October 2011
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April 2010
17 posts
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Regress by Allison Fischbach
The taste of spring is in the air, yet it’s still too early and too chill for the green buds to safely come out. Before us, running the length of a football field is a straight shot of two iron rails stretching out towards the perspective point resting somewhere in the distance where it always stays but never is. We had just eaten dinner and the sweet promise of a new warm evening drove us out of...
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Distance Between Our Lips Sarah Gumbel
Smoother then cream, licked up by the sandpaper tongue of a cat, whose whiskers, long and white, twitch, delicately, sensing the distance, between face and bowl. Such is your face, milky, sweet and silently watching, as I, smiling, take you in, eyebrows twitching, thinking of how far the distance is between my lips, and yours. Paris Shoots Sarah Gumbel The strings of a bow, trained and taut,...
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Thesis by Colony Lollmen
She swiveled towards me in her chair as I held my breath on the other side of the desk, waiting for her words to designate my undergraduate fate. “Your thesis,” she said, “It’s good.” The entire world changed color. I saw rainbows. I almost melted into a puddle of “happy” and “WTF” on the floor. I may not have a planned future or a job or even job prospects, but by God I had written my thesis and...
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Poetry by Jenna Moore
The Truth about Penelope Jenna Moore The damned dog was always howling for a man that is not coming, relinquished the right to pillow against her chest, sweat slicked skin. Her fingertips followed climax of waves churning, touching, their bedroom window, pounding ceaselessly against the shore. A moment passed – envious of this sea for knowing the lines of his body, for the seduction holding him....
Shane Sinclair by Ricky Davis
Sometimes when I wake up I remember a time when I would get up and look in the mirror and think about how much more interesting ugly things are. Brush, brush, brushing my teeth and looking at my face. I can’t really remember any. Any faces at all. What faces would pass by the window that looked like the faces shaped the way they were supposed to be shaped. Instead, every night ten plastic faces...
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Niño Dan McCloskey
When we were younger the birds flew higher for us. I didn’t care then. Birds would be an obtainable goal; when I was older, I’d stand taller, and my arms may dare to grasp one of these winged creatures and ground it, cage it, a token of my success. Obtainable goals weren’t my thing. All I could think about was the moon, and every night my outstretched palm would cradle its dim...
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Hitching at the Trading Post by Allison Novak
The guy in the red shirt and I are talking about Little Miss Sunshine, and I forget his name for a second and take a quick glance at his nametag. “Nate,” I say, “I love that movie.” So far we have just about everything in common, including a minimum-wage job for the long summer ahead. The only difference in our jobs is that he’s a cashier and I fold t-shirts and pretend to be useful. I’ve only...
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Poetry by Emily Broderick
Night of the Ball by Emily Broderick On the day of the ball, I took your hand and led you to the cemetery where you lost your glass slippers once, and maybe a little more when the sun was still up and your mother was still alive. I wanted to show you the ghosts that blink like fireflies to find their true loves in the shadows of the tree planted before the city was reduced to rubble and I became a...
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How to Graduate College With Style by Ferris...
Shit. How did this happen? How could have this happened? I never thought this moment would actually get here. GODDAMMIT. Stupid Graduation What the hell am I going to do now? For about four years, I have lived in this blissful world…a bubble of happiness, where nothing mattered that I didn’t want to matter. I was the master and commander of my own destiny. Then I got an email from the college...
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Samantha’s Child by Adam Church
Darling girl, never got in trouble, except for not listening to mother’s words. She doesn’t understand why her stomach trips over its own two feet spilling out into the toilet. She doesn’t understand the weight she has put on calling it college pounds. Praying it is college pounds. The sonogram shows something she never dreamed: a parasite fidgeting inside, molding into a person. She flutters...
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Chicago by Zoe Woodbridge
Your sister made Campari and I hated it but I drank it because I was eighteen and you were twenty-one and they were older than us in more ways than one. I didn’t care for the drinks. I just cared for the mornings, waking up to that bird in the dogwood outside our window, sometimes next to you. Though you might’ve been gone already, slipped away from under the sheets while I was dreaming of missing...
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Expiration Dates By Emily Kate Brown
Milk going bad and yogurt somehow getting too bacteria-y are irritating parts of our daily lives. Lots of things expire: cell phone plans, leases, credit cards. Shelf life applies to more than just veggies. Relationships expire. Friendships. Patience. Lives. Some things go bad and some things just end. Some things are questionable. Like, does tuna go bad? Seems like it should. Are cans somehow...
