Young Poets

October 21, 2023

“Thaathaa” by Divya Venkat SridharPosted by

Divya Venkat Sridhar (age 15)

THAATHAA

My papa’s papa used to run after the wooden cart of prasadam each dawn for food
Young feet bleeding over the rough road. I like to imagine his eyes:
bright like a brown beetle, fresh like monsoon soil,
his chest burning like metal on metal as he gulps dusty air.
He’s wearing sandbag shorts, mottled with flecks of dirt.
He’s hurdling red rock and plastic bottles, blooming like a wild indigo,
Stomach roaring in his lame body.
His small hands are cupped and trembling, so empty they could hold
a Ganges of riches, a Yamuna of flooding wealth—
only a thin paper cup of rice lands in his fingers.
 
I like to imagine the summer when we go to Hyderabad now:
he holds my hair, and I feel the lines in his palms
like parted sediment along a freshwater river.
He likes to laugh until his beetle eyes fly off into the clouds
and his face goes wrinkly like pottery on an unmanned wheel.
And when he cooks, he lays out food and food and colours
rushing around the big table to fill our hearts
with cardamom and cinnamon and cloves—his love language,
grown from a tongue once parched in poverty.
I like to imagine he’s waited for this his whole life, and this pride
takes root in me like the eternal warmth of a sunlit sky.
His feet carry me over rough road, rock and rubble,
until river, liquid gold breaks out from under his toes
like a lullaby.
 

—from 2023 Rattle Young Poets Anthology

__________

Why do you like to write poetry?

Divya Venkat Sridhar: “Poetry helps me believe in myself. It is the best feeling in the world—to know that I can create something honest, using words in a way that nobody has done before, and speak my truth.”

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October 14, 2023

“The Bellbird” by Isabella Slattery-ShannonPosted by

Isabella Slattery-Shannon (age 11)

THE BELLBIRD

The full moon, glowing at dusk,
and the audacious bellbird is calling out from his tree,
so small yet so loud.
He calls, repeats, waits, and calls again.
It makes me wonder how loud our songs are heard,
and how far they spread beyond our knowing.
 

—from 2023 Rattle Young Poets Anthology

__________

Why do you like to write poetry?

Isabella Slattery-Shannon: “I enjoy poetry because it opens a whole new world for my brain.”

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October 7, 2023

“A Cut-up Mango” by Stephanie QinPosted by

Stephanie Qin (age 12)

A CUT-UP MANGO

Cutting into the deep of this fruit, sweet and sour, just like nostalgia,
you reach to an ending point: meeting at the middle, a pit.
Flat. Long. And spread out. Thin. People usually slice it.
Once it’s cut, all of its secrets are exposed.
How much flesh is inside, how yellow it is. It’s an autopsy.
Can you imagine?
An autopsy of fruit every time you eat one.
Don’t you remember? Every time you go to the doctor’s
in one of those rooms, with a bed and a long sheet of paper, lying
on it. With a sink and full of posters, reading, “At least one fruit per day.”
Why would you go and think about mangos?
And maybe even have empathy for them?
Isn’t that what they teach you in those assemblies?
I remember, once, that the school counselor came inside,
with a big poster, and in Crayola markers written: “EMPATHY.”
But my guess is that nobody ever cared for mangos.
I didn’t really either, but I cared a little, I guess.
Maybe it was because all I ever wanted was
empathy
from people who judged me for the fact that I wasn’t able to speak English.
The first time I bought a mango in Costco: I presume
I picked it up, I chose it from stacks of cardboard boxes
with mangos on them.
I don’t really know if I am considered a mango lover.
Nah, I don’t really like them anymore.
Yesterday, all this started when I bought sliced mango, but
I picked three small pieces and gobbled them in
and that was it. Veins, popping out of the mango—
They make it taste terrible.
I swear. I hate mangos now.
They are either too sweet, or too sour.
They make my hands, table, mouth, cheeks, face
all sticky, it feels disgusting.
But did I ever change?
No.
Not really. At least I don’t think so.
I do the same foolish things, over and over again.
Did I change? Maybe yes.
I’m not as extroverted nor as enthusiastic
as when I was young, when every person who visited my house
would excite me, and I would greet them, and say goodbye happily.
Now? So, I guess I found the answer, sweet and sour.
Just like a mango.
 

—from 2023 Rattle Young Poets Anthology

__________

Why do you like to write poetry?

Stephanie Qin: “I like to write poetry as it allows me to express my feelings in a different way rather than simply speaking out. It converts my ideas into a more abstract form but at the same time shows what I’m thinking.”

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September 30, 2023

“When the Monsters Come Out” by Rose PonePosted by

Rose Pone (age 11)

WHEN THE MONSTERS COME OUT

Nighttime is when the monsters come out,
With their claws and their jaws
That gnash all about.
 
