“You know,” the dear old woman would say, “I was such a young babe when I opened up that bakery. Cupcakes, it was. Cupcakes lured all of the youngsters and their parents in on Sundays after church, or Fridays after work. Those were the busiest times, you know.” 

     Virginia would politely nod her head and smile. The poor woman had nothing else to talk about, it seemed. Just cupcakes and bakeries. 

     “But it’s not the same anymore. These days, cupcakes aren’t really a special treat of any sorts. Kids come in and complain about how they want two instead of one. When I was a just a child, I swear to ya Virginia, I wouldn’t even think of being so greedy. But kids these days…” 

    Virginia was just a young woman of twenty-one, but she’d agree with the sweet lady, “Oh my -it’s a shame, isn’t it? Just a shame. So greedy, those kids can be.” 

      And the old woman would nod with a slight frown. Virginia found it ironic complaining about more business. It seemed silly to her. She’d leave the parlor and kiss the old lamb on the cheek, bidding her a wonderful night, and thanking her for the sugary tea she wasn’t fond of, but drank nonetheless. 

     On this particular evening, she decided not to visit her aged friend. She went right to her house, down the narrow cracked street, past the old woman’s home, and into a red bricked driveway. At the moment she made that left turn, she deeply regretted arriving. 

     On her front steps, sat a vase. It was very bright pink and contrasted wonderfully against the rotted wooden steps. It was pretty. Virginia looked at it for a moment. She turned the keys and pulled them out of the ignition. She unbuckled her seatbelt. She stared at the pretty pink vase for quite some time until her eyes caught the white roses protruding from the frilly top. That’s when she got out of the car. 

     She took a few steps, subconsciously quickening her pace with each stride: 

      one, 

      two, 

      three four 

      fivesixseven. 

     Once she reached the stoop cradling the delicacy of the pale while roses and the pretty pink vase, she looked down. 

    “Maybe they’re not for me,” she thought, as she gazed so interrogatively into the flowers that she felt she’d known them for quite some time. She smiled. Pretty flowers, they were. So precisely placed -from their relation to one another to the pedals so perfectly designed in nature. 

     And then some sort of cloud came, or maybe it was more like a sun shower; she wasn’t sure, but something certainly came, forcefully and suddenly. The smile faded from her face as quickly as it erupted. Virginia glided into the front door. She locked it behind her, desiring nothing more than a few hours of a simple nothing. 

     She sat up in her bedroom, watching the clock. It calmed her. If she concentrated on nothing but the time, the rest of her seemed to melt away into a puddle under her bed, where it was so dark she couldn’t even make out the outline of things. 

      A ringing broke her trance of tranquility. The phone? The doorbell? Yes, the doorbell. Why the doorbell? 

     She remembered she had locked the door. She got out of bed and headed downstairs without the slightest trace of haste. Her feet seemed to resemble pixies, moving so innocently and smoothly through the well-known curves of the house. 

     She didn’t want to think of that gift lying upon her front steps. She’d rather be sitting in a parlor with nectar tea and trite conversation. She unlocked, and turned the doorknob. 

     “Oh, you’re back,” she timidly acknowledged the man at the door. He was holding the pretty pink vase with the delicate white flowers and though it was dark she could see the reddish glow illuminating from the driveway as the fluorescent streetlight shone upon it. 

     “Did you see these flowers? They reminded me of you, you know, all white and pretty and I thought you’d like them. You do like them, don’t you? I was thinking about you all day and just couldn’t wait for you to get home…” he carried on, but Virginia paid no attention. He was gleaming with pride, obviously very pleased with himself for choosing such beautiful roses. He resembled the bright streetlight -just beaming with a smile that emitted nothing but sweet tones and intentions, but Virginia knew better. 

     “Yeah, yeah, I did.” 

     “Don’t you just adore them?” 

     “You know…” 

     “Yes, yes. Your favorite color is red -I knew it. I should have chosen the red ones; God, I’m such an idiot.” 

     “No, no, you’re not. Don’t say that. It was very sweet of you,” Virginia tried to sound sincere. 

