Young Writers Society

air smells cold
like early summer fog
sitting heavy


air smells like early summer fog
but heralds rain that promises
devastation in october fires -

smell of water only comforts from the ocean


2
baseball isn’t a passtime
it’s an exercise in failure that
specialises in pain

3
april doesn’t start with sunshine

april smells like petrichor
hope that stands on crushed dreams

wet dirt, wet cement, new book -
smells to build hope

the worst kind of crushed dreams smell like wet cement -
the ones that could have happened, but never quite managed
fruition.

4 - the cat
the humans have done it again
and left me with the one who doesn’t play
never remembers my treats
and disappears for hours on end,
comes home smelling like children.

5
raindrops on fingers
and dirt under shoes
the cat wants attention,
and so do you.
6
i look at my history of unorganized religion
and see highlights as told by my grandfather
through a filter of what his grandfather held
as tenants and abominations
of tradition and assimilation
straddled between three worlds:
old, new, and the ones fled
countless generations past.

7
spring smells like matzo ball soup and rainy days,
almost summer afternoons, and evenings watching
fog roll across the bay and over hills
still green from winter rain:
the only tradition held scared -
food.

8
a menorah soldered too many times to repair
and a mahjong set carved from ivory;
bone china and fading photographs;
a family tree not her own;
a legacy of hate:
things left behind by my great-grandmothers.

9
don’t look into the sun
(you’ll be blinded)
but close your eyes and turn
(the red will haunt your eyes)
facing west for the unknown
(you’ll miss the signs)
east for the endings you thought you left behind.

10
cleaning a life out of a house:
-dusty corners and unhung clothes
sitting in racks above the guest room closet
keeping company with ghosts
-books with cracked spines
just waiting to be broken
-the saucepan stained
from too many breakfasts,
friend matzo, heavy on the sugar
-the kibble that rolled under the oven
three dogs ago

11
california problems:
looking up after morning rain
to see grey skies and wondering
if it was cloud or smoke.

12
it hits your chest and radiates outward
spiraling toward extremities and extremes

13
the sound of other people in your house
strangles memories that are stripped away
with the furniture

14
the smell of other peoples houses
lands a visceral duality:
love, hate, warm and bleak,
a precipice

balanced on the precipice.
a precipice with potholes.

15
air thick with pollen
sickly sweet, choking
on smell before particles

16
sometimes you don’t know yourself
or the difference between longing and wanting to fit in

difference between longing and normal

if you exist in the liminal spaces
and pass as what’s expected
where is the line between longing
and normal

17
i live where the cicadas don’t
and crickets and frogs
(and the occasional cat)
are the only disturbances in the dark
(are the dark’s only disturbance)
until dawn.

18
sometimes the wind blows
to remind us how close we are to the ocean
and sends the smell of the sea
forty-five miles inland.

19
hot days and cold nights
herald

if the coldest winter is summer in san francisco
then i don’t know what to call spring

20
warmth of sun on skin
only welcomed in the twilight times
when it battles with wind to push sweatshirts on,
sunglasses off

21
the first heat of summer comes
in waves that alter perception,
reality adjusting for long days
and warmer nights
of high deserts
that race
between
forty degree points
and swing to ensure that
winter clothes never quite leave
but stay thrown over arms
just in case the waves
decide to recede faster
tonight than they raced in
with the sun over
the horizon.

22
early morning precipice:
wind on bare skin
and smell of pollen on air
has greater certainty
than the team on channel two
claiming it’s not a heat wave,
not yet.

23
telling of of a life is found
not in what is kept,
but what was thrown away
with last week’s moldy lasagna
and the jar of sauce kept three months past date.

24
16 2.0
cool morning

cool dawn,
predawn masks bugs hiding on the walls

people forget
under the wrapping on sarcasm and snark
a squishy human
that doesn’t want plans
forced on them

25
introvert:
one who does not wish to go out to dinner;
there’s already plans for the next two days.