AGENDA:
Copy and paste a poem 12-20 lines for the yearbook in the comment section of this blog. (I will send it to Ms. Rudy).
Title of poem
by (Your name)
Poem
Work on Point of view exercise.
Select a new short story for workshop on Friday.
HMWK: Read "Sweat"
It Speaks
ReplyDeleteBy Azana Reed
Look at it talking to you. Spewing and snarling
For you to pay attention to it. It’s demanding your time,
Attention, and your life. You crawl away from it
And at the same time you embrace it, comforting it, even
Speaking evil things to yourself. Things only
Stockholm Syndrome victims would mutter. And while
You drown in your own misery, it sneers at you
Cackling as you fall deeper and deeper into its trap.
It speaks to you. The thing you are trying to escape from
Gives you everything that you need. It tastes like freedom,
But smells like despair. And as you light up the next pinch of
Green you can afford right now, it praises you and tells
You that you are safe. Then it transforms into the next
Master and the battle is only half way done.
Crosman Terrace
ReplyDeleteBy Kyra Majewski
You liked the trees on opposite sides of the street holding hands above our heads,
young couples over the dusty table in a diner booth.
The 7-Eleven lights lit up the whole street in orange and green
and told us it was too late to be balancing on curbs
and sitting on the brick wall in the Laburnam Crescent parking lot
looking over the the baseball field all covered in weeds.
The slabs of sidewalk leading to Monroe Ave were always crooked
like our smiles in middle school
but we could still close our eyes
and walk the whole way without stepping on a single crack.
With red and blue teeth we laughed at everyone we saw
until 1 am when the door slammed shut behind us
and we walked on our toes to keep the floor from creaking,
taking our same places on the bed.
Lost
ReplyDeleteBy Emily Boorom
It gets lost in the steam and chatter of typewriters.
In fat thumbs on cell phone screens too small
Making it impossible to hit the right key.
It gets lost in the cloud. In droves of other lost poems
untitled but prominent.
It gets lost in translation.
Old literature spit to a different beat.
Headknockin’ to a different song.
It gets lost in your mind
You become your only inhibition
and it is no longer yours.
Seaside Cliffs
ReplyDeleteby Karina Le
After Ocean Vuong
In the muddy sea, brown and blue dancing together, you look forward. Your
legs swing off the ledge like a pendulum, as the dead
sing from below the depths. Best friends
died together here, you say, your words passing
the space between us and it stings through
you
and my sweat soaked shirt. The salt burns, but it was like
a prick of a finger; a reminder for you. Like the wind
pushing against us, like how water seeps through
cotton and wool, like how the earth cradles us into a
dreamless sleep. The temple bell behind us—carried by the wind—
lets out a thunderous roar, but here in the cliffs? It sounds like a wind chime.
“Someday,”
you say still swinging your legs over the edge. “I’ll
be gone from this world.” I stare at your legs. “But today? Love
is what I am.” You said in that sweltering heat, surrounded by Ocean.
Your name was Vuong.
//LOST BOYS AND YELLOW HOMES//
ReplyDeleteBy Spencer Jude Perez
seventeen letters have never felt more wrong,
you are like an elephant walking a tightrope;
you know, but you do not belong.
denouncing yourself for not what you are,
but rather what they see.
changing like seasons,
fall may be the death of things,
but spring, that is when
everything grows, when you begin
to believe there is more beyond
a paper telling you who you are supposed to be.
they built you a castle made out of pink satin walls,
but you always yearned for yellow paint.
never a blue or pink person,
never even magenta; just yellow.
it was the ambiguity of this color,
the feeling of warmth even during the coldest seasons.
(Scholastic Silver Key, SOKOL Third Place)
Self Portrait with a swing set
ReplyDeleteBy Jocelyn Brillian
The brassy chains always feel cold in her grasp,
the leather seat still sticks to the parts of her inner-thighs
that denim doesn't cover.
She tilts her body side to side, peels her skin
from the seat.
The tip of her sneakers brush the surface
of the sandy area that lays under her.
She still has to sit on the edge
for her feet not to dangle.
Scooting to the edge, she looks to the left.
That swing used to be taken by a boy of a tall stature,
hair slick from gel with Crayola inked tattoos
drawn up and down his arm.
Now it is forever empty, the posts are rotted at the grass,
and his inked tattoos are no longer washable.
His hair slick with the smell of liquor and ash.
Pumping her legs slightly, she swings on the swing set
one last time.
Scholastic arts and writing competition 2018, honorable mention
Backtracking
ReplyDeleteBy Alexander Christie
The vivid fragments of late night silent movies come to mind, each exuberant smile more haunting than the last.
