Three Poems
"French Fries," "Teleport," and "The kid I’ve watched the 1989 'Batman' film with four times this year."
Student Work: Advanced Writing Course
Moonlit
Long awaited moonlight, emanating
My love is here
threading herself through this fickle forest
from the branches
through my roots, into everything.
I’m being conquered
the dead king
They sing to her grace
We are moonlit after all
Nature is …
AVOCADO PIEROGIES
First it was the chain stores. Dunkin’ Donuts bought out Sal’s. But that was happening to mom-and-pop stores across the country. Not ideal, but what do you expect nowadays? Then it was the people who swooped in and claimed to save the diner on the corner from closing. Now the only pierogies I can get are filled with avocado and salmon and some kind of berry I can’t pronounce.
YELLOWFACE
Some point down the line, an awareness manifested that I was not a part of the American ideal, or rather, that something bigger believed that I was not a part of the American ideal.
IT’S JUST A BIT
She hits my foot from under the table. First it’s a mistake, then she beams up at me and does it again, on purpose this time. We both laugh. “What’s funny?” they ask. “Nothing,” we say. Her giggles sound more like squeaks. These moments with Jade follow a formula.
SHALL I PROJECT A WORLD?
On the music of Isao Tomita, communicative entropy, and coming to terms with a diagnosis
IN SEARCH OF ROMANCE
“What is Love?” asks every romantic hero ever. “Love is when you really feel it, you know?” answers every romantic hero’s best friend or mentor who has some authority of love or just guesses based upon some romantic thing they read or have seen. “What is Love?” asks me, and quite possibly most people in their teens. “
WHITE NOISE, BLACK SCREEN
To what extent does a villain become a victim? Can you make a human out of any monster?
A SLOW SIP
Set in the rural Bootheel of Missouri Sharp Objects drifts through its story like the gooey cherry pie its characters eat sticks to the roof of their mouths.
THE WHEEL
"The summer was hot, the tourists were stupid, and Coney Island spun like liquid sugar in a cotton candy machine."
MY MAN, INVISIBLE
I swear I seen you before / standin, shifty, on my block after dark / I swear I know you from somewhere inside
FILM AND I
We go way back, film and I. In some ways there’s been some sort of relationship between me and the silver screen from way before I was even born. It wasn’t always positive.