Wordplay: Just Buffalo's Anthology of Student Writing (2024)

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Come write with us!

JUST BUFFALO JUST BUFFALO

AFTERSCHOOL CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM FREE AGES 12–18

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JUSTBUFFALO.ORG

Wordplay

2024

Wordplay Volume 21 2024 Edited by Robin Lee Jordan Christina Vega-Westhoff Design by Jake Reber

Just Buffalo Literary Center 468 Washington Street 2nd Floor Buffalo NY 14203

Just Buffalo Staff Barbara Cole: Executive & Artistic Director Noah Falck: Literary Director Robin Lee Jordan: Writing Center Director Lynda Kaszubski: Operations Manager Christina Vega-Westhoff: Writing Center Coordinator Myari Ware: Communications Coordinator Just Buffalo Board Board Officers Michael C. Angelucci: President Pauline Muto: Vice President Thomas F. Hewner: Treasurer Sandra Block, M.D.: Secretary Board Members James Bachwitz Kanika Durland Collin Gehl Geraldine Grossman Gwen Ito Elizabeth Pascal Funders Just Buffalo Literary Leadership Circle Adele & George DeTitta Children's Foundation of Erie County Conable Family Foundation Gabriel Bump The James D. and Victoria B. Newman Foundation Robert J. and Martha B. Fierle Foundation Simple Gifts Fund Anne E. Conable The Cameron and Jane Baird Foundation

Welcome to Wordplay At Just Buffalo Literary Center, we believe in the love of reading, the art of writing, and the power of the literary arts to transform lives and communities. Wordplay, an anthology featuring the writing of young people composed during our education programs, performs every part of this mission.

In this issue, you’ll find work from a number of digital and small print publications we’ve made since our last installment of Wordplay. You’ll also find creations from the phenomenal young artists that spent time with us this past year in community spaces, at schools, and through Just Buffalo’s Writing Center — a free, afterschool creative writing program for teens.

JBWC Youth Ambassador, Abuk Aleu, summed up the incredible impact programs like ours can have on young people when she spoke at the 2023 Erie County Cultural Funding Hearing: “When a child picks up a pen and decides to write from a place outside of what is expected, they are stamping something worth mentioning, they are finding ways to comprehend and to be comprehended and in this way spaces such as Just Buffalo are integral. This is where I’ve seen planted seeds blossom under all conditions. We need creative spaces that allow youth to change the narrative—that permit the exploration of self outside of what is demanded of us. Just Buffalo is just that—Just Buffalo is home.”

In the following pages, you’ll see just what happens when a young writer picks up a pen with an unfettered invitation to find a home in words.

Robin Lee Jordan (Writing Center Director) Christina Vega-Westhoff (Writing Center Coordinator) Noah Falck (Literary Director)

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CONTENTS Welcome to Wordplay

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Featured Publications and Writers Transmissions Zelda Abramovich, DEAD BIRDS AND CHAINED NATIONS Grif Oberholtzer, UNTITLED Zeki Ozay, ZOMBIE MOVIE Echo Martinez, I SAID I LOVE YOU

11 13 14 15

Stepping into Your Light Abuk Aleu, V.IO.L.EN.CE Mia Kirisits, DIGESTIBLE ANGER (excerpt) Santhana Sivaselvan, FINDING OUR FIRE Shamara Nesarajah, READY TO BE ME

19 21 22 25

A Healthy Place Mia Finch, UNTITLED Kamya Martin-Gamblin, UNTITLED Rezen Shedrick, AN IDEAL WORLD Jayla Yancey, BLOOM

31 32 33 34

Midnight’s Dusky Arms [And Homes] Frankie Levin, THE HUM, THE BUTTERFLY Haya Elamir, I SAW NO WAY Keira VanDerBeck, DEATH BY SAPPHIC LOVE Lucen, SUNLIGHT ALONG

39 40 41 42

The Ground Beneath Our Feet L. Hartpence, BLUE 2050 Marie McGuff-Zelaya, ON DEATH, PLANETS, AND VERBIAGE Liam Rio, HALF A RAIN Bella Lamberty, FORGIVE ME EARTH, FOR I TRIED TO GROW

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Here’s Where I Make a Little Space for You Abuk Aleu, DEAR LITTLE BLACK GIRL Nzingha Cameron, A BLACK WOMAN’S POWER

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Theo Bellavia-Frank, THE TREE OF LIFE IN RORSCHACH

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Eyes Tied Together Leandra Bell, BLACK BEAUTY Willow Dilweg, UNTITLED danny merlino, UNTITLED Leni Schlageter, I SAW HER FACE IN EVERYTHING

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Hope Blooms from Shattered Roots Theo Bellavia-Frank, IS IT SO Emma, LETTER TO SENSATIVE GIRLS Angel Barber, LOVERS STUCK IN A PLACE Zanaya Hussain, YOU ARE WHAT I LOVE

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JBWC Youth Fellows Jonah Ruddock, FIRST SERMON Lindsay Cobb, A HAUNTING ON ELMWOOD AVENUE Angelina Tang, WALK ME TO THE GARDEN’S CENTER BEFORE BREAKING THE MIRROR PLEASE Sophie Zhu, HUMAN, IF ANYTHING M!LLIE RAEE, 2020 VISION

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Made-to-Order Poems Athena Clabeaux, DEAR BROWN-EYED GIRL Collaborative poem, FOR RICHIE Abuk Aleu, INTERLINKED

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JBWC Youth Writing Zelda Abramovich and Leni Schlageter, PREJUDICE Abuk Aleu, AFTER WAVES Paulina Bargnesi, A GOD’S LIGHT Vanessa Bobo, DON’T BLINK Rosemary Bodine, NOTE TO SELF Pride David, THIS YEAR, LAST YEAR, AND THE NEXT (excerpt) Michael DeLaPlante, THE DAUNTLESS GLITTERATI Amelia Holt-Smith, ISABELLINE (excerpt) Nautica Illas, STARLIGHT BLOOD Alaina Kubiak, OH Anna Kubiak, WHERE DID THE MOON COME FROM? Rebekah Lafferty, THE BIRDS NEED YOU

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Orla O’Donnell Ramirez, SHE Wan’ye Rhodes-Carter, CODE RED Leah Roache, GRAPHIC NOVEL GUIDE BY AN AMATEUR Pierson Schwartz, THE BUSTLING HEART Angelina Tang, SLENOID // SOULMATE Mila Tunkey, NOSTALGIA OF NOW Keira VanderBeck, TOYS

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TRANSMISSIONS (2023)

At the Writing Center, we have the honor to be privy to the work of the next generation of artists and thinkers. Periodically JBWC Youth Ambassadors select and edit creations by writers involved with the Writing Center to share in our digital publication Transmissions.

Zelda Abramovich |

a future bleeding fast food grease in my carpet doesn’t come out of the closest but i’m caught on the frame of the window to the west sunrises because we couldn’t afford sunsets on my grave as i brush away dandelions back don't come closer is how i feel to Jonathan Swift in english class action lawsuits are the same as test me one last time and i might just jump onto a moving train me how to punctuate sentences but not how to tie my shoes have holes in their feet but i won't replace them he will say over the clatter of sewing machines write poetry now did you know that there have only been 373 school shootings since columbine sunflower daffodil poppy seeds like gravel in my socks as i walk into the supermarket to count the wrappers in my back pocket the change and tell my kids i love them unconditionally depends on my health conditions and hope depends on my doctors omissions of a word here and there you are i've been looking for my purpose i think i lost it with my temper when i punched that kid at the amusement parking lots are graves of only children can understand Jefferson’s folly that draws me to water like a one of those bugs that live in small pools of monday morning sunshine good night moonshine and coke make a hell of a way to start a tuesday we will reimagine democracy as it crumbles into your hand me the duct tape i want to salvage this shitstorm but i can't see outside of my house is a dead bird splattered

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across the street glass shatters at two in the mourning but no funeral cause no one can find where they keep the ashes were the first sign of Pompeii being buried alive and then dead on the freeway to a chained nation there’s a phantom tollbooth and a watch as the streets blur into standardized tests for an unstandardized population control is painting a gun pink and calling it a rose by any other name me a monument that doesn’t perpetuate a white man’s burden rests on the shoulders of our children are the future the adults always say cause they don't want to fix it themselves cause no one can fix this living hell but the future and i'm worried for her

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Grif Oberholtzer |

UNTITLED To all the transgender lives taken from us this year.

