I AM AN ARTIST – Ava Zellner

Ava Zellner

I AM AN ARTIST

I am an artist painting on canvas after canvas, one doodle after another. I paint tiny stars in a big galaxy, blue, purple, pink, black in the Milky Way. I am an artist.

Akron Elementary School Grade 3

Just Buffalo Teaching Artists

Meet the talented team of writers, artists, and educators who represent Just Buffalo Literary Center through the work they do with young writers throughout Western New York whether at the Just Buffalo Writing Center, in the community, or during our creative writing programs in the schools.

SUSAN HODGE ANNER is a poet, playwright, and essayist whose work has been performed both locally and in New York, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, and Washington, D.C. She taught Theatre at the University of Buffalo for 22 years, and is now an Artist-in-Residence at Women Children’s Hospital through UB’s Center for the Arts Arts in Healthcare Initiative. She is the author of the blog “What I Know Right Now” and is a certified special education teacher who has taught workshops in improving written and verbal communication skills with students with physical, intellectual, and emotional disabilities.

JOEL BRENDEN is an artist and educator working within a broad range of disciplines including photography and bookmaking. A native of Washington State, he received his MFA in Visual Studies from the University at Buffalo SUNY in 2008. Recently, work from his series Bad Medicine was included in the exhibition Rust Belt Bienniel.

Just Buffalo Teaching Artists

BENJAMIN BRINDISE is the author of the chapbook ROTTEN KID (Ghost City Press, 2017), the full length collection of poetry Those Who Favor Fire, Those Who Pray to Fire (EMP Books, 2018), and the short fiction micro chap The Procession (Ghost City Press, 2018). He has represented Buffalo, NY in the National Poetry Slam in 2015, 2016, and 2018, helping Buffalo to place as high as 9th in the country. His poetry and fiction has been published widely online and in print including Maudlin House, Trailer Park Quarterly, and Philosophical Idiot.

MARQUIS “TEN THOUSAND” BURTON is a spoken word poet, educator and curator. Working with Shea’s Performing Arts, C.A.O. (Community Action Organization), Say Yes Buffalo and other non-profit and educational institutions he has taught young writers to discover their voice through poetry while celebrating their stories for more than a decade. He has represented Buffalo in National Poetry Slams for the past decade and has been the official team coach for two years. Marquis has also held the position of curator of poetry talent for the Music Is Art Festival for the past 6 years.

ADAM DRURY is a scholar, musician, activist, and sound/performance-based poet currently pursuing a PhD in English at SUNY, University at Buffalo. His writing has been published in The International Journal of Zizek Studies and Umbr(a): a journal of the unconscious.

ALEXIS DAVID is a fiction writer, poet, and illustrator. She holds an MFA in fiction from New England College and a MA in education from Canisius College.

Just Buffalo Teaching Artists

LAURA MARRIS’ poems appear or are forthcoming in The Yale Review, The North American Review, The Cortland Review, The Volta, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. Recent translations include Paol Keineg’s Triste Tristan and Other Poems (co-translated with Rosmarie Waldrop for Burning Deck Press), and she is currently at work on a new translation of Albert Camus’ The Plague. Her work has been supported by a MacDowell Colony Fellowship and a Daniel Varoujan Award from the New England Poetry Club. She teaches creative writing at the University at Buffalo.

JAKE REBER is an artist, writer, and educator living in Buffalo, NY, where he co-curates hystericallyreal.com.

SHERRY ROBBINS has conducted creative writing workshops throughout New York State and abroad for more than 30 years and works with hundreds of students each year. She has a Masters in the poetics of ecstasy and two books of poetry, Snapshots of Paradise and Or, the Whale. Sherry ran her own letterpress for years, is a certified yoga teacher, and a multi-year panelist for the NEA’s Art Works program.

