contents
The End of an Era: Saying Goodbye to Middle School by Tawhida Ahmed
Untitled by Abuk Aleu
Beneath My Banner by Zelda Abramovich
Flowerbeds by Paulina Barnesi
How to Stay Trapped by Rosemary Bodine
Mythical Beasts of America by Pride David
Windup Doll by Nautica Illas
An Impending Sense by Alaina Kubiak
The Introvert’s Guide to Friendship by Rebekah Lafferty
Untitled by Grif Oberholtzer
Zombie Movie by Zeki Ozay
The Privileged View by: Mia Kirisits
it was a very beautiful june by Angelina Tang
Floating in my consciousness by Keira VanDerBeck
Collaboration: Beginning with a line by Robin, Rebekah, Nautica, Keira, Nina
Dear Reader,
Transmissions is a collection of youth writing from Just Buffalo's Writing Center in Fall of 2023. At its very core this digital collection is a collaboration. A collaboration between the original inspiration and the writer's intent. A collaboration between the literary artists that created these works and the visual artists that bound it together, gave it a greater purpose and created “a totally new kind of consciousness.” Transmissions is special, not because it is clear and easily understood. But because it will create a million new questions “left unanswered.”
“How it feels to see people debate your existence,” “through [a] viewfinder”?
“What defines a friend” when “hell is a teenage girl”?
“Co-inhabitants of planet Earth” I urge you to read this collection if you want to cry, and laugh, and “scream at all the excess.”
Keira
“Feelings Pillage” by Keira
The End of an Era: Saying Goodbye to Middle School
Tawhida Ahmed
The beautiful flowers, the multicolor cursive writing on the balloons, and all the families cheering for their children. It used to feel like yesterday when you walked into kindergarten, elementary school, and then middle school. You and your friends in beautiful dresses, your dad taking pictures telling you to smile. Those stairs that make their way to the stage, receiving the diploma and hearing the phrase “You Made it!” Your parents were proud, and the clapping was loud, it inspired you so much that you loved the crowd. In those days, you made many golden memories that you will remember forever. It was an unforgettable celebration; indeed, it was the graduation!
This poem was shared during the How to Break Hearts workshop.
Untitled
Abuk Aleu
II would like to speak of florescence in a way that illuminates love and light
Meaning that to capture growth in all frames, clicks marking motion in all shutter speeds
Is to conserve something worth knowing
English takes the verb “to exist” from the French exister, coming from the Latin verb existere meaning “to emerge” — ”to stand forth” — “to be”
These days, I’m scared to utter words containing the letter “d”, depletion, destruction, deforestation
They all reek of loss
But to speak of consequence and continuity, With a tongue twisting back side up, salivary glands bearing drought, is what it means to be an accomplice
Mother nature sits on a ticking bomb, except industry has re-wired duration in a way that ticks her
What I’m trying to say is: we cannot afford to use periods when dealing with a run on sentence as existential as this
Meaning, this is not divine timing but death-dealing
Meaning declaring crisis to be god-sent and not man-made is a ploy beating on accountability
And here again I speak of consequence
More so policies that do not care for the plight of its people
For the conservation of universal life outside of human thought
Continuity is gray tin canisters hammered into brick walls that only care for cash-money
Mother Nature sits on a ticking bomb, except industry has re-wired duration in a way that ticks us
And here, I speak of change
I would like to speak of florescence in a way that illuminates conservation
So I ask you all, how can we make this world something worth knowing?
This poem was shared during a Writing workshop with East Side Climate Connections.
