Category: Junior Literary

This category features the works of junior literary students at Mississippi School of the Arts.

Ten-I-See

So I was thinking about running for president.  But I’ll only have one platform: Tennessee.

We should basically just quarantine Tennessee.  The only real worthwhile contribution the state has ever made that is even scraping subpar is the pick-up line.  But basically, we section it off, and then we make everything in Tennessee $10.  Absolutely everything.

Think about it.  It kind of balances out.

Houses? $10.  (But you can only have ten.)

Any sort of food? $10.

Medical operations? $10.

Price of gas per gallon? $10.

I say we quarantine it and see if it works.  And if it doesn’t work, Tennessee burns in anarchy, and we just let them go at it, you know?  Like let them set up their own government if they want to, whatever.  It will probably take them a while to figure out that the government is coming to stop anyone.

Why isn’t the government going to intervene?  Because no one can go in or out of Tennessee.  You don’t want them buying things for other than $10 or people giving them stuff or them buying things for other people.

Also, there are only 10 dollar bills.  I say that it will work better than any trickle-down economic theory.

Plus, it will be pretty neat to have a new joke for Tennessee that isn’t a pickup line.
“What kind of dollar bills do you have?”
“The only dollar bill is the ten-I-see.”

Amazing, right?  Then Tennessee isn’t completely worthless.  Granted, Mississippi is going to have to find a new “vacation spot” that isn’t basically Mississippi.  They’ll have to, I don’t know, actually go somewhere new and experience new things instead of going to Tennessee just for the sake of saying you went somewhere.

The armpit of the country will turn into a frick frack amazing social economic theory war zone.  How cool is that?

I mean, you’d have to weigh the cons and pros of living there.  Everything is only $10, but so are inexpensive things.  There’s also a lot of anarchy, which I count as a major plus.

I would volunteer Mississippi to be the guinea pig, just because it’s a terrible state, but the whole point to sectioning off Tennessee is the same.

Then again, maybe we can start making some six dollar bills for Mis-six-ippi.  At least then we’d get something other than some annoying song.

And that is why you should vote for Z Money as president.

(I would go contact my senator and tell them my amazing idea, but I think they’d steal it.)

Cogs of a Child’s Mind (a series)

About two days ago, the topic of childhood misconceptions knocked on my dorm room door once again.  The topic snuck into the room and we began conversing about our own experiences as children.  Today, I am going to share a couple of those with you.

3.      Binder Clips and Football Shoulders

Okay, first off, binder clips.  Now, these bobbers never had much of a purpose to me besides looking like tiny purses that couldn’t hold much.  As I got older, they became torture tools used against me by my sister.  And what did they call them? Binder clips.  I’d never seen them used on binders, therefore, they were irrelevant to their name in my perspective.  Then one day in second grade, I watched as Mrs. Brown, rounded belly and all, bent over to grab a box of those clips.  She then proceeded to gather papers from the printer, clipping them together then turning them opposite ways.  Portrait, landscape. Portrait, landscape.

That was that was when I realized their purpose.  Still, I did not understand their name.  That is until a few days ago that my roommate, Madison, offered one to me.

“Um, I’m good.”

She put the clip in her hand down.

“I never actually understood why those were called binder clips,” I admitted.

“Oh.  It think it’s just because paper clips hold small amounts compared to how much a binder clip holds, hence binder clip.”

My mind had been blown.

_______________

“Touchdown!”  the football-announcer-guy half screamed into the microphone that wired into the speakers just behind my left shoulder.  I looked at it, my shoulder.  Then, I looked back at the field.  All of the football players were different in sizes and shapes.  The one thing, besides uniforms, that stuck out was their broad shoulders.  Why were they so big?

I looked back at my puny shoulder.  In all it’s bony glory, it still did not compare to the swollen uniformity of theirs.

Were they full of fat?  No, it had to be muscle.  I mean, you’d think it’d be muscle.  What if they were all muscle on the inside with a sheath of fat surrounding?  If so, then do they jiggle like the bump of Mrs. Brown’s stomach?

