Issue Eleven

 

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.

1.

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.

 

2.

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.

 

3.

Days pass, months, fading in the red sunset.

Tears stain the pages

More often than ink.

 

4.

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.

 

5.

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.

 

6.

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.