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best of issue





SUMMER 2025-2026



One & Two, H & He, You & Me


a holy endeavor in my veins, one that cries out liquid plasma—

my tears nursed the A-bomb, a gratifying explosion of hydrogen

coaxing my estranged atoms to remember your name.


they say I awoke with eyes of hunger and a mouth of wonder

covered in burned soot and inherited starlight and thrilling mermaid scales

a foreign deity in my bloodstream, Cupid kicking alive

his poisoned arrow into soiled marrow—a cusp of life somewhere.


I am not Thunder Bay’s sleeping giant, I can bare

my teeth like a wolf under autumn wind and moonlight

they pray it lands blessed in the valley of freckles and a birthmark,

not in the carotid, pulsing morse code my god, my god, my god!


lay yourself against my lax body, how I’ve turned

to salt. spit me from your mouth, no sweet tongue deserves such hatred—


a fool to dead-mouthed chatter, a visage against

thunderous love and Icarian devotion

salvation in the form of shrapnel and raised hands to the godless.


still—you pull me in, a breath though helium and heartlines

imprinting your traitorous mouth against the crook of my ear

the easiest home I’ve ever made to return to

my god, my god, my god.

Samia Mimo, NY, Stuyvesant High School



EDITOR'S CHOICE





SPRING 2025-2026




The Debt of Lychee Skin


My grandmother's thumbnail splits the rind

as if the lychee owes her a confession.

It gives its wetness to the sink, and she says:

every sweetness has a pit.

I search for the one I swallowed at sixteen--

the seed that grew a girl's tongue

where the household god used to squat.


Mother pressed incense into my palm:

Bow three times for purity.

Smoke licked my face like an old ghost.

At dinner she cracked duck bone for marrow

and ignored the bruises on my wrists.


My grandmother said a daughter is a bowl

waiting for rice or a husband's name.

Instead, I filled mine with a girl

whose laugh scattered like sparrows.

She found our photograph and said:

you are the pit.

But I live in the wet pulp between stone and rind,

refusing to close.

Ashley Sun, CA, Mission San Jose High School



ALL OTHER CERTIFIED National winners
sPRING 2025-2026



Kleptopharmacophagy - August Kirk, IN, Munster High School

The Messenger - Alice Thompson, CA, Scripps Ranch High School

Spit Venom - Abigail Stucky, TX, GC Collegiate Academy

Polo - Daniel Lin - NY, The Bronx High School of Science

i folded paper cranes in your name - Faith Choe, VA, Centreville High School

Human Geometry - Miles McCormick, CA, Burlingame High School

What We Have Become - Claire Kim, NJ, Bergen County Academies

West Facing Windows - Jospeh Juneseop Choi, NJ, American Comm School of Abu Dhabi

a love story for the academic girl - Makela Shen, CA, Saratoga High School

pot-bound - Ashlyn Wheeler, RI, Johnston Senior High School

call me by your phone - Ryder Sparling, NY, Corning-Painted Post High School

The Blueprint of the Seed - Sarah Winans, NY, Guilderland High School

Adorned - Lillian Moss, MD, Roland Park Country School

Enrapture - Olivia Wenke, FL, Coral Reef Senior High School

Cardinal (Beloved Things) - Sahana Sivakumar, NJ, J.P. Stevens High School

Still Life with Golden Bream - Izzie Hockaday, IN Plainfield High School

my tennis toe (subungual hematoma) - Chloe Lin, PA, Kennett High School

Cathy (Yuxuan) Jiang, AZ, Arizona College Prep High School

reminiscence of winter recess [slow motion] - Ysanna Beams, WA, Olympia High School

the cognizance of limerence - Sophia Luo, CA, Irvington High School

Staccato Cenotaph, Euphony - Youna Lee, CA, Palo Alto High School

Split-Mouthed - Noor Fatima, NJ, Somerset County Votech High School Academy

Child's graveyard - Hope Le, PA, Bayard Rustin High School

Tender Self Once Rooting in the Yard - Vaishnavi Mudumbi, NJ, Bergen County Academies

intertidal - Ian Lee, MI, Northville High School


Wina





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