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Tulips
By Jordan Muscal, 17, Texas INT. GROCERY STORE, MORNING The automatic doors of a grocery store open. The AC buzzes loudly. Through the speakers, a country radio station blasts. A…
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Dear Mother
By Amanda Reid, 15, Illinois Dear Mother, You pushed me to do stuff I didn’t know I could do, Believing in me when no one else did, Always having faith…
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I Miss You, Grandma
I miss you Grandma, I know I'm not supposed to start a letter like that, but I’m also not supposed to write to someone who is no longer with us.
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The Stranger in the Photo
It is August 24th, 2008. I am clad in a backwards tan cotton twill cap, a linen tank top, and a pair of striped green seersucker shorts.
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Old Photo Album I Found at an Antiques Store
You, holding the baby, crouching in a meadow, a child yourself. Your father: straight short hair, dark suit, slow face. Here he is holding you, here he is with your…
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Eulogy
Here lies a lesson for all daughters who swim towards stubbornity, who seek to satisfy that self-indulging instinct,
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If you’re reading this…
If you’re reading this, plant some flowers. As each academic break nears, I begin to excitedly anticipate returning home. I always miss my family, my farm, and my community. Duke…
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Dear Mother
dear mother, my magical cocoon, the safe haven within the walls of childhood where rose-tinted flowers grew beside hope-laden trees,
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A New Life
I lay quietly now, like the hush during a funeral. Father stands lofty, towering over mother. Her halo darkened with each passing second.
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Self Interest
What novelty is there in another’s heart? What new skies are there in another’s eyes? Perhaps it’s because my own bosom
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Smiles and Tears
I’ve forgotten how to smile. My muscles get cramped after too many pretenses. It’s easier to just loosen the upward tension.
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My Little Family
My little family started at Newark Airport with donuts and dreamy gazes. My little family is the eighteenth cohort, a dazzling crew that amazes.
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You Zhi San
This piece is a depiction of a young girl with a traditional Chinese oil paper umbrella in southern China. As a Chinese-American visiting the home country of my parents, I…
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Aching Streets
The work is about language barriers/expectations I faced as an Indian American. The poem can be read three ways (the left side on its own, the right side on its…
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Longing
My blood runs brown, rich like the soil of a homeland I’ll never see. Yet I can taste the fruits of that farmland.
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Ore
my home smells like baking grass and diluted smoke it tastes like salt, like when i used to lick my hands as a child and came up with a mouthful…
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Glasses
I have terrible vision. I’ve always had terrible vision. When I was 7, my mother took me to the optometrist and showed me reading charts plastered with E’s. “Read it,”…
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Written in Chalk
With trembling hands, She grasps the chalk, So fragile and breakable, a wisp of white In the dark, dank basement. She cowers at the feet of her father Who barks…
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Round and Round the Rounds
how would i ever start to talk about my brother's heart? once stark and shining, like the sun, too soon found all its beating done.
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Old
As I struggle with my identity as a Chinese-American who was born in an immigrant family, I often wonder what side of me is the "true" me. These thoughts were…
