Dusk Cities 2025

Dusk Literary Arts Magazine Blake Middle School Hopkins, MN Published April 15, 2025 Third Edition Front cover art by Olly Bower Back cover art by Natalie Palmby If not stated otherwise, clipart is from Canva

Editors Olly B. Olympia B. Madelyn F. Morgan F. Josie H.

Sabiha K. Teaghan S. Amanda T. Lilly T. Sophia W.

Special thanks to Ms Derricott for helping us set everything up!!

The theme for the 2024-2025 release is...

Cities

Table of Contents Photograph and Haiku______________________Mr. Paterakis Collage_______________________________Lilla Houston (7) What Classifies as a City?________________Sophia Widge (8) AMERICA____________________________Sophia Widge (8) Red Balloon____________________________Morgan Folk (6) Chicago Ferris Wheel_______________________Anonymous Photograph___________________________Sabiha Kojasoy (8) Postcard City__________________________Sophia Widge (8) Gloomy Chicago________________________Lilly Tarakji (8) A World Within A City__________________Gabriel Shen (7) Photographs________________________Bridgette Guider (8) Sunset in Paris_____________________________Ms. Derricott Collage______________________________Olympia Boxer (6) After Dark _________________________Mary Ellen Meek (6) Chalk Pastels_____________________________Sam Morris (8) Robin’s Egg Blue_________________________Ellen Rippe (8) Colored Pencil Drawing_____________________Anonymous What the World Could Use____________Catherine Smith (7) City in the Sunset______________________Effie McMillan (8) Digital Artwork_______________________Grace Siddiqui (6) New Year’s Eve_______________________Annaliese Lahr (6) qfsdvdf

The Shambles, York, England__________________Mr. Somerville Photograph____________________________________Anonymous Cat in Greece_________________________________Ben Keller (6) Digital Drawing__________________________Aurelius Butler (8) Dominican Republic______________________Amanda Tarakji (6) Digital Drawing_______________________________Josie Hou (8)

Thank you to everyone who submitted!

by Mr. Paterakis

What Classifies as a City?

by Sophia Widge (8) (edited by Caroline Wang [8])

Most people see cities as buildings.

Large, expensive buildings.

But I think a city can be more than a building.

For instance, Is a colony a city?

If it is, a city could be seen as so much more.

Colonies in space – of ants – of fungi on logs.

Is a city just skyscrapers?

If so, why?

Who made these rules?

Who let a city be such a simple thing?

It could be so expansive.

The stars form a city of light, against a deep, dark black, like the plumage on a loon’s head.

The feathers of the bird keep the creature warm, A soft landscape of down protecting it from the snow.

The snow falls in patterned, perfect crystals.

Like the patterns and lines of a city map.

Imperfect streets, curving every which way.

The altitude, the position of streetlamps, the depth of ponds is all unknown.

It’s just a big, wide, bare-boned view of such a complicated machine.

Mechanical structures of flesh and bones create a machine we all know like home: Ourselves.

Simultaneously, could the body be said to be a city?

Can veins be streets, running through a flesh-and-bone landscape; encompassing skyscrapers of both minuscule and insignificant beings of hair?

Imagine gazing upon those structures as if you were a tardigrade.

Their towering entities only growing in size over the years.

(Continued on next page)

Compared to those simple strands, Tardigrades are quite tiny.

Just as the world is very big. One could even say it’s supercolossal.

Bigger than the biggest city, bigger than you’d think.

Imagine walking across every city, on this planet of earth on your own two feet.

It would be quite tricky, yes?

It would take your whole life, and then some. After all, humans don’t really live for that long.

You could spend lifetimes of moving from place to place, just to explore every city.

Though, is there another chance after the first one?

Is it even the first?

And for the first few years of your long, tiresome journey, you wouldn’t even know you were doing it!

You’d be completely lost and confused, like a tourist in an unknown city.

But what type of city?

After all, what even classifies as a city anyway?

Just buildings?

Large, expansive buildings?

Filled with people, whose bodies are cities of their own?

Sure.

After all, Most people see cities as buildings.

Red Balloon

by Sabiha Kojasoy (8)

Postcard City by Sophia Widge (8)

Gloomy Chicago

Cast of Characters PERSON 1: A teacher PERSON 2: A carpenter PERSON 3: A mail carrier (Three people sit on a bench.)

PERSON 1: If only the world were real.

PERSON 2: Is it not?

PERSON 3: I thought…

PERSON 2: But of course! Here it is.

PERSON 1: This cannot be.

PERSON 3: What do you see?

PERSON 1: I see the world.

PERSON 2: It stares you in the eye.

PERSON 3: Look!

(They look ahead and see something spectacular.)

PERSON 1: If this is true…

PERSON 2: This cannot be…

PERSON 3: Yes it can.

PERSON 2: Well I must go closer.

PERSON 1: I shall as well.

PERSON 3: And I will stay here.

