S T .
L O U I S
A R T S
Y O U T H
J O U R N A L
THE FIRST ISSUE ISSUE AUGUST
I
2020
TABLE OF CONTENTS Year 2 ...................................................................................... 02 Off the Edge ............................................................................ 02 my fear of death ten years later ............................................... 04 george washington rewritten ................................................... 07 Modern Parody of Pride & Prejudice ........................................ 08 Colorful Puerto Rico ................................................................. 10 Puzzling .................................................................................... 11 Left Behind ............................................................................... 12 The Peach Walk ........................................................................ 14 Take Me Home .......................................................................... 15 My First Experience With Race ................................................. 16 Sunset ..................................................................................... 17 DREAMS I WANT OR NEED OR BOTH ........................................ 18
ABOUT STLYAC
The St. Louis Youth Arts Journal is a student-led publication from the St. Louis
Youth Arts Coalition (STLYAC), a platform for teen artists and writers to learn, grow, and connect. Through STLYAC, the STL Youth Arts Journal hopes to create a space for community artists and writers to publish and showcase their work in an inclusive and welcoming environment for all.
The STL Youth Arts Journal publishes main issues twice a year (a spring and fall
edition), with smaller mini-issues every so often. Email stlouisyac@gmail.com with any questions, comments, or concerns about this issue of the St. Louis Arts Journal.
ABOUT THIS ISSUE
This first publication of the St. Louis Youth Arts Journal is a mini-issue and the
theme is, appropriately, “The First Issue.” While future mini-issues will have themes such as mental health awareness, a Black History Month issue in February, Pride Month in June, photography-only, poetry-only etc., we decided to keep the first issue simple (color/design-wise and theme-wise) and focus on the artists and writers.
Our spring issue will showcase the variety and diversity of content you’ll find
here, but on a larger scale. Before you start reading, though, thank you for taking the time to check out the St. Louis Youth Arts Journal (and STLYAC!) We hope you enjoy these pieces as much as we did. If you have any questions for this issue or the next, please email at stlouisyac@gmail.com. Feel free to email us with comments or feedback—we are always looking to improve and expand!
Thank you!
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Year 2 SHREEYA RAVINDRANATH LADUE HORTON WATKINS HIGH SCHOOL
Off the Edge ANONYMOUS LADUE HORTON WATKINS HIGH SCHOOL The closet. For most, this word doesn’t mean much. It’s a place for people to shove all their junk so they can pretend their room is clean. And store clothes sometimes. However, for the LGBTQ+ community, this word takes on a whole new meaning. It can be a place of fear and anxiety, a place of self denial.
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A place where you hide your true self from the world because it is easier than being different. I am in the closet, but am slowly starting to make my way out. I am a first generation American and a bisexual high schooler (I think. The label itself is a work in progress.) I have come out to most of my close friends, but not all of them yet. I am eternally grateful for my friends’ unwavering support. However, when it comes to family, I am stuck in the darkest possible corner of the closet. I don’t know if they will accept me—their traditional Eastern culture certainly doesn’t. I feel like with every person I come out to, I take one small step out of the closet. But up ahead is a cliff. If I tell one wrong person, if I take one wrong step, I will fall off the cliff, and my life will never be the same again. In eighth grade, one of my close friends strongly recommended I watch The 100, a post-apocalyptic TV show about prisoners from space being sent back to the ground after radiation destroyed the planet. I had not come out to this friend yet, I only recently did, but they have no idea how much this show impacted me at the time. This show had two female characters from warring groups named Clarke and Lexa, who, despite being on opposite sides initially, eventually fell in love. Even if it was only television, watching their beautiful passionate relationship gave me hope. Despite their differences, they taught each other how to be vulnerable and patient, how to love. They taught each other that maybe life was about more than just surviving. That concept, life being more than about just surviving, changed my outlook on my sexuality. Before, I wanted to suppress and ignore it, because it would be easier to just grow up, become a doctor, and make my parents happy by marrying a man of their choosing. But that life would just be surviving. I want to live, and I can’t truly do that unless I embrace all parts of myself. Watching beautifully depicted LGBTQ+ relationships like Clarke and Lexa on screen made me realize that the kind of acceptance and trust they have is what I want in my life someday. Maybe I will reach that point eventually, but for now, I remain in the closet, dreading the day I might fall over the edge.
