Pressions 2005 - James Madison Memorial High School

PRESSIONS
2005
PRESSIONS
Volume XXIII
Spring 2005
A Journal of Creative Writing
James Madison Memorial High School
Editor
Hal Edmonson
Assistant Editor
Hannah Riley
Poetry Editor
Alice Chang
Fiction Editor
Molly Rideout
Assistant Poetry Editor
Melissa Wei
Assistant Fiction Editor
Rose Schneck
Art Editors
Rose Schneck
Jacki Whisenant
Technical Assistant
Mike Peterson
Faculty Advisor
W. R. Rodriguez
1
Authors
Pressions Press
© 2005 Pressions Press
Copyright reverts to authors and artists upon publication.
Pressions Press reserves the non-exclusive right to reprint.
Some included writings may have appeared originally in
The Independent, The Spartacus, and The Sword & Shield.
Special thanks to the Memorial Art Department for
the use of its facilities.
Pressions Press
W. R. Rodriguez, Advisor
James Madison Memorial High School
201 South Gammon Road
Madison, Wisconsin 53717
2
Kate Phelps ...........................................................................5
Nina Trotto ...........................................................................8
Young-Eun Park ..................................................................12
Daniel Rebholz....................................................................14
Kristin Budziszewski............................................................15
Rose Schneck ......................................................................16
Daniel Kazell .......................................................................19
Molly Rideout .....................................................................22
Emma Martinson ................................................................27
Samantha Burke ..................................................................30
Alice Chang ........................................................................32
Melissa Wei .........................................................................38
Claire Bible .........................................................................40
Courtney Klug ....................................................................42
H. Riley ..............................................................................43
Betania Grossen...................................................................52
Chloe Scheller .....................................................................54
Madeline Midbon ...............................................................55
Jessica Obee.........................................................................58
Hal Edmonson ....................................................................60
Vania Shih ...........................................................................63
Artists
Jacki Whisenant ..............................................cover, 2, 25, 47
Rose Schneck ..............4, 9, 13, 15, 18, 33, 41, 48, 62, 63, 66
Ariana Karp .........................................................................21
Annemarie Rodriguez ..........................................................51
Yvonne Luong .....................................................................68
3
Kate Phelps
Poland
Tire tracks
Across the brims of your eyes
Old tires
From years like 1974 in Poland
You say it means
“Because in Poland it means ‘because’ in Poland”
You are categorically unsound
A slow conversationalist
Brilliant in the mornings
When your oily hair is tasseled lovingly
By explorer’s hands
You still have a few tricks up your sleeves
Fat with promises
A mother bearing twins in June
Time has no meaning to you
A wizard
Who holds his spells in
Jungle-green plaid
The calming stench of cigarettes
On tired, caring breath
And battleships that careen down
The saliva on your bristled tongue
Boats carry baskets, barrels, and men
Who urge you to jump
Into polluted waters
Where there is no telling whether
The Loch Ness Monster hides below the surface
Nimble, hungry
Probing the air with its dinner plate nostrils
Waiting patiently to swallow
Poland
Whole
4
5
Kate Phelps
Kate Phelps
Vincent
You, the Spider
I wanted to write a song
Like Don did of Vincent
When the snows of winter finally drifted
Over his sanity and froze
It’s as if his paintbrush danced on its own
While Vincent remained angry
It painted the night sky
And he smiled down at the little city
Where children sleep safe and full
From mothers’ milk
I imagine that no one knew of a lover
From his sour disposition
A man who ate only one meal
That was always the same
And painted after supper
In the dim light of his den
Perhaps he wore a cap
Like Leonardo
Like the great ones
And prayed each night
For later men to sing of his sad life
Of dull accomplishments
Now behind the glass
We press our noses against
To taste the colors
And trace the brush strokes
And sing
To remember Don
How come you make me want to write?
It would be simple to say
That you spin the words
So flatteringly sweet
You, the spider
Almost lazily expelling the words from your body
A silvery strand that rings in my ears
And remains
How are you so humble in your beauty?
Lying among the rhymes at night
Waiting for the ceiling to come crashing down upon you
Would you but wrap me in your web
I would stay forever
Against the moon-accented verses
Waiting for you to devour me
My blood
And make me beautiful
You, the spider
Camouflaged
I wish that you
Would come down from you rafters in the winter
Even if your eight legs froze
Spinning faster and faster
Working around my body, caught
My bones, muscles, and being aching
For the silver you weave
You, the spider
6
7
Nina Trotto
Untitled
Come away with me
Into our world among the city of lights
Sing along with me on Broadway
Where the sidewalk is our stage
And every stoplight
Is really a spotlight in disguise
Come with me
Throw caution to the stars
Let us be free
In the never ending night
We drive
Among the cold air
That smells of stars
Out to the fields
Where we make love
And the stars are our spotlights
For the opening scene
And the grass is itchy on our bare backs
But we never notice
As our sad song crescendos
And ends in a kiss
Where we roll
And the corn stalks roll with us
In the breeze
As if wishing to be part
Of our sweet–
If short–
Moment of certainty
When it doesn’t matter that our curtain will soon fall
Because we are in our love song now
8
Nina Trotto
Voices intertwined
As if on Broadway
Where every stoplight
Is a spotlight
In disguise
9
Nina Trotto
Untitled
Nina Trotto
They are only a memory
Of a love gone before
And this bud grows
Here
In a place secure from pain
Flowing upwards
In a sultry way
Teasing the sun with a hint
Only to return
To green
And the bud grows
Learning the hard way
Of the ache of waiting
Growing thorns
To pierce ego unbounded
And the bud grows
To become a green of another kind
Jaded
So when the time comes
For the sun to call the bluff
And rid the bud
Of its silky green dress
The only hope the rose has
Is for its petals
Not to be black
Love may be a rose
But simply because
Every spring
A bud shoots up
Barely green
Curved in an
Innocent, seductive way
As if daring someone
To strip it of its green dress
But for now
No one does
And so the bud grows
Stem growing longer
Away from the roots
Away from security
Where a gust of cold air
Can make all the difference
And this bud
Small as it is
Struggles
In this not yet soft soil
Holding on
To past memories
Of frozen ground
Of springs gone before
Of pain and death
At the hands of winter snows
Deceiving flakes
Of soft white poison
But for this bud
10
11
Young-Eun Park
Night
words
whispering softly from the last time you were here
waiting for an answer
the ones you never got
are still rustling inside crinkled paper
with ruby flowers
and violet hearts
and watchful eyes
all over the floor
Young-Eun Park
i can still hear you now
and you’re oblivious
i wonder how much you thought i was
but more importantly
wasn’t?
