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Two easels lay apart,
Abstracted of different mediums.
One from shimmering hope,
Other knowing only heavy demur.

In practice,
The two bonded over mixings
Of colorful palettes,
Revealing hopes and dreams,
Triumphs and downfalls,
Water both half-full and half-empty.

What former conceived,
Latter believed.
They became mural
In endless second,
And in next few decades.

 

 

The shoes – a light blue size too big,
untouched with paper filled belly.
The shoes sit tied by the bed.
Just in case
he needs to run away.
Because dragon’s fire does not
Burn hotter than
“No”

The knight will come,
but here in the night,
creatures crawl.
The giant,
who gave much more than
shoes,
looks with disapproval stretching
into eternity.
(One step.
Two step.
The dance begins every time
his shoes misstep.)

Mother is gone.
Father never was.
Just the giant waiting.
Just the tears shedding.

But years posses wings:
Feet grow.
Son trembling, father ignoring
and blue shoes protect
the soles.
Just in case
he needs to run away.

Now no fairytales;
just angry drunks
and forgotten words.
More candles on his cake
than fingers on his hand.
Empty pictures filled with
empty lies.
He sees the blackness swallowing.
And there is no light;
just an old dance.
(One step
Two step
Every time he missteps.)

The shoes have shrunk.
Shoved into bulging suitcases
full of the emptiest material
Don’t look back.
Don’t turn around.
He doesn’t notice the wet
streaming from his father’s eye.
His father, who refused
to say goodbye.
The world rearranging
and he is determined to see all
but
the Truth.

(One step,
Two step.
Farther from home.)

And now sneakers traded for loafers.
T-shirts for ties.
Jeans for slacks.
He cuts the bangs that covered his eyes
for too long.
Now he sees,
now he knows.
But he is too busy making a home.
He might call his father,
who is now normal size.
He has much to say
but distance is silencing
and being wrong never feels
right.

He gives the shoes to his boys
and reads them tales.
Shows them the plot twist-
an irony he is beginning to understand
through walls and vents,
Whispered curses of the giant.

He wishes to shrink to regular size.
but we do not grow down.
The blue shoes now spotted
Coated in memories and regrets.
No one fits them,
but he does not have the heart to throw them out;
His boys may need to run away.
They teach him a dance.
(One day.
two days.
Watching clocks fly)
But, he prays for a minute more.
A year.
A lifetime.

That lifetime comes
and goes

As he sits,
in slippers that have not seen outside
this linoleum container .
He is old enough to daydream again.
His white haired head puzzles
“How funny that he was wrong:
That giants can be knights.”
He remembers his father,
who never hit him,
never ignored him,
never left him.
Never did anything but
play the grown up.
He remembers hate overwhelming.
He hopes to be forgiven.

He hopes to run back.

Back to that house with the worn porch,
back to a room with
blue shoes too big
sitting by the bed,
just in case he decides to stay.

He breathes in air
that never tasted as sweet.
He thinks of his children.
Now, just to sleep.

They are afraid.

Afraid of my eyes,
afraid of my talons.

They think I snap,
I paralyze, I ravage.

They think I kill.

They are afraid.

Afraid of my invincibility,
afraid of my strength.

They think I am a villain.

They are afraid.

Afraid of my scales,
afraid of my fire.

They think I am vengeful,
And cruel,
And corrupt.

They think I am heartless.

But I do not kill.
I am not vengeful.
I am not cruel.
I am not corrupt.

I have a heart.

Inside my great armored chest
It beats.
Thundering loud and clear
It beats.

Inside of me,
Behind my fangs,
And my claws,
And beneath
The fire in my belly.

Behind this
Fearsome body.
Is somebody who
Just wants to love
Somebody
Who wants to be loved.

Don’t be afraid.

Discrimination and prejudice are running wild,

as rampant and untamed as a little child

Like a ferocious beat it will not be stopped

unless a decision is made by someone on top

Top, top, top like the president–

to whom evil and bad should probably be evident

I hope that this is relevant:

Gay, straight, autistic, lesbian too,

all getting hurt till they’re black & blue.

