Laundry by Angelica Huertas '10

the clothes must be separated.

first, my son’s faded band tee
a whitish smear undoubtedly spurted
as a result of his private passion.

there is a hint of red stain
in my daughter’s underwear, betraying
the secret of new sexuality.

my husband’s blue button-down
carries the faint scent of foreign woman
an odor familiar from his embrace.

and the only sound that echoes in this house
is the dull hum of the washing machine.

October Growing Pains by Melissa Maranto '12

Wrinkled in my closet
Folded and jammed between
A flapper gown and a faded spacesuit
Lies my favorite costume:
Iridescent white slip,
Gold-painted cardboard jewelry, plastic scepter
To make me Queen of the Nile
Cherished that outfit, promised
To wear it on another Halloween

It’s my final year of high school
I’ve spent the whole day in costume
Prepared to prowl the darkened block
For the very last time:
Wrapped in enigmatic black
Velvet cape, emerald painted face, pointed hat
Cleopatra forgotten, for now
Not bound by a river’s waters
I defy gravity as the western witch

But I am bound by schoolwork
Shackled by my own maturity
Slave work unknown to an Egyptian queen
I am slave to my own nature:
My sophisticated black colors my mood,
And I dream of skipping again
Through both street and life
Seeking happiness and chocolate
My Cleopatra gown white as innocence

The clock strikes eleven
Celebrations, quests for candy over
My studies complete at last,
I can challenge my situation:
Toss aside the broom that failed to fly
Retrieve white dress, fake jewelry
But the little slip sticks
Refusing to fit a woman’s body
My face still green with envy
For the child I once was

Shleep by Nina Schwartzman '10

For Lillian by Anonymous

Perched on Hail Mary,
on the verge of Our Father,
the Apostles and their Creed
thread between your frail fingers.
Rocking back and forth,
paper thin eyelids drawn closed—
I can see the thoughts behind them.
Your lips are moving
and what you are saying
fills the room
although no sound escapes you.

Seventh Sister by Alix Bregman '10

First Semester

John Smith told me
i was worthless
i believed him and opened
my pink umbrella
under a sunny glass ceiling

then i burned the apple betty
in my easy-bake oven poor child
while the shatter of a glory stein
squealed in my ears

the shots ring out
spilling on the table
the illusory fable splashes
into the toilet.

i wish i was who
i meant to be here
strong sister strong
like you but who
are we trying to be?

Second Semester

when i grow up i want to be a Goldsmith
when i grow up i want to be a Silversmith
i'm grown up make me a Blacksmith
i'll be a locksmith.

see my bruises doubt you
do but they’re there
there there they say they
don’t know what they’re
talking about

i don’t want to be here
i don’t want to hear bees
i’m a wanton won ton who cannot have two Bs
stop talking to me. but they don’t.

Stop drinking
Alcohol it’s bad for you stop
Drinking coca cola it’s bad
For the starving children and the poor who
Find their way to college with frowns affirmed in action.

Spring

they stick nametags down their throats on fingers
they stick nametags up their girlfriends
i’m bulimic i’m gay i’m tortured i wear black
but don’t tell me how to run my life
i run on my own.

dear sister
help me
Help Me.

Break by Janice Estrada '11

I find it hard to concentrate
Excitement? Perhaps.
Excitement to hold the golden answers you have held already
Nerves?
Nerves that call to me and reaffirm the fear that I might have missed out on something
That little thing that makes you gasp and squirm
When asked to reveal an assumed hard night’s work
Planned out with time
Exhaustion?
Derived from a sleepless night

No I have no chosen to sleep this night.
Why might you ask?