AIDAN RYAN is a writer and educator based in Buffalo, NY, and co-founder and publisher of Foundlings Press. He graduated from the Canisius College Creative Writing Program and went on to study at the W.B. Yeats International Summer School in Sligo, Ireland and to earn his master’s at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of the cut-up poetry collection Organizing Isolation: Half-Lives of Love at Long Distance (Linoleum Press, 2017), as well as

Just Buffalo Teaching Artists

two educational children’s books on computer programming and news media literacy; notable essays and interviews have appeared on CNN and in The White Review, Rain Taxi, and Traffic East, and he is a regular music critic, travel writer, and cultural essayist for The Skinny. As an editor, he conceived and managed the production of My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry (BlazeVOX, 2017), and with Max Crinnin curated and co-edited Constant Stranger: After Frank Stanford (Foundlings Press, 2018). Janet McNally selected Aidan for the Judge’s Prize in the Just Buffalo Members Competition in 2017. He is currently at work on a short history of the Canisius College Hassett Reading.

TRAVIS SHARP is a teacher, writer, and book artist living in Buffalo. He co-edited Radio: 11.8.16 (Essay Press, 2017) with Aimee Harrison and Maria Anderson. He’s an editor and designer at Essay Press and a PhD student in the Poetics Program at SUNY Buffalo. Poems and essays have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, The Bombay Gin, The Operating System, LIT, Puerto del Sol, Big Lucks, Entropy, and in other things and places.

RACHELLE TOARMINO is a writer and editor from Niagara Falls, New York. She is the author of the poetry collection That Ex (Big Lucks Books, 2020) and the chapbooks Feel Royal (b l u s h lit, 2019) and Personal & Generic (PressBoardPress, 2016). Her writing has appeared in Cosmonauts Avenue, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Metatron, and Shabby Doll House, and has been anthologized in The Cosmonauts Avenue Anthology and My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry. She is the founding editor in chief of Peach Mag and the editor of the anthology With You: Withdrawn

Just Buffalo Teaching Artists

Poetry of the #MeToo Movement. She lives in Buffalo, where she works as the communications and development manager of Arts Services Initiative of Western New York.

BEE WALSH is a poet born and raised in New York City. Her book, Manning Up is forthcoming from West44 Books. She is the poetry editor for UK-based Synaesthesia Magazine and a freelance editor for-hire. Her work has appeared in Wyvern Lit, Velvet Tail, Vagabond Lit, Riggwelter, and The Vagina Zine. She is currently living in Buffalo, NY where she is a poetry advocate all over the city.

CHRISTINA VEGA-WESTHOFF is a poet, translator, and aerialist. She is the author of Suelo Tide Cement, winner of the 2017 Nightboat Prize for Poetry. Vega-Westhoff also works as a teaching artist with the Geneseo Migrant Center and as a movement instructor with The Bird’s Nest Circus Arts. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, most recently BAX 2018: Best American Experimental Writing and Words Without Borders. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Arizona and a BA in English and Latin American Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She choreographs and performs interdisciplinary works independently and for festivals and theatre, dance, and circus companies.

NEIL WECHSLER’s play Grenadine won the 2008 Yale Drama Award, selected by Edward Albee. Grenadine was published by Yale University Press and has been produced at Road Less Traveled Productions in Buffalo, SMU in Texas, and UNC-Chapel Hill. Neil’s adaptation of Ibsen’s Emperor

Just Buffalo Teaching Artists

and Galilean premiered at Torn Space Theater. It was the American premiere of Emperor and Galilean. Neil’s play The Brown Bull of Cuailnge received its world premiere in Toronto, presented by The Room. Neil has spoken about playwriting and literature at high schools and colleges across the country. Neil is the Executive Director of Against the Grain Theater Festival in Buffalo.

MAX WEISS is a Buffalo native cartoonist and songwriter, and vocalist of the off-kilter vibraphone pop band, Welks Mice. After receiving a BA in English Literature and Art Education from the University of Vermont in 2012, he has self-published two graphic novels and recorded the full-length album, Songs In C, to be released by One Percent Press this fall. His ongoing making-comics workshop “Masters of the Grid” has yielded three anthologies of JB student work to date.

