"Ise Doden" (Ice Death) by Kevin Foley

Ise Doden (Ice Death)

On frozen fields of horror
Where hordes of briars grow
The dead forever speak
Of crimes the world has known
Deep down in their trenches
Where legions make their graves
Angels rise in choirs
Through the mortar rain
The dawn on the horizon
Shrouded in the ice
No hope for tomorrow
In their lifeless eyes
Defender of self-righteous thought
And atomic faith
With a shout and burst of rounds
A soldier earns his pay
Another steps up to the gate
And to Saint Michael said
“Another one reporting sir
I’m ready to join the dead”

"Saying the Last Goodbye" by Meghan Wilson

Saying the Last Goodbye

I sit and wait for the last of the ceremony, the important Mason one my father requested before he passed away at George Washington University Hospital, twirling his Masonic ring around my finger as I try to convince myself that this is not real, just another horrible dream my mind has concocted, playing tricks on me. All of his family and friends have gathered on top of the old coal mine mountain on bitter metal chairs to see him placed in the cold, unforgiving ground.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” is the only thing I remember being spoken as I stared at my feet - daddy would have love me in a dress (only for him would I subject myself to such femininity). Crimson rose petals are sprinkled on top of the casket, right above a pair of snow white Masonic gloves and an evergreen twig. The men from my father’s lodge gather in a line to shake each family member’s hand and say their blessings.
“I’m sorry” is the only thing spoken from their dry cracked lips and each one of us nods a thank you (what else could we do?) I am afraid to shake their hands. The ring is turned in towards my palm because I am not allowed to wear daddy’s ring, his sacred Masonic ring he gave to me on his death bed before he passed, so I try my best to conceal it and hide it from the young and old men who have come to shake my hand. Five successful shakes and I am almost free. The oldest man is the last to pass through the line, with pale distant eyes and sagging yellow skin he grasps my hand with force and walks on, and as I go to sit down my hand is yanked, twirling me around my arm feeling as though it has just been ripped from its socket. The old man screams, shock rushes over his face and mine. “You cannot wear that! You are a woman!” He shouts at me, spit flying from is lips. Whispers and cries are uttered from the crowd in confusion and disbelief. I can’t believe this man - ruining my father’s funeral all because of a ring. I have disgraced my father, my uncle, and their friends by wearing the ring, yet I cannot remove it from my finger, cannot clasp the ring with shaking hands. The old man repeats himself, louder, angrier, “You cannot wear that ring! You are a woman!” Spit flies from his mouth and finds homage on my cheek. I want to wipe it away but am too afraid to do so. My uncle comes to my side. maybe to rescue me from this live skeleton’s grasp, but instead takes my hand and removes daddy’s precious ring as my heart gets ripped away with it and he walks away.
The funeral is over. People gather flowers then proceed on their way home while I stand motionless clinging to my bare finger, tears silently rolling down my face. I go to sit in the metal chair closest to daddy and his cherry stain casket and the wind blows knocking the remnants of his Masonic funeral on the ground. My heart skips a beat as I scramble to receive the pieces then gently place them once again upon the casket, never removing my hands as the wind blows harder taunting me, The tears flood again, hotter than before and John Hayslette one of daddy’s old hunting buddies come to my side. Taking my shoulders, he whispers that we must go. Sobbing I try to tell him that I can’t leave, that if I do these things in my hands will blow away again. John grabs the birthday beanie baby that someone got for him (nine more days and he would have turned 63) He places the beanie baby on top of the twig, the gloves, and the roses and directs me towards the car with a firm grasp on my shoulders. I look back and wish to run to the casket, run back to daddy, but instead I just say a whispered goodbye as bitter tears streak down my cheeks.

"Kings of Suburbia" by Mr. Marc Smith (faculty)

"Kings of Suburbia"

This is our dominion.

Castles. Secured bastions skirted
by an infantry of concrete.
Sinewy sidewalks,
tandem curbs line neighborly boundaries.