i’ll let the silent spring fall away
the words wrapped in red string
too guilty
too angry to let myself go
never knew rain could burn so deeply
and you weren’t supposed to heal
underneath the starry night
that softly shed its tears for you
speaking words of wisdom
and not forgetting
not understanding
does it matter so much now?
i wonder if you ever understood yourself
something that never
existed in your memory’s distant eye
and if you think about the stars
as much as i do
can’t remember anymore
what was said
but it wasn’t meant to be
repeated
12
13
Daniel Rebholz
Sunstroke
Kristin Budziszewski
Untitled
I lay myself out to dry
Servant to a malicious sun
That burns my skin
And bleaches my hair
My thoughts turn crisp
As the sun strokes me to sleep
And my mind wanders off
To a place in the sun
Where I do not walk in solitude
The moon is full, the sky is dark
The sun is down, northern lights in the air
A long time ago in the woods
Sounds have echoed and bounced off trees
Nobody remembers what happened once
A girl has vanished on this day many years ago
Last seen in the woods at night alone
A squirrel appears on a tree stump
The stump is close to the point of the vanishing
Everything here remains a mystery
Colors
Grind me to the bone
And see what color my dust is.
Is it green like money,
Or blue like sky?
14
15
Rose Schneck
Watching the Grass
Watching the grass grow was a task often given to an over
energetic child by an exasperated adult. It was an exercise, you
see, to enhance the patience of a child. I was never very good at
it. The trees had patience; the grass had patience, but I didn’t.
I was never a tranquil child; my mother said I just didn’t have
my roots yet; my gardener said it was because of the earth beneath my trunk; the birds said it was no wonder that even the
squirrels couldn’t hold onto my branches, but I said it was fun.
All the saplings my age were content to stay near the trunk, at
ease with their leaves, but I just couldn’t stay within my bark.
Before I had the chance to accustom myself to the tree, though,
we were all interrupted.
The forest here was beautiful once, full of trees and their
nymphs. Now it was full of houses, holding men. Men, humans,
they plowed us down, all of the trees. Well, not really. After
all, they skipped me. I suppose I was lucky, if you could call
it that, to have been missed that day. I was still a sapling, and
had wandered, as I often did, to see anything besides trees, trees
and more trees. By the time I heard the screams, I was too far
away. Too far to help, too far too hinder, just too far. When I
finally reached the forest, there was no forest. There were trees
and there were stumps and, to my eyes, there were corpses. The
bodies lay everywhere, those who were dead, those who were
dying, and those who were waiting to die. The nymphs, fading
into the air, sat near their trees crying silent tears or lay over the
stumps, their voices muted by the horror they’d been through.
The humans have a term for it, which I only came across later.
They call it post-traumatic stress disorder. I call it murder. That
day I watched my family die and could do nothing. That day I
survived, and it was the worst thing I have ever experienced.
16
Rose Schneck
Survival, a strange concept–one would think that it would
be a feeling of joy. You survived, you made it, congratulations.
But no, it’s more akin to death than life. Every time you survive,
you die a little death; you lose something, something important.
You can’t really tell what you’ve lost; in fact, it usually takes
time to even realize that it’s missing. I lost my freedom. Poof,
gone. I’m not sure why they left my tree alive but they did, and
so I’m alive. I hide myself, though I have absolutely no questions about how the humans would react if they knew that all
the trees had souls, had nymphs who lived as long as they did.
Having been inside the human circle, I know that they would
have no qualms whatsoever about enslaving this new form of
manual labor. Look, they work for free; you just have to leave
their trees alone! Watch, they live forever–no, no, it’s legal, after
all they’re not human. Oh yes, they’d have no problems at all. So
I hide. I hide in plain sight, as they say, as one of them. I learn
from them, what not to do, what doesn’t work, what shouldn’t
be done. I mourn the dead, and the dying, and those waiting
to die. And I think of my mother every now and then, when it
doesn’t hurt, and I think, how amused would she be, to see me
living among those who watch the grass only to know when to
cut it, me living among these people, waiting for them to leave.
Just waiting and watching the grass.
17
Rose Schneck
Daniel Kazell
Dictionary
Lists 2 & 3
Watch the words
Tumbling from the cliff
Falling one by one into the wet multitude below
Rippling and sinking
As the syllables are mutilated
My personal depravity stems from my teacher’s infamous ability
to squander our time, thus augmenting the austere nature of
an establishment that is somehow found laudable by the community. The complacent attitude of this system is redundant in
its incessantly banal attempts to provide provocative material
which most often turns out to be just as insipid as what came
before. Unfortunately, these efforts to expedite the system
are somehow seen as actions to extol rather than deride, as if
all students will rise in synchronized euphony thanking their
benevolent leaders for their escape from anarchy. Any heresy
against this so called “working system” is skillfully deterred by
way of a reticent individual who will scrutinize you in order
to determine if your contempt is resolute or of a far more superficial nature. While the atmosphere is quite diverse in this
never ending quest for acceptance and/or points, the acute will
notice that the diligent are less rewarded than the pious and
servile. In this place discord is simply prodigal, for the virulent
will crush the aesthetic and conciliatory, no matter how much
guile they pose. The gravity of this situation is that, to repudiate
the system, however lucid your message may be, they will still
tell you to make flashcards for your vocab. However, I will not
submit my resignation to this folly; I think this is proof enough
that I’ll do fine.
