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A Past of Protest

Paper Weight by Jigeesha Mukhopadhyay (Canada, 22)

8/29/2023

 
Moon runs through town and village, day and night to deliver letters to their intended recipients.
He is but an empty shell, an envelope sealed off with resin locks without an actual letter in them.
or where,
Moon wonders if someone is to write to him, what might they say?
Will they know him enough to have questions? Does he know himself enough to answer them?

Glossary of Korean words:

Jipsin                     traditional straw sandals
Woomul                 shallow wells

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Lady Justice by Maliha Iqbal (India, 17)

8/25/2023

 
She was blindfolded
But that wasn’t enough
So they stifled her voice too
In case she should scream for help
When they turned her into
Nothing more than a statue.
Her scales lay rusting in a corner
Until one day a child who had lost

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​The Burning Times by Alorah Welti  (Minnesota, 20)

8/17/2023

 
Snow pauses in its flight
and 50,000 ropes dig into my neck.
Torture is cut and buried in my body.

They make prey of me.

Severed trees groan under the weight
of their own smoke;
the burden of my dark bones.

They make fuel of me.

The air is pregnant with death, my dear,
but I will begin again--
this time

a witch.


​
​​Alorah Welti (she/her) is a Minnesota-born feminist, synesthete, poet, and artist. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic, lavender bones, Rejection Letters, Lit. 202, and elsewhere. She is one of the poetry editors for The Cloudscent Journal and is a recipient of the Daniel Manacher Prize for Young Artists. She lives on stolen Mohican and Wabanaki land, just north of North Adams, Massachusetts, with her family. You can find her on Twitter at @alorahsky.

Cretan Fledgling by Christina Ellison (Texas, 23)

8/14/2023

 
Little Icarus, fly on
your small sparrow wings
away from the nest
that was once all you knew.

Weave through the labyrinth
of twigs and leaves
and soar on a breeze
that takes you higher
than these treetops
holding you captive.

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Underneath an Increscent Moon by Lachlan Chu (California, 17)

8/8/2023

 
​You told me to meet you here;
9:00 in December. Impenetrable sky.
I saw you shaking in the cold,
and we were only strangers then,

both atop a little hill that
I first thought a mountain.
I remember the jeering wind,
jacketless to keep it from you.

It wasn’t long before the fireflies,
and this was the best spot to watch,
you said. They would erupt,
like fog washing across the land,

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  • Home
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