     His smile faded, slowly and quickly at the same time. Virginia wasn’t sure when he began to frown, but once she noticed, she looked down at her bare feet, and took a step outside. 

     “You know,” Virginia began. She was interrupted. 

      “My goodness, you look absolutely beautiful in the moonlight,” the man sporadically concluded. 

     But it wasn’t the moonlight; Virginia knew that. Where was the moon, anyway? It was streetlight. Artificial streetlight. He placed one arm around her waist and went to pull her in, presumably for a kiss. 

    But she pulled away. And with one swift pixie move, she snatched the vase from his hands. She looked down at the pretty pink glass and the innocent snowy roses. She brought the vase up to face and smelled the light aroma emerging from the pedals. She closed her eyes. She took it in. 

    The man admired her pretty, sleek hands. White and fragile, much like the roses. Without any warning at all, she threw the vase over the few rotted boards of wood and shattered the pretty pink glass against the glowing red driveway. The water puddled around the injury like blood, and the roses fell in a helpless heap of discomfort. 

      He looked at her, his eyebrows drawn in, making a ‘V’ of anger, or maybe confusion. Virginia couldn’t tell, and she didn’t really care. 

     “Why did you do that?” he was direct with her. 

      “Flowers die,” was her simple reply. 

      “What? Of course, but….” the man went down the steps to recover the fallen flowers. 

     “They’re just clocks.” 

     “Clocks? Virginia, what are you talking about?” 

     “Don’t you see? They die. They come to an end. Like….” she couldn’t get herself to continue. 

      “Like what? What, Virginia, darling, my dear, what?” 

      “Like us; don’t you see? Love is a clock and a flower is a clock and.…,” her voice was rising. 

     “Virginia, you’re not saying what I think you’re saying, are you?” 

     “I’m composed of nothing for you anymore! There is not a bone in my body or a hair on my skin that could attempt to lie and say I love you! The flowers have run out of time. And time -oh! time is such a silly concept.” 

     He didn’t say a thing in return. He took a step back, stepping into the blood of the roses. 

     “I hate flowers,” she stated with confidence and defiance. She lifted her dainty left hand from her side and stared at it for a moment. 

    Virginia cut the wirings of her clock, stopping time and diminishing all of the past minutes she had ever experienced with that mundane, familiar ticking. She let it fall out of the cracks between her fingers. It made a thump as it hit the wood. 

     She couldn’t bare to look the man in the eye. Virginia turned around, looking at the ground, and went inside. She locked the door. She took a deep breath. Virginia thought about the sweet old woman and the greedy kids. She never enjoyed cupcakes. Or maybe she did. 

     She seemed apathetic towards the matter. 

We have a lot of work ahead of us preparing new poems and performances and we’re all committed to rehearsing twice a week this summer. Fortunately, we have two great coaches: Heidi Freeman, Creative Writing Teacher at Asheville High and Steve Shell, slammaster of Poetry Slam Asheville and a teacher at Eliada Homes in Leicester. 

We’ll also be doing a lot of fundraising—because our journey will cost us our team around $5,000. Already, TOPS Shoes in Asheville has agreed to sponsor the team but we need more generous sponsors and people who will either come to our planned fundraising events or contribute to our Fundrazr campaign which will be launching in a couple of days. 

Upcoming—
June 5 at the Magnetic Field, 6:00pm, Old School Vs. New School—adults poets from Poetry Slam Asheville will slam with the winners of Asheville WordSlam and the LEAF Youth Poetry Slam including me!
June 13 Downtown News and Books will include youth poets in their anniversary celebration and donate some proceeds to our cause. 
June 23 I’ll host a fundraiser at the Black Bear Café in Hendersonville—look for more details—coming soon!
June 29 An evening with fabulous Glenis Redmond, Jonathon Santos, and our team—place and time TBA. 
We’ll be featuring brave new voices all this month—some spoken word poetry—an interview with a local teen artist, interviews with a local teen movie star and more—because we find our voice not just in poetry but in all sorts of artistic expression.

