I'm a chick
And I ain't gonna be some screwed up chick
Just for some dude
How many times have you said "dude"?
We walk down the same street in Italy
I talk about you and you talk about yourself
And how many times have you talked about yourself
Walking down this street?
Do you know?

Should I hide or should I run?
Whatever, whatever the objective is indicates the scene
It says walk so I just walk against the brick brick
Cross street
And just like David
Takes that last piece of bread
Just like Stella spills the Coca-cola
And the last question is
Do we get more bread?

No names just signs the woman screams
When we have that feeling of non-identification
No determination with her nose if she can smell
It's the mutt thing
With the Veuve Clicquot Champagne and hot dog.
Pretty pimp set, huh?
Feeling like a collage
Stuck on that gold pyramid
On the New York Life.

Stella S.
eighth grade

Daniel A.
eighth grade

     No limits. Beware of the lurking congested-sidewalk fools. The actors outside smoking their cigarettes and drinking before the big performance. Frank Sinatra style. A feeling like no other. Exciting feelings of immortality: nothing can stop you. Do what you wish. "Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." Ha, ha, ha. Unique, and only unique. Jazz club down at the corner, comedy club, too. Coffee shops on every block. An empty beer can on a cellar door. Gum sticking to your shoe. A man runs by in an army suit with a nerf gun. A mural is spray-painted on a brick wall. Cars speed by the intersection. A cab driver curses a nearby pedestrian. Then you cross the finish line and wake up to start a new day on the ranch.

Michael K.
sixth grade

     They had tried everything, it seemed: baking cookies, which, of course, had to burn; drawing pictures which got ruined by Zoe's little brother Ned by spilling grape juice on them; building a fort out of sheets which just wouldn't stay up. They finally ended up playing catch but were told to stop when their ball missed hitting by a hair Zoe's mother's favorite Ming dynasty vase. They'd tried to play Monopoly several times already, but when Tennessee, Zoe's basset hound, had chewed on three hotels and four houses, they decided to stop.
     The rain was the only explanation anyone could think of for their complete boredom. The oppressive raindrops plinked mockingly against the windows in Zoe's living room, seemingly saying, "Ha, ha, you can't go out. Stay in, stay in." Fern and Zoe lay on their backs on the window seat, staring blindly up at the stark white ceiling and cursing the rain.
     "This is stupid," Zoe finally said, laboriously pulling herself off the blue flowered cushions. Absentmindedly she got up and went over to the radio to turn it on.
     "Hey," perked up Fern, "I love this song!" Immediately the two girls were full of energy, up and dancing with imaginary microphones in their hands.
     Arms flailing, bodies twisting, they danced their way through song after song, teasing the rain for having finally outfoxed it. They did crazy songs, bouncing and jumping from chair to pillow to table; they did slow ones with long, old-fashioned gestures, swaying to the beat. They danced the Swim, the Mashed Potato, the Twist, and the Monkey. Anything would do in their laughing torment of the endlessly boring rain.
     Suddenly they noticed a figure in the doorway, hands in pockets, face contorted in a strange, disapproving look. As the station paused for a short break, they turned to face her.
     "What?" Zoe asked accusingly.
     "Nothing. Well, not nothing. Just…you're doing it wrong," Zoe stared at her judge.
     "Excuse me? Care to explain?" Fern flopped on the couch intently watching the scene and wondering at the audacity of older sisters. Gwen sauntered haughtily over to them.
     "Just wait 'til the next song comes on." They didn't have long to wait. Soon, the opening music of "Knock Three Times" sounded from the radio, and Gwen, Zoe and Fern started to dance.
     Fern burst out laughing. After the first second she feared she had crossed the sister-sister boundary line, but Zoe didn't seem to mind; in fact, she was grinning.
     "See," bobbed Gwen, "that's not how you do it." Totally off beat she swung Fern's arms back and forth in a strictly rhythmic pattern. Now Zoe burst out laughing.
     "You can't dance either. You look like an ostrich!" Zoe made exaggerated ostrich movements and squawked. Fern started laughing, too, until both of them were rolling around at the feet of a very unhappy Gwen. Lips pursed, hands on hips, she glared at them until they caved in and quieted to only a murmur.
     "Okay," Fern said, getting up. "Enough, enough." The next song came on, and Zoe got up to swing Fern around in a circle to "Turn, Turn, Turn." Gwen just glared menacingly, now on the same side as the rain drops.
     "It's still not right. You can't swing to this song. You should sway." The sister stood, brooding in the corner, a scowl spread across her face. Now, Zoe failed to see the humor.
     "Gwen, stop bothering us. You're not always right."
     "But, but...." Sputtering at her rebuttal, she stomped on the floor. "There's a certain way you have to do it, and that's not it!"
     "Shut up, Gwen, dance is subjective! There's no right or wrong."
     "Yes…there…is!"
     As the final chords dropped from earshot, both Fern and Zoe turned to look at a pouting Gwendolyn. Fern even ventured, "Stop, Gwen, it's not funny. You ruined the song."
     "I hope so." All three parties dropped to a seating arrangement, the Troops of Creativity on one side, and the Commander of Perfect Reason and Suppression on the other. The radio blared indifferently.
     "You know, maybe we should go upstairs and play Monopoly," Zoe blandly suggested.
     "Yeah," agreed Fern as the traffic report came to an end. The two defeated Pollyannas got up and trudged slowly upstairs to the beat of the imposing plink against the panes.

