Poetry

Fall 2019 Poetry

Poetry

Quiet Chaos

by Ean Heise

I hate those faggots. The words echo back and forth, carving deep ruts between your ears as you long for the resolve of the hateful cacophony. You want to lash out, but you remain silent. You want to strike, but your balled fists remain at your side. To react is to commit social suicide, but the companionship that accompanies passivity provides little solace. Is it more egregious to act justly as an agent of equality for all, or to cater to your own need of acceptance?

I. The ringing intensifies as your silence endures. Hate. The tension swells within you as tears begin to sting against the corners of your eyes. Those. You feel the perspiration pierce through your skin as your clothes begin to grow far too heavy. Faggots. The very sound leaves a sour, skunk-like savor in your mouth. Your weak knees carry you away, out of the cafeteria, past the burning gazes of your peers, back to the privacy of your dorm room where you allow the anger to overcome your body. Your curses and shouts fly incoherently across the room as your gasps bounce from wall to wall. You swear to be true from this point on, unmoved by potential consequence. Yet deep down, you doubt your integrity. For you know, the flame of decency struggles to burn in the middle of this ocean.

***

You Have Always Heard

by Lena Driscoll

about this feeling, but you hoped to never experience it personally – the way your heart drops to your stomach, and the way your body aches with betrayal. The person that you trusted more than anyone broke every ounce of trust that you had. You opened up to him, were vulnerable with him, cared about him more than anything else. What did you do wrong? You start to question everything. Did he really care? Was any of it real or genuine? What is wrong with you? What makes her better? You thought he was different, that he had changed his old ways to be better for you. You were wrong, and now you feel more broken than ever. What will you do with this brokenness? You hope that it will make you stronger, that you will not be broken forever.

***

Corporeal Composition

by Tara Schwartz

Where does a poem live?
Is it in the center of my brain?
Does it have enough oxygen?
Will it ever see the light of day?
 
But is it formed yet?
Has it words to become 
flesh, blood, bones?
Can the poem become a body?
 
Not a lifeless body 
on the ground
a corpus springing up
lexicon anticipating living
 
Lungs can build poems, too
The trachea delivers spirit of poetry
Air does not cease in doubt
and my words will last as my breath

White Guy – Jacob Miller

Poetry

White Guy
by Jacob Miller

There’s no silver lining for red lining, burned churches, lies, thug is the new n-word and guess to which race it applies?

Or how ’bout stop and frisk? Ninety-eight percent of all black people stopped have no contraband, yet racism doesn’t exist?

I don’t know how it feels to walk the streets peacefully and pack heat legally but be treated unequally as a criminal or a terrorist.

I never will, I’m a white boy in a white world, my white skin gives me a white wash, call me Tom Sawyer.

I don’t need a lawyer, I say “F the police” and get a slap on the wrist, Travon Martin goes to buy candy and gets shot with a pistol.

Or Eric Holder choked ‘till he couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t believe what was unravelin’ on my TV screen.

But why don’t we talk about all the brave soldiers and cops, man!? Their lives matter too! They aren’t mutually exclusive, fam.

Don’t falsely compare apples to oranges; are we ever gonna grapple with the real issues pressing and nestling

and festering beneath the top layer of “free” and “equal” manure that our white-saturated society keeps shovelin’?

The aged land is soaked with blood of the fallen who fought on this issue; that cotton shirt we wear, have we forgotten its origin?

The roots of slavery run deep, you can’t plow the surface and not expect ’em to grow again; sowed the seeds of slavery tried slayin’ ’em.

Walking – Florence Schloneger

Poetry, Uncategorized

Walking
by Florence Schloneger   

I’ve wondered at the odds — the likelihood
a hymnal shared would make it all begin.
We dated once, but after that it took
a year before he called me back again.

So I was shocked with how he greeted me,
“Uh … Happy Anniversary!”  The gall —
as if he thought the next a certainty!
We stumbled into spring as I recall,

awash in nature’s warmth became a team.
We hiked old trails, held hands beneath the moon,
discovered woodlands dripping rain and dreams,
sat breathless in the dark as sunrise bloomed.

Years passed, earth taught us constancy and trust,
and still we walk each day to keep in touch.

