This is the final portion of our first edition of The Write Stuff. Here, we have compiled a selection of poetry submitted by students. If you wish to view the first or second sections of the April 9th edition of The Write Stuff, which respectively contain academic work and creative fiction writing (non-poetry) you may find them here and here.
Creative Fiction (Poetry)
Among the submissions we received in poetry, there were many standout pieces. One in particular that stood out to us was a submission by C.J. Garrett, a senior majoring in English with a concentration in creative writing. C.J. describes their work as an ambitious and experimental poem that reimagines the epic as a modern construct exploring the spiritual and metaphysical relationship of poetry. We also have had many other compelling entries touching on the topics of love, depression, and identity from several other talented writers. Michelle Garcia even combines the visual and the literary in her work, using collages with thoughtful choices on color and imagery to convey the feeling and theme behing her words.
C.J. Garrett
Noiseless Andromeda
I am a global radius
Without orbit
Without climate
Without orientation
Without vertigo
Or a lyrical apparatus.
- Noiseless Andromeda
Through my telescope's lens,
I tumble my gaze into the night sky.
A world of fog, troops of specter
clouds swath pillars of stars:
the city's bustling scuffles,
adulterated radiance, empty
circadian of a city that's depleting
rumbling ignitions of souls:
metal cars clinging to cobblestone.
Towers cobbling ditzy light.
Titanium chimneys sputter pollution:
satellites churn their emissions:
sonar droplets of tamed electric pulse.
Broken ozone, moon frolics glow
squeamished by neon buzz of bars
and lit steps of a stadium's sidewalk.
Trampling the raylets of concrete
with a pure artifice and pixel silhouettes--
streams of light like acrylics
obscuring murals shaped by moss
And I gaze into my telescope
at a dusky night sky
bucking my axis
with the flourish of outer oceans
swallowed by manic
spectral steam of a city
that still won't drown out her light.
She who tugs on my island,
pulling it with the tides of her barreled arms.
She who laments on the infinite
for having no end.
She whose freckles appear as
radiant dust clouds.
She whose nightgown flows
like rudders of comets.
She whose voice must be with
out sound orientation.
She whose face must embody
a galaxy with the pulsing
of trillions of stars tunneled over
the mirrored seas of my telescope's aperture.
2.5 million light years away she hurdles her
light of polygons and shuddered ellipticals
and I collect the flashes of her body
tracing every freckle and pore across the sky.
From above my flat terrace, she shimmers
cloaked in the lantern valley of suns
dragging the moon with the soft brandish
of her snow-capped teeth, a smile that
crescendos before a billow of my telescope:
a virgin with lunar hair who hangs her
expression to her side like a fiery ampersand.
2.53 million light years away
she lives, encaged by a halo of hot gas
whose luminous piranhas swarm invisible
with serpentine scales and ultraviolet teeth
snaring, circling a fortress, a collapsed quasar
spinning its fractal beams inside a blackhole
where she remains chained to its apocenter
singing of ensnared stars gurneyed away
as wreckage of torn torpedoes.
2.537 million light years away
she remains as a prisoner,
her laughter and tears
becoming vibrations
nesting in the foothills of my ears.
Her soundless whispers
follow me and I chart their
lost vapors like seeds in a crater.
************************************
Let us go then you and I
Across zodiacal summits of our zenith.
Let us go then you and I
Coupling wings of our worded clouds.
Let us go then you and I
Leaping aphelions of our armored love.
Let us go then you and I
Across margins of our marching songs.
Let us go then you and I.
We can tune each-other's lyre
crescendo nature's duets,
break the ribcage
of dawn
unloop the knotted streams
of constellations,
scooping their rivers,
tracing their symmetries across
the spine of the universe.
Let us be that bit of sky, sky
That never washes the helm of its spark.
Let us be that bit of sky, sky
That fortifies the mantles of all worlds.
Let us be that bit of sky, sky
Your sapient kisses tracing my auroras.
Let us be that bit of sky, sky
As we orbit each other as double moons.
