Young Poets
Published here are some of the excellent poems we receive from our gifted young writers.
You can submit poems either by post (please enclose a stamped address envelope for reply), via our on-line portal, or by email to acumeneditor@gmail.com. Please mark the contents ‘Young Poet Submission’, put this in the subject line if you are submitting by email, and put your name, age and address on each page of the submission.
Please submit no more than four poems. You should be aged between 16 and 25 years, the work should be unpublished.
Robin Kathaas
Ha Long
Something as mountainous as a mountain ought not to have a shadow
shivering on the waters. It is too obvious
a lie. When their father falls, the shadows will not survive. Like many of us,
they are already teetering on the border
of what is real and what we wish
was there. The motor of the boat
makes me nauseous not because it moves but because it feels too close
to the blades of a helicopter hovering above
a city with its searchlights open wide like the wings of a butterfly wanting
nothing more than to have its say in things it does not understand.
The guide tells me that this sea is not a sea, but
that is a technicality. Anything this large is a sea,
including a helicopter, a mountain, a blade, or
a mouth tracing the scars that the water has left
on the serrated bottoms of the rocks. There used to be more to them,
but just like everything around them they grew old
and the sea began to look less like a sea and more
like a technicality. Even so, all day they look
at their shadows, denying their fear but not their mass.
The Great Greenland Shark: Timeless.
When I was thirteen years old the Ancient Greeks took me
to the cave that had stopped being a cave
when they told it to be a miracle and it, like an unburdened puppy,
sat up and listened
before speaking. Now it was my turn
to fit the impossible in my mouldy coat pocket.
I stepped into the toothy maw of the beastly boulder and saw:
a greenland shark, swimming in my breath.
It stank. I had brought coins and incense, but I suspected
my ancestors of pouring out their gratitude from below.
Eager to be different, I spoke. I was young,
and if I hadn’t been impressionable I wouldn’t have been there,
wouldn’t have been here, wouldn’t have done anything at all, let alone
been capable of understanding that great greenland shark.
Away, it swam, and it took my breath with it.
For the first few months after my visit, I thanked it
every morning when I woke, out loud.
Then, winter came, and I saw the shapes my breath formed
on the window of the world.
I stopped showering, and stank.
I stopped talking, and grew moss.
I stopped thinking, and swam,
out, into the earth.
Angelin Lee
Makeup
i. Foundation
Layers, cracking:
You will get good grades
get into a prestigious university
Bachelors
get a masters, maybe a PhD
You must become a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer
or what am I going to tell Jason-who-went-to-Harvard’s mom?
that my daughter chose to be a nurse instead?
Your foundation lies in that you work hard
so your parents’ immigration to the States
won’t have been wasted
on a daughter
(even if it was their choice)
ii. Concealer
Violet lethargy blooms under tired eyes
All nighters in exchange for a 4.0 GPA
Three hours of sleep so you pop adderall
(is it worth it? Yes.)
What’s the use of taking Biology if you can’t fix your body?
To conceal. At least when you’re studying you can’t think too hard
about the bumps blemishing your forehead , breakouts
from Monster energy drinks and black coffee
One meal a day
If you don’t get into college you’re worth nothing, you know?
I know.
Tears—heaven’s rain—dampen your cheeks
So you cover them up with concealer two shades lighter
than your skin
will seem healthy, glow—
You study.
iii. Eyeliner
Eyeliner changes everything, you’ve heard
If eyes are windows to the soul then maybe you should at least make yours pretty.
Your eyes tell the truth, scream!
With eyeliner maybe you’ll no longer have
your mother’s almond-shaped eyes
if you line them dark enough
maybe you’ll be able to make friends
that aren’t from China and don’t assume you speak broken English
even though you’ve won writing awards
And kids at school won’t pull their eyes into slits and stick their tongues out,
Maybe.
iv. Blush
Pale pink chrysanthemum petals
Champagne infused cheeks
Felicity layered on enough it won’t seem like you’re yellow everywhere;
that you do have colour, aurora
—that you are Pretty.
Butterfly wings flutter in spring
bubbly with laughter
and the picture is idyllically beautiful
(or is it?)
v. Lipstick
Vermillion shades illusion
mixed with sanguine opulence
Persephone’s pomegranate seeds stain, red
Bold, Alluring. demure
Speak up. Speak louder. We can’t hear you.
okay.