Can you pronounce
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis?
18
19
Daniel Kazell
Untitled
I walk alone among the fading trees, careful not to step on the
selfish creation of an arrogant being, knowing that to do so
would only be conforming to a system I utterly hate but am
intolerably forced to love. Watching as they destroy perfection,
I tear out my hair with the fervor of one who has lost a child at
Walmart. My eyes burning with hatred and acceptance, I walk
past these fools who fill their unsightly scars with a perverted
mockery of existing glory, somehow feeling that they will make
things grander, never realizing that they couldn’t possibly match
the majesty presented to them which they so lightly throw away.
Tears well and block my eyesight as my sleeping dogfeet carry
me away from this travesty my eyes are forced to see. I look to
the sky for comfort, but my friend the sun is hiding today.
The sky brings only an incandescent haze that seems to swathe
me in darkness rather than light. Well, I guess I know how he
feels, but really, how can I? I’ve only spent a day with open eyes.
I wonder how long he has had to watch but never help.
20
21
Molly Rideout
Untitled
Can’t find it
That world I had half a mind to look for when faced with
your words.
I watched,
But only with eyes that darted away anytime I got past the
I already knows
Close to the
I kinda guessed.
No one reaches for the unknown
Unless after their morning wake they stretch a bit too
far and stumble with the power before catching their
footing once more.
And it will be a thousand years before someone accidentally
grapples that void again
And dares
To fall out of favor
And into nirvana
For as we denounce their liberations
We are envying,
With our own doves tied about our necks.
Why is it that we idolize that which we most hate?
And fear what we dream to embrace?
Truth–
That cold dark void just beyond our grasp–
And he with the longest arms shies the farthest away
Whimpering like a wounded dog caught in the night,
For light is just the absence of dark,
Truth the absence of lies,
And which one is most easily heard?
The common state, to which everything falls
22
Molly Rideout
A homebred accent in that foreign country
Returning after a decade of something you’re not
Pretending
Because trying just hurts too much.
My arm is sore from stretching
And it’s warmer in the sun anyway.
Untitled
Voices murmur about me
The sound of leaves blowing through an autumnal chill
Oranges from greens, all bound together
by one loosely fitting spine.
I read somewhere it was getting cold.
Not realizing you had become the pronoun
I thumb through your emotions,
discarding all the ones I don’t really like.
Pages are suddenly missing from that library book
you loaned me.
Try looking under that creeping tree
But it’s coniferous, I forgot.
23
Molly Rideout
Untitled
Pinpoints of thoughts dust the sky, swirling together in an
endless web of conscious cuts from which flow the blood of
understanding that I lick off my fingers every time night falls
and I am suddenly open to the world and filled with crimson
delight, for everything comes when it is least desired, like rain
on a joyful day, but that matters little to me for where I stand it
is always raining and the drops of water as they hit my face turn
to darkness and dry my skin in ways that light cannot because it
never penetrates deep enough to really know what I am all about
and where I lay my tired form every evening before my mind,
full of its soliloquies of fiery fate, soars away into the distance
becoming little more than a speck of light in what comes to be
known as the golden heavens.
Untitled
I left you for too long
You never wrote
I never tried
Ripples from the same point only spread farther apart
24
25
Molly Rideout
Emma Martinson
Union of Travel
Shifting Sands
Sailing on a boat with tied down sails,
Moored down through waves in a strong easterly wind–
Where will you take me? Can it be far?
I’m tired of dampened hair and a rocking life.
He stood, his body erect, poised as though ready to dart like
a stealthy desert cat at any given moment.
I remember a day
In a place with long names
Where a man in a kilt danced to Turkish tunes–
Then everything seemed to make sense.
If I could return to that moment–
Two scoops of ice cream and call it a date–
My life would be served on the most simplistic of platters,
No gold carvings, just a cold hard slab.
I could weather out the world if I had to.
Do you really know me?
Smell the sky from my pointed nose.
I want to sail to a place where I’m a horse with no name,
But you always follow
And I’m just a mare with a bad reputation.
Do you see why I am so dizzy?
Drowning in a sea of my own personality?
Now you know why I want my hair dry.
My fingers are wrinkled and still dripping in false assurances.
I’ve made my bed, but just see if I’ll lie in it.
I’d rather jump on the box-springs and make wild accusations.
After an hour or two the movement is like that of a rocking boat
And I don’t think I’ll ever see dry land again.
26
The noise spread in the distance. There, before the horizon.
It was a gentle collection of booms and rumbling, like so many
storms before. Yet this time, it was different.
The noise was deeper, somehow smoother, like the soft
paddling of a drumhead so there was no distinct beat, just a resounding rumble that neither grew nor diminished–it remained
just so, barely in existence.
Had he still had his eyes, he might have seen the darkness.
A cape of black devoured the clear blue sky as its ambiguous
body rumbled on–a darkness that turned midday into an endless, starless night.
He stood poised, perhaps for an hour, but here, where the
endless beige ocean resided over everything but the limitless sky
above it, time seemed nonexistent. It seemed almost as though
the sands of this sea went deeper than time itself could recall.
