Letter From the Editor
This issue includes the winners of our concrete poetry contest; the winning poems are both beautiful visual works in their own right and inventive, singular texts. However, it is the combination of both shape (the form) and text (the content) that made these poems stand out. I hope when you sit down to write any work, but especially a poem, that you think about its form: Will it have stanzas? Will the lines be short or long? Will you use any rhyme or other sonic devices? These decisions are as important as what you end up writing. In addition to the concrete poems, there are many incredible photographs that I hope will encourage you to pick up a camera (or a phone), as well as stories and poems engaging with the theme of selfhood and belonging. Happy reading!
Fiction
Unmasked: A Collection of Short Stories
Sun Blotches and Angelic Smiles Everybody in my family has different hands. Mine are light brown with weaving veins, like rivers flowing through a desert. Curvy lines streak across the surface of my palm, bards silently singing the story of my life. My sister’s hands are smooth and innocent, round knuckles jutting out when she curls them into a fist, the nostrils of her nose flaring with adorable anger. Dad’s are rough with hardship, his palms jeweled with callouses. He has broad fingers and nails thick and ridged, like clam shells. His sinewy tendons bulge when he flexes his hand, strong and supporting, always ready to help. Grandpa’s hands are like sandpaper. The skin on his hands is wrinkled and blotched with sunspots. His fingers are like the gnarled limbs of an ancient oak, weathered and wise. Grandma’s are small and pudgy, the fat from the hams of her hand gently creasing as she grasps her cup of ginger chai. Uncle’s hands are light as feathers, his long and slender fingers gracefully sweeping across the keys of the piano, like a casual wind fluttering across the surface of a sandy beach. Knotted joints curl around the tips of his metacarpals and phalange bones. I want hands like Uncle, a musician’s hands. Auntie’s are always gleaming with eloquence, her designer acrylic nails sparkling like shining stars. Her hands are a smooth tan, their oily surface engulfing me in a warm, comforting hug. But Mom’s hands—Mom’s hands are the summer sun, soft, welcoming, and always warm, like when her eyes wrinkle with joy and her mouth peels into an angelic smile. Everybody in my family has different hands, some lighter, some darker. Some smoother, some rougher. Some are warm, but they’ll eventually become cold as old Time washes over them. Hands. They hold the marks of our past and will soon tell the story of our future. * * * Clocks in Tuxedos Thick sheets of tension drape over the room as trembling fingers reach across the boards. Beams of intense concentration emanate from players’ eyes, lines of focus creasing their foreheads. Shiny raindrops slip down cheeks, the result of many conceding defeat. Faces flush with a despaired red, their egregious mistakes abruptly annihilating all hopes of a trophy. Then, the horn bellows its long, sonorous sound, announcing the time has come. The judges, dressed in their neon-green and orange vests, place down the Chronos timers. Wavering sighs of anxiety escape from many mouths at the sight of the timers. Dressed in a tight black tuxedo, my timer begins to drone in its monotonous tick-tock tick-tock. With each passing second, an ounce of apprehension grows, sticky sweat coating the back of my neck. My opponent is an older teenager, wearing a red-and-blue-striped shirt. Burgundy freckles are splattered across his face, and he has curly maroon hair. Behind his pair of claret spectacles, his eyes suddenly light up with joy. As his mouth peels into a beaming smile, he confidently brings his hand forth and moves his queen across the board, placing her next to my king and says the words of a chess player’s nightmare: “Checkmate!” * * * The Tree of Salmon Berries The tree of salmon berries is an unarmed merchant, constantly being harassed by malicious robbers. They reach in their selfish fingers and pull off its jewelry as the tree screams a silent plea. The tree’s green neighbors remain in stupid oblivion, frivolously fluttering in the July breeze as they revel in the company of heaven’s water. The wavering limbs of the tree shake with anger, futilely attempting to slap the thief. But it is a tough tree. Always coming back fuller than ever, only to repeat the vicious cycle. The tree of salmon berries is the man in the maze, constantly navigating through and overcoming obstacles, only to find the next corner and hurdle. The tree sees me as yet another monster of greed. And the tree is right. I am very greedy, but I need to be. The greediest are the most successful, for without greed there is no motivation. Caesar, the indomitable emperor of insatiable greed, led the ancient Roman Empire to power and might. Without greed, one is weak and will find oneself bending to others’ wills, becoming more servile with each passing day. I will continue to steal from the tree, ripping its children from their home and devouring them like a cannibalistic demon. The tree of salmon berries will remain the subject of torture, forever ruled by the great