May they rest in peace.

I struggled to write this poem.

The words wouldn’t come to me.

To form a sentence on how it feels to exist as a trans youth in a world that wouldn’t hesitate to kill you.

I wrote, and deleted it, wrote some more, and deleted it.

I thought, maybe, just maybe, I simply wasn’t good at this.

And then I realized, after looking at comments going back and forth about what’s right and what’s not, who is human, who is a demon, and so on.

That there are no words for it.

There are no words that describe how it feels to see people debate your existence, to walk into a bathroom, knowing that could be your last time seeing family, to watch laws being made to try and terminate you from existence, to see yet another innocent life taken.

I’m human, but people try to pry that word from my grasp, as if we are sent from hell with destroying earth as our task.

Scared of our existence threatening your superiority.

As if all we asked for wasn’t just to live equally.

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Zeki Ozay | City Honors School

ZOMBIE MOVIE

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Echo Martinez |

I SAID I LOVED YOU after June Jordan

I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I JUST WANTED TO BE SAFE I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED YOU TO CARE I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED YOU TO BE THERE BUT INSTEAD YOU JUST DROVE ME INSANE WHAT IS SOMETHING THAT U MISS? HOW WILL YOU GET IT BACK? WHAT DOES YOUR IDEAL WORLD LOOK LIKE? SOUND LIKE? GUIDE US WITH YOUR SENSES. WHAT IS ANOTHER STORY YOU WANT TO SHARE WITH THE WORLD?

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STEPPING INTO YOUR LIGHT (2024)

Just Buffalo Writing Center, The Burchfield Penney Art Center, and Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center collaborated on Stepping Into Your Light, a project celebrating the work of esteemed portrait artist Julia Bottoms as well as the life and legacy of trailblazing politician Shirley Chisholm. Digital artists with Buffalo Center for Arts & Technology made an artfullycrafted digital publication of the final creations that you can explore on our website.

Abuk Aleu | Buffalo Academy of the Sacred Heart

V.IO.L.EN.CE

after “Postcolonial Love Poem” by Natalie Diaz

loopings of elongated conversations held together by centuries long forts is how I’ve learned to recognize violence To comprehend the extraction of force To speak of suppression without a colonel holding Colt revolver to neck And to God I askHow to birth a nation without splicing half-whole Plasma leaking off ruins—half-empty Scripture lingering at the cusp How to inhale breath that does not make the tongue reak of genocide To comprend structure This is how I’ve learned to hold nations upon nations—with a tight fold grip That is to name an infliction R U I N That is to tell a lie leaking out—is spilled ink of a narrative i did not write That is to say that the grass is only greener when you pluck it from the root and spray a fallacy I am speaking in a mother tongue that has only met my own with force meaning This is War: a state of armed conflict between differing nations My armor: the global south And my weapon of choice—speech in an attempt to silence That is to say that I dream in saccharine despite the metallics 21

That is to see ——pouring out is spilled ink of a narrative that I will write That is to declare that I am love and light That is to know that I am no longer violence but its resilient aftermath

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Mia Kirisits | City Honors School

DIGESTIBLE ANGER (excerpt) Like a cup overflowing, I race like water down a hardwood coffee table I feel my legs burn with the exhaustion Risking stealing a glance I turn and see the light shrinking behind me I pause and look up My chest heaving as ice fills my lungs The stars above wink down at me, Urging my body to turn around and accept the light into my life “Let it warm you” “Let it thaw your frozen heart” Instead, I collapse into the grass And for the first time in my life, I don’t care that I’m getting mud on my clothes, dried grass threading through my hair The stars beckon me, Ask me how long I will lie and STARE They wonder how much time I will waste envying their light What they don’t understand is that my light is not as gentle as theirs She doesn’t settle into my soul, gently crawling to rest My light is jagged and harsh and angry Above all else, my light is hot with rage So yes it is easier to relish in the light of others, How do you stuff something so violent into your body?

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Santhana Sivaselvan | The Park School of Buffalo

FINDING OUR FIRE

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Shamara Nesarajah | The Park School of Buffalo

READY TO BE ME Intro: C F Am G C Verse One C F Am Sometimes I feel so different, like an outcast C G F C Always alone, afraid to be myself C F Am Will people accept me for who I am C F G Should I spread my wings and fly?

Pre Chorus C F C G F Am G Maybe it’s time to step into my light and show them who I truly am C F C F G Maybe it’s ok to be one in a million

Chorus C F C I won’t walk I’ll run G F C I’ll chase after my dreams F C F G I won’t make progress by standing on the sidelines C F C G Am So I won’t whimper, I won’t complain F C F G I’m done blending in, I’m going to stand out 27

C F C G Time to let go of all the negative thoughts C F C G I won’t give up no I won’t give in C I’m ready to be me

Verse Two C F Am Sometimes I just want to shut myself out C G F C Hold everything in, hide my flame C F C G Am Maybe I shouldn’t care what they think of me C F G I want to live my dreams

F G F G C F C I’ll take every opportunity, I won’t back down F C Am G I won’t let people tell me what I can’t do F G F G Now’s my time to make my dreams a reality F G I just have to be me

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Below are some quotations by Shirley Chisholm that I reference in the song: “I ran because somebody had to do it first. In this country, everybody is supposed to be able to run for president, but that has never really been true.”

“You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.”

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Listen to Shamara’s song!

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A HEALTHY PLACE (2024) A Healthy Place is a print publication resulting from a collaboration between Omega Mentoring and Just Buffalo Writing Center in a project called Climate Connections for Youth on Buffalo’s East Side. Youth learned firsthand about individuals, groups, and organizations taking Climate Action in Western New York through field trips and talks. They processed these experiences through discussions and writing.

Mia Finch | Health Sciences Charter School

UNTITLED My mind is like a plant When life is spoken into me And water is poured into me I shall grow Everlasting And evergreen My intelligence may be small as a pea or I can grow into the beanstalk But my mind never stops Just like a clock Constantly rolling and growing Just as a place

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Kamya Martin-Gamblin | Buffalo Seminary

UNTITLED I wake up everyday

amen

I get up lay back down I want to sleep more and more everyday although I'm not tired.

I wake up everyday amen, I get up get dressed and ready for school, for work or just to get up.

I wake up everyday amen.

I brush my teeth wash my face fix up my hair I wake up every day amen.

I take pictures put on vaseline lotion lip gloss fill in my eyebrows and take some more pics & vids I wake up everyday – get in the car I pass a church, a store, grocery store, park, and traffic I wake up everyday amen.

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Rezen Shedrick | City Honors School

AN IDEAL WORLD An ideal world fit for my loved ones would remove and add many things that are present in this world.

To make this ideal world, we would need to remove homelessness starvation violence viruses and many more factors that negatively affect my loved ones.