Stayed tuned on facebook for all the latest news. 
Yours in poetry, 
Shanita Jackson, Spoken Word Editor

• • •

Richard met his daughter for the first time on a red-eye from Chicago. He stood in the tiny airplane bathroom to keep from vomiting before the plane took off. He didn’t get motion sickness. Being up in the air wasn’t the problem: It was the waiting. The plane was moving on the runway like a slow whale in the ocean. He was a natty old Jonah, swallowed whole. He looked at his face in the mirror until it didn’t seem to be anything anymore. He stared at the blank eyes until they multiplied.

Did you see that old guy who just went in there?

Oh yeah, the natty old one who looked all tired and anxious?

Yeah, what a freak.

Bet he’s pooping.

Richard flung open the lavatory door and took his seat, worried that the red “occupied” sign had been illuminated for too long. Those around him remained engrossed in the in-flight magazine.

“Please stow your carry-on bag in the overhead compartment.”

He didn’t look at her face the first time she passed. He saw her legs, covered in speckly brown moles under the sheer stockings all the flight attendants were wearing. Stockings that he unquestionably wanted to remain on the flight attendant. But he couldn’t look at them without remembering Karen hiking hers up, fists full of filmy fabric, the one time he’d taken her to church with him, and pulling them off, sticking her tongue out at him, in the passenger seat of his car afterwards. He thought of Karen in grad school, trying to loosen his belt in the courtyard. He’d jolted, rolled over on the checkery red picnic blanket, garbled “not right… now”. The occasional professor muddled through the garden on a cloudy evening like that one. Richard was taking no chances. Karen started at his ankles and rolled his pants up to his knees. She brushed her lips over his mediocre shin. She took a felt tip pen out of her pencil case and started drawing thin black lines between his moles. There were so many of them that the stars had come out by the time she finished. She touched his face. She said,

“I constellated you.”

Richard looked out the plane window; it burned his neck to stretch like that. Karen used to kiss his neck -- big, awful kisses that that tightened his chest and left funny, red-blue marks sometimes. After he left, he’d found a shadow of one way back, near his ear. He rubbed his thumb over where the place had been that long time ago. Karen, you have outstayed your welcome.

“Sir, you’re going to have to silence your walkman.” Her uniform was a little too small for her, so the buttons strained over her breasts. She had a faint brown stain on her otherwise spotless collar. When she stood in profile, her brassiere was just barely visible. It was thick and beige.

“No thank you.”

“Sir, it could cause Radio Wave Interference.” She raised her eyebrows at him. They were darker than her hair, crawling up her forehead. Her wrinkles were so deep, even though she didn’t really look old enough to have them. They weren’t because of age, Richard decided, she’d just been folded into herself many times and so it went. “Sir.” He pulled one of his earphones to the side.

“Excuse me?” She pointed to his music player and he understood.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were there. I mean, I knew, but I didn’t know that…” His hot coffee sloshed onto his pants.

“It’s alright. Please stow the device in the overhead compartment, we’re preparing for takeoff.”

Up to a point, Richard hadn’t realized that there was more than one kind of shame. This was airplane shame. He hoped that she had not detected that he was listening to bluegrass music. It was in his top reasons that he felt he should never be a father. That was secret shame.

“Orion, see?”

“Oh, yeah.” Richard’s legs were a muddy sea of hair and ink and moles. “Do you know any in the sky.”

“Kind of. I don’t know, I like touching you.”

There was the shame that came with not having a blowjob in the public courtyard of an Ivy League. There was the shame of hating your legs. There was the shame, now, of the searing coffee on Richard’s thigh. The flight attendant handed him a bunch of thin paper napkins, but it would leave a stain. There was the shame of blankness. Richard tried to tell Karen about his feelings occasionally, just because he liked her so, so much.

“I, um, I feel sort of nervous sometimes when I’m trying to fall asleep.”

“Like you’re hearing this odd sonata in your head that everyone is dancing to but you, and you realize that fear is something you ingested, and you just want to lie on the floor and rip exotic plants out of your chest.”

“Um. Not really. I guess it’s just feeling like I’ll never change that freaks me out a little bit.”

“Stagnant, helplessly glued in time.”

“Yeah.”

Katerina, as she was to be called, would be born from a womb lined with exotic plants. She would enter the world swaddled in weird hair dye and indian food. And he, Richard, would be there with a wardrobe full of beige to fuck it all up.

