Young Poet: Audrey Hunter

Audrey Hunter is a high school senior living in Dallas, Texas, where she is primarily a playwright. Her work has been produced by The Blank Theatre, The Growing Stage, Stage West, and the Linden Grove Theatre Co.

This Is What I’m Thinking

Rain on the window & the ground

Everything is impermeable

So we leave behind streetside streams

& we leave in them

I want to go home

But I rue the journey

Hate the water that drowns the roads

Hate the water that ends up where

I’m wanting to go

I know what it means to be taken for granted

Sprinkle down & write your message in

On the windshield

Watching out for what’s next

You know what it means to have no idea

There is nothing left between the walls

That hold me up in place here

So I am facing skywards

I am falling with my eyes

And then the rest of me

Headed nowhere,

Headed north,

Headed to the gulf,

Traveling smooth but splashed up and around

By reckless, wantless tires

And nothing is lost to the concrete

But something is lost to the air

Little Movements

We can laugh it off all we want but

It won’t change a thing.

It hangs around us,

The air is thick and clouded like stream water

I never have any idea what to say.

Swallow smoke and spit out blindness

Nothing left after the sun rises

& eats up homes,

Cleans out the valley,

And nothing is left except the sighs,

Hitting the walls of the hills

This (like everything) Is About Self Esteem

After my friends across the hall have

Nodded off

I’ll be the loud one

I’ll call the front desk

I am the ghost, the prankster

All my feelings come in seasons

Brought on my rafts of heavy rain

There’s nothing I love all the time

I am a hummingbird,

A big bee,

I weigh nothing, I cost nothing

If you hit too hard

If you look too long

I fall off the face of the earth

I leave nothing

I play songs that become you down halls that

Drip and ooze

Your feet fall on velvet drums

And make velvet songs

I open doors quiet

But I close them loud

There’s a call, a creak for help either way

I cost nothing, I leave nothing