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Deirdre by Amber L. Maczaczyj
She lets her tea sit too long. It festers until mold grows in cups hidden amongst piles of laundry on her desk. She collects twigs and branches as if to build a nest to house her neuroses. She’s not the kind of girl you’d want to keep around. But her things smell of peppermint, dried leaves and oranges and, if she can, she’ll love you with all her heart.
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Online Only Content: Safe Place #2 by Zoë...
I suppose we have a lot of them. We find new ones to replace, or at least join, the one we first find. I’m sitting at mine now, Feeling that sense because of it and because you know thunderstorms always make me see your face. Just hearing the quiet rain whisper your name is enough to make me stop writing this, stop writing and pick up this phone in my lap. But I don’t. Maybe it’s the 14-year-old...
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Endgame: Bullshit by Mary DiAngelo
“They” say that I should stop and smell the roses, live each day like it is my last, take life by the horns (or by another plural appendage, whichever you prefer). I say that this is a load of clichéd bullshit. These are phrases that we often hear as hopeful college students, and yet we rarely know how to follow them. Truly, how are we to know the location of life’s horns, let alone how to seize...
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The Prostitute by Derek O'Neill
It was dark and the street reflected our headlights in the puddles of the day’s rain. A man walked down the sidewalk in front of us and Jen squeezed my hand. It was late at night and only Le Monde Café was open. Jason was to meet us, but I couldn’t be sure he was going to be there. “But anyway,” Jen said as she opened the café door in front of me, “this dickweed in class today kept starting these...
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Shane Sinclair by Ricky Davis
Sometimes when I wake up I remember a time when I would get up and look in the mirror and think about how much more interesting ugly things are. Brush, brush, brushing my teeth and looking at my face. I can’t really remember any. Any faces at all. What faces would pass by the window that looked like the faces shaped the way they were supposed to be shaped. Instead, every night ten plastic faces...
March 2010
17 posts
5 tags
Four Way Stop by Sarah Gumbel
Here I am. Trapped, stuck at this intersection, alone not sure which way to turn, left seems dismal, sounds of rain drumming into metal skin, dead end, caught, no way to turn back again, open-endedness mixed with closed-off heart, right seems too bright, wandering city lights, endless turns, that twist moving like asphalt snakes through the sunrise, breaking dawn, straight ahead, one single line...
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The Evolving Social Image of the African American...
The 2008 election was a pivotal time in history for the United States. Not only because the country witnessed its first African American president but also because an African American woman was granted the seat of First Lady. Prior to, and arguably after, her appointment as First Lady, Michelle Obama has been much like the majority of black women in America. As the current First Lady, Obama has...
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I Walk the Line by Lisa Jones
One of the many spots we liked to go fishing was Gunpowder Falls at Jones Road. After winding down the thin narrow country lane that I’ve always been fond of because its name is my own, you come to a crossroads with a railroad track where you have to tap your brakes before looking both directions down the long, straight rail line, and then rattle over it to park in the gravel clearing a few...
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Fear and Anger by Victoria Heydt
Fear: It’s cold. The pressure around your body increases. The water swallows you up. You’re sinking into the dark. You kick and thrash, attempting to keep your body afloat, but you keep dipping under the surface. ‘I should’ve just stayed away from the edge.’ There’s a random flashback to college, and how your friends couldn’t believe that you never learned how to swim. You thought; ‘what’s the...
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Four Places Which Would Be Improved Exponentially...
Before I continue, let me say the following: I would most likely be one of the first people to die in the event of an actual zombie apocalypse. I’ve only fired a gun once in my life, and I screamed like a little girl when I felt the recoil. What’s more, I’m not the most…athletic person around (if Zombieland taught us anything, it’s that the fatties are the first ones to go). Basically, I started...
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Reading is Communal by Carolyn Bevans
I have always believed reading and writing to be forms of artistic expression, something shared with the world as a medium through which people connect and grow. Reading is not a private matter, as Sven Birkerts describes in his novel The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. Instead, reading has the ability to bring people together. It encourages interaction with the...
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Tuesdays by Emily Kate Brown
If you recall my last Collegian piece, I’m in an interesting position in that I have no future. If you don’t recall my last Collegian piece, I’m offended. And by the way, I have no future. I babysit four days a week to pay my bills. It is all I have and I’m not particularly proud of my current profession. It’s clearly not impressive by any means. However, I take care of children every day, which...
