|earthwinds volume 51 2022
jackson preparatory school 3100 lakeland drive flowood, mississippi 39232 jacksonprep.net
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| note from editor In the current state of the world, sometimes the hardest thing to do is create. Creation is vulnerable. We cannot create without sharing our experiences, and we cannot connect without opening the door for judgment. That is why earthwinds is so powerful. For fifty-one years, Jackson Prep students have said, “This is our poetry, this is our art, this is what it means to exist, to create,” and for fifty-one years the earthwinds staff has taken these sentiments and made something tangible. I am proud to be a part of that legacy, and inspired by Prep students for their ability to keep creating. I hope that in your reading of this issue, the vulnerability of our students creates a space for self-reflection. Not only about our own space in this world, but about others. Despite everything, keep creating.
| editorial policy The contents of this magazine represent the remarkable depth and variety of creative talent found among the students of Jackson Preparatory School. Selections are made by the staff on the basis of creativity, style, and artistic merit. Artists retain all rights to their work. The views represented in earthwinds are those of the artists and do not necessarily reflect those of the staff, the sponsor, or the Jackson Preparatory School Board of Trustees. Student members of the earthwinds staff conduct the design, layout, and proofreading of the magazine, and the works published are solely those of Jackson Prep students.
| colophon This issue of earthwinds was designed on iMacs using Adobe InDesign CC and Photoshop CC. Cover image by Rachel Watts and cover design by Trey Welch. The font is Athelas. Dallas Printing of Jackson, Mississippi, printed the magazine on partially recycled paper using soy-based ink with no animal byproducts.
earthwinds staff 2022 |
trinity scalia
editor-in-chief
mary robinson coco design editor livvy robertson
poetry and prose editor
lauren mckay
assistant design editor
sara beth henson
assistant poetry and prose editor
trey welch
ombudsman
paul d. smith, phd faculty advisor
spread design | Mary Robinson Coco: 26-27, 46-47, 70-71 Livvy Robertson: 46-47, 60-61 Lauren McKay: 14-15, 24-25, 36-39, 46-49 Sara Beth Henson: 2-5, 12-13, 30-33, 38-39, 46-47, 66-67 Trey Welch: 16-17 ,20-21, 54-55, 64-65, 72-73 Trinity Scalia: 8-11, 18-19, 22-23, 28-29, 34-35, 40-45, 50-53, 56-59, 62-63, 68-69
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| poetry & prose Doe Homeland Personal Iliad In Defense of Sexist Old Men Narcissus Lackluster Vegas Baby Alice Barbershop Apples Smash Blur Frank Oklahoma! Testament to Adulthood Lost Self
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Ainslee Johnson Mary Robinson Coco Trinity Scalia Livvy Robertson Trinity Scalia Kennedy Maloney Trinity Scalia Mary Robinson Coco Trinity Scalia Livvy Robertson Trey Welch Ainslee Johnson Trinity Scalia Jane Hurst Trinity Scalia Mary Robinson Coco
Text Messages Cotton Candy Political Rage Amaterasu Thomas Aubade About Goats Between Sleeping and Waking She Will Read This Poem Purse Reflection 1 and Reflection 2 I Want Dear Math Too Early Broken Mind, Broken People You’re My Wine
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Lauren McKay Mary Robinson Coco Trinity Scalia Mary Robinson Coco Trinity Scalia Trinity Scalia Livvy Robertson Trinity Scalia Mary Robinson Coco Ainslee Johnson Trey Welch Livvy Robertson Sara Beth Henson Kennedy Maloney Lauren McKay
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| art & photography By the River Frolicking Jellyfish Bags Clamor Spiral of Liquid Fire Dot Dreams Lost Dots Baby Blue Glass Sky Growing , Changing, Reflecting In the Red Room Selfie of a Red Cowboy Hat Solitary Laurel Street on Film Progress Baby Purple Lake Home Views
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Brinkley Boswell Veronica Chough Veronica Chough Annie Jicka Grayson Adams Katherine O’Brien Katie Poole Caroline Hiers Romney McLeod Mia Carter Grayson Adams Annie Jicka Megan Tang Annie Jicka Mary Robinson Coco Caroline Hiers Grayson Adams
Fair Night Rainy Drive A New Song Raven Flourish Fur Sleep Master Water Wings Knot Sun on the Dome Twist Sun Spiral Going Downing
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Katherine O’Brien Annie Jicka Rachel Regan Mary Robinson Coco Madison Lee Rachel Watts Caroline Hiers Mary Robinson Coco Katie Poole Rose Hsieh Katie Poole Julia Phillippi Veronica Chough Annie Jicka
