Rebecca Oet
smells like teen spirit (violin cover)

[nirvana/david garrett]

1.      every Friday mid-evening I strike a
         match hold the wood between
         my teeth smolder and honey
         and watch the blackening
         trail hissing into my
         mouth with every
         inhale I
         become fire.

                                 I let the flame live behind my teeth
                                 roof of my mouth a home and I
                                 swallow the match whole
                                 my weekly medicine.

2.      this morning I became a dream heard
         an alarm a chorus a soundtrack to
         my fingers and toes dreaming
         down the stairs I thought it
         was violins but it was
         actually a
         dog barking.

_ _

Rebecca Oet is a high school student from Ohio. She is a national Scholastic Writing Awards silver medalist in Poetry, and the winner of 2017 River of Words Youth Poetry Grand Prize, VOYA Magazine’s Teen Poetry Contest 2017 and the Short Poems challenge on Young Poets Network. She has published her poetry in Teen Ink Magazine, Columbia College Literary Review, Tears in the Fence,*82 Review, and many others.

>> Back to Issue 22, 2019