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Living History by Brittany Krueger
Writing is how I see the world. I look at a picture and I see it in words. I begin to create a story and describe the place through my writing, words flowing through my head like a river. Sometimes this river is a lazy stream, and other times it is a reckless flood of information. These words, the stories I create about the places I’ve been, my experiences, and the places I want to go help me to...
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Traversing Literature: Reading Outside the English...
A book I have never read has haunted me. Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, to be precise. You have probably never heard of it. Neither had I when I first encountered it in the bathroom of a Cork city student apartment, blearily drunk, as it rested on the back of the toilet. What a beautiful first introduction. I read a few pages- I had heard people talking about it- but I was a little too tipsy to...
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Endgame: Welcome to Boston by Allison Novak
Sometimes I feel like my life is all airports. When break comes, I book flights, I pack for flights, I get rides from my nice friends for flights. I always pack too much and struggle to get my top-heavy suitcase down the stairs in my dorm. I have perfected the art of packing too much for a week-long break; I have yet to perfect the art of packing for a month-long break. Because of this, every...
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Fun House by Jenna Moore
I was pushed through the entrance. The clown’s plastered smile three inches from my face. He pointed up. I shook my head. You laughed. The rungs of the ladder were cool in the palms of my hands. I saw you slip over the top. I followed down, rushing into the gulping puddle of blues, yellows, greens, and reds. No one was waiting to pull me out. I called for you. Silence....
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My Eyes are the Atlantic Ocean by Emily Broderick
My grandfather was alone when he died, although my mother pretends he wasn’t. She picks through his closet with hands that weren’t holding his when his eyes stopped drinking in the sun. I take the small, yellow suitcase from under the bed before she can find a heritage that doesn’t belong to her. My grandfather once told me that his mother was a seal and I believed him because our blood tasted ...
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Reflections on the Bond Strengths of Two Similarly...
The infinitesimal core of hard matter that is the heart of me will occasionally meet another. Sparks will fly, minute electrical attractions flicker into life and flash out. Arcs of energy cutting a jagged bridge from one lonely island to another. We condense now, gas to liquid. Now liquid to solid, we freeze against the nature of freewheeling, unpredictable orbits. Our polar axes stick in place....
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Carrying the Bodies to the Freezer by Joe Yates
My dad’s family had moved to Ft. Pierce during the mid 40s and had, as the Bible advised, increased and multiplied. So, working for Dr. Raab was interesting for a number of reasons, not least of all because the town in which his office was located was so small. Such as it was, it then followed that between my actual family and the people my family had introduced me to, it was not uncommon to...
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Alicia by Katie Rivara
It is Christmastime 1998 and Alicia and I are the luckiest ten-year-olds in the world. We are front-row at Rockefeller Center in New York City, in front of the famous Christmas tree, listening to and watching *NSync perform. Justin Timberlake and JC Chasez suddenly pull us up to dance onstage, and we dance our little hearts out. Naturally, after the concert Justin and JC ask Alicia and I,...
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Misty of Chincoteague - Where Were You? by Liz...
Assateague Island is a barrier island located off the Eastern Coast of Maryland and Virginia. It is surrounded by the pounding surf of the Atlantic Ocean and the shallow expanses of Chincoteague Bay. Assateague is a priceless seashore ecosystem and a sustainable resource that all visitors can appreciate. It is considered one of the best beaches on the entire East Coast. Searching for seashells as...
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Review for The Hurt Locker by Amanda Whitaker
The Hurt Locker opens with words by Chris Hedges: “The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” The quote slowly fades, but “war is a drug” remains in its spot. The film then cuts to the opening shot, but the disappeared words stay with the viewer. They linger until the very end of the film and for days after that. The Hurt Locker was recently named the...
February 2010
16 posts
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Stalking the Eagle by Liz Shandor
The bald eagle is an easily recognizable and spectacular bird. It was chosen as the emblem of the United States of America because of its great strength and majestic look. The eagle represents freedom. Living as he does on the tops of lofty mountains and among the solitary of Nature, he has unlimited freedom as he sweeps into the valleys below or upward into the boundless spaces beyond. The bald...
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Web-Only: The Danger that Lies in Creating Life...
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. In Michael Bay’s 2005 film, The Island, Dr. Merrick discovers the secret to creating life and uses it to build a powerful life insurance corporation in which he creates clones of his clients as a way of allowing them to cheat death. But when one clone realizes that the world in which he is living is not real, he stages a daring escape and ultimately causes the...
