Fall ‘21 Poetry
Page 2
Ana Quian
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Lessons Learned
There is something beautiful about female rage.
Unique and grotesque to a point uncharted.
It is youthful. Gorgeous. The kind of danger you were into in those days.
There is nothing like it.
It can’t be bottled and stoppered.
If you see it in their eyes, it is usually for a moment.
For a second. Maybe a few.
It never lingered the way it did in her.
Even now it is wonderous how she could grow it
and hold it between her teeth
before she spat it out.
My mother always told me there are lessons a girl ought to learn.
How to sit. How to stand. How to be.
Try to figure out who he is…
what he likes.
That’s how you know what kind of girl to be.
The girl next door.
The jailbait.
The lady.
The slut.
Which does he pray for and who does he want?
You have to act like it is love.
A beat beneath the skin.
Goosebumps and sweat.
That is the only way.
Keep the tape rolling.
Act like you’re stupid.
It makes it easier; I swear.
To pretend to look away when you are seeing everything.
To pretend to see the good when you are seeing his shame.
To pretend it is worth it when you know it is not.
If you think it hard enough you can make yourself believe it.
That the pain earns you love.
That the approval means something.
That your gritted teeth and your white lies
will earn you time off and their good behavior.
They make the bait so easy to take.
I see you as a protégé.
You’re so pretty.
You don’t really want to go home, do you?
They make the prize seem valuable.
They keep you around.
Give you a little power,
a little money,
a little love.
It is the softest dominion.
The most covert and the most treacherous.
They like independent girls
who do what they say
and look the right way
and ask nicely.
They like sexy girls
who are sexy by the rules
and are never wanted by anyone else
except everyone.
They like smart girls
who never talk back
and laugh at their jokes
and don’t believe the other girls.
What was I supposed to do?
What was left of me when you were done?
I rearranged my face and changed my hair
and ate one meal a day and shut my mouth
except when you wanted it open
and still, you had more
demands and critiques and ‘requests’.
And now I am in my bathtub
covered in your handprints and
your eyes and your loud mouth
and I have no idea what happened to me.
Where did she go?
Why didn’t I listen when she said
she had a bad feeling about this?
Why did I follow the wrong rules?
My years that you know about
were lessons learned indeed.
I learned who I could trust,
who held the cards,
who cared.
I learned how to get out next time.
And now that I know,
you are angry at me.
Now that I stand back and take you in,
you feel different.
You look at me with those fake-sad eyes,
your disappointed expression falling flat on the floor
as I speak loudly,
look the others in the eye,
refuse to back down.
You get angry as I proceed to call them to task,
continuing through their interruptions.
I can see the fear in your eyes growing
as the rest of you shrinks.
I know why you are scared.
I’m doing this on purpose.
I want you to know for sure
you were not my end.
Noelle Ross
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Perpetual Blue
Rippling, curling waves crash against the trail of wooden pilings,
creating infinitesimal rain showers scattering droplets across the surface.
The droplets catch the sunlight as it reflects off its crystal shell
sprinkling shades of crimson, olive, and gold throughout its vastness.
Underneath its rippling, luminescent immensity,
lies a boundless dark that acts as a mask.
Hiding its secrets deep within its inky abyss,
afraid of those who might uncover this side of them.
Wave spilling onto the pearlescent shoreline,
crossing over the barrier into a forbidden realm,
almost as if it is escaping its crystalline prison.
So close to its own freedom...
yet so far out of reach…
As the tides recede into their iridescent home,
they watch the shoreline shrink into obscurity,
Soon evolving into nothingness.
The bubbling ripples know that they will return to the desert surface,
only to falter and sink into their shadowing depths.
Yet this cycle continues and the waves will forever return to the ethereal barrier,
as if they believe they are fated to seek a life beyond the shore.
Noelle Ross is a student at the University at Albany with a major in history and a minor in art history and her plans are to go to law school and pursue a career in the law field. She also has found an interest in writing poetry in her free time. When she is not studying or writing poetry, you can almost always find her doing martial arts, reading, or knitting.
Devin Jinadasa
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Mrs. O’Leary
Now you might find this a little too easy
Add a little dash of cheeky
The tale of the next Houdini!
Trust me, it’s not dreary.