So he stood, as if every minute were a grain of sand, small and
indistinguishable from the masses.
Soon, it was upon him.
The once soft rumbling was now a deafening roar, a roar so
loud he considered himself deaf for the silence that it left in his
mind.
He felt sharp beats as though the gods above were of the
thought to pound him into the earth. The pelts drummed against
his skin–millions of blunt daggers that thrust at his flesh and
27
Emma Martinson
Emma Martinson
poked relentlessly. He felt like to break, to fall in a heap of beaten,
bloodied tissue, and fragments of bone. Instead, he stretched his
arms into the onslaught of cold tiny blades.
delicious enough for even The Lady of The World. His tongue
licked at his lower lip and tasted the bitter salt of chilled sweat,
but there was also a heavy sweetness, like a ripe dram of faerie
liquor, that lingered on his skin.
His voice rose into the rumbling as a shrill undertone, broken
only by infrequent gasps for air before it rose again, the pitch
wavering until it settled on the universal note of the heaven’s
wrath. The two meshed into a song of crazed astonishment, of
exhilarated bewilderment, and unsurpassed joy.
But, as the sands glopped together into a clingy mess, as his
sightless eyes blinked needlessly, and his voice broke quickly for
its needed nourishment, it was gone.
The sound vanished. The rain fell no more.
He lowered his arms and nodded, as if all had been according to plan, as if all had met his supreme satisfaction, and, point
achieved, it had given up its existence.
The darkness had moved on, to impose its glorious nature on
fresh dunes. Overhead, clear blue sky smiled at him fondly.
With the same breath, he sat in the cold mush and settled
his hands onto his steadily sinking knees to wait, once again, as
though time was an untried, unthought notion sketched by an
unwilling hand.
He sighed in amazement, in quiet awe of what unfolded
before him, as though in that one second of a day, a magic dust
of life had been sprinkled.
He saw, without a doubt, tiny flowers of vibrant violets,
fragile whims of rosy pinks, dream-like blues of agile wishes,
striking oranges and dashing yellows–all trimmed with dazzling
emerald stems and adorned by joyful, out-stretched elk-skin and
buttery-leather-bottomed leaves. He saw the pale moonlight
yield its blue-silver veil upon it all, as if to protect it from the
harsh grains of ever ticking time.
He held his breath as the dawn rose and rays of seeking fire
burned every careful confection. He watched as every petal and
leaf curled into a dark ash–into whispers of dead dreams that
blew away with the harsh wind of reality, and blinked unseeing
once again. For not even the most cherished of moments could
be stretched any longer than it took for a single grain of sand
to shift in the endless sea of time.
The rest of the daylight fell to the silvery twinkle of the
stars and rich, silky rippled night sky in naught but a second’s
second.
The motionless figure came to life once again. He opened
his eyes just in case some vision should be lingering there, awaiting his absent gaze, and drank in the cold, moist air around
him. It filled his dried nostrils, thick with fragrances, rich and
28
29
Samantha Burke
As They Play on Forever
life once made sense
it made a whole lot of sense
finding out what i actually thought
and realizing that i was lost from the beginning
whether it was my loss of words behind the words
of my parted soul singers
as they belted out their tunes of something i lived for
love, happiness, hate, anger
every emotion, every scenario fit to a song
Elvis Presley
Diana Ross
The Temptations
Carly Simon
they all knew my woe
of lost love and life
of dancing until some large overgrown mutt came crying
of being someone’s girl
of just being blue
Samantha Burke
in my little black book there were the names of those men
who had touched my life
and in there were the names of those who would never
get the chance
for just getting their number became part of the idea
the thought of their broken hearts when this temptress came by
made me laugh
all topping my list of the tears that seemed to stream down my face
they all knew what song they were
they all somehow knew that i was becoming
and that i lived to worship them
but i was NEVER good enough
not for them
not even for myself
i became lost in the tumble and rumble of some helpless boy
it’s funny when i think about it
somehow life made sense once
and now the time has returned
you become lost in everything
but in the end the only thing that really ever mattered
was something you had thought never existed
they belted out their tunes of unknown heartbreak
from the beginning
watching as somehow they found out what it was
supposed to be like
what heartache and break could actually amount to
in the end
pain
30
31
Alice Chang
Alice Chang
Labyrinth
Pilgrimage
The girl child
Wandered down endless hallways
Each door closed to her
With an utter finality that made her want to bleed
For the sake of existing
Someone had had too much to drink
There were spirits everywhere that evening
And her father housed the Holy Ghost
In gently cradling her shivering form
I somehow found myself
Again holding eternity in the palm of my hand.
Before discovering
My two unconscious pilgrimmages
Into the realm of fatalistic musings
I would say that
Artists were just shades of gods
Attempting to emulate creation of life
But now
I find myself arguing endlessly with divine origami folders
Who called apples pears
Only to insist
That there is no such thing as fruit.
Sangreal
Little girls no longer asphyxiate their dreams in salinity
Lulled by the capitalist mantras hanging heavy in the apocryphal air
And they’re no longer seduced by
Rounded corners in quadrilateral little boys
On which they balance precariously
Waiting for circles to complete themselves
And we burn vestiges of the Permian Era
Futilely searching for the golden rectangle
Hearts heavy with the knowledge that our modern day Gandhi
Only catalyzed the next big dieting craze.
32
33
Alice Chang
Alice Chang
Dolorosa
Untitled
After angsting the torrents
That flooded her rock bound sanctuary
She said she had lost the ability to comfort
And I did not deny it
Knowing myself to be wrong
When being right mattered most
Found myself instead poised on the edges of her sorrow
Straining the anguish out with a tattered silk veil
In order to drink of her tears
And feel their slow spread
Like a balm upon my untried soul.
