Winter Poems 2023

when my father was younger, he
aimed his frustration at birds.
when a farm throws itself out wide,
the second between shot and thud
eats itself alive and is lost in the flush of cedar.

when my father was younger, he
had a grandmother whose rules bled right into him.
don’t walk on the grass if it isn’t yours, don’t let a woman walk nearest the street, don’t
shoot the northern cardinal.

my mother still thinks you became one
that when the last threads of your scent escaped out the window
they tied back together and flew
over a farm, untouchable.
your love remained a quiet, breathing creature
one that twists and dances and
lives
even as your absence serves proof of a voyage completed.

 

mikey harper is a seventeen-year-old transgender artist and aspiring journalist from houston, texas. he is a creative writing student with a focus in poetry and creative non-fiction, and is the founder/managing editor of BLUNT FORCE JOURNAL. he has been previously published in the augment review, paper crane journal, and twice through cathartic lit. when he isn’t reading or going to concerts, he’s learning a new song on bass or adding more CDs to his collection.

The fire burns beside me. We chat
And speak of anything but rain.

He gets the place ready to ignite.
We make the bed and dust the picture frames
Sweep but do not mop. I take out the trash.
He tells me it’s the easiest job he’s seen in years.

He tells me it’s already flammable. He tells me
I’m already on fire, that I saw tears and knew to burn.
He praises me for being ready to blaze.

When we’re done, I pack up. It’s cleaner that way, he says,
Better you know what you are saving before it is burning.
We exit, hand in hand, and I ignore the feeling–
His fingers scorch, palms enkindle,
But I squeeze harder.

With one breath the house is gone.
Ash rests on the tip of my nose.

He nudges me.
It’s better off this way.

And we go ahead and climb the stairs,
Suitcase wheels clacking beneath us.
When he releases my hand,
I feel the warmth still.

Across my palm, four seared marks.
I look away and clench it into a fist.
Even now he has not let me go.

 

Josie Bednar is a writer and athlete based in Texas. When not writing, she can be found organizing her personal library or on the basketball court.

there, tucked away beneath
the eaves of the porch:
my grandmother. loud
splatters of rain on zinc

plates, my thick black
hair falling to earth beside
pebbles and puddles. she
was still, so still while i

winced my ear away
in fear of the blade’s
incisiveness. i saw her
in the mirror; her hands

on my shoulder. still.
some years later, long
past trimmed fringes
and slanted sideburns,

my mother and i talk
about her after her passing.
we are still, still. how
the cracks in the ground

hold not my hair, nor hers
but indelible markers
of unfaltering steps, with
half-torn shoes and

ribbed garments; she
is there, has always been,
snipping away stray strands,
feeding with these still hands.

remembering that, i say,
see how you will not
hear me bemoan storms,
gnash my teeth in rain,
trace the steps of years lost:

i like her am standing, still.

 

Brian Lee is an aspiring writer and poet from Singapore, whose works are published or forthcoming in Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine and Corvus Review. Having grown up in three different countries, he writes in an attempt to recreate and remember.

I do not wish to speak with you
of matters great or small.
I take no joy in seeing you
when I walk down the hall.
I see the knives stuck in friends’ backs
when eyes light on your face—
I will not be the fool to stand
beside you in their place.
My intuition’s rarely wrong
and you set it abuzz;
I’ve learned by now that crazy is
as someone like you does.
I do not wish to speak to you’
with any grace or class,
I wish you’d stop trying to talk
and just let me walk past.

 

Lavanya Mani is a sophomore at Clayton High School, and has written poetry throughout her life. She recently attended the Young Women’s Leadership Institute at Barnard College, where she took a class on spoken word poetry. She hopes to pursue higher education in writing and English, and to keep using the art of writing throughout her life as a way of expressing herself and connecting with the world around her. Outside of writing, she has a passion for musical theater, violin, and her speech and debate team.

It was yesterday
when I saw a woman swallowed
by Winter. Her splintered back
like an archway and her face
so chipped you could see bleeding
memories seeping from her skin–lines etched
from the corner of her eyes like
tear tracks.

She passes
our car, pushing her trolly right
as Winter sprouts. A blanket
of whiteness engulfs the empty
crosswalk. And her. At the green light,
Mother reminds me
to look forward. As we flee
I only see her fractured body
crumpling like paper.

Winter reminds me of
watching the hue
on Mother’s sunflowers turn
golden, then shrivel in December–
draped by sorrow. Their silhouettes
wrinkled in invisible residue.

Outside the window I search
a blank canvas for
the woman’s heart.
Until the ground and the horizon meet,
I am drowned in

hope.

 

George Sun is a sixteen-year old Chinese-Canadian poet from Canada. His work appears in The Source, Polar Expressions, and Poetry in Voice, among others. Apart from writing, you can find him assembling jigsaw puzzles or playing basketball.

When you were eight, you didn’t know
now you don’t let yourself
remember.
Napalm raining on bamboo roofs,
death knocking at rice doors,
or bright orange teardrops
making their love to the jungle.

An American soldier, heading home,
abandons your sister
and her unborn child,
your mother heals your father,
his brain beaten, broken by war.
While you slept in a dinghy
fighting against the Pacific,
battling your own red tides.

Years passed, you reached Jersey’s shores,
littered with kool-aid and condoms,
Your hands bled in warehouse night shifts
and your all-American tongue,
silenced stories of a family left in Saigon.

Then you had me,
the bombs and death stayed overseas,
When the nurses wrapped me in pink
and adorned daisied socks to my feet,

did you once again see
Jasmine blooming along the nighttime
shore, your mom’s delicate hands
placing petals behind your ear,
and the pollen tickling your tired eyes.

 

Morgan Santaguida grew up in a small Pennsylvania town. She has previously been published in Stylus, Whimsical Poetry, and Cathartic Literary Magazine. She is now living in Massachusetts as a young writer, studying at Boston College.