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Chucking Oranges Erin Sheehan Under the ocean I sit Cross legged My arms in front Dreaming The taste of the clouds As they sing, mouths open I bite my nails I bite my nails The coral reefs, they are all snails The ocean waves are overwhelmed They crash like titanium I bare no fails I bare no fails The giant whale He nips my lap and down He flails Down he flails Down he flails I wonder why the ocean Is full of nails Down I wail, Down I wail, Chucking oranges, I realize I failed
ghost of you anna gallo I’ve been dancing in these empty rooms with the ghost of you, singing a song that we both knew. But my voice comes crashing back from these bare walls, a hollow tune I don’t know at all.
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Leveler. anna gallo
Nikki Vijaybhaskar
We need a leveler. So much joy is found in suffering. We put ourselves above others, finding something in the great illusionary divide between the high and low, the upper rim and the dust. We throw insults like confetti at the sorest of parties, finding pleasure in the pain of others, while we rise in the imaginary pedestal of our minds. But there is no pedestal. We are all, We We are, Two hands & one heart, Bent souls & false starts, Sore eyes & shaking spines, Stained scars & worn lines. We are the sunlit silver lining, the broken glass kaleidoscope, still shining. Sidewalk dreams on a rainy day, the last word in a world with nothing left to say. Come down off your pedestal, please we’ve gone too far. We need a leveler We are.
answers Cambridge, MA, 6:00 AM He walked towards his station, striding past the unlit worktables and humming computer terminals. He stopped to gaze at the esplanade. The sight was an eyeful. From his high perch in MIT’s chemistry lab, his asylum, the morning walkers looked like tiny emmets. He stooped slightly and rested his forehead on the cool glass of the window. His tired mind wanted to stop, just for a moment, evade the pull of his work bench and be a daydreamer. Dream he did, but his mind kept flicking back and forth. Into the future, and back to theat fateful day when he made a breakthrough. He looked over at his table. It sat there, in the petri dish. Lackluster , dull, with a matte texture. It reminded him of the only picture of Ma he had; old, dusty, dull and fading in a shoebox, somewhere in the attic. He reflected on the aha moment he’d had a couple weeks ago. The test tube had stayed clear as day as the last drop of lye left the pipette. Just as he was beginning to wonder if he’d made it all up in his mind, the slim tube turned jet black. HisHe felt the tremors in his hands trembled as the substance quickly went from a sap green to a sodden brown and then settled as a tin coating right up to the rim. He raced out to find Prof. Leighton and finally located him in the cargo room, trying on one of those new safety goggles. The professor was all keyed up as they walked back to the lab. It was a balmy afternoon. He spied a bunch of students sprawled out under a tarp in the Danny Lewin Square. One of them was running after a dog that was apparently making threats to pee in the park. It reminded him of a vacation he spent in
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Rio, with Ma and their dog Rhino. They stopped at his bench, and the professor peered into the tube. The slender container’s wallsinsides had faded to a dull, mushy substance. He jerked away from the window as he came out of the reverie. He loped to his desk and took in the items strewn across the surface. He plopped into his seat, and looked around the deserted lab. A chart of the Morse code was tacked up to a wall. Someone had brought in a mannequin, clothes held up with cotter pins. There was a picture of the Capitol building. A cut out of a needy-looking cat was taped to the frame. Jane was tatting doilies again. It suddenly occurred to him what a motley crew they were. They were at the bottom of the Chemistry school’s suborder. Maybe this thing in front of him could catapult them to prominence. As the ire at his own ineptitude began to fade, the familiar, dry, ache reentered his heart. The only question he really wanted answered—would Ma be proud of him? He would never know.
Life nikki vijaybhaskar ikki Vijaybhaskar is a graduating student in the Masters in Professional Writing Program at UMass Dartmouth whose short (23-year!) existence is already proving quite illustrious. She has made her own fate by trusting her gut; Nikki left her home of South India, where she completed a Bachelor’s in the (expected) field of Mechanical Engineering, to pursue Technical Writing at UMass Dartmouth.
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n the MAPW program, Nikki has been an ideal student and classmate, proving that she is a multi-faceted person and writer. While she is a geek and a techie at heart, clearly thrilled to be in the field of Technical Communication, she has a ferocious hunger to consume art. Fearless in everything that she encounters, her latest goal is to one day illustrate a cover for The New Yorker. Nikki’s enthusiasm for the written or otherwiseexpressed idea is infectious, and she continuously encourages and inspires her peers.
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Life is a tree, With leaves of old memories; They may not be green But will never go unseen. Some may charm, With mirth and warmth, While others carry gloom From the days of doom. A baby shower, a beautiful flower, The smiles you saw and the miles you went A laugh with your loved ones And endeavors unsung They will all stay with you Till the moment, when The heart and the root will say, “I’ve had enough! I’ll hang up my shoes!” And there you go and with you all these leaves Into the grave where the soul unwillingly sleeps.
uring the summer of 2014, Nikki worked as a Technical Writing Intern for the fast-growing Akamai Technologies in Cambridge, securing a position with the company upon her graduation this spring. She has since encouraged her friends to apply for positions, with this in large part leading to her classmate’s earning the same internship for the summer.
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For the longest time, I thought Michael Jackson was Indian. Then I learned that there were other countries. I learned that I could go there; go anywhere. So I went.
Nikki Vijaybhaskar
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