Category Archives: Spring 2018 Lit

the women hide/ when the masquerade comes out
Honora Ankong

Saturdays spent harvesting husks of corn
and tubers of cassava
Sundays were for morning mass
And the chorus of mortars echoing through the village
On Thursday afternoons the dust of the harmattan
Paint my white kneehigh socks brown
As I walked home from primary school

Summer nights spent in grandmother’s hut with
Smoke-filled eyes I fight away sleep
Trying to follow the chatter
happening in my mother-tongue
That my mother never taught me

The president was to come on TV @ 9
But the lights went out
So we’re having a candlelit dinner
—without the romance

After school we play football with anything we can find
Suck the nectar out of hibiscus flowers
Race to climb the guava tree in front of grandfather’s compound
And dance to the rhythm of makossa and bikutsi

Last week at school we had to hide under our desks
Cover our noses with wet hankerchiefs
Because we were invaded by the smell of the tear gas
The motion from the strike outside
Drowns the sound of the school bell

My mom fastens the mosquito net
she tucks me into bed— tells me the story of a man
who lives near the lake,
I fall asleep and dream of playing in the river with my cousins
Those saturday afternoons when the water went out
And we were sent with buckets, to fetch water for bathing
And drinking.

During the dry season, we play hopscotch in the afternoons
Until we hear the messenger’s cries
I’m told to run inside and hide—for the masquerade is coming
Women can’t look at the masquerade, it’s bad luck
I hide behind the guava tree but I take one tiny peek.

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Honora Ankong is a 20 year old poet, from Cameroon, West Africa. Majoring in English, minoring in African American and African Diaspora studies. Loves literature, art music and fashion.

 

The Surgeon
Ryan Piper

 

Tonight

 

I found the appeal

Of what a

Surgeon feels

When they pick up a knife,

 

When I

Used

A spatula

And a fork

 

To get a
Fry

 

Off of

The floor of

 

My oven.

---

Ryan Piper is a very tired grad student.  He loves coffee and lives with his cat.

Now
Jessica Clifford

Let us find temptation
Grasp its oily surface
Claim it for ourselves.
Claw towards our wants –
Viciously
Leaving a trail of purpose
In the hands of us – the fighters.

 

---

Jessica Clifford is a senior majoring in Communication Studies. She unabashedly relegates humans as second to dogs.

A S̶o̶b̶e̶r̶ Drunk Ode to Whatever
Bek Brannock

Here’s how I’ve learned to open myself:

For God with God
soft prayer stale Communion
one cracker for His body
one bottle of $7.99 Flip Flop wine for mine

Take bended knee or rather
hits before prayer
beg burning bush for Saul scales to fall from
disenchanted eyes searching for
any type of better future

What’s the penance for piss filled jars of sin?

Lately that’s the only gift from my friends
There’s gotta be backlash or
backsplash when someone takes your trust
only to return it sopping wet with excrement

I gave up profanity for Lent
so don’t keep f̶u̶c̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ me up like this

Between His silence and my loneliness
despite my WWJD forgiveness
all I have left is to drink Mary’s fame
until barbed halo shards fall down
disguising scars with hallowed feathers
breaking teeth to fourth dimensional fangs

What’s a monster outside of fiction
What’s a mortal turned angelic
What’s this thing I am now

It’s this beast y’all made me
mentality reorganizing body until
suddenly I’ve dissociated from reality
I don’t belong here anymore I mean
it’s been made obvious I don’t fit in

God help me as I chew my way back
to the Holy Place
devoid of this transcendent shame

I pray there You’ll speak my true name

---

Bek hates the bourgeoisie and tomatoes. Take their poems with a grain of salt (then shot and lime). Support artists – Insta/Venmo/Cashapp: slugbelly

 

The Trembling Thread
Asha Gowan

Coasting
on a thread that trembles
untethered from our gauzy womb,
detaching through ashen bits
into the Sun from backyard peach trees
is a dash to the cleansing flame,
a prayer for consumption in the heat,
for liberation from the slow burn.

I am numb
and hungry, 500 miles from home
on the one-way trajectory
since letting go, wind hollowing out
my limbs. The thread is my thread,
droplets from my eyes racing down to you
turning to vapor and dew,
unraveling from my innards where love
digests and twists my gut and longs
for the woven taste of our web of forevers.

Crashing
on the walls of cold
and darkness, falling from stars
and losing touch with the moon,
night makes the spinnerets ache,
and freeze-dries the teary rise
as the coasting slows

Lonely
it is to travel the thread
without you. I am retracing
the way I lost my head,
how we cast a line into the sky
and wondered about its echoes.
500 miles and counting.

My love,
it goes and goes and goes.

---

Asha Gowan writes poetry and fiction, practices visual art and music, and enjoys long quiet walks with nature.

Where it’s night forever
Ali Ismail

they divvy into tribes
in order of paleness—
the fairest
bear a gory transparency.
A tribe of ghouls unlike
the opaque others.

Gauzy romantics
who hunt bats into stew
by the high noon moon
and swashbuckle
the renaissance of
night.

Listen and Obey
Daniel Johnson

I am tired and starving
Hold reunions at the shore.
My limbs are cut,
Bloody, bleeding my core.
See clothes worn and torn.
Mommy worked herself sore.
Daddy lived and died poor.
I will not be patient anymore.

Let the sun be cloaked by the clouds
And bring on the rain.
Send in Jupiter’s wind
And give us a hurricane.
The planes are grounded.
The trains all delayed.
Cemented to a spot.
Now listen and obey.

 

i will be this way
Michael Petit

 

i am
soft as summer clay
tilled after sunny shower
droplets following
the creases of my form
within and throughout
no fear of what’s found
it is mine to keep
mine to love
no shame for what’s felt
it is mine to hold
mine to adorn
i will be this way
i will because
i am

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