Beneath my Banner
Zelda Abramovich
i bleed a breathing discrepancy
i cede a breeding dependence see, i need my pleading to set us free
i seed the forest for my grandchildren’s trees
how could a high school education break this shackled administration another deadly occupation could not be saved by consecration
i leak humiliation on the tile floor cut myself on the bathroom door not my armies but its my war this is my war you don’t understand what I’m fighting for a chance to sit under birch and ask for water for water just water and an end to the slaughter and a coffin prebuilt for my great great granddaughter
i sleep in english when i'm supposed to read and in between classes i reseal the bleed but i tear out those stitches again every night because Everyone’s wrong about me being right
i know im not right i know im not right they say a few words and then i choke on sight
i will be in that gas station stall
40 minutes off the i-90 If you can recall tell me you recall i know you recall where You and i walked when the car liked to stall and i got sick on that ugly drive back 2 emails out from a panic attack these panic attacks all these panic attacks and mom keeps asking how i can relax but my leash is tied tight to these clever train tracks cinemax bloody Cinemax and my life is paid with federal income tax
i remember how i hit that doe in the dark 10 feet away from my neighborhood park would her crucifixion be blasphemy i asked as they dragged away her body cause they shouldn’t have taken away what was mine her corpse, that was mine it was mine and im fine stop asking questions where you tow the line
have you heard that story where the young couple drown they had to leave town they couldn't leave town so they went to the lake and fell all the way down and under the water the only sound was wedding bells the splash of chlorine when they fell that fetid smell of rot and mold no it wasn't mold or so i’ve been told that only happens when the couple grows old 40 feet under the lake in the cold
it was sold, the lake, when they bought up the park that park
yes that park where i killed in the dark do the dead take up room on Noah’s new ark
i am blood and bone and amusement park lines library fines
ignore the clock chime cause you’re mine and let's dine on hospital bracelets and property lines
This poem was performed at a BCAT Youth Advocates and Community Organizations website launch event.
Flowerbeds
Paulina Bargnesi
I wake up submerged in a bed of flowers. Time has completely slipped away from me. The saplings from before are now snags. Vines are growing up my legs. They're pulling me down as I struggle to get up. Home tugs at the vines. It's trying to rip them from underneath me, but they're coiled around me and far too thick. I attempt screaming, but my mouth is sprouting with flowers, and I'm choking on pollen. The more we tug and pull the worse it gets. I'm begging home to leave me alone. I'll try to figure it out on my own. Home doesn't listen to me. It keeps pulling till its hands are bloody and calloused. I gave up a while ago and let the vines creep up my body. I'm no good at taking action, only good at dreaming.
This poem was sharing during the Dreaming Home Workshop
HOW TO STAY TRAPPED
Rosemary Bodine
Sit alone without your glasses on, Watch through blurred vision.
Imperfections chipping away
At your true self.
Keep your nails long,
Just to tear away at that flawed shell.
Go to sleep early, Just so you don’t screw it up again.
Look at your melatonin dosage, Fantasize about taking more.
More than you can handle.
Just so you can fall into A totally new kind of consciousness.
Type out these grievances
And watch as they enter; Delayed.
Almost as if they aren’t Your own problems.
Sit idly by, While someone else’s complaints
Come through your own vision.
Bury yourself,
Right up to your eyes
In as many projects as you can.
Project after project,
To contain that insatiable need
For a distraction.
Fall into these sorrows
Further – ever further, Until each tick of the clock
Pushes you deeper down.
Loathe every single day.
Plead, with whatever Cruel powers that be, To fix you for once.
Pretend that it shocks you
That nobody comes to help.
Reflect your future
Through a cracked screen.
Make another crack, Remembering how little
Consequences there truly are.
Dissect your every thought. Look to that shattered screen
To guide you, until it leads you 6 feet underground.
Stay in bed,
Shame yourself for every Little Thing.
Knowing that you’re too lazy To fix it for yourself.
Hold that against yourself, Compare your actions to others, Until you aren’t worth a damn Thing.
But, at the end of the day, You’ll just ignore your feelings And go to sleep.
After all, you’ll feel better Come morning time, Won’t you?
Mythical Beasts of America
Pride Davis
All across America, there are mythical beasts. No one knows how these beasts formed, but it’s rumored that when the country became so divisive, people disappeared. There was no fight, argument, or trace left, just… disappeared.
Now, there’s at least one beast per every state. There’s Stikini where Florida used to be and the Jersey Devil in New York- er, Jersey Devil land. This is how we like things here. Organized with a purpose, categorized by personality.
You might ask what happens to those who are uncategorized and… well, we don’t talk about that. There are some things that are better left unanswered.
This poem was shared during Drop-in Hours
Windup Doll
Nautica Illas
Velvet covers the stage.
