Poetry: “Prayer for the high school girls giving head behind the bleachers” by Michaella Sangiolo

Michaella Sangiolo toes the line between fear and the erotic in her poem, “Prayer for the high school girls giving head behind the bleachers,” which is a memorable start to our first few New Voices of 2025. There’s an ominous and tactile sense to the poem, the observations a little too easy to access— “grass / patterning your knees…” and  “linoleum halls” instantly take us back to high school with all its familiarity and desperation. Sangiolo’s work is disquieting because of its recognizable quality. Even if we didn’t have this precise experience, we’ve seen enough teen movies to know it’s not going to end well for the girl who is carefully described and yet distanced from us with the use of the second person “you,” pronoun. She is us and she is no one. The scene is simultaneously cold in the way it describes with ruthless accuracy the sudden and terrifying ejection of young people out of the safety of their childhoods and into the complicated sexual politics of the adult world,  but also the more universal human desires for power, independence, and love. Sangiolo is describing a pity as well as empowerment, and this is what makes the poem memorable and in our current cultural moment, as this country continues to fail in protecting all kinds of vulnerable populations, a kind of warning, as well, walking the line between power and loss.