The Writer's Circle by Mara Cregan

The Writerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Circle 9-12 Literary Arts Department Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12 Pittsburgh Public Schools 2012-2013

The Writerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Circle 9-12 Literary Arts Department Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12

Acknowledgements Ms. Mara Cregan, Literary Arts Chair Mr. Zachary Harris, Poetry Adjunct Mr. Frank Izaguirre, Nonfiction Adjunct Ms. Maureen McGranaghan, Dramatic Writing Adjunct Ms. Sarah Shotland, Fiction Adjunct Ms. Melissa A. Pearlman, Principal Ms. Joan Murphy, Director 6-12

Introduction It is with great pleasure that we share the writing from the 2012-2013 school year of the 9-12 Literary Artists from Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12, a Creative and Performing Arts Magnet. The writing included in this anthology represents the scope and breath of our program as well as the creativity of our developing writers. We hope that you enjoy our work and find that our words speak to each writer in unique ways.

12th Grade Table of Contents A Free Mind is a Crime............................................David Dull He, the Townsman..................................................Ekin Erkan But in the End, Fruitcake Was a Bad Invention Inspired by the Mattress Factory Exhibit............Rowan Fiorilli Well I Should Stop By..................................Adam MacDonald Amber I...................................................................Will Marchl Beholden.......................................................Samara McGraw Gwendolyn Brooks on her Deathbed..................Kelsey Miller Four.....................................................................Kelsey Miller Savage.....................................................Agatha Monasterios Nikola Tesla on His Deathbed Final Words to His Lover..........................Jordan Montgomery The Alter.............................................................Starla Murray

New Hampshire II..................................................Diana Sims Charlotte.............................................................Jasper Wang Lessons High School...................................................Stephanie White Fast Life.......................................................Shanquae Parker Manure......................................................Samantha Winston

A Free Mind is a Crime --David Dull

I think strange thoughts, my actions are questionable nobody trusts me, so they lock me behind bars and call me crazy. I don’t change my ways, I alter the results. I love bizarre endings; it’s why I’m restrained. They tell me I can’t be trusted, that my mind is too much for the world around me. I shouldn’t be punished. I’m rather eccentric, different than you. I focus on myself, constantly awaking failures hidden, then I sit and talk with them. Never have I been one to demand, executing options without contention. I’m no leader, I’m a prisoner with an untamed mind. Yet I still sit by myself and rot, wait, and rot. Force fed pills to make me sleep, I want to know the ingredients. I could help the world if I was trusted. But I’m not, so I’ll remain, I’ll keep sitting, decomposing in this cell. Slowly turning normal, as my imagination recedes.

He, the Townsman --by Ekin Erkan

He, the Townsman The dead grass curved before the wind, a bowl of lisping current overtaking the thin filaments. The field of grass, entirely yellow and dried, was unbounded by the covering overcast, bruising the Winter eve. Slits of sunshine excelled as the billows occasionally broke, radiating across the field. The field contained a blue-stone path – devious and serpentine – with the edges frayed from snow, salt, and rain. Unkempt strands of grass wrinkled the blue path - grooved miles like sea tucked between golden impasse. The nearby city smoked with burgeoning waves of smog. The groundswell distended into the gray air, mixing and dissipating within darkness. The air clung damp and bitter – stenching of exhaust and marked by salt-marked, broken roads. Leather footsteps cracked gratingly. Frail women clinging their fingernails against industrial buildings for balance coughed spittle into broken rose napkins. Businessmen tapped their heavy shoes against the earth in rushed amble and hauling business doors open in frenzy and frustration. The wind toothed cheeks and ears, dyeing earlobes blotched pink. It was five o’clock, and the sun fell purple, hazing the horizon. The tips of the sun’s ray bled and cast long shadows. He walked out of the gray bank. He had a tiring day at work and it showed by the way he opened the bank door. The rusted copper edge swung open and croaked abruptly, clipping the boot of a passing lady. She yelped and stumbled, then glared back at him. She had cracked brown eyes, variegated by irregular yellow daubs. He turned his head the other way and began walking. The minted wind swung across his body, rippling his clothes across him. A sickening phlegm crept through his stomach, build-

ing up in his throat. He thought that he might be hungry, or at least that some food might do him good, though his stomach ached heavy. He continued walking down Main Street, passing figures shadowed in five oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;clockâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s befallen sun: businessmen with black hats tipped down to cast darkness upon their faces and women with billowing dresses swaying in the powerful gales. He bumped into shoulders, and strangers with furrowed eyebrows glazed deep into his eyes. He was not particularly rude, but the panging that thwarted his stomach made him uneasy and oblivious to the surroundings. He turned a corner into a narrow street he had never seen. It read Clayborne, and, knowing that he wanted to head in the eastern direction, he used the sun as a compass to know that this opposite street would yield him favorably. Along Clayborne he passed a barbershop with a twirling red and blue pole. He stopped and watched the spinning pole, thinking of lost traditional establishments to consumerism and shaking his head in wretchedness. He waved his hand to a barber inside, smiling despite the growing pain in his stomach. The barber, however, seemed to not notice him as he had a female client with whom he was engaged with in conversation. The words were inaudible in between the sheet of glass, but the barber twisted the female clientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s black, looping curls in between his forefinger, licking his teeth. He was disgusted at such perversion and winced as he saw her upturnt red lips bloom in laughter. The burning bile returned to his throat, and he continued walking, shaking his head. He thought how reckless he had been in assigning the seemingly traditional barbershop respect. Obviously the owner was a crude pervert. Clayborne Street stretched on, with no crossing paths in the visible distance. The street was abandoned and voices from the rest of the city were muted, the only sound being that of the howling wind. Then he heard a whipping from above his head as a ceramic pot fell downwards, breaking against the street. He turned his head to see what devil was upstairs, but the buildings to his sides surged upwards, long and gray. He could see no man on a balcony, and he thought that perhaps

the wind knocked a pot off a balcony. He continued, cursing the wind and spitting across the street. Then another pot fell down, crashing a few inches behind him. The shards of clay smudged the back of his pants, scraping his inner calves. He jumped and howled in exaggerated pain. He cursed the thrower, his primary suspicion of some ignoramus thwarter renewed. He balled a fist at his invisible malefactor when he saw another red pot falling towards him. He ran forwards and it landed behind him, crashing with the sound of spilling glass. He began jogging forwards, his distended stomach aching and shaking with his stumbling steps. A poisoning discomfort knifed his inner stomach, swimming through his intestines. He came to a forced stop as he sat on the ground holding his stomach with both hands as the bile built up in his throat again. As he swallowed the bile, a red pot collapsed upon his frayed head. The pot broke upon contact with his head, crazing his blotched forehead and clinging to his black hair threads. A shard scraped his glasses half off his ears, and ripped the skin on his temple, drawing a stream of torrid blood. He faltered and black spots of fatigue dyed his vision. His consciousness slipped away, as the steam of blood pooled below his chin. In a few minutes, he regained his consciousness and, using the backside of his forearm to provide balance, he raised himself. He scraped the half dried blood stream off his lower face with his fingernails, and adjusted his eyeglasses. He peered up towards the long looming buildings before him, and jogged down the street, keeping his body close to the wall so as to avoid any more attacks. No shattering pots sounded, yet he continued to run, occasionally hitting his right shoulder off the wall in his delusional state. The shoulderpiece of his suit began to fray, and he could feel his skin abrading against the surface of cement. He coughed violently, choking on his sticking warm spit as he slowed. An intersection finally appeared a few meters down and he turned left, escaping the winding path of Clayborne Street. As he walked upon this new street, he turned

his head back to see the intersection with Clayborne Street dissipate – a new storefront with illegible red painted letters replacing the gap from which he had emerged. He frustrated his eyebrows in furrowed fear, and shouted in confusion. On this new and unknown street streamed a bustling crowd of people – all adorned in business attire. At his profane shouts the murmuring crowd silenced as an air of stillness blanketed the street and the bodies turned to face him. The faces were all empty and expressionless – mouths not twitching from breathing and eyes unblinking. The stillness was cocooning, as he was trapped in a small circle wrapped in a sea of numb strangers eyeing him. He pushed through them, feebly crossing in between the gaps between their shoulders and rips, pushing them away from him. The people had heavy, tense bodies seemingly carved from iron – unfaltering bodies bonded to the pavement that would not respond to his pushes. The bodies could not be budged, forcing him to heave and permute his stomach and shoulders to fit in between the narrow openings that emerged between the solemn strangers. The air was cold and breathless, and their eyes remained fixed on the spot where he had cursed loudly. He peered into a mechanic shop, where he saw a mechanic also frozen in stillness, also glazing mercilessly at the spot. He thought that surely the mechanic could not have heard his jeering and cursing through the pane of glass that separated the shop from the street. He grew anxious, wishing to rid himself of this alien and quiet street completely absorbed by frozen bodies. He rushed past each body quite athletically – heaving himself in between crevices - but soon realized this was fruitless as this street, too, seemed endless. While creeping in between the shoulder of a broad-chested businessman with silver spectacles and a tweed overcoat, and the bosom of a scarlet-lipped saleswoman, he noticed an empty bowling alley. He crossed towards the shop door, and was shocked as it slipped open behind his fingers. Inside, the air of mystique grew, as he found no man-

agers, workers, or patrons of the bowling alley. The bright lamps of the alleys lighted the buttery chestnut lanes with ivory pins. Distant music sounded â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a crestfallen, somber trumpet over soft horns and a clarinet. He walked up a dirty, carpeted stairway where the stench of fried potatoes and grilled meats strongly wafted. His stomach pitted itself in hunger, and he leaned his back against an abandoned fast-food bar where several plastic stools stood disheveled. He pursed a cigarette in between his lips and twisted his fingers in his tattered suit pocket to find matches but was unsuccessful in his pursuit. Letting the cigarette fall from his lips, his eyes grew watery against the thick, sticking air of the bar. He walked around a bit, tossing his feet in front of his body aimlessly. He remembered his hunger again as his stomach clenched and tightened. He walked down the staircase again, lightheaded with each step vibrating across his spine. Looking out the window, the men and women were no longer mummified and gaping but had continued their movement, with the bubbling of conversations quaking the walls. He pressed open the wooden door and joined the sea of suited pedestrians, eager to find a delicatessen to clear his panging hunger. He turned the next corner onto Howe Avenue â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a familiar street that he often used to walk home after work. The crowds had cleared here, and vibrant personalities such as street performers, mimes, or young couples darted the sidewalks. Small shops selling clothing, toys, or antique furniture advertized with bold red posters and sparkling painted signs. He passed a group of school children dressed in pearl white shirts, green ties, and gray shorts. Their knees scraped against the street as the four of them cheered while flicking silver marbles. He felt acid fluids cascading up his chest towards his throat. He stumbled over one of his shoes, his weight suddenly shifting to his side causing him to fall. He reached out his right arm to grasp any holding of support and was able to finger the cold, black loops of a rusting bench. He held on

for a few seconds while gathering his breath and consciousness, noting his listlessness was undoubtedly a result of his lack of nutrition. He then heard a repulsive squeal sounding from to bench towards which he turned to find a scarlet lady in a ruffled black tunic. She had large sable eyes, wet looming eyelashes and bare pallid arms crossed in displeasure. She looked him in his eyes and slowly flickered her eyebrows while running her hand along the bench to meet his. Her stroking fingers contacted his and he coughed violently and quickly slipped his fingers off the bench before limping away. He was disgusted by the abhorrent scarlet woman. He recognized finding food was now the most urgent of matters and thought to himself that a nearby delicatessen, which he frequented on his return home along Howe Avenue, would sate the stinging hunger currenting through his abdomen. The murking clouds had formed tightly together, dyeing the skyline silvery charcoal. Sunlight had been exchanged for smog, as the air grew dense and the oxygen evanesced to be replaced by the choking taint of petroleum released from nearby factories. He realized he could barely see six meters in front of him, and used his suit cuff to mop the layer of soot that had gathered along his spectacles. He passed a flower shop where outside an old woman sat on a greasy white plastic stool. She had sagging yellow skin and splotched brown eyeballs that stared directly in front of her. She crowned her curved, thick fingers in between each other. She twisted her neck mechanically while tipping her head from side to side slowly, never faltering her straight gaze. He continued to walk, knowing he would find the delicatessen in a few blocks. The time had gotten late, and the streets had begun to clear. A mechanic shop to the right of him begun to close. A skeletal man with inverted eye sockets and hoary skin fiddled with the lock. The sound of metal clashing and motor engines from the back garage died down, and an-

other figure – a bald, corpulent man with oil stains across his forearms and cheeks – walked towards the man locking the door. The large man wrapped his arms around the man and coughed. He continued to walk and found the delicatessen empty - most likely due to the late hour. It had not yet closed, so he walked inside to see that the butcher reading the newspaper. The butcher’s wet red hands flipped the pages, and the newspaper’s ink seeped onto his fingernails, imprinting them with text. He was a portly man with no facial hair, thin, curved eyebrows and faint, gray eyes. He wore a wrinkled white apron with smears of blood across his distended stomach. A black fly landed on the butcher’s ear momentarily, and his eyes darted as he noticed his customer. He stood up, allowing the sheets of newspaper to float to the ground. The butcher walked to the counter, his heavy ink boots puncturing the desiccated newspaper. The delicatessen was cramped, with the counter covering most of the room’s area. Rows of unevenly chopped red meats with layers of thick, pearly fat lay behind a glass screen marked by smudges of fingerprints. He asked the butcher for a veal sandwich and paid the man with a ten-dollar bill, telling the butcher to keep the change. He turned his head and the brute crack of the butcher’s knife cutting across the meat and hitting a wood panel resounded. The butcher placed it on a small black stove and a circular fire burst. The butcher sliced a small loaf of bread in half and slipped the meat in, using his bare, red hands to pick the meat up from the stove. The butcher slipped the sandwich in an umber paper bag, cracked and stained with dried blood. He walked out quickly, as the delicatessen’s suffocating smell of sour red meat became suffocating. He continued to walk while ripping the paper bag apart, allowing it to scatter along the now altogether empty Howe Avenue. He bit into the sandwich, and cursed. The butcher had given him liver instead of veal. He promised never to return to the delicatessen and threw the bitten sandwich against

the crazed sidewalk. He decided to use the field as a shortcut home â&#x20AC;&#x201C; something he had grown accustomed to doing as of recently. Howe Avenue directly intersected an opening of the park to the dried field and he entered. He found himself buried up to his waist in the stalking crops, which were now simply shadows. Nightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ink had blotched the sky, spilling over the tuffets of cloud seeping and bleeding. He soon found himself completely lost and tired, with no streetlamps to provide guidance. He had to lift his heavy feet above his waist to step through the shrubbery. Fatigue began to choke his muscles. He tripped over the thick, dry stalking feeling the cracking of his bones. His stomach roiled once more throughout his intestines. His skin stratified into layers of purple, gray and yellow. A green stench festered from his skin. His tongue dried and cracked against his teeth, breaking into gray shards. His eyes began to slip into unconsciousness and he caught a glimpse of a man holding a lantern well behind him on Howe Avenue. He realized he had barely even left Howe Avenue and closed his wrinkled, worn eyelids.

But in the End, Fruitcake Was a Bad Invention Inspired by the Mattress Factory Exhibit --Rowan Fiorilli

The floorboards caught Susan Renauld, just creaked and yawned and cracked down on her slender body, like a moth hugging a wisp of smoke that broke. The kind who never opens her mouth full of oranges and pumpkin rinds, Never spills out uncouth verbal attacks, A straighter spine than yours or mine. And she rode a forever slide to the outside place, where she didn’t want to go sifting through the word’s face, pockmarked, and wholly plump. Ms. R’s first day on the bottom rug gave her the plums to cut and share or take away, paws pawing among a great fermented desire, a kitchen’s paltry lair.

Well I Should Stop By --Adam MacDonald

What kills me is that people live for this. They skip the comics and head straight for the obituaries. Any excuse to get dressed up, wear that outfit from the Bon Ton and shed some tears. Hey free Kleenex is free Kleenex. Jam some in your purse do they have any mints. They do cry, though. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d think they would be oldâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;very old pros by now but no, they still manage to break down when they see the eyelids stitched and touch that hand so easily. Or maybe they cry because this is all that they have.