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my fear of death ten years later BELLA AGARWAL DESERT MOUNTAIN HIGH SCHOOL age 5, child. afraid of the dark, afraid of what creatures lurk in the damp air. in the midst of the night, hurricane spills in through cracked windows, rain clouds are ebony skid marks on the sky. beady eyes narrow in on me, i become a silvery fish swimming in ink, reckless pawn on the chess board. even the marrow in my bones can see Death in this air, She is made of embers and sunken cheeks, a hollow face but ever-hungry stomach. Her scythe guts me, cherry pits spill from my gaping wound, my fish skeleton on full display, an ashy willow tree with bones for branches, gnarled and twisted. i am all puckered lips and gills, my scales become scattered on the floor, fishhook falling out of my mouth, i was naive enough to take the bait and enter the darkness. i am dead-alive like i was in my mother’s womb, it brings back memories i do not have. i see Her face, Death with tight skin and pearly teeth, Her metal corset and swirling skirts ablaze. with a blow She sends me back to where i came from and i cower underneath my mattress, i become the monster under my bed.
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age 15, teenager. afraid of the gun, afraid of the barrel and the trigger and the body. i see it every night in my dreams. i sit in AP Biology, facts about the Porifera phylum cascade from my teacher’s lips. creatures with no mouths, empty shelless sponges sucking in food through pores, never talking, never moving. the ink from my pen begins to bleed into the next page, then the next and the next and my hands refuse to keep writing. his mouth is now full of words about the phylum Chordata, vertebrates with tails and slits and strands of nerves. fish, he tells us. an example of the animals in the phylum is fish. then the boy with the gun bursts through the door and we all take on the form of fish, we are all tangled nerves and puckered lips. i stare Death in the face again, She is in the form of the assault rifle in the boy’s hands, Her fingers interlaced with his, waiting on the trigger. Death is dancing with him, She is waltzing with all of us. Death has become machine, Her plump belly swelling with each life she plucks, leaving behind bodies riddled with holes. a bullet through the girl in front of me, the girl who was saturated with life just seconds before. her bones disintegrate and her head flops onto my desk. i am never the first to die. two bullets in my neck like gills. this classroom is a pomegranate, rosy and ripe for the taking. i can see him shooting the fruit until it splits cleanly into two halves, he rolls each seed in his calloused fingertips before shoving it into his mouth,
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the meat wets his throat and he spits our skeletons back onto the floor, the loose thread on his jeans red with juice. another bullet cuts through my play-dough head and emerges from the other side. i exit this world too young, my mother’s umbilical cord still wrapped around my neck, bruising my soft skin as i become just another tombstone in a cemetary of innocents. our deaths speak volumes but no one ever listens to the screams of dead children. we become the Porifera, no mouths, no movement. the living scream too, the amount of their lips multiply exponentially with every attack by Death, but nothing ever changes, the law never changes. the bodies keep coming and coming and the chants get louder and louder until the night finally ends, only for the nightmare to return as soon as the sun sets once more. every time the one holding the gun mutates into someone else, different genders, races, hands, eyes, noses, lips, tongues. the people change but the gun always stays the same.
