The Loft Literary Center Youth Anthology

Welcome!

2009-08-13T07:29:00.000-07:00

Welcome to The Loft Literary Center Youth Anthology page!

In this space, you will find all the work of The Loft Literary Center's Summer Youth Program participants. These students, age 6- to 17-years-old, have been working hard this summer on their creative writing, from short stories and essays, to manga and screenplays, to poetry and radio drama scripts. Feel free to browse and enjoy the work of our students!

On the lefthand side of the page, the authors' names are listed alphabetically. You also have the option of finding students' work by genre (poetry, fiction, essay, other) or by title. Click on the link, and it will bring you right to the student's page!

The Loft Literary Center is located at 1011 Washington Avenue South, in the Open Book literary arts center in Minneapolis. Since 1975, The Loft has been a place for aspiring and seasoned writers to take writing classes and to share in the Minnesota writers' community. The Loft offers classes for adults and youth year-round, and is fortunate and honored to have as teachers some of the most acclaimed writers from not just all over the great state of Minnesota, but from all over the United States.

Every summer, The Loft offers one- and two-week classes in a wide variety of topics, such as "Do YOU Want to Be a Writer?" and "Making Characters of Real People" as part of the Young Writers' Program. This summer, the Young Writers' Program is also offering intensive one- and two-week intensive writing camps, providing a unique opportunity to students as they spend the entire day focused on a specific topic, such as the Mississippi River and the special history of Minneapolis as "Mill City."

Please visit The Loft's website for more information or to register for classes.

"If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." --Toni Morrison

Silence

2009-08-10T10:13:00.000-07:00

Louie Moser

Silence,

the calm after the storm,

the tears no one can hear.

Everything stands still;

the shock after a tragedy.

Time to calculate the damage

with impersonal numbers:

one plane down

two towers leveled.

Sorrow wears the mask of anger,

as helpless millions watch the moment played again and again

in their minds.

Silence,

created by a faceless terror,

broken by a long wail of pain,

as a nation collectively finds its breath

and screams at the world

“Why?!”…

And silence is there to answer.

Silence.

Subversion

2009-08-10T10:10:00.000-07:00

Mary Reeher

(One big, dorky homage to the original vampire novel. Well, not quite the original. Close enough. Situation debt to Bram Stoker.)

“God preserve my sanity, for to this I am reduced.”
-Jonathan Harker’s Journal, 16 May.

He was a magnet of heat; if I had been warned a thousand times, I wouldn't have been able to keep away. Something caught at me, like an unfillable craving, like a knot of newborn's hunger high in my throat. This made me nearly hysterical. The small, critical voice-- not a conscience, I sincerely lacked a conscience-- was telling me I sounded like an irrational idiot. The master was busied elsewhere, but the three of us had been in the habit of sleeping late into the night, content that the Count would bring us something, perhaps a piglet in a bag, or a Romany urchin, rather than let us out of our ladylike chains. I had higher hopes for my breakfast.

And now that there was another person between the door, and me I found my own vague plans foiled.

In the crypt, my eyes took in all details with their usual acuity. Tracings of spider webs, a tear in the hem of my dress, the twist of malice in the corner of my companion's mouth. She sat between me and the door, not a physical barrier, but certainly a mental one. Mercifully, her sister still slumbered. The two of them together would have been too much to take at that particular moment.

"Harker isn't some wandering salesman. Do you plan to toss his body on the next passing carriage and say he ran off in the night?"

"We will only talk!"

"Don’t think I don’t know what talking will lead to." Malinka sniffed with theatrical distaste, like the designated protector of my honor, but then grinned, showing the white cat's-teeth of her fangs. She had appointed herself mother of our little troupe long ago, and I despised it. Alit as she was on the edge of an open sarcophagus, I had a petty, childish urge to give her one mighty shove and push her back into it. "You suffer from an excess of curiosity, little sister."

"Does He know you're doing this?" Aranka sat up in her stone box, suddenly awake and alert. She had never been the brightest creature, but it was clear the source of her concern wasn't the solicitor, but rather, the Count. (Across these lands, his true name was of no consequence; common people knew him alike as “wampyr” or “draculea”, meaningless and fearful. The privilege of his true name, the Christian name he died under and shed, is not one shared with many.) She had been his courtier once, a near relation, before her blood had gone to dust in her veins. I only wondered how the two got on when he was alive, some centuries back; she had a taste for trouble but was otherwise pretty and useless as an etched winecup.

