The Hedgehog Issue I: Poetry Collection
By: The Hedgehog Literary Journal For Youth
Tags: Literary Magazine, Poetry

“The First Chapters Of The Universe” by Brian Li

[The universe was once a marble, bursting with energy, but only just a marble. Then, a perfect accident or some mysterious force helped out our tiny world and it began to grow with a bang, slowly at first, but picking up speed. As some of the first stars formed and as it grew in it’s intense heat, particles smashed into each other and fused, creating more complex elements. Eventually, dark energy, something we know close to nothing about, began making the universe grow faster and faster, until even if in the near future we develop ships that can travel at light speed, we will never reach out of our Local Group (a group of galaxies including Andromeda. This group is pulled together by gravity, and that is why we are not racing away from Andromeda at this very moment). I play out all of this using my imagination in the following]

It started with a glow

In the darkness: it showed

No more than a finger’s width

And it never seemed to grow.

Thousand years it waited

Little, none, had it faded

When it would show itself

’Twas always: seemed shaded

*****

One

a drop

A marble

as my pen

draws a faint line

upon a blank page

filled with the hope of

a start at the start of the road

as the youngling sets off with

a fire and a call and the loneliness

dissipates as dust and the elements

yet unformed come tumbling out and out

and the nothing around it succumbs to

the growing light as round upon round upon round

of a non-existent shadow is illuminated and shone upon

and the interminable surge crashes with wave upon wave upon wave

of the hope for a perfect accident to unbalance the unbalanced unbalance

and motes of dust mix within over and over and over again and again

with an explosion of rust and crimson that burned brightly into the

flowing indigo and azure that sparks a flame of the sea of elements and unites together,

into a sea of a sea that does not exist, and the sea of elements crashes upon sea after sea

as rivers of colour flow and overflow into an overflowing sea as yet another river crashes

and electric waves cover wave after wave of the river and the sea and the colours

until only just a bright sun of suns and stars and moons hover mysteriously over,

And thus the universe was born.

Colours swirl and spiral into a cacophony of systems and galaxies as the swirls swirl and the spirals spiral

as days that are not days and nights that are not nights get longer and longer and longer until

order is established and a semi-peace reigns

over the outside surface of the surface of the universe but

the inner core of the core and the heart of the core melts with the energetic rhythm of the perfect accident accident called Life—

© The Hedgehog Literary Journal for Youth, 2020

“The Early Bird Gets the Worm” by Melody Xiong

Compared to him, they were petit

Ate more and was always first in line

When the little bird was told by his mother,

It thought the worm would appear simply if it left the nest,

So as his feathers sprouted into gray locust leaves,

His eyes revealing charcoal as it opens,

Remembering what his mother told him,

The worm will be in the same place

The prize

He flew down with spread wings, outlined by a warm glow from the sunlight

There were no worms.

© The Hedgehog Literary Journal for Youth, 2020

“Spring” by Melody Xiong

The place she sat was under an old oak tree,

The sunlight pierced through the leaves,

Onto her arm and book, leaving bright splotches

It was spring —

A cool breeze swept past her neck,

Leaves danced and swirled,

The birds chirped far away, singing a familiar melody

© The Hedgehog Literary Journal for Youth, 2020