week nineteen

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traffic signals

-like the green needles of a coniferous tree

and the red illumination of amsterdam city

shimmy and shaking my body will always be-

breanne chipman

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when you are gone

i warm water on the stove
just to warm my bones-
and i can feel winter coming now.
the windows are closed
and the evening seemed to last
for half the day.

I clench my mug tightly
hoping that the warmth will rub off.
odd how the temperature drops
when you are gone.


thank you new york

beep.
honk honk.
beeeeeep. hoonk.
hoooooonk hoonk honk.
beep beep beeeeeeeeeeeeep.
hooooooooooonk.

thank you new york
for letting me know
that it's time to get up from my nap now.

bianca merkley

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jill taylor vs. dana scully

no shirt, no shoes, no pants,

no baggies, no yum yums,

no plants, no chaps, no braided belts,

no jams, no turtle necks, no dap daps,

no tramps, no spouses, no cummerbunds,

no silks, no smokes, no service.

chris duce

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in response to austin's "solo album"

For the record, Garfunkel had the better voice. And I'm not just sayin that cause our names share the same first three letters (we gotta stick together, you know). Not to mention that there must have been some sort of creative synergy between the two of them - as great as Simon was on his own, his career was never quite the same as when he had Garfunkel by his side. Kinda like the Beatles and the whole sum being greater than the parts, you know?

gard nelson

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broken trust

as you ran toward me,
arms stretched
wider than your smile,
the sun smoked
on the horizon
and beat at the heels
of your fearless footfalls.

though you had not yet reached me,
i could feel warming arms
squeezing from me
a dignity unmatched,
a fire so numb and pretty
it might melt me.

and my fist clenched
and i sent it
shrieking at your eye.

it was like hitting a baseball
so purely
so cleanly
that nothing was felt at all
but the stroke.

you sprawled backward
on the dirt;
a stunned fear
in your circular eyes,
and there was no ball
to throw back.

tomorrow lays alone,
mind on the past
restless, but remembering,
as what we had
marches with spring
out the window.

lincoln wilder

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i consider you an acquaintance

shatter your glass face
made of clouds and ideals
suck the living breath
out of your bulging lungs
adorned with bow ties and
"arsty angles" of your
tragic face
tulip chains resound like bells
in my black and white dreams
ernesto, rigoberta, saddam
forget them all!
it's your face i see!
it's your approval i demand!
americans; proud to be
unless you like what you see
when you wake up in the morning
"i don't read fiction"
"i don't read fiction"
paris je t'aime.

kristie forzese

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train wreck

what if all your ex-girlfriends
were gathered in the same room
would they yell at each other?
would they fight to the death?
would it be like putting scorpions in jar
and shaking it up?
or like seeing an imminent train wreck,
you want to look away but can't

no, it's much worse.

they would all get along really well
they'd share stories and laugh together
and form a facebook group
and agree to meet monthly

trav clark

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the triumph of rock opera

what you have heard is true. meatloaf has the third top-selling album of all time worldwide. 42 million people proudly own a copy of bat out of hell and sing along with the overweight, sweaty, but sexy sexy man in his unflattering tight white shirt and suspenders. and if you don't quite understand how this happened, how it beat out zeppelin's IV or anything by the beatles, and even holds a narrow advantage on the dark side of the moon, just watch the music video for the title track. when he says, "like a sinner at the gates of heaven, i'll come crawling on back to you" and points his fat finger right into the camera to emphasize the fact that he means you personally, you'll never have wanted to give in to anything more. this mysterious man named after a mysterious food will grip your heart in his chubby hands and take you down that road with those 42 million who have paved the way before and put meatloaf on his over-sized throne with giant gold-gilded bat wings reaching out gloriously from either side. giant bat wings straight outta hell.


true love and a possible restraining order

i'm not even positive that it was her i saw
over the shoulder of the less-impressive girl
i was talking to last fall, but i think it was.

she was picking up her bike
from the rack west of the chemistry building
while i was trying to think of a way

to casually break my current conversation
and run over to talk to her before she rode away.
i never thought of one.

that was twelve months ago.
today i chained my bike up in that same rack
for probably the two-hundredth time since i saw her.

each time i hope (mostly subconsciously now)
that we'll both ride in at the same time
and she'll smile at what she erroneously assumes is happy coincidence.

we'll chat about something charming
and i'll pretend to be going the same way as her
only to turn around once she gets to her class

and run back to my own that's held
in the first of the many buildings we passed.
this is not love. this is a sad and pathetically far cry from it.

but I like to think it's a possible symptom,
like the abnormal bumps and discolored moles
that make the doctor check for cancer.

maybe it's an embryonic love,
a precursor to something greater,
but for now still in the eerie little fish stage -

with gills, transparent skin,
and those bulging, ugly, alien eyes.

(from falling star magazine)... they said i have to credit them every time i put it anywhere

austinrory hackett

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who said that was cool

books, books, books

they're piling under my bed

its not that I don't want them there

because really, I do.

i just keep forgetting to read them

no, thats not true

the real issue is that when I find more I like

i forget about the ones I already own

and still haven't read.

but I like those books

i like lots of books

i just started reading one today

its about george.

washington, that is.

he's cool, in an

"i sorta wanna know more about him"

kind of way.

i'm a nerd

i'm a history major

what can I say?

"who said that was cool?"

i do.

me and my history books

so cool right now.

liese rodger

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pies

pies are not for baking by wives in kitchens on days absent from work.
kitchens, bedroom, houses, wives. i will never be called wife.

sarah cutler

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a poem for rob

you stumbled in with weak knees and a knot in your tummy.

integrals, derivatives, trigonometric functions of x?...you felt like a dummy.

but then i came to your side, glasses on and calculator in hand.

i said, "i'll sit with you for as many hours as there are grains of sand."

you looked at me with tears in your eyes.

you said, "claire, you've saved me from a most terrible algebraic demise."

i put my fingers to your lips and whispered, "no, rob. rob, no..."

could it be that you have forgotten a similar tale that happened not so long ago?

you see there was a house on thirteenth street.

a haunted house in fact with which few others could compete.

we walked through that maze hand in hand,

on each of our wrists, a red wrist band.

you protected me from the robotic killers and ghosts.

when lance fell over, i think i laughed the most.

rob, i know i couldn't have done it alone.

with your bravery you made it possible for me to get through that death zone.

now what is it we can learn from these experiences

neither of us asked for nor wanted?

it is that nothing can bring two people closer

than math and houses haunted.

claire m. russell

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