The Trees’ Calling – Claudia Lamp

Poetry

The Trees’ Calling
by Claudia Lamp

Most months of the year, my mind is troubled and fighting.
However, the season of gloom is the worst,
for my soul is still scared of the dark,
even though I’ve finally learned to sleep with the lights off.
A part of it is that my body needs sunshine to feel any sort of brightness inside of it,
especially when the trees and the grass are inviting me to join them in their annual end.
Their leaves fall away as does my hope for the future,
while the grass loses its green and I cover up my thighs with band aids and leggings and “THIS SEASON’S MUST-HAVE’S FOR WINTER.”
My eyes lose their light, and they turn from luminous to lifeless.
I know I need to learn how to water myself,
because winter will never take care of me the way the spring does.

The Bull – Austin Biggerstaff

Poetry

The Bull
by Austin Biggerstaff

From all my best of days on to the dark,
these happy thoughts turned into dreaded worst;

You have yet to see me let loose and best,
over the edge – my thermometer burst;

Now I’m ready to bang heads once again,
one year of watching and seeing time fly;

Now watching hurts so I recede to den,
they question integrity – I don’t lie;

For with this in me I cannot believe,
A fire – a passion – this heat my ears leak;

This love for it only grows as to grieve,
the tamer once – now the bull – I’m at peak;

The day won’t come soon enough to compete,
this anger comes from feeling incomplete.

Poetry

Poetry

We Mountains
by Abigail Bechtel

Love like wasps
flow like ice

key to a loch
that unlocks nothing

remain like dandelions
sink like helium

my butter half,
melting in the sun

fly like penguins
weep like crocodiles
and leave
like
mountains.

 

Cloud Meetings: Utah, Mine 4730
by Katie Schmidt

Every afternoon the clouds consort, meeting over lake Powell, conspiring to rage, billowing into wicked silk pillars—they slide over land and launch shadows onto baked valleys. A moment of shade brings creeping skinks out from under the sage. The jackrabbit flicks his black tipped ears. The clouds travel, as planned, in a savage pack, hunting the desert for buttes to drench and erode, for beetles that can be floated out of their holes. Sunbaked chainlink burns lattice work onto the backs of migrants on the clock. They lean on it, eating lunch and dust. Eat fast—back into the mine before the rain. Already a gauzy curtain on the nearest ridge; it washes and creates washes, wetting even the gophers in their dry packed solitude. Newborn streams run with urgency and mineral red, rushing off with tiny fossils, arrowheads, bones, plywood and metal fittings, uranium ore—soon-to-be relics of ancient people who worshipped a God called Industry.

 

Saturday Morning in Which I Belong
by Elizabeth Schrag

We went for a run
Feet pounding
Breath coming hard
Legs aching and cramping
Chests tightening with effort

You asked me to tea
Scones
Perfect triangles
Filled with fruit and nuts
A sprinkling of sugar.
The all-familiar comfort of
A mug, resting delicately
In my hands.

NPR
I never liked it before.
But I laughed along with you
My inner liberal
Beginning to find her voice.

I can see a line of Saturdays
Stretched out before me
Taking me back
To where I belong

My mother
Baking in the kitchen
Batting me with a dishtowel
A line of sorrow in her brow
Not because of the life she chose
The reason I always
Attributed it to.
But rather because
This life is passing her by.

I would rather spend my days
In a warm kitchen
Filled with humor
Laughter
Family
Than in a haze,
Hungover, a half
-empty bottle
Of Burnett’s

Bitter as
Shame
Self-hatred
And denial
That a wasted life
is the only life
I am worth living.

Maybe I don’t
Have to run away anymore.
Maybe
I can just run.

Hipster Hipster Party

Poetry

By Martin Olson

You are hip. You are SO hip. You are meta-hip. You were hip before it was cool. You were hip before the first Hipster Party.
You go to the Hipster Squared Party. You drink a cup of coffee. You smoke a cigarette. You see a dirty hipster. She sneers at you, and calls you a hipster. You throw your PBR in her face. It gets all over her mustache.
You take pictures on a shitty disposable camera. You get them developed. You put them on Facebook, in an album titled “Uber beaucoup de Hipster Party”. Your friends ‘like’ them. You feel validated. You are shallow. You are SO shallow. You are meta-shallow. You were shallow before it was cool.
Or not. Whatever.

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