Amber I

--Will Marchl Mother Nature sucks us dry, like tree sap, formaldehyde honey bunch, my sugar pie. Taxidermied pachyderm, baby you belong in a museum. Their limbs turn to black ooze running the side streets rushing the blushing whore, America, touching everything carefully with a ten foot pole, laminated in latex lubricated in napalm.

II. (Cigarettes and Broccoli) A bellyful of gravel, lipstick pavement hopscotch gristle broiling on a hot car windshield. A cavity filled with engine brew. Tongue protruding

lesions traced in white, a blue plate special at a Deep South delicatessen. A fistful of lawsuits and bumper sticker bimbos, life of the pity party, as vehicular as a manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s laughter. As cold and passionless as the immaculate conception.

Beholden

--Samara McGraw When I watch a movie Where the protagonist is triumphing, I struggle to hold back my tears. When I hear a child sing, I struggle to hold back the tears. When I feel overwhelmed with uncertainty, I struggle to hold back my tears. When I read the articles and see All the timelines of violence on these walls, Black paint tainting what should be pasty Barriers, I let the tears fall in trios, One that’s salty with anger built up inside, Making itself tangible but sensible enough To hide when I’m done, only leaving behind A speck of salty crust in the reservoir In the corner of my eye I can never completely wash this away. Another is bitter with disappointment, “Who would do such a thing?” The answer is the people of America, And because of you, American people, This tear is bitter as unsweetened coffee, Making me clench my lips together for a few Seconds to hold back what would be Radical, even if I am striking back, Trying to finally take advantage of my Privilege to rebuttal. The last is a scorching tear with the Sweetest taste that moves a tad bit faster than The others. It leaves a gruesome Scar on my face and I try to cover it, But it’s impossible. This tear bears shame, Even though I don’t want to admit it,

I thank God that I am born into an age thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Not perfect, And sees me as at least Âž of a person.

Gwendolyn Brooks on her Deathbed --Kelsey Miller

I used to come back here from time to time, when the fast life got slow, and the work became a chore of fame, no pleasure involved. I climbed these steps, familiarizing myself with who I was but never tuned in with who I used to be. Where is the little girl who played double-dutch on the front stoop, leaping through obstacles of race? When I grew up, I bled ballads, and like a printing machine, pumped notoriety effortlessly. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Hard work pays off,â&#x20AC;? they say, but where is the limit of success? Where is the limit of power and fame and fortune? I became lost in this unfathomable dream, I even lost her--that little Black girl, tip-toeing â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;round the projects, trying to find a home during that sweet autumn eventide.

Everyone has their firsts, but me? I had so many that they all came naturally. The Pulitzer Prize, my words caked on the Chicago Defender and Mademoiselle Magazine. I bred myself in classrooms across this nation. Like many of my firsts, it was natural. This was the life they gave me. I’m home in Chicago, counting my success for what it’s worth. Not much if you ask me. And that’s perfectly fine because I’ve painted some good on my name, and at the end of the day, when the air is tranquil and sweet, I was born in Kansas, raised in Illinois, I am now that little black boy.

Four The aroma of the air shifts with the weather as it changes from autumn, to winter, spring, then summer. I bask in the warmth of the sun as earth adjusts its tilt, oscillating, front to back. Shadows cast by white snowstorms dissolve as golden rays shimmer upon the earth’s surface. The equinox is a mysterious subject to face because of it’s unmanned regulation. But whether it’s mandatory, or just is, it’s a mystery not be solved. I admire the time travel and how the temperature springs from zero to ninety. I relish in time spent on falling back into leaves, snow, grass and water on any given Sunday. It’s heavenly to float on aureate sand and shells, sunbathing while the sun itself showcases a blinding smile, seeming faceless. Seagulls flock to the shore, racing wind, and mist their backs with salty ocean dust. It’s almost like a dream, this weather,

that somehow came to be true. But soon, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll regress like a spring, and return to the cycle. The cessation of summer resolves to a crisper realm. Stars realign, creating another puzzle to solve, and I match fallen leaves together to fabricate an autumn sunset. Caterpillars inch along branches, hiding until itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time to spring from lingering isolation. Pumpkins illude us with their faces, and we succumb to insanity. Then, in an instant, weathered teeth are babied by feasts, and snow begins to back us into a fantasy. We revert to childhood; back to a time when life was nothing to be solved but something simple as snowfall whether it was December or January. Now earth is sunless, and we are veiled with a milky aura. Time freezes on faces of clocks, just as the water of silvery springs.

Time reconciles herself with the birth of a new Spring, and the world awakens and comes back to a sense of life. We all look ahead, knowing what weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re facingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; not scared, or saddened, but understanding of the dissolve of seasons and time and air. We breathe in the sunny atmosphere and thrive in this radiant weather. And as the weather shifts and springs, the sun dilutes our arms, feet and backs with mystery unsolved, never to be interfaced

with humanity.

Savage

--Agatha Monasterios I realized I lost my head when I learned that ears are the only part of our body we cannot close. Perhaps there was always something wrong with me or maybe I had grown empty long ago, but I couldn’t remember what they felt like. Sometimes, I believe I am more savage than the rest, because the curve of your ear excited me, like the curve of a dove’s body arching against the ground. Because the sudden vision of them reminded me of your voice when it grew soft fragrant as if you could have cried if it were another day. I drowned through the phone, almost drowned you, almost felt that at times I am just barely alive when I mistake a rock for my mind, when no one responded to the LOST posters I hung up on their doors, when the sound of your voice brought the eager quaking of tears to my eyes sometimes, even, I imagine that you might wonder where my head is, when you think of me and find you can’t remember what it looks like. It seems your memory is as bad as my own, even though you have a head Beautiful, asymmetrical, omnipotent, breathing life through every black-haired pore like poetry.

I have always wanted to tell you I wish I could take pictures of poetry, but you, watching while I sat snapping each individual bone in my body, calmly explained that you only take pictures of art. I know I cannot stop listening for you. I know I cannot stop listening to myself. I know that I cannot stop listening to poetry when all I want is to see, to watch the words spin out of control, arching into the earth, to look at the light of our bodies and their sea sized existences, wishing for nothing but to swallow them whole. With no head I have become savage. I am a missile, I am missing, missing my head missing the turn I am turning in circles closing my eyes closing my nose closing the gaps between my toes closing my elbows fingernails shoulder blades closing my ears to the sea, asking Let me look at you. Let me see you again. All I want is to know how art can flow into the veins of our eyes like flies, when I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even take a picture of poetry.

Nikola Tesla on His Deathbed Final Words to His Lover --Jordan Montgomery

I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them, for years. But there was one pigeon, a beautiful bird, pure white with light gray tips on its wings; that one was different. It was female. I would know that pigeon anywhere. No matter where I was that pigeon would find me. When I wanted her I had only to wish and call her she would come flying to me. She understood me and I understood her. I loved that pigeon. Yes, I loved her as a man loves a woman, and she loved me. And this is where I die a New York hotel room and I just ran out of milk and crackers. Archimedes: murdered while solving his final equation a mind sharper than the sword that sliced him. What would Edison say before passes? Will he confess before his final lie? Twain? Disappointments: to remember all with nothing to remember. Never made love but made for them to love. This world will never love a man who refuses to touch another. Yet you always come back to find me. A million men as there are pigeons in New York

we find each other. If by chance the Romans should capture New York or if science was only a myth to the genius minds and perhaps it was all magic. Enough to make me a believer If I was a bird as white as cream Would you fly with me? Alas! I am human.

The Altar

--By Starla Murray The day that I see myself in your shoes, My life in your hands, I will let you choose my destiny, fate, and waiting eternity. I understand that you’re concerned with me. Every day that you stare into my eyes, As I lift up my head and watch the skies, I wonder exactly what it is that you see. What makes you so patient with a sinner like me? I know that you notice my tears at night, And my giggles that brighten the morning light, But why do you still kiss my broken cheek, When I curse your name every day of the week? It’s never on purpose, but it happens so much. I act like I’m too pure to be touched By your creation, yet I wait and hope to see the lovely day that you reach down and touch me. I balance your work at the tips of my feet, And when you are hurt I shout out defeat. I struggle to grab your ankles with the crowd, And when they praise you I forget I’m allowed. My judgment is an arrow, never pointed at me. I aim it at the world, it hits who I can see. I hope you can forgive me, release me from this sin. Mold me to perfection in Jesus name, Amen.

New Hampshire II. --Diana Sims

A sexy mermaid wet on a rock I am just learning how to swim without holding my nose A bloated white bullfrog arms suspended dead on the bottom for days settling down onto a flat place without bubbles suspended on a rock in the middle of green I can barely stand without the smallest ripple urging me sideways my hands cupped together a fish makes a circuit three times in between my fingers as curious as the moment I could pluck him a barnacle or a bouquet of stringy things but I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get him to pull me from the water without looking like a child, my stomach a pink line from leaning over the boat the end of each string of my hair a faucet all water looks clear in a shallow bowl. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m questioning his libido. Here there is no sweat only ribbons of light in fathoms above feet cold elbows warm a rusty claw that someone sometime somehow lost I try swimming back to the house

but it gets too shallow and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m covered in lily pads. Later, I found a leech on my hip before getting into the shower.

Charlotte

--Jasper Wang His fingertips fully swollen, like flowers, from the heat of herâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; in the mornings, he finds it hard to move. She is so tumbled pink, so breathlessly clean, every inch of her whirling wildly, just underneath her skin. She takes away every good thing, one at a time. Her breath lingers in the curve of his ear, pooling gently like silver. The buttons on her sleeves drag quietly, like claws, along his jawbone when he wakes in the morning. The rough, strangled cotton tenderly catches in the ends of his breath. She runs like a river between his eyes, leaving long dry salt trails in all the places sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been. He thinks he knows her, but every night, she returns to drink from the same sources of drowned light, pulsating white and blue, in the interminable roots of trees. Her mouth softly tips, like a hummingbird, her lips stained to the teeth with blackberry juice, dripping like long fingers through her ribs, blackening her insides like ink in a wound. That summer, her hair melted into strings of caramel in the sun, hot on her shoulders and sticky to the touch. Her many names played patterns on his neck and hands,

like ropes of sunlight in fading water. She listened closely to the aching of his shoulders, until they broke inwards. She bent him backward forever, waited until each and every rib snapped, chipping like wallpaper, flaking away in her salted hands. When he got up he said maybe not today, he said Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll see you when I see you he said yes, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll miss you, he said nothing at all. And the second he disappeared, she violently blew apart, soft pieces of her fingernails settling like fine dust over everything. Her legs filled with heavy stones by night. Nothing remained behind her smile but bone-dry rows of teeth. He said what he meant, but one day she left her body peppered with oranges, thick and peeling, and in his head, he saw her spin painfully, unnaturally outstretched. Her arms, dripping heavily through a spaghetti strainer, loosely landed in lumpy circles on the pavement, like skin-colored acrylic art. She let her bitter hands and eyes fold into the wrinkled skin of cedar branches, and the leaves fill her mouth with an untold rustling. She grows unruly island in her hair now. He can hear them, late at night,

in the lining of his every muscle. And with long, open fingers, she undoes all the nights of his lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; easily. Quietly. She draws the thunder from his arms, she flowers at the touch. She stands so thin, electrical wires running down her legs, art was always beyond her: she could never make anything even remotely beautiful without breaking herself.

Lessons High School

--Stephanie White One winter in high school I taped blue Christmas lights against my walls and watched them dangle through the dark months, beating over my windows like veins long after the holidays were over. The curtains hung like filthy ice in their alien glow. Plastic green stars that light up in the dark used to fall with pink chips of paint from the walls and decompose in the carpet, in the heart of our home. When we moved out I found heart shaped cardboard Valentineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Day cards hoarded in decade old folders and Christian Religion books all shoved, like newspapers, under my bed. I used to fall into tracks of tracing old scrapbooks to rekindle joys that passed me a few months ago. In the time I spent taping in prints of my loved one, a body of ice couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t melt through my core. Love felt like tremors to me, sweet through my veins and deep, like a wind that kept me turning like a weathervane. Every winter in high school I feel a heart rise in me as breath rises in brisk air and I picture my hero, a man sculpted like an ice tray. He grows over me like the moon grows over October. I pray he moves me as Christ moves through folded hands. I want to hold on for the next couple of months and watch the year turn over from a set of steel shoulders I

know I am too small to fall from. I am waiting in halls with floors that mirror repeated images of fallen playing cards sealed underneath my heels in high school. Veins of yarn hang from a model jellyfish in the stairwell. For months it looms over us, collecting dust in its saran wrap brain. It collects the way our hearts change as they are shuffle through the deck and drawn by scruffy men, bored on Christmas Day. They mope like pigeons on electrical wire, like plump icicles on store fronts outside, waiting for the salt to melt the ice away. I’ve stayed long enough in a Giant Eagle parking lot to see a pair of them fall. Preschool children stood around them in a circle and prayed Christian prayers on Jewish Squirrel Hill streets, for peace. They trudged home, snapping the veins in every fallen leaf on the sidewalks of Whiteman street. I walked with them, heavy-hearted, 14 years ago, when I was 3. I made my teacher write “life is over for the dead bird” for me. Months passed before it was over for me. The final winter months of high school skid towards me on thin ice. I can see the almost ghosts of our present beyond the bleached theatre lights to their porcelain hearts inside them, beating rhythmically like a flag in patriotic waves of wind. I might never fall again once I get out of here. I’ll lose the heat in my veins and all the rage that makes me 17. I’ve kept most of what is Christian

about me. Christ knows itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vane to fall into prayer for love, shallow like melted water across an ice rink. Still I catch eyes with all the holy ghosts and praise those seldom short-lived glories as they sprung and wish on for a new, miraculous thing to rupture in these coming months.

Fast Life

--Shanquae Parker And specs of lights races in her eyes while strobe lights breaks down every part of her. Her body is regulated but her state of mind circulates around the records she moves to. And currency caress her curves that pays for the attention that was never given. And most believe her stature is transparent as the heels she walks in. But when I look into her eyes I see the dreams of hundreds of girls revolving and in the reflection of those same eyes I see thousand of men languish So I guess I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t care, if she only remembers my name to forget her unforgivable past. When she leaves the stage and takes only her real name, she perfectly wraps those imperfections the lights seem to hide.

Manure

--Samantha Winston Manure – a one line poem We need wet manure to make the bricks Manure – a haiku He walks her over with the smell of manure. “Water it,” he said. Manure – a haiku The stench hits her face And she looks at it in awe. “Why?” She asks eyes wide. Manure – a My-ku He walks her over. The stench hits her face With the smell of manure and she looks at it in awe. “Water it,” he said. “Why?” she asks eyes wide. “We need wet manure to make the bricks”

11th Grade table of Contents Venus..........................................................Mayah El-Dehaibi

THE•...................................................................Tyler Hudson

Bittersweet................................................................Drew Lee

The Desert Makes a Man Do Funny............Zakiyyah Madyun

Of Clint Eastwood.........................................Jayne May-Stein

Growing Up......................................................Abbie Maynard

Arizona......................................................Lindsay McParlane

It Ain’t Over Till I Sing................................................Anna Nix

Alec Baldwin’s Rockin’ Bod..............................Donovan Gray

Take a Drag and Bum The Weekend..................Lily Schwartz

A Winter Arson....................................................Anita Trimbur

Han, On His Way to Tatooine For a Meeting........Cole Weber

The Poet at Sixteen........................................Shakeria Carter

This Is How..........................................................Leo Johnson

Mellow Dreams................................................Melissa Nelson

Venus

--Mayah El-Dehaibi The dry desert winds scoop sand in their fingers and restlessly cut through the air. She walks unfazed. The sand is a figure eight storm of hornets that nip at her creamy knees and dig under her toenails, whipping her hair into her eyes and threatening to encase her in the tornado. Her back is straight and her feet embrace the desert floor with every curling step from rounded heel to toe. A volcano erupts in her face, sending lava pouring down her throat and sizzling in her stomach, evaporating her stomach acid into a toxic gas. Clumps of ash fall like grenades in front of her, rock and dust exploding on impact. The sandstorm rages around her and she doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even clear her throat. Each planted footprint is instantly filled with scorpion eggs and shed snakeskin. Her walk to the cathedral gives the sand a chance to graze the pores on the edge of her soft jawbone. Her skin is impermeable and pale lashes flick away the wasp wings and grit from her oasis eyes. She still smells fresh from the sea foam. Inside her skeleton is glowing pink coral, stronger than the slabs of rock littering the desert floor. She had torn her hair from the rays of sunshine licking at the nape of her neck that morning. The whirlwinds pick up as she climbs the stairs to the wooden church on the highest dune, and as she pulls the weathered doors closed behind her mosquitoes in her ears fall helpless on the carpet. She shakes herself off. The church had jewel-toned stained glass windows on all four sides, three dozen identical wooden pews, and a modest altar. Every varnished surface was illuminated by hundreds of white candles. Dinky tea lights, fat votives and tall dinner-table candles were scattered about the church, on pews, resting on windowsills and shelves, and hanging from dusty chandeliers from the sallow ceiling. Not all candles were lit. Blackened matchsticks were stacked in piles on the floor, stuck in excess wax.