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Doe I wish I was a doe— so green in life. I’d peer serenely from my round glass eyes. I’d understand that the world is beautiful. In the quiet morning, I’d bring myself to the meadow and lick the honeyed air and sniff the spring dill. Meanwhile, you, heartless hunter, sit behind the dew-wet weeds. The bullet leaves and I can no longer feel. Just as planned, you’d put me on display, make me heartless. I’m just another beautiful creature the world has filled with darkness. Ainslee Johnson
By the River | Brinkley Boswell | acrylic
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Homeland I want sky through my hair wind through my wings dew on my hand. I want to gather the droplets, let them sing, reflecting sun-bristled beams. I want my home, its opal leaves, a crystal river falling from a tower, its peak bleeding red, cased in stone. I want my home. Mary Robinson Coco
Frolicking | Veronica Chough | photo
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| aubade
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Personal Iliad My twin bed is too small to hold us. You cling to me tightly. Just us two in this wooden raft. Each pitch of the waves draws you closer to me, grabbing like each oceanic lap will tip our sleepy vessel. Look at us lying here. Achilles and Patroclus, sharing a bedroll. I wonder what you are dreaming about. The war you will fight in the morning? I wear you as armor, feign your confidence. Let me bask in the sun you made, lover. I don’t need Dawn’s ashen fingers to reach through my window and prod at our sleeping bodies. I am already warm where your shoulders meet my chest. I try to keep his hands off you, to keep you asleep in my arms, but you twitch in the light. Ready for the battle that rages with the sun. Trinity Scalia
Jellyfish Bags | Veronica Chough | acrylic
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In Defense of Sexist Old Men In your defense, you only wanted me to smile. You couldn’t know the sour cold of my secret. Smiling is the last thing I feel like doing right now, but you couldn’t have known. And in your defense, I bet you didn’t intend to be a sexist jerk when you treated me as an ornament, told me “sit still, look pretty” as if I owed it to you, as if the pleasure of random men on the street is a fee for my female figure. But in your defense, you only wanted to cheer me up. And in your defense, that might’ve been perfectly fine to say back in your day. Livvy Robertson
Clamor | Annie Jicka | acrylic
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| dramatic monologue
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Narcissus I see him at the edge of my memory, right at the spot where the water ripples, sending love letters across the glass and into my wet hands. The subway car pulls up, I see him in the window and meet his eyes, but he slips off the moving tram as I push on. My missed connection. I look for him online and finding nothing, turn off my computer. There he is again, inside my 2008 iMac. Steve Jobs, you wicked man, let him out. Let me kiss his golden hair, his pale lips, hold him, lie in the sun as the echoes of his lyre drift softly into the mountain air. I beat my hands on the ground. Sweet desire, sweet boy, blue-eyed prince, what have I done to deserve you? Trinity Scalia
Spiral of Liquid Fire | Grayson Adams | photo
sonnet |
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Lackluster Embrace do seldom. Maybe never stay. You know, retrace mistakes, your blame is art again, again perhaps; perhaps, you may. To stay today would mean, should we restart? Assume control over direction now. Enable problems stimulate attack to grow, to show division smothers how you know relief; resign existence back. Describe, no clarify, mortal affairs and take instruction. Falter not intend to promise virtue over my despairs. Repeat the same command until transcend. Arrest regime and fix control for pain; consider reason, get morale to stain. Kennedy Maloney
Dot Dreams | Katherine O’Brien | acrylic
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Vegas Baby I must have been about six, crammed into a U-Haul with the great wooden furniture, when I was driven away. From the spin of gambling machines, from dancers and lights. from the click click click of certain victory and cop shoes on marble courthouse floors. The truck would hit each hole, each cut in the road, shaking me. Jostled with the boxes and the small glass turtles and the too-big TV. Down, down, down sinking into the hot air of the South. Magnolia tendrils and snaking kudzu wrapping my tiny lungs, too accustomed to dry air to draw breath in the swamp. I am bitter. Like the smell from stagnant puddles. Like your new money. Like the guns around the house. Like those rank motels we stopped in. Like the cottonmouth I am.
