Amanda Chiado

I pledge allegiance to the war
against the United Faces of Adulthood.
My hand is on my Juicy Fruit,
pocket full of rubber band bullets,
body equal parts blood, courage
and Crush, orange soda.

And to the parents who know
no better, fed by their curiosity
for button up shirts. For which I stand?
I’m not sure, but I stand and curse
for the very first time. Damn.

I fight for the banana seat on my bike,
for the freedom in Bazooka comics.
I fight for my tree house with the sign:
          No Boys Allowed.

Don’t you tell a soul.
That hole in the ground,
dug in the deep wet of my backyard
to the left of my swing set —
It holds my secret coffee can,
my quiet, collected liberty.

You pinky swear, I tell you,
or they’ll find us, and beat us
with leather belts in the name of justice,
and they’ll make us
grow up.

AMANDA CHIADO is an MFA graduate of California College of the Arts. Her work is forthcoming or appears in Witness, Sweet, Forklift, Ohio, Best New Poets, Fence, Cranky, Eleven Eleven and others. She currently works as the Program Coordinator for the San Benito County Arts Council and she is also an active California Poet in the Schools.

Helena Ainsworth

It scares me when it gets like this
and of course the scars frighten alien touch,
but at least they are tangible,
at least they are real.

When it gets like this,
it gets carnal, sounds erupt,
sounds like this that which
I could never again create.

And even the screams
I cannot hear,
eyes tightly shut
knuckles white between gripped hair,
lips stretched wide,
trying to articulate despair.

They are merely raw,
ear-shattering bombs
attacking my unexpecting conscious,
rendering me nearly comatose,
even though it is I
who throws the missiles.

When it gets like this:
my hands form a triangle,
my breathing forms a rhythm,
“I am calm,” I think,
and yet I know, I am exploding.

And that is why
the skunk smoke swirls,
the ink of life drips,
the body hungers.
That is when I get scared,
When it gets like this,
When I remember how it was
And how it still could be.

HELENA AINSWORTH is a seventeen-year-old current resident of the United States who has moved over twenty-one times, lived on two different continents, in four different states. At the moment, she lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts. She finds much of her inspiration in the State Park she often explores with her dog and beloved companion, Copper. She has won the Smith College Annual High School Poetry Prize for 2013 as well as being a Topical Winner of the Live Poets Society of New Jersey High School Poetry Prize for the Summer of 2013.