A few windows were open here and there, letting the harsh sandstorm outside shake the nearby flames. She took slow, deliberate steps around the empty church, trying not to disturb clusters of candles on the floor. The flame on an old melted votive on the back pew was withering. She moistened her thumb on a rosy lip and pinched it to a relieved lock of smoke, and a thousand miles away a man fell to the arms of a woman younger and blonder than his wife. Striking a match on the wall, she lit a dozen tea lights and sent them shuddering and helpless against an open ruby window. A dozen twelve-year olds send frilly red hearts in the mail, biting their lips. She made her rotations around the open room, knocking candles over, lighting them and shaking out the flames, opening and closing windows. She crawled under a pew and picked up a new pillar candle and flicked its wick with her fingernail with a radiant smile dazzling across her face. She set it down on the altar and kissed it, lighting the wick and turning on her heel. She pulled the door closed and left the flames to dance until the next sweet dawn.

THE

•

--Tyler Hudson In the beginning, there was • that sat between two spotless walls. And then there was a flash of green and a flash of red and a flash of vanilla and the • ripped itself into millions. Pieces flew outwards and up, knifing into the walls, stitching themselves in place, stretching and growing and interlocking as dots of sugar do to form crystals. The • crystals happened to weave their outgrowing fingers into a nexus that Someone decided to call “tree.” From this was born the first argument between Someone and Another. If you were to make an impression in Someone’s skin, it stayed there, and so he called himself Stone. Another called himself nothing because he hated naming anything. What value was there in knowing a manifestation of the • as a tree rather than a brick? “But it’s a tree,” Stone insisted, and before Another could respond, he scratched “tree” onto his chest. He turned to another snarl of green/red/vanilla and wrote “brick” into himself. “There is a brick!” Leaping from wall to wall, bounding through thickets and cobwebs of crystal on his new “legs,” Stone gave everything in his path a word. “Fountain.” “Hill.” “Leaf.” “Star.” “Moon.” Another watched him and fell apart. A leaf could not be a fountain. A moon could not be a star. A tree could not be a brick. The flow of • was broken. The electricity had drained away like a dance craze. Words erupted from Stone’s mouth at shorter and shorter intervals, set themselves permanently in his skin, and marginalized the beauty Another saw all around him.

As soon as there were words to be spoken, people burst into being in flashes of gaudy sparks and magenta petals. They turned their heads—snick—right—snick—left—but saw only blisters boiling in the sun. They stepped down hard in unison, left their footprints in the walls. They started building. Stone encouraged them. They called him Prometheus. Another continued to shrink into his skin. They couldn’t describe the •. Some called it “beauty,” some “God.” No one would agree. There was a war that filled every space with the sound of rending. The world filled with a cacophony of rust rasping against concrete. After centuries and millennia, only an earache remained.

Bittersweet --Drew Lee

Before I met you, I hadn’t really believed in love. Love was nothing more than a metaphysical dilemma. The two people who were supposed to love me, didn’t. So where did I turn? My parents were the only ones I depended on for love and I couldn’t even get that. I was never their first priority, but there was never a real reason as to why. I tried incessantly to win them over; I was the best daughter that any parent could ask for. But I never gained their love. After that, I couldn’t bring myself to believe that there was such a thing as love. But there was something about you, something that mesmerized my mind and soul. You said things that others didn’t. You showed me a new side of myself that I’d never discovered. When you looked at me I was more than just a pretty face and I gained a confidence that I didn’t know I had. You read me inside and out and didn’t judge me. I shared things with you that I promised myself I would never speak of. My scars were there for everyone to see and I didn’t care. I’d began to let go of the meaningless things from my past. And at that time I could genuinely say that I was in love for the very first time. But, I also didn’t believe that someone could have the power make or break you until you came along. I assumed that if you were content with yourself as a whole, then you were unbreakable, which was mostly true. But, at the same time, I wasn’t resilient. I didn’t entirely love the person I was. And how could I love someone assiduously when I didn’t love myself, right? That’s where I went wrong. You had control over me and I was fine with that for a while because you were my guide. My guide to finding myself. You ripped out every piece of naivety that lied inside of me. But that only lasted for so long. Overtime, I knew who I wanted to be. However, I couldn’t take myself back. You held a part of me and you couldn’t seem to let go. I was yours. But you began to change because you didn’t like that I changed. There was

an unseen distance between us, but I ignored it. I ignored it because I was so sure you would come back around. You didn’t, though. There were other people on your mind. Just absent-minded girls, still finding their place. Sort of what I used to be. All you wanted was someone to control. Baby, you looked for power in the wrong place. I wasn’t willing to give you that satisfaction because I couldn’t quite understand how a person of so much meaning could drop me in the blink of an eye. I let you in and gave you every piece of me. And I was hurt. Only because you knew my story. You knew that I came from years of hurt. I put everything into what we had and I molded myself into what I thought he wanted me to be. But I left with something I didn’t have before. And that was fine.

The Desert Makes a Man Do Funny Things --Zakiyyah Madyun

The place had a vacancy. It was a three-story structure with a neon sign. Built like a New York brownstone, except it was in the middle of the Sahara Desert. “How does the place hold up?” Thomas Calvary asked once, kicking at a sand dune with one of his orthopedic sneakers. This was a rather appropriate question, considering the significant dangers that desert life permits. “Well,” said the owner, a 65 year old Armenian man with a peculiar inclination for Hawaiian floral button ups, “I like to think the Sahara’s got a bit of a sweet spot for this place.” On the third floor, where Persian rugs covered up tacky linoleum tile and green wallpaper peeled from the plaster, Thomas Calvary peered through the crooked blinds of his bedroom window. Stepped into the pearly pink bathroom with the claw-footed tub and the ceiling fan. Tried the faucet but it wouldn’t run. Tried the shower and watched sand dribble through the drain. “Something’s different,” Thomas proclaims, standing on the balcony while the owner sips pink lemonade from a Mason jar. “One of these things is not like the others,” hums the man, tapping his feet on the balcony floor. “Remarkably cold!” Thomas Calvary exclaims to himself, turning up the thermostat, but the air-conditioning keeps running. “Remarkably cold!” He calls downstairs for a blanket, but never hears a knock on the door. “Customer service,” says Thomas, “could certainly use an upgrade.” Standing on the front steps, sinking his feet into the desert sand, Thomas Calvary wrinkles his brow. “Something just doesn’t feel right you know?” he says.

The owner nods from a plastic striped beach chair. “Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person in the entire world. Does that make me conceited, or alone? Or both? You know, something just feels a little bit off.” Thomas Calvary squints his eyes in the sun, turns to face a sand dune. “Yeah I think you’re right. Give it time. It’s the heat. Yeah, I think you’re right.”

Of Clint Eastwood --Jayne May-Stein

He’s the man behind the curtain. The one who sits quietly at family gatherings and sips his scotch while observing the family in disgust, but whenever he says anything, it’s unbelievably funny. He’s the guy that you want to like you, and even if you hate him yourself, you want to know why he hates you. He drinks his coffee black. Never uses a spoon or straw. Smokes Marlboro red cigarettes or hand rolled cigarettes. Drinks whiskey straight. Sometimes he uses a glass, sometimes he doesn’t. Never uses ice because that’ll water the flavor down. If he owns a dog, it’s a medium-sized dog. He doesn’t care about the size of the dog, but the loyalty it has to it’s master. He also likes smarts in a dog. Like a collie or a German Shepard. Maybe even a husky or a malamute. If he’s married, he treats her well but never brings her flowers. He’s not afraid of rejection but he just doesn’t see the point in bringing her mortal things because to him, the love he has for her is immortal and she deserves roses crafted from pearls. Diamonds to him are too flashy and their beauty is wasted on superficial things like rings and she knows that no woman will look at the beauty of a diamond and think of the immortality of it, she’ll think about the beauty of it and then his efforts to show his love will be wasted. Pearls are humble, classic, like him. They come from ugliness and through the cracks of life, the open and still shy away from the hands and eyes that reach out to them. If you are like a pearl and not a diamond, then you are the woman for him. If he’s not married, he doesn’t have girlfriends because he thinks that that is wasting the beauty of a woman. He doesn’t want a night with her and then to be left alone because he feels like that isn’t right. He doesn’t have any children. If he does, he softens and eventually the drinking and whiskey will stop or by some means of the heavens, he will perish soon before

he is able to watch them grow up. This man is a classic. He will take a woman out dancing in his young years, fall in love with her and when she breaks his heart, remember her every time he hits the bottle. He’s coke in glass bottles. He’s baseball on a summer day. A greasy hotdog that slides down your throat with a satisfying slip of knowing that what you’re eating is unhealthy for you. He will teach you how to drive. He’ll take you to the moon and back in a beige Cadillac. He likes to look at you naked but he won’t get aroused. He just thinks you’re beautiful and a piece of art to look at. In his life, he’ll only love once. He’ll say he loves you, but in his heart, he knows that he’s lying. He has either already been in or has yet to be in love with the one woman of his dreams and there’s a good chance that she’ll be the one to break his heart forever. He’ll never say your name in any song or work of literature that he writes about you. He’ll never compare you to a flower or the rain. He’ll think of you as he sips his whiskey and rocks back and forth on his rocking chair that his father built for him when he was young while he taught him all the rules to being a man.

Growing Up

--Abbie Maynard Crack-filled streets line the path for little boys and girls on their way to school each morning, as they fill their tin containers with an organic, over-priced meat-substitute and whole-wheat crackers. Their mothers give them a kiss on each cheek and their fathers, a tussle of the hair. Their old, Italian grandfathers, who sit on plastic lawn chairs when the weather is nice, the same lawn chairs that hold the parking spots during the day, yell something after them as their bus comes rattling down the streets, narrowly avoiding pothole after pothole. They don’t ride the bus anymore. It’s for babies, they tell their parents as they pull the back doors shut on the cars their parents have on lease. When the girls get out of the car, they roll their plaid uniform skirts up so high their grandmothers might just faint. The boys whistle, even though they don’t know what for, and chase after the girls on the playground. The children huddle in the back of the classroom and exchange words they learned from their cousin who goes to public school. Words they’ve only heard their father scream during sports games and when he gets angry and their mother. They giggle as they whisper them and write them on the bathroom walls. They don’t know what these words mean, but it makes their tongues tickle and swell because they know what their mother would say if she heard them say those words. They drive their own cars to school now, because they’re grown up and need to learn a sense of responsibility. The girls hike up their skirts before they put the key in the ignition and smear creamy foundation over their pale faces in the rearview mirror at stoplights. They lie to their mothers about where they go on weekends and complain about family dinners on nights they claim they have too much homework. They hide failing tests and missing homework

underneath the CosmoGirl magazine they stole from the drugstore. These are not the children that their mothers and fathers once knew, though itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nice to pretend.

Arizona

--Lindsay McParlane I sit on a bench with Sophia and she tells me she failed her driver’s test. I don’t see this as being a big deal and shrug, but that’s probably because I rely on busses for transportation, not cars. “What was I thinking?” she says out loud. I wonder what my mom is making for dinner that night. “I mean, I waited for the stop sign to turn green. The stop sign. I’m useless,” she proceeds to cry into her hands, and I rub her back gently. Will it be casserole again? I hope not. “You’re not useless, Sophia, lots of people fail,” I say, trying my hardest to comfort her. I’m not there because I like her, necessarily, but more because I feel bad for her. Also she just sat next to me and started talking. “My dad told me my driving test would be easy. Like seriously, Dad, thanks for the heads up.” I focus on the dry heat. I can see the translucent waves of scorching air rising from the ground. “And I mean, Martha got hers…” could you cook an egg on this sidewalk? Probably. But would anyone want to eat an egg seasoned with sidewalk dust? “And that’s why there shouldn’t even be cars in the first place, ya know?” “Huh, what?” I look up at her. “Jesus, Naomi, have you been listening to me at all?” Sophia says. “Yeah, sure. Continue,” I say, kicking the dirt. I recognize the fact that I really hate Sophia, including all of her selfimportance. The bench we sit on is getting hot as the sun rises up over us, staring. It’s listening to her like I should be, but desperately don’t want to. “Who even made up that whole stupid driving thing anyways? And Dad even bought me a car. A cute lil’ jeep…” Whose dad buys them a car for their birthday before they even have a driver’s license? I think of the girls on My Super Sweet 16. Sophia would fit right in, between the “let’s spend too much money” type of brat and the “I just want Justin

Bieber at my party because he’s my future husband” sort of wannabe. I feel her body shudder below my palm, and realize that she still hasn’t stopped crying. Turning to face me, I notice that her eyes are all pink and puffy, her cheeks drenched in tears. “Man, you sure do look ugly,” I laugh.

It Ain’t Over Till I Sing --Anna Nix

Check Your Local Listings Come one! Come all! Come down and see the enormous 1 ton woman! The ground shakes beneath her feet and so will you when you see her! People Watching Women patter through the tents. Their feet caress the ground and they flutter like hummingbirds. Porcelain, they drape fragile arms over steely collar bones of dapper men. Jawlines create sharp shadows on their necks. My bones swim in a sea of flesh and I wonder, what is it to be dainty? The Incredible Edible Red e lbows splinter the dining tables and eyes turn their whites to me as I watch the rest of them take meager mouthfuls. Fueling to conform our expansive army of characters into the train. My chin fights my neck as I chew thick bread coated in another animal’s fat. It’s the man’s words and the mocking ones that urge me to continue this swallow. The body stops telling you what to do when you stop listening.

Plate clean.

Wanted These ankles are weighted down to immobilize me. I’m grudgingly wheeled across the grounds, not once

through the town. Besides, not a soul puts up a sign that reads Wanted: looking for woman who will not fit behind counter. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s health or survival, and I chew my way deeper into this menagerie every day. George I was a young lady, my canary dress folding with my skin. I stood on my tip-toes wrapped in white patent leather to kiss his cheek on Mamaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s porch. We were married in June, the air was like soup and I twirled my way to our car when it started to rain. One morning I woke looking at the fog through our trailer window, like someone poured milk into the air. I rolled over to tell him how the trees were like flakes of cereal in the milky air. The sheets were flat, the mattress sunken in remembrance of his weight.

Alec Baldwin’s Rockin’ Bod

--Donovan Gray Blue Spring: It was about 1973 when I dropped out of college at Columbia. Striding through those doors, knowing it would be the last time I did; it was very emotional. Mark Greene led me through campus as we reminisced on the old buildings and memories of academic achievements. I stayed with him in a run down apartment on Coney Island for a while, but eventually decided we could make a lot more money if we filled the Caddy, packed our bags and hit the road, on to California. So Mark Greene and me gathered a few pairs of pants, a few shirts each, some black dress socks, and stuffed them all into this one little brown leather suitcase we bought for a few dollars. After the math was all done we assumed it would take us about a week to get to San Francisco, but after that week was up we still hadn’t even made it through Missouri. We were standing at the Blue Springs geyser, Mark Greene was smoking pipe tobacco while I waited for the geyser to erupt. “How much longer you thinking of waiting Sandy?” Mark Greene slapped the acrimonious ashes into his hands, than rubbed them into the coarse crosses of his jeans. “Not too much longer, just until the geyser goes off,” I said. Mark Greene brushed his black hair out of his eyes. “It’s already been a week and we aren’t anywhere near San Francisco. Instead we are here, squishing our asses on these god damn logs.” Mark Greene was restless. I watched the cavernous gulf for a few more minutes, then decided it was time to hit the road. New Mexico: The trip had taken up more time than we expected.

