welcome to arts, ink.

Joe Leave a comment

Welcome to arts, ink., where our student artists and writers are given a forum to illuminate the Michigan student experience through art. If you want to get a taste of of what arts, ink. has to offer, click on our Summer 2024 Reading List!

If you’re a U-M student from any of U-M’s three campuses, and you’re interested in becoming a weekly contributor, there may be a position available to get paid for your work. We review applications and hire new bloggers twice a year, in September and January. Read more about Blogging Opportunities here!
Email us at arts@umich.edu with questions.

Crooked Fool: Stories

Cydney Marie Leave a comment

Weave

Branching off, coming together, growing, multiplying

From one to the next back further than we can perceive

Whispered into little ears until voice vibrations turn to dreams curling like smoke

Shouted in streets, danced on stages, resonating into song

And never, ever silenced

Even when we think they are

Endings growing into the new

Breathing again and again and again

From before living on in us

And in those who will continue after we turn to dust and wind

Each struggle necessary to make whole

And to be

May this be a blessing

May each story take root in body and deeper

Connecting us to the infinite

Tell me a story

So I can breathe in all that has come

And all that will

Never to be silenced

~Sappy Daze~ Day 25

Sappy Leave a comment 
College Ingredients

A hint of spicy imagination (adjust to taste)
Some citrus zesty energy
1 stick of buttering professors up
2 slices of cheesy lines that weren’t very sharp
1 classroom of crushed egos after a final
4 punches from bitter grades
7 shots of sugary drinks
1.5 cups of floored college kids on a Saturday morning

- Sappy

Capturing Campus: 21st

EKArts Leave a comment

21st

Clouds stretched thin

like dead end

roads or frayed hair

sharpen the pencil to the point.

of breaking 

of knowing

the answers

| watch |

the world weeps to celebrate

cross the street

meet a friend

and another

for lunch and a book

that reminds you of someone

watch the sky die

let the bold moon

speak to you

drink loud music and vodka  

shake the floor with your tongue 

sway and smile 

desperate and dizzy

on the night you agreed to 

nod and say 

it’s time to leave

and wake to the rising sun

LOG_044_CRASH_SITE

Traveler Leave a comment

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Early Monday afternoon saw a vessel of unknown origin crash-landing in the fields just west of District 7. One resident (who wishes to remain anonymous) managed to capture the moments right after the crash as smoke billowed from the wreckage. No agency or nation has yet laid claim to the titanic craft; some speculate that it is an experimental military spaceship, some extravagant film stunt, or even, however implausible, a ship of extraterrestrial origin. Stay tuned: we will keep you updated as new developments come to light.

Critter Comix Week Seventeen!

spiderman Leave a comment

Text: “I think we’d be fine without the “d” in “Wednesday”.”

“Wednesay?”

I just got out of an Organic chemistry exam so I’m really tired, but I hope everyone else’s finals are going well! This is the same penguin from a few weeks ago, and it’s very hard to tell because I completely redesigned them. I probably will do that again because I still don’t like the design, but I like his personality a lot. He’s very dopey! <3

aSoSS 53 | Parasite

a-spider-on-state-street Leave a comment

I’m a moocher, I mooch off my friends, and my parents, and my ex-girlfriend, and my ex-girlfriend’s friends…

Duderstadt Library, 1:00PM, 3/28/2025

those bygone years make fools of us all. the cherry blossoms trace the streamline of the river breeze and i wonder if the petals will reincarnate, if the koi will nibble at the pink and grow streaks of coral and rainbow. there is a songbird in the harbor and it sings of a better time, a distorted dimension, a eulogy, or perhaps a confession: who i would have become, and who would have taken my place. in another spring, the sky is falling on our heads–the impact will, for better or worse, make us none the wiser.

Plus it opens up a whole ‘nother half of the world.

Yeah, and it shows that you are capable to love so much.

7-Eleven, 9:00PM, 4/10/2025

the art of imitation: copy the sleight of the smile, the sway of the hips, the twitch of a thought that pulls the corner of the mouth upward. i would like to love you, i think, incandescently. how did Humphry Davy feel when he invented the arc lamp? when he watched a wire burn without flame, cleaving light from darkness? a black so deep, a pull so strong, a filament that shines with the weight of the world. a backdrop, illuminated: i am removed from my thoughts, scaffolded, sterilized. destiny is chaos and chaos is disorder and disorder is the fabric of the universe, the term for a man with nothing to lose.

I’m growing less tolerant of the people I work with, the people I live with, the people I want to be around.

North Quad, 5:00PM, 4/3/2025

the drip of the faucet, the stutter of the metronome. a parasite of the mind, i know that now–i see it in your face, a quiet strength, the concentration of someone trying to forget someone else. we must grow into death, an acquired object permanence: a child playing peekaboo and looking for a parent who is not there. a grandfather clock chimes from the ashes; winter weeps for the man buried below, and as persephone turns her cheek the snow dissolves without a trace.