Tag Archives: write

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

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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Poetry, Prosetry

Natural Disaster – Maria Gray

i. my best friend tells me
she is a misprint in her own life story
because no one has ever told her
she can narrate it herself
ii. at age twelve, the lightning
stretching across my hips demands
more attention than any other natural disaster
and even holding my skeleton together
seems like more trouble than it’s worth
iii. i am helping elementary schoolers
during their quarter-hour break
from a theater class, making sure
they fill up their water bottles
and nibble on their graham crackers
when one dark-eyed little girl
confesses she thinks she is too big
to let anything past her crooked teeth
iv. every magazine i’ve ever read
tells skinny girls to wear large shirts
to create the illusion of a bust
and tells larger girls to don
vertical stripes and straight cuts
to form a shrinking silhouette because
no matter a woman’s size
the most beautiful part of her
is always the negative space
v. i may usually be terrified of heights
but i don’t get vertigo when i look down
and see where i used to be because
it’s no secret: i am better off where i am
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Prose, Prosetry

Sacrilegious – Reilly Wieland

You’re the proverbs in my mind, the John 3:16 that turns over inside of me- even if that’s

sacrilegious

I am religious in a way that my god does not wear white,

but drinks his coffee black because his lips are like sugar

 

You are the sin I am confessing, the word that comes to me in my time of need and the being I say my Hail Marys for

Your lips are like wine, blessed, and they are mouthing something to me while I scroll through the pages in a fruitless attempt to find parables that justify this

 

I’ve found Eden in your breath, and it feels like my skin is etched with gold, like North Star of your love.

I am not a saint, but a martyr, and even when I fail to find my faith, you resurrect like on Easter Sunday- gifting your wisdom that reeks like like gold, frankincense and myrrh.

The letters according to you stating that it will be okay have been written on my mind in permanent ash, running deep in my veins with the way that you make me feel like I could turn water to wine.

 

When you’re around me I feel sacrilegious, the way you have your hand wrapped around my thoughts makes me question my beliefs because

 

the facts aren’t as easy to fall asleep with as heaven is, sometimes

and I don’t want to ever read scripture again if it isn’t about the way that you look during the summers

 

My church has no damnation or forbidden fruit, it has stories and you, and the prophetic power that I felt when you asked me who my god was

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