After Walt Whitman
by Sam Feingold '09

I am a camera with a broken aperture
All of the light comes racing towards me
Verdant landscapes of flourishing forests
The azure waters of a silent hidden lake
But so do the landfills with decaying bodies
And the graveyards littered with trash
This camera does not focus on any subject because all
Subjects are worthy of my gaze
Cast away your planted inhibitions and fall to the ground
Touch the earth
Feel the dirt sifting through your fingers
Grab at the mud with your naked toes
And when I am done I will give you my negatives
But you can do whatever you wish with them
Print them, expose them, burn them, dispose them
The potential we have by far outnumbers the constraints

-

On a Crescent Ship in the Pacific
by Jonathan Holin '08

On a crescent ship in the Pacific,
I read entries from an old sailor's journal with
razor-sharp scissors
and think, oh how terrific it would be to lose myself in one horrific
storm and be captured by gallant pirates
on a crescent ship in the Pacific.

And think, oh terrific
a life, to plunder lost riches and bury private
treasures at sea.
And think, oh how terrific!

With a vocabulary so economic,
shouting Yargh! Avast! Yo-ho! And Shiver me
timbers! Through a pint of rum in my burly fist
on a crescent ship in the Pacific.

That'd be a fine life of singing sea-shanties,
eyeing wenches and looting haughty landlubbers
on my crescent ship in the Pacific.

And think, oh how terrific!

-

A Rainbow to Remember
by Sarah Hill '08

When I finally stared down
at Uncle Anthony's up-turned lips,
molded red wax upon a face
once feral enough to scream

murder at Grandpop over the orange trees,
steal Nan's new watch
trustfully set on her yellowed counter,
crash my father's car with impunity,

what I saw was not the green fog
of stale breath, of bristled mug, of an uncle
who was never an uncle to me,

but the blueprint of a memory,
my only memory of the uncle
he always should have been.

I wanted to hate him,
the rotten brother who had lived
to hear an indigo bunting
warbling through Nan's fields,
so long after my father had died;

but now, eyes clenched to my nose,
closed upon his remains,
I remember my violet play table,
when we sat side by side

and tracing each arc
of my crayon curves,
"Roy G. Biv," he said.

-

Greguerias
by Graduating Class of '08

I One of the most prolific and honored poets yet little known to modern readers, Spain's Ramon Gomez de la Serna (1888-1963) invented the gregueria. In Arabic, the word derives from "confused outcry" (algarabia) or gringo, meaning an "incomprehensible language" (Zavatsky, 169). According to the Ramon, the metaphor was the heart of the gregueria, and he was "always thinking of one thing in terms of another, drawing lines of connection between them, creating the 'third thing' - the metaphor" (1970). Humor was also at the root of these "aphoristic prose poems" (169), and Ramon delighted in the unusual yet profound connections the greguerias provoked and how each attempted to define something. Here are a few of Ramon Gomez de la Serna's greguerias (translated by Bill Zavatsky):

Cotton mattresses are stuffed with the lint that life puts in our pockets
Lightning reveals the cranial suture of the sky.
Parentheses emerge from the writer's eyebrows.

Here are a few greguerias produced by the Magical Realism class. This is our attempt to create that "double vision" (170) of the gregueria, where one sees both what is real and magical all at the same time, producing that epiphanic "Aha!" moment.

- Raindrops fall when clouds feel self-conscious and are on a diet.

- Bitter is sweet that has been left alone for too long.

- Jazz is Chopin on a tilt-a-whirl.

- Zippers are trustworthy: they hold in things that should not be seen as if they are secrets.

- Islands are the places continents do not like.

- Just before we go to sleep, our thoughts are rocks skipped over the happenings of the day.

- Getting up before dawn is an insult to the sun.

- Water holds stories impossible to be contained within books.

- The static between radio stations is the space between my dreams.

- M's do back flips and becomes W's.

- The R is kicking the S to the T.

- A dog who seems to bark at nothing is actually praying.

- How much life do you miss when you blink?

-

Ceramics
by Jabril Trawick '11

Artwork in the hall
A sign that says do not touch
But something touched me

-

Anniversary Song
by Hanssens-Reed '08

Frank O'Hara got me all choked up in the middle of English class.
i remembered then that tomorrow marks a whole half year
that i've known you.
(what he said wasn't even that sentimental) but i realized
neither of us had really thought about it.
to you half a year seems short, like nothing, mundane like air.
to me it is the distance my mind has gone wondering about you,
and the air floating between the hips of a girl and a hula hoop,
preserved in a pause, whirring, temporary, lovely,
just the whirling of tiny beads in the plastic and
   even when it falls the sweet air is still there.

-

Why Sherman Alexie Writes
by Cara Liuzzi '08

"In his spare time, the six-foot-two Alexie still likes to play basketball and has joked that he would willingly trade his literary career to be the 12th man on any NBA Team."
--excerpt from Canku Ota, a Native American Newsletter

When Sherman Alexie looks at the moon,
he sees a giant basketball.
He sees it swishing through the net of pine trees
jutting across the horizon. He wonders
what it would feel like to palm that ball,
to grip the craters and frozen magma seas
with his moist fingertips.
He imagines squaring his shoulders towards the
pines.
and extending his arm at a right angle, locking his elbow
in the smooth motion of a jump shot,
drooping his fingers theatrically after the release.
He can see himself flipping the moon
towards the hoop with just-right backspin.

Once a month, he launches
a full-court shot with a little too much power,
and the ball doesn't come back for awhile.
He sits on his front porch each night,
watching it come back by degrees,
admiring the arc,
noting the improvement in his form.
To pass the time, he writes.

-

Grew up, had fun, where were you?
by David Judge '10

I say: fun, basketball, playing tag,
I say: Freedom at night, McDonald's after freedom,
I say: riding bikes to play football at
Rhawnhurst field, Solly Playground,
Riding bikes in Shriners bike park,
Then walking home with your bike almost busted in two
I know: everything. I'm safe here.
Wiffle ball and stick ball on the corner with the
Apartments (Frontenac and Chandler)
Hockey, basketball, I grew up in that driveway
Walking around that High School
Always walking distance from McDonald's
I say: best times of my life, where were you,
It was the best times,
How could you think otherwise?

She said: danger, graffiti, abandoned houses,
Hoodlum children, street names,
I was there: scared at night, scared for you,
Not knowing what was going on around you,
I heard: rock and eggs being thrown, windows being broken,
Drugs, guns, Mikey died,
That could have been you!
I know: gang fights at McDonald's,
Zach's Nick's, your bikes were stolen
From underneath you
I remember: your cousin's jaw getting broken
After he won a game of basketball
At Solly Playground, I was there:
Glass bottles being thrown at you,
Just for walking past their turf,
I was there,
I remember,
It was the worst of times,
Because I knew.

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