Category Archives: Poetry

Poetry, Prose

I Pick Me – Brooke Safferman

 

I longed for the days we used to have

Back when we were free from our shadows

And the things that existed beneath the surface

But quite subtly but yet so boldly all at once, you had

Changed.

 

You were always my favorite escape

Until I knew all there was to know about you

Or so I thought.

Or so I thought.

 

You imprisoned me, kept me in a cage with steel bars built of your emotions

Some metallic alloy composed of your cruelty and my acceptance of something Primitive and unforgiving

Your rules were Creed and Scripture and Rhythm

Every word you spoke dictated the very substance of my life,

All actions traced back to you.

 

But could you blame me, really?

Spellbound by the authoritative way your lips moved across my own

I lost myself somewhere

In between the “I love you”’s and the “You’re the best”’s

I knew who you really were:

A ruler and a tyrannical dictator

Control was your elixir, Power, your mighty Pandora’s Box

 

As much as I crave you, sublime in all your mercilessness,

There is something I must tell you:

I Pick Me.

And I must walk away.

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Poetry

Menen – Ian Dean

As far as I can see I admire you,

And so you have inadvertently lead me into folly.

But how could you, that has said so little,

Lead so passionately without even speaking?

 

As misunderstood as the worth of diamond

The thought of speech of the beauty not siren.

 

Such a note that is yet unsung;

I wish to hear your native tongue

Which I have been told is nothing more than

What can be found, and has been, here

 

Regardless of how shallow informant’s depth

Your vibrant face is full of breath

As brown as coffee of your country

I found you new as herder Kaldi

 

And often, I know, I’ll meet your face

A habesha girl with hair of grace,

That shelters you from eyes of envy,

Rests as soft as your skins consistency

 

As passionate as my perceived bestiality,

I have yet to know of your personality.

 

Past waves of tef that equal nigh

The count of stars found in your eyes

Had cursed men and sent to die!

They look to much in glaring skies.

 

Will you take me as am?

Consider despite a foreign man,

Or maybe was it yet my plan

That led me here by my hand?

Could you ever gave the damn,

To hush the world and take my hand?

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Poetry, Prosetry

The One Who Knew Me Best, The First One I’d Never Lose – Brooke Safferman

My dreams are haunted by

The loss of you, The One Who Knew Me Best.

 

Golden hair thicker than the forest

That we took a walk in that first time

You kissed me

And I vowed you would be

The First One I’d Never Lose.

 

Here I am, a year later and still scratching

My first two initials with that of your last name

Onto my notebooks like some 10-year-old in puppy love

Onto my desk chair like a punk who sits in the back of the classroom

Into my heart with each and every memory

 

Of the way your face lit up when you bought me tiny sunflowers,

Of the earnest sound of your laugh when I told old jokes

that weren’t even funny,

Of your whispering breath when you told me how I was

The Girl You Had Always Wanted To Find.

 

Time is a funny thing I’ll never understand;

The older it grows, so does your soul.

 

But mark my words:

No matter how many days and

Hours and

Minutes and

Seconds tick on by

On the retro cat clock with the scanning eyes

(Back-and-forth, back-and-forth)

That you had given to me as our last anniversary present,

Well,

Just know that there will never be another you.

 

You and me, we were burgled that night.

A hit-and-run,

A drunk driver and his equally drunken friends,

Robbers.

They stole your life,

And they stole you away from me.

 

So rest in peace,

The One Who Knew Me Best,

The First One I’d Never Lose.

I will Love you always.


-The Girl You Had Always Wanted to Find

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Poetry

The Way I Want to Be Remembered – Iman Messado

All I’ve ever wanted to be was
the warmth of my favorite plush animal.
I’ve never said a word about
the smell of a new pair of shoes.
I want to be
the sunlight caught in my niece’s eyelashes,
the ink on a college acceptance letter,
the wrapper of your last tampon.
Who ever said I thought about
the tag of a new cardigan?
If you talk to me about the
way that my grandmother’s curtains
do the jitterbug when the summer breeze arrives;
about the hot peach tea that burned by 11 year old tongue,
then we might be on the same page.
But don’t you dare mention the lingering scent
of some $90 perfume on my wrist.

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Poetry, Prosetry

Chance – Harika Kottakota

An old, innate love replaced me–
Scissored the silver nylon
Connecting our shoulders like
Twigs scattered on forest floors
Robbed of light, of fortitude
How venerable this bondage
Seemed within the storm’s eye
How easily, how wholesomely it
Deceived my butterfly thoughts
So naturally, you faded from
Dreams that once consoled me
Yet hubris stops intervention
I simply begin walking again
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Poetry

Four Years – Kaavya Raman

Four years,

First two, emotional roller coaster,

Third, a discovery period,

Fourth to come.

Four years,

Friendship struggles,

Loss of friends,

Gain of friends,

Friends who stick around.