JANNA WILLOUGHBY-LOHR has been writing poetry since she was 5 and performing since age 12. She holds a B.A. in Entrepreneurial Creative Business Arts from Warren Wilson College. A Grand Slam finalist in 2005–2008 for the Nickel City Poetry Slam and a member of the 2006 Nickel City Slam team at the National Poetry Slam, Janna is also an editor for Earth’s Daughters literary magazine, the longest running women’s publication in the country. She has been performing with her band, The BloodThirsty Vegans, since 2008. They are currently at work on their second studio album. She also runs her own business making handmade paper and books.

Welcome to the JUST BUFFALO

WRITING CENTER

Dear Reader,

All of the pieces in this section of Wordplay were written by writers that attend Just Buffalo’s Writing Center, an afterschool “incubator for creativity” for teens passionate about words. As JBWC Youth Ambassador, Danny, so eloquently describes:

There’s a feeling that some writers get, the feeling of having words just trapped inside you. You curl your fingers in need of a pen and paper, your heart pounds with adrenaline but you keep it bottled up. I would get that feeling all the time. But, at the JBWC, whenever I step into the welcoming, book-covered walls, my motivation comes rushing back to me. It’s almost like the walls are filled with magic, telling me, “Write! Write like the world depends on it!”

Maybe these poems were written quietly in a notebook on a simple wood table to help someone process a feeling of panic. Maybe they were written collaboratively in Sharpie on a giant scroll of paper mounted to the wall during the unending dregs of winter. Maybe they were written in Bidwell Park at a picnic while playing a Simon Says-inspired language experiment. Maybe they were written in response to a prompt from a National Book Award-winning poet who sat across from us at

that same, simple wood table and encouraged us to consider the deeper meanings of the words we’ve taken for granted.

No matter how or when these pieces were created, there’s no doubt: the poems you are about to read were written like the world depends on it. Because it does.

Sincerely,

Robin Jordan Writing Center Coordinator Just Buffalo Literary Center

The Just Buffalo Writing Center is a FREE creative writing center for teens (ages 12-18) located on the second floor of 468 Washington Street in downtown Buffalo. We’re open every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 3:30–6:00pm. Beyond our workshop series, JBWC youth get to meet awardwinning authors, are given platforms from which to share their work and talents, and are invited to take part in local arts and community events.

Just Buffalo Writing Center TABLE OF CONTENTS

5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 22. 23. 24.

26. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. "TODAY YOU WEAR THE COLD”: SURVIVING BUFFALO WINTER — JBWC Collaboration MAKE YOUR OWN LEMONADE, WITHOUT ANY OF THOSE UNNERVING PRESERVATIVES — Elle Bader-Gregory THE GAY BLACK MEN WHO DIDN’T MAKE IT — Angel Barber STARING INTO THE SUN — Matt Beebe SOFT AND SENSIBLE — Theo Bellavia-Frank POSTCARD — Jhordyn Brown BOOM THE CONNECTION — Bushraa Choudhury WOMANIST — Sage Enderton HORROR STORY — Juliette Falzone IN THE END, WE KNEW THERE WOULD BE A DEBT TO PAY — Autumn Giordano DULL EYES AND BRIGHT LIPS — Zanaya Hussain SPACE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT ME — Birch Kinsey BEHIND THE SCENES — Rinn Kress MOURNING THE LOSS OF A WELL-SPENT SUMMER — Ayden Link SEASONS — Eden Lowinger and Danny Merlino NEWBORN — Eden Lowinger REVENGE — Carol McGuire CRYING IN A COFFEE SHOP (EDIT: IN FRONT OF MY MOM): Danny Merlino MY GODDESS — Jahton Perry ROADS — Marissa Morris I KNOW A POISON YOU DO NOT — LC Rachuna THE FURTHEST POINT — Trinity Ridout PHOTOGRAPH — Katie Rooney THE JOY OF TOGETHERNESS — Taylor Yarns

Just Buffalo Writing Center Collaboration

"TODAY YOU WEAR THE COLD”: SURVIVING BUFFALO WINTER

inspired by Emily Jungmin Moon & Jill Osier

Frost and crusted snot. As familiar, as fanatic as chicken wings, as footballs flattened to dust. I'll tell you this: today you are trapped in the snow globe of an excitable 8 year old. Her eyelashes the maestro of snowflakes and her curiosity turns you upside down. Her face is protected by a damp knit scarf, and she reaches out to you. Tells you to stick out your tongue. Borrow from the past. Let the wind play a role. The role of the hero dancing through all the streets forever, and forever.