I imagine a football player, so caught up in the excitement of winning, tearing off his shirt and waving it around like the American flag, his enormous shoulders flexing at the raise of his arm.

This thought made me shiver.  Poor football players and their ugly shoulders.

Unhelpful Thoughts

shaking you off of my shoulders would be a burden lifted,

a deep breath out i know i’ve been holding,

(you’re crushing my frame)

my soul was never supposed to be the color of the night sky,

my mind should never have searched for comfort in the stars.

i shrank from the sun’s rays,

afraid it’s light would find its way into my viens,

boiling my blood and scorching my bones.

(maybe it could burn you too)

i never realized the catastrophe you hid beneath your skin,

maybe because i was busy hiding mine too.

our secrets lay behind bloodshot eyes,

yours more chaotic than my own,

(that’s what you told yourself)

i’m tired to tell you to stop spilling sugar,

all over my wounds.

(the sticky residue is starting to itch)

 

 

Have Humility

Pride

It comes in many forms, take grip onto the soles of our feet; it either holds us firmly in the ground or keeps us stuck in stubbornness to the point of arrogance. Taking pride in something or someone is a noble thing to do- it takes confidence  and courage to stand up for something and be the only one fighting. However, pride can turn peoples’ brains. It can sway ideas and linger of the new possibilities ahead if you decide to let your love of something overshadow what is right and wrong. The overflow of emotion that coincides with pride: love, fear, hate, anger- each are used as a tactic to win an argument. Prideful arguments are usually seen as a competition rather than a discussion because the entire talk is emotion-based, not factual. Taking pride in someone for their actions can be a positive thing, whereas talking someone up because you are proud of them, just to give yourself an edge or more power in a conversation is negative. Having pride in your work for example, as a painter, can be promising for your career. The flip side of this is when you are not humble enough to accept given criticism. Say someone doesn’t like your art. Say there are improvemtns to bwe made. Humilty needs to be shown in these situtations, just make sure that you do not confuse pride with worth.

My Father

My father is my best friend.

He’s the most avid reader you’ve ever met; he reads about three books a week.  To add onto that, he reads articles and articles of anything you could think of, sending me gifs out of nowhere of things like “king rats” with an article attached about them.

He always supports me in anything and everything I want to do.  When I started playing soccer, he went to classes to learn how to become a coach.  He studied and researched it into startling depths, where he was sending me packets of research every week on working out.  He forced me to go out into the yard with him and practice, even when I was young and sulky.

He read my first piece of writing when I was six.  It was some nothing about frogs, and they caught a fly that turned out to be a bomb.  I didn’t know how to use pronouns, and it was hard to read.  It didn’t matter.  He saw the potential in it.  In fifth grade, my teacher made me do a personal essay.  I blew it out of proportion, writing almost forty pages.  My dad read every page almost three times.  He still brings it up to this day with marvel in his eyes.

He got so excited about everything I wrote, no matter how terrible it was.  It didn’t matter, because I was trying.  Being such an avid reader, he always wanted to write more than anything else, and he had wonderful and bright ideas, but he never could put them down on paper.  He was too self-conscious.  He supported me in every way possible with it, even making me listen to really lame audio books.

My father wanted to be a professor in Geology before I was born.  He was already with my mother, taking care of her two children from a previous relationship.  He didn’t have to take care of Aislynn and Arianna, my two half-sisters (not that it made us any less close), but he chose to.  He worked odd jobs to support everyone, but when my mom got pregnant with me, he had to drop out with only a Bachelor’s degree.  It was just months before he gained his Master’s.

There are certain memories of him that I’ve found playing in my head lately.  Like how he would rant on absolutely anything he found interesting for two hours, just like a true professor.  I remember when he told me last month that his IQ was of genius level; then he told me not to tell my mother to spare her feelings.