“Come along, come along Dearie”
That’s what she said, that Mrs. O’Leary
She’s a strange one, Mrs. O’ Leary
Told the future from her cards, said it was easy
Strange sort of old biddy, she’s the only one who called me Dearie
Course that didn’t stop me from being cheeky
Can you blame me? Trust me, it was downright dreary.
Hehe, even earned me the name Houdini.
“Always escape,” the streets told me, “Don’t let em’ tie you down, be a Houdini”
Then I met her, that strange Mrs. O’Leary
Now listen, life on the street was getting a bit dreary
Swiping her purse? Maybe a little too easy
For a lad like me, ah it’s just being cheeky,
‘The kindness of my strong arm crossing the street earned me a “Thank you Dearie”’
But surprise, surprise, that old biddy told me “Come along, come along Dearie”
Ha, she clearly didn’t know I was the Infamous Houdini!
Prince of the streets and king of being cheeky
Oh that strange, strange Mrs. O’Leary
Robbin’ her grand old house would be just too easy
Gets boring really, a little too dreary.
Quite contrary actually, not so dreary
Led me straight in with another one of her “Dearies”
Told you Reader, it was just that easy
Course she shouldn’t have let in little ol’ Houdini
But she’s a strange one, that Mrs. O’Leary
Looking around this house of treasure, hehe, time to unleash the cheeky!
Hehe, she had no idea her little Dearie was so cheeky!
But with treasures like this, maybe life wouldn’t be so dreary
I couldn’t help but wonder what she was thinking, that Mrs. O’Leary
Watching her house robbed by her little “Dearie”
Or maybe she was just shocked silly at being robbed by the great Houdini
But that thought kept nagging at me, was this too easy?
It was too easy, should’ve seen it, ya cheeky!
A dreary end to the Great Houdini
Mrs. O’Leary cackling behind her little “Dearie.”
“If the whole world’s gonna be a stormcloud, be the frick frackin blazing sun!” That’s the motto
that Devin Jinadasa, a Sri Lankan senior majoring in English with minors in Theater and
Creative Writing, lives by. With dreams of becoming a bestselling author, he’s literally travelled
half across the world to attend a college where he can learn the ropes of the literary world.
Skylar Hollingsworth
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Honey Dew Mornings
Chocolate eyes, melting me,
Pulling me into a secluded warmth.
Morning sun, Shining through the open window.
Illuminating our white sheets.
Another day,
With you in my world.
A dream with
You by my side.
Rough fingers,
Brush against my plush cheeks.
Raspy giggles,
Echo through the room of daybreak.
Eyes locked,
Speaking to one another
With Silent words
Only we can hear.
Whispering,
If this were a fairytale
I would meet you
In the garden after midnight.
I would find you in my next life,
We could live happily ever after forever.
There will never be a day,
Where I won’t respond to your song.
Heart beating at a wild pace,
Sending vibrations of love.
It was you, always you,
Who met me in my dreams at night.
Euphoria decorates our faces,
Laying here with you
As our morning love fulfills us.
Eternity greets us.
Skylar (Sky) Hollingsworth is a sophmore at UAlbany, majoring in Human Development and East Asian Studies. She is happy to announce this is her first ever publication! Although, this is her first semester writing poetry. She hopes you love reading "Honey Dew Mornings" as much as she loved writing it.
Dylan Perry
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Metamorphosis
As all things
Begin, they must also end.
Calamity begins when the stars disappear,
Darkness swallowing the sky into oblivion.
Everything to be seen lost eternally in the
Fogs of destruction.
Gaia and
Her siblings rot and shatter
Into the dust,
Just as they were before ever
Knowing
Life. For a
Moment there is
Nothing. A brief, blissful calm. But nothing stays nothing for long before it becomes something. It
Opens it’s eyes like a God-Shattering Star
Pieces of what were become part of what is in a
Quintillionth of eternity. Creation
Rains down from it’s eyes like
Soft
Tears of life rain down from a newborn
Until even the
Void is filled with the light to house
Worlds and galaxies and universes within universes as a
Xenolith
Yet even as this new reality grows with such
Zeal, it too will someday end.
Hailing from New Windsor in Orange County and a graduate of Newburgh Free Academy, Dylan Perry is an aspiring writer. When he's not writing, he enjoys drawing, playing video games, reading books, and watching shows and movies. Someday he hopes to create works of fiction that will positively impact others just as much as they have to him.