Elle Bader-Gregory

MAKE YOUR OWN LEMONADE, WITHOUT ANY OF THOSE UNNERVING PRESERVATIVES

In a storage room having a panic attack halfway through the July heat

Hand me your favorite tap shoes the pine-sol we’ll clean the floors and organize the coat hangers together (by size, color, strength, and general friendliness)

Bathe the whole world in citrus neck craned like a sunflower in search of a stolen light and eating silence like the hearts of lemons

Zest in between my teeth That’s today’s problem

The Park School of Buffalo Grade 9

Angel Barber

THE GAY BLACK MEN WHO DIDN’T MAKE IT

how will I feel about ghosts come morning time will the weight of my brothers sink past my shoulders into shallow end if I drown in footsteps was his pain worth a swim did he ever think about me probably not too busy running from cops or bruised up in cold air too poor and sick to sustain too young and free to care not free at all chained and institutionalized or locked inside his own mind breaking apart was status quo living in these horrors so eloquently I wanna know his intentions but is there ever intention in oppression choking up while dead staring the beast wasn’t an option back then midst of tragedy it’s safe to say he wasn’t thinking about me the product of his labors and I do not think about him or the homeless on the street the men and women in pain I turn a blind guilty eye

Frederick Law Olmsted School, PS 156 Grade 11

Matt Beebe

STARING INTO THE SUN

I see his face and shudder. His hair too silky and ginger to resist. His eyes an endless pool of caramel joy I could drown myself in and thank him for the experience. But when I touch his slender jaw, when my fingertips brush his ginger hair, it burns.

His eyes are a small girl under the age of six. She holds her ice cream cone in one hand until it drops onto the cement blocks beneath her feet. Against her father’s wishes, who stands to her right, she stares directly into the sun. Unable to look away. To stare into the eyes of the sun— it is agony. To embrace the beauty of our Earth’s light is impossible for the girl, though it pains her so.

Such is my agony. To stare directly into the sun is to look into his eyes. And to feel his body is to feel my eyes burn against the light.

The Park School of Buffalo Grade 9

Theo Bellavia-Frank

SOFT AND SENSIBLE

with lines from Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost

Love’s feeling is more soft and sensible Than fear, who bends them to his will Love guides from hate and dark to light It ends the endless moonless night

Still climbing trees in the Hesperides? As the sun sets, the clear voice sings One burden for another, and Heracles Takes the earth upon his holy wings

To fast, to study, and to see no woman Men say it’s too much to bear But if Hercules could Hera’s apples summon Does that combat Aphrodite, kind and fair?

As bright as Apollo's lute, strung with his hair, the god sees another nymph standing there Why does he make effort, why does he care? For love is soft and sensible, and does not err.

Amherst Middle School Grade 8

Jhordyn Brown

POSTCARD

How blue are you? Are you dying to live? Tied up like the laces of a shoe? Could you ever reap to give? Do you ever wonder about an unheard sound? Maybe an ego slain? Or the weightlessness of ground?

Amherst Central High School Grade 10

Bushraa Choudhury

BOOM THE CONNECTION

Cubes slip beneath the table. Save the butterflies from flames. (Boom the connection) of crumble leaves. Return to the ground. I didn't want it but it had to happen. Sorry for tearing your life line apart. It was better the second time. After, I had my honey med and returned to the rigged grass crying regret in sync with the wind. Sorry I've eaten you. But you made my head spin.

SUNY Erie Community College 2nd Year

Sage Enderton

WOMANIST

I wish I had been told

that being a woman

means being

made of rust. Growing in Venus’ image means

you learn to be unraveled by the color

red. You will always find yourself

folded over and rotted

at the foot of Dionysus -

a broken wine crate

A ghost waiting to grasp the sky.

