Pastured

yvanna vien b. tica

There are many ways to bar, to keep a cow
from cutting its mouth eating grass. So
many ways to tell a girl who played

immigrant for the past seven years that she is a delusion
in the making. So many ways for her
to cry

and so many ways for her to grit
her teeth when she finds out no, she cannot enter
or rise with the rest of her green
card holding classmates even if her blood
sings America the Beautiful when
it spills into concrete, slips into
a crack and nurses
a dandelion seed into white-haired
oblivion.

YVANNA VIEN B. TICA, Ivy for short, is a freshman at Interlochen Arts Academy. She studies Creative Writing and has had her works regionally recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, receiving three national silver medals, five regional Gold Keys, four regional Silver Keys, four Honorable Mentions, and an American Voices nomination this year. Some of her winning pieces have appeared in MEGAScene, a Filipino-American newspaper based in Chicago. Being a Filipino Christian, she is an alien in more ways than one. In the afternoons she can be found starving while contemplating her identity and struggling to understand how the mind works through psychology and human interactions at her chosen writing place.