Secret Garden
2023-2024
Little Things That Make Me Myself, A Mosaic of My Life Atop My Dad’s Shoulders
By Abigail Tinkham
By Abigail Tinkham
My dad brought me to the patriots parade when I was younger I was on his shoulders and never slid off the waterslide like my mom watched nervously as I climbed an apple tree fighting with my brother had a seizure in the middle of the floor falling leaves outside raked into piles to jump in my barbie jeep the radio worked but you didn’t believe me that I found the fruit on a bush outside after recess with a friend and not being found until the music teacher came outside I played clarinet in the band for years I was scared to make the bed if the cat was on the ice my dad would teach me how to skate with a bucket on a pond in March freezing as I insisted to go swimming at six animals lined up in a row on my barn goat bucking my head bloody nose filled with powdered sugar from the fair skin burning at the beach while I look for sand dollars with my grandmother never went into the water through the ice up to my knee scraped and bloody while learning to ride a bike in Florida the only vacation always camping in the woods and making s’mores in the backyard afraid of the fox running so fast I became cross country captain crunch cereal was never my favorite umbrella always overhead in the rain while I dance and sing the lead in the second grade musical about friends coming and going on trails through the woods crickets jumping over a hurdle on a horse on accident and staying on game days sitting in the bleachers hoping to catch the ball going right past me as I pick flowers in the field day tie dying shirts covered in ice cream as it drips in the sun overhead as I float in the lake eating lobster rolls down a hill with grass in my hair always long span of time without ever throwing up I grew with my problems growing larger than my abandonment issues a release of my artwork in the paper so proud climbing my first mountain and feeling on top of the world traveling with freedom in jeopardy out of fear of leaving my family memories hard to forget the little things that make me myself holding together a mosaic of my life has become school as I approach another four years old never falling from his shoulders but never going back up
Street View
By Julia Thompson
By Julia Thompson
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I’ve been here before,
but not by pressing a
button.
The road has always been noisy,
but the sound usually isn’t my parents’ fighting down-
stairs.
Everything has always been too far to walk to,
but I can usually go further than a 360-degree rotation.
There have always been lots of birds here,
but they’re not usually frozen in the
sky.
The house has always been here,
but it’s not usually split
in two.
I’m here,
but I’m not really there.
Exit Street Mode
Mariposa
By Ori C. Li
By Ori C. Li
After Danza de la Mariposa (Valerie Coleman)
I am born anew from sinews of sleep.
The earth, before me, my home of leaves, and crawling
Dreams, behind me. I used to think I was
Burdened with yesterdays, memory-fled, embarked
To forget, to loss. I used to think I was
Set down in dissonance, dusty with ash.
How foolish I was to fear myself! I take
To the skies upon spring flowers, merry yellows
And gentle pinks wave in the sea of grass.
Children make a dozen crowns. This April
Day, momentous eternity, those birds
Entranced in lively song, the wind a cradle
Of time of lands untamed—
I dance!
Fleeing my shell, I chase the moment now.
Reclaimed Clay
By Jacqueline Modugno
By Jacqueline Modugno
My love for you found itself
Sitting in the birch tree whose branches
spanned into the heavens when I was a child.
Splintered sheets of bark that I now realize
Only lean a few feet above
the blades of grass.
Though I value the presence of that tree like a pulse on my wrist
The knocking of my own heartbeat against my neck
begging me to speak for it.
My love for you found itself in a bucket of smashed forms
Masterpieces that held attention for a moment’s notice
before malleability won greater appeal.
Reclaimed clay within my consciousness
Because what is not worth keeping the first time,
Can often be reduced to its fundamentals
to be formed again.
Ode to a Mouse
By Avery Cox
By Avery Cox
Happy new year to the mouse under the dish machine
Skittering feet juxtapose my frozen shoes and aching heels
Food scraps offer sanctuary to gaping claws
Damp, unlike my hands so dry and cracked
Where words offer relief to idle fingers