People are waiting, anticipating.
Wind up doll it’s time to dance.
Heads are turning and they’re looking at you.
“Once upon a time, I did something wrong.”
What did you do?
“I thought he was mine, But he knew we didn’t belong.”
Twirl about, you’re dwelling in doubt. You’re dancing poorly.
Sing a song, remember what you did wrong.
Stop crying.
You're ruining your makeup.
We're telling a story and you're messing it up.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry,"
That's not your line.
“Please, it won't happen again.”
Wind up doll we’re losing patience.
Heads are turning and they’re looking away from you.
Turn your key and begin.
“I’m tired, I’m tired, My love keeps running And I’ve no energy for pursuit. He keeps turning And I’ve no idea who he is anymore. She does, and she disgusts me.
She’s the reason he’s turning And she must turn away.”
A deed was committed.
Decided by hands as judge. A fate unjustly written. How did it end?
“When I did.”
Wind up doll, you’re talking crazy!
A head is turning, and no one wants to look. But they hear, Cracking, snapping, squeaking.
Wind up doll.
The show is over.
An Impending Sense
Alaina Kubiak
I was lost in a clocktower I didn’t remember entering, when my home walked up to me.
I didn’t recognize it immediately, clad all in the turquoise colors of childhood, ambling as though drunk on the sunshine of young laughter. Its eyes were grey. An undecided grey, gazing at me through the lashes of imperfection, as though I was the one center of its existence.
My words were stolen with the breath that was never mine, as the time that I wish I had lived as my last moments ticked on behind me.
Home is like an impending sense that nothing will ever be the same.
This poem was shared during the Dreaming Home Workshop
The Introvert’s Guide to Friendship
Rebekah Lafferty
Welcome, fellow shy, socially awkward introverts. Please, settle down, get comfortable. You’re among friends- or should I say acquaintances? Co-inhabitants of planet Earth? What defines a friend- and how are you supposed to get one?
I’m about as introverted as they come, so I understand what it's like to try to make friends (or at least try to try to make friends). It’s hard. People are complicated, relationships are complicated, and it’s often easier to be alone. But loneliness is apparently “bad for a person’s emotional and mental health” and can lead to a “32% higher risk of dying early,” so I guess it’s nice to know how to make (and keep) friends. That’s why I’m here! I’ve done the hard work of researching, so I can tell you how to do the much harder work of following through based on the research.
Without any further ado, here you go, my introvert kin: The Introvert’s Guide to Friendship.
1. How to Be in the Same Area as People
This shouldn’t be too hard. Most of the readers are, I believe, high schoolers. Well, look around! You have twenty friends-to-be in all of your classes! Assuming you attend class, anyway…. And if you’re the rare adult in my audience, then Google would recommend joining a gym or volunteering at a local non-profit organization.
2. How to Start a Conversation
I’m very guilty of letting other people start conversations. Pro tip: if you bring a popular book to school, maybe someone will comment on it, and you can let them know how far you are in it, and then voila, you’re in a conversation. But you can’t always rely on others to start the conversation. So, try giving someone a compliment, or asking for help (even if you don’t need it). People like to be admired, and people like to help people. And if you see someone holding a good book, you can be the one to comment on it!
3. How to Start the Friendship
So you had a conversation with a post-stranger. How do you bridge the gap from acquaintances to friends? The easiest route is to eat lunch together in the cafeteria. (Sorry, adults, that one’s for the kids.) If there’s an event you’re both going to, like homecoming or a sports game, you can agree to meet up beforehand and carpool on the way to the event. You should definitely exchange numbers or social media accounts. And really, you can just ask something like, “You wanna hang out after school sometime?” (I’ve never tried that last one, because of social anxiety, but logic suggests that it would work.)
4. How to Maintain the Friendship
Text! That’s a big one. And no, Snaps don’t count. Don’t lie, you know you’re Snapping that one person because you want to keep the streak, they’re not really your friend. If you have any childhood friends, try to keep in touch with them- that’s an easy route to having a good friend. Before you know it, you’ll have more friends than pre-friends! (That’s a lie. If you’re like me, you’ll get three friends and decide that’s quite enough.)