Photos by Bridgette Guider (8)

Sunset in Paris

by Ms. Derricott

After Dark

Mary Ellen Meek (6)

When time comes the lights go up, when time comes the lights go down. It's light with no lights, it's dark with many lights. The town glows from inside out with lamp posts, sparkling in the middle of the night as if it was a disco ball at a party. After dark the world has a silence only broken by the magic that appears in the middle of the night. After dark, shiny lights. After dark, magic.

by Sam Morris (8)

think about how how to cook mac and Robin Florida’s warm weather cheese and where I will probably never watched Home Alone Egg’s Blue even make me shiver. I for the first time with

by: Ellen Rippe (8) I tie my beaten-down tennis shoes in a triple knot, probably tighter than I need to. As I put one foot in front of another, I feel my breath fall into rhythm with the crunching of leaves underneath my feet. While it was nearly silent on the outside, except for the rustling of leaves and occasional squirrel scurrying by, my brain was far from quiet. The houses that I had run past countless times before, now reminded me of all the things I would have to leave. The cool fall chill in the air that’s just enough to rose your cheeks, but not enough to put on a jacket only made me think about afas

wonder how Dad could do this to me. He wants us to leave the place we have lived together since I was born just for some job. He wants us to leave the neighborhood and community that supported us through everything we’ve been through. He wants us to leave Mom’s garden and the neighborhood she chose for me to grow up in. He said we could have a “fresh start” and that “it could be nice,” but I don’t want to live in a neighborhood whose streets aren’t lined with memories of Mom teaching me how to ride a bike and to run with the proper form.

Dad doesn’t understand that we wouldn’t just be leaving our 2-story brick house with creaky floors and creepy hallways. We would be leaving the house where he and Mom taught me

my head lying in Mom’s lap, covering my eyes during the “scary parts.”

I felt a tear roll down my cheek slowly as I passed the house that was Mom’s favorite. I watched it soak into my cotton t-shirt, leaving a small splotch of gray on my off-white shirt. The house was a pretty pastel teal, but Mom always said it was robin’s egg blue. When we went on runs together, it would always be the house that Mom would let me take a rest at. I remember collapsing on the tree stump in the boulevard in front of its perfectly trimmed hedges, breathing heavily and wishing I could stay there forever. Mom would always smile at the spacious front yard and verdant garden before pulling me off the stump to continue with our run.

I would always ask her why we ran on cold or qefw

rainy days when all I wanted to do was crawl into my warm bed and fall back asleep. She always responded with a cheesy quote by some athlete then said: “But really Charly, we run together because we can.”

I smile, thinking about our runs together made me feel like she was still here to tell me that everything was going to be alright.

I turn the corner and see my house. The overgrown garden had mum buds poking up into the air, and the flower boxes were full of the Petunias that Dad planted this spring. I walk up the cracked steps and open the rusty, brown door with a creak. Inside, I untie my shoes and place them in the dusty boot bench next to Dad’s black wingtips. I walk into the living room and sit down on the worn out leather couch.

As I reach for the remote, I glance at qffdsb

something else.

A picture of Dad with his arm around Mom with me on her shoulders.

We were standing next to a marquee sign that said, “The memories we make with our family are everything.” When we were in Arizona, Dad insisted we pull over to take a picture next to that sign. He got the old lady who worked at the McDonalds next door to take the picture and it’s still his favorite family photo. When I asked him why, he said, “Most photos only help you remember one or a couple memories, but that photo helps me remember all of our memories together.”

I look at all the other photos on the side table: my first birthday with my face covered in bright red frosting after smashing the cake into my face; the selfie of us on the Santa Monica Pier during our trip to California; and my first track meet, me holding

my second place medal proudly. All of them reminded me of special memories even though I’m not in the place that they were taken.

Even in Florida I can still remember Mom just as well, even though I’m not living in the house I lived in with her. I can still go on runs and imagine I’m running with her even if I’m not in the same neighborhood. I can still remember the memories with her because they are everything.

Scholastic Gold Key winner!

by Anonymous

What The World Could Use

By Catherine Smith (7)

The world could use more kindness, less shouting people down, and more trying to understand, less personal attacks, and more friendly conversations, less hate, and more love, less shouting, and more talking, less fighting those who disagree, and more helping everybody you see, The world could use more nature, less factories, and more forests, less mining, and more planting, less taking, and more giving, less concrete and metal, and more dirt and plants, less pipelines, and more clean rivers

City in the Sunset

by Effie McMillan (8)

by Grace Siddiqui (6)

New Year’s Eve

by Annaliese Lahr (6)

The Shambles, York, England

by Mr. Somerville

by Anonymous

Cat in Greece

by Ben Keller (6)

Aurelius Butler (8)

Dominican Republic Amanda Tarakji (6)

by Josie Hou (8) 952-988-3600 110 Blake Road South Hopkins, MN 55343

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