As you struggle to rip your toes from the bubblegum underneath, the textured carpet rips, a seam opening like an inverted mouth.
The people walk around with their gloves on their feet.
You can hear their raspy voices that swing through the air from captured faces, burned into the sky.
They can’t choose, you keep saying, letting the kaleidoscope world pass by.
A constant pulse of movement, crackling limbs that cannot find their partners, smooths the edges of silence.
You remember how they walked in New York City and Cape Cod, two sounds now one and the same.
Your buttered popcorn socks draped across the antique furniture turn rancid in the wind.
Age old cement bleeds into worn shoelaces, liquefying over a layer of hot memories.
Their prints leave marks of quilled ink, fingers and toes entwined in cagey material.
Shoulders no longer roll with the inevitable up and down, flatlining in slow motion.
Ice cubes crackle in stale water pushing against the gasoline on the shiny asphalt.
You cannot walk outside, for fear of combustion, for fear of the new reality.
Maybe if the wind weren’t so fragile, the clouds could move freely, uninhibited.
breathing
ReplyDeleteby Carina Giannini
summer’s glow cannot be dulled, O?,
never as long as cherry sweet
air hangs heavy and low, spontaneous
breath pulsing and existing as earth—
beating : beating : beating with the know how
of life; of life and breath lived often,
lived freely, lived to have
carefree concern through the
sweet summer’s days and doting
care, wind ruffling hair like a mother’s fingers.
(Scholastic Regional Gold Key)
Remembering you
ReplyDeleteBy Alexis Jackson
Loving you was not bleak or tedious. It was exhilarating and
haunting. It was like riding a bike down a hill, without
hands on handlebars, without a helmet, without
brakes. You knocked me off my feet
like a boy lingering too long on the train tracks.
Telling my friends about you now it feels like you never
existed. Like I am recounting an apparition that visited me
one summer. Remembering it, that's how it feels.
Remembering you.
You’re beautiful like the first day of Halloween decorations,
when everything is Pumpkin spice and nothing is promised.
You got a smile like a gold chain, and always smell like clean
laundry and happiness, even when you’re miserable
You’re warm like summer, harsh like the sun.
Sweet like honey and stubborn like a bee.
It’s so easy to get stuck here.
Easy to fall back into the slept-in sheets of old conversations.
And re-walk streets we once stumbled down, dumb and
drunk in love. I swear we looked into each other’s eyes and saw
the creations of worlds and watched them burn together. At times
yours’s seemed the color of sunset. They were only brown.
Sea Not
ReplyDeleteBy Liana Caez
This is not connect the dots,
the little girl who stares up at the stars,
and sits by a boy who says forever,
but eventually takes her home and doesn’t stay.
This doesn’t represent the sand,
In which the jellyfish only show the memories
that don’t want to sting,
but still leave a zebra-striped scar.
This thought doesn’t ooze
this crumbling introspect,
seashells cutting through
the crunch of my screaming heels.
And this may be the path
my body rather take,
but the zig zags of my feet say,
‘’do not go in there.’’
I'll Pick You Up At 12
ReplyDeleteDeja Simmons
This is not about how I absolutely hate winter.
With its cold, cloudy days that make me wonder why
or how I even got out of bed. Frosted over
windows blur the world outside.
It’s about the way I felt after you left me
and my brother alone. Unprepared for a world without you,
we fell behind. Lines were drawn
and family ties were broken. Pieces
of the perfect life you worked so hard to create
shattered in front of me.
This is not about how you never came to pick me up
when we were supposed to spend the day together.
How even though lunch time passed I still sat in the doorway
because I hoped you’d come soon.
The screen door was shut
but cicadas could be heard outside.
I stared till the hot Texas sun began to waver
on the blacktop in ripples.
Even then I believed you’d come.
This is not about how I put on my favorite shirt and did my hair
just the way you liked it.
This is about the way I was reminded of you months later
when a microscopic fragment of broken glass
stuck itself into my foot.
Forgiving the Sun
ReplyDeleteIsabella Watts
(don't put me in the yearbook. seriously.)
This is not chocolate beginning to melting
or the sun going behind the clouds
for a second. It has been a long, tedious day
full of shade and stickiness
that is resilient, not letting the sun
blink. It is on this ceaseless day
that we realize trust has melting away.
But still
we think the infatuation is enough
and so we hold each other with open eyes.
And with my eyes open
I hear the sun’s heart beneath the clouds
and grasp the day’s terms.
This is not me leaving,
because I said I never would, but rather
this is me
stepping over the sticky spots
and forgiving the sun for sleeping for a while.
Nowhere
ReplyDeleteBy Tamaron McKnight
God is everywhere,
Mama used to say as she’d brush my hair before bed.