Four years,

Creativity versus practicality,

Practicality is the norm,

But creativity prevails.

Four years,

Proud of myself,

10 year old me would be ecstatic,

18 year old me is yet to come.

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Poetry

The Exception to the Rule – Brooke Safferman

The leaves tickle my bare feet
Dew drops beaming proudly in the coral-lit world
Peachy skies raining euphoria upon our giggling bodies
6am; we’re the only people who exist.

And your lips tickle my elbows
Nothing is as sweet as the whispered “I love you”s
Or the way I lose track of what is my hair and
what is the grass.

The moisture of the ground beneath my back trickles
Through the cotton fibers of my starchy eyelet dress
White is the color of purity, but more importantly,
that of your soul.

With your arms around me
I know that we will be
The Couple That Lasts.

And we will be
The Sweethearts
The When-Are-They-Gonna-Get-Married-Already
The Exception To The Rule.

I watch the birds fly by up above us
And I imagine we are one of them
We are too young to be in this deep,
But we couldn’t care, even if we desired to.

“We already are one,”
you say and you smile.
I lace my hand into your own.
The Exception To The Rule.

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Poetry

The Woman in Yellow – Ugonma Ubani-Ebere

There is a woman in yellow looking at me. She looks sweet like a buttery bread ready to be dipped in tea.
She is looking at me.
Her eyes brown like chocolate silk
As they flow down like chocolate milk.
She doesn’t blink.
Her face is blank, she doesn’t think.
Trying so hard to look mellow in all her yellow.
Her limbs are limp like jello.
Her skin looks cold
As if she needs someone to hold.
A sound of blasting thunder is sung
As she remains forever young.
She never looks away and she never makes a sound.
She melts like red butter on the ground.
There is a woman in yellow looking at me.
I was the last person she saw before she took herself out of her misery.

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Poetry

Stripes – Bryn Bluth

Distance is simply a concept of space, unfortunately, however, it’s a very real one. There was nothing missing before we met, no chunks falling out here or there, I was a happy, whole, person, but your goofy hair and radiant attitude enraptured my mind and filled me to the brim. It was some adventure, that summer; you taught me how to read into the stars for a better understanding of my soul while showing me how to spread just enough strawberry cream cheese on my bagel. We sat in store windows and questioned the rationality of inflatable ties, passed Italian sodas back and forth between Sci Fi novellas found amongst our late-night library visits, summited mountains, breathless and heaving; I conquered lightning storms for you, so I could watch the elation on your moonlit face as you played your third last round of frisbee soccer two hours past curfew. We had something beautiful, and we still do, it’s simply been stretched from one coast to the other, marred by extended separation, but that’s okay- our relationship is a tiger which has earned its stripes.

But I’m starting to forget how my name tastes in your mouth and that scares me, because surface tension is a fragile thing, and I want a tomorrow for our tiger.

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Poetry

Basic – Ian Dean

Though provoked with adolescent struggle and pubescent instinct,

I still think I was naïve

Too naïve to see that in between the mist-ridden breaths of the deceivers,

One I could call betrothed to me, would break my allegiance.

The image was vivid, or maybe just arrogant sound piercing my ears causes me pain,

But I know that you, whose rapturing thrust shatters deep into my heart,

Hath betrayed me.

 

I sought appreciation and understanding,

And though little was given, I was thankful.

Never revealing your motive or peaked intellect, I knew only what was necessary.

 

You saw me,

Someone with little experience and even less self-confidence.

So quasi-decisive you satisfied your hunger with my innocent being

With no hope for any fowl retribution to mask your guilt.

In a sense of pure nostalgia, I would say how

You were sweet, kind, relatable, but yet so menacingly calm and distant;

Like the moon who orbit’s us.

 

I’d never gotten rushed into friendship, and although we weren’t attracted,

I felt tragically bonded to you.

I felt special and stimulated

As with drug’s first kiss.

 

Almost as I should have seen you coming, I began to love you.

I classified you as far greater than a simple friend, but a companion.

Though you’d rather devise a bloated stratagem as you devoured my sensibility and patience

As a frantic mouse in a serpent’s den.

 

The blow was sudden, and the kill was agile and swift leaving no wounds or signs of trauma;

Just more voids to fill.

And you, the one to have and to hold some grudge,

Raved for my collapse

Eventually gaining whatever sick gratification that doth ensure.

 

And you, the one to absorb my grievances,

Left me to rot;

Unconscious and stricken with the shock of my rejection that followed your dagger’s final clutch

You must think yourself the victress of my demise.

But I, more that you, can affect the perceptions of many;

My glory in failure.

I’ve cast a veil no mere property could disavow

After all, I have captivated your entity to total rage with my mere presence.

 

You are of a quantity so basic that you cannot even

Quell your own flaws to properly dismantle mine,

Inferior.

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