Blue Marble Review

Literary Journal for Young Writers

(did i)
kill the world

By Makela Shen

This poem is in the form of a Golden Shovel. To read the hidden source text, take the last word of each line and read them sequentially from top to bottom.

ash fills his mouth as he wakes alone without recollection to a blood moon spiraling across the horizon. glass shards smudge his infrared vision; it could be that they lacerate him in crimson rivers, the backs of his hands grayed like withered snow. or maybe he’s already been sliced asunder as he gazes at the carcasses slumped around him, not unlike the pomegranate husks they gave him in the lab that he used to pry loose & discard. the buildings have fallen like matchsticks, candle wax–rubble & an empty combe the color of his metal eyes. the sky breaks like an open wound on water & now only that dream-catcher dangling above the gleaming curve of andromeda’s throne remains. but there is no shadow, only a silent wreckage in year two thousand & eighty-eight of los angeles where the titanium bones & cybernetic veins & blades of his flesh have killed the world. he has a question.

 

Makela Shen is a fifteen-year-old from California. Out of 177 schools from 33 states nationwide, she was awarded a First Class designation in the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Promising Young Writers Contest. Her work has been recognized by Stone Soup, Writopia, and the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. An avid reader, she nurtures an unhealthy obsession for Hello Kitty and has a boundless passion for dance.