Trinity Scalia
Lost Dots | Katie Poole | photo
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| dramatic monologue
Alice I was never the little girl you thought I was. I sought the feeling of your straight white hair floating under my hands, your body pressed up to mine. It was addictive. Your red eyes captured me, placing a milky bottle in my ghostly hands. It screamed, “Drink me.” I drank. Watching a neon sea thump, thump, through the club, saturating my wheat hair. Your hands followed the lines of my body, holding me up, wandering up to the rabbit-ear ribbon in my hair. You pulled it loose as you pushed me down the rabbit hole. I gave in to the symphony— ace of spades and blood roses. Laughter surged. I think it was the laughter of a 17-year-old girl. Oh wait, that’s me.
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I guess I am not the girl in the baby blue dress anymore. My blue is fit for queens, but I kept the white bow. It was from my sister. I want to go to a tea party with your friends. You always tell me they’re too ludicrous for me. You brush my hair back. I fall against your plaid-clad chest. Am I crazy enough now? Not even my sister could pull me off this high. Only you. Your silk hand is under my back, under my knees, Why is it softer than a girl’s? It intensifies your princely illusion. It’s why you rule me. The corner of my eye sees a painted-rose dress, girl with the heart-shaped face, her lips move, “Off with your head,” but you’ve already unlocked the door, carrying me into Wonderland.
Mary Robinson Coco
Baby Blue | Caroline Hiers | photo
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Barbershop Solemn little drops fall like tears on my neck. I feel it expanding every second, my forehead, fivehead like yeast in the breadmaker pushing into my hollow cavern of a skull, filling the room with burnt hair and raisin bread. My head is covered in a cloud. I feel unrecognizable, Mr. Cumulus, detached from the whirl of snapping thoughts and hair. It feels too short. the barber spins my chair. Trinity Scalia
Glass Sky | Romney McLeod | photo
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Sapphics |
Apples Eros skins the scarlet from rosy apples right before me. Naked and tantalizing, sweet and golden, ripened and soft. Devour wonderful sweetness. Livvy Robertson
Growing, Changing, Reflecting | Mia Carter | photo
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Smash Yellow light turned red, red light turned green. Colors didn’t matter anymore. We saw the speeding bullet, unwavering in its confidence that it could make it in time. Trey Welch
In the Red Room | Grayson Adams | photo
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Blur
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I take the glasses off. Green blue red blending left and right and impressions of past. The world and my mind in broken glass. I put the glasses on. Duties and shuffle and lines and faces and colors and light shadow and dark reflection and I take the glasses off. There’s a song in the back of my head. Race cars fast race cars. A whale song in the back of my head. Ouch. What’s this? I put the glasses on. I understand where I am and who I am with, and I smile because I need to. I hear, taste, speak, and touch but do not feel. I take the glasses off. Magnifications of crashes cars on top of one another and waves and whales and waves ouch ouch ouch why do I— Glasses on. “Yes, I’m okay, just tired.” Glasses off. —do this to myself I wish I was better I wish I wish that’s dumb could you be here? Glasses on. “Yeah, I’m sure.” I close my eyes.
