February 2019

I once sat next to a weathered man
who wore the sea on his arm.
Said he, with gladness:
“Tell me,
oh, tell me!
How do you do
this lovely first spring day?”
I opened my mouth
and butterflies of peach
danced from my lips.
He did know what they meant,
and caught them gently.
Raising the ‘flies,
he let them to sunlight canvas
and painted the nearby beams
with the blushing color of their wings.
And since, each sunny day
has passed with the aroma of peaches and sea
and it is a lovely spring indeed.

 

 

Cassidy Bishop is a sixteen-year-old aspiring poet living in Loveland, Colorado. Her work has appeared in multiple publications including The Gifted Penman’s Poetry Anthology, the Young Adult Review Network, and Upon Arrival. She finds inspiration from the mountains, her peers, and the artwork around her.

 

 

Sparks glide in the cool night.
The icy breeze tries to follow them.
The sky darkens,
the flames get ever brighter,
The glowing orange seems to say, more wood.
It is that wanting that destroys homes,
Leaving only a charred base.
How beautiful,
yet monstrous.
The fire rises,
it sends a wave of heat so hot I almost back away.
I feel stuck,
as if I can’t speak or move.
Away from the fire I would be blind.
Here I am silent.
I am immobile.
I am alone.
The fire grows tired,
No longer dancing,
But sitting,
Spending all of its energy to keep itself alive.
Flames soon fade to illuminated coals.
I douse the fire.
The sky is not the color black,
But the color darkness.
I turn on my headlamp,
And walk to my house,
a single drop of light in front of me.
I long for the moment when the house’s light covers me,
And I am scared no more.

 

Adam McCarthy lives in Missouri, where he currently attends St. Patrick School. He has been at this school his entire life. One of the greatest teachers ever, Mrs. Meusch, has tasked his class with writing poems for the world to read. He thought it was going to be easy, but found that writing has many, many different properties.

she, temptation

curved coastline & hair black as boot

mother india with her sari hiked up

temple in her legs forgotten

& doesn’t starch just

glide against her

she, reborn daffodil

crumples slickly into rot

ground bared for McDonald’s playground

children wearing English like

clear braces & acne medication

oil carefully fingering tooth marks

she, fish-eyed beauty

water creature saved from oncoming

tsunami

thermostat turned down

pence rattling against her deities

gasp reborn in cracked lipstick

she, lawless

loose hair trapping curls of smoke

tobacco decorating center part & spit saying

I do for her

 

 

 

 

Rukmini Kalamangalam is a page and performance poet from Houston, Texas. She is a graduate of Carnegie Vanguard High School and a current freshman at Emory University. In 2018, she was named Youth Poet Laureate of the Southwest and a National Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador as well as Houston Youth Poet Laureate. Her poem, “After Harvey,” was set to music by the Houston Grand Opera. She has been published by the Houston Chronicle, ABC 13 Visions, and Mutabilis Press, with forthcoming work in Polyphony Lit and the Kweli Journal. She has been recognized by the Harris County Department of Education and nationally by Scholastic Writing Awards.

 

 

I like three-pronged forks,
goodbye kisses (more than hello ones),
sleeping in rooms with dusty books
while it rains hard against the window.

I wear goggles while chopping onions,
and count everything that is white:
sugar, the paws of my lady-cat,
my mother’s orchid that is in perfect bloom
and just about to die.

I think about your soft, brown, dissimilar eyes,
and how I pretend
they never reach me.

I think of the way you touch me sometimes,
so gently, at the hip,
as if this ache were suddenly allowed,
as if we were about to hop on a train
towards some kinder,
more understanding universe.

 

Jenny is a Chinese citizen living in California and an aspiring writer. She moved to the US from China at age fourteen, and is currently a senior at Beverly Hills High School. Aside from writing, she’s passionate about social justice and animal rights.

the kibbutz movement fell

in the ‘90s

my mother

a progeny of the fence playgrounds and

stained glass dining halls

danced in the fields

of shattered glass —-

later poppies

on the hills

of red white and blue —-

before the sinkholes by the

ים המלח

dead sea

collapsed

the great mouth of

the bleeding galil

the parachute

a boot

water fought with

children

i visited a kibbutz

two summers ago

heard my name spoken in the

song of my ancestors

poetry of melancholia

and saw the

cinders

of laughter

still there ——

gunshots playing

softly

in the background

 

Noa Padawer-Blatt is a rising junior from Toronto, Ontario. Formerly, she was a staff writer and editor of INKspire, an online literary platform; she is currently the lead editor. Additionally, she attended the launch program of the Kenyon Young Science Writers Workshop, as well as the School of the New York Times for Cultural and Creative Writing. Her poems search to divulge both her heritage and modern issues, and the moments where the two collide.

 

The girl freezes—suspended
in the air, barely skimming

the lake’s surface. Time
is still. The water loses

its fluidity, its ebb and flow,
becoming a pane of glass,

tinted blue like the summer sky
but rough and unpolished,

the ripples jutting out
like ridges, sharp as glass shards

ready to impale. But the girl
still hovers above, caught

in time’s grasp,
immortal.

 

Emily Lu is currently a sophomore at New Trier High School. She has been writing poetry for three years and attended creative writing courses at the Northwestern Center for Talent Development. Her writing has previously appeared in BALLOONS Literary Journal and Paper Swans Press.