Category: 2018-19 Submissions

is that a ghost
following you in the night
don’t look back

if you do look back
would you see the grim ghost
wandering around on this spooky night

boo! it’s darker than usual on this night
maybe you should go back
before you see the soulless ghost

go back, many ghosts are out on this eerie night.

---

Gorzycki

7

to the groups going out for nightcaps, he is nobody; a mere extra in the television show of their night. his presence only clouds their vision of the next bar, where they’re going to get drunker than a sot and slam pints of murphy’s.

by the performers, he is a listener; he entangles himself in the crowd of half-sober locals and apprehensive tourists losing themselves in the slippery fiddle and the bubbly accordion.

and in the smoke room, he is a therapist, someone who listens to the drunk germans and drunk italians pour like a tap about their grandparents’ health and how they’re being exploited at their jobs at the construction site. he kindly gives them back their pouches of tobacco they mistakenly drop on his table.

to the street-sellers, the jewelry-makers, he is an opportunity. they speak in their foreign accents and worldly tongues as they point to their creations of silver and stone. the street performers grill their guitars and puff their pennywhistles to the great beat and bustle of life all around and flash their ample smiles when he drops a crumpled euro into the tin can.

in the pubs, he’s a celebrator. someone whom you imbibe with, someone to shout with, someone that listens to the cries of “eirinn go brach!” and “pog mo thoin!” he becomes equilibrium in the coldness of alcohol and the warmness of people and his mind goes as foggy as dawn in the rolling hills to the western irish coast.

and to the nighttime, he is a drinker. the sound of music bleeds out of every pub like the block’s own merry, drunken symphony. the concoctions of guitar and fiddles, accordions and whistles mix together to make this grand cultural cocktail that inebriates him more than guinness ever could.

by the buildings, he is a seeker. he explores the rustic buildings with rigor, buildings that are older than his country. he finds all the hidden gems; quaint knit shops where the kind old women ask where he’s from as he puts a hank of lambswool on the counter for purchase.

to the city, he is an observer. he notices the beautiful plated fountain with the historical plaque providing shade for the lovers underneath. college students, newlyweds, and tourists bask in the sun in the park, resting on the crunchy emerald grass.

the horn honks of impatient drivers amuse him, because the thought of a tour bus slithering through grafton street, being slowed down by the great tumult of life, is ludicrous. the cries of “slainte!” worm their way into his heart.

to the city, he is many things, he is another welcome in a hundred thousand welcomes. cead mile failte! he is another character, another pawn in the great tale of the city, another set of footprints worn into the boundless cobblestone.

---

McCallum High School

10

When you wake up you smell your favorite breakfast you walk in the kitchen and your mom says ‘happy Birthday sweetie’ ‘thank you’ you say it looks like she has been up for hours for you. You go get on your special birthday outfit. You go in the kitchen and breakfast is ready you eat breakfast together you say ‘I love you mom’ I love you too.”

---

Barton Hills Elem

5

You still smells the way you did then

Stuffed in a draw put away
Forgotten

Darkness kept the hunter green and silver from mellowing
when the four of us relocated

The white walls and furniture
no variety in a never ending color

The smell of chep cleaner lingered
It was once your house
I rescued you from a trash can when we finally moved

You were a secret grandma and I kept
for over ten years
Only we knew that you hid
in the empty guest bathroom drawer

I knew exactly what you were

In a way your a stand in for my grandfather

Did you know that you ran away and got married to your high school sweetheart
And you ran one of the best home remodeling companies Houston, Texas had ever seen.

As an infant I have been told stories that I would only speak gibberish to you

No one in this world can ever call me Lizzy but you
Betty never did remarry
She didn’t even date

Until then
You’re in my closet
Kept hidden until I forget
Or leave

---

James Bowie High School

11

A sharp snap against the cracked concrete.
My body veers to the left at street sign,
the city still hasn’t come out to fix the half bent
Hillside Terrace.
Tall homes loom over my shrunken form.
A single pale light illuminates from a window
a woman hunches over a bright screen.

Lime-green shorts
dance through the front yards and lawn gnomes,
Through the flower beds and twinkling christmas lights.

Shoes
smack, echo through cul-de-sacs,
the only sound for miles and yet it’s still too loud.

A lonely bark from a nearby house,
maybe it can sense something
is happening, like how dogs can sense earthquakes.

Or maybe it wants to feel the freedom I’m feeling, sprinting
despite the stitch in my side, running through the solemn streets
and breathing life into the rising sun.

Slowing down a breath fills my lungs.

It’s just me, the lady, and the dog

to witness what happens every morning since forever.

A cold stillness that washes away with the wind. And with the blink of an eye it’s gone.
People wake up, drink coffee, and go to work.

They drive into the sunrise only to go to another place that is only slightly interesting.
And when they come home the

icy veil layers over the world once again.

---

James Bowie High school

11

Clarity is frosted glass,
You can see the imprint of what’s in front of you
But it’s distorted.
Incoherent.
Is it even really there?
I see what my brain preserves is on the other side,

But what if my brain is wrong?
Seeing what it wants to see.
Seeing what I fear to see.
Seeing myself alone,
No one there to support me,
No one there to comfort me,

Just me and my glass,
That’s useless.
It’s frosted over,
The same way my heart is.

Maybe this is it,
Clarity is something I can’t obtain.
Something so essential, yet so foreign.

Do you see what I see through that frosted glass?
Do you see your family in tears, waving goodbye?
Do you see yourself alone?

---

James Bowie High School

11

It’s hard to put all the memories into paper.
There just aren’t enough words in the world.
All of them together
could not describe
how beautiful it used to be
to feel completely destroyed,
and yet,
to be more alive then ever.

There just aren’t enough words in the world
to describe the way you made me feel,
or to express how much I loved you.

Language isn’t enough
to take the images and rip them apart
into something beautiful
so you can be able to see them.

Words are the limit.

And I’m sure I can tell you
that there isn’t enough time either,
to sing everything out loud
or to do it all over again.

It’s just impossible.

So it tears me into pieces
knowing that what happened happened,
and it will only live inside me,
as a memory.
Hunting me,
because nobody will ever know,
and nobody will ever understand
how it is that this thing inside of me
has the power to slowly
slowly
slowly
burn out my little human soul.

---

James Bowie High School

11

As I stare outside
cars passing
rain slowly falling outside the window
I tune back into the world

It’s a little after seven
I was young
uninformed of global current events
which lead me to believe that NPR
was an entire radio station
created to torture kids of my age
while on long car trips.
It was then that I began to pay attention
to my mother
who was currently showering me in praise
as she haphazardly
pulled into the parking lot of my elementary school.
Slick with the remnants of the previous night’s rain.
Brycen, Mrs. Champion tells me
that you’re an incredible student,
kind, attentive, and cute too.
She says as she reaches over to put her hand on my face.
Being a young boy at risk
of being seen with his mother by his fellow classmates
I was quick to dismiss her affection.
God Mom, I get it! Can I go now!
She stared at me
Her face blank
used to this sort of reaction by now
waiting a few seconds before responding.
You know,
you’re gonna talk that way to the wrong person one of these days
and get your butt beat
I hear her
unaware of the incredible amount of leniency
I have been given

---

James Bowie High School

12