pluck my green unripeness
finger & thumb stained
revolve me & examine
how I shiver on your petaled
tongue – held & unembraced
soured youth & curdled gums
a pinch for tender-
ness, ripened weak & gushing
& sweet & splitting skin
Maya Renaud-Levine is a senior at Beacon High School, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She has a passion for podcasts, politics, singing, and playing the piano, and will never turn down a good crime novel. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in The WEIGHT Journal, Idle Ink, Eunoia Review, Blue Marble Review, Girls Right the World, Recenter Press, and Truant Lit, and she is a national winner of the American High School Poets’ JUST POETRY!!! the National Poetry Quarterly.