Darlene Rivera is a Year-1 student, and Boubacar Djigo is a tenth-grade student at BHSEC, Cleveland.


Welcome the New
by Darlene Rivera

Lift your body out the deep hole

Feel the new atmosphere reach your skin.

Take the used-heart like a pebble

and throw it far out.

Let the pebble disappear into the old 

And welcome the new.

See through the small peak of new hope,

Smell the scent of opportunity. 

And lift your heart to your ear, 

Hear its new desires.

Feel the new beat,

And do all you long for, it is permitted. 

Nothing Left
by Boubacar Djigo

Don’t mourn for me

Memories faded by time

I cry all the time

why is life so ephemeral?

Your memory is my only companion

Soon there is nothing left

Now, I am only your feelings.

Da Capo

*Italicized language is from Jane Hirshfield’s poem “Da Capo” from her book The Lives of the Heart.