Homogenous mailboxes, sentries,
standing at attention
guarding asphalt moats.
Stones and bricks, bulwarks
against encroaching enemies.

This is our WAR.

We are the masters of strategy planning
against the parasitic platoons
of nimblewills and foxtails.
Ever vigilant against the goose and quack.

We are the generals marshaling
militant mowers, whining weedwackers,
and spinning spreaders
preparing pristine battlefields.

We are the Kings of Suburbia standing
alone prideful of our victories in battle.
Greener days are the dreams of tomorrow.
For us, we soldier on – watchful.

"264" by Meghan Wilson

264

The hallway smells of old broccoli and mold. The sour smell of urine lingers in the air. She arrives at his room and shivers as she looks upon the number on the door. “264,” she says to no one and begins to enter the room with a bit of hesitation. She pushes the door open, it seems a little heavier today than the day before. She starts to head for the bed, which is being petitioned off by a long row of odd colored fabric and geometric shapes hanging from plastic hooks. She peaks behind the curtain to reveal what she had hoped would just turn out to be another bad dream - her father, lying in a hospital bed, helpless, and asleep. She moves forward placing her hand on his and gently kisses his forehead; her father’s eyes begin to open, revealing the beautiful cobalt color she loves so much.(He looks so much like hell.) She thinks to herself as she gazes down at the dying man in front of her. He sees his daughter looking at him and tries to speak, gurgling and choking on the blue and red tubes the doctors have shoved down his throat to keep him alive. He gets frustrated, pulling on them with swollen fingers; he never was one to be kept a mute. “I love you daddy.” The girl says practically choking on her tears, trying to be so strong. Nevertheless, tears begin to flood her eyes and the father can only stare at his daughter, knowing that nothing he can do will comfort her. He motions her closer. “I love you too, my hippy girl.” He mouths. The girl shakes trying to hold back the emotions that want to flood her body. The air begins to turn an icy cold. The father now closes his eyes as the daughter places her hand one last time on his. She now knows that her father will never again open his eyes, that he is in darkness forever. It is in this moment that the girl looses all feeling of the heart, no longer lets people in, and no longer cares for life. She leaves the room, never to return to her once perfect life, her last true friend and hero is gone.

Based on/inspired by a vocalist - by Stephanie Milem

With a foot on the stand before me I leaned down and gripped the microphone with both hands. I held it closer to my mouth and screamed a little louder, forced the words from my body a little harder. In a quick jerk I pulled my hand back from the mic and pressed the fingertips into my chest, over my heart. I dragged my nails down my chest, ripping open my own skin in fine red lines across my body.

Let them see me fully, raw and untamed. Let the music, my words, and my pain flow freely until my voice dies and I have nothing left to scream. Until I’m spent and useless, lying on my back and gasping for breath while they continue to scream louder and louder. While they scream for me, for us, and cry as they empty themselves and forget everything for a moment. While they lose themselves in words they’ll never fully understand.

While the lights have turned on and the stage is empty, the feeling remains.