And so it happens
My sweet nothing
In the newest search of reality
New age mantras to the belly dances of
Starstruck snakes and ladders to purgatory
The angry, frenetic quest to define the divine
All we have to do is disconnect our lots
Flush to the afterbeat of trivial
Love poems that caress pulses of faltering eternity
Untenable but still
We throw our heads back
And weave swan songs into curtain calls
Only to wake up in cold sweat
Curving catatonically into invisible embraces
Wondering
What it would be like
If this were real
Again
Untitled
She asked me, once,
Why I felt the need for sorrow in my reminiscence, and
I had not the heart to speak truthfully
Saying instead that I was contemplating
The sound of waves upon a forest floor
My lie leaving me feeling strangely connected
To Alexander, a king
Boldly charismatic and screwed out of lndia
By wet monsoon rains
Feeling entirely
Too much
As the last soldier succumbed
Arms falling with a homesick sigh.
34
35
Alice Chang
Alice Chang
Same Old Bet
Slaughter
To all the poems that never found
The cold press of transcription:
Your voice stings the tip of my tongue
Plagues the light of my waking hours
Your form haunts the insides of my eyelids,
Seducing as I sleep
But these compulsions slipped away
On an eve of a sandy beach
Where, slightly insane from the spray of a concupiscent ocean
We spun, imagining ourselves
At the center of the universe
And we worshipped
Even the more mediocre efforts of
The ghosts of towering literati
Marveling at how they hated
So beautifully
Eloquent even in animosity,
Never more apparent than in elegies held in
Dimlit coffee houses, juice bars, poetry cafes
There, failing to be enamored of our own voices
We inhaled the smoke of our blood, dreams, and innocence
Bathing our raw and naked spirits
In the ancient ebb and flow
Of those who immortalized drug-induced disillusion, and
Made the heavens rain with references to male genitalia.
And maybe
It’s all irrelevant after all
And words are just the sentiments we killed
Misunderstood delirious irreverent
And feeling profoundly violated by our own ineptitude
A crutch we fall back on
When we fail at being
But what adroit murderers we are!
Lovingly throttling each sunset
Already bleeding scarlet up the horizon
Managing, somehow, to escape the permanence
In absolute objectivity
As we convince ourselves
We are responsible for the bright
Mad twinkle night sky.
36
37
Melissa Wei
Nature Description
Here is the ambivalence, which is contained in two cliches
that have been, through mankind’s undying desire to understand
that vast expanse called nature, thoroughly recycled and made
the darlings of writers and non-writers alike: “Nature is red in
tooth and claw,” underlying the cruel cycle of inevitable, painful
growth and death, a cosmic universality, the understood killing
of the vulnerable and the strong alike, as if torn flesh, hovering
scavengers, and decay were written onto the tailbone of every
creature and the capillaries of every plant like some unspoken,
eternal covenant. Another general cliche exists, which the writer
attempts to style in parallel form after Tennyson; it may be
summed up as, “Nature is green in leaf and vein,” and from this
maxim comes the entire theme of the beleaguered human who
draws beauty and inspiration, comfort and repose, from those
verdant fields, those shady afternoon sojourns, and everything
inherently Walden.
One must have a soul of summer to lie in the September heat
for so long and not be overwhelmed by thoughts of the darker
part of the cycle, the animals grappling at each other’s flesh as
if killing were akin to breathing, the hole-ridden brown sheets
of shriveled autumn paper scraping in a melancholy rhythm
across the ground, the overpowering blackness of gnarled tree
limbs raised towards a shadowed sky on some abandoned rural
highway in a storm, seeming to bellow to the human, “You
are small in a large world.” But here, where the sun shimmers
seemingly eternally across acres of crimson-tinted prairie, to
the observer, who attempts to see nothing that is there and everything that is not, the truth is evident, and is contained in an
inescapable irony, that nature is ambivalent. The distant raven
38
Melissa Wei
emits a cry, which, oddly enough, could be mistaken for the
lusty wail of an infant, but this sourd comes from the same
rictus that will subsequently prey upon some lesser creature.
The circles and cycles of living things overlap in this manner,
canceling each other out in an endless series of contradictions.
The crimson and golden intensities of the leaves are a gift to
poets. Their faded brownish counterpart, the feeling of theold
woman’s dry hands, hands that know no expensive cream, is a
gift to poets as well. The viewer beholds a gold-speckled sky–
pure, still, in its breathtaking blue–with clouds that would
make Vermeer’s hand throb for a paintbrush. But through a deft
lowering of the eyes, one comes across some of the most banal
and unbecoming shrubs in the existence of flora and fauna. And
so nature emerges, full of contradictions, as a hideous beauty,
an incomprehensible understanding, an intangible object to be
turned over and over again by inquisitive palms and still left in
its original state, neither innocent nor corrupted, neither inherently good nor evil, but simply being. It is a shapeless circle
spilling into the boundaries of infinite existence.
And nature appears to be reddish-green in color.
39
Claire Bible
This Girl
This girl
child like innocence
clean
no stone or scrape
known to this body
neat to a point
that kids call her
the next hermione granger–
she is golden
that innocence
Claire Bible
she cries less
laughs more
for a saving hand
reached
this girl
and she lives
through her heart and mind
this girl
at last believes in herself!
tried and true
shed those colors
stretching
growing
this girl
is now wild
cutting class for kicks
trying and failing
to survive a divorce
that cut her in half
either way can’t decide
a boyfriend pressuring
this girl
is now scared
living lies
trying to hide a pain
that twists inside her chest
out of body
this girl
has come to terms
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41
Courtney Klug
H. Riley
Untitled
Untitled
Somewhere in the outer reaches of space an undiscovered
galaxy is being made
If you look at that galaxy, you could think that it’s
the same as a life being made
The life of an infant new in the world
The innocence and naivete brought into a world
of lies and corruption
Oh how this child, like the galaxy, will learn pain
What do you do when it rains
Now that you can no longer run barefoot
Through the slushy streets
Howling with the banshees
At a periwinkle moon
I have heard stories of the frostbite
Etched onto your feet
Of the cries that deserted your mouth
To forever chase the wind instead.