To make this ideal world, we would need to add money warmth comfort protection happiness and many more factors that positively affect my loved ones.

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Jayla Yancey | East High School

BLOOM Being with you has made me bloom adventures and talks have made me pop dancing with birds in my thoughts make me wonder when I’ll evolve

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Midnight’s Dusky Arms [And Homes] (2024) Midnight’s Dusky Arms [And Homes] was a collaborative zine made for the 2023 ZineFest.

The pieces, inspired by Emily Dickinson, were created during a workshop with Rachel Shelton of Mirabo Press and Cheryl Weaver of the Emily Dickinson International Society.

Frankie Levin | Nardin Academy

THE HUM, THE BUTTERFLY

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Haya Elamir | City Honors School

I SAW NO WAY

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Keira VanDerBeck | Alexander High School

DEATH BY SAPPHIC LOVE

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Lucen

SUNLIGHT ALONG

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The Ground Beneath Our Feet (2023) The Ground Beneath Our Feet is a digital collection of poems on climate justice by young writers involved with the JBWC. This collection was made in collaboration with Ujima Company’s Dunbar Youth Theatre Arts Program as part of the Water in the Desert Project.

L. Hartpence | Amherst Central High School

BLUE 2050 A smack of jellyfish swim with their twin, plastic, both colourful, undestroyable, thousand year survivors— and above their blue world I tread water, water’s never far from me, already at my chest in 2050, and my family— I held the children made of bleached coral, I hunted the dissipating mirages made of coal and oil, I rioted with the masks made of factory flesh fuming and burning the barons of Hell— but all sank, without their treasure, treading water is now my own, a green world I wish to know— jellyfish, my family is dead, how do I survive, I watch the blue’s devouring of the green world and it leaves your sister plastic only— sinful things my family’s ninth symphony only— jellyfish, let me be your other twin, let me survive and find the green world in the stomach of the blue, I promise you, jellyfish, the green world will be rescued.

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Marie McGuff-Zelaya | homeschool

ON DEATH, PLANETS, AND VERBIAGE it is a matter of carbon. cremation? i had asked. and the answer was a burning — like all gerunds, infinite. untethered. like seven thousand people drowned in their own salted breath in uttar pradesh. like the gleaming tongue of the furnace door shutting. it is a matter of knowing what came before. of stringing tragedies like data points or an iv: fissured body, shell of mantle fracked and filled with nitro and air, hurricanes sitting electric and lurid over drained islands white as plaque. and of course i do not want to. of course i am sick of gerunds. i want instead to fall into the bright imagining of the dead smiling, the planet adaptable. of the petroleum glow of afternoon sun, teeth pure as bleached coral. of God speaking to adam in the breezy part of the day. of eternity locked safely in every living thing.

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Liam Rio | City Honors School

HALF A RAIN I am half a rain.

Drifting in and out of the clouds.

Landing on hats, heads, bodies, places.

Falling into places.

Leaving things behind.

Washing away.

Half a rain, have a sun, half a day a midnight stained purple, with splotches of grey.

Too young to say too young, too young to believe too young, too old to be this young.

Confused, self importance, self import self in, selfie.

Taking selfies, self reflection or self obsession, or reflecting obsession on too many old things, to few new, and too many too far away.

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Bella Lamberty | Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts

FORGIVE ME EARTH, FOR I TRIED TO GROW Open on a wide field of grass Miles past earth You were there, in my arms I become forgiveness I would grow clarity I would grow ourselves So I could see clearly Or just to see at all I want to be the most forgivable thing about earth I wanna find every lovable atom in the universe And eat it into bits.

I've been hoping for a miracle like this, Just to show you what I'm worth.

The universe brought in its fruits of desire, Painted them fresh and made me eat it.

Even I can't deny a thing about the universe But if I can be the most forgivable thing about earth Then all this love can fade away I would grow nonsense I would grow rain I would make sure it rained pennies All over our graves I want to be every lovable atom in the earth Then feed all your hearts till they’re stuffed No one gets any more or any less

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I'll take every lovable atom in the earth And crush them under my fists I'll take you away into the universe And show you love all great philosophers would kill for Then I'll take it away.

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Here’s Where I Make A Little Space For You (2022) JBWC writers collaborated with the AK Teens Museum Ambassadors to create a collaborative zine, Here’s Where I Make a Little Space for You, in response to the Albright-Knox Northland’s exhibit In These Truths. An exhibition of work by Black cultural producers, In These Truths was curated by Buffalo artists Edreys Wajed and Aitina Fareed-Cooke.

Abuk Aleu | Buffalo Academy of the Sacred Heart

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Nzingha Cameron | PS 156 Frederick Law Olmsted

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Theo Bellavia-Frank | Amherst Central High School

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Eyes Tied Together (2023) During the 2022-2023 school year, JBWC writers, along with young artists from Buffalo Center for Art and Technology (BCAT), Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center and the Buffalo Public Schools, took part in a community arts collaboration inspired by artist LeRoi Johnson’s Burchfield Penney Art Center exhibition LeRoi: Living in Color. The creations were compiled in a dynamic, digital publication, Eyes Tied Together, designed by BCAT.

Leandra Bell | St. Hugh's High School for Girls (Jamaica)

BLACK BEAUTY

after LeRoi Johnson’s Black Lives Matter

Dark-complexion - rich in melanin pigments.

Skin, autumn brown, and as smooth as moonstone.

I have pride and never lied about how I look.

Skin that glistens like oiled mahogany.

A type of skin color that tells a story.

A beauty that is different, powerful, and worth glory Brilliant, thick, curly, and coarse Hair black as ebony, black as the night sky, black as the ace of spades, black as coal.

Black hair is the definition of natural Black hair is like a tree Follicles, branches, and roots A hair type that holds many memories towards black ancestry Black beauty is melanized in magic Needed to be recognized, particularized, victimized, penalized, and stigmatized.

Black isn't new And Black isn't something we get to choose.

Black and brave.

Black and beautiful.

Black and blissful.

Black and blessed, praise the lord!

Black and brilliant.

Black and so much more.

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Willow Dilweg | homeschool

UNTITLED

after LeRoi Johnson’s The Gift

I remember the afternoons I spent at Nana’s house when I was a child.

Twice a week, she would pick me up and walk me back to her home, through the sweet-smelling grasses and beneath the shady trees. She brought me a piece of candy from her white handbag each time – sometimes chocolate, sometimes a lollipop, and every once in a while, a hard lemon candy that melted on the tip of my tongue. That was my favorite of the treats she would bring – it tasted like a summer gone, whose balmy weather lingered in our town long after school began.

Nana’s house was small, only four rooms, with pale walls and dark wooden floors, and a yellow cat with black spots we called Leopard. I liked to play with him outside while Nana made dinner, the savory spices wafting out the open door and making my stomach grumble. She never scolded me as my mother did when I came in with grass stains on my skirt. She only laughed and said, “My little wild thing.”

We were coming in the house as we always did, and the taste of sugar and lemon was heavy and sweet on my tongue when I saw Leopard looking past us, behind us. His fur was on end, and he was hissing, his eyes glowing like hellfire.

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Danny Merlino | Hamburg High school

UNTITLED

after LeRoi Johnson’s Naked to the World

there is something so freeing about being alone in front of twinkling fluorescent lights and broken windows naked in a busy city like a stray animal in the woods but the trees have their own problems and drama and beginnings and endings. i am alone but so closed in and you cannot help but stare.

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Leni Schlageter | PS 212 Leonardo daVinci High School

I SAW HER FACE IN EVERYTHING after LeRoi Johnson’s Diamonds

In everyone.

