Tag: self

Staring Into a Multicolored Abyss by Ally Brunner

by Parallax-OnlinePoetry / Prose PoetryLeave a Comment on Staring Into a Multicolored Abyss by Ally Brunner

And just like that, you’ve given yourself away for the third time.

 You’ve revealed a little piece of yourself, burying what’s left of you a little deeper –– a little farther away from the beaming lights that flickered through the heart kaleidoscope you had as a child. 

The angles that once lined up to reflect the colorful expanse before you have sharpened, creating darker images that make you uncertain whether you’re still staring at your brother’s blue handprint on the wall or something else entirely. 

The speed at which the kaleidoscope turns astonishes you. One second you’re staring at an array of sunset-colored diamonds, the next a pool of blue stars. You reach out to grab them, hoping to grasp a morsel of beauty in your ragged hands, but each star slips through your fingers, landing in the hands of those with longer nails and ornate gloves that carry a grace and confidence you so clearly lack. 

Jewels and gems can’t hide the solitude that surrounds you.

Your ears pick up the slamming footsteps in the outside hall but your mind is too obscured by the twist and turn of the kaleidoscope to notice the blue paint running under the door. 

In your long and suitably uneventful life, the omnipresent kaleidoscope is removed only long enough for the splash of your brother’s thumbprint to become visible once more.

The lies spin as quickly as your fingers brush around the edges of the banged-up object. 

“I love you. And nothing you do can ever change that.” 

 

Ally Brunner is a high school junior from New York, NY. She enjoys playing sports, reading, and writing both prose and poetry. 

Visual art by Sylvie Mizrahi

 

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Three Poems By Caroline Rubin

by Bella KoschalkPoetryLeave a Comment on Three Poems By Caroline Rubin

Superstition

 

Because I am young

I secure a mirror tightly to my bedroom wall

 

But I still see shadows cut fragments,

Fractures form in the dark of twilight, where stars hide

 

Themselves beneath this cloth we call universe.

 

Through heavy eyes, the glass begins to sway like

A grandfather clock, my restless mind begs for sleep,

 

Or begs for dreams, or begs for dreams to bleed

Into reality, to wake once more in a better dream.

 

I’d like to say I trust the universe. I hold her hand

 

Like my own mother’s. My age holds no

Significance. I am afraid of separation, drifting

 

Somewhere lonely, in some empty sea.

Destiny is seductive.

 

It points to a place and commands you go there.

And so, you do.

 

My life-line diverts as I wake, wandering

Towards some heaven I can’t pronounce.

 

Illumination

 

Vermeer, did you fall in love with the woman or the painting of her?
Amongst your subjects’ delicate features lay softened shadows.

 

I see a spirit in every fierce brow, in every blotted complexion. An imprint:
your life in those malachite paints and burnt sienna shadows.

 

Your reflection mirrors in every brushstroke, every gentle unfurled curl.
Did you desire the sun for warmth or required light to erase the shadows?

 

We share common ground: art is our oxygen. Without it, we wither and wilt.
Teach me how to uncover the beauty of a world stained with shadows.

 

I wish you could paint me. I cannot think of a lovelier way to be memorialized
than living through a masterpiece. Fragment my soul, remnants of past lives shadowed.

 

If you could paint me, Vermeer, leave the title anonymous, I don’t want them to
know my name, but the woman I could have been.

 

The Poet Warrior
an ode to Garcilaso de la Vega

 

You listen to the music of your own beating heart underneath
medals and insignias. Hear the swelter of the lyre trapped in the heavy breath

 

of war, watch your men fall and pray for mercy.

 

Between the rush of blood and anguish,
you whisper verses
through
trembling lips
as you draw your sword.

 

A fragile balance between two souls:
grounded by the cold reality of death, eternalized by the fire of poetry.

 

There is a fiercer battle persisting in your heart.

 

Fate always seems to take the ones who
understand too much: the tapestry of the man you were,
unraveling at your feet as you fall into the arms of a saint.

 

Holy, holy like the strum of your lyre, silk chords settling

 

into your veins. They fade out into silence against the toll
of church bells.

 

Caroline Rubin is a 16-year-old poet from Naples, Florida who is currently attending the Community School of Naples. She has been published in the American High School Poets National Poetry Quarterly and has been recognized by the Scholastic National Art and Writing Awards. Through her poetry, Caroline aims to explore the existential questions that keep her awake at night.
Visual Art by: John Michael Dee
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Undrawn Self Portrait

by Bella KoschalkPoetryLeave a Comment on Undrawn Self Portrait

Undrawn Self Portrait

  1. The heart cracks into yellow yolk & white as it throbs through Instagram.
  2. The body walks to its reflection and squeezes itself shut.
  3. The ears tuned for sourness savor silence before they turn on & the mouth groans at
    the loudness of the world.
  4. The brain breathes out a sigh as yesterday’s burdens are borrowed again.
  5. She mumbles about the crumbling capitalist cycle, tasting silence in return.
  6. She peels the banana & she wonders if one day, she’ll shed her skin & be silent.
  7. She consumes Radiohead’s Nude & the heart shatters at “you paint yourself white, and fill up with noise” as she imagines herself with an invisible paintbrush.
  8. In a family of scientists, the creative one chokes on the wrong genes.
  9. In her skull, there’s no more space for the pulp of afterthoughts.
  10. In the dark, she silently cracks herself open until she’s all shell and no yolk, again & again & again.

 

Sara Cao is a junior at John Burroughs School in St. Louis, Missouri. She is currently involved in her school’s newspaper, literary magazine, and Science Olympiad team. Outside of school, she is passionate about social justice issues, writing, drawing, listening to music, and eating Shin Black Ramen. Through her poetry, Sara strives to heal and inspire people who relate to the overall messages of her poems. 

Art by: Diana Ryu

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