lord by the name of Greed. * * * Conquering Ghosts Dear Young Aditya, So stop. Don’t get on the bus and go home. Turn around and tell the truth. Don’t let the ghosts of your actions haunt you, weaving their threads of guilt and shame into your brain. Confront and conquer them, so you don’t wage an endless war with the demons of your past. What’s the worst that can happen? Mom and Dad find out and yell at you. But, in the matter of a week or two everyone will forget about it. The burden will be lifted from your shoulders, no longer plaguing you. On the other hand, if you internalize your crime, little straws of hay will be sprinkled upon the pile of guilt every day. As time passes, and your shameful secret gnaws at your insides, that pile of hay will become a stack, which in turn will become a heap. A heap of guilt and shame so heavy that it will be too late to turn back and tell the truth. You will have to live hampered down by your impulsive, rash decision, always present and ominous, like a painful scar seared across your skin. Please don’t do what I did. Don’t walk away. Your older self, Aditya *
Fiction
The fluorescent light of the classroom made it even harder to concentrate on the fine, black print that consisted of nothing but endless boredom. My mind tried to make sense of it. The book was written long ago; the 1800s? It reminded me of when a good friend of mine pretended to travel back in time with me. My nose wrinkled at the thought of her. I remembered Alice being fierce and stubborn. Just like I didn’t pay any mind to the words of this book, Alice never listened to me. I groaned just thinking about it. She was like a pestering bee. Going away but always returning. Alice had the eyes of an eagle and the ears of an owl. And, apparently, the instincts of a bee. She had those funny front teeth that jutted out at anything that didn’t seem right. Against my will, my eyes scanned the pages: “Meg, being oldest, seemed to think she could order us about . . . ” Those words hit me like the harsh wind outside, and, as the realization slowly sank in, I felt the air sucked out of me. But why had she let me boss her around? It may have given me pleasure at first, but in the long run, it definitely drove us both out of our minds! I felt lightheaded. Gears seemed to turn in my mind, contemplating this theory. A broken piano key seemed to finally strike the string it had missed up until now and echo through my body. My ears rang. My hands trembled. The whole world spun around me, blurring my vision and clouding my head. If you looked inside my body, you would see a fogged-up window with many attempts to rub the mist off. My eyes skimmed a whole page in my book, but the echo of that dissonant piano chord in my ears was so loud, it diverted my attention so I couldn’t hear the words in my mind. For a moment, I wished I could really travel back in time and fix my mistakes. When had I started to boss her around? One year ago? Two? Since we’d met? No. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that I had done it, and now I’d have to fix it—without time travel. I racked my brain for ideas. I didn’t want to straight out say, “Did you notice I boss you around a lot?” I came to my senses. I’d just have to stop bossing her around. Plus, now I´d have to reread a whole page in my book that I had missed, but it was too late. My teacher clapped her hands, and I was behind on my book—and my friendship. The recess bell rang its piercing song, decimating my ears. I snapped my head up and stepped outside. A blast of air almost blew me down. I let the door close in front of me and stood back. “ A shiver ran down my spine and pooled on the ground in puddles of trepidation “Did you hear that Linda has . . . ” “What did you get on your test? I got a . . . ” The loud sounds of the hall barely receded every time a cluster of kids exited the building and came back saying it was too cold or windy or this or that. Did I really want to go outside? I shoved the door again, willing it to open. The wind, rougher this time, whipped my face. Even so, I pushed myself through the wind tunnel and stumbled outside, tripping over my feet and using my arm to shield my face. I wished my arm were bigger. The light outdoors was bright, yet the sky was clouded and overcast. The wet dew made my feet cold, and the grass crunched beneath my shoes. The sun was low in the sky making my shadow long. My friends chit chatted as if it were a normal day. But it wasn’t. My friend, Bella, approached me. “We’ve been looking for you!” “Not now. I need to find something. And no, I do not need help right now.” My tense body relaxed a little on a rickety bench that looked as if it would topple over. I stayed completely still as my eyes darted around the school. Where was she? I studied the school. On my right, a bush covered in geraniums lined the grass. The sun was just up behind the bush. A dirt path traversed by a stream from the recent rain led to a cluster of trees. The trees stood tall and blocked most of my view of the benches that surrounded the school. I sensed movement beyond the trees. There. I inched toward Alice ever so slowly, and she, of course, with her uncannily keen senses, noticed me immediately. I continued toward her, the