Reflecting off vibrant surfaces and beautiful dresses. Every time I saw her my heart leapt and all I wanted was to lay down and listen to her stories. The world was a kaleidoscope of her laughter. Purples and pinks and yellows and oranges. She owned the hues and bent them to fit her appeal. I wish I could mix her a new color, pulling various vials from back pockets to fit a color as magnificent as her. But there was no color that I could concoct that she didn't already have shining in her eyes.

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Hope Blooms From Shattered Roots (2021) Hope Blooms From Shattered Roots is a digital collection of writings presented by Just Buffalo Writing Center in connection to The Civil Writes Project (2021), featuring work by young writers and artists living in WNY. The publication features a number of collaborations including pieces written for Water in the Desert, a collaboration between Just Buffalo, Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center, and Ujima company. Digital art students with Buffalo Center for Art & Technology also created layouts for some of the poems.

Theo Bellavia-Frank | Amherst Central High School

IS IT SO

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Layout by digital art student, Jermel, with Buffalo Center for Arts & Technology who writes, “The inspiration for my design for the text in this poem mainly came from my new found love of digital illustration and the uneasy content of the poem. Using a drawing that I broke apart into the shapes you see, I wanted to reflect all the uncertainty the author was conveying.”

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Emma | Nardin Academy

LETTER TO SENSITIVE GIRLS

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Layout by digital art student, Leila, with Buffalo Center for Arts & Technology who writes, “I was inspired by the winding confusion and obstacles that the poem was expressing. I wanted to make a layout of the text that reflected an abstract map and the words acted as barriers and the negative space is where the author leads us through the meaning.”

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Angel Barber | PS 156 Frederick Law Olmsted

LOVERS STUCK IN A PLACE

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Layout by digital art student, Jermel, with Buffalo Center for Arts & Technology who writes, “I wanted to lay out something that seemed both claustrophobic and disjointed at the same time. The poem gives a sense of displacement and confusion but in an orderly way that will just come to a conclusion.”

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Zanaya Hussain | City Honors School

YOU ARE WHAT I LOVE after “You Are Who I Love” by Aracelis Girmay

You are A tower of book spines, each rung filled with a new journey.

Paragraphs that are train tickets.

Periods that are friends.

The rivers of a language, the emphasis, the individuality, the identity.

Beckoning me to hold onto my mother tongue.

Black-and-white-checkered board that becomes a dance floor for an army.

Dandelion seeds that hold wishes. Coin tosses. Cat whiskers.

A chiffon, a jersey, and silk covering, of beauty. of modesty. of a sense of self.

Tucking back the peeking baby hairs.

The music of bangles pushing up against one another, announcing that dadi is here.

The smell of flour and spinach that invites the embrace from nani.

The laughs of the little golden boys and girls running in the empty parking lot who remind me that youth is fleeting.

A speckled salt and pepper beard that consoles me about life’s infiniteness.

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A past, a present, a future.

Tan lipstick. Ombre tips. Graph paper.

Leaders who hold livestreams.

Policy makers who fight for us.

The souls lost, and the ones we must protect.

The ones we must give a plate to.

Our shared table.

The black and blue ink of a pen, gliding across the page, into patterns of poetry.

And into loud voices of Freedom. is what I love.

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JUST BUFFALO WRITING CENTER YOUTH FELLOWS Each summer, the JBWC Youth Fellowship offers motivated young writers a paid opportunity to develop their craft and explore professional avenues within the literary arts.

Enjoy these excerpts from the 2021-2023 Fellow projects!

Jonah Ruddock | Williamsville East High School

FIRST SERMON from Blood Rummage

From Greek plastikos: “fit for molding” / “capable of receiving a new direction.” Or: shred of oil. Knob of history’s breaking. Mad industrial rain.

The final secret in the wilderness of the heart, caught in its ill wandering from auricle to auricle — in the pig’s pulse as he sways toward the electric floor, the keen of flesh and machines enclosing him like a fist, perhaps, or the lazy murmuring blood of the graveyard deer sprawled in the manynamed shade of the dead, or the clamor of the fly’s heart drumming out a buzz above the dumpster.

Consider the heart of the dumpster, ripe waiting thing, and consider the flexing chambers in the newborn’s chest, each already glut

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with the rattle of spare parts, with a clot of winking eyes that will see him through to the end, to the bone, to a forest of synapses where something will have to kneel or be knelt to. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

“In [Blood Rummage], a microplastic traverses a wilderness of waste and decay.

Remember: everything is touching everything else, and everyone is lying to you.”

- Jonah, JBWC Youth Fellow 2023

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Lindsay Cobb | City Honors School

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“This project is in many ways about the past, about making sense of the events that have just transpired and about reckoning with the futures we lost long ago, but the past only matters if it affects the future. So I ask that as you read, always consider: “what can I do? what can we do?” I know the world can feel hopeless or meaningless – constantly drifting somewhere between indifferent and hostile – but I promise with a few friends and a little solidarity you can make a difference. The world gets a little less scary when you’re not alone, and we’re not alone so long as we have each other.” - Lindsay, JBWC Youth Fellow 2022

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Angelina Tang | Williamsville East High School

WALK ME TO THE GARDEN’S CENTER BEFORE BREAKING THE MIRROR, PLEASE from Autumn Flowers When skin splits, red petals fall. This, she knows for sure.

And yet she knows nothing else, not in this chaos deco. There are white blossoms, sickly orange, dark pink and bright yellow—they surround her, filling her mindscape, her vision, her bedroom, her skin.

She is bloated, the petals floating out and laying like a blanket around her small body; is she even home still, or is she in hell? What agony pulses through her chest, what thorns in her feet. She’s crumpled on the floor, in the dirt, in the petals, and she’s lost in a meadow of torn organs.

But she is a dumb girl, a simple child; she cannot name any of the flowers, despite their shapely petals, their radiant colors. Can she name herself, either? She is a guest to this world, one who has found herself in a stranger’s home, and she cannot locate the exit.

There are two figures before her: one a human made of pink flowers, the other of orange. They might be making noise; it’s indiscernible over the sirens in her ears, the screaming voices clamoring for her ill affections, and her head is spinning, she feels ill; hey, mama, will you pick me up and lay a blanket over my bones? And yet, she cannot push the words from her mouth, no matter how she wishes to utter them. She can’t even cry; all that falls from her tongue is the sickly feel of velvet petals, dusty roots, sawtooth leaves.

Hurts. It hurts.

I hope it ends soon.

It does, as swiftly as sleep.

When she next awakens, she is still trapped, like an insect within an eggshell, one made of flowers instead of dead calcium. Opening her 88

eyes reveals the yawning dome of shadowed petals high above her head; the ones around her, so multicolored and multifaceted, are yawning and blooming and wilting in succession, spinning like a hypnotist’s finger. She feels dizzy. She feels sick. Why does her head hurt, and why does her chest?

There are voices all around her, yet the words are distorted when they meet her ears. No matter how hard she strains to understand, they are unclear, and it compounds the tightness in her chest. Why can’t I get it?

Maybe they are aliens, kidnapping me, taking me to hell. Maybe this is purgatory. Sticky, brown nectar drips from the ceiling; it licks its way down her face, yet she cannot move her hand to wipe it away. Wipe it off. WIPE IT OFF. Why won’t you remove it?

There are hands upon her body, hands on her face, but they do nothing to the sap. Its smell makes her want to throw up all over again, but somehow, doing so on herself seems undesirable.

She’s unsure how much time has passed, but she is certain that her environment has remained unchanged. This is reality. I’m sure of it.

Reality hurts and is filled with flowers. I am a child lost in a meadow.