5. And Then What?
And then… keep doing it. Keep starting conversations, making new friends, texting people, and maintaining friendships. It’s a never ending process. It’s a daunting task, yes, but just remember: the first step is as easy as an off-hand compliment on someone’s anime teeshirt.
This poem was performed at a JBWC Open Mic in 2023.
Untitled
Grif Oberholtzer
To all the transgender lives taken from us this year. May they rest in peace.
I struggled to write this poem. The words wouldn’t come to me. To form a sentence on how it feels to exist as a trans youth in a world that wouldn’t hesitate to kill you. I wrote, and deleted it, wrote some more, and deleted it. I thought, maybe, just maybe, I simply wasn’t good at this. And then I realized, after looking at comments going back and forth about what’s right and what’s not, who is human, who is a demon, and so on. That there are no words for it.
There are no words that describe how it feels to see people debate your existence, to walk into a bathroom, knowing that could be your last time seeing family, to watch laws being made to try and terminate you from existence, to see yet another innocent life taken.
I’m human, but people try to pry that word from my grasp, as if we are sent from hell with destroying earth as our task. Scared of our existence threatening your superiority. As if all we asked for wasn’t just to live equally.
This poem was performed at a JBWC Open Mic in 2023.
ZOMBIE MOVIE
Comics Meet-up
Zeki Ozay
Shared during a
The PRIVILEGED VIEW
Mia Kirisits
the senator stands in his powerful stance arms crossed face stern as he peered through the viewfinder he looks only straight ahead with bustling streets and smiling faces smart children only growing smarter rich men only growing richer then it clicks off and he is welcomed by darkness he sleeps soundly with the vision of faux reality behind his eyelids had he looked right single mothers, scraping together enough for dinner to the left, people dying of illness because they cannot afford help but god forbid he strains his neck and looks
This poem was sharing during the Forced Connections Workshop
it was a very beautiful june
Angelina Tang
“Did you hear about the train?”
Her hands brush yours, a silky coolness not quite filling the gaps. A draft breeze from somewhere unseen flutters between your fingers, a trapped moth between your palms; she offers a slight glance over her shoulder, her long, silvery-blonde tresses. The paintings loom over you, the dull shadow casting their once-golden frames in copper decay, oil eyes like husks overhead. Her lantern creaks as you walk, the candle within slipping in the ever-so slightly oversized hollow, greased with melted wax like a torn moon.
“What train?”
“The train that derailed.”
You could never forget that, passing by after the scene had already died. June sunset, the sight of the boxy, white car slipped over the side of the blackened rails, its tail end still in the station, a chain-link fence the only thing between your fingertips and the head of the car like a great, beached beluga whale. The sun had glinted off of it like a jewel. You had been alone.
“Oh, that.” Her lips pull into the slightest little smile. Her colors are all washed out; she is a worn-out lady from a painting. The museum is cold after hours how had you ended up here, anyway, with her? “Terrible, isn’t it? Those children.”
Of course. It must’ve been right after school, when all the little ones take the line home. You wonder if any of them had been slumped
against the windows, their tiny backs with tiny clothing and shiny backpacks creating a bed. You wouldn’t have seen or perhaps you did. Perhaps what you’d thought was an abandoned bag was a body. You wouldn’t have known.
“I wonder how it happened,” you say. The lantern squeaks. You reach the bottom of a flight of stairs and begin to climb; her dress hem, white cotton, flutters against your hip. You’re not sure where you’re going; the light does not reach that far.
“I wonder.” Her voice is soft; it’s as if your mind strains to hear it as a bout of lightheadedness falls like a shadow; had you forgotten to drink anything today, again? She keeps walking, and you follow her. “Hey, tell me… do you wish you’d seen it happen?”
You open your mouth, perhaps to tell her to stop and sit a while to stop the throbbing in your head, or perhaps to answer you’ll never know, because it’s then that you blink and the darkness vanishes like descending smoke sinking heavy to your feet, and suddenly you’re on the train platform wet with cigarette petrichor and the sticky June humidity forms slick dew on the chain-link behind you, a heavy rain rattling the metal roof of the station.