We were three weeks into our voyage, and halfway through New Mexico at some Navajo village. Mark Greene was sitting on one of those log stools sketching an elderly Navajo woman weave tapestries while I asked one of the more sallow tourists how to get to California. “Oh, it’s not to hard.” He said. “Rout 70, it turns into 66 eventually but that will take you right to Los Angeles.” I gave him a piece of paper torn from Mark Greene’s journal and requested he write down directions to San Francisco. “I need to find a friend of mine, stay here.” I said. I told him I would be back soon and started towards Mark Greene, who had finished sketching the Navajo woman and was now smoking pipe tobacco with some of the natives. “I hope we aren’t leaving yet. Three weeks and this is the most fun I’ve had,” he said, passing a generous pinch of pipe tobacco to one of the older Navajo men. “I got one of the tourists to write down directions to San Francisco. We could make it there by the end of the day if we leave now.” I said, noticing one of the women picking the Navajo man’s head. “He has lice,” said Mark Greene. The sallow tourist tapped on my shoulder. He was holding out the directions to San Francisco. Mark Greene took them, sliding them into his pocket. San Francisco: I waited outside the strange edifice for Mark Greene to come out and tell me if we had gotten the business deal or not. A man across the street was tossing Frisbees to a mass of dogs across the park. My mother had told me that the only people that came out of San Francisco were gays and Asians, and Mark told me not to wait for him, I had the chance to explore the city; so I set off across the street. The weather in San Francisco was stifling, humid;

weather I wasn’t used to having had lived in New York for most my life. There was a small coffee shop about three blocks from the park, which resembled the Morning Glory in Eau Claire, where I lingered waiting for Mark Greene. After an hour of leisurely sipping a shot of espresso and reading an old edition of the Examiner, Mark wondered into the shop and took the seat across from me. “So,” I asked. “Did we get the job?” Mark picked up the faintly sharpened knife off the table. He looked intensely my direction. “No,” he said, halfheartedly refraining from cursing or cuffing some stranger. I had already gone limp, my vision went blurry, and all I could think about was the Navajo woman picking out her husband’s lice. “Sorry bout’ the gas.” Said Mark. “Maybe there will be something else in California.” I said. My will, for now, had been broken.

SNAP --Alexis Royall He was on his way to his wife’s polka concert when his mind snapped like a femur under two tons of pressure. It was a gradual thing, this splitting; he ignored it until he felt the fracture; hairline, of course, doesn’t sound so bad until it splinters you into a thousand pieces and leaves you passed out on cold concrete. His wife felt the bone slice through his thick skin from two miles away, and she knew that she had done this. The night they met was brimming with terribly uncomfortable conversation and vast overstatements that made the other’s stomach roil with disagreement. They thought maybe a friend would rescue them, but the lanterns strung about their heads provided just enough light to see that there would be no rescue. Night progressed and they fell into that awkwardness and started to call it life: with its ups but mostly downs, and dreams, but mostly nightmares. They were a quick couple, almost instantly forgetting what this was before him or what that was before her. They couldn’t help burrowing into each other’s rib cages; maneuvering stiffly between sheets and bones and detached eyelashes, coated with three day old mascara on pillows cases, and snoring so loud it kept the dog out of the room. The relationship wasn’t built to last, but they rode that thing like it was going to keep chugging along forever. The day he fell off the vessel as it raced full speed at the brick wall the pair had been undoubtedly building, was the day her polka band got their first show. He drove down the deserted road at sixty-five miles per hour, and almost lost control when the pop of his brain hit and sent him spiraling down a tube of the past. She knew the marriage was over from two miles away, but the tension in the air, that horrified aura he emitted since the day they met, was almost enough to make her in

passionate, heated love that would sour in moments and she wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t care.

Take a Drag and Bum The Weekend --Lily Schwartz

There is something about cigarette smoke that I am just sick of. I hate when it’s blown around me or a young girl flings it around while she circles a sentence. I hate when the ash falls on me. I hate that, oh man I really need a cigarette. I hate the real cold, I don’t want to stand out in the cold with you while you suck in a drag. My cigarette-addicted cousin would have a somewhat bohemian style if she wasn’t so poor and wasn’t the income for the family. Her hair was redder than mine, which I wasn’t okay with, and she had a good body, but her face wasn’t really something to write home about. Sarah flicked her cigarette on the edge of the car window. She talked about moving to Pittsburgh and getting a real job. College wasn’t for her, she’d say. She kept insisting the words us, we, or you and me. And Sarah Belle had always lacked this attention and affection growing up, from the time when we were little until now she always needed male affection. That guy that’ll hold her, want her, and kiss her so she can shut him down and feel superior. We rolled over country hills as I thought her future successful life was an AM dream that’ll be blurry in a day or two. Sarah and all her sisters got good grades, but they were nails hammered into this decaying wood called Perry County Pennsylvania. No matter my persuasions, her and I both knew she’d be knocked up in two years and working at a bar like her sister. “I could move to Pittsburgh with you, get a job, and start my life.” Again she twitched her lit cigarette around. Gross, I’m dying. I didn’t really have any real curiosity in what we were talking about. Since I was a baby, riding in a car with music on put my interests in talking to bed. As we looped around the endless turns we finally came back to the six-lane highway that connected straight to their house. “I don’t want to go home.” “We have to, I’m low on gas and later I gotta buy Dad

chew.” “Didn’t you give him money this morning?” “He spent it on booze.” * * * The night before, when I arrived here from the Greyhound I was dragged to a bar out in Dauphin, a town so small they didn’t have red lights or cops, or sobriety. My Aunt’s battery ran out while they were waiting for my arrival and after a man named Smoothie jumped the car she owed him a drink. Hannah, the youngest of the girls, has smelled like a bar since she was four years old. My mom called her a survivor because at age twelve she was hustling adults for money at cheap card games. Her father taught her a staid poker face. She worked the audience like paid programming and looked three years older then she actually was. “The Firehouse is a private place, you need to be special to get in. And it’s locked.” “Do they wear suits and smoke cigars?” I associate private clubs with the 20s. “Lil, this is Perry County.” We walked into the bar and slammed on the door. Each one of us climbed on each other trying to see the window that looked like a hatch in a submarine. When the buzz let us in it really felt like home. There were ribbons and clusters of smoke hanging above me, but it was familiar bar smoke, the kind associated with boozy breath. This classy place had alcoholics lined up around a peninsula of the bar. Another cousin of mine named Ashley worked hurriedly, delivering drinks to the lined up scraggily men and abandoned women. I sat down and Hannah ran over to the modern day Jukebox and put on Lady Gaga until someone changed it to a more country song. The smoke circled me while the runaway husbands spat words and nearly dead teeth at me telling me how red my hair was, how pretty the girls were, and how great his beagle is at home. The song that whistled on slowed the room down, and jarred the smoke in my lungs. Just right, I thought. The fat man next to me handed his cold, untouched onions rings to Hannah and

I. “The wife and I don’t care for onion rings.” We happily picked at them and munched on each fried crust as the wet, droopy onion slipped out from our lips. I looked over at a sobbing, rugged woman that was hysterical in my Aunt’s arms. I could imagine the words they were exchanging in hushed tones; the rugged woman’s slurred because she was blackout drunk. I bet it was all about the good Lord, and the wondrous paths he has chosen for you. I continued to pick at my smoky onion rings. The song that played oozed into my heart and I felt stitched up again. I was no longer in two or three pieces. I was in this warm embryo filled with pool playing, drunk cackles, dirty smoke, dirty breath, and these dirty lives that surrounded me. “One of them cheated, and the husband left her, and now she’s a wreck. We might drive her home.” Hannah informed me of the drunken mess’s current life struggles, but I didn’t listen. I watched the hag sob and heard the music drown out the laughs and the stumbles. The song was sweet; it created this balance within the Firehouse of Dauphin, PA. Things got a little quieter, patience got a little easier. Wouldn’t it be great if some older man whom smelled like pubescent Axe, had beer on their breath, and cigarette colored fingernails asked me to dance? It would be a dream. Sarah Belle stomped over to us and handed me my coat like she was showing the misfit to the door. We left the song unfinished and exited through the submarine hatch where the crystal air was too clean like white walls or fresh bathtub water. I craved the smoky memories now. Sarah blew my words right back in my face when she exhaled the hazy grey. “I need to know that song. The one playing in there.” “Wagon Wheel, by Old Crow Medicine Shop. Bob Dylan wrote it, but he didn’t finish the song. Good, isn’t it?” “Amazing,” I said. “Ya know, I really do want to come out to Pittsburgh and do something with my life.” She bit at some more smoke floating around her. I bit my lip. And the cold bit at my knuck-

les. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I need to listen to that song again.â&#x20AC;? We drove home quietly, my breath extracting heavily, possibly because I was back into two pieces. I have never sucked smoke in so hard before that drive.

A Winter Arson --Anita Trimbur

Daddy would travel out to the west coast on business all through the autumn and into the early snowfalls. In his absence, her mother would scoop her softly into the passenger seat of their Buick, the seat belt running clear over her small head. The car rattled over to the bank of the lake a quarter mile from the townhouse rows, and her mother would pry open the rusted door and let her tumble onto the shore, wading past the spongy shallows of the water, the air gently aromatic with the water lotuses and wild herbs at the base of the hills. Her mother would usher her into the shallows until the water dampened every seam of their dresses, even though Daddy would surely know the stale, lake smell whenever he returned. They carried with them a filthy tote, and the girl would draw out a yellow, disposable Kodak, beaded with lake water. They hiked together up the foothills, treading over the wildly growing reeds and reddened leaves lost to the trees. At the peaks, her mother would hoist her up on her shoulders, struggling to support her growing daughter. The girl would hold the camera clumsily between her palms, and release the shutter while her mother tipped back and forth on the balls of her feet. They knew how to look at each other and silently acknowledge how imminent a season is. On the days just before Daddy returned, the girl and her mother would rush to the drugstore and pay for the photos to be printed. They bought hefty clothespins and wire and strung the photos up like party streamers along the bedroom rafters, pinching their fingers red. Speculation riled them; how Daddyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s face would look in the doorway with flushing color. In time for Christmas, Daddy would arrive in the company of winter. He would bluster through the house, tearing down every photo and spitting about money wasted, about time wasted, until he was blue from talking. In the first nights,

he would sit in front of the fireplace and burn it all, steeping the rooms with the pungent char of photo paper. But the mother shushed her daughter firmly, and hid a shoebox of yellow Kodaks in the trunk of the Buick her husband would never touch. They were as cyclical as the seasons; in dawn time, they’d trundle over to the lake and record the year until autumn, when they’d print the images in bulk at the drugstore, and wish the winter away. The winter when Daddy tried burning every photograph at once, heaving buckets full into the hearth, the blizzarding December sprung the shutters. The flame went spinning on the frosty rifts, and caught Daddy’s button-up until it welled with orange. Her mother frenziedly salvaged every photo before smothering the fire. They moved south to escape both the winter and the hearth in wake of the burning. Before leaving, the girl and her mother buried the scorched photos and the shoebox of Kodaks at the lake, because Daddy wouldn’t burn again.

Han, On His Way to Tatooine For a Meeting With Greedo --Cole Weber

Chewbacca has told me, in the cold expanse of our cold starship, that space is like a cold night in the rain. Cheer up buddy. We have spent too many nights in space, dodging incessant, droning bzzt bzzt bzzt bzzt bzzt bzzt bzzt laser fire. I struggle to grip the Falcon’s controls, spilling convenience store coffee on my lap and not bothering to clean it off. I love playing Jimmy Buffet too loud and pissing Chewbacca off. I am a sailor of comet streaks and I welcome the idea of serenading a human woman in the Poconos, sipping drinks named after interesting people. I bought a tanning booth from Craigslist but it’s just not the same. The fantasy of space travel is lost, as we both realize that all the stars, which used to be romantic, look the same and I’m sick of looking at the same ugly alien faces in the seedy Tatooine bars where I spend every last credit just to hear the pleasant hum of conversation between happy people. I want to retire, but I’m landing the ship again.

The Poet at Sixteen --Shakeria Carter

Faded into the distant smoking ash of distinction I have become nothing more than a figment of my imagination; poetry, of some sort, they call me. A poet in disguise, faceless and rhythm-less; I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t recall my last line. Instead I choose to spread my youth endlessly through the town leaving nothing to remember but my unpronounceable name and unpleasant grace, doodling through streets and wandering past creativity into my own. The words I have written are none to be appreciated.

This Is How --Leo Johnson

‘This is how you braid a tail, Western style,” Kennedy’s mother says. Kennedy leans over Starry’s rump and watches. * The ceiling over Kennedy’s bed is cracked. The plaster drips water in the summer thunderstorms. Kennedy doesn’t mind. The cracks make pictures. When it rains, Kennedy’s mother gets out the popcorn bowl and salad bowl and mixing bowl and Kennedy gets to stay up until it stops, changing them when they fill. * “Indians lived here a long time ago, before we came,” the teacher says through her stiff smile. “They’re all gone now.” “Like the dinosaurs?” Emmy, who gets called precocious by adults with even stiffer smiles, asks. “Extinct?” “Yes. Like the dinosaurs.” Kennedy comes home and pictures her bones wired into place like the dinosaurs in the museum she went to on a field trip. She sees the sign, “A Real Indian, eight years old,” and the moccasins Mom made her with flowers beaded on them under glass, and she cries and won’t tell her mom why. * “This is how you braid a mane, English style,” Kennedy’s mom says. * Kennedy goes to the library and looks up Indian in the catalogue. She finds a book about Hinduism and a book about cowboys. Then she finds a book about Red Power and reads about cultural destruction and genocide and poverty, and feels kind of bad because her family’s not so bad off, but she still steals the book from the library so she won’t have to return it. *

“How do I braid a mane Indian style?” Kennedy asks her mom. Her mom goes quiet. Finally, she answers: “I don’t know.” * It rains all night. Kennedy wakes up and her math homework’s soaked through. Her mother writes her a note and tells Kennedy with a laugh that at least they have enough bowls to put under every leak. When she was a kid on the Rez there were so many they had to run back and forth like tennis players. Kennedy knows she’s making it up but laughs and feels a little better anyway. * Kennedy’s mom waits until she graduates high school, and teaches her how to solicit donations, how to fill out a not-for-profit tax exemption form, how to sell beadwork on the internet, how to pay bills, and how to drive a car. She shows her what supplies to buy and who to buy them from, and how to argue with slaughterhouse employees. Just in case, she says. Two years after Kennedy graduates high school, her mom takes off in the night. She leaves a note in nice cursive. “I took care of you as well as I could,” Kennedy reads out loud, and throws the note across the room. It doesn’t hit satisfyingly. * She will not sell the ranch. This was her mother’s ranch. This was her grandmother’s ranch. This is her ranch. She will not sell the ranch. * Sofia. Wisdom. Kennedy hopes her daughter has more than she did, hopes she can raise her daughter without shame, hopes her own best will be better than her mother’s. Then she succumbs to the painkillers and passes out, baby in arms. * She doesn’t know better than her mother. She isn’t

Mellow Dreams

--Melissa Nelson A window, once upon a time. A windowpane of mellow dreams, caught for all time in specks of grit and rust. Shattered. The brightest ray of sunlight streaks through, and the window is gone in the blink of an eye and the scuffle of a worn-out sneaker. But look more closely. The lone shard hangs from the pane, falls with the delicate brush of butterfly wings. I can’t breathe. Can’t see. I can feel the rough edges, skin to skin, rough to smooth. The ragged edge is a warning now. The tennis ball—the perpetrator—rolls away unharmed, deeply unaffected and uncaring. It will be retrieved later, once it has made a desperate bid for freedom and tasted a new life on its tongue. But for now, it may roll peacefully. The windowpane is a mirror, a chasm, a splatter of mud on a shiny car. The glass oozes along the ground, bouncing this way and that. In all my life I have never seen so much glass, thumping along in every direction before settling to a stop, deadly sharp underfoot. It is horrible, fantastic, horrendous, magnificent. There are no words to describe, truly, the nature of the beast. My brother turns and asks: “What’s Dad gonna say?”

