2025 Montgomery County Youth Poet Laureate
Tina Ramberg-Michael is a ninth grader at Cheltenham High School. She took first place in the poetry slam at the Delaware Valley Consortium for Equity and Excellence and has published her poetry with Young Inklings. Outside of school she plays cello in three orchestras throughout Philly, Montgomery County, and Bucks County. In her free time she adores honing her creativity through making various projects with her hands as well as learning new languages. She hopes you enjoy her work as greatly as she enjoyed writing it.
Maggie
You kissed me in the appliance aisle,
For the first time
People saw, for the last time.
I held a blush-colored dinosaur stuffed animal between us, and we christened her Magnolia for the trees her likeness must’ve known
Before someone stitched her bones together, and then into cotton,
Into memory.
I think we both just needed something to hold
If not for each other, and we knew we could not have each other.
Magnolia trees have lived for one hundred million years,
Outlived the beetles that pollinated them.
Blooming among the dinosaurs and between us,
My skyline bursts softly every May into pink splendor.
I haven’t loved you for even one year yet, and I don’t think I will get to.
When the blossoms came last spring,
You told me you were dying, and in turn I thought I must be too.
I do not remember pollen, the sweet rain
Only the ceiling fan, only the kitchen sink.
I imagined the cloud of ash covering the sun
Must’ve felt like this.
When the blossoms come this spring I will have forgotten how to be so sad And I will have forgotten how to be so happy.
I will have felt the world and returned, a blossom in its bud
Too keen at the first brush of warmth since June (years ago by May)
Bitten back by the cold shock to come.
You promised me a magnolia tree in our yard,
Pink pots in the kitchen. What I mean is,
That appliance aisle looked like a future,
What I mean is, when you touched my face
You felt like the future.
What I mean is,
I would’ve kissed you when the asteroid hit,
Would’ve kissed you before you kissed me.
I think I’ve loved you for one hundred million years
And will for one hundred million more,
I think we held each other under a magnolia tree when the sky fell and the ground rose. I miss you, the way your hands turned my love to the color of soft pink splendor
“I love this poet’s surprising and vivid images, engagements with other texts, and experiments with form. These poems feel born of real private and public necessity, attuned to ephemerality and the ancient both, full of sonic pleasure and heart. The experience of reading them lingers long after I’ve finished reading. The poem ‘Maggie,’ in particular, astonishes me with its tender intimacy and deft layering of information and time. The structure and cadence of ‘Olive Trees…’ stands out as well: such a wise, thoughtful, and moving elegy of global witness. I could go on and on, but I must stop myself. I love these poems!”
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