Ainslee Johnson
Selfie of a Red Cowboy Hat | Annie Jicka | acrylic
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| dramatic monologue
Frank Father, why have you forsaken me? You pulled my hands from rotting corpses, my feet, from maggot-ridden men. My head you carefully crafted from the clay, the dust and ash. You gave me eyes, to see, to watch the work you do. The metal you took from your own forks and knives. Piercing my skin together. Your intricately-stitched son. Father, why? You brought down lighting. The sky, the heaven down to me. Why then, Father, am I forsaken? Trinity Scalia
Solitary | Megan Tang | colored pencil
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Oklahoma! Jane Hurst
D’Encanto’s is the closest thing we have to fine dining in town. Hell, it might be a low-quality diner dripping in Americana and decades of bad habits, but it is home. I hardly ever look at the menu. I mean, what is the point when it hasn’t changed a bit in the thirteen years since I first ordered? I used to come here with her, but now I sit alone in the mint-colored booth. “Pumpkin, you want the usual?” Cindy breaks me out of my inner spiral. I nod, offer a smile, and return to my comfortable loneliness. It wasn’t always a lonely booth. If I listen closely, a faint hum of “Oklahoma!” or the smell of gardenias will entrench my senses. I am small again, she is here. I receive my order—two chocolate-chip pancakes with a side of bacon. Perfection. I say my silent grace and dig in. She would tell me to eat like a lady. She would sip her black coffee and daintily eat her grapefruit with a small spoon of sugar. But no one corrects me. So, I haphazardly dive into my pancakes.
Laurel Street on Film | Annie Jicka | acrylic
D’Encanto’s has mastered the ratio of chocolate chips to the batter. Not too little, the chips and not rare, but not too many. I hear the clamor of centuries-old workmen’s boots as Dale D’Encanto appears behind the counter. Dale offers me a nod and a smile, the type of smile I’ve only encountered after the wake flowers rotted and dried. The type of smile that keeps its distance from the wreckage of a red Corvette on I-95. An old Dolly song echoes around the almost empty diner. Dale shuffles out of the diner toward Mr. Finch’s old truck. I eat my cooling pancakes. I listen to Cindy’s bracelets rhythmically clink together as she pours a coffee. The bell rings and Dale re-enters the diner. I hardly look up until I feel two pairs of eyes dart toward me, and then dart away as quickly as they came. “I forgot to cancel the order,” Dale mumbles to Cindy. He carries a crate of grapefruits.
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Testament to Adulthood I want to sit in silence for an hour with a book. I remain undisturbed. There is no call asking to come in and serve pig-faced women mediocre Italian food. I want to take a nap in the afterschool heat, leave a sticky sweat mark in the canyon my body made. The sun comes through the window and cooks me like a rosemary chicken. I want to kiss you in front of all these people who think you’re that much better than me. I want to put a hole right through my drywall in the only spot not covered with posters. I want everyone to treat me like the freak they see me as. They act like I make them uncomfortable. I do. Trinity Scalia
Progress | Mary Robinson Coco | marker, pen
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| dramatic monologue
Lost Self Holding myself up on a mountain cliff, a selfish wind is pushing my body down. My hands are bleeding. Grasping the strings now lost, I fall into seafoam. Mary Robinson Coco
Baby Purple | Caroline Hiers | acrylic
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Text Messages Hello, to goodbye. I’m sorry. Try to slow down, for me. Leave me alone. You’re so funny with your lies. First off, that’s not the problem, It’s you. You were good, but not good enough for me. Lauren McKay
Lake Home Views | Grayson Adams | photo
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Cotton Candy A culminating cloud rose in the dust dissipating to nothing. Honeysuckle flowers sifting through the breeze dabbling on vines. A carnival of chaos— its rush fills the air, brought to simplicity. Pure mountain breath moves easily through lungs laced with sweetness. Hot-air balloons risen by heat, cooling in the sky. An expansive sky ground blending together one complex but simple image. Mary Robinson Coco
Fair Night | Katherine O’Brien | acrylic
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Rainy Drive | Annie Jicka | acrylic
