21 May Written Post 2008
”Poem for Anne Sexton”
The man would not anoint you with oil,
but he said God was in your typewriter.
You typed of shit and indifferent angels
and the phantom limbs of damp ex-lovers.
Now you sit in your automobile, still.
Far from the keyed machine and far from God
and farther from the seedless, swollen man.
His tattered hem grazes the concrete steps
as he climbs toward the empty rectory,
out of the alb, into the cold shower
where, his head bowed not in quiet prayer,
he will not think of your dry and pale lips.
The garage fills with one part carbon one
part oxygen one part silence one part
indifference three parts regret
And in
his silence he will not think of your hair
pulled back tight as a drum, will not think of
your hands clenched at your stomach, will not
think of bruises caused by slow steady pressure;
he will be filled with that bottomless want
that is an organ we are born without
but never stop feeling swell with fluid.
- Rachel Milligan, Community College of Philadelphia, Class of 2011, PA
“E - E.E. Cummings’ Ode,
or, (sometimes I wonder if)”
sometimes I wonder if
You knew it all along;
if You let it guide
Your paper and Your
pen.
(reincarnation is unnecessary
when such words are Yours,
You live through Me.)
how You without breath
breathed life into Me,
I wonder if You knew,
but thanks is
eternal.
(explanation is unnecessary
when You make me feel so,
You live through Me.)
and if You knew,
I love You for it,
and if not
I love You for
it:
(and if heaven is a lie
let the worry dissolve in Your bones:
You live through Me.)
- Ann Weisse, Central High School, Class 2008, PA
“The Small”
I have felt the small
in my hands, in my fingertips,
fingernails, the space of fluid
between my knuckles.
I was small as a fish when
my palms fell to earth—
shoulders down and neck bent—
among the far-off ripples of a vast lake.
I watched as one glint of dust in a cloud
fell back to the surface of the sand.
Your fingers were too large and could not possibly
rescue anything from any surface,
not even to swoop an eyelash
and wish it all away.
You are used to cutting our
meals into triangle pieces and chewing
with big molars.
I cannot do this. I am a kid.
When you have made an ant hill
grain by grain. When you have felt
the beds of tiger lily pollen, yellow
on your young skin, the specks of
dust on your nose.
When you have felt a thread, and
a button on the blouse of a warm figure;
when you have touched and measured
the thickness of this page,
of a page of the bible,
a child’s book:
then you will know why a baby
reaches for your finger
as if it were the moon.
- Sean Zhuraw, High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, Class of 2008, PA
“What Biochemistry Can Teach Me”
That day in the park
I carved little circles in the ball of my foot
seeing the skin
retreat
and part
like the sea in the face of a prophet
The salt, in the brackish water
of the inlet
reaches my inner dermis
and kills
lyses cells good and bad.
They pop one at a time
each a little victory
Then, only then, there can be
a clean start
a fresh layer of bone and sinew
I want to skin myself
so that I can be new.
I want a new sole
so that wherever I walk will touch a new piece of me.
- Brendan Sullivan, University of Pittsburgh, Class of 2011, PA
“Every day Better is Coming”
Everyday better is coming
In tall warm waves
coating finger tips and tongue tips
with a thin layer
of some potent sweet smelling wax
I’ll be holding my own hands until it passes
Everyone like newborns dripping
with pink wax, hardening mid trickle
groping at each other smiling,
begging for thick embraces
comfortable with their new slow skin
enough to press chest to chest
without worry
entering into unknown wetland territory
Every single day, better is coming
in heat waves
that melt away our borders
so we become glowing glossy puddles
leaking and seeping into one anther
shouting secrets out loud
Everyday better is coming
And I’m holding my own hands until it passes
- Mia Cammisa, Temple University, Class of 2011, PA