Not just fists and punches, bullies stealing lunches.

Words.

Splendid characters that illuminate a page

are being used for hate, to take out rage.

It’s hard to believe–

no, even to conceive–

The things people say and do.

But let me tell you this from me to you:

That it’s real.

It’s there.

Oh yes and it’s true.

Something needs to be done.

This disease must be cured.

I’ll do this by speaking up.

I have a right to be heard.

 

Small outcasts,
on this small evening,
in this summer city.
Rooftops grant the crows,
outcast crows a home.
The crow,
usual times, they crow,
but outcasts back up each other.
They’re not outcasts,
at least not to each other.
They’re brothers,
sisters,
and friends.
The Greatest of friends.

The outcast children,
and their parents,
and the parents of theirs,
had been outcasts to everyone else,
ever, ever since.

They’ve been sold, beaten, and outlasted,
The Crow.

The crow had been outcasts ever since,
no bird would join their feasts,
no other had terrors.
Similar to the little outcasts,
Night is where they blended in.

In about the thick corn fields,
slowly picking out only the thickest stalks,
the small children make haste;
no time to waste.

A small yell develops past the pasture,
from the landlord,
yes the landlord of those pastures,
and those thick, stalks of corn.
He hears rustling through his bushes.

Loading his gun,
he’s prepared to take back what’ his.
They, the outcasts,
they deserved to be outcasts,
for doing what they’re doing now.
Just as he starts the search,
The Crow.
The Crows,
screeching, the call of alert.

Outcasts,
not only the children,
but outcasts everywhere,
hear the call,
the call of alert.

The children run,
they leap,
they dash,
they bolt,
for their lives,
for their reputation,
to both people who came,
to be outcasts,
to save outcasts everywhere.

A time to equalize the uneven;
To save outcasts everywhere.
The Crow.

 

 

Millions of Islamic women
Held beneath the surface of possibilities
Waiting
Waiting
For the deafening tomb
Of shattered silence
To break
I am one of them
Those women
Held away from freedom
From a life of the maximum
Whispers, murmurs and mumbles
Float through the air
Taunting me
Accusing me
Of something I have not yet done
A soft prayer spoken in whispered, warning words
Reaches me
Strangling
Scarring
I will never forget
Those hungry words
Now I realize
When foreign women walk by me
Wearing red
It is my favorite color
My khimar
Black as a raven’s wing
My friends say green is better
Green is life
I like red
They say black is the color of rebellion
I smile and nod my head
Seemingly oblivious to the fact I am wearing
Red
Shoes
Now taken to the mosque
To be “disciplined”
Can’t they see
I am already too far gone?
I see the cracks
In this dystopia
An earthquake struck here
No one felt it
Only I
Am gazing on
The effects
My former life
Far out of reach
A mermaid lost to the foam of the sea
Choices made
Without segregation
Is it possible to change
A man of my own
Married for love
The wind blows
A butterfly by
Floating
Carefree
Soon, that will be me
Millions of Islamic women
Trapped beneath the surface of possibilities
Struggling to breathe
Waiting
Watching
For finally
One
Just one
Is breaking free