SNAP

--Alexis Royall He was on his way to his wife’s polka concert when his mind snapped like a femur under two tons of pressure. It was a gradual thing, this splitting; he ignored it until he felt the fracture; hairline, of course, doesn’t sound so bad until it splinters you into a thousand pieces and leaves you passed out on cold concrete. His wife felt the bone slice through his thick skin from two miles away, and she knew that she had done this. The night they met was brimming with terribly uncomfortable conversation and vast overstatements that made the other’s stomach roil with disagreement. They thought maybe a friend would rescue them, but the lanterns strung about their heads provided just enough light to see that there would be no rescue. Night progressed and they fell into that awkwardness and started to call it life: with its ups but mostly downs, and dreams, but mostly nightmares. They were a quick couple, almost instantly forgetting what this was before him or what that was before her. They couldn’t help burrowing into each other’s rib cages; maneuvering stiffly between sheets and bones and detached eyelashes, coated with three day old mascara on pillows cases, and snoring so loud it kept the dog out of the room. The relationship wasn’t built to last, but they rode that thing like it was going to keep chugging along forever. The day he fell off the vessel as it raced full speed at the brick wall the pair had been undoubtedly building, was the day her polka band got their first show. He drove down the deserted road at sixty-five miles per hour, and almost lost control when the pop of his brain hit and sent him spiraling down a tube of the past. She knew the marriage was over from two miles away, but the tension in the air, that horrified aura he emitted since the day they met, was almost enough to make her in

10 Grade Table of Contents Escargots......................................................Anne Amundson Willpower.....................................................Raâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;naa Billingsley Harbinger............................................................Kenzie Bruce Summer, 2007...............................................Madeline Colker HELIOCENTRIC.....................................................Taylor Fife wildflower.....................................................Brenna Gallagher The Captain....................................................Jessica Ignasky Melancholy.......................................................Taylor Johnson Parasite........................................................Jazmyne Kenney When Paper Burns..............................Mollie March Steinman teach...................................................................Alexis Payne Hippopotamus...............................................Drew Praskovich

Kleptomaniac..................................................Madeline Smith Mud........................................................................April Yoder

Escargots

--Anne Amundson Mikey likes hot chocolate and romantic movies because he likes to believe that they’re true. Mikey doesn’t like his mothers cooking because he wants somebody to make him pb&j sandwiches and take him to Broadway shows. Mikey wants them to take him travelling to see their favorite landmarks. Mikey’s already seen the Eiffel Tower and tried escargot (he thought they tasted like Africa) Mikey’s favorite smell in the world is the smell of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. because his stepfather bakes them sometimes out of a plastic tube from the grocery story. Mikey thought they were the best cookies in the world because they smelled like the movie Anastasia and the pretty candles he sees in the strip malls. Mikey’s mother makes Kraft mac and cheese every Wednesday night for dinner and likes to keep a china cabinet for their cheapest dishes.

Willpower

--Ra’naa Billingsley I look at the clouds sometimes, and I see hands. I pray above sometimes, and I hear Him. I pray to the clouds sometimes, and I see God’s hands, seeking down upon me. Seeking to guide me to the heavenly luminescence. Sometimes the devil’s dusk takes us over. When we close our eyes to see our inner most self, darkness is the only thing we see behind our pasted eyelids. When we meditate and “om” away the pain, all we see is obscurity. The sun gets stronger every eleven years, but this earth gets darker every decade.  We search for the light,  Seek it,  Yearn for it,  Crawl towards it, Drag our burdened mass of body with our newfound arm strength, towards that glowing orb. We are have all been lobotomized, and in our vegetated states, light is essential. We need it for survival. Shed light upon my skin before it disintegrates to paste for the vultures.  Shed light upon my soul, so it may stay pure and good, and it may not be stolen. Grant me willpower, and I will power through this. I will get to this light, before my existence ends in darkness, as the same way it began.

Harbinger

--Kenzie Bruce Clinging to ledges, waiting to rain down upon the herds with rage and fire. They grind their teeth and grin, each flash the hinge to the mask of their madness. Herbs will have no effect on this rare breed of briar, thorns will prick out from their mouths to bar the path they call righteous. Hear this bringer of justice spout its lies; it will have no bearing on my mind, nor the thoughts of the others. They do so little to gain the fame they long to hold; foreshadowing death for the binger, sewing their lips together with fingernail thread. Even angrier now their reign has not triggered the oceans to burn; the barren wastelands they arranged to retake the earth never even began.

Summer, 2007

--Madeline Colker Water in the garden hose hot. Whispers in the kitchen faltering like weak radio signals; we can hear them through the cracked window glass. Pebbles get stuck in between our toes. Grass blades get stuck in between our teeth. Popsicle sticks littered, and even the fish are drowning in this heat. The air is thick as the algae in our plagued pond we are struggling to breathe in it. The stale grass has withered with the hot weather and we are waiting to be let back inside.

HELIOCENTRIC --Taylor Fife

You have me wrapped around your finger, up in the center of your universe. By my hips you hold me, your touch bittersweet like licorice. You look me in my eyes and I melt to the Milkyway because your force is so electric. I got chills up my spine from you, hand delivered by you. Every night you recite your love letter for me. P.S. I love you girl right down to your hot, metallic core. Some days you’re too far from me. I can’t count the light years and I hear my own echo. I promise I won’t let us burn so don’t you ever worry. Our love is an infinite line and together we’ll stay on it’s course. Our love will ricochet, back to me you’ll come, back to you I’ll go. We have a bond that is forever ionic and that is surely not a lie because in your universe, I will always be your gravity, and you’ll always be my only super hero.

wildflower

--Brenna Gallagher I know he’s sick of me. I can tell from the way his lips crawl over his teeth when I ask him what he wants for dinner. I know the answer already: Hmph. I try to remember what his favorite is but all I remember is that it’s slathered in gravy and sticks to the insides of your cheeks. On Tuesday nights Roy is at poker. I lay on my bed with a copy of Cosmo and try to remember what college feels like. I smoke KOOL cigarettes after, not because I’m a smoker but because my mother smoked them and it’s nights like this I miss her loose skin and revolting cough. I empty my ashtray off the side of the porch. Roy thinks I quit smoking two years ago. I don’t continue to hide it because he’d be angry but because when he mutters ahem I know it’s his own personal I-told-you-so. His own little special I resent you. Sometimes it’s enough to make me fold up in my grandmother’s sewing box and pretend I’m as little as I feel. I crawl into bed long before he gets home. I breathe the taste of detergent before his hardy musk takes over the entire bed. It makes me cough in my sleep until my lungs shoot out of my chest and onto the floor. The flowers from the covers line my skin and I can feel myself becoming the landscape. My arms the branches of trees, my stomach the petals to flowers. I stay still long enough until a pair of teenagers will drive within my vines and lay down on top of me and kiss and touch and grip. I long to feel their magnetism, to taste the longing from his lips flowing into hers. I reach out to them but they mistake it as weeds tickling their backs. This is all ruined by Roy unlocking the door and running up the steps. Each thud is enough to make me cringe and I long for my body to be the wood and my back to be a bed for adolescent love. Once in awhile he’ll climb on top of me. He won’t kiss me but when he does little flakes of tobacco stick to my tongue.

I turn my head and lick the pillow but that only leaves me with a stale taste of fabric. I wait for it to be over so I can roll on my side and wait for more teenagers and more love. I pretend I am the wildflower he drags down her stomach. I pretend I am the dirt his fingers bury themselves in. I pretend I am anything but this.

The Captain

--Jessica Ignasky I’ve tried to find you in the places where the earth has scars. I’ve checked in the deepest part of the East Brady river where you can wade out and just stand. Your footprints are still implanted there, along with the pole you carried, everything is still in the water, waiting for you to return. I’ve checked on the mud islands, with their weeds reaching towards the sky, but my feet became stuck as they did long ago leaving me waiting for you to come and lift me up. I’ve checked in the forest, because I know it holds secrets, like the abandoned log cabin with the flowers growing out of the wood, the moss hanging off the broken glass like drapes, the ghost stories you told, still whispering through the air, leaving me waiting for you to swallow them up. I’ve searched everywhere you left a crater with your bad knee. I’ve even gathered the strength to lift up the tendrils of your mechanical boat, the seaweed and sand raining down on me like laughter and lawn chairs and every phrase you said is still so clear, but I have learned that scars heal and I cannot find you anymore.

Melancholy

--Taylor Johnson She turns to me and says, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The best way to get there is canoe.â&#x20AC;? The sky was green that day, like money or a clear vial of alchemy. She said I reminded her of her days at Coney island, her words smooth jazz or drizzled honey. Always searching for a silver lining of the finest lace The waters were calm and my blue house was clean the shutters played the cello but she was a cameo and I was the ocean

Parasite

an organism that lives on or in an organism of another species, --Jazmyne Kenney You are filled with yellow stains and sour residues. Your scent lingers on all of my clothes and in the arch of my back. And so all day I fluctuate between standing in silent bathrooms, unbuttoning and re-buttoning my blouse. Later, I cup my skirt in my hands and think of you. You say I am not fit for children because I spend all day looking at myself in oil-stained mirrors and asking you how much you like me and why. I try and pretend that I know you. That I know why your lips curve like they are made out of leather when you smile. Or why you wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t pick me apart like seeds. On Sunday, I paint my fingers and toes yellow to match my skin and to match your mood, and you curse at me your voice resonating off the walls, hitting me, raw, like sand paper. I twist at my arm hairs, hard, and listen as your words pour out like acid. You say, I am crazy, and I think of all the other words you could of said instead of crazy. Perhaps that I was irrational or passionate,

because I didn’t like the way “crazy” rolled off of your tongue, dry, like it would crack. You say you are leaving. I want to say, “how,” or “where would you go” because I see you, instead of me inside spotted mirror and on the tips of my fingers.

When Paper Burns

--Mollie March Steinman The photograph is gray and ambiguous so she’s only white if you know what to look fornaturally slicked curls and small features and my, how skinny! No mother would approve. The way that cigarette is perched so carelessly between her fingers you get the feeling she’s not looking for approval. She is completely distracted prim lips pressed to a full, willing mouth eyelids half open. He keeps his hands at a respectful distance (upper back only). He’s holding a cigarette, too— maybe they’re trading cancer. I hope so (how romantic would that be? breathing smoke swirls together, into each other, that warmth encasing your tongue, down your throat, a sweet smother, dirty and fearless). I hope when she looks at him she sees soft skin, not brown skin. I hope their lungs shatter from too many tar cracks. I hope their hearts don’t shatter at all. I hope he sets her on fire with that silver lighter and she melts white chocolate.

teach

--Alexis Payne cut us out of this book. shave the stubble from our chin, and make us whole. we are not men. they say. pop life from our lungs and make us breathe slow. cut us. my mother, father, uncle, who held golden scepters to pale faced foreigners and vomited hieroglyphs on smooth cave walls. cut us. my sister, cousin, brother, who staked words in the white manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ground, black artists licking the ceilings and the walls and the floors to taste real life and make music. cut us, besides our wrists bound in manacles; besides our lips parched, food forced down our throats; besides our feet on foreign soils, running from something. cut us; besides plastered faces on headlines, mug shot snapped. besides lynched little whistling boys and hard times pressed like Sunday shirts.

cut us out of this book. pop life from our lungs and make us whole. but i will save the scattered pieces youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve forgotten. and i will remind the boy locked in the walls, in his ghetto of the kings.

Hippopotamus

--Drew Praskovich They washed her in the kitchen sink with shampoo, dragonfly suds, as John F. Kennedy the papist watched nestled on the refrigerator in a utopia. There, Kellogg’s and momma’s dead weeds sucked on potash till the baby’s skin was a raisin and took her out with a pop. She was their little River Horse, and poppa oh poppa’s fingers would strum on frets, smooth moonlit blues on medicinal herbs and baby’s autism. Momma leaned by the same sink, scrubbing with soprano thumps. Cry like an ocean, and bring home those lips and hips. And it hit him, how something so small could be such an opus.

Kleptomaniac --Madeline Smith

I am living like my ghost will live, an animal. Glass for pitching at cornfield crows, someone’s ankle. Strings from folding clothes, Jesse’s nickel, and Grandma’s gun. Letters from my sister to me the maple maniac, bubble gum, the black bear claw, broken, splintered pencil. Collected in cobwebs the baby’s first breath, photographs for pockets, and our bravery in jars. Tender turtle shells wound in bailing wire, a dusty pecan. Calendars that make our bodies atomic. Black buzzard wings, timid sketches of window shades, chips of motel paint. And four stubborn maps of our old planet

Mud

--April Yoder I was the riverbank and you were the river, trying to grasp my edges as the currents pulled you away. I reached up with rocks to halt your rolling, but you had already let go. Now I watch you glide across my back like wind. Frictionless. For God’s sake, just look at me, just make me into a poem, just skip my name when you read it in a book, just blacken your hands, just wash the black off and replace it with red, just scream and scream and scream. I want you to feel. I want to see that your blood has turned blue. I can already see it seeping out from underneath your fingernails, but it’s not enough. I used to cry into jars so that one day I could break them all at once and drown you. I wanted to drown your voice I wanted to drown your eyes I wanted to drown your poetry. Now I use them to bathe. You turned away from me with ocean water sliding down your cheeks, filling your ears with paper, as if I would stop existing. I do exist. I do I do I do exist. But the bank can’t exist without the river.

9th Grade Table of Contents The Maw is a Touch Screen..................................Ahmir Allen 10 Ways of Looking at a Mirror...............................Maya Best Summer Nights.................................................Jessica Britton The Thief’s Confession.....................................Laura Condon Little White Lies..............................................Madison Custer Pulled to Little Sparks..............................Muriel D’Alessandro Ten Ways of Looking at Christ Church..............Clara Dregalla PA Railroad Calendar Delivered 63 Years Late...Keely Durkin Scam.................................................................Sam Eppinger 10 Ways of Looking at a Viking........................Dylan Fletcher 11 Ways of Looking at a Light-bulb.................Hannah Geisler Prestige..............................................................Tyra Jamison

Happy-Go-Lucky...............................................Chris Kraemer Offerings............................................................Curran Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Neill Purple Tents and No Night Lights...........................Eden Petri Join with Me....................................................Jacob Richards Just Like Best Friends...............................Shayla Salamacha Cockeyed (A Persona)...................................Emily Schwager Losing My Breath................................................Lanie Wester

The Maw is a Touch Screen --Ahmir Allen

My iPod is always by my side, it is ferocious and large. It keeps on growing and now it is so much more than those first thirty-two songs I fed it. I prepared the meal with that gift card I got last Christmas, though I feed it almost weekly now. It is nowhere near full and won’t be anytime soon. It wards off those ne’er-do-wells on the bus, some of them are crazy people who I don’t know, though I see them twice daily for thirty minutes in-passing. They might cause me harm with their unintelligible mumblings, or those inconsecutive stories that they have to go back and retell, because they skipped a part. Sweet old ladies in bunches or kind elderly gentleman who mostly sleep. These I can stand. I tone down my pet’s viciousness when we’re around them. A kindness, for it is very vicious. The gossiping, giggling, snide women who find nothing better to do than laugh behind people’s backs are the ones who get on my nerves. Mince meat is made of their banshee wails, melodious lyrics soon take their place as the voices are thoroughly drowned.

10 Ways of Looking at a Mirror --Maya Best

I Grandma’s mirror has suffered long With foggy glass and fingerprints. Endured the children’s crayon drawings, And watched the paint on its golden frame Peel away into a dull brown. Worn from its 100 years of standing, It fears the day when it will crack. II She’s stared at the girl for 11 years. She’s watched her move with her, Watched her talk with her. The girl with the same forest green eyes, The same dimples when she smiles. She can nearly feel her skin, Almost clutch her hand On the glass. III The clothes are in the cupboard, The bed is on the floor. The mirror is on the wall. IV Hidden glass behind the dining ware, Of teacups and glasses. Eyes unclosed, never blinking. Unnoticed yet watching, It stares from its perch. V Where flaws are revealed And quickly covered up.

