Young Writers Society

10. summa cum laude

before the fall semester started, he told me
that I could just barely pass all my classes in my last semester
and I'd still get the honor anyways,
like he did, despite barely turning in
half his assignments in the class we shared
and the professor saying afterwards,
in a polite way, that my friend had been
going through some "senior burnout."

I still have a bit of work to do over the summer,
so I'm not sure I can give up this semester.
but frankly, even if I could, I don't think I would.
I have an assignment that's due in an hour,
and even though it's a simple write-up
that's barely worth any points, the idea
of not doing it still scares the hell out of me.
that's twenty whole points I'd be throwing out the window,
and even if I could use that hour
to do some more important assignments
or work on my resume
or just watch videos on youtube
(and let's be real,
I just want to watch videos on youtube),
that'd be an assignment that I went out of my way not to do,
and I didn't get this far because I didn't do things
(even though, frankly, I could've afforded
to not do a lot of things the last few years,
and I'm not sure it's worth
trying to bury myself in every assignment
and wreck my sleep schedule staying up
until two or three in the morning every night
for something on a resume
that an interviewer is going to look over
for a couple seconds, then push it aside
and look for a resume
from someone a little more qualified).

11. 2008

I think I was about seven?
sitting in the family minivan
while we drove up a hill
looking out over rows of trees
and pastel-colored boise houses
(and I'm not sure if I remember that right -
I don't think boise
was ever that green or hilly
because it's in a depression
and all the heat and clouds
settle in and try to kill
anything that tries to grow there),
and I was thinking about lemonade stands.
where I could get the wood,
what I could cobble together,
the signs and prices I'd put up,
where to buy lemon juice and sugar,
who all would be interested,
how much money I could make,
if I could spend that money to make more stands,
get more ingredients, put up more signs,
make enough money that it wouldn't matter
dad had just lost his job
and we didn't have to leave boise forever.

and, of course, I thought I could do that,
or, at least, I didn't have any other choice,
nevermind that I was a random kid
with no friends or social skills and a fear of tools,
so it wasn't like I could go anywhere with that.
and I don't think seven year old me
would appreciate older me traveling back in time
to say that yeah, leaving boise forever
was probably a pretty good call, all things considered,
because now you live in a place
where flowers can actually bloom in the spring
and your bigot relatives are too far away to visit
and you don't have to be (as) afraid to live as yourself
and when you get a car, if you ever want to come back,
all you have to do is drive back there long enough
to get whatever nostalgia you want out of it, and leave.

12. mesa in the sunset

red and brown rocks
jutting out in layers,
creases, ridges, gaps,
some hiding others
wherever I'm looking
so I always find new things
to fall in love with, like
green moss and dead grass
almost golden in the light,
the mesa casting a shadow
on the hill below it,
and overhead gray clouds
rolling rumbling streaking,
it's raining somewhere
I can't see,
and maybe it'll rain here
soon, because
we have a long, hot summer
ahead of us.

lol a little busy this week

13. frayed mess pretending to be an adult

I'm pretty lousy at tying my shoes
(seriously, you'd think
it'd just be a couple loops
and threading shoelaces
through each other,
I've been doing this
most of my life now,
pretty sure they can hold together
for more than a couple hours),
and usually I'll be walking back
to my place and I'll look down
to see my shoelaces
gradually coming undone,
flopping on the sidewalk
and brushing against the grass
and eventually giving up entirely,
like I'm giving up entirely,
stomping on those plastic bits
(they're aglets, right?
like that phineas and ferb episode
said they were, I'm pretty sure)
and hoping they don't break off
and turn my shoelaces into frayed messes
like I'm a frayed mess
pretending to be an adult
long enough for me
to get back to my room
and take my shoes off.

14. graphite

to get some more lead
into that mechanical pencil,
I used to be able
to yank the back off
and shove some graphite in.

but, for whatever reason,
that back piece stuck
to the rest of the pencil
(maybe time and rust (?)
from holding it in my hand
for however many years),
and me and then dad
would pull the back out
with pliers, until one day
dad pulled on it too hard
and broke the pencil.
I don't remember why.
maybe a spring bent
or the casing caved in
or something like that.
I know that pencil
is lying around somewhere,
but I'm kind of afraid
to check on it.

not that it mattered.
I'd stopped using it
a little while before -
turns out typing things down
is easier, faster,
and I don't have to memorize
page locations and random paragraphs,
and I don't get hand cramps.
but I did like the way
graphite scratched on paper,
flipping back through pages
to see how much I'd written
(even though, by now,
the pages are probably yellowed
and the writing tiny and faded),
and watching notebooks stack up
on the table next to my bed
after a couple years of nights
writing under a lamp
long after midnight.