WINNER: Erin Farrell
, CB East High School
Coarse Heels

They say it’s impossible to get lost in North America now
Since they’ve commercialized
and vandalized
with infrastructure and order and rigidity and organization
The natural world – taming everything they decided was wild and proclaiming it savage
and     uncivilized and wrong because it wasn’t like us, the rugged individualists
But they – yes, that same they
That damned they that’s always there with their sayings
They say nothing is impossible
not one gaping abyss of normalcy nor a massive cataclysm of adventure
                        nothing
But sometimes, that’s just all you want to do – get lost
Or maybe it’s just me
I just want to escape the suburban catacombs in which I’m already buried and die somewhere exotic as someone different
Or maybe it’s we – maybe you, too
Maybe it is you and you’ll prove them wrong
Hopefully it’s you: I still have hope for you, I really do
that you’ll live and not just wait
It’s all you want to do sometimes
Run
Hole up in some deep dark oblivion and never speak again
It’s all those meaningless things that are frivolous things and so absolutely thing-y and material that you’re running from
And the people who have become things because of their obsession with things
Just hop on a train and watch the steam swallow the sky
Cut your ties – your losses
Just drive
Hide in the back of a rusty red pickup and smell burning light bulbs of old headlights and
decaying wood and dirty wrenches and oil and talcum
Thumb a big rig and get lost
Just get lost and never find your way back
but find a way forward
shove a door open with a shoeless foot and disregard the past recklessly
Oh, just do something reckless, utterly reckless, like run away
Pedal somewhere on that old bike and never turn back
Have a false identity
To be a stranger and find another stranger in a strange world
and just moonlight-dance and sing and be strange
just run
You want dirt in your hair and under your nails
Grime at your wrists and on your feet
The only soap the running stream
The only comb your fingers
Feel hunger and need just to feel something even if it’s pain
You’ll chase nothing but the idea of something to the ends of the earth
                        and when you’re there you won’t fall off but you’ll dive off
and swim into some forbidden celestial chasm
bare and unafraid of what might be swimming with you and the stars
                        submerged in the black and one with it because you let go and ran
                        living in a room you made out of the mountainside
Because you’re you and you ran because you could not because you should because you shouldn’t have but you did
You ran because it was what you wanted
You weren’t afraid to want and lose and defy and trespass and feel and take risks
You did what you wanted and are free
Could you imagine that liberty
Tearing your coarse heels on cracked black pavement and watching the yellow lines skid
beneath you in a wild blur
wild like you
Even though you’ll die someday
but not until you’ve lived, you restless soul, lived and you were wild
But maybe some things really are impossible
They’re wrong either way
And they’re right, too

RUNNER UP: Matthew Kolosick, 
CB East High School
Laundry

Have you ever been to a laundromat?
Walked through double doors to rows of silver fed beasts set to devour?
At least they’re kind enough to return their food
Though it comes sodden and chewed
Like a mother bird feeding its baby.
Though this mother has but one child,
And it is stranded, huddled between its fellow orphans.
Relying on you for sustenance.
Have you ever been to a laundromat?
Sat down and watched your clothes
Cycle up then down, wet then dry?
Asked yourself why it is we only handle them when they’re wet?
And spend the whole time protecting ourselves behind glass doors?
Have you ever washed clothes by hand?
Hung them out spaced and tall?
Watched the fabrics as they dry in time with your hands?
Just twine and wood and water
Bringing out a silver shine in the flesh of your palms.
But you get to keep this silver
Even though it comes and goes with the basket
And the washbasin where you rescue the clothes from drowning,
Then proceed to hang them by their necks
High above.
A warning for all to see.

 

 

Philly Girls Read are all 5th graders at Independence Charter School. Teacher Corey Michener started Philly Girls Read as a curriculum, guide, and way of life that teaches girls how to read actively and create their own advocacy campaigns for the causes they care about. This is an exercise in essential values and core beliefs. We frequently discuss what it means to be an advocate and what kind of things do we advocate for. Here are some poems the girls wrote to discuss issues they find important in their own lives.

Advocate
Verb: to speak or write in favor of; support or urge by argument; recommend publicly.
Noun: a person who speaks or writes in support or defense of a person, cause, etc

Teacher Corey 
I am an advocate of drinking mint tea when you are feeling ill.
I am an advocate of marrying who you love, because you love them.
I am an advocate of solving things with your words, not your fists.

I am an advocate for anyone without a high school degree that wants one.
I am an advocate for animals without a voice that need to be taken care of.
I am an advocate for families that deserve more time together at the end of the day.

