By Andrew Unruh
A burned out light in the sky,
its life-spark lost to the aether,
throws shade across its hollow-eyed
desolation tenement lodgers…
Telephone wires above are sizzling like a snare
smoking in the supernatural darkness,
floating across the tops of cities
reproducing flowers of green-gold, red-gold and fire…
The cinders of psychic respiration flow on
within you and without you, as we lay
by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery.
By Miranda Weaver
I am standing, trembling
at the edge of all my dreams
the dawn of new and promising things
glaring and shimmering across the abyss
I am not afraid of falling- no!
I am afraid of what I’m leaving behind
of breaking with this familiar, beloved ground
So many memories born in this warm earth
But the enchanting, beckoning blue above
calls to me with its freedom
its freshness, its mystery
And my heart is answering
urging me on to this last step in my safe, known place
I will leap! I will spread wings I knew not of, burn with fire I knew not I had
soar in joyful wheels at heights I thought unattainable
By Jocelyn Wilkinson
A brush, a swipe, a breath
I feel you against my neck
I can’t find you though.
Where did you go?
Hand flings through the air—I’m growing up to you.
You were just there
But now you’re gone.
Where did you go?
There
There
There
I see you but can’t get you
Try catching up, you’re gone.
Where are you going?
Stop
Stop
STOP
Please I said stop
Just slow down so I can catch you
I can feel you—I’m almost big enough for you—just slow down.
Where are you going?
My body is
B U R S T I N G
trying to find, meet, understand you
Can’t you see I’m trying?
Why are you going?
Oh there you are…
Almost…
I missed you again—bigger, bigger—slipped from my hands.
Why are you going?
You stopped…but…you were going somewhere…
You couldn’t have stopped for me—I shrink, I’m normal.
Why did you stop?
By Audra Miller
A granite-tinged
violet fog enshrouds
my brainstem. I become
a tepid traveler, shuffling
and sore. Lantern’s light,
snagging on a million little dew impedances,
unspools into thick threads
of every single color.
Streamers barely billowing, celebrating
existence and the gaps
that permeate it (the exact
coordinates where red becomes
orange becomes yellow…)
Brushing angel hair from my
face, every movement
a bruising moment; I begin
to become color. My blood
brings all my auras to the surface,
making it easier for them to diffuse
through thick skin and
evaporate. So yes,
it is deflation–—a harmless
loss of self–—But more so it is
integration,
time stitched seamless into passages through spectrums.
By Leah Clark
By Anthony Gonzalez
In the weeds I
Felt the grasses I
Felt the rushes under my
Earthen toes
Sooty feet
I felt the lashes
Of concrete patches
Upon crusted fingertips
Plastered
In the midday dewy lens
Of christened sapphiric
Blooms
If forgotten I
Grow molden and I
Shift to dust and suffer
The rust of hinges
In the seasalt air
Molasses thick tears
Of mineral remains
Sticks of carbon
Fretting in
The dirt
Ill begotten I
Give passage to
The sun above though
Powerless to say
Otherwise
bclines.bethelks.edu 