March 2010
17 posts
5 tags
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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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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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...
6 tags
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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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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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...
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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...
3 tags
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....