Where morning hair and unwashed faces Like to show. Where every girl gives that dreaded look, Hoping to see the best in the glass. VI One crack and it was gone, Like winter snow in February. Kicked out the door and into the lake, Unloved, unwanted, just another piece of junk. Shattered mirror silently cries As it gradually sinks. VII Tired from a long day at work, And tired of all those ugly faces That never stop preening or batting their eyelashes into his glass, Mirror sets out, a dark top hat balanced atop his silver frame, And mustache carefully colored in with sharpie, Wobbly and shy as he crawls along in his master’s boots, Cautious to avoid the deathly fall resulting in a thousand cracks. He only hopes they’ll invite him, To be the dinner guest. VIII As you walk the mirror steadily follows, Tracing each step, each slight movement. You’ll turn and it’s there. Such a copycat it is. It has no life goals, other than to ruin yours. You try to move before it can, But it is a lost game. Forever it will be a skilled master at stalking.

IX Rumor says she died there. Her glazed eyes staring into the glass And body cold fire. She saw something they say, Something right behind her left shoulder. As she looked into her reflection She saw the man who killed her. X All these years it lived alone Without another soul in that grimy bathroom, But the slimy toilet seat And sink, not scrubbed since last Christmas. All alone.

Summer Nights --Jessica Britton

I climb and we sit as we eat Skittles that were for someone at school We drop them on the tracks and only smile because those skittles aren’t us and we will never be those skittles. My smile, every fiber, every cloud glaze in little fields, every cry-fest in parking lots, I want to go on forever. Summer days filled with sleep and adventure, and summer nights filled with movies and dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets We would do cannon balls into the river, singing songs from that show we loved. I want to fill my entire life with summer days and nights And I want to fill those days with you, so those can be just our adventures and no one else’s. I could hop a train and we could runaway just like we daydreamed, That could be the perfect life for me We would laugh and sing, and have clothes only decorated by grass stains that will never come out Because I don’t want them too I feel as if I could be a music box, you would wind me up and fill me until I’m full and perfect I feel as if I am a long lost twin to people that look nothing like me, but I’m sure that we are somehow connected I feel as if I could burst at any moment, confetti and candy would fly out as small children scurry to pick to it up I feel as if I could be a lot of things, and I could never be a couple things even if I tried

I could never be a mime because I’ve never seen them cry, or laugh, or flip the bird, or yell a cuss word, or just scream at the world that they are there, and there is nothing it could do about it. I remember my father used to take naps on top of the tree outside my window. I would look out at him in awe, and wonder how that man could fly, but now I know that flying and being weightless are two different things. I may not know what it’s like to sleep on trees, but I do know what it’s like to be weightless You might not notice it, you may never notice how I float and glide and how all me shoes are squeaky clean because they never hit the ground. But I don’t even notice it, I barely notice it because I’m laughing too hard, I barely notice it because we are dancing in the hallways, I barely notice it because I’m never looking down, And I barely notice it because I’m have too much fun to tie my shoes.

The Thief’s Confession --Laura Condon

I must be a thief, because none of my words are my own. I am the one that steals with a smirk. A two fingered salute and a Cheshire smile Are all that’s left in my wake. Delivering to clients Who pay with honesty. My family is full of tight smiles. Their words signal approval But their eyes are contradictory. They think I want their lies. Oh, how wrong they are… When black leather is exchanged For jeans and graphic tees The roles get reversed. “Friends” proudly take the credit For the work I did that night. I don’t want to spend life as a villain. I want for my family’s smiles To finally be real. I want my timid victim side To merge with my cocky self. I want to leave behind the misdeeds But keep my Cheshire smile. I want to keep my friends But learn to straighten my spine. That is the girl behind the mask. I may still be a thief, but my words are becoming my own.

Little White Lies --Madison Custer

CHARACTERS Warren Cooper, 63, sitting president. He knows how to lead a country and handle foreign affairs. He pulled the country out of a recession, and he knows how to do it again if he has to. He’s crotchety to people he doesn’t like, but polite when he’s in a situation with only a few people. Chloe Wilson, 23, Warren’s secretary. She runs errands for him. Can be played by the same actress as Molly. Alex Cooper, 25, Warren’s nephew. He helps run his uncle’s campaign. Phillip Reese, 35, young presidential candidate. He’s young and stylish, wins people over with his charm. Reporters 1-4, various ages, not important. Molly Paige, 34, Phillip’s girlfriend. She’s protective, and really wants Phillip to win. Can be played by the same actress as Chloe. Ensemble, the actors not in this play. They don’t come in until the very end.

Scene 1 (The setting is a dark room. There is a desk with an American flag sitting behind it. On the desk is a small sign that says “President.” There is a pen cup, a phone and some paper.) (Enter WARREN. He turns on the lights and sits down at the desk. He starts writing, but shortly after sitting, he presses a button on the phone.)

WARREN Chloe? Bring me my coffee. (He starts writing again. He’s just barely started writing when CHLOE bursts in, holding a cup of coffee. She hands it to Warren.)

The usual?

CHLOE

WARREN Obviously. You’ve just given it to me, haven’t you? CHLOE Yes, sir, of course, sir. WARREN Now go... don’t you have somewhere to be? CHLOE No, sir, my day’s completely open today. WARREN (annoyed) You can leave now, Chloe. CHLOE Of course, Mr. President. Do you want the door open or shut? WARREN It doesn’t matter, Chloe! Thank you for the coffee, now please let me be!

(Exit CHLOE, hurriedly.)

(Enter ALEX, looking confused as to why Chloe is walking so fast.)

ALEX Some one was in a hurry.

WARREN (to Alex) She’s new, and she’s always trying to please me. But she needs to learn that in the morning, I only want my coffee. ALEX Amen. I learned that the hard way. WARREN Oh, stop it. Now. Any news on the campaign front? ALEX Actually, yes. Reese’s team just released a commercial, and I gotta tell you, it’s not good. WARREN What? Already? The election still isn’t for 9 months. Do you have it with you? ALEX No, but it’s at the beginning of every video on YouTube. WARREN You’ve got to be kidding me. ALEX No way. Look, I’ll show you.

(He pulls a laptop out of his brief case and sets it on the desk. He squiggles his hand on the mouse, types something, and then passes the computer to Warren.

ALEX Here. This is just some random cat video. Totally unrelated to the election at all. It’s only got fifty views, and at least forty of those have to be from our team watching it over and over again, because first of all, it’s hilarious, and second of all, we

ALEX (cont’d) needed to see if the commercial would come up every time. And did it?

WARREN

Yes!

ALEX

WARREN Oh my gosh. I have to see this thing.

(The commercial is projected onto the back wall of the theater as Warren is watching it.)

COMMERCIAL (not PHILLIP’S voice) Warren Cooper has had the presidency for too long, and things have got to change. Before he took office, there were 25,000 polar bears in the wild, and do you know how many there are now? Only 20,000. That’s 5,000 dead polar bears sitting up in Alaska. That’s 5,000 less beautiful creatures on this planet, and all because Cooper OK’d the bill that allows dirty, carbon releasing pick-up trucks to drive on highways. Do you want this man as president again? I don’t think so. If he’s killed 5,000 polar bears in less than four years, how many PEOPLE will he kill in the next four? My name is Phillip Reese, and I approve this message.

(Warren stares at the computer in disbelief. Alex closes it and puts it back in his bag.)

ALEX (Chuckling.) I know, it’s bad. WARREN It doesn’t even make sense! Pick up trucks have nothing to

do with polar bears, and there was never even a bill like that! He’s lying! Are people going to believe this? ALEX I hope not, but the numbers aren’t working towards us. There are other videos on YouTube that are just that commercial, and most of them have over 100,000 hits. WARREN This country is unbelievable. ALEX Oh, and you should see the demographics! Half of the people watching aren’t even from this country! WHAT?

WARREN

ALEX Right now, other than the US, Canada has watched it the most, then all of Great Britain, then Mexico, France, Germany... WARREN Unbelievable. ALEX I know. It’s tragic. If this is where the human race is going, then I don’t know how much I want to be a part of it. WARREN Amen, Alex. Amen.

(Beat.) (Suddenly, CHLOE bursts in)

CHLOE MR. PRESIDENT! WARREN What, Chloe? CHLOE POLAR BEARS? REALLY? DID YOU REALLY HAVE TO KILL 5,000 POLAR BEARS? WARREN Chloe, if you believe that, you’re fired. CHLOE Excuse me? WARREN I said, if you’re stupid enough to believe that any of those facts are true, you don’t belong in this House. CHLOE Uhm... what are you talking about, sir? You signed an act that resulted in polar bears dying. WARREN I did no such thing. In fact, there hasn’t been an act about any type of car in the time I’ve been president. CHLOE Oh. Well, if you insist. (Beat) Why would someone lie about that kind of thing? ALEX (To Chloe) Well, technically, he’s not lying.

(To Warren) ALEX (cont’d.) At the beginning of your term, there were 25,000 polar bears. And now there are 20,000. But that’s been attributed to Russian poachers, not anything like pick up trucks. WARREN Yes, but who in their right mind would blame something like that on me? ALEX We know the answer to that, too. We called Reese’s campaign team, and instead of his campaign manager picking up, REESE DID! I guess he was having a brain storming session with his team, and the phone in the manager’s office rang, and Phillip beat him to it. We asked him about the commercial, and he had no idea what it was. HIS TEAM DID IT WITH OUT HIM! He had a commercial pre-recorded, and that’s where they got the approval at the end. Needless to say, he was furious, and I feel really bad for that manager. I have no idea what they were thinking. CHLOE Oh, so everything will be OK? ALEX Well, no. Even though we know the commercial is a fake, it’ still out there. Reese can make his team pull it from YouTube, but he can’t make the individual uploaders to remove their videos. Sure, we can offer them money, but, you know, once something’s out there, it’s out there. CHLOE You’re right. I hope that manager was fired. ALEX I don’t know if he was fired or not, but I do know that he’s not

ALEX (cont’d) ever going to be able to do anything without Reese’s express permission ever again. WARREN Well, I guess we’re just going to have to make a commercial of our own. I can trust you not to do anything stupid, right, Alex? ALEX Obviously. I’m not out to ruin you, Uncle Warren. WARREN I’m aware. Alex, you go back to your team and start coming up with ideas. We need something strong, something that can kick Reese out of the picture, at least for a little while. We need this to simmer down before we can do anything else. Chloe, you need to find whoever has uploaded this commercial onto YouTube, and send them a message. Offer them money, offer them a free trip to meet me, I don’t care. Just get it off as much of the Internet as you can cover. CHLOE You got it, Mr. President. (She exits.) WARREN Oh, and Alex, before you go, I need you to promise me something. ALEX Anything, Mr. President. WARREN I need you to promise me that you can make this commercial, that it’ll be amazing, but that you’ll be able to come up with better once the time comes.

ALEX Aye aye, Captain. WARREN Now get out of my office.

(Fade out) (End Scene.)

SCENE 2 (The setting is Warren’s office. WARREN, ALEX and CHLOE are sitting in the dark. They are looking at the back wall. ) (Alex closes his laptop and walks to the side wall, turns on the lights) Well?

ALEX

WARREN That was one of the best commercials I’ve ever seen. CHLOE And there were no polar bears! WARREN Of course there weren’t any polar bears. What are you thinking? CHLOE I was just meant.... Well, I loved the part where you called him “young and inexperienced.” That’ll make people think.... I think.... WARREN Uh huh. Not important. Alex, you did a fantastic job.

ALEX And I can do it again! WARREN I hope so, we’ll need some killer commercials when it comes time for them. CHLOE I’m sure you can do it, Alex! This one was fantastic! Nothing is going to make Phillip Reese look worse than this did! WARREN Nobody asked you. CHLOE Sorry. I was just saying... WARREN Whatever, Chloe. Go make me some coffee. CHLOE Yes sir, right away sir.

(Exit Chloe)

ALEX You really are mean to her. She’s just trying to please you. WARREN Yeah, whatever. She’s annoying. ALEX But she doesn’t mean to be. WARREN But she is. End of story.

But-

ALEX

WARREN Oh, not you too! I just-

ALEX

WARREN Look, you did a great job on this commercial. Put it online. Get it all over the internet. I want people seeing this tonight! ALEX Yes, Mr. President! WARREN Good. Now, go set up another appointment with Chloe, then I want you to go talk to your team and start brainstorming again. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re going to need some great ideas on your end if we want to win this election. Yes, sir!

ALEX

(Exit ALEX) (WARREN walks over to his desk and collapses in his chair. He starts rubbing his temples. He opens up a drawer in his desk and takes out a bottle of pills. He swallows two, and leans back in his chair)

WARREN (To himself) This had all better work out in the end...

(Fade out)

(End scene)

SCENE 3 (The setting is a pressroom. PHILLIP is sitting at a desk, there are reporters sitting in the audience. Reese is holding this press conference town-hall style. The reporters should raise their hands, and have some moderator guy point at them before they ask a main question. They can speak out with out being pointed at, though.) (Fade in) REPORTER Mr. Reese! What do you think of your opponent’s new commercial? PHILLIP I think it’s great, but I think mine was better. REPORTER 2 Really? Yours seemed a bit far fetched... PHILLIP I know, I know, I wasn’t being serious. Turns out my team and I had a misunderstanding, and they released the wrong commercial. REPORTER 3 Is that really what happened? PHILLIP No, not really, but I’m pleading the fifth. REPORTER 1 You are allowed to do that, you know.

PHILLIP You know, I did take a journalism class when I was in college. I passed that class with flying colors. Got my article published, too. (The reporters murmur in appreciation) Aw, I feel loved. REPORTER 4 You are! You do know that your commercials have a higher viewer rating than Coopers? PHILLIP I wasn’t aware. I guess you learn something new everyday. (He chuckles) Oh, I can see the headlines now... “Reese has no idea about anything about his opponent...” or even “Reese doesn’t even realize how many people have seen his commercial that was a total failure.” (Reporters chuckle) REPORTER 1 OK, OK, Phillip- can I call you Phillip? PHILLIP Sure, why not? REPORTER 1 Phillip, can you tell us honestly right now if you think you have a shot in this race? Well-

PHILLIP

REPORTER 1 No, let me finish. You’re only 35 years old. You have no experience. President Cooper has brought this country out

REPORTER 1 (cont’d) of a recession, and he’s had great success. We’re in a better place right now than where we were before Cooper stepped up. Do you think you have a chance? PHILLIP Can I speak now? REPORTER 1 Yes. I’m finished. PHILLIP OK. You’re completely right. I don’t have experience, and President Cooper does have much more than me. But there’s something about me that President doesn’t have. I like to think that I’m more personable. Have you ever noticed how much of a grouch President Cooper is? Don’t tell him I said this, but he’s not really one for being friendly. And if you’re not friendly, how can you possibly handle foreign affairs? I don’t think you can even effectively run a country if you’re not friendly. And I like to think I am. That’s something about me that makes me different than the other previous candidates, and it’s something that’ll set me apart if I do win the presidency. The rest of the world won’t know us as the grouchiest country anymore. They’ll remember us fondly, and want to do more business with us in the future. I will admit that President Cooper is doing an amazing job, I don’t think anyone can deny that, but I think that I’ll do just a little bit better. (Silence. Suddenly, the reporters start cheering and clapping) PHILLIP (cont’d.) All right, all right. This is all the time I have. Peace out!

(Exit PHILLIP off the side. He waves to the crowd. They continue to cheer)

(Fade out) (End scene)

SCENE 4 (The setting is a dark room. PHILLIP is sitting at a desk, his face illuminated from the light of the computer screen in front of him. He look at the screen, then jots something down, then looks back to his screen. There are bookcases and papers all around. The room looks like an office. Note that there is no printer in the room.) (Enter MOLLY) MOLLY What are you doing so late? Turn on the light! (She crosses to the wall, turns on light) PHILLIP Ugh, my eyes! MOLLY You’re going to hurt yourself, you know. PHILLIP No I’m not. I’ve got this light right here. (He gestures at the computer screen. Molly looks un impressed.) MOLLY Sure, sure. What are you working on? PHILLIP Oh, nothing...