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Political Rage This is the land of the free, isn’t it? It’s not our fault Cuba got a little too excited about socialism. AIDS? What about it? You want us to do something? It’s really not in the budget this year, sorry. The war on drugs? When has war ever been bad? Don’t say Vietnam or Afghanistan or...you know what, let me stop you. Get your people out of the streets. It’s very inconvenient to have to drag the tanks all the way out here. Really, we aren’t the bad guys. It’s in your best interest not to think too hard about it. Trinity Scalia
A New Song | Rachel Regan | watercolor, pen, paper
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Sapphics |
Amaterasu Chasing flecks, the mockingbird’s fading daylight seeks the Sun the Moon had once held in shallow dreams. The scarlet roses desire perfection, Night’s retribution. Twilight’s natural order collapsing, ocean’s tides have failed. The Sun abandons the Moon, their marriage breaking rocks and boulders, their world’s own shoulder, separate in turmoil. Mary Robinson Coco
Raven | Mary Robinson Coco | digital
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Thomas Trinity Scalia
“Seriously, Thomas, get over yourself.” She slammed the door in my face and went back to whatever she was doing before I decided to visit. Through the glass, I watched her silhouette climb the stairs, making hollow steps the whole way up. I rang the doorbell again. It chimed deeply like a grandfather clock, but no one came to answer. An untouchable rain was falling. The kind that feels like mist. Stuffing my hands into my pockets, I walked around to the backyard. Orange leaves blanketed the lawn. On the second story, framed by her white latticed window, she was pacing her room. Occasionally she would be concealed by my awkward angle. A cool strain of jazz floated into the evening. Some artist I was unfamiliar with. She seemed unreal, like some kind of movie star. There was something alluring about her in there and me out here. The wet air was soaking into my jacket and hair. My hands, still in my pockets, were starting to shake. But there she was, a square of light cast into the backyard. She was undoubtedly warm. I watched her for longer than I should have, but she never looked out the window. It’s not like I was well hidden, she could have seen me if she tried. The blue evening melted away, and the autumn night settled in. At some point, the rain fell like it was supposed to and the world got colder. Even then I didn’t want to leave. The Italian cypress I hid behind swayed in the wind. When the rain got heavy, she closed the window, and I walked home. Flourish | Madison Lee | photo
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earthwinds | 53 Under the streetlights, I felt yellow. Light played around the corners of my eyes, blurred by the water that ran down my face. My hand looked jaundiced. The rain convinced me to stop at the next bus stop and ride home instead. A girl I’d never seen before was riding alone, sitting with her knees squeezed together, and her bag to her chest. I passed her on my way to my seat. Her hair was a shaggy red curtain that fell over her eyes and onto her shoulders. Her facial features were unremarkable. They all seemed to function independently, but when put together on her face, anything exceptional about them was lost. I sat two rows behind her. Other than the girl, the only other passenger was an efficient-looking businessman sitting in the back row. His head was resting on his palm, lost in thought or dozing off. I tried to look at the smear of streetlights, but couldn’t stop myself from stealing glances at the girl in front of me. The copper scent of the bus was entwined with a sugary smell. Maple or vanilla or something. I couldn’t get that jazz tune out of my head. It ran its way around my plans for conversation. Everything I could think to say to the bus girl was drowned out by a sultry trumpet. I couldn’t bring myself to talk to her. She was standing to get off. As the bus came to a stop, she looked at me and smiled. A square kind of smile, crooked and meaningless. Then she stepped off the bus and into the night. I pulled my coat tight around my shoulders. The metal bus seats suddenly felt very cold. There was no way I could go home now. The bus ambled along its preordained path and when it arrived downtown, I got off. I could walk home if absolutely necessary. A blue digital 7:02 flashed on my wrist. Rain was falling around the bus stop, sliding down the clear plastic walls, and pooling at my feet. I couldn’t complain, I was still relatively dry. Across the street, two girls were standing under the awning of a bar. A neon cowboy was drinking beer on a continuous loop. An “open” sign glowed in the window behind them, bathing the whole scene in a faint red. They were just talking to each other. One would make big gestures with her hands, and the other would nod along in agreement or occasionally cock her head or gesture along. It was like watching a puppet show. I tried to imagine the puppet master and could think of him only as a medieval jester. The world, a wooden stage framing this hollow life. My clock read 7:14 when a car pulled up, obscuring my view of the bar. A Toyota Corolla, mid-2000’s by the looks of it. Minutes later it drove away and the only thing remaining at the front of the bar was the neon cowboy sign throwing back another one. The rain showed no sign of slowing down. I
decided to have a drink. The quiet in the streets was interrupted only by the steady beat of rain. People pack up early on nights like this, maybe I could grab a beer in peace. The man behind the bar was pouring a drink with a stoic look on his face. The place was nearly deserted and a thick cigarette smell hung in the air. A man who looked like the cowboy on the sign was shooting pool alone. The people who were there milled around like they had been dropped in some bar purgatory where there was nothing to do but drink, smoke, and walk around like NPCs. The barstool I sat in was cow patterned, I pulled it as close to the counter as it would go. The bartender eventually made his way over. He asked what I was drinking in a twisting country accent. “Heineken,” I responded. He sniffed with one nostril, looking me up and down. I assumed he would ask to see my ID, but he didn’t, just turned around and made himself busy. He returned with a Budweiser. At 8:00 more people started funneling in. The stools around me filled up. People would press over my shoulder and gesture for the bartender, now joined by a short guy who looked equally uninterested in everything going on around him. Everyone who walked in was dressed in upscale country clothes. It looked like an odd imitation of blue-collar life. The girls were all wearing short skirts and cowboy boots. One with curly blonde hair and a cowboy hat looked at me. Unreadable expression. Across the bar, two more girls were talking to the short bartender. One laughed and held her hand near her mouth. The pose was identical to Barbie, inarticulate and unreal. A country song was playing, the lights were set to a moody purple. I couldn’t tell what was making me sick, but I thought it was the beer. I paid for my tab and started to walk. My mom was cooking dinner when I got home. She was wearing flannel pajamas, slippers, and her wet hair in a loose ponytail. Standing over a pot of boiling water, she was smoking a cigarette and flicking the ash onto a paper plate. She didn’t notice the door open. Humming to herself, she dumped a box of pasta into the water. With large, exaggerated motions, she stirred. I wonder what my dad saw in her. The fluorescent light bulbs made her duality strikingly obvious. Not old yet, but not young either. I felt bad for her, straining over spaghetti that would sit uneaten in the fridge. I walked past her without saying anything. In my room, I thought about a jester, playing with his little puppets. My mom was talking softly in the hallway, an indecipherable whisper. I didn’t respond to the knock on my door. The bossa nova from earlier wouldn’t get out of my head.
aubade |
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Aubade About Goats The sun is a large goat. Black beady eyes, four horns curling around his hot, expressionless face. I find him devilish. Hauling himself over the horizon, cloven feet grabbing for permanence in the sky. His effort turns the black to pink, A rosy goat sunrise. Standing at the foot of my bed, eating my blanket until I have no choice but to don my crook and flail and let him out to eat the kudzu. Trinity Scalia
Fur | Rachel Watts | charcoal
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Between Sleeping and Waking
Livvy Robertson
In twilight, when the misty moon will cease in shining silver soon, I rest beneath her cratered face, mind drifting to that secret place where rivers of thought ebb and flow. As the angelic, pearly glow of that bright orb, evening’s eye, begins to fade in starry sky, I squelch along the banks of sleep, edging nearby the dying deep, and I halt under the old elm tree. I dip my toes into the sea of life, of times lived, later lost, memories long forgotten, tossed in frothing tides with foam of dream, which bubbles, rushing with the stream dividing the shadow and soul. With pillow on my face, my stroll in sweet slumber stops. I’ve stirred with light of dawn and song of bird.
