Never
by Katie McClanan
January 24, 2012

 
Slam
The wooden door crashes against the cracking
white frame
Another day in a school I don’t want to be in
With kids and teachers that hate my guts
And there are less F’s at the Fast Food Festival than on my last report card
Light
Blaze
Scorch
A herd of flames lunge at my face
Without warning
a dragon with a tongue of burning blades,
waking from a deathly slumber
Fall back with a painful crash
onto my uniform plaid skirt
Another aspect of Meadow Grove Middle School that I utterly despise
The flames grow bigger at my already destroyed doorstep
Like a crowd of people,
All prepared to tear me to shreds
not so different from my actual life
It hits me
Charlotte
My little sister
the only thing that means anything in my trash I call my life
The only person that I could ever trust
not to be gone when I come home
Need courage
I get up and plow into the wall of heat
explosive crimson
then white
Blank
Feel myself hit the ground
Tuck my head in my soiled collared shirt
dragging my self across the floor to the phone
See a blurred corpse about a meter ahead
“Charlotte! Charlotte!”
I scream with every last bit of soul I have left in my body
It looks like the well has run dry
Nothing but the sound of flames flickering in my face
As if to flaunt my unbearable pain
and heart ache
I see my own charred bangs, once golden,
now the color of the night my father left
Slamming into the leg of a table
I grasp the phone but
I’ve lost all feeling
the phone crashes to the floor
I grab Charlottes arm and drag her across the blistering floor
I look down to see the face of an innocent girl layered with soot
take two fingers and press them against her neck to check for pulse
nothing
Wrist
NOTHING
"Stay with me!
Don’t let go
Please!"

How can anything so sweet be gone in an instant?

It should have been me
should have been me
have been me
been me
me
me

Collapse
That’s all I can do
I did my best
Not
Good
Enough
people have been telling me that my entire life
They
Were
Right

I will never be good enough
Never
 

Audio/Video: 

Katie McClanan.mp3

Go
by Leslie Stiff Arm
November 8, 2011

I had found him,
in a deserted clearing,
I thought I had the boy,
until I heard a rustle in
the shrubs

I suddenly started sprinting to
him,
the hated runaway,

Seventy Feet,
my head is clear,

Sixty,
I'm beginning to doubt,

Fifty,
I heard him scream,

Forty,
I saw it,
A dark figure gaining,

Thirty,
I’ve got to help,
and fast,

Twenty,
I killed it,
Just like that,

Ten,
I got to you,

Zero,
there’s more,
we need to
Go
 

Audio/Video: 

Leslie Stiff Arm.mp3

Stand
by Annie Heath
May 24, 2011

 
She was out
Then in
He was at the top
Now bottom
She was scared
He was too
She left
He stayed
She cried
He yelled
She screamed
Into her pillow
He just punched
His own
She was confused
He was puzzled
Nothing made sense
Yet everything did
She questioned
He lied
She answered
Herself
He queried
His lies
She smiled
And the people
She couldn’t see
Before
Came evident
He laughed
At his friends
Now visible
Neither was alone
Anymore
They now know
Where they stand
 

Audio/Video: 

Annie Heath.mp3

Spring
by Anna Bishop
April 25, 2011

I sit on the porch
With a bee on my leg.
You would have flicked it away;
I didn’t.

I run in the field,
Cosmos brushing against my knees.   
You would have scratched;
I wouldn’t.

If you think joy is in money,
It isn’t.

Or happiness comes in boxes,
It doesn’t.

Joy is a gift,
But it’s free,
No price tags.

Sometimes people don’t realize
That what they are looking for
is right in front of them;

Right in front of you.

Audio/Video: 

Spring

All Because of You
by Maria Chang
March 11, 2011

 
You are the winner
reigning over me
with eyes like knives
piercing through
my heart.

I remember
those days,
you and I
skipping
laughing
teasing each other
running down
this exact same road.

Back then
when I saw you
I saw happiness
enough to light up
an entire town.
The sparkles in your eyes,
as bright
as the summer sun.

When I look at you now,
I see fire
the scratches
on your heart
the ones
that will never
mend.

Now all we have
are some splinters
along the sidewalk
leaving trails
of blood
all shed
because of
you.

Audio/Video: 

Maria Chang audio

No Reward
by Gus Edelen-O’Brien
February 24, 2011

I walk down from the alter
my sword bloody with light
I disposed of the king
my dagger proves the rumor to be true,
and restored peace to a land in woe

Sounds heroic doesn't it?
Like everything is now so gleeful
What about the people lying dead in the streets?
Killed by my order, do you expect me
to look at them and say, like a tyrant at his fallen soldiers

“They were killed for the greater good”?

My thoughts appear before me, in the shape of a dog.
It goes over to one of the bodies,
its owner
and huddles against him.
He cries with the sound of a seal,

sinking in the ice of despair.

No one bothers to comfort the heart broken animal.
They’re all too busy celebrating
my triumph over the Ruler.
How about the soldiers sprawled in the roads

to me
they are the ones
who deserve the feast.
 

Audio/Video: 

Gus Edelen Obrien.mp3

The Reef
by Liam Wynne
February 2, 2011



A bright coral dances to the beat of the tide


Spreading its feather like appendages with pride


A school of parrotfish swims by its side


Letting the current be its guide.



A sharp-toothed barracuda swims past


From the great blue ocean that is so vast


The school of fish moves away fast


Desperately trying to outlast.



A crab scuttles along the ocean floor


Trying not to be tempting octopus lore


On a rock two anemones wage a territorial war


Each one firing stinging cells that cause gore.



There is an eel that lurks beneath the coral


Which seems so deceivingly floral


He tries to avoid any quarrel


For that is his never-ending moral.



Every thing is in perfect sync


From the shrimp that are so pink


To the jellyfish that rise and sink


As night starts to cross day’s brink.

Audio/Video: 

Liam Wynne.mp3