I advocate for Sundays filled with brunch and friends.
I advocate for literacy among urban youth in Philadelphia.
I advocate for farming and eating things you grow yourself.

Dasia
I advocate for my religion.
I am an advocate of life, for being myself.
I am an advocate for being strong and being more brave.
I am an advocate for working really hard in school.
I am an advocate of being a relaxing person, who cares for a lot of things.

Nasya
I am an advocate of God.
I advocate for my family.
I advocate to BE ME!
I advocate to believe in myself.
I advocate to stop WAR!!

Colette
I am an advocate of swimming.
I am an advocate of gymnastics.
I am an advocate of diving.
I advocate for love.
I advocate for writing a diary.
I advocate for writing.
I advocate for stopping the wars.
I am an advocate for turning my homework in on time.
I am an advocate for getting an education.
I am an advocate for getting a diploma.

Juliana
I advocate for obsessing over your wedding; mine will be to Harry Styles.
I advocate for helping my mom with the dishes.
I advocate for laughing awkwardly.
I advocate for dancing at random times.
I advocate for going on the internet ALL DAY!
I advocate for writing in my diary.
I advocate for painting my nails.
I advocate for giggling with my BFFs.
I advocate for crying my eyes out when I need a good cry.
I advocate for donating my hair to “locks of love” at my haircuts.
I advocate for being sad when something bad comes on the news.

Citlalic 
I am an advocate for the earth.
I am an advocate for weird people.
I am an advocate for helping families.
I am an advocate for people that have cancer. GO PINK!
I am an advocate for Catholic people.
I am an advocate for the ICS community.

Leslie 
I advocate for helping my mom clean the house.
I am an advocate for my family.
I am an advocate for helping.
I am an advocate for helping make people laugh.

Georjelis 
I advocate for my baby sister.
I advocate to be weird sometimes.
I advocate for Philly Girls Read, nationwide.
I advocate to talk by yourself or someone when you feel sad.
I advocate for sick people.
I advocate for finishing high school and college.

 

 

1-3 GRADE WINNER

Addy Deloffre
, Maple Glen Elementary
Tornado
Here comes the tornado
on quick and speedy legs.
It is fast and never stops.
It is sneaky and ready to catch its prey.
It is running and spinning and never stops
and then it goes away.

1-3 GRADE RUNNER UP

Zachary Porter, 
Plymouth Elementary
The Field
A Dusty, windy
Saturday
Late at night
Fans cheering, bats cracking
Baseballs flying, bats swinging
Pitching, running
In the spring
Ready to play

4-6 GRADE WINNER

Hana Kenworthy, 
Colonial Middle School
Laylah
With a swish, the flock of light-birds move
as the screeching calls stop.
Two stars suddenly burst into worlds of unseen
dull, ugly straw rocks back and forth,
becoming a new shade of molten gold, 
until it is no longer simple food for livestock,
but beams of captured sunlight.
Bubbling, the liquid in a pot hurls
into small pits, then
silence. Only the wind ripples through.
The liquid is no longer. Two hands rise,
clutching nothing, nothing but themselves.
Drops fall, splattering. Two lines, 
of rain and life together,
childishly pout of unfairness, of anger. 
Above juts a cliff, darkness spouting.
5 cylinders spring into place, below and above, 
battered from the effort.
She reaches up, grasping for warmth, 
the warmth of one,
the one who made her… But she stiffens, cracks.
And she is no more.

4-6 GRADE RUNNER UP

Priya Padhye
, Wissahickon Middle School
Paper Building
Last night,
I built a building out of paper.
It was constructed from the lead of my pencil,
The tremors of my fingers,
And the creativity of a genius, or a madman.
Then, in a rage, like that of a baby when his wish is denied,
I struck down my building.
Down, down, down it fell,
Building blocks tumbling askew.
Should I have known better,
I wouldn’t have set it afloat, out the window, like I did then.