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Baltimore City, Ellicott City, Homeward bound by...
A beltway is called a beltway because it is like a belt that surrounds the city, holding in what doesn’t want to be let out or, on the other hand, making sure that things don’t fall apart. This might seem like obvious information to some, but it hadn’t been to her, and she was genuinely surprised when he had told her that. She drove down the beltway, the night sky dark and cloudy above her,...
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There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly: A...
At some unspecified time in the past, an elderly woman happened to ingest an insect of the order Diptera, likely a Musca domestica. The circumstances behind this decision are unknown, but I caution the listener that death is always a possibility. The same elderly woman proceeded to ingest an arachnid of the order Aranae, specific species unknown. It exhibited a variety of spasmodic motions, as...
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The Short-Term Benefits of Denial: A...
Before I start this whole bit, I want to make one thing clear: I am most likely, in spite of the fact that I still remember to bathe occasionally, one of the laziest human beings alive. On that note, I wish to warn the reader that this “mini-manifesto” is essentially the only thing I’ve managed to accomplish today—unless making macaroni and cheese counts as an achievement. In other words, I’m not...
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Original & Web-Only: City of Gold, continued by...
“Remind me why we’re doing this?” I asked yet again, staring out the car window at the wasteland of sand and shriveled bushes through which we’d been driving for the past two hours. Carla rolled her eyes and gave me an exasperated little grin. I knew I shouldn’t be wheedling her like this, because she was going out of her way to escape a tangled web of wedding preparations so she could spend some...
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Track Six by Emily Broderick
The booklet in the CD case declares that it might be you playing the bass on the sixth track of your brother’s self-titled album, recorded probably in Hotel Grand Number 51, South Corridor Street, Reacher’s Park, East Georgia, in a room with a view. I’m half sure they’re right, but half positive they aren’t, because no one’s seen you in seven years, and...
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Web-Only: Poetry by Sarah Gumbel
Within the Bloom of Your Cheeks Winter is like a brushstroke of white, against powder canvas, seeming clean yet unclean. Truth, a finger dancing down, your throat, poised, waiting to breathe in my tongue, dry, catching flame. Washed, dyed red and grey, like Tartan, inlaid into your bone’s curvature wanting more, needing warmth. Eyes sink into black casings like shells, cast off from shots, burst...
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Review for Modern Family by Amanda Whitaker
One thing every normal American yearns for in life is the chance to have that one television show that seems to have been tailor-made for your taste. That one block of TV you wait for every week with vast persistence and patience can only be rewarded with the show itself. That one spark of light gloriously gleams from your television set after a long, hectic week. It is your show, and is something...
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February 2010 Editor's Note by Mary DiAngelo
How can we feasibly handle all of the excitement that February has thrown our way? We have Birthday Ball (to celebrate the birth of our humble college’s honorable namesake), Valentine’s Day, and an impromptu snow break all in one month! It is difficult to conceive that we have yet to face the brunt of this semester, or that this semester also contains that distant concept called spring. It seems...
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A Holiday Story via Email by Anonymous
We have numerous parties to celebrate the birth of Jesus in my family: the pre-Christmas Eve party (my house), the Christmas Eve party, and the Christmas day lunch and dinner. Each party takes place at a different family member’s house. The pre-Christmas party went pretty smoothly, all things considered. There were just a few hiccups. Like when my grandmother called my mom a dishwasher. I got...
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Endgame: The Choice to Graduate a Semester Early...
I technically ended my stint at Washington College in a committed learning process called being a undergraduate on December 16, 2009. That night I went to the Bird with my best friend and played pool for a few hours. Some random old men hit on us, and we alerted our male friends that they’d better get their asses to the bar before we were further accosted. Male friends showed up, which made us...
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Watching Haiti by Allison Fischbach
Somehow I missed it. Almost the entire thing. I was busy, as you can imagine, running up and down my Facebook page and the streets of Baltimore. Spending precious hours mooching neighborhood cafe WiFi and waiting for something to do. This is why it was two days before I heard about the earthquake in Haiti. We have a tendency to joke that our lives as college students extract us from the larger...
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February 2010 Editor's Note by Mary DiAngelo
How can we feasibly handle all of the excitement that February has thrown our way? We have Birthday Ball (to celebrate the birth of our humble college’s honorable namesake), Valentine’s Day, and an impromptu snow break all in one month! It is difficult to conceive that we have yet to face the brunt of this semester, or that this semester also contains that distant concept called spring. It seems...