Jen Waters, Spring 2017
I. 46" x 46" The act often happens alone during deep slumps of doubt, fifth-life crises of existential dread, apprehension of vocation, of God, of self. I came around the bend to meet the eyes of the Crying Girl with her back against the north wall. She has wiped her eyes for fifty three non-stop years, and will continue to do so for the rest of her life. II.Me X Her I continue to meet with the Crying Girl, now called Comforter. We reflect on an action so primal, and colors so primary, of being stamped on steel to display strength, permanence—a life sentence, of domineering men causing misery, and a thousand empty eternities.
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Peter Spaulding, Spring 2017
Playing hangman with you, I think of origins. Is it a tragedy that he only begins to exist in death, or is he lucky? Mackenzie Innis, Spring 2017
1. I threw my love into the sea, A bird had brought her there to me. 2. He flicked the ash into the trash And now the house is burning. 3. the wind blew in the clouds today but I am Nowhere, at all. 4. poignant phrase. roots. stem. flower. smell, your head, my heart, our hands, s p i n n i n g. Megan Smith, Spring 2017
I grew up to the sound of my father's voice-- whispy articulations of dreams from authors I had yet to realize were untouchable. Tolkien. Rowling, Tezuka and Terui. I don't remember most of the things he said, but I will never forget the inflections-- the way words sprang to life when he read them from the page, inviting them to dance to the melodic hum of his voice. All of the bad in the world is shed-- lightens as he leaps into the magic, invites us to follow. Everything is safe when it's wrapped in my father's voice. No matter how deep his sleep he hears every, Psssst. Are you awake? Pleading for just one more story. My father's voice is always composed as though there's never been a bad day. I grew up believing he was the serious one. Supposing because he was the one with the job, with the boss, with deadlines to meet, it meant he had to be tense, easily angered, worn down by life and all the ways that it was nothing like he thought it might be. Isn't that what a father is? Certainly those were the fathers I expected him to be. Then I got to know this fellow, whose salted hair was nothing more than that—hair. Whose only wrinkles showed where his eyes smiled, and whose guilty pleasure manifested in sitting around the corner so his daughters wouldn't see him watching The Notebook. This wasn't a father at all. This was still a boy who wanted nothing more than to be invited to play. He was Obiwan, Pikachu, Gandalf, taxi driver even an axe murderer that one day. He smoked pot once, bit his tongue at every meal, but always jerked in surprise; felt, even in REM, the frame of a daughter in the door—ran so fast the football team called him crazy legs. He'll watch whatever is on TV, but we can't watch commercials anymore because he dances to the jingles and it concerns mom when the capitalists are winning. When he watched Les Mis he cried, and bought the beach towel, and he likes to blast James Taylor and pretend shared initials equate a shared destiny. I still wake up to his singing in the garage beneath me. There is no room for embarrassment, and if the book says to sing. then by God there shall be a song. Ravi Ghayal, Spring 2017
Heavy shoulders and cookie cutters. Shoes flutter as they hit the gutter. It's a warzone tonight, in a civilized manner. The young boy is sitting, trying so hard to understand her. The screech of the board and the bullets are flying away. The silence so desolate, deafness in the morning of May. Minds flourish as experience vanishes into thin air. To do what others before them could not, the weight to bare. GRenADES are gained, and failure is not an option. WEapons are given into the system, and the future only lends exhaustion. No rest for the weary or for anyone. Nothing is said but everything gets done. The marching of men to a common destination. Passing with flying colors is the only expectation. And when the war has finished and a paper is given. Only to re-enlist once again, motivationally driven. Endure longer and prosper throughout. All the numbness turns into shouts. And when it is all said and done. And the war is won. Only one survivor is left. And that is the gUn. Saul Lopez, Spring 2017
The garbage man picks up trash because nobody picked his back in Jalisco. The garbage man wakes up early because back home there was no future for him to wake up to. The garbage man kisses his children goodnight because his own father didn't have enough time, for he was in El Norte working as a bracero. The garbage man watches dubbed sitcoms because when he was younger all he had was a crank powered radio he had to share with his five siblings. The garbage man dreams of moving back to his Pueblo because despite having lived here thirty-five long years, this American soil doesn't feel like home to him. The garbage man does not mind being called names anymore because he's learned that people are more scared of him than he is of them. The garbage man sings at night because it helps him remember his dead father, who he couldn't visit at his deathbed because he had to pay for his son's tuition. The garbage man reads self-help books because they help him become a better person in this upside-down world. The garbage man cries at work because he must decide between eating or sending money to his bed-ridden mother. But despite all of this, my father sleeps soundly at night because in his sleep he gets a chance to relive the American dream he so desperately longed for. Tyler Farrell, Spring 2017
everything is north or west. the state of being, and sometimes we do crave exits away from the city. But mostly we hope to remain in the largest place in Wisconsin since we know how to treat ourselves with kindness and wonder like the light from the lake in winter filled with love Zac Wierschem, Spring 2017
I love the way God uses time like bumpers when you are bowling. Like, When God puts the one person you don't want to see right in front of you. And when God takes your keys and hides them in a black hole and you find the keys right where you first looked. Or, When God steals your heart and lays it on top of a towering shelf called passion and experience. And when you look for your heart you get lost and furious. I love the way God uses time to weave human lives together and connect them like an end rhyme. Jen Waters, Spring 2017
All that glitters isn't gold. Sometimes it's ash smeared across your forehead during a sixty second lay-lead-liturgy, The element that makes pavement shine, in spite of being walked on day after day, what makes the bird cock her head, The janitor and art teacher sigh with hands on hips wondering how long this debris will stick to the floor. But did you see the final product? A macaroni art masterpiece! None like it in all these years. Inextricable, irremovable, integral. A history formed with this sparkle-- embraced and irreplaceable. Come—witness this gritty, glittery hope. Abby Vakulskas, Spring 2017
My grandparents have told me stories about snow-- How it would fall from the sky in winter in little pieces, Smothering Denali in white, Drowning the valley in gentle silence, Swooping like sand dunes, Around the pine trees and houses in the village. They say it was cold, But not like any cold I've known. They say-- It hasn't been really cold anywhere since they were children. It's mostly hot here, And dry, Though they do get rain sometimes in Anchorage-- But they say it was different. And I laugh, Trying to imagine the Iditarod dogs pulling clunky sleds instead of trailers, Like they do now. Sometimes, On the most frigid nights, When the thermometer huddles around forty, I bundle up in an old sweatshirt and squint at the sky. I can just make out the flashes of aurora borealis behind the perpetual, Hazy clouds-- Maybe someday those clouds will bring snow again. I hope they do-- |
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