pomegranate girls by Jaiden Thompson (15, Washington)*

you’ll be told to caress the smirks between bloodied rivers 
before you’re allowed to touch your own hips like a lover;
honeysuckle blossom, lie across ruptured statues, sighing
velvet euphonies like a newborn lake and pour into him;
but, on an eve of sweet macabre, the wary moon will sing
a spare mockingbird’s ballad; now they’ll teach you to beat 
against yourself until there’s a Starry Night Over the Rhône 
plastered on broken flesh; second coatings lick beauty with 
a sugared tongue and they’ll say “garden like God himself” 
but you know God is a loose pomegranate seed sort of lady, 
birth swimming in Her endless pupils and spilling like wine 
atop our salvers; 

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