The Fourth Thursday in November 
The chill has seeped its way into our house and settled, like a heavy unbothered fog. The leaves, already changed from emerald and peridot to scarlet and rust have fallen off the trees, creating a satisfying blanket of crackle and pop. 

In the kitchen the refrigerator is full to bursting. So is the pantry. And the cupboards and tupperware and the dishwasher and pots and pans and- i'm getting ahead of myself. Those other things fill when the refrigerator is emptied. One recipe at a time. And then the kitchen is full of the smells of thanksgiving. 
It strikes me as odd that the whole idea of thanksgiving is so inconstant while the act of giving thanks stays the same. Even the date isn't set. (Is it the third Thursday or the fourth?) Things to be thankful for are constantly shifting. sometimes they can't even be found. Your grandmother could have passed. Or a tree could have fallen on your house and now you have to live in a hotel. Maybe you can't come home for thanksgiving. Maybe you don't want to. But the image we have of thanksgiving looks largely the same. Completely unchanged by what we are thankful for or the date or place or time. 

Maybe that's the point. To find a way to be thankful no matter where or who you are or what that looks like. So philosophical I know. So let's get back to that kitchen and it's soon to be not full fridge. The day of Thanksgiving starts like this: you wake up. You eat food. And then the family meeting is called into order and the preparations begin. At first it looks like mayhem and it is, but the rhythm of it is like clockwork. You weave and dance around your family. Checking your recipe. Chopping the veggies and dried fruit and By 1:00 you've almost finished with the green beans and potatoes and stuffing and gravy. your family is sweaty and bright eyed and the light of connection is thrumming through the kitchen like an electrical current. It crackles and pops and zings between you as you look around at the food you've made and the mess you've created. And even though some of the family might run off when it's time to clean up, even though that spark has fizzled out a little, even though you're sweaty and tired and looking at anything that has fractions on it will probably melt your brain, you feel even more filled up than you will when you eat the food. That is thanksgiving. That moment right there. Coming out of the focus and stepping through the doorway of transition, the split second between seconds when the high peaks. That is what I am grateful for. For me, that is thanksgiving.

Violet Hendren is a 16 year old homeschooler attending GCC. She loves swimming, painting, camping, and most of all writing creative and poetic literature. Something Violet loves about WW is Lynn's ability to inspire a completely original piece. Giving just enough prompt to tease out fantastic writing.


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Talking to Someone Better Than Us

​By Summit


Perhaps we should be more descriptive of our failures. 
feel the texture like our own flesh
because it is
Our 
Own 
Flesh 
You would never be wrong if you told me that we all were negligent. 
            but I think that we would argue with you to save our reputation 
Thinking
that maybe if we don’t admit it it isn’t true 
I am told that confessing equals self betterment. 
and 
some better understanding of ourselves and it turns so quickly into pity 
and nourishment of our bodies waiting to be praised for something nobody can quite explain.
I’m wondering if that means our actions are immoral. Wondering if it’s like a parent hiding anything that would shatter the false sense of security from a wide eyed child just trying to understand. 
We are the wide eyed children 
and they are
hiding everything black and blue.
Hiding crimes 
Hiding ourselves. 
And I've been meaning to ask someone who isn’t brainwashed what’s happening. 
                                                                      Maybe I can watch you
watch the world and come up with a filtered analysis of everything wrong with us if you tell me how 
So hurry up and explain what's happening and how to analyze what’s wrong with us.

Summit is 13 years old and is homeschooled.   She has been in Woven Word for 5 years and has thoroughly enjoyed every second of it. She loves writing in a group of  dedicated, appreciative writers and hopes to continue writing in Woven Word for the foreseeable future! In addition to writing, she loves LD debating, dancing, and playing violin. 


