your vision, your voice
Black is like a coal mine
Black is like a night sky
Black is a panther
Black smells like oil in a car
Black tastes like burned food
Black sounds like silent
Black looks like shadows
Black feels like loneliness
Black makes me Me
Black is ink in a pen
Boone Elementary
3
From my Legos down to my toes
I itch and twitch
Up to my arms down to my feet
All my itches and twitches for presents
Two more weeks until Christmas
I can’t wait!
Boone Elementary
3
It’s something like being interested in dollhouse miniatures … Or, you know, putting a ship in a bottle. – Lucia Perillo, on modern poetry
Dollhouses are gilded gingerbread with windows the size of fingernails and furnished with polished plastic picnic tables. They canonize flawless families in flimsy fabric ensembles, delicately assembling copies without originals. The building will be abandoned in the bedroom corner.
A boat in a bottle is a cloud in an hourglass: water kept in a closed circle, tumbled into seaglass. It was made in the century of whale hunts, now clouded by dust and tidal with condensation. My grandfather kept it in his study the way a shark holds its egg purse or how a sailor clutches a locket.
There are so many lives we are not living. There are so many lives we are no longer living. There are so many ways to build with precision.
James Bowie High School
12
The in-flight map says we’re over Winnetka, but the suburb looks the same,
and I get the same feeling: I could card my hands through tiny trees and puncture frozen ponds.
I want to trace the lines the farmers made. I want to work with my uncalloused hands.
If there is sadness here, it is stowed in the overhead compartment.
Arrogance peeks its blonde head through the cabin door. I pretend to look out the window.
Separated from Earth by a thin layer of vapor, these streets could belong to me.
James Bowie High School
12
My dreams have grown mundanely vivid. I can’t nimbly untangle their milky opacity from my waking life. Last night,
I dreamt of folding paper animals, touching corner to crease, mimicking breathing creatures: crane, cat, fish, and fox. I ordered them
on the horizon of my dresser – a patient pageant towards the ark, spaced airily, like nightgowns on a clothesline or owls in the night.
When I shuddered into morning, I woke not to a rush of cranes, but to the wind fluttering a map through my open window.
The topography covered me like a quilt. My dreams were thin, blue paper, but I could put a pin through the map and trace the interstate with thread.
James Bowie High School
12
Your lonely whisper such a song across the plain
Through the treetops Flying is a blast
Yet your thinking of how much you could gain
Would it ever last
Sneaking by, experiencing so much hurt
Trying to be heard falling to your knees
Thoughts could be heard bet ween the dirt
You are lesser only the breese
But you have feelings too
Deep down inside about to break
If only they knew
Your feelings s w e p t away with a gentle rake
When you take a STAND when you need a friend
Who better than the wind
Gorzycki Middle School
7
I count the hours, the minutes, the seconds on my hand.
The journey has begun, around me, a nauseous dome.
I sit there, I wait, wait for the motherland.
I imagine my feet running in the sand.
My mind, in an endless roam.
I count the hours, the minutes, the seconds on my hand.
The moving carts are like a loud, unsynchronized band.
The noises overwhelm, but the clouds outside a calm, soft foam.
I sit there, I wait, wait for the motherland.
I watch them waiting for the dreamland.
Rotting away, still as a garden gnome.
I count the hours, the minutes, the seconds on my hand.
I listen softly to the music strand.
The journey is at its end, around me, a sleepy dome.
I sit there, I wait, wait for the motherland.
The long, long minutes we all have to withstand.
I just want to go home.
I count the hours, the minutes, the seconds on my hand.
We sit there, we wait, wait for the motherland.
McCallum High School
10
My love, slowly fading away in my eyes,
her bright blue ominous eyes, getting less threatening,
slowly, the color washes away from her beautiful face,
drowning in a mass of confusion.
Water, slowly trickling down my parched lips,
landing on my dry bed in a “Splash!”
Colors, all around me, like a loved scent that you could never turn from,
skillfully drifting away in the dark shadows.
“Call back,” I say, with no conviction in my voice,
but the beautiful bright colors that once used to overwhelm me with pride,
are now black and dusty like a dark cavern.
My eyelids flutter closed slowly and soundly,
all my precious items disappearing in my view,
drifting back behind my socket.
My heart, strumming its last beat, like a guitar strumming its last note,
and then finally stops with a drums final beat.
My life has slowly slithered away from me,
and everything I cared for has
vanished.
Gorzycki Middle School
7
you favor the contrast between the red
and the black
my elegance swings but hangs
what if you have no way of determining whether this entertainment is just an excuse to disguise my fall as something beautiful?
(yes) i have glitter in my eyes
and perhaps you can’t see my particular pain?
i
have to glorify this lie
although it is true that
i
am but a trapeze acrobat
in no way am i just red or fancy or flexible
you are not vexed by my nature because (to you)
i am an orchestra (too)
easily you develop an adoration for my tunes
i am so high and
(i know) i entertain your loss(es)
the red i sport
you
do not envision as blood
i am love
i am the seasons
hurting or pleasing
why is time a bore?
you shouldn’t think (that) i was born this way
i sparkle for a reason
even if the first time is the last
even if the landing isn’t pretty
i know why i stand
nonetheless
i crave an immediate and sudden end to this (ride)
it feels like 25 cents
hunger is past 12
and fun is only a 3 letter word
Stony Point High School
12
In a freezing Costco I look for
the warm orange
of some freshly harvested
pumpkin
or the deep smell of dried hay.
Out of the window I imagine
a tiny car and immeasurable
countryside,
but I just see boundless
streets and intrusive trucks.
Pale places
used to bored me
in my memories now
I’m intrigued by their joyful color.
Family
an expert puppet master that
used to suffocate me,
now I search for them
in my dreams.
Voices
were loud and oppressive
a barking noise
now I can hear them calling from afar
like Ulysses’s mermaids never-ending song
imploring to go home.
My stomach is full of stones,
there’s a weight in my lungs,
Not air,
but
nostalgia.
James Bowie High School
11