 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
 |
||
 |
THE SMOKING POET |
|
 |
|
|
| Home | A Good Cause | Feature Poet: Diane Seuss | The Poetry of Diane Seuss | Dianne Roberson Hendrix, Artist | NonFiction | Fiction | Fiction II | Kalamazoo College Student Poets | Poetry | Poetry II | Poetry III | Poetry IV | Cigar Lounge | Zinta Reviews | Olga Reviews | Third Annual Short Story Contest | Submission Guidelines | Links & Resources | Archives | The Editors |
|
|
|
Kalamazoo College Student Poets |
|
|
||||
|
Kalamazoo
College prepares graduates to better understand, live successfully within, and provide enlightened leadership to a richly
diverse and increasingly complex world. Founded in 1833, Kalamazoo College is among the 100
oldest institutions in the country. The campus is located in Kalamazoo, Michigan, a mid-sized city just 35 miles from Lake Michigan and approximately 140 miles from both Detroit and Chicago. Known for the "K-Plan," which includes some of the country's first and most extensive study abroad programs, Kalamazoo
College offers a liberal arts curriculum that fosters creativity in thought and expression. On this campus is a creative writing class taught by writer-in-residence, Diane Seuss, this issue's feature poet. The poetry below is from a selection of Diane's students, a new generation of poets.
|
||||
|
||||
|
Maggie Baillie Grandfather’s Granddaughter Blues This
is what I know of you, though my mother’s shame. Paranoia
wrapped in pills and lies, the country club ashamed. I
hate myself for carrying your name. Your
mocking words cut your children to the bone. Four
men and women haunted by your bones. I
speak like you, and cry when I’m alone. Now,
empty my pockets and my coinpurse for another bag Clear
out my checkingssavings for another sweetsharp bag. You
pay my way towards looking like a hag. This
damp and sticky basement breathes like sickness You
killed my family’s spirit, lost inside your sickness. Ate
it away from the inside, pulsing like an abscess. I
see you out the front door, standing in the street. Staring
at my windows, you can’t hide out in the street. Your
eyes look like my mother’s. I retreat. Like
history, you wait for me, your opiates and insanity. Like
family, you live in me. I suffer your insanity. Feel
you creeping through my dreams, slick with profanity. You’re
still whispering, in my head you see, say that they’re following me. I
shake with fear but no one’s there, it’s only you that’s following me. I’m
sick inside my mind you see, your legacy is swallowing me. Maggie Baillie grew up in Minnesota. After 13 years in one small private school, she moved 500 miles away to attend a small private college. Currently an undecided junior at Kalamazoo College, she works as a bilingual teacher’s assistant in a first grade class, has five cats, and enjoys baking, procrastinating, and art in all forms.
Paloma Clohossey Valentine Delivered This time
of year, armies of grass blades march in damp
circles, hold up crowds of skin undulating to the
addictive thump the speakers spew. Jellyfish
moving in packs, we stick to each other, sea sweat
thick with salt, we love the hiss and burn of our tentacles
whipping back as we detach. I was
going to call it love, but it is not love, or is it: we are
strangers meeting, strangers intertwining our gelatinous
parts. Squeezing, squishing our flexible backbones
to fit against one another. We are
loving how we feel together, the movements we know
to make, how we know to clasp hands, match pointer to pointer,
to feel hair and graze arms. We know
to throw silence around like a weapon, we know
to be ashamed. There Is A Dance When the
night eats the sun, my body is a shy yolk, thin skin shaped
round over my young moving insides. This milky yellow dances back and
forth like a small ocean, a handful of waves wrapped in membrane. In the
black, I am the fragile weight of an egg, threatening to spill, cowering
under the unknown, the quick crush of what I cannot see. Fear
is a stranger who visits, rubs his dirty feet on white knotted carpet and curls
into my bed. To battle the dark, there is a dance whose steps I’ve read about
in myths, a full body thing, feet firm on the dirt and arms around the moon.
Brave skin naked in the air. It goes like this. Paloma Clohossey is currently studying and living in Nairobi, Kenya for six months. She will return back to Kalamazoo College in February armed with journals filled with memories. Originally from Menlo Park, California, Paloma loves dear friends, live music, photographs and poems.