*&***


Berkshire East and Alternative to Girl DInner
By Elo Schwabe





I remember the aggressive smell of bbq engulfing me 
as i stepped over piles of wet coats, 
and people taking off their boots and waving their socks in the air,
the metallic smell of hand warmers i push up against my clammy cold face


I remember the feeling of my feet falling off in my boots 
while I hobbled around the dinning hall
and the wet of snow melting off my hood and down my back,
the stinging feeling of hot water out of a rusty faucet splashing against my hands


I remember the taste of mac and cheese melting the paper cup i held it in 
and stale, fake, Trader Joe's Takis barley crunching against my teeth 
the sizzling taste of orange crush 
as i watched bits of pork fall out of a pulled pork sandwich


I remember hearing the swoosh of uncomfortable fabric 
falling to the ground 
and thumping feet against the wooden paneled floor,
the obnoxious sound of insistent chatter overflowing the room


I remember seeing toddlers on leashes being tugged around wood beams
and kids outside the big glass windows splatting snowballs against the panes,
the shady old guys smoking in the corner 
next to the trash can overflowing with energy bar wrappers


The Berkshire East dining hall never disappoints.


Elo Schwabe is a 7th grader at Amherst Regional Middle School. She has been attending Woven Word for two years, and likes spending time with other young people who share her love of writing. Elo especially enjoys weaving humor into her writing. 








​Ode To Antiquity

​By Sarah Martini

Ode to the stories of olden
to the green bronze and the golden
to Odysseus and the Trojan
and to every sad votive
offered up to deathless time
ruler of our realm, sublime
shaker of this paradigm
greatest conqueror of them all
countless cities, empires fall
civilizations dawn their pall
and though Constantinople tried to stall,
it was memory by ‘53
and yet the final curtain call,
could not erase its history
Emperor Trajan’s spiraled frieze
may yet cause the heart to seize
some marble weathered, and some stayed
to craft the Athens colonnade
time-worn treasures have decayed
but where foundations have been laid
we will build on up forever
and the past will last and last
that which time shall not dissever.

Sarah Martini is 16 years old and lives in Amherst. She goes to the Williston Northampton School and her favorite sport is cross country. She loves Woven Word Summers on the Houseboat, and writing poetry.

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Everything eats and is eaten, time is fed. - Adrianne Lenker

There’s a mug of peach tea on the kitchen counter.
I made it for you in the boiling and muggy, late august summer heat.
You left it there, sitting by the salt shaker and the olive oil decanter with a backdrop of chipping cobalt paint.
It’s cold now but neither of us mind.
It’s the thought that counts anyway, you say to me.
The thought of clinging to the lingering, steeping dregs of summer heat.
The thought of drying lavender above the sink.
The thought of Mary in her little yellow sundress out on the dock in the sunset.
The thought of standing on the dyke watching geese fly home overhead through an immense sky.
The wilting flowers in the jadeite vase on the windowsill.
The vinyl collection passed down from your mother.
The teaspoon in the honey jar.
The rusty coffee pot on the stove top.
The ant infestation.
The quart of blueberries we got at the farmers market last Tuesday. Now mushy and past.
The lazy dog sleeping in a puddle of sunshine on the hardwood floors.
The time bomb ticking down the days until school starts.
We sit on the deck and we philosophize over our untouched mugs until it gets dark and the bugs come out and we have to go inside.
We lie in the grass side by side and we try to see our father’s faces in the cloud formations.  Don’t let go, You say to me, squeezing my hand.
I couldn’t if I tried.
We hum our little summer songs,
we dream our little summer dreams,
we delude ourselves into thinking this will last forever.
I didn’t realize it at the time,
but I was holding the hand of the earth,my fingers intertwined with the grass blades and the ant hills and the heat.
Ollie Perrault (she/her) is a 16 year old from Easthampton who has been attending writers workshop since before she can remember. She enjoys reading, writing, and running around barefoot on her family's farm. Ollie is a youth climate activist and a passionate advocate for reproductive justice. She has been a leading member of the Mass Audubon's Climate Leadership Program since she was 11 and is now the founder and director of Youth Climate Action Now which is a Western MA based environmental justice organization.
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By Leah Mendelsohn

Lemon girls are only sweet when they’ve been dipped in sugar. 
Sour smiles are only appreciated if they’ve been drizzled in honey. 
Her acid words get drowned out in lemonade and it’s sugar sweat. 
Her juice stings and nobody likes to hear it sizzle. 
Nobody likes a kick to their palette. 
Not by legs that are supposed to be crossed, under her citrus yellow dress 
with beaded trees growing from the hem. 
You pucker your face at her tart taste for dresses. 
You call ‘too displaying, too declaring, too distracting’
You slice her open and squeeze her onto your ice. 
She lays like a crescent moon on the glass rim of your cup. 
Because she is only a lemon girl in a 
man’s world.


