Author Archives: theatala

Rebecca Castillo is an AP Drawing student finishing her junior year at PPCHS. Her favorite medium to use is graphite. She has always enjoyed drawing and also creates digital art such as “Two-faced,” the piece selected as cover art for the Spring 2022 Issue of the atala.

The world teaches us that we must fit into a box. What do you do when you can’t fit into all the many boxes? What do you do when every action you take goes against what society deems as normal? What do you do when your very skin goes against what the world sees asContinue reading “The Box”

*A sonnet is a fourteen line poem written in iambic pentameter and following a particular rhyme scheme typically dictated by either Italian or English form rules. This sonnet qualifies as an English sonnet. I amputated my arm yesterday Blood relentlessly spilled out of the wound I watched it pour and I began to pray MaybeContinue reading “Adiela”

The sky is ash-blackened and heavy with smoke, making each inhale a gasping effort into the strip of cloth pressed to my mouth. The suffocating scent of gasoline still chokes the air as I stumble over the cracked earth and into a small clearing on the boardwalk. From here, I can see the dark lineContinue reading “Oil Spill”

Mariana Colicchio is currently a senior and NEHS President at Pembroke Pines Charter High School. She specializes in oil painting and focuses on portraits. She is a past winner of the Scholastic Art Awards and won 1st place in the 2018 Pines Art Fest Student Competition.

The poetry of Emily Dickinson exhibits a command of mind that represents one of the paradigms of feminist ideology, storytelling as a vehicle for the activation of “the centrality of identity” (York 2). In her radical poem “It was not Death, for I stood up,” Dickinson reveals the pathology of oppression through her probe intoContinue reading “Ontopoetics: Metaphysical Massacre in Dickinson’s Poetry”

In his poem “The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost illustrates the complexities of choice  through the speaker’s encounter with a divergence of two identical roads, communicating the  poem’s theme that although human beings are shaped by the decisions they make, it is often  impossible to foresee the outcome of those choices. Through a metaphorical analysisContinue reading ““The Road Not Taken” – A Commentary on Human Nature”

*A villanelle is a French verse form in nineteen lines that follows a specific pattern of two rhymes and an alternating refrain. School is five feet from where I rest One must have willpower to stay attentive Don’t even attempt to get nicely dressed Cameras to the ceiling, unable to see our chest Our appearanceContinue reading “Online School”

I could fly without them weighing me down Painting lands I’d never dreamed I danced alone in the rushing rivers How I loved the new reflection I saw But I missed the laughs and company so I returned to what once was. Now people can see my dancing and I know I need to stopContinue reading “Contorted Puzzle Piece”