TEEN SEQUINS 2018! Day 6: “CURE” by Annabelle Crowe, AGE 19

To me this poem reads as one of resilience. “Make me a boulder striped with tide stains/on the salt marsh.” Striped but stable within. “Make me a coastline/of shattered language.” A coastline nonetheless, revised lexicon. And those last four lines. What is the cure? Mercy or resilience? What survives? “[An] idea of the sea.” Make me. Unknown only to others. Infinite. – Robert Auld

Cure

Have mercy on me, gods
of transformation.

Make me a boulder striped with tide stains
on the salt marsh.

Make me a pennant, regardant—
a lung, fluttering

itch, a tough flank stretched
between birch sticks.

Make me a coastline
of shattered language.

/

I want to age evenly.
You can carve me out

through hard winters,
you can bend my ribs back

like a two-page spread.
Have mercy.

I’m no bigger than
your fingertip. I’ve sent my name

winging away. Just bones now
and an idea of the sea.

Annabelle Crowe is a rising sophomore at Rice University and hopes to double major in English and the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Her poetry has been published in Asheville Poetry Review, The Adroit Journal, and diode poetry journal and has been recognized by the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award. She is the poetry editor of R2: The Rice Review, her campus lit mag.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: Olivia Alger (University of Rochester, Rochester, NY); Alixa Brobbey (Brigham Young University, Provo, UT); Reuben Gelley Newman (Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA); Annabelle Kang (Concordia University, Montreal); Hannah Pandya (Simmons College, Boston, MA); Noel Peng (Princeton University, Princeton, NJ); Simran S. Shaju (Travancore Medical College, Kollam); Sahara Sidi (Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT); Amelia Van Donsel (Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY); Kelsie Ward (Sage College of Albany, Albany, NY); Lisa Zou (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA)

TEEN SEQUINS 2018! Day 5, “Antonia” by Morgan Levine, AGE 18

The first half dozen times I read this poem I was mesmerized by Morgan Levine’s diction. Pink bathrobe, plastic flamingos, moonshine. Elvis, Mary, rosemary oil. “I hold my children/close to me like minutes.” Close like words, prayer, a manifestation of love. “I have prayed,/I have produced.” Having read the poem a dozen more times, I am further entranced by the “I” of “Antonia,” a voice reflecting the persistence required to continue living, the voice of someone in love with family and legacy, and the symbol of Mary, both prayer and a “chipped porcelain platter of sky.” -Robert Auld

 

Antonia

for my great-grandmother

 

…Mary’s chief glory is in her nothingness, in the fact of being the “Handmaid of the Lord,” as one who in becoming the Mother of God acted simply in loving submission to His command, in the pure obedience of faith. – Thomas Merton

 

 

 

Amen I have braved another

locust night to stand sentry

in my pink bathrobe among

the plastic flamingos.

I have come for my evening

visit, for my single sip

of moonshine.

 

I hold my Elvis mug

& snip a gardenia

for you.  Cream petals

like pages I turn for you,

Mary, name of my mother,

sweet rosemary oil on my

temples & wrists.  I once

had a name that tangled

on the tongue when spoken

in the Texas heat, sinful

& sweet as a man named

George.  O Mary, he called me

Toney.  & he married me.

 

Claudia & Carol,

David & Daryl,

I have prayed,

I have produced.

 

If a woman is a window

through which immaculate light

can shine, then you, Mary,

are so glorious in your thinness.

I paste your prayer on my bathroom

mirror.  I throw my old name

into the sky like a lost tooth &

I walk in this house

with a hundred clocks

& a dozen calendars

& I hold my children

close to me like minutes.

 

When the clouds allow,

I stand here &

gaze at the moon.

If there are two things

I will give my children,

it is you,

Mary,

prayer I lay over their beds like fine lace,

& you again,

Mary,

chipped porcelain platter of sky.

 

 

Morgan Levine is a multimedia poet currently studying at Columbia University in New York City.  Her works have been published both in print and online, and she is a three-time finalist for Houston Youth Poet Laureate.