There are cicadas birthed from some of the flowers; they land on her, on occasion. Sometimes there are rubbery hands, and they force the insects down her throat. She wishes to protest, but her body rebels; I am to oblige and obey.

With time, though, the sickness begins to pass; she takes bland oatmeal and does not spit it up. She realizes it is a pill, not a cicada shell, that is being slid so bitterly down her throat. She realizes that there are figures behind the hands, only they take on odd shapes, tall and slim-necked or covered in feathers. Their features are undefinable; the strange, growling voice that asks questions right in her ear seems to misunderstand her, telling her, “Okay, okay,” every single day.

She realizes that the garbled voices are forming words, intelligible phrases. Their inflections are familiar, yet she cannot remember why.

“Useless girl, look where you’ve ended up.” “What if they’re trying to kill you with those meds?” “Wow! What a comfy bed you’ve got. No work and all sleep.” “Mama, I feel sick.” What do they mean? ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

“Autumn Flowers, a novella, is a story about being human. It is the journey of a girl who rises above her suffering and embraces herself, learning to accept her past and future; at the same time, it is an exploration of Chinese culture, flower language, and the effects of a schizophrenia diagnosis. It is a character study. It is a call for change in our perceptions of mental illness. It is a form of love. This short excerpt is merely the beginning of the story our main character, Qiūhuā, wishes to tell; think of it as an introduction to a new friend.

Tuck her silent voice away between your ribs for now, and perhaps, one day, you will get to hear the phrase after the pause.” — Angelina, JBWC Youth Fellow 2022

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Sophie Zhu | Williamsville East High School

HUMAN, IF ANYTHING My mother calls to me the way dusk has— daily and rust-licked, my name in her mouth wide as neglect. There is the missile overhead, coppering our skin like a child’s thumb.

There is the old Chevrolet engine that hums a boy’s favorite song broken, his uniformed father stepping closer and closer to the war with each bone -crunch of an oak leaf beneath his feet. There is the streetlight groping our thighs. My son, in this world, we are held that way. Daily, our boys are stranded at a man’s feet like a flash of black hair, before he turns them over in their sleep with heaven. Like shed flowers—held only to be trampled by the scarring of the man’s boot outsoles. My son, you who are not yet a son.

You, who are not yet the ink veining the American newspaper story, mixed from a slab of your flesh and the hot breath

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of the White man who carried you to heaven the way a bullet carries a son to silence. Because you loved America and left your body alone once. Because you have forgotten the splash of your mother’s arms before they were deported to last December. Yes, my son.

It was warm.

Like blood. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

“I hope you keep three phrases in mind while reading these poems: the act of being human, a video game of syllables, Wolfgang Tillmans, and your people.”

- Sophie, JBWC Youth Fellow 2021

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M!LLIE RAEE

from The Inbetween

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

“Not only was this my first completed project but an enriching introduction to the Buffalo literary and poetry community that in turn ignited my passion for creating art again.”

– M!LL!E RAEE, JBWC Youth Fellow 2021

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Made-to-Order Poems A poem about your lovable, dumb dog? You got it. A poem to celebrate your daughter’s Pacific Northwest wedding? No problem. An ode to your favorite artwork at a local gallery?

Can’t wait.

Throughout the year, you’ll find JBWC poets at events writing custom poems for attendees on our vintage typewriters. Or head to our website to order a poem any day of the year, supporting young writers while you’re at it!

Athena Clabeaux | Williamsville South High School

DEAR BROWN-EYED GIRL after Rineke Dijkstra’s Coney Island, N.Y., USA, June 20, 1993

Dear brown-eyed girl, I hope they’re nice to you, the kids at school...

I hope you know you’re loved, that your parents only want what’s best for you. brown-eyed girl, I hope you had fun on that beach that day, that your heart didn’t ache for some nonsensical boy who doesn’t treat you right.

I hope you know that despite what society tells you, you’re still beautiful. Now, 30 years later, I hope the world treats you right, that your dreams come true.

And even if they didn’t, I hope that you’re still somehow getting by and pushing through the hard no matter how tired you are of pushing. brown-eyed girl, this is my wish to you.

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Abuk Aleu, Angelina Tang, Theo Bellavia-Frank, Leni Schlageter, Haya Elamir, Willow Dilweg, Liam Rio, Zelda Abramovich, Timber Oldfield

FOR RICHIE (excerpt) Inkwells carry space for hands that being life spat out—Being life that came crawling. back to me in stanzas Metamorphosis, as in change, as in changing —- I have chipped at the bark of an unbegotten willow and have watched it morph back into me as extension as opposed to substitution meaning that it does indeed matter what we call a thing You have always been change, changing like the river to the stream to the sea, wondrously wandering from places of happiness to silk sand and back, back home; but you have always remained you, the you we love — the you cupping a seedling in your gentle hands and letting it grow, the you who now seeks a home in the woodlands as we wave a kindly farewell to arms, to legs, to the cicada shell of the body — leave the nymph skin behind. you will not need it. you will need the room in your pack for many other things: cool-looking rocks, for instance, too flat to be skipped, and branches too short to be walking sticks. if you can skip a rock, or make a branch a walking stick, 98

you must — if you leave the shell, it will be gone before you return, like the nymph skin. let it blow its own way on the wind.

Chase dreams knowing that every bit of your past is never left behind but carried with you.

A blaze of color: Green Azure Gold.

A leaf, tucked into your sweater pocket Cosmic objects swirling in space Books waiting to be opened.

There are things to be named, Courses to be charted Words that will evolve as you do.

Is the universe infinite?

You can try your best to prove it.

And to the dock as we fold another our little sailboat drowns should we not have built her out of paper? but Rivers do flow into that upward trend of speech Where solo-iloquy becomes soul-iloquy and that rock you packed skips (for) a few generations and where the currents sing “For how can you end something that began in the most beautiful of rivers You may lay him to sleep but in his dreams he writes” moving on, persevering like a flower in the cracks of the concrete paving the way for a lush forest to grow

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Abuk Aleu | Buffalo Academy of the Sacred Heart

INTERLINKED for a wedding In this space—tethered vines tightrope us together Tethered meaning: I have watched gravity withstand the weight of all things— fragile hands mirrored in the rippled waves of the Deschutes River and the heavy mist: unbent—that allowed me to see you in a light that I’ve never known before In this space—carvings knocked into cave walls tell you that I have learned of love what I have of home That is: that one can find it on a coastal road or a mountain trail and mold a safety net in its space all the same And if I must name it—let it be: tethered—meaning interlinked Meaning that enclosed in a shoal of steelhead is comfort so long as this place is marked as ours Meaning that observing Arcturus from the Cascades loosely translates to measuring the distance between all of the places I’ve learned to love you all the more In this space—where I have watched red pine morph into the anatomy of a human hug where I have learned that nature is derived from the Latin word nātūra meaning origin I have again remembered that we are Interlinked May this love—woven into paradigms of moss —continue and end with you 100

JBWC Youth Writing (2023-2024) Enjoy these current pieces of writing by youth involved with the Just Buffalo Writing Center during the 2023-2024 season! Whether created during a workshop or performed at an open mic, these creations give you a glimpse into the innovative minds of the young artists that sit around the table to write with us each week.

Drawing inspiration from each other and groundbreaking local & visiting teaching artists, JBWC writers are provided access to writing assistance, workshops, literary events, collaborative youth arts initiatives, and platforms to share their creations.

