Selected Pieces Poetry | Write to Right

Anchor 1

Celebration

Tom Barlow

My city is scarred like the thigh of a teen with

a razor blade and each street serves to separate those

whose hands are cupped from those who glory in

treasure, those who promenade in Dior from

those whose last meal was a squirt of Naloxone.

We are as inattentive to the basement of this city as the

boy walking the tracks with his Beats cranked up

until the hook and the train arrive at the same time.

My city squanders a fortune on stadia for those who

worship uniforms at the same time it sends a dozer

to the camps along the tracks where psychosis shouts

like a drill sergeant and those who live in those tents

jump to attention and you could search all day and never

find a heart there that beats as loud as a Mercedes Benz.

The winter comes and those who do not flee south burrow

deep in their cardboard and dream of fires and sour families.

Pain tunes them up every morning, sending them back out

to the street to face the good citizens who stare with boredom

from office buildings and patrol cars, who see the wrappings

and judge the whole package a wound that eats stitches,

shake their heads and return to their portfolios and

plans for another celebration of themselves.

Tom Barlow is an Ohio writer of poetry, short stories and novels. His work has appeared in journals including Trampoline, Ekphrastic Review, Voicemail Poetry, Hobart, Tenemos, Redivider, The North Dakota Quarterly, The New York Quarterly, The Modern Poetry Quarterly, and many more. See more at tombarlowauthor.com.

Anchor 2

I Mourn for the Gene Pool and Its Unavoidable Clutch On the Human Soul

Rebecca Aponte

I mourn for the gene pool and its clutch that no one can escape.

A young girl, banging her head against the shag floor

Which reeks of english muffin crumbs and roller skates from decades ago Yearns for someone to love her without sharing their insufferable burdens. The archaic surroundings mean nothing to her, she

Resents it and begs to break free, each pound of her head a blaze of fire from her heart But the old crab won’t let her. She peers at the girl through bloodshot eyes Like a hawk awaiting prey. Her stained nightgown and thin, unwashed white hair Emanates power, fierceness that will always prevail over childlike desperation. Her past drags across the carpet like rusty chains, and with every heaving breath The rust flies through the air and wearily clings to the little girl

Hoping to keep her fateful legacy continuing forever.

I mourn for the gene pool and its relentless weight on the mind.

An exhausted daughter-in-law, lying underneath a blanket

Adorned with pancake batter and tear-stained tissues

Wishes to find answers within a question-stricken world.

Her voice grows raspy and strained after endless nights of

Screaming to God asking why men who left their wives leaving nothing But shirts to iron and late birthday cards with no money in them Were forced into her bloodstream like a drug.

She has no choice but to serve as the provider these men never were, Now grizzled and dangerous underneath a mask of quiet.

She anxiously turns on the stove to cook for them, unaware of

The plantain-stained oil splattering onto her skin and leaving deep marks of red.

I mourn for the gene pool and its detrimental impact on the young. A loving father, once sprightly with life but rapidly languishing, is Shaking with emotion in his final moments of agony.

His son found him this way—he does not yet understand the pain of Organs being ripped out and flesh being stitched together as if nothing ever happened But what is easily translated is the neverending stillness after the long battle. A little boy has become fatherless, unable to stand after

The one who taught him how to walk has lost the grip of his hand. He grows up within fleeting moments, and soon finds himself

Working late into the night, plotting a way out, saving every earning and Stray penny from the mall fountain to afford an engagement ring. Then, his past can be erased from his memory.

I mourn for the gene pool and the innocent hearts trapped inside it. A precious soul, still in his mother’s womb,

Remains frighteningly beautiful during his last moments of purity. He doesn’t yet understand where his parents came from

And the forsaken, disadvantaged future he is subjected to.

His father and his father’s father were born this way, too,

Wandering the earth alone before even entering it for the first time. They lacked the support and love to carry the baggage of their ancestors And are left to take everything on themselves and leave the rest

For the generations to come. Tell me: why can’t we move on from our past?

There is more to our lives than the obligations we are forced into, isn’t there? I mourn for the gene pool, but I mourn for us, too.

Rebecca Aponte is a sophomore from Knoxville, Tennessee. In the summers of 2019 and 2022, she attended a creative writing program at Interlochen Center for the Arts, where she studied a variety of poetry and prose styles, constructively critiqued the work of her colleagues, and showcased her own work. She is the head editor and 2023 Spring Writing Contest Winner of her school's Pierian literary publication, is the founder of a chapter of the organization, Poetry Out Loud, and has submitted to both the Scholastic and Adroit Journals. In her free time, Rebecca is an orchestral and chamber violinist and is on her school's swim and mock trial teams.

Anchor 3

911 Call & A Poet

Louis Faber

911 Call

Needs help, drugs

can't find him

black and alone

Naked in the street

sirens, three, no five

down on the ground

snowing

comply

am complying,

cuffed stil naked

agitated, drugs

spit bag on head

three on back

still naked

still snowing,

now seven

ambulance

start CPR

still, still naked

loaded into ambulance

pronounced dead

five months silence

Chief lied,

Mayor says

we all failed

Black, dead

cops suspended

home with families.