The flight attendant sat in a grey plastic fold-out seat across from Richard. She adjusted her tiny black tie. She didn’t read a book or a magazine or look out the little window over Richard’s left shoulder at the stars.

In the end it came down to sacrifice. He tried to sacrifice Katerina. He walked past a friendly German Shepherd and came to terms with the fact that if he was her father, she would fear it. He went with Karen to an art museum and, as she filled her notebook, placed his hands on her stomach so the baby could learn indifference. Three weeks of this and he could feel the perpetual knot in his stomach loosening. He bought a few bluegrass records with a lighter heart. He went down on Karen in the parking lot of Bed, Bath, & Beyond. Karen had a stomachache one day and he imagined his fear and shame flying off of himself and onto his daughter, making her heavy and skittish and lame as hell. That was the end of sacrificing the baby for himself.

He tried, next, to destroy the poet. Karen had fallen in love. He had been ready to drive to the nearest supermarket for chocolate peanut butter ice cream at 3:00 a.m. Unfortunately, Karen was not subject to the sort of craving one could conventionally imbibe. But she was not immune to desire. Karen fell in love with a poet, resting his thin books over her huge belly and weeping to them every morning like clockwork. Richard stopped setting his digital watch to wake up. He woke to her tears on his neck and her quoted passages in his ear and her stomach pressing into his back as though urging him to move forward.

“They say that I am a poet,” she said, “I wonder what they would say if they saw me from the inside. I bottle emotions and place them into the sea for others to unbottle on distant shores. I am unsure as to whether they ever reach and for that matter as to whether I ever get my point across. Or my love.  Isn’t that beautiful? What do you think it means?” Every day during her afternoon nap, he stole one of her poetry collections and hid it behind the two large cacti she had ordered off of Amazon.com during a particularly hormonal weekend. When the stack of red and blue books grew higher than the flowerpot, he purchased a plane ticket.

“Sir, you are seated in the exit row,” said the flight attendant. “Are you willing to perform the exit procedure in case of evacuation?” She had, Richard noticed, a large mole right beneath her chin. Tragic, he thought. Somehow that mole was the tipping point. She was the type of stranger one would struggle to imagine complexly. It was entertainment, almost, to picture her brushing her teeth and the way she held her face at redlights and the way she pronounced words in her head. It was funny because it seemed so impossible. Richard closed his eyes, and with the knowledge of his uselessness in a crashed and burning plane, uttered a “Yes.”

• • •

• • •

Just used my Canon Rebel T3 and my undeniable urge to make origami. One of my favorite things to do out on a shoot is take at least one paper crane with me and snap a shot of it... then I'll usually leave it behind... SO I decided to name this piece after the hundreds of cranes I've set loose where ever I go. It's my own little peace movement I suppose. I first got into cranes when I was read the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes back in 2nd grade :) I hope one day to make my own 1000.

• • •

• • •

Eleanor Leonne Bennett is a 16-year-old internationally award-winning photographer and artist who has won first places with National Geographic, The World Photography Organisation, Nature's Best Photography, Papworth Trust, Mencap, The Woodland Trust and Postal Heritage. Her photography has been published in the Telegraph, The Guardian, BBC News website and on the cover of books and magazines in the United States and Canada. Her art is globally exhibited; her work has been shown in London, Paris, Indonesia, Los Angeles, Florida, Washington, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Canada, Spain, Germany, Japan, Australia and in The Environmental Photographer of the Year Exhibition (2011), amongst many other locations. She was also the only person from the UK to have her work displayed in the National Geographic and Airbus run See The Bigger Picture global exhibition tour with the United Nations International Year Of Biodiversity 2010. See more of her work on TRILL HERE & HERE

• • •

• • • 

There’s an elephant in the halls of my high school
and it’s big and black and it goes by the name of poverty
but that’s PC for being black in the 21st century 
and the only incentive to address it
is addressing it on those embarrassing end of year school reports

Focus goes into fixing problems that only appear on paper
like bumping up those minority test scores
enough to soften the guilt that sweeps the halls
at the end of the school year;
an absolution on why We didn’t really fail them