"A Way of Life" by Li Hollinger

A Way Of Life

It was four o’clock on a chilly Tuesday morning when a lone cargo train passed unscheduled through the Canadian-American border an on into Turner, Montana. The guards stationed nearby eyed it warily, but allowed it to pass without question; they had been paid too great a sum to be hindered by conscience now. The thin ebony walls of the speeding vessel shook feebly as the cold from outside continued to find its way through the knots and fissures of the wood. Inside it met hundreds of frail, frightened bodies huddling closely together for warmth, the smell of sweat and leaky bladders rising from their clothes and causing the occasional cough, but otherwise it was silent as a grave. Two hundred twenty three children were being transported as freight inside this train, ages ranging anywhere from seven to fifteen. They were homeless, every single one of them, and tired, but sleepless, sleepless but wide-awake. All up and down the train this scene repeated itself, tonight was a short ‘shipment’, only 6 box cars total and two passenger cars bringing up the lead.
It was in the second of these passenger cars that three similar children sat feeling especially pleased with themselves. They were the cause of the night’s events, and though they were sure to be caught and severely punished eventually; they thought they had certainly been through worse.
“You know, they say innocent ones are like dogs…” the girl spoke first, her voice soft and slightly muffled from her position curled up on the window seat. She was perfectly dry and smelled palpably of lavender, a result of overusing a high-end woman’s perfume. Her thin blonde hair was chopped off unevenly: patches of it fell in places to her shoulder while some fell all the way to her waist, and it was matted with condensation where she leaned against the window.
“What are you talking about now?” The older of the two boys countered, his voice hard, unforgiving, carrying with it just enough remnant of a Slavic accent to suggest that English was not his first language, though he spoke it perfectly.
“I mean people say they can sense things… all kinds of things. Ghosts, bad weather, death. Us?”
“That’s rubbish, and you know it, they didn’t suspect a thing until it was too late.”
“Yea, I know, but don’t you almost with that they did.”
Both teenagers paused for a moment, seeming to fall into deep thought. Most people watching this scene would misunderstand the silent meaning that had passed between these two. The second boy, Warren P, Wasn’t quite as lost as an outsider would have been, but who knew if the speculations he made about the two were anywhere near close. He was the new addition to the team, the young blood; brought on only out of necessity when they had made the decision to start catering to an even younger crowd. And unlike the older two, Warren wasn’t a street kid with extenuating circumstances. Warren was a sociopath, and tonight had been his debut.
“Hey Rein?”
“Nn..?”
The older boy, Reinhold, hadn’t really taken to Warren yet, and when he could, avoided talking to him, replying to any direct address or questioning in grunts or monosyllabic answers. It didn’t complicate life much for him in the end though, since from what he could gather, Lauren seemed at the top of their small social hierarchy. She was the smartest, the fastest, the trickiest, and when it came down to it, she was the one that won the children over.
“What’s your excuse?”
“-Don’t need one.”
“I’m just trying to understand, it’s easy for me, you see…but I know with normal people it’s-“
“It’s easy.”
Warren felt his skin crawl as Lauren stretched superficially and turned herself over, he said nothing more. The movement had been meant to draw attention and establish order; moreover, one learned to watch themselves around the nymphet, as harmless and frail as she may seem, a viper lurked beneath those wings.
“You see, really they come to us mostly, like moths to a flame. All you have to do is walk the streets: the little mice do love a new face.” The nix accentuated her words with a playful giggle and her hands twined their way through Rein’s curls – they were lovers when she got like this, and the cruelty in her lit him like a flame. Immediately he was afire, raiding his voice to the recantation of past events.
“So ready to believe they are, a warm place to stay, a bowl of soup, a slice of bread to eat.” He was kissing her neck in between words and her arms embraced him gleefully.
“You lead, they follow, and by the time they see the train it’s already too late.”
After that Warren knew the rest: troops came with guns, children screamed, eventually they were herded into the boxes where the doors locked behind them and their futures disappeared. The company would stop in a city, retrieve a few loads, and never look back. He knew they picked up from Canada always and dropped off in the United States. Somewhere in Montana, off in the isolated desert, stolen children were stuffed away in a low-population area, where they would never be found.
Warren would lay eyes on it for the first time before long now; they would arrive in the first light of morning to unload the cargo.
“There were some pretty girls in this load, I wonder if we’ll break our record.”
Lauren seemed to be scrutinizing her nail beds but it was obvious she said this to entice curiosity. Unfortunately, she succeeded, and Warren clearly saw Rein smirk from his current position under her when he opened his mouth to respond.
“Record?”
“2,500,000. The most we’ve ever sold a single girl for,” the lesser of the two chimed with sick mirth.
“Fourteen years old, 5’3”, of South East Asian descent, brown hair, brown eyes.” His mistress added as if she were reciting in front of the class.
“You know, I didn’t actually think she was all that great.”
After this there was the longest pause when the three all though – the older two no doubt about the joy of the money they were about to come into, and the younger about what lay ahead. Faced with the heartlessness of the whole institution it seemed a little overwhelming even for him.
As the clock struck eight the train ground to a halt in the makeshift station of an old warehouse turned jail. There it sat, rustic and peeling red paint as guards still groggy from a full nights sleep filled out and took their positions wielding guns and cattle prods. Three children filed out of a heated passenger car, its fresh white paint harsh in contrast to the dark rotting wood holds that held the night’s haul. They surveyed each other, the leader again calm and composed, the older boy silent and hateful, the youngest withdrawn and hesitant. A heavy plated metal door opened before them and a woman dressed in a blue suit approached, the look of a frightened doe present in her eyes.

