Megan Siebert

The Creeker Sonnet

Poetry

By Megan Siebert

Out to Sand Creek. Campus abandoned
Students trek for singing and fires
By academics and studies orphaned
Young adults their social lessons acquire

They can hear the bottles sipped on
Warm Fridays recall laughter, shouting
Twigs and brambles freely tripped on
I can’t see anything, battle cry of the outing

Smoke fills their eyes, their cups and clothes
Darkness clouds as new hands meet
Bluegrass rests for the profane, swear-filled toast
And cheerfulness fills as hearts and fire heat

At end of night, they bear welcome pressures
Drinkers and dreamers morph to Threshers

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Road Watcher

Poetry

By Megan Siebert

She rose early from a sleepless sleep

The high TUH-duh TUH-duh of the road grooves keeps her risen

Perpendicular, the waterless creeks of eastern Colorado

Parallel, the broken deer with the country road highways

Disappearing color of the landscape made more so by continents of ashen snow

Telephone lines follow like foamy limping waves.

The drowsy chins of the leading passengers pull their Ellington-filled heads down

                        Leisurely

She wants to shave the wisps of hair budding above their collars

Driver’s eyes shift mirror road mirror road

Hers revisit the colorless ocean.

 

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Bethel Students at Their Finest

Photography

By Claire Unruh

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To Bear

Short Stories

 By Megan Siebert

“Syd, roll your window down a couple inches.” Sydney obeyed her mother and shut the passenger door of the car, squinting up into the bright gleam of the unnatural cross perched on the spire. Jesus didn’t die on a titanium cross. He died on some criminal-fit wooden posts. For our sins. Thank God.

            Stop touching your stomach, she reminded herself as she followed her mom and brother up the cement steps to the tall oak doors of the church. An old man pressed his thin lips together and crinkled the corners of his eyes in greeting as he slowly hauled open the door for Sydney, but his welcoming expression went unanswered as she sailed by him into the foyer with her eyes down and her knuckles tangled together in front of her ribs. She wondered if the other church members bustling around the green carpeted lobby noticed her gliding around on tiptoes. She wondered what each whisperer guessed to the next about why Sydney Benton seemed slightly strange this morning. She wondered if they could detect, with each step, the weight of something that didn’t even breathe yet roosting impatiently just behind her navel.

            She slid into a pew next to Ellie.

“Hey,” Ellie yawned.

When would Sydney have to tell her friends about her drive downtown last night? How she almost went to the Walgreens in Obispo Plaza but had panic attack about seeing Jen’s mom there again? When would she confess that the old man at the CVS had looked at her with such disappointment that she started crying? Like it was her own grandfather or something. The pew was particularly hard this morning.

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