Rachel Dallman Icarus From Above And
you think you’re like him sometimes, that
boy, waxy
wings, melting
candle arms. Flying
too close, wanting
too much sky, bursting
into star and flame; what
a way to leave this world, what
a way; a
burning hole where you used
to be. You
think you’re like this. You
pretend to let life go; unclench
bone white fingers, knuckles
red with trying. You,
suspended in air, think
you can watch life fall, like
a solid thing, slip
through sky to break into
water below; a
ripple capped in white. Soaring,
unweighted by breath
or heartbeat. What
a way, and
you, already so close to heaven. And
you think you’re like this, that
boy, bird
boy, frail bones, and
feathers sewn on; climaxing
at the end of life, climaxing
at the end of every moment.
And
maybe you’re tired of crescendoing through
clouds, trying. And
maybe you fell, when
you were nowhere near the sun. Rachel Dallman is a junior English major with a writing concentration and a minor in Women’s Studies at Kalamazoo College, currently studying abroad in Madrid, Spain, at the Universidad Antonio de Nebrija. She is hoping to do her Senior Individualized Project in poetry, and has looked to Di Seuss for brilliance, humor, and refreshment for the past two years. Wherever you go, Di, bring those leopard print leggings with you; they will take you far! Jared Devitt Alone at river-windows Great lighted faces Dream that there is nothing that dies In their carnivorous landscape. ―Paul Auster Calliope strains in search of a music box, playing forever on the shores of the stream that feeds into the lake that feeds into the sea that empties its boats and nymphs for the great ocean where brave conquistadors go to die, where armadas drop over the lip of the horizon and fall up into the sun, one after another, like dominoes. Or walnuts. Or sisters. We watch them sail past, jigging to the steam pipe music, throwing us boxes of Morpheus cigars, to be smoked alone at river-windows. We put the river valleys behind us, to find the city made from flint and cathedral glass. Belfries grumble for all hours, for every ailment, and we cannot make ourselves heard in the boulevards. We ask if they have been in the city long, as we are ourselves very fresh, very afraid of noise. Between bell tolls, the strawmen look at us with lonely stepfather eyes, hungry for a nip at our cheeks before vomiting lungfuls of red clay across cobblestones and great lighted faces. The city kneels into the ash tree’s roots, and we can believe that we have been sleeping longer than we have drawn waking air; but there is no way to be sure when the moon refuses to set, babbling with its lunatic teeth instead. A finch lunches on a fox, and we remind the bird that he owes us a birth-debt. ‘Hardly,’ replies the bird, ‘for are you so sure that you are imagining me? I’ve been known to dream of lost boys, to dream that there is nothing that dies.’ The cigar boxes ride up onto shore, but never enough; they wash back, and try again to make it up the tideland. Angels nibble at ticks, asking each other where the meat of their wings has come from. We pinch ourselves, and can feel our fingers working through our robes, and the straw of our skin, but never the barb. Where are the stairs down from sleep? From their ships, the conquistadors poach the angels with fat blunderbusses, laughing at us poor flotsam caught in their carnivorous landscape. Jared Devitt: Writing, running, wasting oxygen: repeat, ad infinitum.
Claire Eder Thirst As he drew near the camp, he saw the calf and the dancing. With that, Moses’ wrath
flared up, so that he threw the tablets down and broke them on the base of the mountain. Taking the calf they had made, he
fused it in the fire and then ground it down to powder, which he scattered on the water and made the Israelites drink. —Exodus 32:19-20 The
river shimmers with our sin: scraped
off in curling flakes, then
grated into dust so fine a film clung
to the prophet’s skin as he pinched the
product with thumb and fore- finger.