Anchor 4

A Poet

is a child who

on seeing a blank page

must fill it with dreams

hears the song of the nightingale

in the din of passing traffic

comforts the lonely mother recalling

the pain of a thousand births

sees in each passing cloud

the ashes of a generation

feels the heat of the sun

amidst the winter’s blizzard

carries the bones of young men

from the fields on which they fell

cries with the child

hobbling on war shattered legs

curses the generals whose souls

have been cast off on the field of battle

cannot forget, trading

nightmares for dreams.

Louis Faber’s work has previously appeared in Constellations, Parcham Journal (India), Alchemy Spoon (U.K.), Arena Magazine (Australia), Dreich (Scotland), Atlanta Review, The Poet (U.K.), Glimpse, Defenestration, New Feathers Anthology, Tomorrow and Tomorrow, North of Oxford, Rattle, Pearl, Midstream, European Judaism, The South Carolina Review and Worcester Review, among many others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He lives with his wife and cat (who claims to be his editor) in Port Saint Lucie, Florida.

Anchor 5

American Flag

Sydney Mann

walk like legs do not shake on divided city sidewalk

left bright white lighting on closed shop

Right green park turned military car park

Forward unavoidable red sea (and i am not moses)

Back white face flaccid pink tongue jeering at you

Everything is white and red now

no blue, this is america and america has never been whole

But you must move, body

Pass the signs that make you want to sign for help

But behind you

White man who will put you in chains before your mothers

arms White women who will crush you underfoot before offered hand

Red sign calling for death extermination eradication or future greatness of country

Red is this future?

And behind you the whitehouse, the capital, the washington monument

Behind you, white limestone

And if i squint hard enough i can see it, see

Red of slaves slaving over symbol of freedom

(because american freedom is white power painted red in the hopes we are color blind and will think the red is brown and celebrate that our future mass grave has our skin tone as if it wasn't built out of brown bodies to begin with)

Is the future visiting me on this sidewalk, is it red?

Red of blood down storm drain

Red of blood on white palm that could belong to anyone, but

The blood is surely ours and

It will stain white traffic line red and no cars will pass

Not because there is blood, a body, in the street

But because this is america and you do not go on red

And you will see white and red for all of time

White your mother will dress her only daughters body in after “15 year old murdered in violent insurrection, body left in the street now stained

Red” is everything I see now

White house gate protected by

Red rubber bullets shot at

White skin that will protest but will not bleed

Red for us when we say

White power is death, it is death

And I will die here in this street surrounded by red and white

Wondering if i would have survived if I had seen blue Or would it mean

White cop coe to shoot me even though hands up covered Red in my own blood, can I staunch a bullet hole? Or do I die a second time on this street?

On my knees, at America’s mercy

Yelling, fuck your red white and blue

Sydney Mann is a senior at Sidwell Friends in Washington, DC. Her first poem was named “I am not a Princess” and was an exploration of femininity in classic tales. She won runner-up in the Folger National Shakespeare Sonnet Competition, with a sonnet focused on the passing of her grandmother. Since then, much of her work, both poetry, and prose, has focused on the maternal relationships in her life, grieving, womanhood, race, and mental health.

Anchor 6

The Last Women on Earth

Lily Scheckner

The fifth last woman on earth

Will envy her brethren

Who find sisterhood

In the dirt that envelops them

The fourth last woman on earth

Will write her will in blood

On a diner napkin

My ashes should be scattered

At the edges of the world

With no gravestone to mark them

The third last woman on earth

Will remember her mother

Who said:

“When they come,

Set yourself on fire”

The second last woman on earth

Will take a knife to her breasts

And burn

All the bloody cotton-

Candy-flavored lip glosses

And heart-shaped necklaces

The last woman on earth

Will flee to the forest

Where tender wolves

Will feast on her blue flesh

To save her

From the beasts

Who ask to be buried atop her

The last women on earth

(Done running from the smell of piss and old beer)

Will die ugly and gladly

Lily Scheckner is a tenth grader at Montgomery Blair High School. She is attending Interlochen Center for the Arts this upcoming summer and is a literary editor of a magazine at her school. Outside of school, she is a writer, reader, and activist.

Anchor 7

A Hymn Within the Horror

Audrey Crocco

Amidst the metropolis of Kyiv,

under the eclipse of totalitarianism and persecution,

beneath the caliginous stratosphere,

amongst the mere contours of former autonomies,

a sweet, euphonious gospel breathes in a whisper.

A hymn, permeating within the erosion–

a song of salvation:

the choreography of rainfall following the drought.

Sporadic pulsations after an isolated exhale.

Western vain and ignorance;

a blind eye turned to international grief.

The insistent nature of history:

Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Yemen.

Withal, if you let the disharmony lull,

if you nurture the divinest mutiny,

refusing the monopoly of bystanderism,

a hymn–an unrelenting melody of hope–is heard thrumming through even

the most devastated backstreets.

Amidst the immorality,

amidst the grief,

a hymn stirs.

Audrey Crocco is an 11th grader at Madison Public High School. Crocco has been published in Highlights Magazine, Sustainable Lehigh Valley, Ruckus, and has won the 2022 regional Scholastic Gold Key Award for excellence in poetry. She is passionate about volunteer services, including her self-ran non-profit, and she has attended over twelve activist demonstrations regarding Women’s Rights, climate change, fighting against racial injustice, LGBTQIA+ rights, and advocating for civil rights.

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