They watch you sleep,
All peaceful and deep,
 
But maybe they’re not as bad as you think.
 
Maybe they’re sad
And too scared to blink.
 
Maybe they like to roam in the dark.
 
Your small room
Is their
Amusement park.
 

—from 2023 Rattle Young Poets Anthology

__________

Why do you like to write poetry?

Rose Pone: “I enjoy writing poetry for multiple reasons. First of all, I’m simply a creative person, but writing poetry also requires knowledge and intelligence. This causes both sides of the brain to work in a manner that can only be described as satisfactory, or thirst quenching. As well as this, I enjoy the effortless escape from reality. In poetry, you can incorporate things from your life, but tamper with them however you may wish.”

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September 23, 2023

“Death Untouched, Death Crooning” by Ziqr PeehuPosted by

Ziqr Peehu (age 10)

DEATH UNTOUCHED, DEATH CROONING

My mother says
Her dog visited her in her dream,
The night it died. Death is a tragedy till you can’t go back. Till you can’t go forward
I am not a spiritual person but
I wish to touch my mother in her dream
The night I die too.
My mother tells me she used to be like me
She’d look at god and she’d look at faith
And she’d spit on it. She’d spit on it in a way that it disintegrates
Like she was hurtling acid.
She says it’s inevitable though, receiving faith.
In Hindi, you don’t have an enlightenment,
It’s something that happens to you.
In Hindi, you don’t become religious, don’t believe in a god,
You go in it. Within it.
You succumb to it.
In Hindi, it’s inevitable.
No wonder, I’ve always preferred English.
My mother knew her dog died before anyone ever told her.
My mother knew her grandmother died before the doctors told us.
My grandmother says, my mother is prone to these things.
That god chose her well and special and made her more sensitive to it.
My grandmother doesn’t say that god forsook me.
He did.
My mother knows when people die because they all visit her.
All of them.
My dog died with her face in my mother’s hands, cupped just as so.
Her dog died and came to visit her.
People do not die on my mother because she does not let them.
My mother was touched by god and in turn she touches everyone around her
She leaves us all connected to god, all of us and then we are forced to visit her when we die.
We all touch my mother when we die.
She wouldn’t have it otherwise.

—from 2023 Rattle Young Poets Anthology

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September 16, 2023

“Seomyeon Gongsajang” by Hyunsoo NamPosted by

Hyunsoo Nam (age 14)

SEOMYEON GONGSAJANG

after Philip Levine

My father would come home from a construction site in Busan
and limp down the hallway to his room. I could hear the bed sigh,
his sandals resting against the wooden floor. “You can take them,”
he’d say. Through the mirror that settled on his table, his wrinkled
face was shaped with bleached white hair and pitted nose and he
 
would be lingering in that position long after noon only to wake up
to find me gone. Ten years would pass before I’d remember
that moment when suddenly I knew each son has a father who
disappeared when he dreamed, and dreamed when he rose to face
this life, and that together they were only one person clutching each
 
other’s hands and gazing at each other’s eyes that always hovered,
hands blemished and bruised, a mouth that stuttered, asking, “Do you
think I can carry on?” All day at the Seomyeon Gongsajang my father
stacked bricks and cement while sunlight lashed at him,
and the manager howled at his workers for doing work so slow.
 
In the 70s in the district of Seomyeon, buildings and skyscrapers started
to conquer the grassland that had sprawled all over the town. The city grew.
The grass became buildings. Giwajib became apartments. The homeless
wandered and the city bloomed with neon lights, the cars and trucks hissing.
 
I give you back 1971 and the years afterwards. Give me back the swollen
face with the pitted nose, the bleached white hair. Give me back my father,
exhausted, smiling in his blue Dodgers cap and leather jacket.
 

—from 2023 Rattle Young Poets Anthology

__________

Why do you like to write poetry?

Hyunsoo Nam: “I am heavily influenced by the surrounding environment, including my school, my neighbors, and my family. I like to write poetry because I think it is the most effective way to express my thoughts and memories of other people. I also enjoy the fact that I can interconnect my theme to global issues from news and the internet.”

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September 9, 2023

“My Scooter Goes Fast Down the Hill” by Elizabeth Dozier MoshmanPosted by

Elizabeth Dozier Moshman (age 5)

MY SCOOTER GOES FAST DOWN THE HILL

and I look at the sky
and tree branches.
The sun was smiling
but I fell down. I saw
the sky again.
 

—from 2023 Rattle Young Poets Anthology

__________

Why do you like to write poetry?

Elizabeth Dozier Moshman: “I write poems because it feels like it is a miracle.”

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