 
HONORABLE MENTIONS: Miranda Sun (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Wilmett, IL); Alexis Noga (Denison University, Granville, OH); Jackson Neal (University of Houston, Houston, TX);  Lily Zhou, Enshia Li, Maya Salameh (Stanford University, Stanford, CA); Ben Togut (Columbia Preparatory School, New York, NY); Peyton Toups (Jesuit HS of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA); Andrew Tye (Princeton University, Princeton, NJ); Quinn Lui (University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada); Jessica Meng (Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA) Isabel Garcia (Bennington College, Bennington, VT); Zack Tambone (Passaic Valley HS, Little Falls, NJ); Grace Clifford (Columbia University, New York, NY); Katrina Rojas ( UMass Amherst, Amherst, MA); Harper West (Bentonville HS, Bentonville, AR); Tom Bosworth (Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH); Kate I. Foley (Homeschool, Lebanon, PA); CG Aquingel Plabrica (Colegio de la Inmaculada Concepcion – Mandaue, Cebu, Philippines); Rebecca Northup (University of California, Santa Cruz, CA); Amery Segovia (Alamo Heights HS, San Antonio, TX)

TEEN SEQUINS 2018! Day 4: VIDHIMA SHETTY, AGE 17, “What Did Me In”

When first reading Vidhima Shetty’s poem, I misread “the world is something more // to clench my fists around” as “the world is more than something // to clench my fists around.” Perhaps I misread Shetty’s line because what the poem does with the world is honor and fight, embrace and reject. The poem is a glimpse of young struggle at its finest, its desire to “transcend in all the wrong places.” And I remember that, the moment of being 17, feeling simultaneously old and young, being able to feel the world splitting, things that felt like truth becoming visible then drifting away again. But when I was 17, I couldn’t say it like Shetty does, and she does it, (as her poem sings) “waking and spring-fisted.”  – Sophie Klahr

 

What Did Me In

 

 

 

Vidhima Shetty is a rising senior from the Bay Area in California. Her poetry has been recognized by Scholastic Art & Writing and Hollins University, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Red Queen Literary Magazine, Moledro Magazine, and Eloquence, among others. When she is not writing poetry, she is watching anime and drinking milk tea.

 
HONORABLE MENTIONS: TiKa Wallace (George Mason HS, Falls Church, VA); Caroline Grand-Clement (Cité Scolaire Internationale, Lyon, France); Davis Mathis (Pace Academy, Atlanta, GA); Allison Lin (Syosset HS, Syosset, NY); Jojan (Jay) Padua (Galileo Academy of Science and Technology, San Francisco, CA); Bronwen Brenner (Baruch College Campus HS, New York, NY); Katie Hurwitz (Walpole HS, Walpole, MA); Vivian Parkin DeRosa (Communications HS, Ocean Township, NJ); Jessica Lao (Westminster Schools, Atlanta, GA); Jennifer Jantzen (Concord HS, Concord, MA); Breanna Trigona (West Boca Raton Community HS, Boca Raton, FL); Samia Menon (Hawken School, Cleveland, OH); Haemaru Chung (Trinity School, New York, NY); Claire Parsons (Hellgate HS, Missoula, MT); Isabelle Edgar (Falmouth HS, Falmouth, MA); Madina Malahayati Chumaera (Global Jaya School, Greater Jakarta, Indonesia); Zoe Kramer (Nova Classical Academy, St.Paul, MN); Quinn Filler (Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, Greenville, SC); Carolyn Stein (New Roads School, Los Angeles, CA); Grace Lytle (Kinder HS for the Performing and Visual Arts, Houston, TX); Sophie Parsa (Germantown HS Jackson, MI); Eliza Browning (Wheaton College, Norton, MA); Aidan Aragon (Wausaukee HS, Wausaukee, WI); Emily Chen (Williams College, Williamstown, MA); Josh Schlachter (Orange County School of the Arts, Santa Ana, CA); Dana Chiueh (International Bilingual School, Hsinchu City, Taiwan); Laura Liu (Conestoga HS, Wayne, PA); Anna Butcher (Alabama School of Fine Arts, Birmingham, AL); Carly Civello (Lancaster Country Day School, Lancaster, PA); Sarah M. Zhou (Naperville North HS, Naperville, IL); Anna Shahbazyan (Marblehead HS, Marblehead, MA), Bessie Huang (Eleanor Roosevelt HS, Greenbelt, MD); Vanessa Tsao (Taipei American School, Taipei, Taiwan); Keira DiGaetano (Richard Montgomery HS, Rockville, MD); Susan Li (Deerfield Academy, Deerfield, MA); Worlanyo Mensah (Mount Olive HS, Mount Olive, NJ); Evan Hochstein (Liberal Arts and Science Academy, Austin, TX); Olivia Hu (Port Moody Secondary School, Port Moody, British Columbia, Canada); Corrine Barker (Hackettstown HS, Hackettstown, NJ); Veronica Palacios, Juliana Schlaen, Emily Garroway, Hadassah Amani, (Miami Arts Charter, Miami, FL); Hanah Shields, Kendall Hunt, Kate Soupiset (Alamo Heights HS, San Antonio, TX)

