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Our bravest contributors have shared with us some of their more earnest efforts from the misty past. Scary Bush should not be reviewed while in the process of drinking liquids, and the reader assumes all risk.

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Happiness

Donna Vorreyer

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Untitled

Les Kay

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Untitled

Michelle Donahue

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Supermarket's Woe (or Lamentation)

Jessie Janeshek

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Untitled

Kate Velguth (5th grade)

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Untitled

Can't tell - think it's Isaac Kirkman

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Philosophical Question – Is It Gonna Make a Sound

Jamez Chang

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Untitled

Claire Kruesel (age 15)

The constant, driving desire to conform
washes over me with
a steady, soothing, predictable pulse,
slowly wearing me down,
replacing my eroded being
with deposits of
another identity.

But with an occasional aberration
of this insidious caress...

like an irritant in an oyster, eating away at the raw, vulnerable flesh,
I feel the vague but definite pang of my true self,
persistently gnawing at my conscious.

And if I drop the self-convincing facades, forgo deception, renounce
false beliefs...
assume true interests, acquire genuine options, nurture creativity...
coat my soul with opalescent layers of lacquer,

then, no longer buried in detrimental fantasies,
my true being emerges from the ugly oyster of my false self:
properly nourished, a pearl.

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