évah myles, 2026 Montgomery County Youth Poet Laureate

2026 Montgomery County Youth Poet Laureate

because
tomorrow the sun will rise, waves will crash on sand, birds will sing a song sang every morning
my cords can’t replicate, and tomorrow the moon will set, water will run off cliffs, jazz will play
in bars received by ears who don’t acknowledge the blood of the bleeding, tomorrow rain will
fall, but not on the boy dead from fire, not on the brother burned from reaching a hand to the
burning (he became who he attempted to rescue), tomorrow the sun will rise, and children will
cringe from the pop of fireworks, each shot a reminder of the lives a bullet has stolen in gluttony,
tomorrow the moon will set and a remote will click between sitcoms and genocides, what
channel validates your ego, makes you chew comfortability (like cotton never candied), because
tomorrow rain will fall, but not on me, and i will continue to run to a destination with no name.

eve
                                                            i open my mouth to the gods if music decides to cry from its
                                             isolated home
                                my sinus is not big enough for all soil so it sits in my sockets where the sky’s
                  tears wish to lay
in my mouth lies a single sprout rooted in my esophagus and ‘round my heart
                                                                                             the earth speaks through me as it did evelyn
                                                      i kiss prayers into my mother’s few eyes to conceal my vintage
                                          Voice
                lips hide history
                i woke up 8 years ago when music plagued our skies and the barometric pressure made
blood beat bluest

                           my heavy hearted body dragged by new seedlings pillaged to my mother and
whispered proverb needled into my dreams

                                                   hush hush my child she cried
                                                                           i know

A body is burning.

A sneaker hangs by a
shoestring on an electric
line. Can you smell
it? The disgrace. The
dread. Crackles can be
heard for miles, and embers
travel over seas – seas so
far from the people in
drought. Has no one cared
to learn the name of the
dead? Are they another number to
you? Another tally on the mortality
count? Families gather in a town of
fire, tying together laces and throwing
them on wires. The shoe collection is
growing. The poles can barely hold their
lines. The kids cry. The mothers
scream. This is what the world sounds
like. Can you hear it? The misery. The despair. More
people have gone missing. The fires are growing. Bodies
are piling. We are running out of wire. The city is turning to
ash. Will there ever be water? Since the blues have kept us
red whilst showering themselves in the privilege of wealth. Those
who burn long to drown.