She stands in the center of the rail, white Mary Janes like jewels against the worn metal. A train rushes towards her, its headlights drowning her out from a mile away, tossing a blanketed haze over her pale skin. She stares straight ahead as it swerves right before it meets her fingertips.
“Did you crash the train?”
There’s a rotten glint in her eye. “I wonder if I did.”
This piece was inspired by the song “とても素敵な六⽉でした“ by Eight.
Floating in my consciousness
Keira VanDerBeck
My flesh is too much
Encumbering my bones
Swirling and bloating
Until I can no longer walk
And I scream
At all the excess
An overflowing of a teenage mistake
Turns into a fetal surprise
Now always breathing
And sleeping
And eating
So she panicked
Wondering
Knowing
That all she is
Is a waste of storage space space
A clerical error
Hell is a teenage girl
Biting and bitchy
But mostly just scared
Of being alone
On the periphery of the joke
Barely enjoying the rays of others joy
Full knowledge of the stark constant Teens laughing
Tagline “show those pearly whites”
Or a girl alone in the world
The personification of an Elliot Smith song
We all know who is wanted.
Beginning with a Line BY
JBWC Poetry Meet-Up
Robin
You apologize and the garlic burns in the pan.
A burnt apology you soak, then scrape away.
Sizzling into something more than nothing that is quickly gone
All that is left is the writing in the ash and smoke. It spells “it’s fine.” It misspells “your fine”
They’ve washed away into water and the clouds.
I dance then with the spatula in hand
I meant it. I mean it. I’ll mean it again later too.
This is the end - honestly.
Rebekah
When I think of you, I think of strawberries
how everything new about you hovers around the edges
how there are little seeds everywhere ready to plant
How the sweetness in your core soothes my tastebuds
You exist as a sigh on a cold summer evening
The rabbits have carried you off by morning
Twinkling in the early glow
I’m left to wait for the next time you’re in season
Seasonality, sazón– snap
Snow sneaks in, shortcake, you just have to accept it.
Knowledge familiar friend of the tears I haven’t cried
Nautica
The red in the cake means I love you.
The blue means I wish you were here.
But you aren’t and the window leaks cold air
Air that slowly freezes the chocolate icing
I ran out of baking soda, a week or so ago, and nothing rises
I ran out of red and have to make it -- I scrape the petals off the neighbor’s roses, I chip the paint from the toy car buried beneath the porch steps
My tears substitute the blue. Oh, if only you knew how much I love you. You know something substitutes though, my other me.
Keira
Despite popular opinion I am not a trash gremlin
I am, in fact, an iconic piece of work.
Elaborately-framed with an ironic tilt
Out of your price range, shifting A priceless enigma that drives you to insanity for the answer.
Consider me recycled, consider me the promise of compost I can’t quite remember what it feels like to be home
But it feels quite comforting on a pedestal.
Here I am, friends, you’re welcome.
A show put on for your amusement.
Nina
Breath mind, the brussel sprouts remained on the plate, the music
These are the moments that stop time, forever dinner party chatter
You ask me how I’m doing and all the water glasses tip
During the dinner party charade, we all pretend to have it all together
But I can easily break like the glass in my hand, and spill out like the wine in it.
Thirst thrust into time.
An innocent masquerade I’ve seen you all before but can’t remember a single name
Am I here or am I an illusion? To you and to myself, I know not the answer. Cheeky bastard boy grabs a drink and runs, youth the antithesis of all that we are a song they’ve played on the radio too many times. this whole time you thought you knew the words
WITH GRATITUDE
Many thanks to Just Buffalo Writing Center staff, Youth Ambassadors, young writers, and teaching artists.
Thank you to Program Assistant Sage for cover design.
Thank you to YA Ambassadors Angelina, Keira, and Pride, and Writing Center Coordinator Nina for collaboratively editing this issue!
Thank you to Angelina for interior images, design, and layout. Thank you to Keira for the introduction and collage!
Just Buffalo's Writing Center is a creative community of young writers, artists, & thinkers. Located on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, Just Buffalo Literary Center’s mission is to create and strengthen communities through the literary arts.
Learn more at justbuffalo.org
