Young Writers Project, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power, and to gain confidence and skills for school, the workplace and life.
Check out the most recent issue of The Voice, Young Writers Project’s monthly digital magazine. Click here.
Each week, VTDigger features a writing submission – an essay, poem, fiction or nonfiction – accompanied by a photo or illustration from Young Writers Project.
YWP publishes about 1,000 students’ work each year here, in newspapers across Vermont, on Vermont Public Radio and in YWP’s monthly digital magazine, The Voice. Since 2006, it has offered young people a place to write, share their photos, art, audio and video, and to explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org. For more information, please contact Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org.
Raise your hand if you’re the type of person to label a note “To Do: Write to-do list,” and then quickly shove it in a drawer to address later. Well, this week’s featured poet, Zoe Bernstein of Jericho, has a mellow, feet-up alternate reality for you to slide into — on your own time, of course. Next stop, Procrasti-nation Station.
Procrasti-nation
By Zoe Bernstein, 16, of Jericho
Welcome to Procrasti-nation.
Get here by our new train station.
The cars are always running late,
but that’s simply regulation.
Listen to my swell narration.
Feel your heart bounce with elation
as you near your truest home,
where all hearts are beyond inflation.
Here you will find no damnation
in just avoiding your own frustration.
In fact, the surgeons here have often
gone out for drinks during operations.
In fact, avoiding’s our foundation,
and that’s why there’s such a large migration
of businessmen and fancy gals
coming here to find salvation.
Every day is a vacation.
Our leaders swim in adoration.
Well, they don’t really swim, of course –
more use devices of flotation.
There’s never been an altercation –
a boast, a brag, an allegation.
Everyone’s too busy being dozy
for any evil calculation.
The only reason for a confiscation
would be to do a demonstration
of working well or trying hard:
anything requiring concentration.
But if, above all, you detest creation,
and wouldn’t mind the annihilation
of “duty” and “a moral reason,”
you’re welcome in Procrasti-nation.