City Honors School, PS 195 Grade 12

Juliette Falzone

HORROR STORY

They say the outcome depends on the beginning. Although, somehow, something tells me that’s not true. It seems to be the opposite. Although, it’s kind of hard to tell when the only thing you can see with the one eye that isn’t perpetually swinging from its socket is what little blood you have left dripping down from your wrists because the chains you bear in the basement are too tight. Everything is covered in dust down here. Bookshelves cluttered with dust, tables filled with trays full of dust, bags full of dust. Some of the bags are filled with rotten fruit. Everything smells the same. It smells like being buried six-feet-deep. I can feel somehow too. I can feel all around the room and I don’t understand why I can feel everything and yet it all feels the same. It’s soft and delicate like lace. I’ve never liked the way lace feels but I guess that is what this is supposed to be. Everything I hate.

Kenmore West High School Grade 10

Autumn Giordano

IN THE END, WE KNEW THERE WOULD BE A DEBT TO PAY

How is it that my heart ties itself into a tight untie-able knot right when someone knocks to get in

How is it that some people can listen and believe everything they hear

How is it that when my heart is in a knot the one sliver of doubt in my head is bombed

And every limb on my body goes numb

Every thought in my brain goes dumb

And every answer I say seems to wrap itself around me and make me regret the honest words that seem to come out of my mouth in a rhythm

It seems people like to talk more than listen

You realize you knew there was a wrinkle in the shirt the whole time that you couldn’t iron out

Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts, PS 192 Grade 9

Zanaya Hussain

DULL EYES AND BRIGHT LIPS

Her eyes are dull, but her lipstick is always bright. Hair styled and breasts out. Smooth skin covered her thumping heart. She was everything they wanted, though she never knew what she needed herself. Stilettos made the edges of her feet ache, but she always seemed to make due. She exclaimed at a constant how much they all wanted her, though she never told us whether she wanted them. But everyone knows that bruises can be covered up with makeup, and how easily blood dries, and how often screams are muffled before the bed is even made. Her body belonged to society. Her voice? Stolen. How would she know what love felt like if she was never taught? Instead we blame sexism on history and culture. When really screeching fathers and complacent mothers bloom insecure girls. But it’s alright, because there are always more eyes to look at and more lips to kiss.

City Honors School, PS 95 Grade 11

Birch Kinsey

SPACE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT ME

and it's impossible to disappoint the sun You'll live and die looking up at the stars

Seasons will churn on and my children will join me All we made of ourselves will turn to mud and soil

From under the ground we’ll wonder if the stars know they meet an end too Oblivious? Or unbothered…they’ll just keep on burning

City Honors School, PS 195 Grade 12

Rinn Kress

BEHIND THE SCENES

Do you cry in contact lenses? Are you numb in tailored costumes? Is there anyone out there who truly knows you anymore?

Has your personality become a character to be? Does our applause tear through your nightmares as a painful memory?

Do your routines feel robotic? Is this really what you wanted? If you could go back now and change it would you change it and be free?

Does your head ache every day with all the things you couldn’t say? Do you look out at all the faces and wish that they’d just go away?

In our eyes you fake perfection. Go home and stare at your reflection. Everything you do always watched through a magnifying glass.

The thoughts are raging in your mind. You have no choice but to be “fine.” Why do they blame you? It’s impossible to keep it all inside.

Home School Grade 10

Ayden Link

MOURNING THE LOSS OF A WELL-SPENT SUMMER

an early august evening keeps me awake with unknown faces that I see in my dreams twenty years from now

laughing with an unknown boy getting my ears pierced by an unnamed girl with a face as pure as the moon and eyes green as moss-covered logs

late nights yelling at an old wooden chapel

cool mountain air floating off the lake my first breath and I rise

this place has my heart rooted like the massive oaks that surround us

Hamburg High School Grade 9

Eden Lowinger and Danny Merlino

SEASONS

I’m angry at the mucus frozen in my throat waiting for the beginning I never asked to believe in but you made me

After the equinox she woke with the sun nestled into the whites of her eyes like the chickadees that started to build their raptures of twig. What made a bird’s nest a home, she wondered, and why did garlic start to grow before the last frost?

an angry sunlight streams down, melting the snow in my eyes. icicles on my back ripping the fabric of the school bus seats you’re always the same, aren’t you?