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george washington rewritten LIV ACREE JOHN BURROUGHS SCHOOL
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Modern Parody of Pride & Prejudice ANDY ZHANG JOHN BURROUGHS SCHOOL Written for my 10th grade English class at John Burroughs, these diary entries sought to convey the life of the eccentric Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice as a teenager in the modern world. She begins her journey at NICDS, a parody of MICDS due to their natural rivalry with Burroughs. Aug 16 The perfect way to start the tenth-grade year as a new transfer student isn’t to be called ugly by the universally-acknowledged hot guy in the grade, but that’s exactly what happened to me. I wanted my impression on other people to be “Wow, the new girl Lizzy Bonnet is really creative, smart, and fiery!” I didn’t expect it to be more along the lines of “Oh, is that new person the one Darcy roasted?” (Which is something I heard literally someone say when I was walking in the halls after school.) I’ll give you the rundown of what the hell I think happened. This morning was my first day at the fancy “Netherfield Institute Country Day School,” or NICDS (which is ironic because people have already made fun of me for looking like a country girl), and I think I hate it already. My mom wanted me and my sister, Jane, to go because it’s going to provide a “good education” and maybe we’ll “end up marrying one of the rich boys.” As if, they’re probably all pretentious pricks. Anyway, I walk through the obnoxiously massive courtyard to get to the main building, and the whole time my sister keeps repeating about how gorgeous it is, or something, and I’m just rolling my eyes, imagining a timeline where she wouldn’t be able to only say nice things. She eventually turned to walk towards the senior commons and I walked by myself to the sophomore commons. My first class was chemistry, funnily enough, as I had the least amount of chemistry for the child I was going to have the dissatisfaction of meeting: Darcy Barnesitano. This guy is your stereotypical jock highschooler, probably with a GPA failing more than Jane trying to be mean. The teacher started to draw names for lab partners (I’m getting to the roasting part now), and I overhear one of Darcy’s friends saying something like “I wouldn’t mind pairing with that cute new girl,” and Darcy audibly says, for the entire class to hear, “Eh for my standards she’s a 4/10 at best.” Cue my red ears and the class going “Oooh burn!” I did not partner with him, thank God, but I learned that I had FOUR
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OTHER CLASSES WITH HIM IN THAT DAY! I pray to keep my sanity by the end of the year. Aug 23 I don’t think I hate NICDS quite as much as before, but that’s also because I think everyone forgot about the roast. Also on that note, I can’t tell if Darcy hates me or not. He’s been really weird since the first day, and I feel like he should hate me as much as I hate him because I’ve made an effort to say as many witty and sarcastic things as possible about him, but he’s just kind of... oblivious, I guess? Like, in English the other day, we were doing peer-editing for a character analysis essay, and he had written “As you can see, there very prominent features in Macbeth’s character because...” Obviously, he should’ve used ‘they’re,’ right? So I sarcastically say “Wow, 178 IQ use of the word ‘there’ Darcy,” and he just says “Yeah thanks, I spent a pretty long time making sure the grammar is right. I don’t know if the content section is going to do well, though.” I genuinely can’t tell if he’s joking or if he’s just being stupid. I just wish that my sister and literally everyone else would also recognize his bullshit. Also, my sister is dating this rich senior guy named Will Bingley. I’ll update on that situation at some point. Aug 25 Okay, I finally have someone to help justify how much I hate Darcy, and his name is Hamlet Wick. This guy is the exact definition of the guy I need in my life; he’s attra tive, intelligent, and doesn’t like Darcy. According to Ham, Darcy has always just been an arrogant douchebag ever since middle school, self-entitled and snobby. But more importantly, Ham was supposed to receive a scholarship provided by Darcy’s family, but apparently, Darcy convinced his dad to put the money towards a car for himself. I genuinely thought that Darcy couldn’t get any worse, that’s literally like taking candy from a baby, except the baby is a cute guy. This is all I need to finalize my opinion on him. However, the news just keeps on coming. There’s this trivia night event tomorrow that’s sort of a “get to know your classmates” thing, and out of all people, Darcy asked me to be his partner. I absolutely hate myself for doing this, but I said yes, out of sheer surprise. My friend Charlotte said that it won’t be as bad as I think it’ll be, but it most definitely will. I’m just going to predict that it’s going to be super awkward since he’s still being really weird around me, I’ll update tomorrow.