TEEN SEQUINS 2018! Day 3: Sophie Paquette, Age 16

What is an exclamation point? An action. What are many exclamation points? A revolution. Sophie Paquette’s poem is a refusal, a feminist text, where exclamation points fly after every almost thought and phrase. In short, Paquette uses the exclamation point to punch the patriarchy in the throat. She uses it as a middle finger, a protest sign. But the exclamation point is also a cut here, a strain, taking the grammar of online marketing and struggling to bend it.  “o shattering prism of clicks!” writes Paquette, “o country of hands!” If we are to do right by Paquette, we will share, re-post, and re-tweet this poem, a sign to the patriarchy that says “teenage girls! know! what you’re trying to pull!” We will work to help clearing a path for any teenager being patronized, even if we just begin by hitting “like.”  — Sophie Klahr

 

for the ad on my browser reading tragic girl’s life could have been saved by this new safety device!

 

tragic girl clickbait!

catfish!

receives dick pic with a smile!

spits in a bottle for you to wear round your neck! so this thirstiest part of her always hang close to your chest!

tragic girl cartoned milk! best used 7 days after opening! best used to wash down something else sweeter! sits in your mouth to silence the aftertaste of another! suckle tragic girl for strength! while she refills herself! again & again!

tragic girl marketing scheme! paid display advertising! purchase with a single click! tragic girl wants to help get you off! the couch to buy something!

tragic girl shapes her body into any role she is given! tragic pixie wet dream! plays love interest! plays some kind of instrument! only so you can lay naked & beg! tragic girl play me like your—!

tragic girl grew up ugly! tragic girl grew! once! not anymore!

tragic girl exactly how you like her! not child! not woman! not alive! not dead! could have been saved! but the body still warm enough to touch! tragic girl could have been! an artist! a writer! a person! but what makes her tragic then! how could you swallow her! without spitting out! could you! could have! could have tragic girl! preserved forever! while you sit with this new safety! device & its saved lives! the flood of voices still trailing behind! tragic girl & all her undead sisters! so you feel holy for hearing them! gracious for wanting them! hero for imagining their revival! divine for sculpting all of their hypothetical lives from soft clay! or software! somewhere tragic girl sings her praise & I wonder

if she feels it! o shattering prism of clicks! o country of hands! these many glowing screens! a million fingers! pressing down

 

 

 

Sophie Paquette is a poet and essayist from Bloomington, Indiana. She attends Interlochen Arts Academy, where she serves as an editor for The Interlochen Review. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Heavy Feather Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, Midwestern Gothic, The Offing, and others.