Malinka answered before I could. "Of course, not. We might interfere with his business affairs. Or throw off his plans for dinner later." As if our handsome young guest were some sugar-dusted delicacy in our larder being saved for All Soul's, or Easter. Drifting over to where Aranka now sat (dusting grave-soil from her clothes, with long, dark curls pitifully tousled) I began to comb the grime from her hair. The comb in my hands was inlaid ivory, but splintered by missing teeth. One of the advantages to our condition was that no matter how hard I pulled, she didn't cry out as I worked the larger snarls from her hair. Malinka-- called Mala by her sister Aranka in more affectionate moments, Amalia by her lord-- seemed put out by my dismissal of her, and she continued berating me as I worked.

“Avaricious little minx!”

Giving up even the pretense that my plans were innocent, I put up my hands.

"Is it so objectionable that we should share? What does it matter to me if the two of you follow along? What concern is that to our guest, for that matter? I have always been generous with you two-- don't laugh--" I punctuated this with a cruel pull to silence my subject's giggles, sorry that such attempts would be unlikely to cause her pain. "You wore my English dress the last night we had guests! You of all people." Aranka and I were of a size, and my renewed trousseau, sewn in more urbane Western styles, was my only real tool with which to bargain. Her sister, however, had a lusher figure, oddly sensual and suffering for the lack of blood. (I could only assume I bore the same marks of tiredness in my face. Remember, reader, I lack a reflection.) I seized upon that next, without shame. "Would you have me eat pigs? Cattle? Little lost children? Mala, I swear, you conspire to make me unhappy."

Maliciously, I began to cry. It was only half an act, but the rusty tinge to the tears on my cheeks robbed them of some of their innocence. As if I were awash in blood on the inside, a vessel, not a creature.

Aranka pulled the freshly-combed hair down over her shoulders before clambering out to console me, but Malinka's face only got that pinched look she often wore. She looked very much like her master in some moments, when angered. I had seen him angry much more often, seen the red flare up behind his eyes when I misspoke or acted out of my own temper. Now that I had silenced her, it was if I was unable to stop talking. The words poured out of me.

"How long has it been since your master provided for you? And," a smile turning my lips, "he will never know. We shall only sip. And the marks will heal."

Aranka seemed strangely moved by this; she made a little noise, as if her stomach had growled with hunger. In moments like these, she seemed more like a child than I did. If her sister had any compassion left, I doubted it, but it was clear I had earned the sympathies of one, if not both. Appealing to their baser natures was not my usual tack. But hunger and curiosity had worn me raw.

“He’ll heal,” Aranka murmured, like my echo. A pleasing falsehood.

The water pitcher’s contents had frozen over. I had to dash through the thick sheet of ice that topped it, and even then, our washing water had delicate frozen chips in it, like snowflakes. I dabbed the blood from Aranka’s cheek, dried into a black flake from her last feeding; she cleansed an anonymous scuff from the cotton broadcloth of her dress, like a careful housewife.

We abandoned the crypt for the comforts of a lady’s boudoir. The primary concern had not been our enjoyment, but that the Count’s carefully compiled merchandise might not mildew in the damp. To my annoyance, it took the two of us at once to dress the other, and it wasn't as quick a business as I would have liked. First, changing from a full-length muslin (the last prize of one of the master's trips afield, pressed into service as a nightshift, ha) still speckled with grave soil into a starched whisper of a chemise. Our hands were bare. We had been sleeping, hadn't we? I braced myself to be cinched into stays. How humiliating, like a beetle in its shell. (I could not object, of course, to how the lacing stole my breath. I could almost circle my waist in my hands. Again, dear reader, you must forgive my limitations.) Snaking penitential curls, demurely drawn over my breast like living gold. These preparations we took to become pleasant young ladies, rather than blood-dappled fiends. Not a lengthy transformation.

Surely he would not suspect for as little as the sound of unstockinged feet. We kept a light step; where there was dust enough to mark them. The three of us roamed the halls like a perfect trinity of specters. I found my quarry at last in one of the corner rooms, a spider-haunted solar, sound asleep on a decaying velvet couch. His book was in his pocket; a diary, or merely his commonplace book? I thought of students I’d met, long ago. One usually could not find guests strayed this far from the lower floors. Better that we found him than his host. He’d been wandering, poor lamb.