So the admin chews on pen caps instead of chewing on the problem
because it’s only an issue as long as the number is glaring enough
and numeric glyphs can’t reflect the faces of the demographic its collecting

but ultimately
a student’s death stemming from a shooting is better than potentially offending anyone
a murder isn’t a drop out
one less failing test score that gets worried about

so maybe instead of a two percent increase,
we can get the test scores up to four
and instead of having one student gunned down on the porch of his girlfriend’s Section 8
we can maybe one or two more

Really, what is one more shooting all the white collars can mark up to pseudo-gang killing
if a high school’s end of year report has a dozen more passing test scores

Never mind that Tommy Harrison was an Asheville High student
before the city’s forensics could wipe off the pool of blood on the stoop where he fell
he got a minute of silence and his name read over the intercom
That’s a Cougar Requiem

Real talk:
a student took six shots a block away from his house
and we hung our head in a school silence while our hallways screamed with that guilt
that should only be present at the end of the year when those Holy school reports go home 
but after that intraschool silence, the school day carried on

As if those six shots that rang out were even out of ear shot,
a stone’s throw away from the school entrance
where not a single sign was made, flower dropped or card written
for an Asheville High school student
three months away from graduating

Instead of hosting a memorial service
my school memorialized Tommy the day after his death
with twelve police officers posted up around the Varsity Gym
because every black man gunned down must be gang related
and everyone else must expect retaliation
like an eye for an eye changes the fact that these halls are even emptier

We didn’t unify as a school,
hold hands,
say what we remembered
we watched the staff of the high school watch a Chinese circus performance

I’m just another white AP kid talking about an issue
that I know nothing about
because all I see is the finalized copy of last year’s  test scores

For comparison:
I use poetry as a mirror I can hold up to myself
for reflection, introspection, shit like that
but none of Tommy’s friends are up on this stage
writing verses about their memories of him
because my high school forgot to pass the memo on to the standard English classes
about our school’s poetry club
cause if they can’t pass their tests, they probably don’t care about art, expression – standard white people things 

Has no one realized:
integration wasn’t the last step on this path
neglect is still racist
and test scores won’t change that

• • • 

In the next few weeks we’ll be sharing some of the videos from that day on Trill. For me, the only type of justice I can fully agree with is Poetic Justice. And who accomplishes that? Poets. Through workshops, through slams, through open mic, poets have the ability to heal. We don’t have the ability to reconcile what is already lost, but we have the means to mend what might be broken in the future. That is true justice. That is the only justice I know.

What does your justice look or sound like? Send us your poetry, your stories, your art, your photography—join us for justice.  And, join Trill on Saturday, May 26th,  7pm  at the Firestorm Café in downtown Asheville for Poetic Justice: An open mic evening of youth spoken word poetry. Sign up at 6:45.

For poetry,
Nita Jackson, 
Spoken Word Editor

• • • 

• • •

October 19, 1859
 
It is an awfully warm day for October, and I am sitting on the porch, lording over the
garden. Father and his favorite Negro boy, Isaac, sweated all through the brooding, rainy summer
to prepare the little corner of our land, with a stone path through it. They planted in the autumn --
all pansies. We had some bright little faces (deep violets, peaky yellows, and rosy pink) to
brighten the winter, because there was little snow. Now, I can discern my favored color from
amidst the jumble of vibrancy. A tender lavender.

I don’t know why, but this morning I felt compelled to write. Now, I don’t know what I
should say. I can see the lean figure of my father on a knoll beyond the garden. I know it’s him by
his cocky stance. He’s talking to a stocky man with auburn hair I can see from here. I do believe
it is Mr. Leeman, who owns the plantation just a short few miles away.
Father hates it when he catches me writing, or with ink on my hands. He thinks I’m
plotting his demise because I won’t let him read what I write. I think that’s the talk of a
superstitious old woman, but I hate to see Father when he’s enraged. His face fades to bloody red
and he curses so badly it would sear the ears off a preacher.
And he’s coming toward me now, so I should hide this book well.