Most of all, though, I remember when I was ten.  I was convinced my father knew absolutely everything, and he was never wrong.  We were making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  He told me you should always use peanut butter first with the butter knife, because otherwise jelly gets in the peanut butter, and jelly has to go in the fridge while peanut butter goes in the pantry.  I told him jelly was easier to wipe off, and it was so miniscule that it didn’t matter anyways.  He agreed with me.  That is the first time I considered that my father was not some all-knowing being.

He does the oddest jobs, like he built an Indian fireplace the other month that doesn’t create smoke for no reason.  It was the hardest thing to build, but it didn’t matter.  He enjoyed learning about it and doing it.

My father is the most fantastic person I have ever known.

Little Girls

I can’t stress this enough: STOP SEXUALIZING CHILDREN!! I’ve seen far too many movies where children under the age of 16 have been in sexual situations and made out out to be the ringleader of the whole show. Although I enjoyed the movie, I later realized the bigger picture. Movies such as Lolita and Pretty Baby have two female leads who are subject to sexualization and statutory rape of men and the scenes are set in a way that makes it seem like the girls wanted it. Children are in now way mentally or physically prepared for those activities.

These movies make Pedophilia seem natural, like nothing is wrong with the act of preying on young girls. It’s immoral and cannot be justified in any sense.

Innocent children should not be exposed to sexualization and grown men and women shouldn’t even think that that’s acceptable. It’s seen in more than movies. Hugh Hefner had two magazine pages of young girls, around 8-10 years old, partially or completely revealed. In no way should that have ever been printed, purchased, or socially accepted.

I feel as if i’m ranting more than getting my point across, but nevertheless, the sexualization of children is wrong but often done for cinematic and other entertainment purposes.

 

http://www.onlinefmradio.in/videos/showvideo/Lolita-1997-Full-Movie-x6kLJVytJY1i and Pretty Baby https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HczuLC4v9DM

 

the suburbs (pt. 5)

empty room // arcade fire

i was always alone.

even when i was surrounded by my friends, all i ever felt was alone. i could call someone’s name at the top of my lungs in a room full of people, but the room was always still somehow empty, like no one was even there at all.

suburbia left me in isolation, craving something more. it left me desiring something bigger than small town feelings.

i knew it was coming. i knew one day something would come along and pluck me from the suburbs and plant me where i belonged. for seven years i waited and waited, sitting in empty rooms and rooms only filled with empty lives.

when i was younger, everyone older than me looked like they were on fire. they looked fiery and inspired and passionate. in fourth and fifth grade, my friend down the street and i always looked up to her older sister. she was two years older than us and wiser than we could ever dream of being. our elementary paled in comparison to her middle school wisdom.

honestly, she intimidated us. we always wondered what it was like to be that old, to be that grown up. the way she walked and the way she talked left us wondering what growing up would look like for us.

then we were the ones growing up. only the girl down the street and i didn’t talk anymore. we were the intimidating middle schoolers to the little kids in the neighborhood, and i realized that her sister wasn’t on fire anymore. the sparks were gone and all that was left was the same grey that would take me over if i let it.

but i wasn’t going to let it. i wasn’t going to let growing up empty my soul out and turn me into a ghost of suburban future. i wasn’t going to let the emptiness that consumed them consume me, too.

so i laid low. i let them paint me over with their blacks and greys and pretended to be like them, but they could never touch the colors that coated my insides. i was going to grow up, but it wouldn’t be like them. i wasn’t going to become the people i’ve watched fall away time and time again. all i had to do was wait, and if it took forever, then forever it would be.

Faces

There is earth in your teeth. Lighter in palm. There is running. You wipe your brow and swallow gravel. Again. A brush past through hallway corridors. Sweet copper lines down your chin. They call you Red. They do not have eyes.

Flipping through magazine pages. Cut. Strands of silk fall through the paper. Into your hands. The eyes of a cat, one nose from a woman advertising her cheeks. Or her lips. Or the gloss coating them. You cannot tell.

Schoolbooks beat like butterfly wings against your ribcage. Everything painted in blue. So much blue it burns. There is a clap of lighting outside and it does not startle you. You present a poster with glitter glue and Ronald Regan facts. The glitter melts on your tongue.