He watches you through your whole life
and helps you stay steady before you fall off the ledge,
or maybe he pushes you off to help bring you back.
As I grew up,
I looked for God everywhere—
he was the job that kept Mama away from us every day—
when my brother died babysitting was suddenly $7 an hour
and she needed as many hours at the restaurant as possible now.
Dying is expensive, she laughed.
Do you think people try to stay alive just so they don’t have so many bills?
God is the hand that holds Mama’s as I prepare for my own bills.
She distracts herself with idle conversation
about forgetting to vacuum the rug my brother gave her
almost 20 years ago now. Soon, though, she runs out of topics
and lets her tears do the talking.
God is nowhere, she says,
he doesn’t bring us to the edge of disaster
or to our greatest achievements—that’s Life.
Life has shown me love, joy, and more importantly pain;
Life helps you stay steady before you fall off the ledge
and pushes you off to bring you back.
God is nowhere
and Life is everywhere,
she says one last time before both take her with them.
Sokol 2018, 2nd Place in Poetry
Lucky Charms
ReplyDeleteBy Sara Rule
This is not about the way the leaves on my street fell like golden pancakes,
each one hitting the surface of cement slick with rain,
oiling the pan in heavy drops.
It’s about the way cold feet slammed against the cracks in the sidewalk.
About the way they heated up when July came,
resting callous against driveway pavement,
leaning over to move your piece just one space past free parking.
The wind swept your last 500 dollar bill into the street,
and you learned about how to invest your money from dice and a cardboard box.
This is not about the 343 concrete slabs circling my block in the form of a sidewalk.
This is about the fact that I counted one day in September,
as summer sun slept in and melted the paint off of the porch steps.
Freezer pops and turkey sandwiches closed in ziploc bags burned holes in little hands
as crabapples rolled through the grass and down our throats,
wondering where the property line was drawn
and whose crabapples were they really?
This is not about the fact that Blockbuster closed last year.
It’s about movie nights in the garage
where a force field was created by a sky no higher than the streetlamps
and the extension cord reached just far enough.
Thinking of how it was to lay awake with electrical bills left unpaid,
floating just above wrinkled sheets and cold pillow cases.
Held at the shirt collar by doubt.
It’s about waking up to white, ceramic bowls occupied by Lucky Charms
and fear that the sun would set again before you got to the bottom.
Automat, 1927
ReplyDeleteBy Dan'Nae Palmer
He promised you that hour alone,
but time passed by
and he still didn’t show.
You sat down with legs crossed,
right over left.
You stared at the mug
as if it were human,
still wondering where he could be.
Lonely, miserable, and embarrassed,
You sat waiting.
Steam from the coffee rose in the air;
Even the atmosphere reminded you of him.
The hiss of the radiator,
hurt your ears,
but you shivered in your seat,
cold, cold hearted man.
Only the abundance of your heart told you to wait-
and you waited.
First-Friday's Jazz
ReplyDeleteBy Nasmere Johnson
The vibration of the upright bass dances
Throughout the old wooden floors of my grandmother’s house
and lifts the corners of my mouth.
My uncle is playing a generous cadenza,
holding his instrument closer to him
than he held my aunt on their wedding day.
The spirit of his perfectly imperfect rhythm
introduces itself to me and I shake its hand,
for even though it is deafening, it is friendly.
The perfume that fills my grandmother’s house mixes
with the smell of my uncle’s jazz,
a perfect symphony of flowers, cedar, and soul.
My uncle plays a romantic theme for my aunt, painting her a soft pink.
A Latin vamp paints my mother a vibrant yellow.
As I observe my kaleidoscope of family members,
I notice my grandmother sitting quite peacefully
in her favorite rocking chair.
She smiles at the spirit as she watches her colorful family.
We are the setting of a Leonid Afremov painting tonight.
The more vividly the color is painted,
the more strongly my uncle feels the rhythm.
Dad
ReplyDeleteBy Emily Boorom
You smile at me,
your teeth like
rotting corn-on-the-cob,
I never smile back.
Instead,
I chew on sore flesh
around over bitten fingernails
but only when you come around.
Wide eyes strain
through empty darkness
while stubby fingers
graze cigarette burns
in mums old blanket.
I stay awake
too afraid to find you waiting for me
in my nightmares.
I lick tears from my pressed lips
as they melt down my
red stained cheeks.
Saliva spits from your crusted lips
as I hear you yell at her through thin walls.
You drown your liver in Abosult,
saying I’m ‘no fun’ when I don't drink any,
but watching mom wipe vomit
from your lifeless body
doesn’t seem…fun.