Sleep Master | Caroline Hiers | photo
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she will read this poem If you’re reading this poem it’s not for you. I have nocked it into my bow, the gut is taught against my pointer and middle finger. My body makes a strange triangle, a crescent moon, distorted. What is luck, what is skill what is god in the feminine, hands on mine, steadying the killing instrument. It lands just south of Koreatown. Like I said earlier, this poem is not for you. You’ve probably never been to Koreatown. god breathes deeply in my ear. Trinity Scalia
Water Wings | Mary Robinson Coco | watercolor, acrylic
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Purse A tube of lipstick left open, its blood smeared on a gun handle, wedged between crinkling receipts and spilling cinnamon candy; a wedding ring, a diamond in the center, silver in the shadow. Tarnished. Mary Robinson Coco
Knot | Katie Poole | photo
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Reflection 1 Your heart of pyrite beat down my indestructible fortress founded upon foolishness. Ainslee Johnson
Reflection 2 If only the world were moved by words, and words not only used to write the time. Ainslee Johnson
Sun on the Dome | Rose Hsieh | pen, digital
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I Want a s’mores Pop-Tart, a Winnie-the-Pooh onesie A’s in all of my classes and higher pay at work. Spaghetti and meat sauce, peanut butter, I want grits, I want Sawmill Gravy, tortilla chips, to ride a roller coaster for the first time again. I want a funnel cake or deep-fried Oreos. I want to travel the world, see the Eiffel Tower, go to Australia, see the Great Wall of China, I want to win the state championship. I want Waffle House or Primo’s. I want a good burrito, one you eat with a fork, not one you pick up. Trey Welch
Twist | Katie Poole | photo
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Dear
Math
Livvy Robertson
Dear Math, you’re boring and useless, and I hate you. I hate staying up late into the night, finding solutions to your stupid problems. You know what Bob’s going to get if he buys twenty more cupcakes? Diabetes, probably!
Dear Math, You’ve taken my time, and you’ve stolen my sleep, imprinting purple crescents under each eye. You make me want to cry, you make me want to die, to slam my head against the wooden desk where I’m sitting, to jab a knife-sharp pencil into the temples of my skull with my throbbing hand— you’re horrible, honestly, Math.
Dear Math, did I mention that I hate you? I mean, how about solving your own problems for once? I’m a teenager, not a shrink.
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Too Early
I dream of sleeping in, drinking coffee, reading a book, but no, I’m up before the birds, before the sun, before the worms. They love the idea of working out, they love it before they hear the alarm. Then they back out. Then, I’m working out alone, again.
Sara Beth Henson
Sun | Julia Phillippi | acrylic
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Broken Minds, Broken People
One, two, four, one, four, six, three, one, one. Hmmm. Break me, shake me, do you really want me? Me break you, take me, shake you. No, No.
Mark me as your own. Ahhh. I see you torturing me. Me want—want you—did you want that? You said broken bottles are a masterpiece, right? One, two, three, four, four, three, two, one. See, Johnny, I’ve got it. Go away, Johnny. Ohh. Who are you? I need to go back, back, back, black, blaa. I can’t feel anything. Put me in the corner, because you took my emotions away, didn’t you? I said now Who am I Go away I can do it but No, six, nine, seven, two see, take me home now I countdown, down, down count. See, see, look, he hurt me, hit me. He’s nice to me.
Mmm. Look at me, Mom. See, everything's going to be alright. I need you. You, you need me. Need you me now Mom, don’t go White. White. Bright. Walls, light, floor. I like it. Stop it. Black. Black heart. Black. Eyes closed. That’s better. Kennedy Maloney
Spiral | Veronica Chough | photo
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| Sapphics
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You’re My Wine After losing wrinkled and fleshy berries softly plucked by dangerous hands that scratched me, fingerprinted memories turned to warm wine. Beautiful ruins. Lauren Mckay
Going Downing | Annie Jicka | acrylic
Columbia Scholastic Press Association National Critique of Student Publications Crown Awards Competition Gold Crown 2008, 2015, 2016, 2018 Silver Crown 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2017, 2019 Columbia Scholastic Press Association National Critique of Student Publications Medalist Competition Gold Medal 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 Bronze Medal 2002 National Scholastic Press Association Pacemaker Finalist 2017, 2020, 2021 All–American 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2019, 2021 First Class with Distinction 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020 National Council of Teachers of English Program to Recognize Excellence in Student Literary Magazines Highest Award 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2017 Award of Excellence 2005, 2020, 2021 Superior 2014, 2016, 2019 Southern Interscholastic Press Association Evaluation of Student Publications All–Southern 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019 Superior 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021 American Scholastic Press Association Annual Magazine Competition First Place with Special Merit 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 Mississippi Scholastic Press Association Excellence in Journalism Awards Best in Mississippi 2013, 2014, 2015. 2016, 2018, 2019 Best Design 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020 Best Quality of Visuals 2020 Best Theme 2015, 2016