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LHS Junior's Poem Earns NY Times Honor

LHS Junior's Poem Earns NY Times Honor

Congratulations to junior Mel Diemert on being chosen as a runner-up in the New York Times' Coming of Age in 2024 Contest! Students were asked to submit a piece of writing or art in response to the question, “What can you show or tell us to help explain what it’s like to grow up in this political moment?” Mel's piece of poetry was chosen from among 1,600 entries from across the nation! Click on Read More to read Mel's powerful entry.

Mel's entry:

Mel Diemert

Queer Kid Imagines An Alternate Reality/Politics Disguised as a Love Poem

 

Queer: A synonym for an absence of love

Not a new definition of love,

But its antithesis

In this world, I cannot afford indifference

I was unable to find it at Goodwill this summer

I limp through life as a statement, a red flag declaring war

 

In another world,

We sit on the floor of our bathroom, 25, after a long day of work

hexagon

Your hair is up

The world is quiet

And softly pirouetting

I know how to make your coffee;

4 sugars, a splash of creamer

It overflows the cup and pours onto the yellowed, aging tiles

And the world is a newborn baby with jaundice

Orange, crying, glowing

Effereservent is the word carved into our skin

In this world, I don’t listen to the sirens go by

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Instead, I lean my ear toward the babbling creek of your throat and tune everything else out

I trace hearts on your shoulder, smooth down a hair

Jesus died years ago, but I swear for a moment

I can see him painting us on an easel in the corner

Clementine shelters his canvas

Here, indifference was baked into my childhood brownies

I was born clutching it tight like an IV

When I lost my first tooth, I tasted it in my mouth instead of blood

Here, love and fear aren’t conjoined twins,

Split in half and told they are not the same soul

In this world, I have cried,

But never wailed

 

Back in reality,

I’m a cozy home for uncomfortable questions

They fester, an ineffable wound

Back in reality,

I cross my fingers every four years,

Tight, like ribbons

Meanwhile,

Love becomes silent, it shrivels

And action is a highway,

A headache

Of noise