At night sometimes I think I see you sitting by the window
Reciting longingly to the breeze
The untold sweetness of January.
Will learn how, to everything in the world
or galaxy, there are two sides
Two sides of the coin that is constantly being flipped
Heads the good
Tails the bad
A fifty-fifty shot and learning who you are
As life draws to a close with death
You remember the good and not the bad
So life, being a metaphor itself, tells the galaxy
There’s hope that you will be discovered by me someday
42
Tuesday Mist
So Guinevere rode over the hill
Like spring robed in long white silk
And the moon rose early
Above the Sacramento sea
The relevance of who was waxing
And who had driftwood waned
Was lost to the luminescence
Of stray sandollar glow
Shot put
In the corner of your
Ever indigo traveler
Eyes
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H. Riley
Monroe Street Moonspin
She came dancing in from the night
drunk on the darkness and iambic pentameter
With a calm gray ocean day surging behind her eyes
basked in the moonlight
And when she laughed
head thrown back
ripples lapped against our ankles.
We drowned Kerouac-style
in the synthetic carpet
dreaming of all the New Yorks we’ve never
really known
With the watery spirit who plans her voyages
fearlessly
and makes me believe it
more than anything I’ve ever believed before.
H. Riley
and thrill
and when that’s gone
Mourn it as the greatest catastrophe this earth has ever suffered
Wrap the desolation around you
shrouded in the weight of all the miles you
have traveled
and drowning in all the empty eyes of the faces
you have seen.
We lie enthralled on the carpet
consumed by the poetry of a blank white ceiling
the infinite possibilities that lie therein
and
The break of the oblivious ocean crashing against the sky.
I tell her silently of how some day
she will travel to see Denver
And find her San Francisco
blazing by the sea
Perhaps Jack wasn’t trying to live happily
or fully
or even just well:
Perhaps all he tried to do was live
live the way no one had lived before him
Just experience
Just burn
he says it himself
Never ebb
just flow
and when the flow’s gone
Just stoke the fire with drugs and sex
with booze and dreams and burn all you can
Just itch with passion
and emotion
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45
H. Riley
The Blood in India Sheds Itself in Screams
Funny how
When the drops slow down
They sound louder
Hitting that surface like the ground after freefall
And it’s just as hard
With all the slicing finality of a guillotine chop
Reverberating in the silence
As they proved conclusively that the mind
Is more powerful than the magic of the heart
Or at least that petty psychological tricks
Can outsmart even the previously infallible
Irrepressible will to live.
(unless)
I wonder what his thoughts were
As he played the good audience member
To the symphony of his blood draining slowly from his veins
Did he regret his choices
Re-evaluate his motives
Call for his wife
Or regress to crying for his mother
Did he feel that jolt of anticipation
for the answer to the question
that no one can ever quite put words to
Something about a purpose and the mystery of the soul
Or perhaps, if you’re poetic, where the sun hides when it descends
Below the curtain of the west
Until it’s time for stage east entrance and an encore performance
Of the oldest show around in red
(unless)
Each echoing drop a gunshot
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H. Riley
The knowledge a stab to his chest
How much blood can one person lose
(unless)
Or is it possible that he knew
In the dark recesses of a frantic mind
That it was not his blood he heard
Pounding the bucket bottom in some fatal deliberate percussion
Is it possible that, with another’s blood on his shaking hands
And a murder on his broken conscious
He let his death-row heart join tempo
With the water
And slow gradually
Until they both
Finally
Stopped.
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H. Riley
Untitled
I am in love with consciousness
With the feel of the air in autumn
And the smell of a shade of saffron so deep
It knocks you to your knees
And while it’s some consolation
That these things are perpetual
In that they have existed for a tiny fragment of time
And were experienced
And will therefore live forever
As metaphysical loose change
In the jingling pocket of space
Yet life is still a banquet
In which we feast on the love of beautiful strangers
Leaving me wishing only
To be eternally ravenous.
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49
H. Riley
Untitled
Just another adjective soul verbing across the noun
Yet still
Lulled in the gentle waves
For some reason I always thought it would be torrents
Pictured melodramatic surrender
To the fury of the roaring storm
But the harbor was so beautiful reflected twinkling in the water
Taken back to that one Lido Isle calm night
Meandering barefoot along the mid-August waves
Where were you when I sat reading in that
Open-air Laguna coffee shop
Watching the water drip into the sky?
It was my greatest fear at that time
That I would never be so happy again
As I was in that charmed season
So here is my glass of milk raised west
Under my breath to the rhythm of the waves
A toast
For all the words you didn’t love with every breath you breathed.