Let us be that bit of sky, sky
As we join our bodies in an ambit menagerie.
Let us be that bit of sky, sky
Your earthly hands sketching my azimuth.
Let us be that bit of sky, sky
Your fingers strumming my inner walls.
Let us be that bit of sky, sky
As we relight the nucleus of every star.
So come starseeker and free me rom this interstitial imprisonment.
The castle guards its sounds
with vials of creation, frozen
debris of a previous existence:
that flings back into itself like the broke phylum of a ghost.
While niveous tongues of comets
and the bastioned beams of piranhas
swaths all its defenses and traps
but they are no match for the wanderment of your telescope's gaze.
So come stargazer, kiss my hair and mark my body as your canvas.
Here I've been trammeled for all of
eternity because of my allurement
of that of a siren without talons
or a harp without its strings bolstered by the venom of a basilisk.
For I am a pure flame of carbon
singing only of its only element
and this song sung is as sweet as
a rose without red or vermilion or of any frolics of a spring's drizzle.
*******************************
And as morning fissures all the stars away
from a city that never reels or evinces
the slosh-rot of their ersatz beacons,
the virgin with lunar hair's words
continues pivoting towards me, calling
upon all their elements that advances
their errata designs
like a pottery of nerves,
starking my mind's intravenous landscapes.
All its deltas, mesas and archipelagos,
are fumbling wings of her loftless voice
tied to susurrant bursts of stamina--
cornered by my telescope of a night sky.
As I sleep listening to currents of pedestrians,
her words follow me and I chart their
falling whispers like the veins of a hurricane.
"So let us go now, unclung from shuttles:
untethered from mental decays:
eternity soothes as a counterfeit elixir:
entropy beckons like a comet's core
opening as a clam with a pearl as a star
that smears the sky with radiated
rays of our crescendo that's a museum:
A stadium where our doubles meet:
I want to meet you as my own true self.
You whisper to roll-rocks of dusty clouds
Lapping a moon with noise-bound thoughts."
**********************************
And so now our nights are
summed out;
and thrust upon themselves
in satellites and
the slashed mosaics
of an insomniac city;
the archaeology of our fates,
uncoded
and
threaded through
the ruminations of our souls
like whispering climates inside
the bottlenecks of horizons,
uncaptured,
unmendering,
all the tear-sloshing of our
770,000 per parsec gargling sounds:
let us weld together
harmonies
into one another:
no divisions between the
heartbeat
of an inert petal in a
haphazard monsoon
and a gestating sunbeam
on the metal bars of my lurking city balcony:
my telescope and my
pillow head,
scoping ahead prairies
spawned from your taller incandescence:
here you leave the imprints of reticent songs
mapping all my colliding neurons
and I nimble towards
their descents
with haste from
famished cheetahs--
imbued with your essence,
launching the reams of
my melody, galloping towards
rearranged elements brisking all your sagas:
the city becomes dilapidated
by the synergy of your muted flamelets
like a lion with its mane
doused in seeds of backwashed helium:
and the sky ratchets its pride
through aureate stubbles of your flocculents:
beautiful woman with
eyes from ungazed blueprints and a voice
unclaiming birth, serenading
impotent cores--soon ripened comets--
how the cosmos gurgles
its rhythm to hearken your halo,
arresting my telescope
with stratified storms of castles--
I glide my overwhelmed
telescope towards the aphonic jaggering
unnoising your staccato--
how you hurt and weep, these gone vocals,
they are what now number me:
I the starseeker, with your tears thunder to my throat
like bolting jaguars
and now from my terrace's pit,
I wield my telescope as an undomestic magnet.
a wild, unreefed instrument,
finching at the ledged sky, punctured by
mechanized swimmings made by artificial light:
break away all that's familiar:
All I want is to enshrine your radiating voice
and swallow it close to me as a stroke symphony.
Let us scope the parliaments of stars
and unmender their staged laws.
My island, the afterglow of andromeda's
diaphanous,
progenitor
back
wards
spin.
There's no time to waste.