* * * 

It’s late night now, and from my bed I can hear the crickets. They’re a calming and familiar sound,
but not loud enough to drown out the ruckus in my mind. When Father came up to me on the
porch this morning his face was already broiling mad. He stalked past me and into the house as I
carefully hid my inky hands beneath my skirts. I heard him speak shortly to Mother; I heard her
give a little gasping scream.

Darting inside, I saw them conversing in low tones in the hall. They saw me and retreated
deeper into our house, taking the stairs hurriedly.
I ran to the parlor. My sisters were already convened. Louisa was in the turquoise chair,
her hands poised with a needle above her embroidery. Annie and Nancy, facing each other, had
abandoned a slate on the table. All three stared at the ceiling. Silently I joined them. We all hoped
our parents would seek refuge in their bedroom, which was located directly over the parlor.
Sometimes, when they shouted, their voices carried through the floor.
We suddenly heard light footsteps above us. They didn’t stop. Back and forth someone
paced. Mother, I knew. She paces with her hand pressed over her mouth when she’s anxious. I
could imagine her pale, worried face.

Our attempts at eavesdropping were fruitless, but others’ were not. After several tense
minutes of waiting, we heard heavier footsteps chasing down the stairs, and Constance charged
into the room. Her eyes were wide in a way I had never seen, like bottomless muddy pools. She
had heard every word, of course. Constance is our maid girl, daughter of a free black. Her
greatest asset to us is not the work she does but the education she gives us. A born eavesdropper,
she tells us our parents’ every word.
“They talking about that John Brown man, and it ain’t sounding good!” she crowed.
Louisa dropped her needle. None of us knew John Brown, but I guess all the Negroes do.
Constance said he was a murdering fool, and an abolitionist to boot. She spat ‘abolitionist’ like an
offense, but I believe just because of her company. Namely us, the pampered daughters of a
slave-owning man.
“How bad?” asked Nancy, probably thinking that if it were bad enough, she could get out
of her lesson.
“Bad.” I never knew ‘bad’ before, though I’ve known discomfort and pain and sadness.

I’ve never known death and murder. By the time we sat down for supper, the story had passed
around all the slaves. Constance got the whole thing from a friend and filled us in.
This John Brown man, the murdering abolitionist fool, thought he could incite a slave
rebellion. So he stole hostages from a little Virginia town, and then attacked with just twenty-two
men! Ironic, how they pinned him in the exact armory he had tried to seize. Colonel Lee stopped
him. I don’t know Colonel Lee, but a few of the slaves knew his name.

“Whoo!” said Constance. “Them Virginians are gonna be an-GRY!” I guess they sure
will be, but not just Virginia. Father was stormy all through supper and he locked himself in his
study. Mother fretted and dropped a china plate. I saw the tears in her eyes as she turned away
from the mess. I saw my own uncertainty in all of my sisters’ eyes. How could this be such a
momentous thing? It was horrible, certainly, but not...important.

I guess that isn’t right, there must be some centrality to it. Annie said that now it really
matters whether we’re from the South or the North. She wouldn’t explain further, she just shook
her head, like I’m stupid or too young to understand, even though I’m only three years younger
than her.

• • •

• • •

I worked really hard for weeks drawing this significant woman. My artwork portrays this icon, testing the lines and definitions of black and white. 

Materials used: graphite pencil

• • •

• • •

Eleanor Leonne Bennett is a 16-year-old internationally award-winning photographer and artist who has won first places with National Geographic, The World Photography Organisation, Nature's Best Photography, Papworth Trust, Mencap, The Woodland Trust and Postal Heritage. Her photography has been published in the Telegraph, The Guardian, BBC News website and on the cover of books and magazines in the United States and Canada. Her art is globally exhibited; her work has been shown in London, Paris, Indonesia, Los Angeles, Florida, Washington, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Canada, Spain, Germany, Japan, Australia and in The Environmental Photographer of the Year Exhibition (2011), amongst many other locations. She was also the only person from the UK to have her work displayed in the National Geographic and Airbus run See The Bigger Picture global exhibition tour with the United Nations International Year Of Biodiversity 2010. See more of her work on TRILL HERE

• • •