MOLLY What kind of nothing? (She sits down next to Phillip.) PHILLIP Just election stuff. MOLLY That doesn’t look like election stuff. That looks like email. PHILLIP Yeah, these are just some old messages I found from Cooper to one of his friends or something. MOLLY Isn’t that illegal? It’s illegal to read other people’s snail mail... PHILLIP I guess it would be, if it wasn’t easily found on the internet. There’s this part right here about how Cooper’s going to hide something in his house, but I can’t find the first part of the message. He never says what he’s going to hide on the pages I have, so I have to find the first page of this email, so I can figure out what it is he’s hiding. MOLLY Why are you so obsessed with this? PHILLIP It’s not that I’m obsessed, it’s more that this could be some dirt worth digging up. MOLLY All right, whatever you say... Did you eat dinner? PHILLIP No, not yet.

MOLLY I’ll order Chinese. PHILLIP That’d be amazing. I have to go get something from the printer. I’ll be right back. MOLLY All right. I’ll call now. Do you want the usual? (She picks up the phone) PHILLIP Sure, why not? (Exit Phillip) MOLLY (Hangs the phone up, walks over to computer. She looks out the door to make sure Phillip is gone, sits down at desk, starts reading from computer) “Your cobra came in today. Keeping in my basement. Come soon, don’t want the cops finding it. Warren.” “Coming later today, can’t wait to meet my new pet! Paul.” “Hurry up, cops are down the street investigating stolen goods in neighbor’s house. Don’t want them searching mine for evidence. Warren.” “Be there in 10. Tons of traffic. Stupid Georgia highways. Paul.” (Molly types something on the computer. She waits a second, then throws her hands in the air in triumph.) Pet cobras are illegal in Georgia! I knew it! But why did Phillip lie? Doesn’t he trust me? I guess it doesn’t matter. Now, to let Cooper know we’ve figured out his little secret... (She presses some more buttons and clicks around on the computer.) There, sent. Victory is ours.

(Fade out) (End Scene)

SCENE 5 (The setting is Warren’s office. Warren sits at his desk with his head in his hands.) (Enter Alex) ALEX What’s the matter, Uncle Warren? WARREN Can I confide in you? ALEX Of course! May I sit? WARREN Please. You might have to. ALEX Oh no, what did you do? Did you kill 5,000 more polar bears? WARREN I’m not joking around about this, Alex. This is serious. ALEX Well then, why don’t you tell me? WARREN Let’s just say that last night I got a fax uncovering some things I did as a kid that I’m not proud of. ALEX Oh no. Do you want to tell me what?

WARREN But you can’t tell anyone. ALEX I promise. If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to. WARREN No, it’s fine. I have to tell someone. Well, back when I was your age, I had this friend who really wanted a pet cobra. We lived in Georgia, though, and pet cobras are illegal there. So what did I do? I called a smuggler and got one sent to me. It was supposed to be as a birthday present, but he found out. It was going to be the best present ever. It’s all right, though, because even though he knew, he was totally stoked when he got it. Anyway, I got this cobra, and was hiding it in my basement for a couple days. Eventually, my friend came to get it, but it turned out he wanted another one! I was the only one who knew where to get them, and I didn’t want to tell him, since I wanted to keep that part a secret, for the fun of the present and all. I ordered another one, but this time someone else found out. They wanted a cobra, too. Eventually, I became a baby cobra distributor. That’s pretty illegal in itself, and it’s something I’m not proud of, but I quit doing it and cut my ties with cobras completely. I had almost forgotten about it until last night, when I got a fax of the first emails I sent my friend when his cobra got to my house. If anyone finds out about this, anyone at all, I’ll be ruined. I think I have to pull out of the race. ALEX Now don’t make any rash decisions, Uncle Warren... WARREN No one can find out about this! I feel like it’s some sort of black mail trying to get me to pull out!

ALEX I’m sure that’s not it. That doesn’t make much sense. Who would do that? Unless.... WARREN No, it couldn’t have been Reese. Don’t tell him I said this, but I think he’s a pretty good guy. He wouldn’t do something like this, would he? ALEX You never know... WARREN Well, I guess we just have to hope it wasn’t him. A blackmailing cheat doesn’t deserve to be the President of the United States. But neither does an illegal animal distributor. ALEX Uncle Warren! Don’t say that! WARREN I don’t know what else to say, Alex. I don’t think I can continue on in the race! ALEX Yes you can. I promise, no one will find out. If I have to take this into my own hands, I will. WARREN No, you don’t have to. Do you really think no one will find out? If they do, my whole reputation will be ruined! Not only will I lose the presidency, I’ll never be able to show my face in public again! ALEX My gosh! Calm down! You’re acting like some teenage girl who just got rejected by the quarter back or something!

WARREN Hey. That’s not funny. ALEX Actually, it kind of was. WARREN This is serious, Alex. Can’t you be serious for one second? ALEX Sure, whatever. I think you’re being too dramatic. There’s no reason for you to pull out of the race, Uncle Warren. WARREN Are you sure? ALEX Look. If you’re really this paranoid, you’ll go to dinner with Reese. You’ll have a nice, man to man conversation. If he drops any hints, he’ll know something. If he doesn’t, then you don’t need to worry about this hitting the press because it was just some nobody who found it. Right now the press is only going to want completely legit sources, and they’re not going to trust some average Joe who sends them some transcripts. They won’t believe it unless it comes from Reese. So you just need to figure out if it was Reese or not who did this. WARREN That’s a great idea! (he leans over and presses a button on the phone on his desk) Chloe? Can you come in here?

(Enter Chloe)

CHLOE Yes, Mr. President? WARREN Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m going to need you to set up a meeting with Reese for me. Can you find his personal cell number? CHLOE I can try my hardest. WARREN Well your hardest has to be your best. This needs to happen. I need you to set up a dinner appointment with him for as soon as possible. I need you to find his personal cell so no one else knows. It needs to be just us who are at this dinner. No paparazzi, no reporters, no one. Got it? Got it.

CHLOE

WARREN Now get to it. Yes sir!

CHLOE

(Exit Chloe. Alex and Warren exchange hopeful glances.) (Fade out) (End Scene)

SCENE 6 (The setting is a small restaurant. Phillip and Warren sit at a table alone. There is light and fun jazzy piano music in the background. It is quiet, except for their conversation.)

WARREN It’s so nice to finally meet you in person. PHILLIP Well, this wasn’t the first time, but I agree. We’ve never had a real conversation before. WARREN I figured it would be appropriate to talk to the man who could be taking my job. PHILLIP And I thought I’d might as well come and hope some of your talent rubs off on me. WARREN Oh, sure. Lots of talent. You’re just trying to butter me up. PHILLIP No, honest! I voted for you in the last election, you know. WARREN Well, I’m flattered, really, but flattery is not the point of this dinner. This is about getting to know our opponent, you getting to know the restaurants in DC, and us to enjoy some good food and amazing wine. PHILLIP Amen to that. WARREN Now. How is your campaign going?

PHILLIP My girlfriend’s been a big help, but I’m not sure if she’ll lead me to do something I’ll regret later. WARREN You don’t trust her? PHILLIP It’s not that I don’t trust her, but she’s wanted to be married to the president since she was a little kid, and she’s determined for that to happen. WARREN She sounds like a keeper. PHILLIP Please. She’s nosy, sensitive, and she’s been threatening to break up with me for forever. But we love each other, despite our flaws. WARREN That’s good. PHILLIP How’s Marge? WARREN My wife? She’s doing fine. She’s getting old. She’ll turn sixty in a few months, and then I think I might trade her in for three twenty year olds. PHILLIP (Laughs) You don’t mean that. WARREN No, you’re right, I don’t.

PHILLIP And your daughters? WARREN Successful. Andrea’s doing well as a doctor, and Phoebe’s trying to land a job at NASA. PHILLIP Wow. That schooling must have been expensive. WARREN Tell me about it. I almost couldn’t pay the mortgage for the last three and a half years. PHILLIP But you don’t have to pay a mortgage. WARREN Exactly. (They chuckle.) So how are you doing? I heard your mother was diagnosed with.... help me out here. PHILLIP Melanoma. She’s in remission, but still on meds. WARREN Remission is always good. PHILLIP Tell me about it. We were really worried, and then we learned the 10 year survival rate was around 80%, so we calmed down a bit. Plus, the doctors said it was never even that bad. WARREN That’s good.

(Awkward silence.) (Phillip coughs.)

PHILLIP So... what’s your favorite animal? WARREN I love bears. And yours? Cobras.

PHILLIP

(Piano music comes to an abrupt halt)

WARREN I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you right. What did you say? PHILLIP I said cockatiels. WARREN Oh, that makes more sense than “clothes lines.”

(Music comes back on)

PHILLIP Favorite drink? Mine is Coca-Cobra. What?

WARREN

PHILLIP Coca-cola. Are you OK? You can’t hear anything. WARREN Yeah, I’m fine. Just feeling a little tired. My favorite drink is

coffee. All sorts of coffee. PHILLIP Oh, from Crazy Mocobra? WHERE?

WARREN

PHILLIP Crazy Mocha. WARREN I’m so sorry. This piano music is so loud. Yeah, Crazy Mocha is good. PHILLIP OK. I didn’t know that. I’ve never been there. My favorite food is cobra casserole. WARREN I’m so sorry. What? PHILLIP Okra casserole. WARREN This is getting ridiculous. I’m sorry?

PHILLIP

WARREN I can’t sit here and pretend like I don’t know anything. About....

PHILLIP

WARREN COBRAS. TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT COBRAS. PHILLIP Gosh. You don’t need to freak out... WARREN APPARENTLY, I DO. TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU KNOW. PHILLIP I have no idea what you’re talking WARREN NO WORDS. JUST COBRAS. PHILLIP OK, OK. They’re poisonous snakes. They live in jungles. They’re illegal to have as pets in the United States. WARREN Is that all? PHILLIP WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT TO KNOW?! WARREN WHAT ELSE CAN YOU TELL ME? PHILLIP DO YOU WANT ME TO GOOGLE IT? (He pulls out his iPhone and waves it in Warren’s face) WARREN JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW.

PHILLIP THAT. IS. ALL. I. KNOW. You know what? I’m getting out of here. WARREN What are you talking about? PHILLIP I’m leaving. This was a nice little dinner and all, but you’re really starting to freak me out. WARREN No, don’t go! We were just getting somewhere! PHILLIP GETTING SOMEWHERE? You’re the only going somewhere, and you’re going crazy! WARREN Pardon me, I’m just trying to figure out why you’re blackmailing me! PHILLIP Blackmailing you? Who said anything about black mail? WARREN Well, pardon me, but when I get faxes of messages I sent someone 30 years ago, and those messages talk about illegal things, I think someone is trying to black mail me. PHILLIP (sudden look of realization) Molly... WARREN Who’s Molly?

PHILLIP My girlfriend. She... oh, she’s the worst. What?

WARREN

PHILLIP It’s a long story. And it doesn’t really matter. WARREN Of course it does. I’m being black mailed. It matters! PHILLIP All right, you’d better sit down. WARREN Fine. Look. I’m sitting. Please explain what’s going on. PHILLIP OK. First of all, you’re not being blackmailed. At least not by me. Anyway. You know about my girlfriend. She’s crazy about me being president. A few weeks ago, I found those messages online. I wasn’t going to do anything with them, I promise. They were just good to have in case anything ever - never mind. It doesn’t really matter. Anyhow, I left my computer for a second, and she must have sent those messages to you. WARREN How do I know you’re not lying? PHILLIP You just have to trust me. WARREN And why should I?

PHILLIP Because, no matter what you think, I’m not out to ruin you.

(Fade out) (End scene)

SCENE 7 (The setting is not important. What matters is that the audience is suddenly not the audience of a play any longer, but the audience of the big party thing that happens when we’re waiting to find out who has become president. The actors who played the reporters are still in the audience, but now they play random citizens. The candidates are not on stage, but they should be dressed in suits and ties of contrasting colors; Warren is purple, Phillip is orange. There is a map projected on the back wall, and as the candidates win states, the states on the map light up the color of their ties. This scene not only is a scene (of sorts) but it also plays as the applause at the end of the play. There is a table center stage with glasses on it. The glasses can be filled with apple juice, so they look like champagne, but the actors don’t get tipsy as the scene progresses. This scene is loose. It’s a party. They can do what they want.) (Enter Phillip) (He crosses to the center stage and takes a bow. The actors in the audience should lead the rest of the audience in applauding.) (Phillip sits down at the table. Enter Warren and Alex. They bow and go to the table.) (Enter Chloe and Molly. They do the same thing. Molly should bow like normal, but Chloe should curtsy, be cause she’s that kind of girl. They sit at the table.) PHILLIP (Picks up his glass, holds it for a toast) May the best candidate win!

(Everyone else cheers, they all take a drink from their glass)

CHLOE Look, Mr. President, you’re in the lead! WARREN That’s nice, Chloe. ALEX It’s all right, Chloe. (He pours her some more apple juice) MOLLY Look, Phillip, if you win Michigan, you’ll be in the lead! Look, look, look... oh. Darn. Cooper won Michigan. If you win Montana you’ll be tied with him! (She’s basically just giving a running commentary of what’s going on. Phillip is waving her away, though, because he doesn’t really care, and she’s annoying.) ALEX (to Warren) Look, you got Hawaii! I guess they’ll be really accepting when you go to move there in five years. (Warren chuckles) (They party on for, like, 30 more seconds as the map fills up. Eventually it does, but it’s so evenly tied that we can’t automatically tell who won.) (Enter Ensemble. They are wearing all purple. They are cheering, and maybe they even pick Warren up. Warren has won the election. The actors in the audi ence and the audience audience cheer.) (Phillip stands up, pats Warren on the back, and exits. Molly does the same, follows Phillip out.) (Fade out) (End scene)

THE END

Pulled to Little Sparks --Muriel Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Alessandro

You were nine at the time, Nine and left alone. Sitting on the crumbling concrete steps, Your eyes flitted back and forth following the cracks in the brick wallFrom the corner of your gaze you spotted something small and black scuffed by the dirt and trampling feet. Dusting off those compact squares of rough cardboard, you pulled them apart to find twenty little matches, Lined up like uniformed soldiers. Your mind flashed back to your motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wordsNever play with matchesNever play with fire. Just a try, you thought to yourselfJust a try. So on the cracked concrete you struck a single match. You watched, mesmerized, by the colors` White linked to Yellow to Orange to Red to Black, to that charred, remaining sliver of wood. It happened slowly, so slowly in your mindonly seconds to anyone else. The exhilaration as the flames burned away

the pounding in your heart; As you watched them near your fingertipsBut you didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t let go.

Ten Ways of Looking at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford --Clara Dregalla

i There is no denying the almighty glory of God. It was His hand that shaped this stone, the towers and spires. ii The baptismal font is filled with blood, and no matter how grand you build your slaughterhouses, your monuments to violence and hate, no prayer can wash away the carnage. iii One of Wolsey’s projects, a child to be nurtured and supervised. Abandoned during a messy divorce, but Henry built the college after all. vi The sunlight is a gift, sight it a gift and color is a gift, and sand is a gift, and the miracle of transformation, from sand to heavenly light, that is a gift. v Frithuswith, Oxford’s patron saint, who refused marriage and summoned a well with prayer, rest here and protect here, your replacement womb. vi Voices rise like angels ascending, the melodies and harmonies dispersing, filling this vast cavern, prodding the far corners and exploring the crypt. vii John Locke’s mind is racing too fast to even imagine sleep,

and Henry Liddell is staying up to read and worry, but Thomas Strong hardly stirs, comfortable in splendor and dust. viii The organâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s multiple throats invite all to wonder and to fear and let no churchgoer forget the sound of Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mercy and rage. The organist is neither amazed nor afraid.

PA Railroad Calendar Delivered 63 Years Late --Keely Durkin

There was a war A few years back, But I don’t keep track of that. Does it really matter whose side we are all on, Who we are fighting for, And more importantly, Who we are fighting against, If there is nothing to schedule And plan, If nothing is foretold And known To be so And to be not so. And what time it is all going to go down At, and at what precise moment You are planning on dying that day. If you don’t know, then why does it matter, Why do you care, Why do you write letters To the ones you left behind And not plans and invitations And dreams for me – Wishful thinking – Tell me what is going to happen tomorrow Because if you don’t know you will die Tomorrow, Today, In eighty-two years, Why live your live as if you are – Why not live your life As if you had all the time in the world And all the time to get there?