15. wait sorry what were you asking me, I wasn't paying attention

outside the window,
in between budding leaves, a
house finch hunts for food

16. false spring

if I look up at the mountains for long enough,
I can see snow hiding under the evergreens
or settling down in a ravine or behind a rock,
white specks holding on to their color
even as the sun bears down on them
and rain seeps through them
and animals trample across them
and the brown grass turns green
from the water it can steal from the snow.

and biking by my parents' house,
I'll sometimes see little gray mounds
that I almost think are gravel or rocks
until I see the puddle of water around them,
and recognize snowflakes buried in a pile of
small oil spills and tiny chunks of asphalt
and browning pine needles and rabbit poop
but still refusing to melt because
they've been in the shade
and the wind's been blowing strong and cold
and it gets a little below freezing most nights
and spring isn't really spring in the west,
it's winter pretending to be warm and breezy and rainy
long enough for me to forget it can snow in may,
when the northern hemisphere tilts towards the sun enough
that winter has to pack its bags,
throw out the last couple snowstorms
its been keeping in its closet,
and go south to whiter pastures.

17. an atheist goes to a john mulaney show on easter sunday

we've got to be a little fast,
because we're at the front
of the crowd of people pulling their phones
out of bags (and several people
almost ran into me while I waited for you
to hand me back my phone),
so we run down the concrete stairs
in-between the red rocks
and bottles of alcohol
left like offerings
beneath the railings,
and you're already ahead of me
(running around people
even though your ankle hurts)
because I'm being cautious
and I want to look out
over the black hills rising up
in the distance and over our heads,
separating us from the city lights
and the moon clear, pale yellow
hovering overhead, a few stars
in the night sky, and blinkers
from cars already driving away.

18. experience

sometimes I'll look back
at those weeks I had to deal
with three exams and projects
plus some events on the side,
for flavoring, if flavoring
was running around
with my ass on fire
hauling a wagon up a hill
kicking open doors
putting up decorations
sending out reminders
double checking the clock
a few dozen times
laying food out
turning on the music
saying hello to everyone
breaking out some games
maybe make art
glue ceramic together
stop the music stand up
give a presentation say who I am
who we are what we're doing here
why it matters that we're here
and we only reserved the room
for so long but nobody else
is coming so I have to wait
for everyone to slowly leave
then stop everything
take everything apart
put everything away
throw everything out
shove everything into a wagon
and haul everything down a hill
through a couple doors
and some stairs into that room
turn off the lights close the door
go home with my chest hurting
my back hurting lungs hurting
throat scratchy ears ringing
throw myself into bed
and take a nap for a little while,
I look back at all that
and wonder how I did it,
then I look the other way,
see the three exams and projects
plus a couple events on the side,
and I think yeah, I can handle it,
not because I've done this exact thing before,
but because I think
I might sort of know
what I'm doing this time.

19. ninth planet from the sun

I don't know if I'm remembering this right,
but every time I think about it
I can see my face scrunched up,
me holding an astronomy book under one arm,
furious at the idea that pluto
isn't a planet, it's a dwarf planet
(whatever that means), but I knew
pluto is better than that, it's big enough
and far away enough and alone enough
that it's still a planet,
like all my old books said.

and by the time I was a little older
(old enough to give up and accept
that pluto's probably a dwarf planet,
because maybe it doesn't have the cleanest orbit),
I'd pour through wikipedia and google searches
looking for the latest blob a probe
several billion miles away had sent back to Earth,
or maybe some artist's renderings
of the big brown ice-covered rock,
or news on the moons they'd just discovered
flinging themselves around pluto,
and I'd tear my hair out because
2015 was too far away,
it was basically an eternity,
and back when I spent a couple hours a day
doing homework and the rest reading books
or running around in the grass or biking
or playing video games under the bed,
maybe it felt like that, that
I'd never get to see pluto
through my own eyes (or, a probe's cameras).