Satisfied, he gathered the
offending powder in a pile, swept
it onto a cloth, and bundled it over
to the water’s edge. We held our
breath as the cloth unfurled and
for a split second the wind showed
itself, gold. Now
the solid, hoofed and horned is
only oily sheen, drifting, a
misplaced libation. The sunlight fails
to penetrate the brilliant barrier screening
the water’s depths, like the veil between
the ark of the commandments and
the people in the temple. We
cannot touch the cold flank of
this God. We tried to shift out from
under the shadow of
His mountain, tried to find Him in
the way we knew: in ourselves, melting
down the gold we’ve worn around
our wrists for decades, the
rings passed down from those we’ve
lost. A god from the pendants that rest between
our breasts day and night, warmed
by our skin. Now, forced to
our knees, hands cupping, we bend again
and again: our lips coated in
light, we bend to drown the thirst. Judas Iscariot to His Mother I This
shouldn’t be about you. Yet
when I think of judgment, when I think of the end, you
are there. I’m
the merchant in front of the temple and you’re tipping over my table. The
doves flap and blunder into each other as their cages tumble and
the coins are rolling, rolling, wobbling on their thin edges, circling, flat. I’ve
got to hide my golden calf from you. Got
to hide that bag of silver behind
my back, with my crossed fingers. You’re
the cock that crowed in the courtyard; you’re
the salt and I’m the pillar and
oh, I am looking back. II I
want to tell you what I’ve done. To
warn you. Woman, behold your
son. Would you take me in
your arms then, let my body drape
your lap, would you wrap me
up in linen, roll the stone across
the gap? I could hand him
over with a kiss. I could turn my
back. But I could not lose you. I
am not brave or coward enough
for that. Claire Eder is a senior English and French major at Kalamazoo College. For her thesis work, she is writing a collection of poems in English and French. She recently invested in her first house plant (a pothos). If she could have one superpower, she would want to speak every language in the world. Natalia Holtzman
Bees at the Window we
caught insects all
spring what i like is
to watch them or keep
them in jars in
fact i study their
wings i don’t care
now for books anymore,
only to
touch here and
there, say who
but the walls of
this house stand for
me, the doors most
of all with
their bursting applause
and a bloom in
my skin, bees at
the window, parading
the halls with- out
any clothes but that
damp in my hair, brilliant
moisture, salient
crown, still my
name doesn’t ring
like it’s mine Natalia Holtzman is a senior philosophy major at Kalamazoo College. She is currently doing research at the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois. Maghan Jackson A Primer After Bob Hicok We call we’ve given it specifically for its misleading qualities. Like the western boundary line, which, to the untrained eye, might look like the graph illustrating climbing prison populations (entrepreneurs exploring the lucrative methamphetamines business), but what is really the profile of the last great American cowboy having a stare-down with potatoes are worthless without steak. For those who do not know it, who have never really experienced God (who lives in the Bob Marshall Wilderness with Peter and Paul, his pack mules), ‘last’ is qualitative. It is last best, and therefore it is worst. The most-played song in the juke box in the roadside bar in a town that is only a pit-stop on the way to anywhere else is the wind. Sometimes it sings bass and rips shingles off of roofs. Other times it murmurs a lilting soprano and rustles the wheat and the poplars. The indigenous phobia is micro. Big sky. Big mountains. Big prairies. Big. (Imagine waking up in yourself—so insignificant). A Montanan will know you without ever having met you. It is your smile, your eyes, your build, your laugh that will give you away. And he will know your grandfathers from the hospital in telephone company up in Scobey. He will have danced with your mother once at their prom and seen your brother play on the O-line at Memorial Stadium. And he will inquire after your uncle’s dog that he knew had been feeling sick over in
grandmother was. And then he will say it’s been nice talkin’ with you and pay for his groceries and leave you to small-talk with the cashier and treasure the feature of your face that holds so much history. It is impossible to carve the mountains out of words. You can’t write the sun or the rivers down in ink. The dictionary has not yet thought up a word for ‘sky’ that would fill up its space. The most popular lawn ornament here is a rusted-out truck with crabgrass growing up through the engine toward a sky that feels like flying when you’re driving fast enough. Maghan Jackson is a junior Art History and English major who is currently on study abroad in
Rome, Italy. She is originally from Montana, and her upbringing there has been a big influence in her writing, as have the
personalities and biographies of the artists she studies. Diane Seuss was the first person Maggie met at Kalamazoo College,
and her Introduction to Creative Writing class was a defining course in Maggie's educational path at K. Along with Di, some
of her favorite writers are Lynn Thompson, Miley Maloy and Patricia Smith. Marianna Johnson [Say something good] I. Say something good to me. Say something good to me. Say something good—
me. II. Once let delirium walk for days between sidewalks and duck covered ponds. Let it run past coke dealers and hooded men and suburban kids with guns. III. I’m pretty sure
I asked for a hair tie then and water. Time I said Time is ridiculous Time is so
funny. IV. Once was a cliffside, melted and hardened through one bic lighter and two large front teeth. Once picked up your hand and rubbed it on glass. heard it melt while you were asleep. V. I wanted to hear your hair, then
and feel it brush against the floor I wanted to break your groans in half
and suck the marrow from the core VI. Say something good to me
I cut my bangs when I’m bored. Marianna Johnson is a junior at Kalamazoo College. She aspires to explore her passions in science and writing while still maintaining some semblance of sanity. Aside from academics, she is involved in Kalamazoo College's women’s empowerment group and green energy advocacy group. While not at school, Marianna lives with her parents in Southern California where she has a vegetable garden and enjoys spending quality time with her cat, Peter.