Death gurgles the seams of dreams
and enchants the cerebral of lifted verse--
imagination touches gravity from its other side
and transfixes your balcony's voiceless spirals.
They move my satellite without friction,
pampering me by the orbit of your flexes.
Your knuckles crack and my zodiac grins.
Your hair unfastens and my rotation excites.
Your smile loosens itself and my telescope
captures waltzings mirroring our synchronicity.
How beautifully you render yourself
Hoisting my shadow to dance along your contours.
How beautifully you render yourself
Bejeweling me by the tarot of your bolide clutter:
Let us go: a barometer of frenzy atmosphere
Let us go: a telegraph of furbished artifacts
Let us go: an almanac of thermoluminescence
Let us go: a weathervane of changing seasons
Let us go and chart the warmth of our atoms
smattered between us--a breath between stars.
You hold up the other half of my sky
Ensnaring me, latching me to your lashing arms.
You hold up the other half of my sky.
Embraced. Nurtured, cycling towards your apogee
reclaiming indexes of clouds, depositing one cloud.
I am planted. This plateau of my terrace,
scoping ahead these brackish stummerings tossed out
gyrating citadel-flames, a far flung disk--
There's no time to waste:
and so now I leap from the silence of my terrace--dauntless of death/
telescope belted to my waist like winded loops of Altazor's parachute.
I'll protect you....
Andromeda
whispers
as I
fall.
Michelle Garcia
Bugs
so when you feel the bugs crawling
On your arms and back and neck
call me
when your throat closes up and the
World is too loud
To let you cry in peace
Call me
when the warm cocoon of your bed
Is cold and the blankets begin
To stick to your tired body
I’ll be there
Close your eyes and rest on me
or we can stay awake
I’ll hold you gently
I don’t have all of the words but maybe
We don’t need any
Soon you will be yourself again
Bring back color to your cheeks and
Stars in your eyes
You will feel at home again
And I will be proud of you
Blue and Grey
When the world gets too loud
And you feel lost again
I will be your blanket and cover your tired body
Here you are safe and warm
Here you can rest
When the dark circles under your eyes are too hard to look at
When your skin no longer feels like your own
And your legs can no longer seem to hold the weight of your shell and all the things you carry
You can rest and lean on me
Here,
You can close your eyes even if just for a minute and rest
Rest peacefully and deeply
The dawn is no longer bed time
It can be a new start
Or we can fall asleep at dawn and try again tomorrow
Sammy-Jo Lueg
Untitled
I used to look at dead winter trees,
and see them barren with no leaves.
and I would cry-
how could something so beautiful just die?
I used to wish, and hope, and pray
that summer blooms would just stay.
but fall comes like a thief in the night,
leaving no warmth for us in sight.
and it would bring me so much sorrow
to know the leaves would fall tomorrow.
when winter came I felt even worse,
It felt like earth was under some curse.
The trees reached to the sky with their wretched hands,
begging to replenish the barren lands.
but our creator looked down and they said “no.
it's just the way things have to go.
It’s all a cycle, if you must know,
things must die in order to grow.
The birds still sing with winter blues.
so can I and so can you!”
Now something’s changed if I must say,
I think it happened some time in May.
as I saw spring flowers bloom,
I suddenly felt another doom.
I came to miss the cold winter air
and that’s when I realized, I’ve had an affair.
I feel this every seasons end,
mainly when the weather blends.
I begged the season, “please just stay”
but like the others, it made its way.
I now sense that it’s all a cycle,
each season waits for its own revival.
hot, then cold, then hot, then cold,
in with the new and out with the old.
That's just the way life has to go.
seasons come and always go.
Now when I see dead winter trees,
I no longer fall down to my knees.
I thank the season for its coming,
no longer finding it quite as numbing.
