stolen thunder

By Carolyn Zheng

We see these grand beasts working so hard trying to survive and provide for their families, but with one bullet, hunters and poachers can kill them and all of their life’s efforts.

the lion chases the gazette
powerful sinew and muscles work in tandem
it pounces
kills
and feasts with its cubs
until a man appeared
with a shining metal gun
thunderstruck
leaving scorched black
and cubs
Alone.

Girls Write Now On the Other Side of Everything: The 2023 Anthology

Do you know what it’s like to communicate with your family across a salty ocean’s divide? Do you want the sun and moon to enter your home with stories written in embers? Do you seek voices that will punctuate the darkness? Welcome to the other side of everything. It’s the other side of silence, the other side of childhood, the other side of hate, the other side of indifference, it’s the other side of sides, where the binary breaks down. It’s a new paradigm, a destination, a different perspective, a mindset, a state of openness, the space between the endless folds in your forehead, hopes for tomorrow, and reflections on the past. This anthology of diverse voices is an everything bagel of literary genres and love songs, secrets whispered in the dark of night, conversations held with ancestors under the sea. 

READ ON THE OTHER SIDE

VISIT ANTHOLOGY LIBRARY

Process

I’ve always wanted to write poetry, so I decided to try. For this poem, I was thinking about how much people have to struggle to survive. I have also been recently reading the book The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. In it, it talks about how even if the two gangs—the greasers and the Socs—continue to fight. everything remains the same. Both concepts don’t apply only to humans either, I realized. Animals work hard to survive and provide for their families, just like humans. However, it doesn’t change the fact that they can never win against humans. Our technological advancements are something that natural evolution can’t win against. Poaching is evidence for that fact. Once I realized that, I just wrote something down. My mind first thought of a scene from a nature documentary where a lion or cheetah was chasing its prey, so I started with that and went along with whatever I conjured up.