluses on my fingertips

Or the embers that burn in my bones or

The sunlight flooding my eyes and lighting

Even the darkest corners of my mind.

One day, the words stop. I sit and

Stare at the wrinkled snow-white paper

No sentences scrawling from my pen,

And a lump rises in my throat as I realize

Without words, I don’t know

Who I am.

Days pass, months, fading in the red sunset.

Tears stain the pages

More often than ink.

One March day at school, I ask David

What lights the fire in his blood

And my friend looks at me with a tight smile

That doesn’t reach his eyes and says

I don’t have any fire.

I am like him— scorched in summer heat,

Glowing in sunrays, yet unable to burn.

When the April clouds start to drift,

I become stubborn.

A blank document scowls up at me

Like the twisted face of a long-dead ghost

And my cobweb nerves tremble under its gaze.

Seconds pass, the minute hand

Clawing at my skin, scraping

The dead coals in my bones

But I steel myself and make my heart become iron.

I set the font, crack my knuckles

Then write a sentence, another, another,

My blood burning like lantern-lit flames

In the night, and the sturdy type

Clicks out on the page like the steps

Of a samba de roda

The similes flying like feather-tailed gowns

On a September wind.

Now,

Terpsichore dances across the pages

And my heart sings like a hammer on steel.

Cate Pitterle is a junior at Cary Academy, where she writes for the school’s literary magazine and is the editor-in-chief of the newspaper. She also works as a second reader for Polyphony H.S., an international literary journal for high schoolers. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Teen Ink Print, Body Without Organs, Foliate Oak, and elsewhere, and has been recognized by Scholastic Art and Writing. She has a seemingly permanent sock tan.

How to Not Say Regret

By Grace Zhang

When karma shot him in

the bubble tea shop, they

shot you too. Heart fell straight

out of your chest, plopped across

the bamboo floor, thrashing like a

fish out of water. Its ugly veins

rupturing, spitting ostensibly.

A desiccated, carved out

hollow. Nightmares of

tapioca balls exiting the

revolver, ricocheting off

the walls, smearing all the

love letters you traced with

him in spilled sugar. How

to not burst whilst

rearranging burnt

bergamot orange and

darjeeling tea to call each other

“honey.” Now he bleeds

oolong like he used to

inhale it from your mouth in

between shifts, in

between the eternal spaces

where you didn’t utter it

back.

Grace Zhang is a seventeen year old from Princeton High hungry to get out of the bubble and experience the world. Her work has been nationally commended by the Scholastic Art & Writing awards and is forthcoming in the National Poetry Quarterly. Some things she likes are liminal spaces, peach oolong bubble tea, and the mundane morning stars.

This is Not a Poem

By Aarushi Bhardwaj

This is not a poem

and I am not a poet

when I can’t find eloquent words to describe

that more blacks are incarcerated in America right now

than in apartheid South Africa

when beautiful words fail me and I can’t express

the worries of the deprived through the complexity of language

that our key policy makers and leading civil servants

have never had a job outside of politics

that sixty percent of Jews identify as atheists since the holocaust

no, I am not a poet

when I can’t find crafty words to illustrate the fact

that before 2008 Mandela had been on America’s list

of most dangerous terrorists for more than half a century

that

massacres and genocides and partitions and conflicts

give way to erratic sensationalizing where no one can hear the cries

that when the ending is unsatisfactory

not many stick around to watch

some wax lyrical about the tragedy and the shock

about something tangible lost by something intangible

the pleasures of life lost to the end of a sharp knife

the joy of living lost in a bullet wound

but the real comedy is how some fail to acknowledge it at all

chaos befallen on them who dared to utter a syllable

lest someone knows it was their fault

the plot twist is that there is no plot twist

and I wish there was some metaphor

to lower you into this grief

but that is why this is not a poem

and I am not a poet

but it’s fair to say

the heart’s crafted to evermore persist

a rugged pioneer of time, relentless optimist

that sometimes it’s an act of bravery even to exist

but you see

I’ve crossed lines, not followed traditional poetic form

failed to construct elaborate metaphors to explain

that immigration isn’t a choice

that a person probably has more Muslim blood

than the people in the mosque they conspire to blast

never is survival available to all those who deserve it

and so it goes

how do I explain all this and still retain artistic worth?

the wanderers, the grievers- here they are doomed to roam

hatred boils in them and sears the world like a blazing scar

and humanity falls when tyrants are hailed

but how can one be falling, if flying feels the same?

how does man forgive himself

for all the things he did not become?

a refugee buried within suffering

for a war he cannot comprehend

but it’s all done now

anger surrounds us

hate courses through us

yet this hate is unaware

of the humanity she births into us

we are made of all the things that break us

just to keep us alive

maybe I should’ve just said that, but I didn’t

because

this is not a poem

and I am not a poet

of things that seem out of place in today’s world

like writing a poem which isn’t one

Aarushi Bhardwaj is a school student from India and has been previously published in Teen Ink Magazine and The Hindustan Times.

Nutrition Facts

By Caitlin Salomon

I rub the neon rind

Of the juicy clementine,

A fragrant sun I cradle in my palm.

It croons of life so sweet,

And it’s mighty nice to eat,

That thick-skinned ball from California’s groves.

It’s coated with a shine

Of chemicals that rhyme

With names of third-world countries I can’t say.

I’m sure it’s safe to eat,

(If no substances have leached)

Into the soil where this gem was grown.

See—the crop must have been good,

For they all look as they should,

And taste the same and share their DNA.

And since we’ve cloned a sheep,

(To match the people that we feed)

It’s no trouble to clone a few small fruits.

Why, in only a short time

Instead of me in line,

My double will be buying this instead.

Caitlin is an English major at Grove City College who has too many half-filled journals lying around. When she’s not writing, she can be found eating pizza, watching Seinfeld, or listening to music.

House

By Lydia Friedman

These days I’m still adrift,

captain of a childhood tub

that wishes it were a skiff.

Someday I’ll shipwreck & wash up

on a shore just strange

enough to do. Kneeling in foreign muck,

I’ll build a house, shingle to hinge.

Like this. Four walls, each brick a word.

Slant rhymes for roof-slats, arranged

in terza rima to keep rain out. Hard

truths for muntins & panes.

Each door a creaky metaphor from cupboards

to closets. Ideas grand & mean

will waft from the beanstalk

chimney like a kitchen kettle’s whine.

And in the garden, silk-

petaled inspirations will puff

& bloom with incessant talk.

Lydia Friedman is a nineteen-year-old time traveler who once went on a blind date with a marble statue in Vienna. She lives in New England and can be reached by howling into the void, or at www.crookedbutinteresting.wordpress.com.