Archives

Monologue

Based on the Philadelphia Inquirer story ‘Pilot gets 366 days in fatal Duck crash’.

“You should’ve stepped away
You were trained to step away
I don’t know why you didn’t.”
Said the captain yesterday
But the deaths they saw were hidden
When her call came to me, unbidden

A single call
A courtroom wall
She never should’ve told me
Their final breath
The stench of death
The law would take and hold me

The steamboat rolled
The gray river rolled
2:37 P.M. in July
When the teenagers’ fate was told
I felt guilt when they asked me why
And it’s not in my heart to lie

A single call
A courtroom wall
She never should’ve told me
Their final breath
The stench of death
The law would take and hold me

“I shouldn’t have called him
Oh, why did I call him?”
Cried my wife, and tore at her hair
She said “Surgeons have sinned
Left our son without air
As his eyes were fixed in their lair.”

A single call
A courtroom wall
She never should’ve told me
My sentence stands
In judges’ hands
A year and a day, they’ll hold me.

 

Lily Alexandra Mell is twelve years old and is homeschooled. She lives in Center City, Philadelphia. She has written many
short stories and poems in the last few years, though this is her first time being published. She is currently writing a science
fiction – fantasy novel. She greatly admires the published author Tamora Pierce and aspires to write as well as she does.

Time

I am time.
I am that which was, which is, which will be.
I am the now, the then, the flexible future and the potent past.

That which is, was.
That which was, will be again.
That which will be, is now.

I am creation.
I am destruction.
I am all.

All that is great, is nothing.
All that is worthless, may be vital.
All that is mighty, all that is proclaimed to be great and wonderful,
is nothing before me.

I am all.
I am that which you lose and gain.
I am the infinite, the immeasurable, the unstoppable.

The greatest giants, the mightiest mountains, the most amazing
creations, both artificial and natural-all those are dust before me.
They who live may try to control me-to measure me, change their
travel through my flow, disrupt me, even harness me, shift my ebb
and flow. Yet the most ambitious plans must fail before me, the
mightiest beings bend to me.

I am infinitely complex.
I am the bringer of darkness, the destroyer of worlds.
I am that which was, which is, which could be, and that which
must never be.
In creation, there is destruction.
In destruction, there is rebirth.
There is no such thing as void, all things are in flux.
This is my nature.
Fire and ice, light and dark, life and death, energy and matter,
all these bend before me, for I am time.

 

 

Jonathan is 16 years old and attends Northeast High School in Philadelphia. His favorite subjects are English and History.
He has lived in Philadelphia for 12 years, previously he lived in Cleveland, Ohio. His hobbies are reading and writing stories, particularly science fiction and doing karate.

Insights of a Dying Man

If a knife is stabbing me in my chest
While my wife and child are sleeping
And some superior force is burning me
In the pitch black dark
Over my head under my feet,
While I on my porch
Sing, killing me softly by Lauren Hill
Out to the people of the world
As they throw sticks and stones, as they break my bones
As I tell myself: “I am not afraid, I am not afraid,
I was meant not to be,
So I shall stay that way!”
If I take my pride, strength,
And power
And put myself against the world,
Who is anybody to say I’m dying?

 

 

Eliah studies creative writing at the “Teen Lit Magazine” workshop at the Musehouse Literary Arts Center in Germantown
(www.musehousecenter.com).

Day and Night

When it is day, it is blue
When it is dark, the sky is new
When it is day again, I feel free
When it is night, the stars twinkle
When it is day, I try to fly
When it is day, I like to swing up high by the sky

 

 

Elle Julius is 7 years old and lives in Ardmore, PA. with her mother, father, aunt, and brother Wyatt, who is 5 and has autism. Elle is a wonderful big sister to her brother.  She attends Penn Valley Elementary School and is in 2nd grade.  She loves reading books and writing poetry.

Prose Poem

As I stand here, ready to take on the world in a fight that will seem to last an eternity, thoughts of doubt, intimidation, and sorrow swirl around my mind sucking away any confidence I have left. And more and more as my confidence fades it leaves nothing more than these thoughts that tear away at my esteem. I sit through the night waiting for the battle to begin, the sun slowly arises and more and more like a fungus the fear starts to grow inside infecting everything. With all this internal pain it seems my only escape is to submit and give into the enemy and all my uncertainty, but through all the fear that tears away at my spirit a gentle voice as quiet as the whistle of the wind seeps through my ear and says “Stay strong my weary child for greater am I that is within you, and it by my anointing that you will stand against the forces of evil till you return to my kingdom to mend and heal the wounds of battle, be encouraged for you are my child and victory will be guaranteed for thy faithfulness.” For it is then that all fear was cast away and my spirit and courage was renewed with confidence ready
to fight another day.

 

 

John Thomas attends the New Media Technology Charter school.  On Thursday, July 14, 2011, (his 17th birthday) he attended the PS Jr. Poetry workshop at the West Oak Lane Library with Teresa FitzPatrick.  The attached work is the result of his attendance. John lives in the West Oak Lane section of Philadelphia.

Brave Soul, ii

In this lugubrious land
where coltan and fighting decide to rhyme
where the Congolese and its splintering neighbors forget
what they’re really fighting about,
it’s easy to not hear Parfaite’s dive into a lake of dreams
and dismiss the battles fought on her brave brown body
like she was the war.