Zelda Abramovich + Leni Schlageter

PREJUDICE Conversation bubbles from the table like a mosquito lives short and annoying and fleetingly parasitic. speaking in swoops and curves it climbs from her mouth into the ears of the strangers sitting around her table. she knew little of them. if anything at all. she remembers their faces, their expressions, their reactions their rage, so uniquely feminine and funny until you began to scratch your heart out the scandalous feeling of spontaneity clung to her chest, the corset of her dress. what would they think if they knew. how improper. to have to teach a poet to match inconsistency with communication anger crept into her at being perceived with such disgust, climbing her legs till she expelled the feeling with the flick of a finger. anger at you who told her it was only female mosquitoes who drank blood and anger at you who compared them to all women

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Abuk Aleu | Buffalo Academy of the Sacred Heart

AFTER WAVES Soma: That being Greek for body That Meaning this convoluted thing of mine is more than just a particle That being that had this been the past I’d know— No I’d write myself back into existence Because the wooden creeks weren’t loud enough and I still don’t understand God or myself or that I wasn’t cremating fiber particles and death but rather becoming Distillation: because abrasive and synthetic rubber never asked me why So long as we hoped half-empty, and sung shouting Appraisals of how we’d get over ourselves Of how we’d know to love these dying things Because who are we if not everything we’ve ever worked up the courage to love The shaft wrenching yesterday’s uhaul and today’s regret: : what we learned to call direction This pit in my stomach being convex plague And my hands: the mouth of a shark And my home: 6am’s construction site And my home: the gravel on a lover’s shoe And my home And my home And my home Because I needed to love the astringent taste in order to know myself Because I needed to know myself

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Paulina Bargnesi | Williamsville East High School

A GOD’S LIGHT I only wanted to see the sun. But to Him that would be treason. And you are obliged to follow His order.

The wave you summon crests into the sky like a jagged mountain. It crashes into me and I suddenly see color. Swirls of glistening pink, blue, and emerald green. These wondrous sights so foreign to me. It is your kind that has ruled above us on the surface, used to the sun and all its colors, while we were damned to the shadows of the ocean floor. How cruel it is that I experienced them for the first time under your brutal force. Colors I've never seen in the abyss for that privilege was only given to your kind. I have a fleeting moment to savor their glory before another surge of water drags my body. My limbs feel flimsy, useless in their attempt to resist my exile. I let it take me, in hopes that it will lead me somewhere distant. My lungs are heavy with water. It hurts to cry.

They say you live eternally in servitude to Him. What a way to live. Are you hoping that your obedience will lead to something more?

And what of the humans on Earth? The ones who pray to you and beseech you to protect them. To those people, you are the reason that a mere coincidence is a miracle. If only they could see what you are doing to me. They would be as scared of you as they are of me.

A ray of pale gold light pulls me from the daze you put me in. I'm so close to the surface, I can see the star I've only ever imagined. Before I can breach the air, the ocean is dragging me away. The glowing orb becomes a stain, an accident I was not supposed to see. I return to the same darkness from which I was born.

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Vanessa Bobo | City Honors School

DON’T BLINK (excerpt) Don't blink You can't do that? Then don't think but if you can't do that, then don't speak and if you can't do that, well, you're weak When they tell you they treat you different, but it's really just the same way they've grown up and all of this is in vain if my emotions are stuck in the drain I break down for just a moment every chance I get to try to get out this mess in my head but it keeps coming round and round like a car on a track Don't blink. and if you can't do that then that's okay You're doing your best and I know you are Go ahead and blink!

You are allowed to do so now, you're free as a bird who's lost its wings but keeps trying to fly again.

Keep thinking that you can do better, through any kind of weather you can do great things.

Keep speaking your truth no matter the cost, don't think about what you've lost, keep moving on.

Don't ever lose your will to believe that you are strong.

I know you can hold on… I've held on for so long, I've been through the same as you and I'm here now explaining to you that it's okay to blink, think, speak, and always know that your weakness is not something that needs to show, just know that you are bright and bold so go on my wingless bird and fly away….just remember..

Don't blink…

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Rosemary Bodine | City Honors School

NOTE TO SELF Rosemary, Who are you to me?

Are you me, Or are you who I became?

You’re the name I write, The way I’m introduced, And the way I chose to be named.

Rosemary, Are you really here?

Do your eyes deceive, Fooling you into false pretenses?

Are you still there?

Or are you ignoring Every single thought?

Rosemary, You’re part of me, But not all of me.

You are who I am, But he is who I was.

And he’s not gone, Just born anew.

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Pride David | Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts

THIS YEAR, LAST YEAR, AND THE NEXT (excerpt) When I was 15, my grandmother told me never to fall in love. I had a crush on a guy in my math class, and although it wasn’t more than a sheer feeling of bubbly anticipation, my grandmother sat me down and told me never to fall in love. She said falling in love would be a slow yet painful and pointless process that would either end in marriage, breaking it off somehow or death.

When I was 16, my mother told me to expect disappointment. I had just come home from my then-girlfriend Fara breaking it off with me, saying she had fallen out of love. At the time, something in me couldn’t understand or accept that. How could you fall out of love with someone you’ve been in love with forever? I was heartbroken. In a mess of tears and the urge to vomit, my mother sat me down and told me to expect disappointment. Dating is a series of highs and lows, and I’d be better off staying away from it altogether and focusing on dreams and aspirations that wouldn’t include someone else.

I’m 17 now. I don’t fall in love anymore or believe in doing so. If love is only going to be painful and end in disappointment, there’s little point in trying, right? I haven’t strayed too far from it, though. I write romance stories, watching my characters fall in love, learn about themselves and the world, get heartbroken, repair the pieces, and return to their dreamy, idealistic lives.

I try to concentrate on the blank page on my laptop screen, trying to remember what I was talking about on the previous page, except that there’s nothing on the previous page. It’s blank. This is a new story. A new story I have yet to write with words.

I look around the coffee shop, hoping to get inspiration from someone talking to a friend or the barista calling out someone’s order, but today it’s practically vacant, and the most noise I hear is the lo-ficovers of pop songs that play on the speakers. I look out the window at the people walking by. Lots of athleisure and sweatshirts with different college names across the front as people walk by either with their dogs, 110

a stroller, or a group of friends. In Buffalo, it seems like everyone has a goal of getting out. Sometimes, I wonder what all is out there, but most days, I find comfort and inspiration in its familiarity.

But today is not one of those days.

“There you are! I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” An eerily familiar voice squeaks out, and I look up to see a girl who looks like the younger version of me sitting down in the seat across from me. “I went to the house, but Mom and Abuelita said you went somewhere to write.”

“Who are you?”

“Solana.” She says with a glowing smile but stops when she sees that my face's confusion has grown more. “I’m your sixteen-year-old self.”

“No way.”

“Yeah way.”

“How did you get here?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I did something similar to time traveling since I got connected to myself in different dimensions, and it turns out that in a different world, I am an incredible mathematician like in that one movie Interstellar-” “Why did you do that?”

“I got bored.” She shrugs. “I’m always writing stories of other people living at least semi-interesting lives, and I figured it’s time for me to start living my own.”

“Well, if one thing is for certain, you’re more confident than your seventeen-year-old self.” I look down at my laptop screen, but the only change is my dead battery. I pull the charger out of my tote bag. “Can you plug this in? The port is behind you.”

“Sure.” She plugs it in, and my laptop is restored to life again. “But you really shouldn’t say that. I’m sure seventeen-year-old Sol is plenty confident.”

Was my sixteen-year-old self really this optimistic? I can’t tell if I find it annoying or aspirational.

“Why are you here?”

“I won’t be here for long, I don’t think I could even if I wanted to, but I’m supposed to get advice from you. I met this girl Fara a few weeks ago, and I really like her, and not in a friend way. I’ve never liked anyone like this before, and I’ve especially never liked a girl, and I was wondering if…” She trails off. “If what Abuelita said about love was true.”