Lips too thin, small, cupid’s bow? No.
Overline them. And fill in the gaps
with scarlet crayon.
So you will be able to better communicate—
Stand straight.
vi. Smile
The last and most important step of makeup
is to wear a smile
Not too big so that too much of your teeth show too much
Just a little…perfect! Be (un)natural.
Confidence, they say, is key
Wear one for others if nothing else
But your smile is a mask
and no matter how hard you try
Masks shatter too
You are lost without one
Naked
What are you doing?
Don’t let the tears fall or it’ll ruin your hard work!
S M I L E
Keep your mask on even as the layers threaten to crack.
More Young Poets
Lily Finch
David and Goliath Story So you, unperturbed, let me weep on your marvellous stomach– hallowed ground, ribbed by the sleeping mounds of nested muscles– and when I am done, wrung out, washed in, belly-up on the sand like a beached jelly, you gift me a Stanley Hammer:...
Michael Liu
Hunan Teeth, the bones I clean, bite into this pillow. This bed is not mine, it is perhaps my late grandfather’s; or just another metaphor left in this parcel of land that could have belonged to my grandfather. Inside my eyelids: two melting balls of chocolate....
Ella Pheasant
Gabriel’s Harley Your old Harley rusts next to a broken ATM, gum-tacked mirror smashed in by the church’s poker iron, your fingers bloody and buried inside me, before dawn daubed its collared black puff over your thick, stained-glass lids. x I want you to know that...
Sidney Lawson
Anecdote I’d like to have her laugh / Which erupts like a broken hose / Fixing at the wrong time, or his shoulders / Which people love to lay their head on. (from The Party by Sinéad O’Reilly) In dizzy rooms awash with eyes of green, The air is smoke, the water...
Audrey Hunter
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...
Saul Grenfell
Rain and cheer Innocence darted through streets alone,hair dancing in the rush of itamid dense smells and bids and cumin and saffronlittle lungs a-panting. Now, with top button stiffly done,greying hair flattened and...
Sidney Lawson
The First Affair I rinse my hands of the way your skin felt, Brush my teeth thinking of how you tasted. The soap’s scent is reminiscent of your Intense fragrance, something I won’t forget In a hurry. I remember the sight Of you in that red dress, the slight gasps you...
Emily Riley
till dawn do us part late night kisses behind closed doors no one has to know you’re mine for the night unwavering devotion you write novels on my skin then tear them to pieces leaving me severed and shattered your beautiful work destroyed no one has to know...
Charlotte Lebedeker
Josephine It’s been ten years of Josephine, and the world will give us decades more. But if that’s cut short by the gods above, I would upturn all our climbing trees, I would dry out all our oceans, I would leave no corner of the world unchecked searching for her. As...
Daphne Harris
dinner party ‘conversation’ It has a haunting quality, does it not? How shadows leave the table when lights flicker on, but their presence is constant and reminded when birthday candles are blown out. The way a sour aftertaste an be remembered for days on end, but the...
Florence Grieve
The Bristol hum I’m looking for the secret portal where the air quivers above the grass because I want to get away from here from the place where emotions are berocca dissolved in the white wine served with dinner, swallowed with our plates of macaroni cheese and...
Isaac Cude
Sandpaper There is not much difference between words. Maybe there is, maybe it is different. There is horror in thoughts, in desiring Something unknown; it seems known to others. It is kept hidden, secret, and it is unfair. When words bubble up, they are strange....
Tricia Tan
finding nemo in the ward the aquarium of her ward was rich as ever in the Great Barrier Reef Hospital. Old fish diving in the shallows of the ED. The pillows a lush anemone, her clownfish gown swallowed in. My smile daft as Dory’s. Brief as bubbles, or the...
Emily VanPelt
Adoption I didn’t spend 9 months in your womb, growing into a creation of my own I wasn’t the result of your great love story, but of one unknown You didn’t feel the emotion when the second line appeared There were no tears of joy and no little kicks that you endeared...
Liberty Price
Swapsies Your favourite jumper is draped, Languishing on the back of my chair The tattered sleeves unmoving, Its snot stains ever-present And the colour clashing As always With your imagined outfit. The window looks on, Sheets of sunlight In heavy layers over the...