Her daffodils, so hasty after their hibernation, had the vestiges of winter killed. She planted them late fall and already they seemed to crave sunny cataracts. Still, the awakening of nature’s mouth made her skip when no one was watching.

death, rebirth of what? people and leaves leaves that you created where did they go?

And when the snow had lost its fury and the first few bright days had passed, the leaves of autumn soon became compost - and as her garden woke she remembered twelve. On the year’s first hike she had fallen into stinging nettle, how like embroidery her tights were pierced.

crack my knuckles like the stems of the leaves blood making the snow cherry-flavored a disgusting rebirth i don’t even remember but the birth is all we look forward to

And she remembered that somehow this pain was artful, as it carried her home on her father’s shoulders and seemed to harbor warmth.

who are you rebirthing?

City Honors School, PS 195 (Grade 12) Hamburg High School (Grade 9)

Eden Lowinger

NEWBORN

You have crafted a bale of bone and skin for nine months, and here her crowned head is with the musk of muted wildflowers. You sit and know that you are sterile, because as you nurse you stare at the hospital pink vomit bucket on your bed counter. She’s pulling away, yet you dig your fingers into her soft spots and somewhere between the plates of her skull you remember the eighth month. How your skin stretched into ribbons and her limbs like rolling veins had crowded your intestines. You recall how the five men waiting for the outbound train had frightened you, as they jumped on the mattress you left for trash. The seventh month saw you wide eyed while she slept, how like a briefcase you started to dread her and the prenatal gummies your boss offered you turned colorless on your windowsill. And now you recall six months, how the sparrows began to crowd your fire escape — they sang past your fingers while your daughter held your bladder in her own. The fifth month had you gnawing at stock bones and ordering marrow at restaurants — how in the fourth, you knew your fetus was soon to form fingernails while your placenta fed the keratin. And you felt a fool — of course you had been warned against her but it was all too soon. You’d not known until the third month that it was possible for something to call you mother. How quiet the first two had been, how autumn settled as dust and the trees reached bare in the wind. You preferred the emptiness you housed then to the milk.

City Honors School, PS 195 Grade 12

Carol McGuire

REVENGE

I am in a large shipping port. The beeping of various machinery is almost deafening. I wish I could see the water but the boats are too close to the dock. There are seagulls perched atop the shipping crates. It’s oddly relaxing. Igor, servant to Victor Frankenstein, taps me on the shoulder and hands me a microphone. He nods to me, telling me I already know what to do. I yell into the microphone, controlling the seagulls around the port. Igor and I stand together with our new seagull army.

City Honors School, PS 195 Grade 11

Danny Merlino

CRYING IN A COFFEE SHOP (EDIT: IN FRONT OF MY MOM)

you let me in my body an empty shell a candy wrapper of compost my veins and arteries pumping with anger

you let me in a cavern of a house that didn’t exist and you gave me a skeleton you gave me muscles you gave me myself

you stitched our skin together until we became one person a mess of extra limbs and too many eyes but the thread was made of metal and the metal began to rust because i poured the water

you stared at me as my skin began to wilt becoming the color of your worst enemy i was the half of your whole a leech that sewed herself on a bud on your coral

but i could only see the red in your blue the bitterness in your sweet

i filled my lungs with oxygen oxygen that belongs to you

you cracked my knuckles for me and i cracked your neck in return

Hamburg High School Grade 9

Jahton Perry

MY GODDESS

draw your sword and fight for her/ her is life/ strife stored in/ psyche wards and/ I found in/ my bones it’s/ biologic/ my thoughts are just bi-products/ of thy goddess/ thy goodness/ my goodness/ I’m just psychotic/ I guess I oughta/ die/ but if I must why not diabolic/ I find thy goddess/ quite ironic/ wise wise goddess/ I cry out blind why thou hide thy knowledge/