leaves crunching beneath my boots. My arms tensed. My stomach churned, and my legs pulled at me to back up. A shiver ran down my spine and pooled on the ground in puddles of trepidation. The world spiraled about. I couldn’t think straight. I uneasily twirled a strand of my hair. “Hey Alice,” I stammered. She turned her back on me. I looked down. “I’m so sorry.” Alice glared. “I can’t believe I didn’t stand up to you before! Why did I let you make a toy out of me?! Buzz off.” Ha! She really is a bee. I stiffened. “I said, I’M SORRY!!” Whoops. Now she’ll never forgive me. “Leave me alone!” Alice’s mouth was a big, gaping hole. Tears formed in her eyes. Hmm. . . I thought. Nice comeback. What else did you learn on the playground? My cheeks turned bright red. I attempted to hide my face and darted back toward the rickety bench. I could feel Alice staring after me, her eyes boring a hole in my gut. I had just lost a friendship that was so hard to
Fiction
There is an alien among us. She has built a wall across her heart, one made of sheets so thick others do not see her. Until they realize— An alien is here, an alien is here—there is the alien. She tries to walk the halls in silence, tries to creep up to classrooms. It works, and the alien is not noticed. * * * Homework. “Damn it,” I mutter to myself quietly. But everyone hears, and they crowd around me. “Are you hurt?” “Is there anything I can do?” “If you need anything, just tell!” I force a smile upon my face. “I’m okay—I just forgot my homework.” A girl whom I have never once noticed in my life walks up to me. In her hand is her homework. * * * This alien—she is an experiment. She is a fake, she is different. And she knows that nobody will try to break down that wall around her. Who can see her first behind those green paper walls? * * * Maybe it’s because I’m rich, because my dad is a millionaire. I know nobody wants to be friends with a nobody. I know that nobody would willingly give their own homework away . . . To a nobody. Who will like me once I grow up? Once I am not different from the rest of them? * * * This alien, she knows that everyone loves that wall. They probe and push and talk. They do not care. She is an experiment, a test to see who can take away that wall first. * * * I walk these halls alone. Nobody comes to me until they realize that it’s her, the girl with the money! Soon enough, I might forget who I am. I might just be the girl with the money. * * * This experiment is gone. This experiment is a nothing.
Fiction
I began to notice a collarless brown dog that seemed to be following us as the shadows of stucco houses became the shadows of trees and the narrow cobblestone street faded into a packed dirt path. It wasn’t stray: it had a well-groomed coat of hair and was rather clean and friendly, but it wasn’t quite a house dog either. I asked my mother about it, and she told me that I should ignore it—she didn’t want a dog following us thinking we were its owners. My dad agreed. It seemed to run away, but then further up the trail, it sprang from the shaded understory of mulberry trees saplings and grass onto the trail with us. I was trying to obey my mother, but it was impossible to ignore. I found that I shared many similarities with the dog. We both had boundless energy that inevitably made us centers of attention, we both ran ahead of my parents, and we both eventually brought smiles to my parents’ faces. When we passed the last human settlements, an entirely new terrain lay before us: van-sized cacti lay on bare earth scoured by drought and sunshine, semi-lifeless grass reached up from the ground like hair, and occasionally a daring tree stood beside the trail, soaking up the cloudless sky and providing much wanted shade. Another dog, even darker than the first one, began to follow us. His hair was very well trimmed, and he kept a pace equal to that of my parents. He was a house dog, for he had a collar, but he was as dark as good dark chocolate, while the dog we had met earlier was more of a milk chocolate hue. Throughout the course of the trail so far, my father and I had been scouring the area, looking for cactus pears. We had become enthusiasts of the odd fruit since we had found them on a walk. The sweet red-violet orbs hung off cacti by the half dozen or so, and in the local Neapolitan dialect of Italian they were called “figadindis.” We had taken it upon ourselves to name the first dog this, and my parents seemed to be warming up to the idea of letting him stay. Slowly but surely, the life was seeping back into the field, in optical form. At first, the grass became greener and taller, but then flowers and plants of every kind began to carpet the sides of the trail—brooms, tulips, poppies, sea thistles, daisies. As the verdant growth closed in from all sides, the trail narrowed our group down to single file. By this point, Figadindi was our only canine companion, for the collared dog had left. Small lizards scuttled in the fields and sunbathed on rocks, which Figadindi chased for entertainment. My dad now had a plastic shopping bag for holding cactus pears. A few wispy clouds floated on the horizon, shading faraway mountain peaks. From this altitude, the whole of the Amalfi Coast was visible. I was amazed