Poems featured on this page also appear in the 2018 volume of Cascadia, OPA’s student poetry journal.
Monster Underneath my Bed
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i cannot sleep, for my mind is awake
with the memories of today.
i let my hand fall, after watching its silhouette
dance among the dark shadows in my room.
i imagine that i am reaching out to hold hands
with the monster underneath my bed.
i think about how the monster is still there,
after all this time.
i shouldn’t be surprised;
is the monster ever really gone?
if i roll over to the other side of my bed,
if i lay down facing the wrong way,
if i jump up and down on the springs,
is it not still there?
i think about how i’ve never seen
the monster before, but the sight of it
isn’t the proof of its existence.
and i think about how i wake up and
leave my bed every day for a short spell
without the monster,
about how sometimes i forget
it even exists,
and about how i sometimes kid myself
and say it is dead now.
and i think about how every night i still
return to the bed under which it resides.
and after all this thinking,
i notice that each of my hands
is occupied by the other.
Grace Bragdon
St. Mary’s Academy, Portland: Eleventh Grade
Mary Barrett, Teacher
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Atop Mt. Everest
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Atop Mt. Everest
With ice inside my lungs
My path is littered with bodies
With songs left unsung
Songs of praise and glory
From days that had gone by
Each song grows ever silent
As their owners all have died
In life, pride and arrogance became them
They shouted and laughed you see
They thought they were unkillable
They were wrong, like me
Songs of fear and sorrow
Soon we sang them all
As we lay here dying
Waiting for silence to fall
Silence like a blanket
Covers this forsaken mount
Each soul is trapped here
With screams they can’t let out
Here atop Mt. Everest
With ice inside my lungs
I was one of those unfortunate souls
With a song left unsung
Zach Brown
Grants Pass High School—Gladiola Campus, Grants Pass: Twelfth Grade
Jennifer Rood, Teacher
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Regarding Your Euphoric Decay
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Sickly sweet and positively succulent
Saccharine yet satirical,
her words thickly ooze over your fingers like honey.
From crystallized venom to velvety mellifluousness.
She has you in a vice grip.
You flinch, whimper and quake from her articulations; terror and
wonder cinched together and choking you to incoherency.
And you can’t get enough.
Schuyler Dull
Sunset High School, Portland: Eleventh Grade
Erin Werner, Teacher
you have three eyes
the lady with no face
tells me
one that shines on the
children that eat the
terrain of your body
one that shines
at the husband
who wakes you up
at 2:46 to eat you
and leave your wrapper
crumpled in bed
one that shines
because it is cursed to see
nothing
—three eyes
Anna Ferrarini
St. Mary’s Academy, Portland: Eleventh Grade
Sara Salvi, Teacher
Creation Myths
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In the beginning God said let there be light
or maybe he didn’t.
Maybe God is a quantum-mechanical oddity,
spooky action at a distance,
flickering in and out of existence at our command,
more of a theoretical phenomenon
than a measurable one;
But they tell me if I want evidence I’m missing the point
and anyway, textbooks and holy books
have always been most often burned.
Here is what I know:
In the beginning there was nothing
and then there was something
(a light, a spark, a fusion)
(a god, a sun, a turtle with the whole world on his back.)
And that something grew and expanded,
there was chaos and beauty and darkness and light
and somewhere in there, humans
playing out our little wars and conquests
living, loving, hurting, dying
like a blink in the eye of eternity
among the fragility of cherry petals
that blow away on each spring wind
under stars that will blow us away with a fiery exhale
and keep on burning
until they, too are gone.
Anna Lipari
St. Mary’s Academy, Portland: Eleventh Grade
Sara Salvi, Teacher
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Tangled Roots
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They say the problem started when Nellie sold her heart.
Married an immigrant man, too old, too different,
The tightrope too thin, over a chasm in which
Shadows bred all evils men are prone to.
The shadows joined the baby in her womb
Poisoned it, a black hole eating away
Until the body purged itself with birth-death.
But the roots still remained long after
Even when they tried to force it out of her,
Her eyes like burnt-out street lamps in the madness of night
Her veins fried crisp and black with all the dark
Staining her lineage, with all the ink
Dripping down the family tree, bleeding together
Cold and dark over my name
Where shadows found a home, now demons built
Their nests under my skin
Emma Snyder
Mcnary High School, Keizer: Twelfth Grade
Laura Reid, Teacher
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Around
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Around and around we go
In this cycle,
That turns our bones
To sticks
And stones
A soul fills the hollow body
A body of no significance
no importance
It is but only a shell,
A vessel
For your soul to call its temporary home
It is the soul
that ignites the true potential
It is the soul that is older than Earth itself
Growing and growing
Like trees
Cycling
Around and around
The cycle does not stop
The cycle won’t be tamed
These sticks and stones
Derive from our bones
And our souls forever remain.
Angelica White
Grants Pass High School—Gladiola Campus, Grants Pass: Twelfth Grade
Jennifer Rood, Teacher