Highway Lullaby

  

        
  
  

    
Poetry
By: Hunter Towne
 


Silence makes a sound

	don’t you think?

	Sometimes I can’t sleep

	because the silence is so loud.


There is something about the nothing,

	the absolute emptiness of a place

	like walking through a forest on a snowy night.


Silence scares me.


I grew up in town

	close to the highway

	and the constant hum of tires on tar

	has sung me to sleep the past 15 years.


Sometimes we go to a farm

	in New Hampshire.

	It’s beautiful

	and I treasure my time there.

	But I have a hard time sleeping.


It is just

	so

	so

	so

	quiet,

	yet, so

	so

	so

	loud.


Silence has a sound

	don’t you think?


Hunter Towne is 15 years old; she lives in Freeport, Maine.


  

  
  

          
    
      


  

  

    





        

    
The Red and White Campbell's Beef Noodle Soup Can

  

        
  
  

    
Poetry
By: Andrew Li
The red and white Campbell’s Beef Noodle Soup can, 


created by heavy, hurting, hands, in a faded factory, 


sits, idly. 


 


It has the same mellow, metallic, touch as others of its kind.


It has the same lackluster label as others of its kind.


 


It has the 


same


soggy


soup


as others of its kind.


 


The price, nineteen cents, is printed boldly on the lid,


and the can is shipped off to a shop in Manhattan,


where a man comes everyday to buy it. 


The man, Andy is his name,


whips out two dimes, grabs the can, 


and tells the storekeeper to keep the change. 


 


He returns to his easel in his studio 


and opens the can 


and takes in the boring bland aroma of the soup


and he consumes it like his mouth is a black hole 


devouring the universe of beef, noodles, and soggy soup. 


 


Yet it doesn’t deter him from buying another,


and another,


until twenty years have gone by. 


 


Andrew Li, 18, Singapore


 


 


 


 



	 


  

  
  

          
    
      


  

  

    





        

    
My Outspoken Mother

  

        
  
  

    
Poetry
By: Chloe Basch
My Outspoken Mother


 


She gave me fear.


She gave me hate.


She eyed me with disgust.


She gave me strength.


 


The fire escaped her lungs


And the flood absconded with her brain.


She resides


Withered away,


A novel amongst stories.


She fell off the shelf,


She snapped.


The ink that was once forced onto the paper,


That yearned to paint the world a different color;


Instead her words painted the limited pages.


 


Her spine shatters


Her pages wrinkle.


Her cover fractures,


And her story is forgotten.


Gone.


 


Her story told the truth


And that is why she died.


We cannot know the truth,


For then the world would not be poverty stricken.


The world would not be 


 


broken


 


If there were more stories like her.


 


They did it


They ripped her pages


Burnt her cover.


They silenced what couldn’t be heard.


They killed the spark of fire left


Because that spark caused a conflagration.


 


The fire consumed libraries


Because they told lies.


It spread to schools


And buried the ashes.


Because they told lies.


She didn’t fall.


She didn’t burn.


Her story wasn’t forgotten.


 


Forgotten like mine


Like my father’s


Like my sister’s.


 


Her infamous truth did not overpower the lies that are enforced.


It did not flood every library 


Every school;


But it killed everything that made me fit in.


Everything that made me the same


 


Chloe Basch,11, NY,NY USA