Leah Mendelsohn is 15 years old and goes to the Amherst Regional High School. One thing she love about Woven word is the community of all ages and how their writing inspires her.. 

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By Katy McGinnis
Let there be more kids who wander.
Let them wander here.
Let them sit under this tangled tree.

May more kids get to look into Rosie’s eyes,
and pet her loving body. Happiness at its purest.

May their eyes close, entranced by the rocking of a Houseboat.
A Houseboat who has seen nothing quite like them in all of its years of service.

Let there be more friendships born.
More inside jokes created.
Let differences and similarities once again blend into an invisible string.
Let it be reinforced as lives once again merge on a fateful Monday.
Although the string may weather,
Let it stand the Test of Time.

Let sighs of frustration and pens upon paper wander here.
Let humans,
balancing on the brink of youth and truth,
once again join.

Let them day after day,
summer after summer,
year after year,
return to where more than more than words are woven.

May their artistic voices be woven into existence here.
Thread by thread, story by story, and letter by letter.


Katy McGinnis lives in New Salem, and is a rising 9th grader at Ralph C. Mahar Regional School. She enjoys dancing, music, field hockey, softball, and of course, writing. She loves writing because it is a snapshot of herself at a point in time, that she can then reflect on.

By Elizabeth Rotunno 

Science has taught me that bubbles are the best way to blind someone.
World History has taught me that premeditated murder is easier than you'd think.
English has taught me that a pool noodle and a ramen noodle
are equally precious on a deserted island.
French has taught me that slapping people
is more effective when wearing a ring.
Lunch has taught me that yanking someone's ear
is an efficient distraction to steal something from their hands.
Civics has taught me nothing but how to swaddle a baby.
Math has taught me various methods of thievery.
Band has taught me the best ways to exact revenge,
most involving oobleck and wind instruments.
Computer Science has taught me how to endure all manner of
unknown substances that may have fallen on the keys of a keyboard.
Health has taught me more about Chess than anything else.
Advisory has taught me that all good business occurs in Singapore.
Saying school doesn't teach you anything is like saying robbery
isn't a marketable skill: You're just not looking in the right places.
Elizabeth Rotunno is 14 years old and lives in Massachusetts.  Some things
she likes about Woven Word are the creative opportunities
and the many fun prompts that provide inspiration. 












​

By Ollie Mae

Leopold Baker had wasted most of this life locked in his study trying desperately to write something real. He often joked with his close friends that an author spends all of his life arranging and rearranging the twenty six letters of the alphabet over and over again. It was enough to make anyone insane. On the night that Leopold Baker died he had been sitting at his desk, staring at his typewriter and the blank page before him. At around 2:30 in the morning, surrounded by cigarette smoke, crumpled pages of forgotten first drafts, and half full mugs of lukewarm coffee, Mr. Baker had a heart attack and died peacefully. Or at least, that was what Mrs. Baker told the police.

Mrs. Baker often joked with her close friends that the only thing her husband had managed to accomplish in his forty two years of life were those first three pages of his novel back before they had been married. She had fallen in love with those first three pages, that love letter he had sworn was inspired by her. They were the most beautiful arrangement of words she had ever heard. But he couldn’t continue it. And years later, in a drunken daze, he had spilled liquor over it one night and the ink had all bled together into one great smear of gray. An entire life's work, gone in the amount of time it took for her self-righteous husband to knock a glass of brandy over. Mrs. Baker had taken it all with a rather dignified sense of amusement, as if she was observing some old fashioned sitcom. After all, it was funny. Wasn’t it? That she had devoted her life to this man, this poet in the attic, enveloped in smoke who smiled like he knew who she was, who she really was. That one could go from loving someone to despising them so fast. That she had stood at the altar with him and given him her future, given him everything she had just so he could have the chance to write something real. And he had thrown it all away in the amount of time it took for him to spill a glass of brandy.

