ASM creative writing

The ASM Creative Writing Media Project aims to create a safe space for young artists where they can interact with each other, create work, and share that work with the world. We want to build a network of artists who can grow through by sharing work and seeking constructive feedback.

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The distraction

Disclaimer: the views expressed in these pieces may not express the views of the after school matters organization. They may contain profanity and offensive/sensitive content

The Distraction

Ayden Tillman

The phantom touch on my lips keeps me up sometimes.

Sometimes while I’m walking I feel like I left myself back in those

Fifteen minutes we spent together.

All of my plans for the day had fallen into your lips,

my mind short circuits as your eyes grew closer to mine.

And I can’t think of anything but you

And my heart is racing but you can’t tell

And I’m lured in with the ambition that if I kiss you

You’ll do the same.

Back in the real world I let everyone else but me handle myself.

There was no place to go once I couldn’t go back there.

I can’t even make a poem about it.

I am distracted.

I am the distraction.

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The Small Town

Disclaimer: the views expressed in these pieces may not express the views of the after school matters organization. They may contain profanity and offensive/sensitive content The Small Town Adayshia Jones Grandpa always told us old scary stories about the town that he claimed happened when he was a small boy. Like the dog that he got as a child. He said when he first got the dog he noticed it would always get up to leave when it started to  get dark out and Grandpa would always be confused why. Then one evening, Grandpa followed the dog into the woods and hid behind a bush. He said the dog was eating a small child that had went missing the day before. Grandpa hasn’t seen the dog since that night. Grandpa also told us about the abandoned Johnson hotel. He says it was this mirror that still is in the king suite today. The mirror was beautiful and had the most detailed border. One day when the hotel first opened, a young, rich couple wanted to stay in the suite for their trip to the hiking mountains.all the staff said was “be careful with the mirror, it’s expensive.” The cocky rich wife then said, “ It’s okay we have the money sir.” Once the couple got to the room, the wife instantly admired the mirror’s beauty. She stared into the mirror the entire night. 

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If I had the chance to see myself through your eyes I would. But, I would not resolve a single aspect of myself in which I see through my own.

Kyra McGee

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Temples

Disclaimer: the views expressed in these pieces may not express the views of the after school matters organization. They may contain profanity and offensive/sensitive content Temples Gabe Levi My temple is cursed Under the spell of feminism Constant rage and protest What is the big deal? Ignorance at its finest Feminism Equality of the sexes Is all they ask for It always has been a man’s world We parade with fire and hatred And claim the one thing we can’t Her temple Her temple is her shrine Built from her mother’s cracking hips Plagued with a pain Men will never feel her pain Men are the judges and jury Men own the damn court And all women can do is fight Give every breath into her stomps and every teardrop into colored signs Guilty Women are guilty of being women A crime punishable by a life of mistreatment A crime that can not be corrected Let us observe the common man Entitled Working only to provide for his housewife He cracked his mom’s body Only to disrespect her Tread the Earth with self-given respect We are the seeds of our parents Some just grow wrong All men are not devilish couch-loungers Some respect what is left of equality Some respect her shrine Some are smart Skin to skin Babies Provide at home The old society fell under these words The sexes stand at a battlefield Women already disadvantaged Temple to temple The sacred beings stripped of their light Feminism is an old word Feminism is Respecting her Respecting her shrine Respecting your mom Respecting women Her temple is not ours to rule over Only to learn from The missing piece in an old puzzle Equality

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A show

Disclaimer: the views expressed in these pieces may not express the views of the after school matters organization. They may contain profanity and offensive/sensitive content.

Imani Joseph

Act one there’s going to be fire lighted and someone will get burned. Parents will be called in a flurry of hysterical cries and dry sobs. Children will be  scared and parents will look for the purple and blue scars realizing they would not heal properly.

Act two girls were now females and boys were still boys. These females were playing games and these boys were breathing hard. Panting like dogs licking their chapped lips.

Act 3 cherries were popped and their sweet red innocence stained the boys dry lips. That year, that season, that week masculinity became a predator. And those females were fair game.

Act 4 cherries got eaten and sluts were born. Niggas was killin’ the game. Niggas were full but still hunger

Act 5 boy’s made sloppy promises with the flicks of their tongues and the rapidness of their breathe. They smashed passed and screenshotted. Pussy was a right not a privilege.

Act 6 teams were congratulated on beaten meat and raw lust, blood still dripping from there victim.

Act 7 trophies were given for most bitches collared.