“If you’ll just step this way please, we’ll clear you out of the way before we start unloading.” Her voice was pleasant and carefully calculated, every syllable a perfect paradigm of what was intended.
The boys nodded and proceeded with her through the door but Lauren held back, looking with an odd sense of longing back at the train.
“I think…I want to stay and see the look on their faces.”
Reinhold just nodded and Warren fought back a fit of nausea in his stomach as he watched the steel doors close on her sweetly smiling face.

"The Gallery" by Meghan Wilson

The Gallery

The setting is somewhat serene to me in an odd way. But of course such a place would be so to a creative mind - paintings strewn about, hanging on the pale olive walls or tossed about sometimes in boxes or on the worn burgundy carpet. There is a large painting in the far right corner, as if pushed aside and forgotten. An ivory couch sits near the huge balcony window that is to remain shut for all days or until the brittle winter subsides. Hunter green carpets hang from rusted brass pipes as a sad substitute for curtain rods while large soup pots are being used as end side tables. A simple green chair with sagging cushions, missing fluff, and cherry colored wood sits alone in the very center of the room. The chair's bones creak and moan even without the harsh weight of a person. Randomly placed stairs lead up to the only entrance or exit to this secretive gallery, the stairs made of cool black iron railings that twist and turn in an old Victorian style. And finally what makes this place so alluring to creatives is the quiet calm that comes over the entire room.

"Hold Me' by Mr. Marc Smith (faculty)

For years I've turned my phrases
I've twisted my verse
I've honed my prose
Discovering my-self.

For years
Behind closed doors
Between stained sheets
Under expecting shadows
Searching my - voice.

For years
Splattering intimacy
Thrusting emotion
Forcing existence
Blazing my - identity

For years
On spiral lined pages
On formalized parchment
On soaked cocktail napkins
Journaling my - world.

For this
intimacy,
expectation,
moment -
this now.

"Mourning Dew" by Meredith Lawson

I lay there one spring morning
Wondering why I’m mourning
Should I relish this feeling?
Having what I have with another human being

The sky surrounding
Should be soaking my attention
But my heart is pounding
And I forgot to mention

His face has consumed reality
For better or for good
And managed to change my personality
Why, I still have not understood

The dew and the rain blend with my tears
Lying in the wet grass blades
Both taking the same path as if they were peers
The river my cheekbones have made.

Wondering why, it’s such a hard task
Why I’m so sick with love, I constantly ask
Starting a new life, I see the flowers bloom,
And I sit there in jealousy, awaiting emotions’ doom

"Poem" by Brittany Schirtzinger

Lying in bed,
Thinking of you,
Remembering your face,
Dreaming of your touch,
Grasping the tricks of reality,
Then again I open my eyes.
A little bit of you is in every breathe I take,
A little bit of you is in every thought I think,
But as well a little bit of you is in every pain I bear.
But the love between us makes it all worth while,
Together we share a heartbeat,
Together we share a soul,
I will love you till the end of forever,
And hold you close forever more.

"Reach Out" by Meghan Wilson

Reach Out

Morbid transactions
Of a tainted youth cry out,
For freedom,
From this place,
Of fear,
Regret, and a long foreseen loss of innocence.

We,
We cry out,
To those who will listen
To our tortured screams,
Pleas of help,
To release the shackles,
On arms and ankles of open skin.

