Editor's note: This poem was a finalist in the the 2021 Gaithersburg Festival Youth Poetry Contest.
The Rain of Today
The sputter of raindropson the steel...
Yellow Whistles, 2021
Buttercups sway in the wind on wispy stems, tiny fairies in grass forests, chirping silently of meadows and woods seeking to escape...
Our Pandemic Blues
my friend Jack tells me aboutthis new syndrome called surge depletion.
it’s likeour human batteries are running low after working so hard to...
Sky Song
Listen Up: Making Music from the Northern Lights – The Guardian, 12/22/2020
At the top of the North, Aurora hangs
curtains of shimmering light across...
The Porch
Reddish-Brown are the screws buried beneath the porch
Remnants torn down long ago, replaced by hard work
Built on the backs of the strong
Stood on...
Rhinoceros
In these modern times, I confess to forgetting, on occasion,that rhinoceroses aren’t dinosaurs. Nor extinct—at least, not yet.That they live in this world, somewhere,...
FACE
My face distorts and dances
in the rippling water.
And a goldfish floats through my nose.
SCRAWNY KID
Scrawny kid.
Lean against your crumbling shack,
And try to paint with...
The Birds Busiest Before DawnNorth Carolina, January 7, 2021
America, can you still hear us? Caged, mournful,what songs echo empty streets after all ballotshave been...
The Reflection Terrace at Brookside Gardens
I am still water
I take on the color of thehedge-pine greens thegeese-moss browns thetortoise-rock grays theazalea-breeze pinks thebride-haze whites...
POULTICEWhen you have looked elsewherefor answers—the spider’s web,the empty hive, the rotted log,beneath the unturned stone—ask yourself what you haveneglected. Do not lamentthat what...