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 into tears.
She never wanted this.
Nor thought it was possible:
“You can’t your first time.”

No money for an abortion,
but coat hangers are free.
Digging and scratching.
bleeding and screaming.

No longer a will to live
(barren, ripped, torn, infected)
she’s got an umbilical chord,
one of her own.

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 my mother.

But I’d find you
I always do
I would hear the clack of the jump rope
on concrete and look down
from the porch
with flaking green and yellow paint

I would yell down, “Hey sexy!”
Sometimes you might choose to hear.
And I would stand there for hours watching you
jump under the dogwood,

thinking that I could do this for a long time.

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,
fingered by Love’s smooth hand,
released the arrow of Death
into Greek flesh,
of unprotected and glistening
feet.

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 memory.

Richard Brautigan
by Emily Broderick

“Please”

Do you think of me
as often
as I think
of you?

—Richard Brautigan

You’re reduced to an epigraph,
Richard, but at least you
know you’re on my mind.

Richard, I still don’t know
why you killed yourself
six years before I was born
to appreciate you.

You once said,
“All of us have a place in history.
Mine is clouds.”
and I think that’s your way
of begging to be in a place

where love works out
and the colors all blend together
and there are no heartbreaks
and no .44 magnums.

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.

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.
Mist spurt from the floor,
    filling the room until I choked.
The maze wound,
hugged every corner.
Tight walls.
     In each new piece of glass
my reflection never changed –
wasn’t it supposed to? –
but you, yours shrank.
          Reaching out to grab your hand,
     my fingers screeched against smooth mirror.
Panels shifted beneath my feet,
     pushed me into the spinning
kaleidoscope. Stumbling, stomach swirling
threatening to show baby blue cotton candy.
The exit. Find it.
When I found my way out
     I could not look at myself again
   and you were completely
gone.

by Jenna Moore ‘12

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 leading into ever more,
no sun or moon, dark or light, nothing,
endless and eternal, stretching on past the outskirts of town,

Here I am.
Caught off guard, stuck,
foot triggering brake, engine humming into the night,

the only way I want to go is back.

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 like salt.
In the middle of the night
he taught me how to hear the ocean
hundreds of miles from the shore.

The bus’s exhaust almost masks
the smell of brine,
but it’s already been waterlogged into my senses.
The sealskin is warm
and I feel it breathe, its wet nose.
It fits me like a glove.

Onto salt seas
I am bound for to go.

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 I’m pretty sure
that’s not long enough
to have gotten that good.

Especially since you promised
you’d never play again
after your uncle Paul gave up the ghost,
although I’ll be the first to admit
you never keep your promises.

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 against my
skin, my own cheeks, flushed.

In Between Nothing and Us

Racing across the dunes of our past,
sinking, our feet slip in-between the tan waves

Time, relevant to no one
Nothingness, light, dark are eternal

Minds scavenge for gold dust, like small stars
that glitter, hidden beneath our feet

We want to find, a twinkling neon splattered vortex,
figures of beauty, cloudless nights

you scamper, scatter and spread the gulls
they fly, temporarily closing off the sky, cloud

I turn, face blown across the stretch,
features lost in the twists of dying color

Soulless, covering your face
closing off features, memories, heart

Fall back, into strobes, reflecting millions of glints
back at the sun, moments of before

And your eyes, they dance ahead of me,
lost in the oncoming, flashing rain of tomorrow.

Clocks and Mirrors

I long to feel the warmth,
Against my tired skin.
The feel of softened leather,
In my dry and broken hands.

I’m hungry for the smell of roses,
For the taste of sweetened plums.
I want to feel the breeze again,
I long to hear the ocean’s hum.

Life is like a pinwheel,
It catches and never stops.
Whirling like a sun disk,
On a universal clock.

And we are all just numbers,
Waiting like ducks in a line.
For some sort of miracle,
The dawning sun to shine.

And ever after is like a mirror,
Dipped into a glaze.
Just when you finally catch it,
It slips and breaks away.

I want to fall in love with you by Alexandra Borden

You know…
the more I get to know you,
the more I like you.

I like your personality;
and I think you’re very intelligent.

And funny, too.
We have such good rapport!

And if you want to,
I would really like to make you dinner sometime.
Soon.

Web-Only: father By Olivia Williams

You’ve fallen under.
Water slick as lies covers you;
I see your beak—your nose,
poor genetics? It stabs out,
I recoil.

Suddenly, you are flailing,
beady brown-black eyes beseech God.
You have no chance. Remember Judas?
He forsakes people like you.

Lazarus smirks—¬¬a devil’s smile, you think,
his eyes watching you slip in, Moses
reminds you. He pulls Lazarus away.
If they do not believe.

Your room is a bamboo forest—
the fan spins lazy circles.
I know how impossibly imperfect I am.
If that eye be unfaithful—pluck it out.
Your eyes—sharp and black like a raven’s—remain intact.

She grips the bed—
this neighbor, this mother, this nameless woman.
They say ‘Love Thy Neighbor,’
but she is not mine, she is not mine, she is nameless.

My brother—four and small—
is awake, uneasy in the next room.
Her body, her daughter, her dogs
get more attention.

You, who broke all your promises,
who shattered my nights with fury,
who live in luxury,
who read Conversations with God,
who lie, languish, and luck,
you—who have gone against
me so that hatred and betrayal
are all I have left—
You ask me for forgiveness?

To move on, start afresh.

Easter morning,
you have pushed too far.
I cannot forgive.
I cannot love you.

Perhaps, if I could learn
from my Father,
I could forgive you.

But that leap stretches before me,
and I am not ready.

By Olivia Williams ‘12

The Barista by Mike Kuethe

She puts on a blank white apron
before putting on a smile,
and turns to face the people beyond the counter.
She processes each of us efficiently:
give a friendly greeting,
trade an order for cash,
give coffee,
move on.

But when I reach across the cold, hard marble
to hand her some bills,
I see a face behind the smile.
Two circles shadow her eyes
and a line furrows her brow.
And for a moment I can’t help but wonder,
what secrets her apron hides.

Behind me, I can hear the people
clicking away at Blackberries
and murmuring into phones.
Each one locked into a schedule
and eager to be gone.

So I give a friendly greeting,
trade cash for an order,
take coffee,
and move on.

I can’t bring myself to ask.
About the life she hides.
Instead I tell myself
as I walk out the door,
that she never would have answered,
encased in her blank white apron.

Web-Only: On the Look-out of the Mast By Dan McCloskey

I crash into the cradle of my bed,
let my sails sag and anchor fall to the sea,
chest heave to the rhythm of your blink

behind my eyelids. I crane my neck back
and think of you, imagine my nails
tracing the comma of your navel

as your breath comes out in ellipses.
I feel your legs clasped ‘round me,
two parentheses around “etc.”

Web-Only: We weren’t trying to grow up By Dan McCloskey

Our only boundaries were the warnings
of an empty gas light and the approach
of police lights in the later nights,

but all we could talk about
was how trapped we felt,
how our free time waned
in parking lots and hidden groves.

We leapt to our escapes—
blown glass and the homeless man
with his mattress behind the Giant
who’d buy us booze for an extra buck;

the blaring riffs of an Incubus tune,
or the hum of a television set
that had nothing new to say.

So summer crept on,
and where did the time go?
We shed our skin, our disregard
for speed limits and haircuts,

moved on to indie rock and poetry,
and let’s face it—all that glory is gone.

It’s hard not to look back on it,
think of the first time you got high
behind the shopping center
and not want to say “I’m sorry,”
or feel like you’ve missed a chance.

The Collegian

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