Tag: poem

Wolverine Stew: Travel Log

clydemg 1 Comment

There was always going to be a list

First wandering far past downtown to

A bus stop where once I walked westward with

Mud-caked boots and a rain-soaked umbrella

And two friends, all doing our best to flee

The Hash Bash haze awaiting us

And at that point I made a goal

To cover every cardinal direction

And see how far I could wander

East had long been done, a loop

That sent me past the first flowers,

Mannequins, ant colonies, and mourning doves

Of a spring with five false starts

But one always welcome all the same

Travelling together, time spent speculating

About what makes a “good” scary

And in between my trips I stopped

For a moment amidst tabletop memories

Or going through the graveyard, daisies blooming

Or an overlook of Shakespearean summers

Or a last time wandering the Arb for me

And the first for another

Before I made my way north, by bus, by foot

Into that setting sun with turkeys in the trees

Deer in the dark, raccoons by the road

Each a reminder of my final walks

As I took in the same stars

And finally, I decided to

Replace that chance to

Take a southward route

With a carnival, one more roll of dice

And a “see you later” to

Friends I go through the witchlight with

Because I’ll be back to finish my goal

Of four ways to wander

And start a few more trails anew

After all, I remember the paths

And the ones I walked them with

~Sappy Daze~ Day 11

Sappy Leave a comment 
Taiwan is the Sweltering Heat 

where stray cats purr and street 
food hisses. Stinky tofu stinks 
of unassumed deliciousness,
daring the foreigner to try it. 

Umbrellas are used 
on sunny days but can’t 
protect you from getting wet, 
so changing clothes three 
times a day is a must. 

The clothes first stained 
with sweat are then hung 
up to dry on the rusty chains 
crisscrossing the balcony, 
a constant victim of the 
perpetrator that is the weather. 

- Sappy

Wolverine Stew: Same Stars

clydemg 1 Comment

This begins with a question

How to thread a handful of years

Through a thousand words

And at first, I went for that

Sunset over Palmer Field

Over the classes where I learned about

Bioluminescence and serpent hoards

And what to do when a screw’s

Let loose through the fan of your laptop

(Which is mostly panic, by the way)

But I couldn’t quite catch the wisps of

Orange giving way to the night

So down I walked past

Two theatres, tonight with no moon,

Halls formed from paper monsters

From which celebration echoes

A courtyard of black-feather leaves

Where first this all began

Where I found a world of

Strange music and a good few

Kind words of encouragement to

Try this all out in the first place

And I kept on going

Stumbling upon the

Pothole pock-marked path

Taken in a parade of maize and blue

Trying to keep the cold at bay

I ended up before the stadium

A family necessity when our weekend came

Where I realized that the screams of a crowd

Are quite contagious

And I smile with the static

Still singing in my ears

But this isn’t quite it

So I wander a little more

And the sky darkens in

The sweet scent of shadowy lilacs

As I turn my attention upward

And there it is

How do I write a goodbye?

How could it hold

Every last thank you for the

Laughter I was let into?

I think of every

Walk with a friend spent trying to

Rot each other’s brains when

They became too full of phantoms

Every evening spent shouting at dice

Made of benevolent stones and troll skulls

With the friendliest chaos one can conjure together

Every post-it note needed to make a

Smile that stood in a window for a semester

And maybe one more that stays a little longer

Every mask I carefully made

As I joined in the revelries of

The one night each year I start to come back

From the ghost I can make of myself

Every strum and song and

Wild of words hustling towards happier trails

Every moment before the lights dimmed

And showed their rising beams of dust

Because each scene was built beforehand

And sung of afterward, the words a flash

Across a screen we all crowded around

Scenes made of plastic trees and hot glue gun thyrsi

Pinprick green constellations and roses, real and parchment

And all the days spent

Going from forests to films

To markets to midnight vaults

To arcades and on across Ann Arbor

Always with those I will be

Grateful to call my friends

All of that

How does goodbye hold all of that?

Well, it doesn’t

So instead, I’ll thread a hopeful “see you later”

Through the thousand words above

And look to the streetlight

That we’ll pretend is a sunrise for now

Because no matter what

For all those memories and people

That a goodbye could never hold

I’m under the same stars as you

~Sappy Daze~ Day 10

Sappy Leave a comment

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

Ching Chang Chong

Ching-ching is the sound of a 
cash register: the sound of money.
It’s the sound of an American 
dream achieved by a Chink.
But the Chink named Chang 
dreamed a pipe dream of fame 
only to pave a track to gold 
not meant for oriental freaks, 
because they were 虫, insects, 
and an invasive species from 
the Pacific named the yellow 
peril and came in terrifying
rising tides that never grew weak.

- Sappy

Capturing Campus: April

EKArts Leave a comment

The River Man
at the riverside
I saw arches of rocks
which told the water where to flow
about the pattern, I asked the girl beside me
she said a river man picked up heavy stones, guiding the water downstream
she asked, and he answered with tired eyes
“leaving a mark before I go”