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51
Betania Grossen
Betania Grossen
Untitled
Jump in After
I laugh
A distraction
Then my thoughts come back to you
The laughter dies
Quickly
And the smile fades
As if it were never there
An illusion
Painted on my face
To make you think I’m fine
“I’ll be just fine, pretending I’m not”
The words are perfect
But I’m not allowed to listen to them
So the words, the music
And the memory
Just play over and over in my head
You’ll never know, never know how bad I feel
Unless I tell you
Which I won’t because you’ll laugh
Then your smile will fade too
When you realize I’m serious
I’m always serious
Serious about you
You don’t know
And you won’t know
Because I’ll never tell
Writings on the wall
That only I can see
And only I can understand
Written for a world full of promise
But erased for a world full of demise
Nobody sees that
When you hate the world
The world hates itself
Then it swallows itself whole
And leaves you with nothing to complain about
But yourself
Forget what you and the world had in common
And see the difference
You couldn’t leave if you wanted to
Too many people act like they care
And would save you from yourself
For the sake of their reputation
Resistance is useless
Go through life and find the only thing
People like us can depend on
Loneliness
Half alive
Half dead
And never forget your true self
The one that wants to leave but can’t
For the reason of people jumping in after you
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53
Chloe Scheller
Madeline Midbon
Whine to the Moon and Stars
Untitled
Complain away
Oh tired soul
Whine to the moon and stars
They will listen with a sweet sympathy
As you unfold your problems
Problems no mortal could ever satisfy
For we are blinded by the shadows of our lies and dilemmas
Unable to hear or see
Only to sink within our own unfortunate events
Sputtering and gasping for air, we try to overcome our obstacles
And to fulfill all our needs and our dominant thoughts
We crush others like tiny ants under our feet
Letting their light burn out.
Is it all a coincidence life didn’t like you
life wouldn’t cradle you wrapped in warm blankets
instead the sky flickers and threatens to unlock
Your mind breaks down but it doesn’t matter
because acceptance is irrelevant anyway.
We all gaped and listened to your rapid heartbeat
we were stabbed into silence
finally perceiving this vast cavern only after it crumbled
now I don’t even have the patience to cry
for you or sit still and analyze your revelations
because everything’s screaming and everything’s so
bright and I am too young to be torn by an aging world.
Only Me
Untitled
You judge me by my cover, and you keep me on the shelf
Eyes in the blind night
My skin is ever burning
Can you feel me in your starry reach?
Cut by a single, longing thread
I never said it was bad just not right
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55
Madeline Midbon
Madeline Midbon
Untitled
Untitled
My role was once lost, sunk to the bottom of the sea
and disintegrated.
I need to talk but I just keep on apologizing
to your black pupils reflecting the same hope
I will forever unwillingly distrust.
I’m screwed now and the sense of importance
is the only thing keeping me writing.
I struck out with love yet I wept
unofficially as I listened to your breath.
And the more this continues the less I am certain
of the boundaries that remain.
And I wept when my hand didn’t fit over my face
the way it did when I was a child and
my life didn’t slide by uncontrollably.
I guess the only real things are the ones I made up and I’m sorry
I was told by my heart that living had its reasons.
It said a soul does not waver involuntarily,
The once weak will be strengthened and the once weary rested.
I choose to look onward towards a noncommittal end,
a stage of peace.
I am neither found nor forgotten.
I am refreshed to the point of understanding.
I want the uncertainty that flows inside me to be lightened,
and the waterfalls to grow clear again.
Odd that my spirit rests weightless on my shoulders,
under my feet, swirling through my flesh.
Sometimes I cannot tell if I am in Hell or Heaven,
and then the breeze reminds me I will lead
myself to far-away places only to emerge as
the weak will soon become, and then I will decide.
Rain falls as night closes deep, I do not run
but wait for my blood to turn cold.
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57
Jessica Obee
Fireflies
The stars were always twinkling in my eyes, even in this
muggy, lonely dusk. I could breathe the cool air and let it poison
my mind. Nights like these always do that somehow, poison
your mind. They lull you into a sense of security, then once you
awake, it is day and the blinding lights sear into your head. All
of the city: dreary, grimy, sleazy, suffering from one big migraine,
the sort that pounds in your left temple like a big band groove,
then slithers behind your eyes and pounds out jazz.
I catapult my worries to the darkening sky and let the twilight drown in them. I am no human, no, tonight I am free of
those mortal chains and choose to be as the wind. It leaves me
to just be me. There are no tears or screams of pain; I will mend
everyone’s heart and breathe clean air into their blackened lungs.
Flying, flying I soar into the air and let myself hang in time,
the thin thread that could snap at any moment. I cling to my joy
like a tight rope as I fear the ground below, rocky and unknown.
A call from below brings me down and I waft like the first
falling leaf of autumn. It is Peru, all gold and blue with white
smiles and kind words. She waves and runs over, arms outstretched. I meet the embrace as we twirl and laugh, clasping
hands and tumbling over the grass. Her smile warms my heart
and fills me with peace that I once feared I never would find.
Jessica Obee
“Race you.” And we are off like birds let from their gilded
cages. Speeding down the grassy slopes, she falls and rolls until
the flowers catch her in their embrace. Laughing, laughing, I
beat her to the far rock and climb atop. She comes, bedraggled
and disoriented with a crooked smile. One tug and I am on the
ground, staring up at her. We share a secret thought and smile
wider, exposing perfect white.
“Look!” she points and there is a flash, then it is gone. “Did
you make a wish?”
I wished it could stay like this forever, but could I tell her
that? She would not understand. We are silent, watching the
twinkling of stars light years away, stars that already could be
dead. We are constantly unknowing of all that is around us, and I
tell myself to simply live and not worry about what is coming.
“Do you love me?” A soft, murmured question that stops
my breathing. My shoulder brushes the rock as I turn away and
crease my brow. My shoulder provides a place to rest my cheek
for a quick glance behind me. Her eyes are crinkled like a folded
paper fan at the corners.
“Yes,” I answer.
Silence. More bright smears spread and wishes parade around
like fireflies. A mating call, an answer, and life goes on.
“I am content,” she whispers as we stare into the sky. The
memory of tears still hangs between us like a lingering childhood memory, but it cannot ruin this moment. Tonight there
is no time for the shadows we bring into our life, only bliss. A
sudden laughter spills from us both and we stand, arms raised
to the sky.
