Every Friday this summer, we're featuring the work of young writers in partnership with the Telling Room In Portland. This week, a poem by Taryn Brennan, a senior at Deering High School in Portland.
I. Venus Flytrap
He fled the despotic bog, his birthplace, in favor of the bright forest just beyond the picket fence. The trees whispered their comfort and protection; songbirds flitted amongst their boughs. Lost, an alluring aroma below offered him guidance. He found her, mouth open, nectar succulent. Enthralled, he landed amid teeth and darkness swallowed him whole.
II. Red Delicious
She is encased in a thin, red veil hiding bruises just below her surface. She falls and withers; her form collapses into itself, core exposed. The soft ground absorbs her, its ravenous soil ripping the nutrients from her rotting figure. A seedling breaks through the crust; the earth shifts, striving to replace death with life.
III. Ants
Rich dirt protests as mandibles shred it into black ribbons and small, six-legged creatures permeate its more porous surfaces. They gut the earth’s insides and craft long winding highways. Their blood constructs a castle and guards stand by. The ground moves; millions of ruthless beings overrun a decaying fruit, engulfing the sphere—a microcosmic globe.
IV. Black Widow
She is cloaked in sleek black, accented by a red redolent of her victims; she is a femme fatale. She stalks her web provocatively, waiting for a mate or insect to stumble into it—both are potential prey. Her venom leaves one gasping for air, its body writhing in agony as she gleefully watches nearby.
V. Mushrooms
Rain had saturated the earth, inspiring bright hooded figures to appear in the foliage. Raindrops danced on their caps and rinsed their stalks clean of the dirt clinging to them. The earth’s lithe fingers intermingle with those of a corpse long forgotten. They reach toward the dark, low-lying clouds yearning for the sunlight behind them. 26
Taryn Brennan is a senior at Deering High School in Portland and one of 26 students to be selected for publication in the annual anthology of the Telling Room, a nonprofit writing center dedicated to the idea that children and young adults are natural story tellers.