And so upon the updraft it fluttered.
My sweat and energy, all of it wasted
Upon the breath of the wind.
I let it fall, fall, fall,
Down into the sewer,
And it was consumed by the pernicious muck
That can only be found in the aforementioned sewer.
And unfortunately, the only creatures that could indulge
In the pleasure that my building held
Were the rats.

Back at home, I was no longer cross
And I lamented the loss of the building I had scorned
Realizing its evanescence
And its beauty,
Though it was just the product of me soliloquizing
And writing down my spoken thoughts,
All at one time.
Though it was just an abstract thought,
Such as the one I am writing down right now,
Something about, something in it– the essence of it, perhaps,
Seemed magical.
I had nurtured it for nothing more than a few seconds,
Yet for some reason, this was no trivial matter.
A connection had been severed,
And I felt something die deep inside me.
That in itself
Is what perplexes me.
How do you know you’ve lost something
if it never truly existed?

7-9 GRADE WINNER

Leanne Siorek
, Norristown High School
Target Practice
Target practice.
It’s all about target practice.
Cupid messed up his arrows and they struck me right in the eye,
but my lips still know how to aim for yours.
I have the capability to painfully wrap my arms around your torso
and I get urges to constrict your ribcage as if to convince your heart to beat again.
I know how to look you in the eyes
when yours dart around the room to avoid my questions
and I hear words you’ve kept in the back of your throat 
like coiled serpents flicking their tongues through your teeth.
I see your nervous habits like nails down to the quick
and guess how fast your lips chap when you lick them
before delicately plucking out words from the inside of your mind
just to flow over your taste buds like rivers of every consolidation you’ve ever
learned
and I know this.
I know how every joint sounds when you pop it.
I know the look your face contorts to when you cry
and how low you hang your head
as if the weight of the world rested on your defined shoulders.
I know the taste of your body so well I could manufacture recipes and sell them,
and how slightly crooked your bottom teeth are
because I’ve studied the bite marks you leave
like a first semester college student.
Cupid may have missed but not nearly as greatly as I’ve missed you.
Target practice makes for a perfect shot, but I’ll just have to settle with aiming for
your cheek.

7-9 GRADE RUNNER UP

Jaycie Clerico, 
Spring-Ford
See You Soon
I’ll see you soon my friend, my friend.
I’ll see you oh so soon.
We’ll have to meet for tea at fifty seconds until noon.
I’ll see you soon my friend, my friend.
I’ll see you oh so soon.
We’ll sing the song we happily sing,
The one with the catchy tune.
I’ll see you soon my friend, my friend.
I’ll see you oh so soon.
Just meet me at the park
And make sure you wear your hat of maroon.

10-12 GRADE WINNER

Haley Gordon
, Cheltenham High School
Last Period of the Day (in May)
that antsy feeling in your forearms
that makes you hug yourself violently
and you have to bite your lip
because you can’t scream
but outside it’s sunny and warm
and you are trapped inside
and that person (that one person you hate)
raises her hand three thousand times
and says nothing that you can understand, 
but squawks as if asking for a slap in a rare bird language
and you can’t give her what she must be asking for
because an in-school would probably be worse than sitting here
but only probably
and that teacher makes the joke he made on the first day of school
and the second and fifth and twenty ninth and forty second
and you don’t even groan because expending that much energy
risks you dissolving into a pool of drool and sweat and angst
which would be unfair to the janitors
and ultimately make walking to your locker take even longer than usual
and that clock is almost definitely most likely five minutes slow
and you can’t verify that with your phone because four people have been scolded already
and there’s no defense when you’ve heard four people get scolded
meaning you have to sit and stare as the second hand stares back unmoving
obviously just to spite you
and now even though the teacher is looking for volunteers you can’t look away because then it wins
so you get called on, and you lose the contest only to say
that you didn’t hear what the question was and would he repeat it
but of course that only brings on another lecture on the importance of attention 
even though he “understands” that it’s the last period 
of a beautiful day
in May