CREATIVE WRITING

Hello dear bipeds,

Welcome to the April selection of creative writing. I offer these poems and stories as refuge from your studies. Seriously, procrastinate. These are way more interesting, anyway.

Your Creative Writing Editor,

LAURY CHARLAND

Let’s Just Talk

ADRIAN DARWENT Contributor

Okay. I’m listening Two hearts beating An autumn flutter Wings powdered together

Sticky like your gloves At the end of a long day Picking flowers For a paycheck

Okay. I’m listening Two gloves hit the tin Sides of a garbage can And slap me in the face

Stinging like your touch At the end of your parade Picking someone else up Outside my apartment

Okay. I’m listening. To an excuse you’ve made So easy to love Just shut up and

Listen, okay? We need to talk I need you to listen Are you listening?

I’m listening, okay? Then look at me when my eyes roll back into your head and when my lungs beat at your chest to seize in the open wind and when my embalmed cheeks siphon air from your wound and when my throat has never worked so hard to breathe and when you kiss me after you’ve buried me

Creative Writing by

LAURY CHARLAND Creative Writing Editor

Doodles by

ALESSA ORSINI Graphic Designer

In and out, an Explosion

TANYA LEMIEUX Contributor

An avalanche hiding behind The mist of a crushing crowd.

“Is it better to speak or die?”[1] If only I could move my lips.

A golf ball in my throat, A mind faster than lightning.

Have you no notion of power? Or have you become a knight?

A supernova for a heart, A black hole for a mind.

But will my fingers synchronize, Will I ever learn your tune?

Or will I drown into the ocean, Only to get swallowed by the sand.

To Fomalhaut

VICTORIA VOLPATO Contributor

The constellations smiled at each other. They winked and flirted and danced and floated; Gemini held — arm in arm — his brother, Pisces swam in waters too eroded.

But when I plucked one ripe out of the sky, To carry with me wherever I pleased, They ceased their revel and watched as I cried About the nothings and no ones I dreamed.

They were taken — my intentions so pure, I simply needed more, more than myself And the creature of my mind who would lure Me into pleasure then take for itself.

Roots

LAURY CHARLAND Creative Writing Editor

She watched the desert stretch on, a vast wasteland of nothingness and memories she’d rather forget. Her steps dragged on, uneasy and exhausted. Her throat was raw and parched and the weight of her whole life slowed her down. Or perhaps it was the dead who haunted her, clawing and grasping at her ankles. At her hands. At her hair, when they too had the strength to get up. She didn’t think about them much anymore, but they followed her still.

There was her dad, buried in a landfill somewhere even the dogs hadn’t been able to find.

There was her sister, buried in bits and pieces across Arizona. She’d always loved puzzles when she was little.

There was her next-door neighbor’s dog, grilled to perfection and fed to the unsuspecting parents attending little Debbie’s 7th birthday party.

There was her uncle, who she’d left hung and castrated in his living room in Maine.

And now there was her daughter, buried in a shallow grave 30 miles south of route 79, the sand cracked and dry and hard and nothing to mark her grave but the tiny skull of a mouse she’d found dying as they walked together towards the perfect spot. It was better, she thought, that her four-year old never really knew her mom. And as she stumbled and scratched her knees against the scorching ground, she couldn’t help but wonder who would bury her in turn.

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CEDRIC BOUDREAU Contributor

It spends its leisure reading old books made of leather rotting green brown The damp book, heavy with mold, flops on the table with a wet sound Its gaze meets yours and you see its eyes shooting to every point of your body The chair it sits on is old and rusted The floorboards cry out from the weight its cheese-like stumps carries, Clad with an overworn long skirt, fungus thriving on unwashed fabrics It clasps the metal bars “The youth should be in my place!” Wiping its mouth of drool, it looks away “I wasn’t always like this ya know, When I was like you… fresh… I learnt the right way to be! The right way, which made me like this… But it must be! One must suffer to achieve greatness.” It looks back at you, a pustule bursts open The green yolk oozes and spills onto the floor The creature bends down and coats its finger in the viscous fluid The wall is painted in the yellow green substance A shape, a letter, a name on the wall Grenouille Renaissance “This is my name!” It laughs, it snorts, it coughs for a moment stretched in forever Silence fills the room A drop of water falls from the damp cobble ceiling The creature looks back and inspects you like before Sheer panic fills its face “You don’t understand this?! It’s from the…” The rest you don’t remember, the door closes, a shriek is heard, and learning is lost.