Tag: poetry

~Sappy Daze~ Day 13

Sappy Leave a comment 
I Took a Picture 

of an old lady 
taking a picture, 
in awe
of a naked tree. 
That tree attracted 
her admiration 
because 
it was stripped 
of its bark
is what I 
thought, until I 
realized that 
tree was 
just like that, 
and not diseased or 
traumatized. 
Did the old lady 
taking a picture 
know that? Maybe I 
never actually 
took a picture. I 
can’t remember, but I 
remember wanting 
to, and if I 
had actually 
took a picture, 
I deleted it 
right away.
I remember wondering 
if it was creepy 
of me to 
take a picture 
of the old lady, 
too, but what I 
took a picture of 
was her 
taking a picture.

- Sappy

Capturing Campus: Dying Ritual

EKArts Leave a comment

Content warning: Suicide

Dying Ritual

Put on shoes—your best ones–or regular ones; tie them tight for white toes and pink ankles; start walking; walk with purpose, on a time crunch to nowhere; cross the street; watch for cars; don’t trip; remember not to trip; not tripping is important; round the corner at the stop sign; there’s a bird on a wire; don’t stare because that would be rude; keep walking; another turn; do you remember where you’re going; reach the gate; bend your spine; duck beneath; don’t let a car snag your side; up the elevator; press down; top floor; wait a moment; think of nothing in particular; wait some more; the doors shutter open; step onto the roof; find the courage; take a step; remember your shoes are tied; take another step; look at a bird, which could be the old one but isn’t; take a large step; how would one know if it is the same bird; take a larger one; step step step onto the ledge; is anybody watching; watch the bird that hasn’t budged; move an inch, a couple more; how many centimeters is an inch; the wind is cold; breathe a breath; make it good; don’t go slowly; say a prayer; don’t go slowly; don’t look down; but do; should you look down; is that what people do; look down and fall—or don’t; you’ll see it through tomorrow.

aSoSS 40 | Leeway

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

…and she responds, and doesn’t get weird, or defensive, like you.

[mouth agape]

Yeah, yeah, it’s okay. Me too.

Trader Joe’s, 12:00PM, 11/24/2024

every shipman is aware of the dangers of slack, a knife of potential cutting across the air. and yet we have tiptoed around the topic for too long, each of us too scared to wake the current and lose the line. like a cruel childhood game–whoever moves first loses!–your hands are at your mouth and i am on one knee (as if to tie a shoe, i tell you, but really, do you believe that?) and the moment is frozen in a dream, so vivid a memory could not do it justice. the orange is left to rot on the counter, unpeeled, unsplit. pure and perforated and rotten, at the same time, in all the wrong places.

If you don’t like it, you just hand it to Eileen, be like “cool, now you have two!”

Food Mart, 12:00PM, 12/26/2024

the vice of the human condition is the systematic approach to an unstructured life. you have been tasked with falling in love: go and sit on the bus and hold eye contact and brush the snow out of her hair. a look of surprise overwhelms you. even the most artistic are drawn to scientific conclusions, eliminating every variable at once. everything must go to plan or else it is not the plan at all. a senior thesis: is it, or is it not? the numbers quiver in their sockets.

when you board, the bus is empty, the driver wears sunglasses, and all the snow has melted.

That’s my job, and yeah, you and I have to stick to it because we’ve been way too accommodating!

Traverwood Library, 5:00PM, 1/14/2025

the tap water runs clear and straight–an ominous sign. it was the vietnamese activist Duong Thu Huong who wrote there’s no river without a bend just as there’s no life without its unhappiness. i look around; the room is littered with peanut shells. i am an elephant with a blanket on its back and the room is nothing more than a cage. outside, panem et circenses. the carnival band starts to play and the world is filled with all the notes of an obituary.

~Sappy Daze~ Day 12

Sappy Leave a comment 
PMS 

Pardon my speech. As a 
poor, malfunctioning soul,
pleasantries might not suffice as I 
pacify this major s*** of a time.

Pre-menstrual symptoms 
popularly include munchies--
pizza and milk-chocolate-coated strawberries. 
Problematically, my sanity is 
progressively missing, so
please my satiations and 
perhaps I might sincerely 
produce my pretty smile.

- Sappy

Capturing Campus: Washing Ritual

EKArts Leave a comment

Content warning: Obsessive compulsive behavior, gore

Washing Ritual

Close the door; lock it for privacy; check again, for privacy; remember to breathe; turn the faucet; let the water pour pour pour into the basin; watch the steam build up; pump the soap; press down one, two, three; like a cloud; scrub the palms and the wrists; the palms again; get the fingers: three, four, five; the frog webs or minor syndactyly—it must be one of the two: three, four, five; dig in the groves and under the fingernails that don’t have dirt under them but maybe they do, they always could: one, two, three, four, five; move to the left hand; one, two, three, four, five; one, two, three, four, five; one, two, three, four—the water should be scalding, just enough to blister, but not enough to regret; scrub hard, scrub very hard; scrape at the holes and the raw patches; rub away the fine lines, the creases, the folds in the flesh; keep going; the blisters will go away in an hour or two—maybe three; another pump: one, two, three; again—the right hand; the left hand; keep going; don’t stop; it burns because it’s working

aSoSS 39 | Suspicion

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

I never know the next time I’ll see you.

I’m always at home.

By the time I come home it’s 2AM!

Well, I’m probably awake…

Weiser Hall, 3:30PM, 10/19/2024

for Edgar Allan Poe, remoteness is a necessary ingredient of literature. we must detach ourselves from reality in order to best portray it. Muñoz Molina writes that he lives through the death of a beautiful cigar girl. He writes a story in which Mary Rogers becomes Marie Rogêt, substituting Paris for Jersey City and the Seine for the Hudson. like an outsider swiveling a telescope, sweeping the curtain aside, peering into the void of human nature from the neighbor’s window. her murder, of course, is never solved.

the cold is a sedative, the snow a sterilizer. you are across the world and only now do i dare to loosen my tongue. i brush your name onto the paper as i once did to the tears across your cheek.

Registering for classes now is wild. Go inside, they have more wifi inside than outside.

More wifi?

Pierpont Commons Outbound, 11:30AM, 12/6/2024

hey, it’s me. yeah, it’s been a long time, huh? i just got your letter, the mailman told me it was a miracle the machine could read it. he said you have the worst handwriting he’s ever seen, haha. there are just piles and piles of stuff in the back of the room that they just can’t send. can you imagine that? terabytes of information is just lost in transit, as if it had never existed in the first place. isn’t that crazy?

hello? is anyone there?

[holding a plate of cucumbers, hummus, and peppers] I like to get creative with my meals.

Yeah, I guess you could call that a meal…

East Quad Dining Hall, 5:00PM, 1/7/2025

the act of eating with someone is perhaps the quickest way to rewire the neurons. do you think our brains misattribute this relief of hunger? your fork vibrates, ever so slightly, attuned to the heartbeat pulsing through your fingertips. there are things we are not in control of and this is one of them. once bitten and twice shy, why do you keep your distance? the stomach rattles its chains.