Jeanette Lee The Edge of the World Through up a volcano, its inner walls well swell, a cone of dusty purple lichen liken to
dead moss on ledges. Scientific pulsing pausing grey hearts push heat. Up. To the top, the light, the lithosphere. Suds of
liquid grey matter madder form from the valves, halves of veins, violent spurting, spilling, and filling the void of the volcano.
Foaming falling up and down dune the sides like suds en route in a root beer float flats over the sides of the glass, gases
crash. The volcano canoe implodes like a condemned building demolition demonstration. Spectator’s hard hat hated heads
turn upwards swords words. Cheer. Chairman. See a man made mad monolith fall fail inwards. Why. We. Slow motion emotion video
void on a bread bed box television screen seen spliced in the museum memo wall wail walk. Darkness. Dryness. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jeanette Lee is a senior English major at ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Takira Lytle A birthday party the summer of ’67 revisits
from the photographic grave, four year reflection
smiling back over a black and white juice
party. A million remembrances of a maternal familiar:
“you look just like her.” These kins are so akin,
from their curly ponies to their cutesy What
they didn’t know was that not everything is
black, and white. There’s also color which shows a
broken heart so much better than it could in any light.
Also don’t forget that a picture’s worth a
thousand words. But all those words can’t capture cries
from a scraped knee or a divorce. The album can
keep the black and white familiarities, the ones your
friends and pride love to brag on. Over in my lifetime,
I’ll keep the colors your true side could never
quite hide, even on the darkest nights. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Takira Lytle is a junior history major at Kalamazoo College, currently studying abroad in Spain. She is originally from Dallas, Georgia. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jessica Maas Photographs I was doomed the first time I casually sat down to watch and didn’t notice the end of the bungee cord that snaked out of the television and drilled itself into my head and wrapped around and around my brain until none of the organ was visible and I didn’t notice myself getting pulled back to sit in front of the television a camera thrust in my hands and I took picture after picture of the images that pranced across my vision and smiled taunting me as I stopped just long enough to run with the cord back to my room frantic to attach the images to the walls where I hungrily traced the curve of each woman’s abdomen around to her hip and down her protruding hamstring that led into the knee and back out just slightly for the calf. I studied the smiles of the women last the light in their eyes and faint blush of their cheeks and then I grasped the measuring tape I was handed and began measuring parts in millimeters hysterically cataloging paying careful attention to the elevation of the stomach and nook where the hip bone meets the thigh and the way the flesh of the butt hangs and exactly how much peeks out from under the bikini and in what proportion until it got to the point where the measuring tape was surgically implanted into my brain and I was pulled back to the screen where the camera was eternally super-glued to my hands and I clicked and clicked and clicked. Soon the walls of my room were covered photo thrust atop photo in a schizophrenic collage that traveled to the ceiling and the floor and all the furniture and things were taken out until it was just me and hips and abdomens of the women who stared at me from all directions and the rope coming from my head was clipped my eyelids sewn open and the door of my room closed for the last time and vanished behind the women and I sat in the center of the floor on top of women whose bodies I stared at while they stared at mine their eyes everywhere smiling smiling always smiling all with the same smile and I finally reached for the light switch only to find it gone. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jessica Maas is a senior English/Writing major and women’s studies concentrator at Kalamazoo College. She is also captain of the varsity softball team and an executive editor of The Index, the college newspaper. Jessica is interested in poetry, creative non-fiction, and journalism, and frequently examines the topics of gender, sexuality and the media in her pieces. Upon graduation, she hopes to attend law school with a focus on women’s issues. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ada McCartney Poem Without Sex There’s a hot storm buildin’ under my skin, a twisting heathen of movement; you’re north east and I’m restless, destroying crops in the mid west, but my bones, my bones they wanna come from the ocean. Not enough to be wet.
