Student Work: Advanced Writing Course
Parables of Law and War
The outpost had existed for centuries, stocked with soldiers for reasons lost to time.
The Deception of The Bird Revelation
Chappelle's casual and conversational performance style in this special has a very specific function: It gets the audience on his side.
Three Poems
"People have never seemed so precious. / Like the earth from outer space, / beautiful and beyond me."
On Being Edible
I believe that catcalling serves the double function of allowing the collective chauvinist culture to flex its muscles in the streets in order to keep women in a state of submission, and of allowing individual men to boost their egos by engaging in an activity that gives them a feeling of power.
Crisis and Cooking
"I have felt within Venezuela throughout my entire life while spending all of my twenty outside of it. In an attempt to finally understand what happened to the beautiful country in my mother’s stories, I begin to ask questions and start memorizing her recipes."
Three Poems
"French Fries," "Teleport," and "The kid I’ve watched the 1989 'Batman' film with four times this year."
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