• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

Blue Marble Review

Literary Journal for Young Writers

  • Home
  • About
    • Masthead
    • Contact
    • Donate
  • Issues
    • Covid Stories
  • FAQs
  • Submit

Summer: 5 Poems/4 Stories

Fishing on the White River

By Emily Dorffer

We could see the eddies carrying algae

downstream where some fly fishermen

had recently gone to whip their rods.

She said, “I’ll catch a brook trout this time.

It’ll be a lunker. You’ll see.”

I said, “Of course you will, after I do.”

My dad would be arriving soon, dangling

worms in our faces. In the amusing way

of this place, rainbow trout leapt into the fog

before splashing down to tempt us to travel to

the end of the rainbow with almonds and parsley.

“Powerbait,” she said, “is the best way

to get a few nibbles.” I said,

“Which color works best: pink, yellow, or orange?”

We had known each other for ages

so my love for her, like a patchwork quilt

draped across me, reflected my experiences

in a simplified way as if they were viewed

through fragments of stained glass

collected from a church’s floor and whose edges

had been sanded into smoothness. “Your luck,”

she whispered, “your skill, your instinct

will lead the way.” Her forehead glistened

with diamonds of sweat. “You’re the expert,”

I said, but I pointed to the jar with the

highlighter yellow balls. The raindrops

were drumbeats. “You’ve got this,”

she muttered, “I’ll bet there’s a hungry fella

eyeing your bait.” Trolling is the process

by which one trails a baited line

behind a boat but how, how?

With the current’s help. I know that now,

as long as the line doesn’t snag, anyhow.

 

 

 

Emily Dorffer is a current undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University. She has previously had a short story published in Breath & Shadow.

 

Study of the Back Door

By Imani Davis

 

I am sick of courage. I grit my teeth into diamonds. You a good father, making me spit sawdust like a working thing and all/ feminism of the plow and sweat. I erode my eyes against your absence of mercy. You raised your girl right. Granite enough to chisel into like renewable resource. I ain’t never runnin out on you, Pops. The same way every Cadillac gon have gas till the end of time. Whatever I gotta tell you to get your eyes to flutter somewhere Georgia summer soft, sometime before you forged your God into an unlocked handcuff dangling at your wrist like the trust of a girlchild. I’m the youngest of your mistakes. Which is to say I have not had time to heal away my being. I am a scar ready to peel off the mystery of its face. I’m erasing my body until all that is left is a handful of chipped teeth. I invent a new word for gone every time we lock eyes. Teach me the ease of cowardice. I do not know if the grass is greener on the other side, but I know the ground here is tired of conjuring fruit from barren blood. This is the story I guess: a man the shade of lumbered and labored oak claims the night as his overcoat. Every star implodes in his synapses. Cuz back in the day, children used to respect they parent’s trauma. They was seen and not swallowed. And they knew better than to come home after certain darks.

 

 

 

Imani Davis is a student of many things, most often her Blackness. She’s currently studying at the University of Pennsylvania. Her poetry has settled down with Rookie Magazine, Brain Mill Press, and other homes. She was also awarded a Silver National Medal from the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers. She is a member of Urban Word NYC’s Slam Team. Her life is grounded in “despite” and New York. She can be reached at imanid@sas.upenn.edu.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shirtless

By Joseph Christensen

My pale frame rests under a dark V-neck

Skinny some say

Yes, I suppose…

 

Guys loll in easy confidence

Gifted with lines and shadows defining them

Chiseled features, six-pack abs, sensitive yet strong

“No, no, I think I’ll keep my shirt on.”

“I’m cold,” a lie

I shiver for effect

They effortlessly roll their golden shoulders, “Whatever”

 

Perfection doesn’t care

I’ll wait an hour

Dusk will help hide my skin and bones

“It’s fixable,” I say

“I’ll work out,” a false promise

 

Ten push-ups after nine p.m.

Behind locked doors in a narrow space

Chiseled features

The ground comes up to meet me, number ten

Trembling arms pull me under sheets

 

My V-neck will never stretch to accommodate my bulk

Girls won’t giggle at my strength

When the shirt comes off, what am I?