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59
Hal Edmonson
Hal Edmonson
Coffee
Messenger
She sits
At the back corner table
Sipping the Chai
I have never
Learned to love, and
Telling the lonely bookshelves
That winter is cruel,
Mouthing wordlessly that her drink
Is far too dark,
The tidal swirling
Spewing her blend across
The oak table as if
It would become sweeter
With time
He lit a candle
as the stars went black
and though the words he so
desperately sought emerged
with god-like beauty
the lack of an audible answer
to the muffled prayers he
murmured in darkness
was never anything but natural,
like all things
quivering in the evening breeze
With a look at the sky
She asks me
Why I drink it black
Why it flows across my tongue as
Water on rocks and why
I never seem to grimace
At the bitter scent
And with his last breath
he wondered of the moon,
and the existential providence in the way
that it played out the final notes of his
enigmatic composition
to the hills asleep below,
while on his funeral pyre
he spoke to the falling rain
of infinite stars
lost amid infinite silence
I smile, and tell her
Of conversations with the sky
And the night transparent,
Vast enough to lose my words
In the welcoming absence
Of light
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61
Hal Edmonson
Vania Shih
December
Wing’d
My momentary lust for moonlight gone,
I sit curled in the windowsill
counting the droplets
dancing a quadrille in the night
And wonder if the shadows of your breath
will linger in the darkness
diffusing life into the barren ground
With wings I’m anchored to the ground, the naïve dreams
of flight tied to this anatomy abandoned in reality
Tracing their span tip to tip, the fantasies echo with smiles,
but you shouldn’t envy the tethered freak thus bound
These feathered chains lock me down, forming an impromptu
cage unfit for hiding from the stares they bring
Once stripped of the spell of first glances, I’m mocked for a
bird-like human or the twisted parody of an angel
Useless wings that draw only momentary wonder weigh
heavily and I can’t escape the lingering aftereffects
I couldn’t even fall right, never having reached a proper height
to sail brief into blue heavens or black oblivion
And I’m just the product of my shredded dreams prettily
patched together,
there’s no science to my misery
And again the glow of the streetlamp
reflected in the snow
casts a radiant complexion
over your buried mind
Your warmth draws my ear
and I listen to the
darkest secrets
of Spring
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63
Vania Shih
Nisus for Lost Dreams: The Myth
Times past are times to happen and entirety ricochets
on wet-inked pages
Hear the echoes of the moon dragon’s scales scraping
‘gainst the stars
Evanescently all your dreams are realized and lost,
do you cry?
Look into the copen blue sheen of love’s ichors and
glimpse truth
If you could wield eternal memory would your soul
be immortalized?
There are songs of crisp night winds threading through
the birch trees
Search for the secrets you seek within the fey haunts of spun
copper shells
Call the raging storm and hold your hands out to the
falling rain
You’ll find the coalescing wisps of shadows flowing between
your fingers
Waves of mercurial thunder crash against the lightning-lit
shores
Bind feathers of darkness to make your wind-streaked wings
Suture a mask from the tears of fire and the sands of autumn
Mendacious heroes championed the legends that pave your
exemplars
And to tread upon a sinistrous road is to look up and shield
your eyes
Where fulgurate sentiments roil and grin from out of
desolate fields
You must listen beyond your experiences that urge your
tongue to talk
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Vania Shih
There’s a realm thrice past madness where gods died
from icy desire
From whence came a malice only misery can breed
the climax awaits
In shattered lines of a web once passion-plagued you’ll
be twisted
The dregs of any oblivion you try to find refuge in shall
be burnt
Seethe and blaze, your heart should blind encroaching
destiny with fury
Only in the throes of a winter freedom can you take a
moment to breathe
Every luxurious sigh is bittersweet like the undefined smile
of the Lorelei
Have you forgotten to hate the chains that have you
craving numbness?
Wherever your feet find purchase the prints show it’s an
itinerant trail
Drink virulence with triumph’s ashes and return to the
changed beginning
Can you discard with the reassuring lies now that you’ve
come so far?
After images like fireflies in the elusive child’s catching game
To regain what was once lost, is it worth everything lost
in exchange?
Ignite your own dreams and perfect the effort of nisus,
devote and caution
The pen a sphere spinning in the book as it ricochets on
wet-inked pages
Out in the seas of continuum ripples of salt glitter
in a fading ring
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Vania Shih
Vania Shih
No Fairy Tale
Smothering the Fire
You’d look at me as if there’s something only you possess
that I desperately needed
And when I smirk and turn away waving without a
backwards glance
You realize that you’ve fallen from my graces, your petals
withered in my gaze
That now my words draw more blood than yours;
who has the thorns?
I will forget you tonight
as I’ll forget the breath of day
Once you danced like flames
writhing in my mind
while you twisted in front of my eyes
Your warmth drew me ever nearer
and foolishly I reached
Silly how you can compare sparks to stars
burns like kisses mar my skin
the sharp crumbs of pain I accepted
with bitter content
I can’t sustain the longings of you
they’re feeding on me from the heart out
my false hopes have crumbled into ash
Wishes once scudded along a trail
I chased them like fireflies
you’re a blinking light
in a dark I bestowed on my sensibilities
It was like trying to drink the sea
futility has haunted my steps
has become another shadow tied to my actions
And now I’ve looked back
the markings are there
you’ve illuminated them for me
I see what I’ve been seeing in you
I’m forgetting you tonight
As I’ll forget the breath of day
So when’d you begin to think that being a dragon
instead of a prince
Wouldn’t change my fairy tale thrall? That a rotten apple
is still worth eating?
Finally I knew to run, grabbed my heart from your lair,
leapt from a tower
And lo, when I slammed into the ground my sensibilities
returned in tact
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