Melissa G.
eighth grade

        A cold mist shrouded the harbor where the boats bobbed like oversized sea birds cleaning their feathers. The town lay spread opposite the water with an apprehensive quality. It was early winter in Salem, Massachusetts, yet frost had chilled the autumn months. In the center of the town (however parallel to this grey setting) was a vivid smudge across the dim horizon. Muffled by the thick fog were shouts aroused from an active crowd of villagers—not many, but enough so that their noise could be heard by a few fisherman in the harbor. The blur they surrounded was a flush blend of red and orange. Fire. Fire which crackled and snapped, engulfing its victims. Smoke curled high in the dusk sky, dissolving or adding to the mist that it mixed with. Other sounds, too, arose to the sky. They were shrieks of pain which seemed to rise from the heart of the fire. If you got as close as the villagers, you might see a form—the form of another villager—flailing about amidst the flames. The fire—or rather incinerator—would perhaps burn all night. There were about three now, burning, all accused of the same thing—witchery.
        As darkness filtered through the fog, the villagers headed homeward. Two, however, lingered for awhile, staring into the flames where a few last whimpers could still be heard. Then one man spoke, the younger of the two:
        "I guess I'd better be goin' now, Adam…Sir. Dinner is apt to be on the spit by now and mother will be expectin' me. Farewell, Sir."
        "Yes, Pat, my lad, I might well go now, too, for most the same reason. Tomorrow another case and another trial. Rest may help me through, and a fine dinner. Farewell then." And both men walked off, their backs to the still-writhing flames.
        Adam Davidson was a prominent man in this small Salem village. He had a wife and four children to carry on the family name. He maintained high position as "the judge." For this reason, because Adam was judge, he decided the so-called justice that went on in his colony. He decided the fate of criminals and witches. Anyone suspected of being a witch he put through a certain number of tests and testimony, and their fate was most probably lethal—burning or hanging. It was not considered in the slightest bit cruel. On the contrary, it was considered "for the good of the people," as many put it. They were "a menace to society." And so Adam went on with his life after every burning, joining in parties, enjoying his children, and killing witches right and left, with less thought than when one slaughters a cow, pig, or chicken for tonight's dinner.
        When Adam Davidson crossed his own threshold, his wife and children awaited him as they cooked and tended the hearth. All was as it should be, as it had been now for quite some time. The family sat down at the table, as all were merry and cast not a single thought on the still-burning bonfires. Adam got out his fiddle and struck up a tune to which all began to sing. Then the eyes of the children drooped in the heat of the fire and off they went to bed in a grouping bustle while the last dishes were washed and their father sat in his place by the fireside. At last the lights were dimmed, and Adam and his wife crept to bed so as not to wake their sleeping children. All was still.
        Late in the night as Adam lay beneath layered covers, he suddenly awoke to what felt like a drop of hot wax on his forehead. He opened his eyes slowly and what he saw made him believe himself to still be asleep. For there, standing directly was a—he knew not the words to describe it. It had the appearance of what seemed to be a specter, this being, such that if one ventured to thrust an arm out, the translucent proportions would be not quite tangible. In other words, the arm would probably go right through the body and out through the back. It had a luminous glow about it and seemed not to stand solidly upon the floor, instead hovering about an inch above the ground. It appeared as a woman, yet its clothes were ragged and torn with holes—made by fire? Its pale skin obtained a glazed look and was splotched with a black tint in various places where the flesh seemed to crumble as though ash. On the whole, the ghost looked as if it must have endured much pain throughout life and still bore the scars of its misery. Its expression was cold, and its eyes were not human but had a surface of plain silver, and light seemed to penetrate from beneath them. It stood in silence as if it were not quite capable of breathing. Its form Adam surveyed in speechless horror and chilling dread.
        " Wha-what a-a-are y-you ?" Adam stammered in a dull whisper. The specter let out a hoarse croak and placed a candle of the same unreal substance that it held on the bedside table.
        "I...am...what...you...ssseeeeee!" it uttered in reply, as if each word took great pains to speak.
