Orange candies sliding around in someone’s mouth like a snake on ice

Black is like the smudges under football players eyes, smearing from the crystal droplets of rain pouring down from the deep purple sky

A flush of orange salmon darting, pushing themselves upstream, desperate to get to their birthplace

Grey like the outside of a house during one of the huge tornados on the Kansas plains

Yellow is like the sunrays, dancing like people giving warmth to everything they touch

Mimi Eliscu, Winter Park

Summer 2008, written to an abstract painting at the Cornell Museum of Art, Rollins College

A couple banana poems

My color is yellow

The sun is my yellow friend

Please don’t eat me 

I am shaped like a canoe 

To open me you split my head off 

In my final day I become rotten and old 

Black spots appear on me as I get older 

I am shaped like a gun

My banana wife died in childbirth 

I have four banana kids

A monkey ate my best friend

Hopefully you are allergic to me

Please don’t eat me. I have a tough enough

Life already.

Joey Heindel, 6th grade, Mt. Pleasant

Do you know how hard it is to write on a banana?!?! You should try it sometime. But first think, How do you think the banana feels? The ink staining her back forevermore? How would you feel? The sharp ball-pen tip piercing you with every letter. The burn of the ripped Chiquita banana sticker for more room to write? What about the kids?!?! That’s right. A whole family coming home to scare the children with scars…What a horrible fate…SO SAD.

Fiona Harvey, 4th grade, Maitland, Fla.

  

 

 

Untitled

Seven years ago, I saw you walking all alone
You were wearing that light blue paisley dress you wore last Thursday
It ends right above the knee and has short sleeves
You were walking down Bulbery Street
Looking at the ground
Staring at your shoes
Green slip-ons with a pink flower on the thong
I didn't yet know your name
And I didn't know if you knew mine
I was the guy wearing the purple baseball cap backwards
You did look back
But I'm sure positive you didn't see me
I need to know your name
I want to know
What you do
Where you're from
Everything about you

-- Mariah Byrne, 8th grader, Orlando

Two Haiku

The large green and yellow doors,
The statues of the country's heroes,
Are overshadowed by the Wickalow Mountains .

-- Maureen Malles, 10th grader, Orlando

A bud starts to form
Then slowly blooms to its full
Not knowing it's been cut

-- Victoria Coleman, 7th grader, Orlando

 

I Am Waiting Poem

I am waiting for my money
Like you wait at a raffle drawing
To see if you’ve won the prize.
I am waiting like a fiancée waits
At the altar to say “I do.”
I am waiting like a football
Fan, cheering for my team in a third overtime.
The teller takes so long to fill
my bag with money.
I am waiting like a little kid
Waits at the window for the rain
To pass. I am waiting like
the cheater that stands at a friend’s
locker wanting his homework returned.
I want to take off this mask
so badly, and hop into my dull green getaway
Buick and race to Mexico.
I am waiting like a hungry
Family waits for food at a restaurant,
With only drinks to keep them satisfied.
I am waiting like the lion waits
For the water buffalo on the African
Plains. I am waiting like a man
At a red light with his pregnant
Wife in labor in the back seat of his
Chevy. I am waiting like the
Man with free samples of orange chicken
Hungers for a customer. I am
Waiting for the bank to give me my
Money before I fart and
The police fire thinking it was a gunshot.
-- Nadine Currie, 11th grader, Orlando, Fla.

Some flower bulb poems:

 

 

I am a bulb

A gilded

Peasant

Cradled in

Silken sheets

Of gold

Although I am

Really just

All

Squishy

Inside

I am the one that seems

Flawless

But really am just

Coated in makeup

I am the very

Fake

Person who looks tough

On the outside

But really is harmless

I look very

Confident

But I am burned and tortured

I am a bulb.

            Larissa Schiavo, 7th Grade, Mt. Pleasant

 

Soft yet hard

A brown light bulb

Cool and tan.

Planted in the ground

It develops,

It grows

A little green inchworm

Inching its way to the sky.

It surfaces its subterranean dwelling

Taking in its first glimpse of sunolight,

Like a baby’s first breath.

As it climbs up and branches out,

It’s a green octopus

Pulling down the sky as it towers.

Taking the air within itself

Growing ever green

Ever mutating,

To something beautiful

            Matthew Yungman, 10th grade, Mt. Pleasant 

A “Used to Be…But Now…” Poem

I used to be pink and red when I first came out, but now I am calm and quiet
I used to be messy and unclean, but now I am clean and sanitized
I used to cry a lot but now I have someone to rock me to sleep
I used to put on other people’s shoes and clothes but now I have someone to guide me in the right direction
I used to put socks on my hands and wear them as gloves and pretend I was an usher at church, but now I have someone to take me
I used to get my clothes mixed up but now my mother is here to find the right clothes for me
I used to do all of those things but now I am older…

-- Treyshawn Simmons, 7th grader, Charleston

The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter - The Next Step

(a continuation of Ezra Pound's translation of Rihaku's poem -- ed.)

At seventeen I waited,
I waited for you to return,
you have been gone for too long,
my sorrow is overwhelming.

At eighteen you returned,
I was confused to see you,
I didn't know how to react,
my world had been always quiet,
like sleeping mice.

You told me of your ventures,
to America,
I asked why you had departed,
you didn't answer.
I told you I was going to come look for you,
but didn’t know where to start.

I missed you.
and, I'm happy to have you back,
please don't leave me again,
for my heart will be shattered.

-- Megan Wray, 9th Grader, Orlando

Spring is in May,
Ending in late June
Sounding of the light whistle,
Of grasshoppers in the late, cool evening
Feeling of, of the feel,
Of making bacon
With no shirt on.

               -- Mary Scott Gilbert, 3rd grader, Mount Pleasant Academy