You,
You cry out,
With this army of tainted youth,
In hope one day,
One of us,
Will be denied torture,
Denied the refined
Punishments,
Of a world lost,
In darkness and decay,
A place where life is no longer for the living,
But for the dead.

Unititled poem by Meghan Wilson

Untitled

Thoughts that just flow through the brain
Never stopping
Sometimes never coming to full expression
Sometimes never even existing but a faint urge
Whirling
Twirling
Anxiety of the human brain
Useless words in the head
Become useless on paper for future fliers of the mind
To express
Compress
Dissect
And be deemed worthy of philosophical discussions if nothing more than a child's bedtime book
Creativity to the highest extent is given
Shown to others
And expressed with enthusiasm
Not for money or to be known
But for pure love
And hopefully a step closer trudged toward something like sanity
To choose to fall back on art
When you are the artist
Digression is a suicide for non-creative minds

Excerpt from a short story by Stephanie Milem

It’s almost impossible to rid yourself of something after you’ve named it. It remains a part of you because the name has some kind of emotional significance. You begin to think of things differently when they’re no longer “it‘s“. You give away a small part of yourself in a name, and to have something you’ve grown attached to be torn from you is like losing that part of yourself. It sounds sweet, like parents naming their newborn child, or that child in turn naming their pet hamster, but for me it’s the very opposite. I didn’t chose this thing, or to name what it brought me. It found me, as if I’d won it in some biological screw-up lottery, and with it came my mental nightmare. This thing is my disease, nesting in my rotted mind. Schizophrenia. The mental nightmare it forced on me would be called Hiroki. Before the disease itself was given a name I suffered under it without knowing. My perception was warped, I saw things that weren’t real or weren’t there. I witnessed horrible scenes that I had no power to stop because they weren’t even real. I heard any voice imaginable, all of them meshing together and swirling around in my head constantly, pulling me in a thousand different directions. My dreams made as much sense as my reality did and I could never tell the difference between the two.

"I Like It Here" by Meghan Wilson

I Like it Here

I sit here and recall all of the details me and my family went through with my father’s plaque. I can remember the first time I saw it: I fell to my knees, for the first time realizing that he wasn’t coming back and I dusted it off until nothing else could touch it. I remember, it was a really windy day, and the grass had not filled in all the dry dirt places yet and so dirt kept piling on it. I got so upset that I just laid my wet face in the dirt, giving up, on top of my father’s name and just wept, forming a salty mud puddle with my tears. I couldn’t move, I never wanted to move again. I remember thinking, “Go ahead, let the rains come, let the earth shake, I don’t care, nothing will ever move me from this spot, I am here, with my father once again, and I am never leaving his side.” But I did, and I’ll go back, to lay my head on his stone, whisper secrets in his ear and ask for his guidance, because I told him I would never leave him, and I need him. So whisper to the ground I will, because that is where my father rests.

"The One and Only Understands" by Brittany Schirtzinger

The One and Only Understands

I didn’t get a chance to tell you,
The real reason for everything I say or do,
It’s all for you,
Why else would I stay up late?
Or protect you from fate?
It’s to just hear your voice that to me opens heaven’s gate.
Your face so beautiful, with an addicting shine,
Hopefully one day your hand will hold mine,
And from then on out life will be fine,
When I’m with you there’s nothing to fear,
The love between us is oh-so clear.
When thinking of you I can’t shed a tear,
You mean so much to me,
And now you finally see,

How happy we can be.

"Advice on How to Live" by Meghan Wilson

Advice on How to Live

At least once in your life
Go skinny dipping.
Walk in the rain till your body is pruned.
Take a walk in a grave yard
On a full moon night.

Write your life down
For future reference,
No matter how boring or exciting
On paper
On a napkin
On your clothes
On your arms
On thighs
On hands
Write down your life.

Do everything wrong (but attempt to do it all right)
Learn from those times where you screwed up so bad
you should have been slapped
senseless.