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Colorful Puerto Rico ANONYMOUS PARKWAY WEST HIGH SCHOOL
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Puzzling JACQUELYN HARRIS JOHN BURROUGHS SCHOOL Do you ever feel like you’re missing something, but you can’t tell if it was something you lost or haven’t ever had? I keep thinking to myself, “Is it something that was given to me or something that I have to earn? When will I get this missing piece or when will it return to place itself back into the hole left in my being? Has the mold of this mystery completion been established already or has it yet to be introduced? Will this hole ever fill?” I try to keep myself patient, waiting for the lost answers to finally meet my endless string of questions. I wonder what this piece is and if there is more than one. I worry that the meeting of my empty slot and curious remedy will not be enough to fix the hole. That, in addition, I may need tape, glue, a sealant, nonetheless, to free me of this overwhelming desire to feel whole. Sometimes my eyes begin to water. Tears collect in the corner, not daring to fall down my cheek. I dab at the growing puddle with my ring finger to stop the storm. But, of course, the storm doesn’t live there; it lives in the hole of that puzzle that plagues me. It taunts me in its empty space, laughs at my confusion, and sneers at my desperation to find my missing piece. I’ve always loved puzzles, solving them. But it’s much harder when you’re trying to complete it without knowing what to look for, without a picture for reference. I’ve looked and searched, but the picture on my box is nonexistent...because I never took a picture of myself when I was whole.
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Left Behind AUDREY PINSON JOHN BURROUGHS SCHOOL
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The Peach Walk MADDY PASS JOHN BURROUGHS SCHOOL Mimi brought me hard Flamm’s Orchard peaches last Sunday morning. Free stone, fuzzy, and sunset colored. I can tell immediately that she snuck some of her own peaches into my overflowing half-peck, and I love her for it. Each dusk since then I slowly circle my house’s outdoor perimeter, steeping in the humidity, savoring my own humanity, savoring a peach apple-style. The bees are lazy by this time and the air is fragrant near the mock-orange bush. Juice runs down my body without protest. There’s so much liquid it’s ludicrous to eat inside on clean floors. Last week our water was off and without showers my legs stayed sticky. Sometimes on my way I’ll catch my dad waving from the second story of the white building next to my house. He opens his window and we talk politics and baseball. I haven’t hugged him since last month when he left home to protect me from the virus. It rains some nights here, and at dusk mosquitoes bite my legs, but my Peach Walk is something that’s mine. It’s what I have left.
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take me home JACQUELYN HARRIS JOHN BURROUGHS SCHOOL
i listen to alina baraz’s sweet, calm tone while the rain, powerful, yet soft comes down quickly, as i watch from my desk. i used to hate the rain, but now, as i sit and stare at the peacefulness of the trees, i see the water touch their hopeful roots and still branches. i smile. i don’t know why. but the longer i look, the longer i bask in the beauty of nature in front of my lucky eyes, the bigger i smile. and then i slouch back into my chair, close my eyes, and feel the words of alina as the rain grounds me back into the world, before my imagination takes flight to a new universe of complete serenity. right now, life seems simple. it’s refreshing.
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My First Experience With Race SARA CAO JOHN BURROUGHS SCHOOL As an outspoken yellow girl in Missouri, life hasn’t always been stained with the utopian yellow tinges of happiness, because in America (and quite frankly everywhere else), everything is about race. Yellow trails me everywhere I go, and somehow, the country painted with red, blue, and especially white always finds a way to reject other colors from seeping onto its perfect palette. I had a pretty normal childhood up until the moment I realized that my skin, the suit I felt most comfortable wearing, separated me from the rest of picture-perfect America as if I didn’t fit the dress code. This transition from being just a child to a child of color is a defining moment for many BIPOCs, and my first experience with race was a rude wake-up call to my otherwise idyllic childhood. When I was eight in second grade, I distinctly remember a chant white girls in my grade would continuously sing at me while pulling their eyes back into lines, and with those lines, those girls crossed into the land of racism. The chant went “Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these!” At first, I didn’t realize the harm of the chant, as its catchiness clouded the blatant discrimination behind it. However, as time went on, I noticed that my classmates would direct the chant at me, and I made the connection that it was because of the color of my skin that they uttered those words. As an 8-year-old, that realization stripped me of some of my naive innocence that white people have the privilege of holding for their entire childhood. I immediately wanted to paint myself white upon my racial consciousness, as it seemed to be the purest color. It would give me something the color yellow seemingly could not: the ability to fit in. The notion of yellow being an afterthought was life-changing for me. This experience accounted for many years of self-deprecating jokes about my eyes, my “godly math abilities”, and my overall yellowness. In a predominantly upper-class white elementary school, I struggled with my identity, and I made up for my hidden insecurities by ignoring the toxic relationship between my true inner self and my external yellowness. During that period, no one asked me why I made Asian-jokes; instead, I was greeted with waves of laughter after each joke. I was so eager to please my white peers that I sacrificed my own integrity I held for the color of my skin for ignorant acceptance. And this is how at only 8 years old, my ears became addicted to white validation.