Skinny some say

Human I say

 

Joseph Christensen will be a senior this fall at Bellevue High School in Washington. His hobbies include: pondering the perplexities of life over bowls of chocolate ice cream and pretending to be professional.

 

A Petrified Conversation

By Anna Lund

The word Love

like a pebble under my tongue

It takes a second of awkward maneuvering to dislodge

and tumbles to your feet

We both stare for a moment

I turn my gaze back to your face

and bear witness to a stone of your own pressing against your cheek

You scoop it out

let it rest on your tongue

Then slowly reveal

my undoing

The word Sorry

 

 

Anna Lund is a writer and artist attending high school in northern Minnesota.

 

Lines for someone who disappeared from poems I never wrote

By Archita Mittra

  1. half-lit classrooms/ january sunlight/tasting new words on my tongue/ words i will later make poems, out of
  2. this, this is not a love letter/i love you the way one falls in love with a painting/ across time and space, endlessly/though mythologies of longing/ letting go is a kind of slipping
  3. half-finished conversations in shadowy corridors/ my claustrophobic stories like ghosts in summer heat/the tragedy in being so close..yet invisible/ even in dreams, i am colourless
  4. and your voice, a cantillation and the sound of my name (something beautiful) and the bell ringing like a knell/ (all i ever wanted was a universe where time machines exist)
  5. waking up in a dreamed-up world, a mythical venice or a strange arabian city stolen from postcards or ancient stories whose endings we have lost, over the centuries, so we invent new and better ones/ false alarms/ in that universe, we are not so distant, you and i
  6. confession/ i never stopped to realize just how entangled i am, with vines of identifies and whims and dreams clinging onto the rusty, crumbling walls of my heart/ desperation, (i)solation, death/ i, the lonely half of a hyphenated word
  7. i sometimes speak of myself in the second person, only to lose myself/ if you and i/ if you were i/ the way words lose their meanings when you repeat them enough times/doors opening into doors opening into doors you were closing all the while/ not you, i meant i
  8. if i (not you) write a suicide note, it would read: i cry because i cannot make myself understood/ i who yearn to write love songs to the stars
  9. autumn playgrounds/swinging to strange heavens on rusty swings or sliding down to dusty hells of fallen leaves and memories/ there is no goodbye when imaginary friends die/ does anyone mourn for burnt diaries
  10. trapped in a world that no longer exists/ my loneliness is like an empty train station in the wee hours of night that waits impatiently for something, someone/ to happen;

 

 

 

Archita Mittra is a wordsmith and visual artist with a love for all things vintage and darkly fantastical. A student of English Literature at Jadavpur University, she is also pursuing a Diploma in Multimedia and Animation from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata. She has won several writing contests and her work has appeared in numerous online and print publications including Quail Bell Magazine, eFiction India, Life In 10 Minutes, Teenage Wasteland Review and Tuck Magazine, among others. She occasionally practises as a tarot card reader.

You can read more of her work on https://thepolyphonicphoenix.wordpress.com/

 

Second Chances

By Archika Dogra

 

I never knew that playing the sport you love could be so hard.

I started playing softball when I was in third grade after my mother had initially signed me up just for fun. I remember the first day of practice. Before I even made it to the field, I threw up in the car. You may think that I was just extremely nervous, but it wasn’t anything serious like that. I had just had a bad falafel. That’s it.

Ironically, that trivial moment seemed to symbolize the rest of my softball “career.”

Throwing up may seem to be a grotesque way of symbolizing a passion. Yet over the years I kept on finding myself quietly discarding the comments, while taking the criticism to heart. In other words, every time I was complemented, I threw it up, while every time I was criticized, I digested it. Concerning, no?

I continued playing softball in Little League throughout elementary school, just as a fun way to spend my Monday and Wednesday afternoons. However, once I reached fifth grade, softball started to become a little more serious.

I never really talked much on my team and I definitely wouldn’t have called myself a leader. Even today I find myself holding back a number of comments when taking part in friendly conversations or even team discussions. Some people regarded me as timid, some as boring, and others as “too serious.” In fifth grade, I was told by my coach to try out for All Stars. It was a one-tournament team of girls from around my area that seemed to demonstrate skills above normal standards. I was elated at the fact that somebody deemed me competent enough to try out for such a team.