 
HONORABLE MENTIONS: Olivia Bigboy (St.Huberts HS, Philadelphia, PA); Olivia Campbell (Methuen HS, Methuen, MA); Laila Hamer (Woddbridge Senior HS, Woddbridge, VA); Madison Vogt (Bentonville HS, Rogers, AR); Ian Jacome (Miami Arts Charter, Doral, FL); Ashlyn Langford (Timber Creek HS, Keller, TX); Katerina Drogojevic (Rome Free Academy, Rome, NY); Haley Fisher (Woodlands Secondary School, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada); Foster Hudson (Little Red Elizabeth Irwin, New York, NY); Eliza Durbin (Newton Country Day School, Boston, MA); Ellis McGinley (Capitol Theater Magnet HS, Millimantic, CT); Lily Krug (NYC iSchool, New York, NY); Sylvan Lebrun (The American School in Japan, Tokyo, Japan); Yoonjin Lim (Northfield Mount Hermon School, Mount Hermon, MA); Matthew Capone (Westwood HS, Westwood, MA); Lacie Minton (Hibriten HS, Lenoir, NC); Alison Child (Mountain Vista HS Highlands Ranch, CO); Claire Shang (Hunter College HS, NYC, NY); Stephanie Chang (Richmond Christian Secondary School, Richmond, BC, Canada); Helen Graham (Harvard-Westlake, Los Angeles, CA); Helen Quian (Richard Montgomery HS, Rockville, MD); Anjini Grover (Adlai E. Stevenson HS, Buffalo Grove, IL); Allison Armijo (El Segundo HS, El Segundo, CA); Adam Zhou (International School Manila, Taguig, the Philippines); Priya Rinkus (Rumson-Fair Haven Regional HS, Rumson, NJ); Akhila Bandlora (BASIS Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ); Rebecca Oet (Hathaway Brown, Shaker Heights, OH); Jessica XU (Haynes Academy, Metairie, LA); Grace Wang (Columbus North HS, Columbus, IN); Sandra Chen (Amador Valley HS, Pleasanton, CA); Margaret Balich (Winchester Thurston, Pittsburgh, PA); Hannah Crowley (Marblehead HS, Marblehead, MA); Star Bullen Crowe (Brooklyn HS of The Arts, Brooklyn, NY); Samantha Grace Dell’Imperio (Eastchester HS, Scarsdale, NY); Yerin Chang (Lower Moreland HS, Huntingdon Valley, PA)

TEEN SEQUINS 2018! Day 2: “After the Funeral” by Taylor Fang, Age 15

In Taylor Fang’s “After the Funeral,” grief is objectified. The poem’s first line, “I bring back everything I find,” is an apt descriptor for the work of the piece, only Fang goes deeper. Does taking things from the meadow, the outer world, endow responsibility? “How little I knew then/about the bitter destruction/I kept in my hands.” Maybe aging is learning of this tendency, this will, to destroy. Maybe part of loss, grief, is the desire to counteract destruction. “I pick out her ring/and slip it onto my finger.” The desire to protect our memories, and the objects that hold them. – Robert Auld

 

After the Funeral

I bring back everything I find
in the meadow by the house
that I grew up in
and pour it on the table.
The coffee cake, shoved sideways,
dangles over an edge.

Once, I stuck a steak knife
between two slats
on the shiplap siding of this place.
How little I knew then
about the bitter destruction
I kept in my hands.
I try to forget the days
when I wanted to die,
or become blonde, or pour flour
from the skies, covering my mouth
like dust. I press my wildflower
wounds between pages.

Last summer blooms
through the cover—
the open window, mother saying
someday you’ll thank me
and all the surrenders that came out of my mouth.
I nod. The room grows cold
around me, around this place
that will soon carry new people
and new hands
to grease the doorknobs
with their leaving.

Keys and shards of glass glitter
against wood. I pick out her ring
and slip it onto my finger. The rest
lays in waiting—
shining, beautiful,
an open field of waste.

 

Taylor Fang lives in Utah. Her poetry appears in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Cargoes, and Rookie Magazine, among others, and has been recognized by the Poetry Society UK. She enjoys playing the piano and spending time outdoors

HONORABLE MENTIONS: Quest B (South Spencer HS, Rockport, IN); Donald Berg (Kirksville HS, Kirksville, MO); Olivia Bramante (Methuen HS, Methuen, MA); Teddi Haynes (Orange County School of the Arts, Santa Ana, CA); Jeremy Hsiao (California School of the Arts, Duarte, CA); Sarah Lao (Westminster School, Atlanta, GA); Lia Marisol Portillo (South Lafourche HS, Cut Off, LA); Sarah Street (Westminster School, Atlanta, GA); Violet Tabacco (Montpelier HS, Montpelier, VT); Anna Wang (Adlai E. Stevenson HS, Lincolnshire, IL); Stephanie Yen (Beachwood HS, Beachwood, OH); Katia Camargo, Zoey Ruzic, Serena Lozandi (Miami Arts Charter School, Miami, FL)