My first response is to tell her yes, that it is true, and that Mom will 111

tell her shortly after something similar to expect disappointment, but then I look into her dark brown eyes and remember that she’s the younger, more naive version of me. The only life she has lived has been the one she was told. She hasn’t been hurt yet, and she finds hope in the small chance of fighting against the narrative her grandmother has engraved into her for the past year. She believes in the good and hope of people, and she looks up to me. In some ways, I look up to her, too.

But is it better to be honest and break her heart, or tell her a lie and let her find out later, and be even more heartbroken than I was?

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Michael DeLaPlante | City Honors School

THE DAUNTLESS GLITTERATI We exist.

We resist.

We are loud.

We are proud.

We will light up the world to equal futures we are bound.

We are ready to raise our voices come and hear us ring; Our chimerical eulogies our serendipitous syzygy's the quintessent eudaemonia our futures holding our diplomas Hear us ring.

We are existing.

We are resisting.

We are loud.

We are proud.

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Amelia Holt-Smith | Nardin Academy

ISABELLINE (excerpt) I had one foot in childhood when I went away to boarding school. I was the picture of adolescence: too-long limbs, angular face, skinniness hidden under a t-shirt.

I stayed that way for most of my freshman year. My uniform hung loose and I abused blue-black eyeliner to distract from the rest of my face. It convinced me that I was a rebel when I wasn’t one. No real rebel follows every rule and gets A’s and has a lot of friends, especially when they’re predetermined friends, legacies of Churchill Academy and its rich-kid antics. The teachers heard my name and smiled, and said, “I remember your mother” or “Your father was a riot” or “Lichfield—oh, yes, your sister was a lovely girl.”

My sister was Sybil, and she was so unfairly lovely that I hated her. She had a serene, stupid beauty; hazy smile, half-closed eyes. She graduated before I came to Churchill, so I never had to see boys trailing behind her on the quad or comfort her over a test she failed. Not that I would have.

She didn’t get to be smart. It was the only thing I had to hold over her.

I called her all the time that first year. I cried over boys and my uneven eyes and over Finn Dobson, who was a whole other problem no one ever seemed to comprehend.

“Finny?” laughed Sybil when I told her. “You like him? Does he still pretend he’s a dog?”

Finn’s full name was William Finley, which was honorary and unused.

With him, I shared a childhood of sandy feet and runs through the sprinklers, races on the grass, making treasure maps and drawing pictures with school pencils. I don’t know if he remembered any of it. By the time we got to Churchill, he was a real rebel; he broke the curfew, liked the girls’ dorms better, stashed half-finished vodka bottles in his room. He never got caught. Maybe he would have if he hadn’t been beautiful: golden hair, cheekbones, bruised gray insomniac eyes. For me, 114

he was Sybil all over again, but I couldn’t stay away from him. I meant something with his arm around my shoulders. People knew me because I was Finn’s friend. And as much as I hated myself, I wanted to be known.

Also, I was in love with him. It was reason enough, not that I would ever confess.

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Nautica Illas | Hutchinson Central Technical High School

STARLIGHT BLOOD Twinkle, Crackle, Boom, Another one died Stressed its boiling madness And scattered its remains for its mother to see Her glow is the same.

Burning quietly, Weeping, A trillion more will be born.

A trillion more will die.

All in a minute, And the sun will watch.

Lonely and accompanied.

With her children and their pieces.

Until her carmine spirit falls apart.

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Alaina Kubiak | homeschool

OH O is a solemn letter A letter dashed in the tears of funeral bells, drowned In the blue of banishment.

O is a quiet letter, Though he is never alone, for O is afraid of silence.

He is one half of the infinity symbol.

One half of eternity, and yet O has never been eternal.

His ponderings are often existential, dark in their material, warm and heavy In his hands like sun baked soil.

O is a gentle letter.

His words are soft, though his lips may be Cracked and bleeding, dusted with the remnants of stories He has told before.

O is a letter on his lonesome.

A great reader of Jane Austen, though his shelves are full of unread Shakespeare.

O is a forgetful letter, a forgotten letter who longs to remember what it felt like to be cherished.

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Anna Kubiak | Penn State University

WHERE DID THE MOON COME FROM? I have known nothing. The way it feels against fingers that don't exist.

The breath of it across the back of hesitant expectation. I have tasted it on a tongue attached to no mouth, whispered to it in words from no heart, held it in the shaking grasp of no soul. I have known nothing for so long that I have forgotten it is nothing. I have learned to hear the music it plays to no listeners, the dance it choreographs to no audience, the lure it has to no one. I believe I am the nothing, the whole being of emptiness, the trace hanging in the air that has yet to utter a single breath, move a single inch, live for a single moment. We are entangled, undisguisable, it has become me and I have become it, I murmur to it sometimes that I am still caught in its twisted embrace. I have known nothing before I ever thought of something. Something that glows ever so softly, rising from one end of one place to another, touching the warmth of something reaching back. And then without warning nothing murmurs back. Not with an embrace, soft or vulnerable, it only reveals itself to say goodbye. Nothing abandons me, in a bang of something terrible. Of something. The nothing is gone and I am exposed to whatever existed beyond its captivity. To the something that is around me, the something that is inside of me, beating as a heart would, radiating a light even when nothing hid me away. Something speaks to me the stories it knows about a time that runs out. Something has warnings, enveloped in every gentle caress, whispering that nothing is a liar. But nothing has no matter here, because it is something I will become.

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Rebekah Lafferty | West Seneca West Senior High School

THE BIRDS NEED YOU May 14th, 2024 Please keep writing. The birds need you.

I wrote a prose poem not long ago titled, "Bird: A Fairy Tale of Sorts." It was about a bird building a nest, and included ten versions of the same story. Not my best work, but not my worst.

I shared this poem with a friend of the woman in charge of my school newspaper. The friend was a novelist, and she came in to talk with me and the other newspaper writers about our work. She read our stories ahead of time, and wrote each of us a letter. Her letter to me ends with "Please keep writing. The birds need you." She also reviewed many of the mistakes in my writing. However, I found that while I could take the criticism with minimal sobbing, the request that I keep writing made me cry.

-There's a girl who goes to our school. No, a girl who used to go to our school.

Her name is Shelly. Her name was Shelly.

I didn't know her name until it was written in stone.

Shelly walked the same halls as me. She went to the same classes I did.

She had many of the same friends, or at least the same acquaintances.

She had many of the same struggles. She felt many of the same things.

They never said the cause of death.

Everyone knows anyway.

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-Please keep writing. The birds need you.

I repeat these words to myself all day long, as I twirl the letter between my fingers. All my life, I have been a writer. The title of writer makes up most of my identity. I have never needed anyone to tell me to keep writing.

Nonetheless, it means more to me than I can say.

Someone noticed. Someone cares. Someone wants me to keep writing.

Someone needs me.

-Shelly.

Her name is spoken in whispers. Like her life (or lack thereof) is something regretful, something shameful.

I didn't know her, but now I wish I did. I wish I did, because I see how it affects people when she's gone. A mutual friend of ours is walking around in a trance. Like she can't believe Shelly's gone. Like she can't imagine what a world without Shelly will look like.

I didn't know Shelly, but I know she mattered.

-Perhaps that's why I feel so strongly about the fact that the birds need me.

Someone out there has been affected by you—by your words, or your actions, or your smiles, or your presence.

Someone has a better day when you're with them. Someone looks forward to the next time they'll see you. Someone needs you.

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Please don't give up. Your work matters. You matter.