Scam

--Sam Eppinger Greased up hair slicked down, crude black oil dripping off a ten hundred dollar smile. He regurgitates enticing promises. But I remember him, when he was stalking my ancestors And fleeing grounds ruled by Greeks. Then again lounging inside of France, and singing tales of a land before. I saw him outside my carriage window, camouflaged in ditches of horse dung back in London. He didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t look well, having spent most of his time entertaining tramps, shams, and other hoaxes. His trench coat, torn and his hair, in a ragged mop on a cold scared face. He lunged, delighting in my surprise of him being so near. I could smell his gutter breath and his eyes shifted about my carriage, violating every cranny. Then we were gone, and he, with my wallet, whisked away in a humid cloud of clay and moonlight dust. That had seem to be the last of him, I hoped. You see, he has a knack for getting me into trouble then splitting with my money and food and destiny and fate. But fate he couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t take and we were set for collision.

He sits across from me now, on the 107th floor somewhere on Wall Street. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cleaned up. His breath smells of Listerine and brandy. His face is wrinkled, old, and clean, like selected from a doctorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shelf. And he wears a suit. He seems to have fooled every citizen, but not I. Because I know those young shifty eyes, from way back when they were hiding in dung.

10 Ways of Looking at a Viking --Dylan Fletcher

I. Did Columbus ever learn about Vikings? Did he study their vessels? Did he feel the Nordic air whip about their wooden faces? Did he imagine their triumph As they discovered America, all those years before him? II. Europe folds and refolds Expands, erases Redraws In time with every Viking siege. III. Bitter men, Bitter ship. Then once again, The gold they grip. Elated men, Elated ship Now and then, They love the trip. IV. Dear America, The soldiers who trudge Through bloody sand And corpse-filled swamps Would look better With horns on their helmets. V. A million bristles Of billowing beard.

Santa sighs as he checks The wish list. Not one of his Nordic competitors Asked for a razor. VI. Their hands grip axes Their eagle eyes peer into England. Fog scurries from them. The beach greets them. Blood awaits them. VII. A rabbit clan is short one skin. An oxen herd is short two horns. The mighty thief lets out a grin. The Viking spends the winter warm. VIII. I sit at the edge of it all, A simple leaf on all of Ygardsil. And I wish I could fill this void, With the jewels of English nobles. IX. Dear America, The soldiers who fall Onto the twitching bodies Of the brothers they swore to protect Would fare better With crossbows and broadswords. X. Viking + gold = steal. Viking + woman = abuse. Viking + challenger = fight. Viking + Roman = the end of the story.

11 Ways of Looking at a Light-bulb --Hannah Geisler

I. The luster of the bulb against the dusky night outlines the shadow of a single fly on the wall. II. Devouring the darkness: Every particle, every shadow. Digesting black, regurgitating white. III. Always knew you as the jealous type, trying to outshine the other. But resorting to self- destruction— Now I’ve got glass in my eye. IV. I’m hearing light. What an awful noisy light-bulb, such an irritating hum. You’d think it was rise of the mosquitoes. V. Corkscrewing— metal on metal. Friction. Go home. I want to swim now. VI. That shiny chrome heel sure accentuates your figure.

Talk about illuminating your curves. VII. You are shaped like a pear— but pears are of ancient times. Probably feeling left out just like my old PC.

VIII. “She’s not the brightest bulb on the lamp,” says my father. I’m sorry he insults your existence. IX. Veins are protruding, tension is tight. Mustiness permeates the enclosed room: A flickering bulb. X. Lines gnarled, shapes twisted, vacant spaces make black ribs. XI. Word problems, no I am anorexic— Dammit— dyslexic. The light-bulb’s a little rusty.

Prestige

--Tyra Jamison Dazzling You are, darling! You hold a magician’s touch. Power. Control. High status Carved in the circles under your eyes, The thoughtless curve of your lip, A deformed smirk. There’s red glamour stained on your cheeks, and letters sprawled ‘cross the floor, and the watery remains of a heavy drink sticking to an elaborate glass. Old Hollywood sits proudly on the throne of disintegrated fists. Perfume pervades the air. You are success. How does it feel to be desired by gray suits with silver tongues and spoiled hearts? You, beauty who lay at the threshold of a colourful world, The gatekeeper to fame, fortune, and synthetic divinity. Little do they know That you were an illusion— Stuffing too much glitter in their eyes. Now let’s see why some doors should remain closed.

Happy-Go-Lucky --Chris Kraemer

I enjoy being myself. I hum happy tunes to myself. I walk with a slight spring. I think that the people around me are less happy. Their slow shamble. The gray coats and dark hats. Sullen eyes stare at me from wrinkled eye sockets. I know they stare at me. But I try not to feel their despair. I try to live a happy life. I try to fill my life with happy memories and good experiences. I remember the sunlight beating down. The brilliant ocean spanning to the horizon. I watch as children look at my gigantic form. I watch as adults cringe away from me. The children’s eyes are filled with fear. The adults give me looks filled with venom. I feel shunned because they are frightened of me. But I’m not what they see. I help people whenever I can. I tell the truth when I am called to do so. But they don’t know that. They have no idea who I am. They will never know that I am not what they see. At least they probably won’t. I find that even when I am gazed upon with fear I am still humming a happy tune. I still find myself walking with a spring in my step. Even thought the world may shun me for being who I am I still find myself happy. I will sometimes find myself feeling down in the dumps because of their fright. I overwhelm this with happiness. I make sure that I can always stay happy.

When the dark figure of despair comes knocking on my door I send it away to far distant lands. When people ask me why I am so tall I answer with a broad smile, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Why are you so short?â&#x20AC;?

Offerings

--Curran O’Neill Dead flies lined up On the windowpanes as offerings. The chandelier casts rainbows on The staircase as my sister and I Catch these winged lights. Upstairs Mother cuts my hair short, Collects the strands and ties a bow. My fingers are so cold. Daddy kisses them one by one like A prayer. A mattress’s springs flail Like metal intestines and Mother’s old Clothes are left like mouse carcasses—untouched. Tracing her pinky over the sole Clare giggles. In our grown up shoes we flaunt Holding our chins up high. With a twist of her heel and the bite of the stairs, She is sent down headfirst. The room lets out a sigh. Our fire licks. My dress of flowers and pink Scratches at my chaffing legs. Mommy drinks coffee, pants Soggy from melting snow.

Purple Tents and No Night Lights --Eden Petri

We sat on the top bunk of our bed and you taught me how to count to ten in Japanese And when summer came we walked through the alley to that small house with the raspberry bush. We sat on the hot gravel, our feet burning like ants under a magnifying glass, And we ate all of the berries. We wobbled back home with tired eyes, And denied the lunch mom had made for us. You climbed unto the top bunk, and I the bottom, and we slept the rest of that day. Sometimes I’d sleep in a tent in the middle of our floor because I didn’t want to share a room with you anymore Yet when all the night lights had been turned off, and our room resembled a buried casket. You’d climb into the tent with me, and we’d pretend we were camping Closing our eyes when we heard mom’s footsteps, resembling those of an angry bear. And sometimes when you were in your bunk, and I was on the floor, You’d ask me if I was okay And I’d whisper no So you’d climb down and slither into my purple tent And place your tiny hand on my heart. We were convinced I was dying, my heart beating faster than normal. So you ran into mom’s room, and you told her I was sick, and I needed to go to the hospital. But we were young.

And on our birthday, you gave me a beaded bracelet that said “best” Then pulled up your shirt sleeve and showed me the one around your wrist that said “Friends.” And if I asked you today where your bracelet was, I don’t think you’d remember. But that’s okay, because I barely remember myself.

Join with Me

--Jacob Richards As I’m writing this today, you might be reading it tomorrow, or the morrow after tomorrow. So congratulations for living in a future world that my eyes have not grasped, in air I have not tasted. And I suspect that you may know more than I know, but you need to know how to break the rules a little bit, to jaywalk from place to place. And by now much of your creativity has been silenced by growing hours of schooling, But I know that in heart, you are a good person, and I urge you to join with me, over time, and see things how I see things, without suspicions. I stare up at the sky with all the elegance of a drunken vagabond, not caring which way I turn, as long as I’m somewhere. The world before me is too planned out, scientists striving to understand how every crevice and corner were placed on the earth, without thinking that maybe its not “how” but “why”. And if every how was replaced with a why, we’d know so much more about ourselves today. Come with me, dance along the twisted riverbanks upwind from the cold factories, away from the smog. Come with me, wish upon the morning star, and marvel at the power it recharges you with. Come with me, tiptoe through the branches of the pine trees to find the newly hatched autumn bird. Come with me, to the top of the clouds, and let’s jump together, and see how much bigger the world is from

the top. We have to make it to the top just to find how small we are. Lets go together like silky splashes of ink and rewrite our lives. Come with me, and see how it feels to throw away the stencil, to live life freely.

Just Like Best Friends --Shayla Salamacha

Characters Jonathan- fourteen years old, he is best friends with Gavynn Gavynn- fourteen years old, likes to joke around and full of energy Setting: It is Jonathan’s room. There is a bed stage right and a rack of dark colored clothes center stage. Next to the rack of clothes, on the left, there is a small metal trashcan. There is one lightly colored article of clothing on the rack, which is a straight jacket.

(Lights up. Jonathan and Gavynn enter stage left.)

JONATHAN We can hang out in here until my Dad gets off the TV. (Jonathan sits on his bed while Gavynn walks around and looks at everything.) GAVYNN Wow, your room is clean! I can see the floor! JONATHAN My dad said I couldn’t go on Xbox until I cleaned it. GAVYNN Xbox is something always worth cleaning for. JONATHAN We would be able to play, but my Dad is watching a movie on Netflix. GAVYNN It’s okay, we can- look through your clothes!

(Gavynn starts sorting through the clothes on the rack as Jonathan stares at him confused as he gets off the bed.) JONATHAN

Why?

GAVYNN What else is there to do? You have nothing in your room. (In a girly voice.) We can talk about fashion! (Back to normal voice.) Or we can discuss all the stains you missed on the floor. (Jonathan looks down at the floor and looks then sits back down on the bed as Gavynn continues looking through the rack of clothes.) GAVYNN What’s up with all the black shirts? There is only one thing in here that isn’t black or grey.

(Gavynn pulls out the white straight jacket.)

What- is this? JONATHAN (Gets off the bed.) Um… well it’s a straight jacket. GAVYNN Why would there ever be a straight jacket in your room? Where did you get it? JONATHAN Well…you know about my brother David. When he was taken to the mental hospital.

GAVYNN Dude, yeah but why- why do you have it? JONATHAN Because I asked to have it! GAVYNN Okay, okay. I’m not trying to be mean. Like, it’s cool, really cool. JONATHAN Yeah I guess, for someone who’s never seenGAVYNN

(Interrupts.) Can I put it on? I mean, like, if it’s okay. JONATHAN As long as you don’t do anything to it. David wore it out already; something might break on it. GAVYNN I will treat it as a feather of an Eagle. What?

(Jonathan stares at him awkwardly.) JONATHAN

I will treat it gently.

GAVYNN

JONATHAN Okay, here give it to me. I will undo the buckles. (Gavynn takes the straight jacket off the hanger and gives the jacket to Jonathan, then hangs the hanger

back up on the rack. Jonathan lays the jacket on the bed as he unbuckles the buckles. ) JONATHAN I’m going to help you put it on. I just want to make sure nothing happens. (Jonathan helps Gavynn put the straight jacket on.) GAVYNN This is so cool! I feel so… restricted! (They finish putting it on. Gavynn begins to walk around and act crazy. Jonathan stands and watches concerned.) JONATHAN That’s not funny, my brother actually had a problem. GAVYNN I know. Sorry, I’m just trying to get a feel for it. JONATHAN Okay, well are you ready to take it off? My dad might be done with the TV by now. GAVYNN I guess, Xbox is better than anything. Why did you keep this and not anything else of David’s. Maybe something happier. JONATHAN Well, he stayed in Tennessee when we moved here so all of his stuff was still there. (Jonathan walks over to Gavynn and tries to get the straight jacket off, but is struggling.)

The mental hospital only sent us this, we didn’t get anything else of his. I told my Dad that I wanted it in my room. Why won’t this come off? Here, let go, I’ll try.

GAVYNN

(Gavynn begins to jump and run around and shake his body.) I forgot I don’t have arms in this! JONATHAN Go and sit on my bed! I’ll try again! (Gavynn sits down on the bed and Jonathan remains standing while trying to get the buckles undone. All but one buckle comes undone. Gavynn’s hands are now free. One chest buckle is still left closed.) JONATHAN I shouldn’t have let you put this on! GAVYNN Well nothing has broke! It’s all still okay. JONATHAN I don’t think this is going to come off with just hands. We need to like cut it off or something. GAVYNN No! No! Let’s not get carried away. My hands are out now so I’ll try. (Jonathan and Gavynn both start pulling at the buckle. After eight seconds you hear a loud crack and Jona-

than hits the floor with a piece of the buckle in his hand.) Oh crap! I’m so sorry Jonathan! I didn’t mean to do that! I should have just let you try! (Jonathan stares down at the piece of metal in his hand as he is sitting on the floor.) JONATHAN I know you didn’t Gavynn. So, it’s okay. Are you sure? Yeah. I’m positive. Now what? Let’s go and play Xbox.

GAVYNN JONATHAN GAVYNN JONATHAN

(Gavynn exits stage left. Jonathan puts the jacket back on the hanger. He holds it up and looks at it then puts it on the rack. Then he throws away the piece of buckle then exits stage left. Lights down. End scene.)

Cockeyed (A Persona) --Emily Schwager

When I was eight I lost my right eye. Kids used to stare at me with surprise or disgust, Look at her! They would point and pull at their friend’s sleeve. Yes, look at me. Maybe they thought that since I only had one eye I couldn’t cry, maybe they thought I lost my ears, too. And they teased me, because I am different— Different people aren’t real people so it’s okay to laugh at them. I think.

At first, I wore an eye patch and all the boys asked me if they could borrow it for Halloween but after a few days I think they knew what was under and stopped asking. And the girls used to stare at me and ask if I felt lopsided. They would walk around with their head tilted to the left and their right eye squinted, giggling at how silly they looked. And everyone was always staring. I could see them, even though they thought I couldn’t see anything. My mom would tell me to accept who I was. But she had two eyes and I only had one, and she would never understand. Back then, I used to pretend that I was pretty, and I lived in a town where everyone had one eye and I was friends with everybody. And I was happy.

I was only eight, remember. The little eight-year-old girl who lost her right eye.

Losing My Breath --Lanie Wester

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like to imagine my breath staying with me, collecting itself in my soul, lingering within the pit of my lungs. Every breath I take would stay with me, not leave and mingle with others in the air. No, it would be mine to keep. My heart dripped blue icicles once and was warmed by a knitted glove. The kind that absorb, the kind that are stitched. I asked you to walk with me, go out in the blizzard. You held my hand, protecting it from the blistering air that would turn it a bluish shade. And I was thankful. I inhaled the frigid air, and frost chiseled at my lungs. And as I exhaled, I felt a heaviness on my chest, almost like my lungs were a rooftop caving in. My eyes were forward, watching. My breath left me then, with the tilt of its hat and with a willing smile. It floated up into the sky but not before looking back at me with a nod. It looked a bit like a fire, but only for a few seconds. Like a soft campfireâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s smoke dissipating into the night, trying to light up the sky.

Silly Silly Teacher --Iesha Olatunjii

Warm weather makes them crazy as the end of the school year is two weeks away Field trips are their worst nightmares Leaving the building, already late with a class of children that hate you must make you happy, That stupid smile youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re always wearing makes them hate you even more Rushing out the class with your students huddled behind you into a congested staircase, already late to leave Finally you reach your destination mixed with people from all over the city outside the convention center with a class of idiots who donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t listen you begin to discipline them as you fail. Slowly you trip and down goes Sheila, in the middle of the street. You fall and no one worries anything about you as they all keep walking right over you laughing Right in your face. You just lay there alone and embarrassed, until your hero soon comes into the picture grabs your hand helps you up catch your breathe and your class is gone. Silly silly teacher

When will you learn?