Final Act there was a fire and children were no longer children. Boys were scared to look at a women and only were confused by consent. Women wanted to be girls again. And parents did not recognize their children. They never saw her scars but he cared his with him.

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Field trip to the cultural center

Photo Credits: Tyler O’Brien

Date: July 6, 2017

Exhibits visited: Protest banner lending library, Wall of respect

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“People are braver at night time. The shadows are much more forgiving than the light of day.” “Well I think, if you can’t do it in front of the sun, then you have no right to do it in front of the moon.”

-Maia Feruzi

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Why does being the bigger person always mean making myself feel small?

- Maia Feruzi

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"And then she died."

Title: Nami

The air was golden and warm, like honey comb. It felt peculiar to him. Somewhere between comfortable and horribly wrong. All he saw was this golden space. Nothing else. He knew he wasn’t dead (he just knew) but he could feel something was about to-

A girl.

There was a girl there.

She appeared as suddenly as he had into the space. Not in a way that he exactly knew how to explain. She simply appeared in his line of sight like she had always been there. Not like a pop but rather an entering that was not clearly defined by a before and after. He stared at her, hypnotized by the way flecks of light seemed to catch on her eyelashes. She was beautiful and familiar, his heart growing inexplicably heavy with knowing. Like the taste of warm milk on the tip of his tongue.

Keep reading

[sundae-notsunday-deactivated201]

Her body lay heavy in his arms, the world having fallen silent. And then it happened. His mouth opened and his ears felt muffled like a bomb had gone off right behind him and rendered the hair cells lining his inner ear useless. To anyone standing nearby they would have heard a howl, rumbling and wretched. They would have said they heard the sound of a heart breaking. He couldn’t seem to breathe. Air wouldn’t fill his lungs fast enough to stop the gasping sobs that wracked his body so hard it arched his spine. And then the sound came back, rushing into his eardrums all at once. The clang of metal on metal, the thunk of arrows hitting flesh and flesh hitting the ground. His mouth closed. He gently laid Nami on the ground closing her eyes. He used a few discarded shields nearby to build a makeshift fence around her body. Then he got to his feet. He felt cold, numb. Slightly weightless. The power in his muscles, the blackness in his heart and the revenge on his mind grounded him. And with a battle cry that challenged even the most savage of beasts, he began to fight.

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Create a story beginning with or based off of a Hamilton quote

Welp. It ended up a poem so heres this

He was born a bastard

Buried in the pillows he cried for a unknown man a unknown father

He was born an orphan

Constantly searching for validation from a family he never had

He was born a son of a whore

Only knowing his family by a horrible reputation his mother left behind

He fought his mind and body for wanting a person that he could run home to

He fought the idea of needing a noble family to come from

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drowsy, I lounge, shapeless and infested

Harmony Marks

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It’s like being put in a room that’s isolated from the rest of the world. However, you know that something’s wrong and that things aren’t normal. You never talk about that though because there’s no frame of reference for normal other than your isolated room. So you think that things have to be normal. Right?

Rae’vonne Barnes

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When I was younger I wondered where birds were flying to, what the whole point was, and then I figured they were just flying away from something. Outer space, the Other, she probably loves birds. She wears the sky we see like an opaque veil; she can't see out of it. she doesn't want to look at us. When we send our rockets breaking out through baby blue visor, she can't bear to look at our ugly fishbowl faces, so the Other tries to do nothing harder than choke us out, than to make an example so that we stop trying so hard to ignore her mask, and we send men out in little reflective armors and fishbowl helmets and she gets her hands around their throats but just can't squeeze, she turns their bloods blue and stretches their spines, but regardless when they come home they are heroes, role models, and then more will follow in their footsteps. But the Other, the outer, she loves birds because they're happy to just fly along the surface of the sky, of her mask. They're happy to be so high without any reason to be there, having never considered the beyond. That's what clouds for, for her to whisper sweet little songs to the birds and keep them healthy and watch each of their lives play out, because she loves them and they have never given her a reason to try and suffocate one.

Jon Recinos

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The thump of my mother’s womb was foreign but recognizable the second the car jolted forward

Harmony Marks

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He combed his long curls of brown hair with his hands messily before shoving them in the pockets of his mortal jeans and starting to walk, whistling along with the early morning birds as the sun crawled into the sky.

Tyler O’Brien

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Every time a bullet was released from a cannon a baby bird was pushed out of its nest

Lailah Ali-Valentine

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As the train neared Southport, she wondered if she would have to keep riding the brown line  forever. Did the L tracks even have an end?"

Tyler O’Brien