at the beauty of the vista, though I did not show it. We rounded a hilltop, and the trail fell into shrubbery and forest. I was intrigued by the contiguity of such drastic microclimates. Somehow, amazingly, evergreen pines had colonized the sides of the trail, and now the trail was separated from the surrounding thicket by wooden poles that lay parallel to the ground. I could sense that we were getting closer to Sorrento—a highway roared in the distance, and the sounds of wildlife grew ever fainter. We had not even so much as petted Figadindi, yet he almost felt like a family member to me. My parents implied that they felt the same way. About 50 meters from the fringe of the thicket, I heard a large rustle in a tree. Figadindi, crouching, was intimidating a large fowl sitting somewhere near the top of an evergreen. With a few barks, he sent the fowl on its way, breaking a number of branches as it scampered away. My family was awed. Figadindi, unfazed, simply returned to trotting down the path, and we soon followed. We brushed through some bushes and branches, and a single two-lane road lay before us. Over the course of the trip, I had noticed that Italian roads were remarkably narrow, so we deduced that it was a highway. We crossed it and followed it downhill. We then came upon an urban labyrinth of streets, upon which my parents pulled out several maps and navigated us through a winding path of narrow alleys, shady streets, and mossy stairs. In fact, another dog had joined, this one a spotted, short-haired pitbull I named Motley. Relations between Motley and Figadindi were remarkably intriguing–sometimes the dogs were indifferent to each other, sometimes they were friendly, and at some point Motley even tried to mount Figadindi, which made me reconsider the genders of both. After a walk of about a mile, we arrived at a park, where we settled down for some hard-boiled eggs and pickles. The park was only a temporary resting place, for after lunch, it was back to a fun exploration of the streets. For the rest of the walk, we did not return to the wild hills we had been in earlier. Some areas had more plants, some had less, but the two recurring themes were stucco houses and dogs. Frightening canine guards, perched on high walls, made sure that their masters’ gardens were well protected. This area was famous for its lemons and oranges that grew to great sizes thanks to the fertile ash of Vesuvius, and local gardeners made sure no one intruded. Ironically, Figadindi was nothing more than annoyed by the guard dogs and fiercely stood his ground when intimidated. Motley was indifferent to them. We soon came across a large boulevard leading down to the sea. We followed it down a bit and then decided to roost at a restaurant. Motley had left, and Figadindi decided to lie down
Poem
Some days I am a girl. On these days I like to giggle and play with toys. I wear bright blue clothes and shirts with cats on them. When I feel like a girl, my feelings change. I feel kind and happy. I like being a girl. But . . . There is a downside. My heart is bigger than on other days. It becomes too big for my body. This causes my feelings to mix together, and that results in emotional drama. This doesn’t make me want to be a girl. So . . . Some days I am a boy. On these days I like to be silly and play rough. I wear darker clothes, like blue, black, or red. When I’m a boy, I feel like my body fits me better. Sometimes it’s as if God intended me to physically be a boy, but changed his mind at the last second. I like being a boy. But . . . Sometimes I feel like I’m too awkward to be a boy. I’m not a very sporty person, and I don’t like jokes. This causes me to appear abnormal and too “sensitive.” This doesn’t make me want to be a boy. So . . . Some days I am a dragon. On these days I like to stomp through the hallways and growl under my breath. I wear light clothing on these days so, being a Dutch Angel Dragon, my fur doesn’t overheat. When I’m a dragon, I like to use pronouns like it, they, them, and their. But . . . Dragging around invisible wings, horns, and a tail all day gets exhausting really fast. I get agitated, and sometimes chirp swears (or something rude) in my language. Even though no one can understand, it is not a good feeling to be cursing, even if it’s an accident. This doesn’t make me want to be a dragon. So . . . It’s really quite simple. I make another choice . . . to be Olivia, who is currently a dragon (roar!!!).
Honor Roll
Stone Soup Honor Roll: March 2019
Welcome to the Stone Soup Honor Roll! We receive hundreds of submissions every month by kids from around the world. Unfortunately, we can't publish all the great work we receive. So we created the Stone Soup Honor Roll. We commend all of these talented writers and artists and encourage them to keep creating. – The Editors Scroll down to see all the names (alphabetical by section), including book reviewers and artists. FICTION Leah Barrentine, 13 Claire Jiang, 12 Madeline Sornson, 11 Cathy Tu, 11 Sasha B. Wang, 12 POETRY Shirin Gohil, 12 ART MacKenzie Reese, 11 Honorable Mention in the Concrete Poetry Contest “Snowflake” by Emma Almaguer, 13 “A Tree” by Andrew Lin, 8 “The Cloud” by Madeline Nelson, 12 “Seeing the Sea” by Maya Viswanathan, 12
