Our fourth annual High School Poetry and Prose Contest is now accepting submissions! Learn more about it here!


 
 
 
 

when you’re twenty-two
& dying
to hide
the weight of life’s
weightlessness

beneath the table:
our knees’ first kiss

 
 
 

Paradise

Esteban Rodriguez

 

The sharp and salt-
scented waves are glazed like a sheet
of wrinkled cellophane, like endless

bubble wrap popping softly on the shore.

 
 
 
 

Touched by grief,
besmudged, wrapped
and ribboned.

 
 
 

Crawling Beast

Juno Wolfe

 

It was then that Mary Fisher looked for the first time upon The Body.

They got all sorts out behind the Fisher house—vagrants and peddlers camping out on their way to Jackson. Mary would snicker as she watched them struggle to find a solid patch of wetland, but once they started a fire she would head out with an apron full of Mama's snap peas and conversation.