What happened to simple desires unattached to the manufactured desires of outsiders
like fu-fu pounded fresh, obnoxiously yellow
mated with deep fried Nile tilapia
that Parfaite had pulled a thousand times from Lake Kivu
like Sundays after Mass when she moved with the shield of some god’s word
like those voices of the market folk haggling just to extend the day
like the dress makers exciting Parfaite’s sense of her own beauty
with a bounty of pagne sold by the meter.

When the sun was obnoxiously yellow
and the cries for justice and the fall of machetes clashed in evil dissonance
Parfaite carried a basket pregnant with the bloom of coffee flowers
and she hummed a tune to match her simple delight
when he attacked
with a broken bayonet and a mercenary’s penis
in front of a basket of fallen flowers
not just her vagina, but her place in the world.

Parfaite returned home with her story between her legs,
backs briskly turned,
time did a wicked dance
she was left with life inside her belly
that kicked
and would never be welcomed.

Abandoned, displaced
and now carrying a sinless sprite pushing for its own attention
Parfaite, wrapped in new found pieces of pagne-audaciously yellow-
returned to Lake Kivu
to the memories it held
to the sustenance it gave
to the laughter of the its fish
and with a pardon to her god
she jumped in
tightly holding on to her sense of her resplendent beauty
and humming a tune to lull her baby into a watery dream.

 

 

Sojourner Ahebee , 16, is a 10th grade student at Interlochen Arts Academy. Originally from Cote d’Ivoire, Sojourner now resides in West Philadelphia when not away at school. Her poetry has been published in Stone Soup, Teen Ink , Apiary Magazine and Red Wheelbarrow. Sojourner’s poem Listen to Africa was recently published as a poster for sale by the Syracuse Cultural Workers. http://syracuseculturalworkers.com/poster-listen-africa Sojourner has maintained a culture blog for teens for the past four years. It’s called Sojo’s Trumpet: http://trumpetworld.blogspot.com/

Great Grandma Bea

Here I am again,
propped up for the photographer’s pleasure.
It’s easy to see how photographs make memories.
Will future relations remember me simply as the gaunt, unsmiling soul
peering out to them?
Stripped of my homeland and family just
to come to the land of promise.
America.
I believe my soul reaches out farther than the glass
and gently taps the shoulder of the viewer,
connecting us.
I may be gone when
my great-granddaughter writes a poem to preserve my memory.
I know that I will be proud.
Share it. Share it with others.

 

 

Mia Nadira Carter studied creative writing at last year’s Teen Lit Magazine at the Musehouse Literary Arts Center in Germantown. Her poem The Night Sky was published in the Winter issue of Philadelphia Stories, Junior.

Fire

Dance,
Through the air,
Eating away at life,
Creating a silhouette behind you.
So pretty, yet grotesque,
In your wavy frame,
Wild and untamed.
You kill and burn,
You twist and turn,
You bring warmth and pain,
Destruction and comfort,
And this is what the human soul longs for.

 

 

I’m twelve years old and in the sixth grade. I enjoy school, especially writing. I’m not quite sure what I want to be when I’m older, but I’m on the fence between some kind of scientist and a writer.

She’s Dead

The books lie behind the phone.
“To Kill a Mocking Bird” and “Murders in the Rue
Morgue” stand out among the titles.
The phone frowns at me accusingly. Judging me in
silence.
The ring screams out, making me jump.
“Mr. Ripply? We’ve found your wife,”
says the Police man on the other end of the line.
“She’s dead.”

 

 

Marianna Bergues lives in Narberth and is homeschooled. She loves to write fiction. Marianna participated in the Teen Lit Magazine workshop last year at Musehouse Center for the Literary Arts in Germantown. Two of Marianna’s poems were published in the premier issue of Philadelphia Stories, Junior.

Nightbird

For two minutes and forty four seconds,
I watch the night, in its luminescence.
Heavy clouds twist, like so many dark ribbons,
Dark velvet punctured only by stars, clouds overridden.

Pudgy cats yowl in alleyways deserted,
Shadows confuse them, their pouncing thus thwarted.
A beer bottle crashes, from nowhere, it seems.
The echo dies out like a soft, faded dream.

I wish it was warmer, or that the wind held better.
The breeze whistled through my threadbare yarn sweater.
Shadows were approaching, completely unencumbered,
Fright started slightly in a pit in my stomach.

The time seems but ripe, almost tangible to pick it.
Ripe for all creatures to emerge from the thicket.
For ravens, wings glossy, and rabbits, fur soft.
For stray cats and dogs, their heads held aloft.

Though I feel alone in this fantasy now,
I see a strange animal along the ground.
Feathers of speckled grey, black and white.
It cocks and bobs its head, into the light.

It take careful steps, its orange eyes are wide.
A pigeon steps into the quiet moonlight.
And as I approach it, one finger extended,
It climbs on with pink claws, and upwards we ascended.

Shadows less menacing, moonlight less dim.
As on it clambered, tail fluffed, neck prim,
My cheeks were glowing with happiness.
A pigeon was exactly what I needed, no more or less.

 

 

Calamity Rose Jung-Allen is a twelve-year-old singer, guitar-player, writer and actor from West Philly, the city of brotherly love and grafitti. She lives with her mom, her two cats, dog, and two rats. Recently declared a brace-face, she is short and loves peanut butter ice cream. She is one of the winners of the first “Teens Take the Park” writing contest.