For a single, annoyed moment, I thought from the rumpled disarray of his clothes that our host had been at him. But his pallor was merely that of an English complexion, not a sudden, fatal syncope ushered in by a bite on the neck. There was blood still coursing, good, live blood. To redden his cheek, when he stirred, the gleam of waking eyes under heavy lids indicating he had caught first sight of us. Pale lips were parted slightly; his breathing, at ease and shallow, had quickened. Harker had a kind face, marked with worry, and now placid alarm.

Aranka beckoned me briefly, and purred in my ear.

“Look. He wakes. Take the first taste, Lucia. You brought us here."

Mala made some tasteless jest, and to my surprise, I found myself amused. Our laughter, shrill to our own ears and pitched like a discord of bells. Previous quarrels had fallen away—the light in my dark sisters’ eyes could be mistaken for the softness of affection. In the grip of her hunger, Malinka had turned soft and submissive. I could see him watching her. Transfixed, like a butterfly on a pin.

This all seemed a terrible and wonderful joke, a game. The sight of his pulse battering in his throat was too much to bear. And he was perfectly pliant, as I bowed my head, and brought my mouth to his white column of throat. I could nearly taste his heartbeat.

“Go on! You are first, and we shall follow. Yours is the right to begin.” Aranka said, knowing and quite, quite poisonous under her coquetry. A willing victim, ha! These were our better days all over again, before we had been reduced—to theft, to charity. We had been goddesses and demons and vipers. Malinka followed her lead in ushering me forward.

“He is young and strong. There are kisses for us all.”

“I couldn’t.” Another bitter peal of the sweetest laughter, and I cocked my head, like a hunting dog examining its felled quarry. Mala nudged me in the small of the back. Giggling like girls, we were. This seemed to put the Englishman at ease; the fear left his eyes. Smoothly, Aranka transitioned from our mother tongue to the liquid, honeyed speech this man would understand. For no other reason than to twist the knife?

About the Author:

Mary Reeher is fifteen and a rising junior at Trinity School at River Ridge. Her first Loft classes this year were A Journey Back In Time and Writing The Dark; naturally, this story is inspired by both.

Sun Block is Important

2009-08-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

Jill Berray

The way the door opened,

and my mom walked in.

The way she sounded when she said

“It’s time to say goodbye”

The way the hospital looked so clean and shiny.

The way I thought that the hospital had no right

to be so cheerful, when we were all so sad.

The way my grandfather looked,

so weak and tired.

The way I looked at him and cried, mad at myself

for all the times I forgot

“I love you”

The way I saw my dad cry for the first time.

The way everyone thought that he was going to

fight it and survive.

The way I could smell the plastic gloves,

that wouldn’t help at all.

The way everyone was completely shocked

when the doctor said

“Its all over his body”

The way my grandma held in all those tears,

when all she wanted to do was let them go.

The way I cried forever,

praying he would live.

The way I kissed my mom goodnight,

and she was silently crying.

The way I told my grandfather that it was ok to let go.

The way I went to summer camp,

hoping it wouldn’t happen while I was away.

The way my mom said

“Wear a colorful dress to his funeral”

The way I watched my sisters cry,

along with myself.

The way I lost someone I loved so much.

The way I still cry over this story and the song

Wonderful World.

The way I look at his picture and sadly smile.

About the Author:

Jill Berray is 11 years old and is in Peter Blau's Do You Want to be a Writer class at the Loft this summer.

The Story Of Mona-Lisa

2009-08-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

Jill Berray

Mona was no ordinary girl. Well she was, until a painter came up to her and asked her if she wanted to be in a painting.
Of course, she said yes. So Mona went home to get on her best dress and hurried down to the studio where the painter

began his masterpiece. From what Mona could see, it was a beauteous painting. The painter was using all different shades

of green and yellow. As she took breaks and he continued painting, Mona got happier, and happier. But she didn't dare show

it, for the painter had said to be serious. Soon the painter moved on to Mona's face. That was when Mona accidentally let a fart slip out. She smiled slyly, just as the painter moved on to her mouth and then finished. Ever since then, people have been bewildered

by the young womans beauty and her mysterious smile. They later added on "Lisa" after people thought that "The Mona" sounded

rather like a rare disease. But in secret, Mona called herself "The Mona-Stinksa"

About the Author:
Jill Berray is 11 years old and took Peter Blau's "Do You Want to Be a Writer?" class at the Loft this summer.