new horizons passed by pluto
almost seven years ago.
it sent the last of its flyby data back
almost six years ago.
it completed its second objective,
going past arrokoth, three years ago.
it's flying out of the solar system now,
and maybe it'll get a chance
to swing by another ball of dirt
before its systems fail in about ten years or so
(which also feels like forever,
but I think I've learned my lesson now).
we know what pluto looks like,
what pluto's moons look like,
all the craters and scars and gashes
and atmospheric compositions and what that ice is
and their orbits around each other and the sun
and overall, a little more about the solar system
and how it got to this point.

these days, I think
it doesn't really matter
whether pluto's a planet or a dwarf planet -
it's a confusing set of rules
made up by a group of scientists
who found out there were a bunch of rocks
as big as, or bigger than, pluto,
and decided kids didn't need to learn
about the fifteen planets
(personally, I would've loved to, but).
what matters is that we saw it
so big and strange and far out there
that we had to throw a probe at it,
because learning everything we can
about everything we can
keeps us alive as we fly
through the stars, no matter
what we call what we see.

20. go local baseball team wooooo

I hate wearing clothes
with brand names on them.
nobody needs to know
what my favorite brand is
(not that I have any,
which is part of the problem).
I don't want to be
somebody's walking advertisement.

I loved those baseball caps,
and I wore them constantly
for a few years (to the point
that it felt weird not having one
on my head, like my hair
was just about to fall off
in the sunlight),
but I don't watch baseball,
I barely know the local team exists,
and I got tired of bluffing
my way through conversations
or, worse yet, admitting
it's a little weird
to wear a baseball cap
and not know anything
about baseball.

and earlier today
I was wearing my newest hat,
and the dude walking ahead of me
had a shirt with the same brand,
almost like sunlight was
reflecting off my hat
and onto the back of his shirt,
and I almost wanted
to walk off into the grass
so it wouldn't be that obvious,
even though I'm pretty sure
nobody cares about that
other than me, because
I just want clothes that fit
and feel nice,
and apparently
that's too much to ask for,
I need to slap a brand on myself
in the off-chance someone notices
and buy the thing for themselves.

21. floating in air

it's so hazy out
the edges of the hills
are turning blue,
like the sky
is eating the trees
and rocks,
like the sky
is going to eat
everything,
and soon enough
I'll be floating
in air

22. problems

(wooo low-effort late night poems)

I don't know what's worse -
the wind I can hear rumbling through my headphones,
the base from that concert vibrating the walls,
pollen in the air clogging up my nostrils,
or the ash coming in from the southwest to sting my eyes.

23. I literally only nap once every couple years


knock it off with that whole
ironic self-deprecation thing
you keep doing. it's not funny,
and it's a little concerning
how easy it feels for you to joke about
how little you sleep or eat
or how basic tasks confuse you
or how you can't hear people
or how many things you suck at
and wow aren't you a real kidder,
you're just being sarcastic,
it's not as bad as you say it is,
and if it is that bad, well,
you just brought it up
and now you don't have to explain yourself,
and if other people are concerned,
that's their own problem,
which is why you're at the point
where a random stranger
tells you that you should take a nap,
and you laugh it off
and say you'll sleep eventually,
even though getting off a chair
is an adventure these days.

you keep rolling with the punches,
but getting punched in the face
still hurts, so why put yourself
in that situation?

24. ysaye op. 27 no. 2

sometimes I read
or watch or listen to something,
and I decide I like it,
by which I mean
I spend the next few hours
frantically checking youtube and tvtropes
so I can pour over the plot summaries
and all the side content
and the fanbases' best opinions
(either the ones that sound
the coolest, or the ones
that put to words
whatever opinions I already had
so I feel more clever
about myself), on top of
watching or reading or listening
to the original thing
a few dozen more times
looking for any breadcrumbs
I haven't vacuumed up, any hints
or cameos or surprises
that I hadn't noticed
the first few dozen times,
all while begging for something
exactly the same as what I experienced,
but new and interesting and exciting,
because I can't get over
that it happened, it's over now,
and I'll never feel like that again.