Stories Teens Love

The nature of writing, and the nature of being young. When I think of young people writing, I return often to the movie “The...

The juxtaposition of characters in this story is what I found interesting here, on a first read. A generational conflict, for one: here is a man acting like a boy, and a boy trying to act like a man. The internal conflict within Sturgeon juxtaposed with the conflicts he undergoes throughout the narrative with his father. The starkness of these two moral battlefronts that the men find themselves on. Against the backdrop of the Million Man March- a gathering for Black men to pr

I chose this poem, mistakenly believing that somewhere in the body of the text, it referred to New Year’s. Ah, well. There is no reference to New Year’s, in this Terrance Hayes poem, but there is an unmistakable feeling of newness. Which is why I love poetry, for its ability to implicate, maybe, at even greater degree than fiction. Everything is implied. Which is why it’s sort of a miracle that a couple of lines and stanzas, a handful of words, can impart anything at all. Bu

The house is still and the streetlamp flickers outside the window. Eli turns his body left and right, kicking the blanket up and down trying to ease himself. It’s the middle of fall and the leaves are turning color. He tightly shuts his eyes with his mind loud with thoughts flying by. He glances over at the calendar, circles two words in a big red pen. Tryouts tomorrow . He takes a deep breath and pulls on the lamp string, illuminating the whole room.  He stands and walks ove

Seeing the dimpled thighs, where flesh seems to become a woman. Fifteen years old but I still suck in my breath to watch the crease of Levi's shimmy its way up my hips. A belt as uncertain as its owner. It seems to tighten around me, constricting me. Somewhere in the world or history, my mother says, somebody would find me beautiful. The cruel irony is that everything that I want is not here in the room right now. What I love is the absence. The space in photos where supermod