Wish on a star;
Follow your dreams
No matter how ridiculous

Get your hands dirty
Fall on your ass
Then laugh at yourself.

Spend an entire day getting to know
The most important person in the world
You

Take time to smell the flowers
Skip over the roses
And read a building full of poetry.

Learn to be a better person.

Write a list of things you think others should know
To have the perfect life
Or at least as close to that life as possible

Love your family
Cherish your friends

Never see more negative in life than positive

Live your life free
Live your life whole
Let it be what you wish it to be

Until that day comes
Where this life will end
Spend everyday

In love

With life

Translation from Japanese by Sarah Chantharavongsa

Lyrics of "Atama ga Okashii" by the band Ayabie - translated by Sarah Chantharavongsa

My Head Is StrangeMother often made notes and scores. Up until now, I profoundly wore a distorted shaped hat... because it's the exact same shape as my head. Protruding from the right-side of my forehead is a reindeer-like horn... (My dancing capacity is 15 centimeters per pace) ...I was born with it. In his room, that person secluded himself;
and there was alot of nice things to watch on tv, but...
the time to leave childhood came... and he, brash, also held the courtesy to becoming a man. About that man... (in this place, the letters were so scratched, and they couldn't be deciphered. Regarding the description of his head and in relation to, a detailed drawing along with notes were done. In conclusion, wealth was unneccessary in the song and left out.) I shortened and trimmed my hair, and my head began to swell for my 13th year spring event.Now, please notice me. My situation... Without a word, you held me in your arms. Now, you noticed, how these people smell like antiseptics. Without a question, I know I won't meet you again... It was taken from mother's notes that despair and fate's siren crowded him. Immediately, the siren really did draw near until it reached the house. Confused; the whirlpool he was caught in was the apoptosis of an autoimmune disease, because a program for reaching towards death was being done. ...As I'm being taken along, I thought about my fate, and how I'm getting all the coincidences more,
instead of letting it pass
and being able to accept it with no questions... Now, please notice me... My situation. Without nothing being said, you held me in your arms. Now, you noticed, these kind of people have the scent of antiseptics. Without a doubt, I know I won't meet you again. After three days, I cease to exist.
My distorted, I loved you... I'll be with you soon.It's for destroying all evidence. I'm sorry.Can you hear me?

More limericks...

So you like limericks? Here's a limerick sequence I wrote when some of my creative writing students were not quite coming up to the mark:

On the Occasion of Danielle's and Cassie’s Acting Out in Mr. Sellers’ Creative Writing Class

Charmingly cheeky Danielle
Whined, " I don't want to write villanelles.”
So she tittered and snorted
And then she resorted
To read to the class doggerel.

“To show my disdain for them all,
I’ve affected a languorous drawl.”
“But Danielle, my dear wench,
(Sellers then switched to French)
Vous petez un plus haut que vous cul.”

“As a teacher you’re such a disgrace,”
Cassie said as she covered her face.
“Teachers should be more caring
When the students are sharing,
But you think that teen angst’s out of place.”

Said young Cassie to young Dani-elle, “Er,
It’s amusing abusing old Sell –ers.”
But I don’t like the way –
Though he’s old, deaf, and gray –
When he’s outdone a kid he will tell her.”

Then Danielle replied to the lass,
“I know what you mean by that, Cass.
To our culture he alien
But so sesquipedalian
That at poetry he's just unsurpassed.”

Limericks by Chelsea Richards

Here are some limericks (with a bit of metrical variation) from Chelsea Richards:

Time
It will speed by like nothing at all
as it calmly watches you fall
As different as daylight
or as dark as night
Just chill out and watch
What a haul !

People
They are of many different races
as in many different cases.
Just do not judge them bad
just because they are sad
Some say hello/ goodbye
With their faces.

Chelsea Richards

Welcome!

Welcome to Periphery, the online literary magazine of Spotsylvania High School in Spotsylvania, Virginia. Current students, faculty, and alumni are invited to post.