Gotta be Vodou— derivative of spirit. Gotta be sharp coral and darkness. Voodoo is touching myself in the shower: steam and wrinkled palms. My Belly’s not land mass or volcano, just a succession of undertows. And above it, ribs, my slatted, oar-less row boat. And breasts, too. Small tidepools: suncatchers
jammed with jelly fish. What are those hard pearls?
Ain’t no abandoned clam shells on this beach! Bodies are just bodies, be they full of water or blood or both. They need the same things and when invaded, they swell with the same incandescent parasites, the same illnesses. I bet my milk is thick with that unwant. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ada McCartney is a poet, an actor and an adventurer, currently studying English/Writing and Theatre at Kalamazoo College. She spent part of her sophomore year working, doing an internship, and participating in seminars at The Philadelphia Center. She is originally from Colon, Michigan. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jordan Rickard Shifting
States Shivering
even as I look to escape my
bed and dash the long journey from bed
to shower, from shower to bed, and
I wonder what it is about desolation that
lures me to live in it, through it, cold
after cold day after cold. Thinking
back to the
rectangle that couldn’t stop trying because
squares were it, but it wasn’t a square. Where
yokels kept poking at the ground and praying to
Poseidon to make it rain, to grow maybe a single seedling,
but the God of the Sea hadn’t hit up since
Panspermia. Even
my hot shower is somehow cold in
this state. I never knew a shower’s head
couldn’t keep up with the bit of that
snuck inside. Managed to escape the vast empty streets
of swirling snow and huddled students who
just can’t stop swearing God damnit God damnit, it’s
cold. even
with the lake rain, even when the lake must
have been frozen to make this rain. This
beautiful and clean wasteland that no one inhabits
but bewildered shivering squirrels. No
wonder cars won’t grow here anymore. You
see no one knew that prosperity wasn’t white even
when the flight flew, but not the workers too who
continued to poke at the ground and hope windshield
wipers would grow like wheat, and I
worry because sometimes it smells like Truman, like
Macarthur, like I know this state would vote
to nuke some
silo
after silo of silly rice-burners. They
must be using pesticides. When
it remembers how to rain again, all
the fair-weather flighters will come back, their
great pilgrimage come full circle. Don’t
let them back in like us, they who never
knew what it was like to poke at the ground with
a stick, and know it is just a stick, and
it won’t help. Really. Sometimes
prayers sound like negotiations when
you keep offering more at the silent auction, but
never win anything good. My
People (Ode to My Friends Back at K) I
miss my people. My
wear a shirt until if falls apart kink
in your hair ring in your nose. Tattoos
dove chirping out how
can life be so easy. Sardonic
smile PBR sipping lips pass
a bottle of whiskey like a love letter you
want everyone to read. Can
picking butt flicking poetry reading always
nodding pack that
sticks out like a Marlboro Red. The
scruff scrap and grit smokers
cough ash flecked grey
and blue eyes gleam like grit. Gin
thinning sin singing real cool who
go to class like a coffee shop, sipping
what tastes strong, spitting
out the cream. Cutting
pills cutting class cutting out, strangled
hair old house party basement. Red
keg cups like kisses. Bite
on the neck slap in the face handshake Sneaky
drawer steamy bathroom long
nights exhale cold clouds. Hand
on the face circle jerk smoke breaks. Dinner
cheap wine one fork pokes beat
armchairs long walks graveyard thin
bed lost lighter missing cigarette. Hand
rolled loose tobacco smoke machine. Heavy-handed
musicians pluck heart strings. Plunge
deeply sip away gin and tonics, pepper
spray puns trips long lost. Save
the last drops of the bottle. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jordan Rickard is a junior at Kalamazoo College. Currently studying in Ecuador, Jordan aspires to be a writer and international teacher. An agnostic liberal from Kansas, he is a voracious road tripper, scribbler, and day dreamer. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Joseph Schafer Hell on Heels I
read the news today, composed in prose across her face: a bit of rear, a
bitter tear, a glass frame, an unsaid name, a list of things to drop like rain or a bomb, because
she just bought a gun after work and she’s only twenty one but the tee shirt says ’ Survivor.’
Yeah, she’s a survivor, not a
victim of rape, but a living shockwave with
a stolen switchblade and all her pain is just what
she wants you to feel under the foot of a war on wheels, and
her mug shot caption reads “hell on heels.” She
didn’t want to be buried; one more forgotten soul of So Cal, one
more true crime whore-shaped shell, instead she dropped his ass down a well, drifted
in and out of desert dreams, washed her face clean ‘til
there were no more echoed screams from that Hell’s Angels S.O.B.—then she took his bike. Dusted,
Stoned, on the road, half dead eyes sunk in globes like a zombie; Forever.’