Jessica Yim
One last wish
I don’t wish comfort nor pain on you child
With no pain you will live with no flower
Foreseen pain will not harden you the same
Don’t let your body get used to the degree
Quiver and surrender ‘fore you feel free
Pickled Reality
It mustn’t lie in reality
let it ferment in its jar
sour in their own dungeons
its new taste so pungent
it can cleanse out your guts
Dreams can only remain
a lie to unwanted visitors
I Have a Story to Share
I am not
Who I think I am
Nor what you think
I am supposed to be
In this world stands
Million other versions of me
Which is why I shall
Treat you with
All due respect
A Broken Foot and Its Owner
How did your foot getting broken
cause you to think about your race
again, you tell Dr. Gutenberg that
dad wants you to see a chiropractor
“You wanna please him, right?
Then by all means please go.”
Treating your own foot now has now become
A familial act even though you are not familiar with
As if servitude is the only thing you care about
Have you not owned your dreams and doubts?
Your skin color automatically renders
affinity towards your family, cancelling
Erasing the thoughts and doubts
as they urge you to “Go on and keep smiling”
Now you unpack your therapist’s unsolicited advice:
“By all means you must cut them toxic family out”
You have already attempted but later realize
cutting one of your limbs means all of the
seeds you have planted are to be extracted
from its very roots of this entangled land
You pull off the band-aid
Perhaps putting it back-on
If it means blood shall not be shed
Joey Liang
The Loving Boyfriend
When he first met her,
She wore a scarlet silk gown
that fluttered with her every movement.
Her smile would even make the sun frown.
They often went to the beach together,
the waves steadily coming onto the sand.
The weather was hot and humid, but
bearable as long as he had her in this grand land.
The color of her skin was a snowy pale, and
her eyes sparkled and made him feel alive.
Her fingers were warm as he held them to his lips:
She was the reason that he would survive.
They watched the news together-- the world became
hotter and hotter. The resources are running dry,
but he was alright as long as he had her by his side--
even when Mother Nature started to shout and cry.
Now she wears a pool of red.
The same scarlet as her gown when he first met her.
It does not flutter, nor does she move--
The color of her skin, a ghostly character.
The beach is no longer there, the hot weather
has dried it bare. The sun was scorching hot
on his skin, hot enough to fry hers as well.
He knew it was time when her skin started to rot.
Her eyes have lost their sparkles and her fingers
are cold against his lips as he pulls her pretty
tanned fleshy thigh to his teeth. She will be
the reason he survives in this famine society.
Words to Myself
When night falls and all is in slumber, only the mind
wanders and repeats each memory, vividly. The
memories that want so badly to be left behind.
In the beginning, it collides like a tsunami. But as time
goes on, it hurts less. However, it still treads lightly
sneaking when it is unsuspected; it comes at any time.
The vanilla ice cream is no longer sweet. It slowly melts
and the favorite food no longer brings a joyous smile. Even
with the warmth of the sun shining down, it cannot be felt.
The leg steps forward, but something holds it back. Afraid
to turn around, I look forward to where the sun shines:
One day I'll be happy.
Xiomara Demarchi
Love Garden
i met you when the
winter melted into spring,
and all at once,
the ice in my heart
soon watered the flowers
you planted inside of me
A Modern Tragedy
my ears bleed from the siren of your absence;
my heart beats the saddest melody
whatever the gods may be
i know that they are punishing me
when you seep your way into my dreams;
my heart beats the saddest melody
Pain is known to have many faces—
yours is all of them.
perhaps Sophocles once felt then as i do now:
alone, and in love with all things unbearable.
my heart beats the saddest melody
Depression’s Lullaby
there i was, heaving my lungs out on the bathroom floor,
tears cascading down my cheeks as the shower head ran—i
did not know where the water began or where the tears
ended. for months i have been swallowing cigarettes whole
and staring down at the bottomless pit of my morning
coffee. as i stare at the swirling madness of my reflection, i
attempt to search for peace in a world full of insanity, to
find meaning in my meaninglessness. long nails and flaky
skin begin to pester me when my brain speaks the loudest; i
peel away at the surface of my fingertips, hoping that the
stinging sensation will snap me out of my misery. what
does it matter to live when all i’ve ever felt is death? i ask
into the abyss of my morning brew. i am left without a
reply. but somehow i am full of answers.
Interstellar