Because I am behind
Because I have chosen to sleep through those fall mornings while you minds were molded
Because I have failed at choice between academia and health
Because I have ravished my blankets to their fabricated lengths
Because I have chosen to delay
Because I have chosen to diverge in midnight conversations in hopes to catch some glimmer of a future that holds happiness
Because I have slacked
I have…
You fill in the blank

And yet I feel alive
Having fought with my mind against time
To the sights of a book well used
To the taste of a Coke gone flat
To the smell of a refreshing smoke
And to the sounds that anger me through jealousy

I stay awake
To hear the slight pressure of your wooden floors as you awake from your slumber
Hear the yawning of a well rested night
Hear the aching of the body to move
Hear the sighs of contempt for a new day
Hear the groans of your first meal you find unsatisfactory
Hear the mind’s traveling through your agenda
Hear your first morning thoughts

To see the dawn’s first spectrum
Between night and what you call day
And what I have called bedtime
To see the first dawn’s greeting
This is what I find that truly makes me feel alive.
To look out one side window and see the night
And to step onto a porch embracing a new day
This alone makes me feel unconquerable
As I face the eastern sky
And hold fast to the hopes
That today will be the day
Where I conquer a sleepless night
And stand in the glory of academia

Today will be the day
That I will truly live in this college
As a student
As a mold to what is expected
As a citizen in a mediocre world

Today will be the day
That I will live a life preordained

Today will be the day

Subway Man by Wiley Reading '10

On a dismal train
traveling noisily
from Hoyt-Schermerhorn to Lafayette,
a man with piss on his clothes and beer on his breath
lurches charmingly toward me

the skinny and smiling and paper-brown man
sits down with his thigh
pressed against mine and studies me
with rheumy eyes

life is getting me down
he says and I nodded, knowing
I’ve needed others,
always,
to give me some relief
and now I smelled it coming:
anonymous release

Life is hard he said
you bust your ass at work and then you
get home to some ball bustin’
from the woman-you-love
I nod as middle-aged merchant’s wives
sidle slowly away from the pair of us
and our troubled talk
You’re too pretty to have a hard life
he says

That's how it is I say
and he doesn't tell me
I'm too young to know
he would be wrong
and then
he holds out a skeleton arm
wrapped in sinew and street dust
and I shake his hand and leave
the holy place

Ancestor by Gwen Gethner '11

Powdery stone dust
Chipped delicately away,
Paintbrush and dental tool
Slowly reveal
The line of my jawbone,
Smooth and fossilized,
The ridges of my teeth,
Tiny legacy
Of my disintegrating body.

Later, buried
In the orange-brown motley
Of anonymous stone,
My straight miracle
Of a knee-joint
Is uncovered,
Two worn ends
Of bone hinging the door
To future centuries
Of bipedalism.

Fragments of my body’s frame
Cradled in a scientist’s hand
That reminds me
Of my own.
Slender, dexterous,
With the elegant offshoot
Of an opposable thumb.

The Receipts, a found poem by Anonymous '10

Do there really need to be scholarly articles on
Effects of income on drug choice in humans?
I mean, isn’t it kind of obvious?
As Whitney Houston once said:
“Crack is cheap. I make too much money to ever smoke crack…
Where are all the receipts from the drug dealer?
I want to see the receipts.”

Study Abroad by Alexandra Bregman '10

The European Union stars blind in Eiffel Tower photos
While French kids at McDonalds sneer at Americans between cigarettes
Musicians sing in Spanish on the metro passing by yet another
Couple’s fleeting, slimy embrace

On my way I eat
Crepes made by Musulmen and pizza made by Frenchmen
Brushing the Iraqi beggars knelt on the Champs Elysees
Between Asians in berets
Smiling at the obese homeless man outside the boulangerie with his “hungry” sign

Nightfall leads me to lonely rockers lingering
In an empty concert hall looking for their scene
I get a few more onceovers in the dark crowd before
I avoid the coffin elevator
And sleep in the Haussmann across from a new apartment
building.

Bonjour.

last night i dreamt my father drowned the cat by Amy Sefton '10

last night i dreamt my father drowned the cat
it was almost worse that he hadn’t meant to
he’d intended to give him a swimming lesson
outfit him with cat goggles
flippers
a cat sized swimming cap to protect his pink and sensitive ears
he submerged him in the fishtank
with the sunfish who snapped at his tail
weaved in between his whiskers
swam fast and dodged his batting paws
and i forget what happens next but soon my father is holding our cats body
and it is limp
and dripping
and pathetic
and he looks so genuinely crestfallen that
in my dream
i am more worried for my father than for my cat
and my heart breaks for my father and not for my cat who is dead
because my father was careless and stupid
and forgot to buy a cat ladder
a cat snorkel
a cat sized life preserver
and i want to protect my father
from the rest of the family
and the other cat
who won’t be as understanding as i am
and don’t understand what it is to have a plan that falls apart at the end 