People taste how empty feels.

You are saturated. You are the crater on the dirt where the sea used to be. Someone has eaten the ocean.

A mother washes dishes. A dancer’s grace (fallen down). The windowsill light casts halos above her brow. You rock back and forth, forth and back on the bathroom floor when she sleeps. You pull the word “afraid” from your throat as you shake. It comes tumbling out like string. The walls crumble like cardboard houses. It all feels terribly real.

A broken bottle slices your tongue when you blink. One, two, three. Blink-black brittle-bloody-dropping-down-again- again.

The mirror by your bed has hands. Clinging to  the corners, stretching the edges so you fit between. You are too whole. You bite off a piece of arm, a tear of skin around the ears. You stick it to your bedroom wall. It slides down to the carpet within the week. The dust mites piece you back together. Stiches snug.

This brain tugs taut as needle and thread. Another whisper of smoke. Cigarette kiss. Welcome in the hurt the way you pray. Be silent when you scream. Cry. Eyeballs freeze with winter weather. Slit your body through. Bleed out on the hardwood floors. The stains. They call you Red.

They do not have eyes.

You say you love her. Spit it out.

The glass between our faces will break one day. You keep tapping.

Tiptoe over trauma and bury dog bones. Visit once a day. Stop visiting when it snows. What about promises? Perception. Prove a point. Be mindful to be forgetful. You cannot find a good song to fit this. No emotion. Black hole looming and crunch-

the bones are broken now.

Include you. Include you. Need you. No one needs this. Vanilla smile and warm milk. Sickness is a state of mind.

You sleep below a motel bed. The world is shuddering. Holy is a brutal word.

No one can make you say it. No one can make you do anything. You read a Bible once; you could’ve done better. No matter. When the air congeals, when the birds fall dead mid- flight, they will know.

They will all know one day.

What a terrifying thought.

We meet beneath streetlights. They break our bodies orange. I kill my fears by kissing them upon your palms.  You share secrets. Ears are disintegrating. Your knuckles protrude. Angel- white.

The sun stopped working today. We tried shaking it, you put it in rice. Nothing changed. Not even a flicker.

You  stay miserable and underneath wet blankets.

You feel heavy. Heavy feels alone.

 

 

 

 

My Deal With Blogs

Here’s the thing: I really enjoy writing blogs. I like that the whole class and the seniors can see them if they want to. The point of the blogs is to be able to share what you’ve experienced and tell your opinion on matters.

This is my whole problem with having to have a certain amount done a week. I can watch the news all day long and still not feel like I have something to comment on or tell my opinion about. I’ve been alive for seventeen years but that doesn’t mean I have a plethora of stories that I think are blog worthy. I like to put a lot of effort into the topics of my blogs and even more effort into the research I do for the blogs I do when I comment on today’s events.

Sometimes, I feel like I’m stuck on campus, unable to hear and see new things or talk to new people. I can’t hear their stories or opinions, which is where I get a lot of my story prompts from. It makes it more difficult to get the full extent of a story or concept, when there’s no one to compare with.

Also, I don’t like constantly writing about sad and dark things that make you stare at the wall or forget how to come up with a sentence. I like writing about happy things that make people smile or at least not feel so down about life. And with my usual writing it’s usually the first of the two that ends up happening inadvertently, which is not my intention, so it takes extra time to convey my stories/poems/opinions in upbeat terms.

In saying that, it kind of makes it look like I’m coming up with excuses, which I might subconsciously be doing, but not on purpose. I tend to take a lot of pride in my writing, despite what I say, and I want it to be the best it can be. I want people to really think and remember what I’ve given them. It sounds like I’m being a attention seeker or that my writing’s worth depends on the accounts of others but that is also not what I’m trying to say. It’s just, if someone is going to take the time to read something of mine, I want it to be worth it.

This blog is sort of all over the place, but I feel like it tells what I’m trying to get across. Hopefully.