Yeah, she’ll live forever in
the minds of those she left behind, whose
loved ones she ran down with her ride, and while some
ran away, some volunteered to slide their skulls under the wheels, and
her mug shot caption reads “hell on heels.” ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Joseph Schafer is a senior English major at Kalamazoo College. He is writing a senior thesis which combines his two great loves--poetry and death metal. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jenneva Scholz Sylvia Plath’s Voice on CD Can’t imitate
it in print, there’s no code of dialect I could throw down
to indicate her, because it sounds,
best as I can tell, the
way English should: full, resonant O’s,
T’s cracking like a stick of celery, unspellably lovely and lofty and steady, as smooth as a cruise ship and as loaded, a thousand passengers
behind a wall of mirrored windows. It sounds like a scene
from the silver screen but no one is waiting for a kiss
from Cary Grant. Even reading this aloud
I could not shake in some Sylvia like salt cannot imitate her
direct and damning diction. I would wallow in vowels
where she sweeps, I would sound like a sci-fi universe in which every member of the parliament speaks with a different fake
accent. I would sound like I listened to books on tape but never narrated
nothin’. I would sound faux-British, or a sillier pompouser
selfabsorbier version of myself. I have heard my voice
set down in magnets, listened to messages
on my own machine. I know the woman on the radio downstairs
begins to merge with me, trained in the “milk” and “car” of the sweater- set kind of
voice with a pin a kindergartener made. Sylvia’s voice
wears pearls. Foxfur and raw silk
in a tailored dress suit. A hat with a veil. It carries a thin goldtipped
pipe for opium in a satin wrist purse
wrinkled by a tight hand. Sylvia, mellifluous,
at once invitation
and cold shoulder & maple syrup poured down your back straight from the fridge
it makes you shiver and you want to believe
there’s a sweetness and you can smell it, but it runs down your
spine in that un-itchable
place, slow and cold and you’ll have
to wash it off in a serious
shower before you can even leave your house, but really. Really
have you heard? Have you heard her
say the word “snare”? Ich, ich, ich! I could
hardly speak in those deep drowning
blues and trues and yous, pure & bones, Are you hearing this?
Do you feel the holy sweep of foxfur
on your shoulder? Do you open like bread
to the knife to that which is so
beautiful & wracked with horrors? Have you heard this dead woman say
the word God? Jenneva
Scholz is an art major and English minor at
Natasha Sharma Makeup Forever Looking at the mottled face transformed pastel that was seated next
to me, I wondered if I could
pour all the tubes and glasses
of pinked white foundation
into a base at the
bottom of the hill. What ceramic God would
I shape? The kind with two arms
nailed up to heaven
with tiny black birds
resting aloft His broad fingertips Her foundation held
up those soggy fatigue
wrinkled cheeks into tight balls of
Roman Ivory. They rose stark upon
me, asked if I had any passion? I unbuttoned my collar and showed her the scarecrow neck bristling
brown fur. She recommended
nude. All the masks
of pinks, warms, and ivories around the room nodded
their heads in taut
agreement. I felt a whisper at
my side and turned to look
at a hand nicked with a few little white
scars that only a deep color
can show. The kind
that doesn’t
come in bottles, the kind that smears.
I really wanted to
touch it. To lick a bold line
through the ash. I realize that my caramel
tan thirsts for pigment,
to always be surrounded and cushioned
by purples, blues,
and chocolates. This hand recommends
a heavy rosary, thick, messy, red. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Natasha Sharma is an apprentice poet at ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alice Thomsen Warrior Princess: Reflections on Disorder I am browsing diet pills on amazon.com when it occurs to me, weren’t the Amazons strong warrior women? And what am I? No warrior, that I know— I am fighting nothing. And strong, I think not, because every day makes me that much frailer. Even woman seems too much a stretch; my body grows more and more androgynous, prepubescent and gangly. I am an ice sculpture of classic Greek beauty, curves melting, limbs shrinking, femininity withering under the glaring September sun. Alice Thomsen graduated from |
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
Feedback, submissions, ideas? E-mail thesmokingpoet@gmail.com |
||||