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Looking back at my first experience with race, I’m glad that I’ve now found my place on America’s palette. A picture without warm yellows, deep blacks, and comforting browns looks awfully plain. On the imperfect picture of America, everyone has a place, and it’s our job as American citizens to make people feel that way. Having the knowledge and experience I have now, I wish I could tell my eight-year-old self to wear her yellow as if it shines like gold.
Sunset ANONYMOUS PARKWAY WEST HIGH SCHOOL
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DREAMS I WANT OR NEED OR BOTH BELLA AGARWAL DESERT MOUNTAIN HIGH SCHOOL every night, i weep until my eyes swell shut, my dreams taking my body to a place above the diaphanous clouds,
i transcend to a place where no one else goes, a place where i can be myself.
here, i catch snowflakes on my tongue, lollipops dissolving in my mouth, sugary sweet syrup spilling from my lips, dribbling down my chin, and my skin feels strange to wear, almost as if i am dawning the body of another. above me, my mind stains sticky colors onto a pure canvas, creating vivid images of my dreams and desires and passions, weaving visions of the life i want for myself. the kaleidoscopic mess melts and pirouettes into a galaxy. my senses are brought to their knees by a billowing nebula as my heart’s violent staccato crescendos, threatening to create a supernova. my hands, clutching paintbrushes tightly with milky knuckles, are stretched towards the shimmering stars, and my fingertips trace the rigid outlines of universes, their sharp edges causing blood to blossom on my scarred palms. picturesque stars twirling around my fingers form glistening rings. moons gently dust my head with lustrous powder, silver flakes intertwine with strands of my coarse hair like metallic ribbons. glimmering constellations waltz with each other, dripping with fire, singing off-key odes to a honeyed fantasy of a life that could
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be lived, protostars trailing behind them. clouds of molecular hydrogen drift lightly, waiting to collide and collapse and transform into beautiful broken things, birthing a series of new stars, new beauty. each swirl of starlight is a spectrum of color, each planet is vibrant and bursting with glassy prisms, free of imperfections. this utopia feels like crushed velvet in my fingertips, the space that my hands are exploring is a saturated, colorful pandemonium, wild and reckless and breathtakingly ethereal. this utopia feels like crushed velvet in my fingertips, the space that my hands are exploring is a saturated, colorful pandemonium, wild and reckless and breathtakingly ethereal. this interstellar wonderland is alive, brimming with energy. these cosmos are an incandescent elixir that smooths my fractured mind, a relief from the burden on my shoulders to be everything but what i want to be. it always hurts to know that when the aurora comes and the sun rises, the painting will evanesce from me,
iridescent planets wrap around my wrists like beaded bracelets.
an alluring necklace of comets lightly singes my collarbone.
as morning approaches, silver handcuffs clamp around my wrists.
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leaving the wispy ghost of freedom lingering as the feeling of beauty diminuendos.
iron weights lock around my ankles.
the art brought color to my monochrome world, but it left only the painfully familiar watercolor of reality, ivory and dull shades of grey splattered with raven ink, the paper brittle and rough. one day at 2:07 in the morning,
i tried to paint the future everyone else wants me to have on a crumpled 11 by 8 sheet of printer paper using a cheap $3 brush i stole from my memory of childhood art classes. no matter how many different colors i tried to smear on, it always ended up looking black & white.
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purple half moons under my eyes blur my vision.
white-hot chains bind and sear my body, i am trapped.
Š st. louis youth arts journal 2020 all rights are hereby returned to creators
ST LOUIS YOUTH ARTS JOURNAL
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