At her husband's funeral, Mrs. Baker sat in the front row of the church pews and debated what people would say if she didn’t cry when they carried the casket away. Mrs. Baker had never been one to cry. That had been her husband’s job, to feel all these emotions, this insane spectrum of humanity, and then turn it into poetry. It had been her job to fold the laundry into two matching piles on their bed and collect the empty mugs of coffee off his desk each night. Mrs. Baker had spent most of her mornings standing over the sink, staring down at his dishes. Wishing so, so badly that she had been the one blessed with his gifts. Mr. Baker often talked about his gifts. He talked of how he had always known he was a writer, even as a young boy. He talked of how god had blessed him with this talent to bend and twist language to his will.

At the funeral, while she sat staring at the casket that concealed her husband’s dead body, Mrs. Baker wondered what her beloved Leopold would have written about his own death, if he had had the opportunity. He often wrote about Death. But he wrote about Death as if he was a person. A living feeling being who remembered every life he had taken. Mrs. Baker had always assumed this was a strange habit of her husband's that he had acquired as a young boy to cope with his own fear of death. But as Mrs. Baker had stood in her husband’s study the night that he died, staring at the back of his head as his fingers furiously flew across the keys, she could have sworn she felt him. Death, like a shadow dancing at the edge of her vision, waiting as if he already knew what was to come. The outcome of decades of abuse, spilled brandy, clouds of gray smoke, and dirty dishes. He stood, hands outstretched before her husband, reaching for the oblivious writer. And Mrs. Baker almost laughed at the thought, that even with all his gifts and blessings, Leopold Baker had no idea when Death stood over him.

Mrs. Baker thought she would live a happy life after she killed her husband. But instead she spent every day watching her back and her nights lying awake in bed, hands shaking, terrified that he would find her. It wasn’t the police she was running from. No she could handle them. It was her husband's old friend, Death. The one that had cursed her with this creeping paranoia, this crazed obsession, and this bitter disposition. Mrs. Baker never stayed in one place for too long. She had become familiar with hotel bedrooms and strangers’ living room floors and the cold wood of park benches. And every new place she saw, every new experience, she wondered how her late husband would have described it. How would he have described the light that filtered through the dirt stained window of the taxi cab, the floral wallpaper and moth eaten couch in that overly friendly bartender’s apartment, the condensation that swirled from her lips when she slept out in the cold, the frills of the maid’s cleaning uniforms as they bustled down hotel lobby hallways?

After a decade of this, her running turned to chasing. And she found herself chasing after the ghost of her husband. Mrs. Baker went to his childhood home, to the room he had been born in where God had blessed him with his gifts. And she went to the city, where he had spent his early twenties standing at bus stops wondering how all these strangers' lives connected and intertwined and overlapped. And she went to the Grand Canyon, where she stood on the cliff edge and imagined that she was flying. And when she finally made her way home to the cluttered office where her husband had wasted most of his life, Mrs. Baker sat down at his desk and, with shaking fingers, began to write.
​
Ollie Mae is a 14 year old homeschooler who has been attending writers workshop since almost before she can remember. She loves reading and writing, cares deeply about climate justice, her best friend Morgan, and her two dogs. She knows that writing will always be a part of her life whether she goes on to become an investigative journalist, a forensic psychologist, an astrobiologist, or a poet.

By Moloaa Daterao

I walk while I think,
I think about a red fox I saw while at a skating rink,
The blueberries sit at the tip of my tongue,
While I remember the birds that had just sung,
A butterfly comes and sits on my nose,
While minnows in a stream tickle my toes,
I smell bittersweet pine needles while I walk,
And just feel the urge to talk,
To talk about the forest wonders,
At the same time rain come down and so does thunder,
Here I wait beneath a tree at night,
Waiting for the first sign of light,
Soon light filters in and I walk away,
Good bye I say,
​And that’s what I remember to this day!