like I believe you’re love/ I mean… I believe you’re lovely/ I believe you’re to me/ like the bee to honey/ why do you treat me funny/ I perceive that I’m receiving some sort of slightest treatment from thee/ you tell me “go write a speech about it”/ so I proceed to write and speak about it/ I’m petite finite perhaps even obsolete without you/ All I think about is how I think about you/ tell myself to stop with all the pity partying/ pouting cause it’s really/ started/ piling/ on me/

like sides upon a/ polygon/ god I call upon thee/ god I saw your opposite and I’m the carbon copy/ is this why I desire props and paparazzi/ why I’m repulsive by default and ultimately faulty/ there’s a frightening mighty hungry/ parasite inside my tummy/ maybe I should try and fight it lipo/suction style/ grab a knife/ and cut it out/ sell it online at least try and get some money/ for this vile creature that has stolen my childhood from me/ I believe that even Jesus might proceed to judge me/ I have seen the heebee jeebees/ there are mighty creatures coming/

I must be quiet hide or else they find me!

but if by the Goddess I was not constructed/ how my words mighty strong cometh/ in onslaughts like the old comets/ that wiped the dinosaurs off the earth and made ice become of the dust from them/

I exist because of them/ I come from the jungle!/

Villa Maria College First Year

Marissa Morris

ROADS

Like “all roads lead to Rome” and “country roads take me home” you can go down long roads like the I-90 and end up in a different town. I’m not sure where that one goes. Rochester? Niagara Falls? You can use roads to go to New York to tall buildings. Like a downtown that never ends. So full and the lights are so bright it’s like the sun never sets. It must never be calm? Like when it’s 3am in Buffalo and it’s so quiet and empty that it feels like the world has gone still.

City Honors School, PS 95 Grade 11

LC Rachuna

I KNOW A POISON YOU DO NOT

My breath is lost in the color of these veins

Corroded

The heart’s cage is brittle Set free the murder of crows

Who are you?

Bitter saliva A question returned in silence Duly noted

Trinity Ridout

THE FURTHEST POINT

inspired by “The Waves” by Diana Goetsch

How long does it take to say I was wrong? There are too many words between yes and no, and too many mistakes between the poles.

People always complain about the water, but never the waves. We say it’s too cold, too deep, too all-encompassing. I embrace the water. Sometimes I run into the lake making splashes in the murkiness.

I feel mud in my toes like the squelching gurgle of a hungry stomach, like when I eat dinner at 5 o’clock and stay up too late, feeling empty at dawn, realizing my own humanity. But

when I don’t feel mud, when I stand on dry land, it feels fuller than bursting suitcases strapped to car roofs. Where do sin and sinner meet?

Drowning in the lake I am absolved by dark eyes wearied by regret. Blood in murky water, it’s hard to find my way home.

City Honors School, PS 195 Grade 12

Katie Rooney

PHOTOGRAPH

I smell the leaves, their musty scent lingering in the air. I smell a certain freshness. Signaling new beginnings, an end to the old. I smell the wind —how so, it is impossible to pinpoint — carrying everything on its back. I smell the nearby construction, I hear the buzz of construction.

I feel exhilarated. Something good is going to happen. I will grow up. I won’t hold back. Stop tripping over myself.

Nardin Academy 7th Grade

Taylor Yarns

THE JOY OF TOGETHERNESS

with lines from Jaime Joyce’s “Let’s Make It Easier for Kids to Visit Incarcerated Parents”

I sit in a classroom of 2.7 million future tragedies. Boys that carry their parents’ hope that their son will be the one to win a war that has never seen a victor and girls that skip lunch to practice their smiles in the bathroom mirror for their inevitable appearance on the milk carton. All the toothy smiles I have loved since third grade— nothing but collateral damage in the eyes of the law. The boy next to me hasn’t stopped fidgeting all day. Exactly a year ago, his mama poked fun at his restlessness, told him that she would tie a bell around his neck so that she would hear him whenever he moved and no one would ever take him away. Now he wishes that he had done the same to her. The boy’s mother was in prison and that is what he said when the teacher asked what had been troubling him.

Note: This poem won first prize in the Pulitzer Center’s Fighting Words Poetry Contest

City Honors School, PS 95 Grade 11