Please keep writing.

The birds need you.

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Orla O’Donnell Ramirez | Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts

SHE She cries, She thinks she cries too much, But it is just enough for her.

She yells, She screams, She thinks she is too much, But she is just enough.

She smiles, She laughs, She thinks she is not enough, But she is the right amount of everything.

The perfect harmony of beauty and pain.

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Wan’ye Rhodes-Carter | PS 212 Leonardo daVinci High School

CODE RED for Ramone (Red) Carter

Yesterday, we asked ourselves "To be or not to be?"

But today the question is "To live or not to live?"

Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows That reality gives And inflicts on true hearts Or to take arms against the sea of troubles That drowns our world apart That drowns the light away, leaving us with only dark That ushers our future away in the jaws of a shark from the very start Before God's journey is embarked How much longer will it continue?

The heartache and thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to?

But rather than say "how dare you?"

I dare you To take arms against the arms that harm And sound off the alarms No such thing as a good luck charm Because justice begins with just us And peace begins with The People Executing Action to Correct Errors Stop the terror taught by the scorns and whips of time Begin a new timeline Where the light emerges from the underground pipeline Even makes the night shine 123

Because what's present in the light Is still present in the dark It may seem as if conscience makes cowards of us all But when the pale cast of thought has Sicklied over our native hue of resolution That's when we spark the revolution Against the execution Of our youth and Do it for our future's evolution We will bleed red blood For Red's blood We will each spread love For Red's love We will not let the bullets that killed him become the bedbugs Eating away at his dreams Feasting away at the seams That keep family one Because our fight for peace is stronger than any gun So, it may appear That conscience makes cowards of us all But like a rainbow gleaming after raindrops fall Conscience makes us heroes off the wall.

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Leah Roache | City Honors School

GRAPHIC NOVEL GUIDE

BY AN AMATEUR This is how to maybe, write a graphic novel.

You need to imagine…

To imagine you need to think of that one thing you have in your head, like the Jingle Bell song…

Once you get your imagination going, doodle for fun…draw your favorite characters with ungodly anatomy because in this stage you’re most likely 10-12. because __ is too “uninterested for anything!” Oh, as you draw make a character…give it a name and a quirk…I named mine Allegra and gave it glitch powers… and based her off my hyper energy…do not show anyone who might steal your ill proportioned drawings… you want your worth to be an unknown…now make a story based off of this character. For me, I put my character in a TV world, so that it can match the glitch themes…don’t add your friend’s OC… because one you will forget; and don’t even think about making the other OC’s your love interest because they don’t like you but some bum senior who looks like the lonechild of Ground Megamind. Now, make more characters in the end…this is how to not get attached with any side character…man idk i just scrapped the story and made it about them…develop them and their backgrounds and make it emotional and dark as possible…and then find your sketchbook from when you were 10-12 and not 11 and look back at when you drew so…ungodly…and cringe at the art you once saw as …remember that step?

Don’t let anyone see it…yeah…now you know it's to protect the

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eyes from seeing this…ifs…and then forget and finally begin to read actual graphic novels…because in some lucky eyes there’s tips on how to write your own storybook…and now…actually make the scene…think . live your characters, go on character a.i. but don’t because you’ll get carried away by making them be in a relationship with the a.i. When they already have a partner …don’t focus on the couple you created…

They’re sweet together…but will make a cavity in your process…don’t be afraid to change anything…make the white green girl into a jamaican green boy just because you can …give them depth and individual benchstones… and finally start to write…get a writers block and shudder and be stupid when you try to explain your work to other people…that’s all i know, i haven’t gotten to the actual art stuff yet…

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Pierson Schwartz | homeschool

THE BUSTLING HEART In the heart of the city, where dreams collide, Where neon lights flicker and secrets hide, There's a rhythm that pulses, a beat so alive, In the chaos and the clamor, where souls strive.

Listen closely, hear the streets speak, Whispers of stories from the bold and the meek, Each footstep a stanza, each heartbeat a rhyme, In this urban symphony, we find our time.

From the corner cafe to the subway’s roar, Every corner a canvas, every wall a door, Where poets and prophets find their stage, In the alleyways and avenues, they engage.

They speak of love found and lost, Of battles fought and lines crossed, Of dreams chased and hopes crushed, In the city’s embrace, they’re hushed.

But their words echo in the concrete jungle, In the hearts of the weary and the humble, For in the poetry of the streets, we find truth, In spoken word, we find our youth.

So let the city sing its song tonight, In the glow of the moon, in the neon light, For in every verse, in every line, We find our humanity, our divine.

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Angelina Tang | Williamsville East High School

SOLENOID // SOULMATE solenoid: a coil of wire around a cylindrical form; a coil of wire around my finger, knotting it too tight, taping it to a plastic cup; a magnet inducing a current through the red threads, threads like red string, soulmate string, buzzing with the sound of pure, rich music amplified through that little cup; soulmate string, your finger tied to mine, a wire with the insulation scraped off at the ends conducting charge; a charge, running from me to you, the slightest imbalance, oscillating positive and negative running through our holy bodies in and out of the earth we stand on; the earth, a part of the circuit, of the system, its gravity pulling you and me together like a falling bird to the sea; closed systems, preserving momentum and energy and mass, net gains and losses landing equal, you catching me and me catching you; momentum, directional, you taking my hand and us walking down the aisles of a record store; records, charged with a piece of shedding rabbit pet held over on a lab bench, records like the ones you played in your bedroom for me like a crackling fire; that lab bench with a steel frame pulling the compass’s head towards it, your own pole pulling mine in, like and unlike all at the same time; electrons spin, and so does my head when you are holding my arm, spinning me in a lace and light blue dress. we are so young, made of the

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same stuff that made that wire turn into a tiny speaker in my hand. when I think of buzzing song and vinyl hearts, I think of your glossy, wooden record player.

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Mila Tunkey | East Aurora High School

NOSTALGIA OF NOW Sometimes I look around and all I want to do is bottle a moment. I want to capture a memory, a feeling, a laugh or a tear. I think that might be why we snap so many photos, why we paint and write and sing. We do it to recall a fleeting fragment of a time we’ve already forgotten. As I sit and try to capture the pink hazy sky that sits heavy and humid on my skin, I know it will be gone by tomorrow. And still I try to hold on to the bubble surrounding me like a film projected on a sheet, I write frantically to capture the smiles and laughter of friends and strangers, the way shadows creep into existence and lightning flashes without a single drop of rain. As I write down what feels like a fever dream, sadness wraps around me because I know the moment has moved on and disappeared. As I live for a future of staring into the past while I try in vain to stuff the present into a bottle, I’ve realized how beautiful life is when peering from the outside in and inside back out again.

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Keira VanDerBeck | Alexander High School

TOYS Allow me a small fragment of youthfulness and joy I never played with baby dolls Because I was taking care of my sister I never played kitchen, because I was already making the food I never played house, Because I was sick of the constant fighting But now he's gone and I'm supposed to be a kid Boy bands And stupid crushes Maybe I was a kid all along trapped in a little room And now I'm finally free

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Many thanks to the partners that helped make this work possible.

Buffalo AKG Art Museum Buffalo Center for Arts & Technology Burchfield Penney Art Center Emily Dickinson International Society GLYS WNY Massachusetts Avenue Project Mirabo Press Omega Mentoring Program, Inc Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center Teen Reality Theatre Ujima Company’s Dunbar Youth Theater Arts Program

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Located on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Just Buffalo Literary Center’s mission is to create and strengthen communities through the literary arts. We believe in the love of reading, the art of writing, and the power of the literary arts to transform individual lives and communities.

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