TEEN SEQUINS 2018! DAY 1: “Moses split the red sea, but still, there was no path” by Ottavia Paluch, Age 14

In “Moses split the red sea, but still, there was no path,” we are drawn in by a murmuring voice. An old story, but Ottavia Paluch makes it new. The poem’s voice almost seems private, half-thoughts folding in on one another, occasionally surfacing to speak to us, then again, turning away. It is a voice that lives at a bus stop, quoting Old Testament passages, sometimes audibly, sometimes not. “…I was–/ no miracle. At least I tried,” says the poem, and we are drawn in, to see just why, and how. “I thought of myself / as one of those daughter plants” writes Paluch,” Quenched. Believed.” And indeed, we believe.

— Sophie Klahr

Moses split the red sea, but still, there was no path

The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.

—Exodus 14:14

I’m not sure who I would’ve belonged to. There’s

the army. The ones who crossed. The

skeptic, because perhaps it all was—and I was—

no miracle. At least I tried. At least

I could drag myself through desert roads, through propagation.

But when the tide rises, I help little but the schools of fish, so that

they can survive. Instead, I prayed–there was a saint in my view,

and I wanted to look holy enough to be worthy of death.

I asked for obedience. I colonized. I thought of myself

as one of those daughter plants. Quenched. Believed. My

thoughts soon rested in no oasis, but rather a place where they may have

never been seen before. So that I would be no sea;

so that Moses might not raise his staff

above me.

Ottavia Paluch lives in Ontario, Canada. Her work is forthcoming or published in Alexandria Quarterly, The Daphne Review, Body Without Organs, in Navigating The Maze’s 2018 anthology, and Bitter Melon.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: Ashleigh Elden (Mamaroneck HS, Mamaroneck, NY); Liliana Greyf (Horace Mann School, Bronx, NY); Esther Kim (Holton-Arms School, Bethesda, MD); Katherine Lee (Conestoga HS, Berwyn, PA); Eva Murillo (Walter Payton College Prep, Chicago, IL); Juliana Pratofiorito (Marymount School, New York City, NY); Saniah Wilson (North HS, Torrance, CA); Kaitlyn Zhou (Neuqua Valley HS, Naperville, IL); Vincent Gomez, Maia Tasker, Elyse Thomas, Emmanuel Ortiz-Ochoa (Miami Arts Charter School, Miami, FL)

Starting tomorrow: TEEN SEQUINS 2018

A dead deer, a dick pic, obedience; girlhood, sainthood; plastic flamingos and shattered language: Welcome to the 4th Annual TEEN SEQUINS celebration! We are honored this week to present another galaxy of poems.

This year, poems flew to us from all over the U.S., from Canada, Indonesia, France, Japan – from all over the world. One hundred and fifty-one teen writers (yes, you!) bravely sent us your voices , and as always, we ardently wish that we could feature more than just one poet in each age category! 

Our 2018 Teen Sequins featured poets are Ottavia Paluch (14), Taylor Fang (15), Sophie Paquette (16), Vidhima Shetty (17), Morgan Levine (18), and Annabelle Crowe (19). The work offered by these writers is exemplary of what we see teenage writing is in 2018: full of wonder and watchfulness, furious and self-aware.

As we put together this feature, it was a pleasure to realize that all of our 2018 poems are written by women, some of who are people of color, some of who are disabled. We don’t look for any particular kind of voice or background when we read work – we choose poems that chime with us most deeply- but we are proud to find that we are holding up voices which often must struggle to be heard.  

On a similar note: We read somewhere recently that women are much less likely than men to re-submit to literary journals, but our 19 year old featured poet, Annabelle, has been submitting to TEEN SEQUINS for three years, and it wasn’t until we accepted her poem this year that we realized this fact! We hope that Annabelle’s story can serve as an example to all of our teens who submitted this year, and to anyone who might read this feature – a rejection from a publication doesn’t always mean no. Sometimes it means, not yet. As Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Enjoy this week of poetry, follow along with all the Gigantic Sequins social media, and share share share this wonderful work with everyone you can! Until tomorrow…

 

Happy reading and writing,

Robby Auld and Sophie Klahr

Teen Sequins co-editors