        Then suddenly Adam found himself standing on cold ground. He recognized the scene. Yes, he had been there many a time. It was there in the center of their village square that Adam stood, the burning piers for witches scattered to the sides. What he saw, however, was more than unearthly. Before the piles of ash was set ablaze—What was it? It was not fire as you and I see it. These flames were neither mass nor fluid. Neither hot nor cold. They appeared to be made of material much like that of the specter, and they leapt up to form an awesome sight. Around the flames were teams of other ghosts such as the first. All bore the scalding burns that were forged by the flame. They moved in painful dance-like movements and cried in plaintive tones, seeming to echo in the objects beyond.
        "What are they doing?" asked the awed Adam to the spirit who still stood at his side.
        "They…are suffering as they will…forever…from the pain they bore at life's end. It will cause...internal burning which is unstoppable by any... dampness...," replied the spirit.
        "Who—who are they?" he questioned, still faltering.
        "Y–you knnnnow!" cried the phantom. And it was so. Adam recognized each and every one of them. They were, he resoved, all those whom he had accused of being witches. He had seen them die, one by one, deriving no pity from his soul, or any others, on account of their inflicted suffering.
        Helplessly he pleaded, "But they—they were witches, were they not? As—as you are?"
        "They...were...no more than...your...own children," the specter croaked, and the ghost continued no more but was swept in by the gasping and crying crowd of spirits as they continued their rounds.
        "But it was not I!" cried he. "I did not light this fire!"
        "Ooohh, did you not? Wasss it not you who judged—who accused us? Have you not the power? It was you more than even the men who set ablaze the piers with a single flaming branch!" And with this the ghost raised aloft its ghostly candle and with a wave of its ragged hand lit the hair of a weeping spirit next to it who did not even seem to cower more at the pain.
        Was it he who had transformed these innocent creatures into monsters in a breath of fire? Adding to his horror, Adam also realized that while he pondered the hideous spirit, the other ghostly witches had, with their dance and outstretched hands smothered in sores, guided him closer to the apparitional bonfire. Adam could now feel neither cold nor hot flickers tinging the sleeves of his nightshirt.
        "Wait! What are you doing! I did not know—I did not realize the crime I was comitting at the judging bench!" Still the spirits pursued their earthly victim.
        "Now we shall repay you for the pain we bear!" cried the first spirit. They had now formed a ring around Adam and the bonfire. With every step they pressed in closer to the flames. As the first of the flames leapt onto Adam's back, he realized, to his amazement, that the flames had no earthly touch, yet as they spread out on his quaking body, the burns made his flesh deteriorate as though the burning process was sped up to an extremely fast rate. First one arm collapsed in a heap of ashes at his feet. Then a leg, then another arm, all burning to ashes, and he not capable of feeling this. This nightmare—of witnessing oneself burn without a sense of pain—was overbearing. Then he also realized that where one part of his own body burnt and fell, a new one would grow in its place so that the process never ended. Still, slowly, the ashes drifted to the sky with the billows of smoke, and with them went Adam. He soared overhead in the form of ashes, and he saw the dissolving specters, their fire being extinguished. As Adam— materialized?—he found himself in bed with dawn at the shutter, once more possessing his whole body, except there were a few ashes clinging to his bed clothes.
        "All was a dream," Adam muttered, yet as he said this his eyes fell on a ghostly candle, left by the spirit he knew.
        "Adam. Adam, are you awake? The trials are approaching again. Do not you remember those foreign ones? There are bound to be fires at sunset. Adam! Hear me, Adam!" nagged his busying wife.
        "Perhaps, well, perhaps," Adam replied in a distant voice.
        Adam arrived at the courthouse (still clutching the invisible candle) and took his stand as in a dream. The court proceeded and the evidence was laid out, yet Adam sat deaf to the hearing. He, instead, gazed at the poor dark young woman who cowered in the prisoner's box. The court was drawing to a conclusion and the woman became even more frantic while thinking of the flames that waited to devour her. All this Adam saw, thinking on a final decision.
        "What say you, judge?" asked one man there.
        Adam replied to this saying, "The witch—woman—may go free. For she is no witch but a person who must be respected by man and his law. She will not burn—innocent!"

Christina P.
seventh grade

Britton T.
seventh grade