Bianca

Bianca


Jelly bracelets materialize from under
the black lace of the 80’s and slink up

the wrists of girls, vibrant rubber bending
to the touch: great propensity for snapture.

They’re pop bracelets, says my 13 year old
niece. She’s cinch-waisted, eyebrows

manicured to a constant state of surprise,
my Harriet Tubman,

this adolescent underground—
these naughty rings coded like Spirituals.

If a boy breaks a blue bracelet, he gets a blowjob.
Red stands for lap dance. Clear means anything he wants.

She says the game is called “snaps.”
I ask: but isn’t that talking bad about

somebody’s house, or their mother? She shrugs.
All she knows is that green’s for outdoor sex.

Silver for fisting.




© Samantha Thornhill

Previously published in Indiana Review

Ode to Joy

Ode to Joy


Keep your mouth shut
sky, as I drive
down the ribs of this
land; don’t break
into your melon hymn,
not yet.

Just me and you
Joy, and this bug
splattered glass. A bright
ribbon of
traffic coughs North. But my
road’s dark

wrenches like love.
I’m the world’s
candy, brightly wrapped
sin. I watch
the miles slip under my
wheels, and

the sky loosen
it’s lips to sing.
How the sun rinses
night with its
yellow gloves! So immense
with you

in my lonely
skin. 6 am.
Why do I feel so
achingly
alive? How? How long will
you last?




© Samantha Thornhill

Previously published in Crab Orchard Review

Lice

Lice


First day in an American school,
I imagined Ms. Benvenuti’s dark
Italian hair on my own head, then

wished it down to my knees.
She introduced the class to me
and they went right back to cutting

whatever they were cutting.
I thought it strange, the white lady
floating from one head to the next—

parting curtains
of hair and scratching scalps
with the tip of a ballpoint pen.

They didn’t seem to notice her
either. The lady didn’t scrape me
with her blue wand;

I didn’t mind. Ms. Benvenuti
seated me next to an Indian girl
and said she was from Trinidad too.

I said hi. Her eyelashes were so long
I thought they would fly away. Hello,
she said and went back to cutting.

She didn’t sound like home.



© Samantha Thornhill

Previously published in Crab Orchard Review

Poem by Samantha's Student

Write Like Me

by Julissa Thompson

I don’t think that words do justice to the human heart
But we as writers come pretty close to it
The past few months have meant the worth of gold to me
I’ve not only grown as a writer, but as an intellectual
From Angelica’s enthusiasm to Syeeda’s touching personal story
I’ve learned the worth of waking up every morning
To find beauty in tangible items, the big, the small, the dirty the clean
Let go, let flow
Was what she said to us that first week
Ms. Thornhill, a wonderful, insightful product of the human race
It’s not fair to say that her mom and dad made her
I feel that that’s too much credit for only two people to grasp
Though I’m sure they have lots to do with the genuine beauty

of the nature that Ms. Thornhill carries on her shoulder,

I would like to thank the world
They have allowed her to pass on her great insight to us, a blessed group of kids
Through her, we’ve grown another pair of eyes
To take the world as it passes by
Rekindled euphoria should be the title of this poem because that’s what this class was
Happiness restored in just an ounce of love
Something to never forget
I’ll live on through our pens
And maybe just maybe
In the future we’ll be widely recognized as
Ms. Thornhill’s Fiction Intensive Class, Write Like Me