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Teen Literature Podcast
Poetry, short stories, and other prose accepted. Several pieces will be read and analyzed on the air, with a link in the transcript/audio description to your prose page or other social media (if desired). Any participant selected as a winner will be asked to write a short description of extended metaphors, symbolism throughout the piece, and the inspiration that led to it. Work published elsewhere is accepted and encouraged, as long as it isn't plagiarized. To be totally honest with you, I can't really check. Who's going to stop you? Podcast cops? I also can't check if you're between 11-19, but I don't know what kind of weirdo is going around pretending to be child just to get on a podcast that 12 people are going to listen to. I just thought I should include that because it's in the project specifications that I wrote. There is no monetary reward, but there is some fame-- not much fame, but a little! The real reward is getting to talk about your writing as much as you want and have someone actually care enough to analyze it (that's me!). There will be about 16 winners total, but I'll likely only get a couple submissions through this competition and that's fine. And if they are all by the same author, it's not my problem, babes. Once again, it's the problem of non-existent podcast cops.
GabyGap
35 reads

Alice

My name was originally supposed to be Carla Gabriella Diaz. It’s a good name, and one that I would have liked, but my mother wanted to name me after one of her favorite poets, Gabriella Mistral. If it was my middle name, everyone would call me Carla, not Gabriella. Also, Carla Diaz doesn’t sound as nice. It’s too short, too choppy. Maybe I’m just too picky. Anyways, my mom decided, why not Gabriella Carla? Well, because it sounds weird, that’s why. So I got Gabriella, no middle name, Diaz. I kind of wish I had a middle name. It’s not out of vanity or anything, I just think it would be helpful. You know how many people in this world are called Gabriella Diaz? Too many, that's how many. I’ve met one before, in 9th grade. Her name was spelled with one “L” instead, but it was annoying as all hell. One of my papers got put in her folder and I had a failing grade for a test for weeks because the teacher couldn’t find it.

I don’t think I would ever change my name, but I won’t lie and say it’s not intriguing. I know, logically, that a new name can’t really reinvent you, but if it could, oh if it could. I would like a new name to wear, a nice large hoodie hiding my face and my hands and forty million knick-knacks in the absurdly large pockets. A new name to wear like a concealer over all those ugly marks, pat powder on my cheeks and have a new face to match. I chose a name when I was younger, Anna. It’s the name I put down when I need to fill out something for an add or a coupon or an online quiz. It’s the name I use when I talk to people on the street trying to sell me something, or advertise something, or just being weird and making me super uncomfortable as I walk a little bit faster because why are you talking to me about your photography business and offering to take my picture? Dude, that’s creepy.

Along the same vein, there is the idea that people can look like a certain name. That’s interesting, that people can look or act so similar that we all have a general idea of how the person with that name should act and when the person who acts like a Katlyn isn’t named Katlyn, we recognize it. Or maybe it’s that people in general are so similar that everyone you meet reminds you of someone else. Names are really just noise, no more real than the entire spectrum of language. They are not real things, not tangible. They hold no more importance than what we give them. It worries me, sometimes, that so many things in our society exist because people decided they should exist and made it happen and no one disagreed. One day, someone is going to realize that the world around us is nothing more than a paper-thin veneer of falsality and instead of getting anxious, they are going to wonder. Wonder, “If it isn’t real, should it even really exist?” And then that veneer is going to crumble into sand. What happens, if names lose the value we give them? The idea that names give us a sense of our identity means that without them, we must have less identity. Or maybe no identity at all.

I would like a name to tie to my identity. I already have a name, of course, but it does not have anything to do with my identity, far more with my parent’s. Or, at least my mom. I don’t think I would want to make Anna my name. It’s a very simple name, but it was created as a lie- I would never escape the shadow of its original purpose. I'd want a new name to match with how I feel. Maybe the name Alice. I’m not blond and I don’t have a rabbit, but I am tumbling down a hole anyways. I don’t think I’ve quite hit Wonderland yet, but probably soon.

The world feels a little more like Wonderland every day, but I don’t like it. It’s confusing and the people here are weird. It’s probably not normal to be so lost, so turned around by the world that’s whirling around me, a dizzy blur that burns my eyes. Like the rabbit hole, never any control in either the journey or the destination. I wonder how Alice felt in Wonderland? Was she in awe at their magic? But she must have gotten tired of being bossed around, meeting so many new people who were all summarily unhelpful in her finding her way back to peace, back home. Alice in Wonderland was a puppet on strings, controlled by either fate, fortune, or fear. A name like that would be fitting, I think, although it would be rather dispiriting. It’s not a good feeling, to feel like an Alice.

So, what’s in a name? A rose would smell just as sweet and a person would be the same, no matter the name. Some of the things one chooses, your clothes, your hair, the makeup you wear (or don’t wear) say something about you. But you don’t choose a name, so there is nothing of your choice in it. There is nothing of you in it.

So, what’s in a soul? That’s a different story. There are some people in the world whose names become reflections of their soul, tainted with their deeds. Bad people, mostly, Hitler, Stalin and the like. I met a kid named Fidel once, and felt such pity. No one deserves to be saddled with a name like that. Will it fade in time, the dirtiness of a name? Children named Antoinette are not immediately associated with the French Revolution, nor are the many, many, named after British monarchs. The soul must affect what we remember of a name, how the soul using that name shaped the world.

I don’t think I’d like to be remembered like that, my name co-opted by strangers. Indeed, even naming children after passed loved ones has always seemed morbid to me. Does the soul gain rest, when its name is borrowed? Or does it wake with every mother's call, every childish yell, before falling back once more into the deep silence of the quiet abyss?

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