Cover Road:Cover - Teen Ink

Birthdays
I met you at Jessica’s fourteenth birthday party,
where we stayed up all night on the couch.
I don’t remember a word of what we talked about
but I can still see you there, with the blanket
on your lap,
and you were laughing. Always laughing.
I’m glad we became best friends.
I was there for your fifteenth birthday –
we watched “Flushed Away” at the Grand.
We laughed about it as we ate cake
in the glass party room where everyone could see us.
I’m sure that if they noticed you, what they saw was that
you were so alive.
You were there when I turned fifteen,
and we ate at Friday’s.
I took a picture of you there.
Your dad has it now, he keeps it with him.
And I haven’t eaten there since.
Jessica didn’t celebrate her fifteenth birthday
the same –
by then, you were gone.
For your sixteenth birthday, all your friends gathered
at your grave, and we wrote you notes.
We rolled them up tight and put them in balloons.
We sent the balloons away and pretended
you would get them.
I turned sixteen.
I lit a candle; I wished you were there.
Saturday is your seventeenth birthday.
And it’s hard to believe.
This year, I think we will try to forget.
But your impact, it’s still here.
It’s like tiny craters in my skin.
And I will always remember you,
through all the years.
Through all the
birthdays.
by Jillian Bush, Prentiss, MS
Letter to Individuality
Individuality, dearest one,
What has become of you?
You are a flower so rare in this “modern” world.
Pray tell, were you hiding from the world again,
With Chivalry and Dignity, your secret friends?
It’s sad, the world without you.
Did you hear Hope is lost,
And Purity was taken?
What has happened to Forgiveness, you ask?
You’d best not know.
Chaos bullies Innocence,
And Sin rules supreme.
And poor Love and Romance,
The sisters are no more.
My dearest neighbors went away,
And Lust has moved next door.
And Imagination
Was run over by the band wagon.
And Faith, her fate worse than death –
The world believes her irrelevant.
Please, before more are taken,
Save the world, for it is shaken,
Teach us to think for ourselves,
So the Virtues may return.
Always yours,
Emily
by Emily Roldan, Bettendorf, IA
Remnants on the Mantle
I am not you,
just the remnants from
the mantle
of a deteriorating family,
whisked away by the man with
a crowbar and a blackening handle.
When we used to be a
threefold troupe,
and you stomped all over it
to crush the picture with your dirty foot.
It’s about time I rise up from
who you are.
I am so much more
than your deafening
resounds.
Bravery and risk taking
is who I am
and you are nothing
but the woman on the floor
crying over your spilled milk.
I am so much more.
by Ellen Frank, Noblesville, IN
Writer’s Block
Writer’s block …
fingers waxen, halting
typing out a repetitive, ugly pattern
the words like burns across the page.
Hesitantly, I gingerly attempt to grasp hold of my
unusually absent river of creativity
tapping the flow
guiding it to where it is needed, an irrigation system for
the drought in my head
and am met with empty hands and slapped wrists.
by Jasmine Pesold, Park City, UT
Photo by Demetrius Anderson, Ft. Meade, MD
A Cannibal in Love
I want to make a feast out of you
your fat swollen chops would be great
nourishment for my lovesick mind
your savory lips pack the flaky crunch
that goes
perfectly with crimson molasses like my
dear honey bear draining the life out of its belly
oh yes! the belly!
my tongue yearns for medium rare sausages …
your tubular will do perfectly
fillets off your midsection
still fresh and perfect for sushi
won’t you say?
I can’t wait to get a bite out of you and
won’t you want a piece of me too?
by ZiXiang Zhang, Ridgewood, NY
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Lazy bounds of stadium light
flicker on our boys
but we are tearing
up the night
cutting open nebulas
ravaging the moon
inky black guts slide
i hear them scrambling over barbed wires
attempted lust in the trees
fumbling with skeleton hips
adolescent lips digging into sharpened necks
leaving their burrow to inhale sweeter highs
someone’s china-glass tears are heard
below the idle roar
we are only allowed to scream
when rubber balls are involved
pounding car ride far away
a cotton moon glares at the windshield
these earthly nights
never felt so real.
by Yasmin Majeed, Cupertino, CA
The Empty Streets
I watched the traffic lights change
from green to yellow to red,
from behind my steering wheel,
from the other side of the glass.
And I drove the empty streets
that reminded me so much of
the empty hallways of your heart;
I guess I knew you weren’t coming back.
So I circled the block once more
hoping maybe we would pass
and I nearly thought we did,
but those weren’t your headlights
that I was staring at.
The slow and steady pulsing
of the biggest small town,
cars passing through lights
like my blood through valves;
missing you is like background noise,
like traffic outside my window at night.
And when I press my head to your chest
to hear the slow and steady pulsing
of your blood circling the block again,
the stars spread out before me
like city lights from atop a hill.
by Jessica Brenn, Wayne, NJ
Youngest Daughter
In the night, sweat glued my thighs to my jeans; the moths
melted like nodes of fat on the window screens while the
creek perused, a sluggish intestine of hot water; I looked
to see, in a corona of fireflies, my youngest
daughter. They stuck, lighting jewelry to her umber
throat. They were gemstones pulsing on her
soft grass-stained toes; they rippled
down her cheeks in tears of
joy that say, “Mother …
last night … I
met a
boy.”
by Rita Feinstein, Glorieta, NM
APRIL ’09 • Teen Ink
Poetry
35