I went to tryouts and made the team— which wasn’t much of an achievement, considering that basically everybody made it. The everyday practices went well and I received a number of pitching opportunities- which was at the time my favorite position. However, come the tournament, things changed.

I was benched. A lot. I didn’t even have a chance at proving myself during the games. The whole tournament I watched other girls happily prance on and off the field while sitting under the shelter of a clammy dugout. It was disappointing honestly- I was a decent player and really wanted to pitch. The only positions I played were some outfield and maybe one inning of shortstop.

Looking back at it, it makes me sad to realize that only at the age of ten I had already begun to lose my confidence.

The next season I excelled at pitching once again during Little League and was ready to redeem myself during All Stars. Come the tournament once again, I was benched more than I would have wished to be.

Was it because I was too quiet?

Should I have stood up for myself?

Was it only because of my hitting, which tended to falter at times?

I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting the equal amount of time that other girls were getting. I slowly started backing myself further into a corner- into a place where my coaches wouldn’t acknowledge me, my teammates wouldn’t remember me, and the team parents wouldn’t remember me. I started believing that I sucked at the one thing I loved to do. I wanted to quit, but never told my parents or my coaches. So I played on.

The summer of the tournament, I tried out for Select. I finally got in and felt accomplished. Training season came and went by and I felt ready to pitch for the season. I was anxious to pitch in my first tournament- my very first select tournament.

We traveled to Yakima for my first tournament and I was mentally going through the pitching motion at least a hundred times. I felt confident; like I had felt at the beginning of every season I had previously played. Fatefully, the end result was almost the same.

The inning for me to prove myself as a pitcher finally arrived. I didn’t execute. It was a cringe-worthy inning of balls rolling over the plate, batters being walked, and hitters being given free bases. I gave up about five runs in one inning- five runs too many. I had worked hard the whole season only to blow this one chance. When I walked off of the mound that inning, I knew what my one mistake was. I had exuded fear and anxiety instead of poise. I had thought about proving myself to others, about being benched for the rest of the season, and about not being the best on my team. I never thought about a second chance, even if I messed up. And the saddest part is- there was never a second chance.

Every day after that tournament I went to pitching practice.

Every day I played as consistently as others.

Every day I worked hard on my pitching.

Every day I waited for a second chance.

If you don’t get second chances, how are you supposed to believe in yourself? My confidence went from zero to negative. Every time I made a play, I focused on the errors instead of the successes. I slowly started being pushed out of my position at second base, even as a capable player. I didn’t even have the confidence to speak up for myself as I watched myself sitting in the dugout while other players took the field every inning. I can’t blame my coaches or my teammates. I can only blame myself.

Finally, my parents told me that if I wasn’t going to speak out, I would never get what I wanted. I was adamant that my actions on the field spoke louder than my words. Apparently, that was not the case. I had a talk with my coach, showed him the stats, and refuted his excuses. Slowly, I won my position back- but it would never win back the confidence that I needed to push me forward.

This isn’t a story about how now I’ve magically transformed into a confident and improved player. I’ve stopped pitching and I still don’t even have a consistent spot on second base on my select team this year. I’ve continually performed well, but I feel that all my coaches see are my errors. Maybe that’s true if you don’t stand up for yourself, don’t have a dominating presence on the team, or just worry yourself to an extent of making the wrong plays. However, I’ve definitely gotten better. I’ve realized that if I’m going to talk less, I would have to observe more. My coaches and my teammates can’t affect how I play. I’ve realized that the only one that can directly tear you down is yourself. Confidence is the key. And lastly, I’ve become resolute to stand by the opinion that everybody should have a second chance.

If others won’t give me one, I’ll just have to give myself a second chance.

 

 

Archika Dogra loves to write and read, along with playing outside. She plays select soccer and softball throughout the year. She will be going into high school as a freshman once the summer ends. She loves science, programming, and getting involved with her local theater. She has been recognized for her writing internationally, and also by contests such as Letters About Literature. In the future she would love to pursue acting, writing, and something STEM related, all at the same time hopefully.

 

 

 

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to Next Page »

Copyright © 2023 · Site by Sumy Designs, LLC