New Moon by Allison Pilatsky '12

The way frost turns on the air
And bites grass down to dirt
Before the first moon is full.
This is winter and its accompaniment.
Now waning, she is the sky’s
Mirror and she wakes in the middle
Of the night to ask if we have long
To live. This unknown measure
Draws her eyes closed again
And lips part in a half moon’s
Mile, overreaching fingers of light
And I leave her in bd.
Outside I notice snowbells
In the garden. This is joy.
The moon is gone.

Jurassic Prelude by Wiley Reading '10

I can’t wait
until the Rapture—
when America will return
to wild God’s country
Princeton will be choked
with sandpipers and clothed
in spruce and boggy
skunk cabbage.
Detroit will be strangled
by giant ferns,
its long-abandoned
Automalls now nurseries.
for neo-prehistoric plants
Nevada will burn.
Las Vegas will sink into
the sand.
Mammoths and Behemoths
will roam through Montana
crushing Exxon stations like
peanut shells.
I want to be the only one
left
for the dinosaurs to hunt.

Grow by Caitlin Treacy '12

I think (maybe) I knew her, once,
before her smile was bones.
Something happened between
caring and then, later, leaving.

Before her smile was bones,
she could lift me onto her shoulders.
Caring and then (later) leaving
was easy at night when walls were darkest.

She could lift me onto her shoulders
back then. I didn’t sleep at first, but rest
came easy at night, where the walls were darkest:
somewhere in-between ivy vines and flower gardens.

Back then, I didn’t sleep at first. But the rest
became easy once I was gone for awhile.
Somewhere in-between ivy vines and flower gardens, our
honeysuckle used to grow. I sucked their marrow out

which was easy once I was gone for awhile.
The leaves crumpled, and weeds overran the place where
our honeysuckle used to grow. I sucked all the marrow out
of her past. She’s dry and bleached and not even real anymore.

I think that maybe I knew her once—before her smile was bones.

Raindrops by Gwen Gethner '11

Somewhere a woman sings an aria to her piano,
With the rain bright on the windowpanes
And the chairs dusty under crocheted covers.

Somewhere a man digs a grave
And the rain streams gently down the mound of earth
And spatters his yellow slicker.

Somewhere a boy runs to the alley
Holding his tongue out to catch a drop of rain
And sloshing through the puddles.

Somewhere a woman dreams
Of rain on Mozart’s grave,
A man places a bunch of violets
Heavy with raindrops on a coffin,
And a boy shouts a song
To the rain.

Baby by Dana Glass '09

You are a thin creature, like a
malnourished child in my arms,
slender and brittle. If you were
alive I would hard boil eggs
for you. If you were alive,
we would have play-dates and
discuss politics. As it is,

I have fabricated a thin life for us:
I bury myself in tea-colored
manuscripts, face hovering
ghoulishly above the miniature blue
bonfire of your one, looming eye.
Darkness begins before night and
continues after.

Untitled by Bella El Makdessi '12

Refocusing, the heat from the oven
Warms my hands, feet on the tiled floor- lain
Before my arrival here. A new house,
Old habit. In rooms above, boxes linger, Sharpie
On cardboard-Names scratched out, re-labelled. Kitchen,
Living room, bathroom. Books.
Small shots of pain, frozen. Seemingly
Disconnected. I clench, don’t attempt
To change the situation. Hairs on my leg stand on end, ignored
For the smells reaching, chocolate baking. Result
Of large changes provoking smaller ones, my system
Confused by movement, unfamiliar spaces, stopped
Writhing.
Gather yourself, the voice told me. So I produce
Something small. Of little value, but great effort
The clenched muscles collecting an egg, don’t
Break it yet.
Steadying my breathing, Crack.
And now, the smell, cracks open the oven, steam
Fogs my glasses. I see a misty vision of Aztec history
And witch-doctors,
And writhing bodies
And sickness
And cocoa beans.