David Mitchell
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A Change Is Gonna Come
Enter my mind.
A space hollow, not hallowed
Brimmed with regret and pain
Of previous actions that serve as
Nothing more than reflective torment
A place once garnished with light
Now overcast with shade
Sparked from the root
Of one rogue tree of thought
The intrusive notion
Makes me thrash in dismay
As my stoic face regurgitates
The polite mannerisms indoctrinated
Within me from adolescent times
A futile attempt to placate emotions
Derived from covetous intentions
Of the subconscious
Only to be attentive to the physical actions done
Repression is not elimination
And guilt isn’t the reminder
But the teacher
What lays dormant beneath the surface
Is nothing other than a patient seed
Frosted over by harsh winter gusts
Momentarily soiled by the reign of progress
A sunny day with earnest motive
Impeded by unsuspecting clouds
Is suffice in nourishing the eager seed
Omitted from the memory of a credulous individual
Its presence soon to make itself known
A foreign invader
All too familiar with
The freshly planted garden
A bindweed that ravishes
The flowers of the mind
Moving expeditiously through
The morals of man.
The serpent shepherd,
Predacious, in wait near the gardens edge
Directing the vine to do its bidding
Though cautious to not enter the field itself
For the mind is still Eden,
Protected by the truth of the heart
which the psyche wishes to suppress
When weeds encroach on profitable fruit
What’s valuable is harvested
Then the field is burned
And grown anew
I wish not to enter this wretched cycle
born in new flesh,
Precursory knowledge imprinted on the soul
The autumn breeze sharply cascades the skin
Signifying the ever-present yet looming winter.
The soft ground soon to be frozen over again
Provokes a fearful curiosity
Has a seed been planted anew,
Deep within the enriched soil
Or has the sun's radiance barred any propagation?
Insight may only be gained by a new season.
DWB (Driving While Black)
“Mr. Mitchell, tell us the truth.”
You want the truth?
The truth is there is no such thing as “truth.”
Do you want the facts or the truth?
The truth is what you make it, the facts are what they are.
The truth isn’t the same in Harlem or the Hamptons.
The truth has color.
The truth is living, breathing.
The truth is constantly changing, not stagnant as you believe.
The truth is you don’t care about the truth.
The truth is you probably stopped listening to me five minutes ago.
The truth is that even with all your ivy league learned empathy,
you still couldn’t possibly fathom how I feel inside.
The truth is if I was hooked up to a polygraph,
my heart wouldn’t skip a beat.
The truth is you’ve already made up your mind.
The truth is allowing me to speak is a formality.
The truth is I hate that you think you know what the truth is.
The truth is the justice system doesn’t care about justice.
The truth is you or twelve twits pulled off the street
shouldn’t determine what the truth is.
The truth is “the truth” doesn't set you free.
Not in man’s eyes.
The truth is “the truth” usually ends up condemning you.
The truth is I never once lied.
Truth is you need to ask better questions.
Am I free to go now?
David Mitchell is an aspiring writer from Long Island, New York. Mitchell has published numerous journalistic articles but is rather new to the field of poetry. Mitchell's poetic works often revolve around social commentary and streams of consciousness, stemming from his philosophy background. Mitchell's goal is to eliminate rigid poetic classifications and restore poetry to a purely creative art.
Leanna Roskoff
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Lamb
weekly scene you’ll witness only once:
FACELESS MASS TO TABERNACLE
lined
up
for
penance
in
precise
progression
misreading butchering as benefaction
(as is asked of them.)
and you are Beautiful,
Blemishless,
unmourned, like the calves
like the doves
(as is asked of you.)
hebrews 9:22
& apologies He refuses to accept unaccompanied by blood
“every beast of the forest is mine
the cattle on a thousand hills. . .
if i was hungry, i would not tell you
for the world and its fullness are
Mine”
(you are not allowed to say the word)
death non-providing,
sating no hunger
this is your purpose,
your name is Sacrifice
remembering Cain,
your martyr,
blemished for the sin of sparing you
you,
pulled apart by sinful hand,
pray only that they remember the smell
(pray only that they remember the rot)
pleasing
a
vengeful
God.
you will never be like Isaac,
your story ends on the hill.
Roskoff is a senior and a psych major. She has been previously published in Wrongdoing Magazine. Inspirations include Frank Bidart, Courtney Love, and the Bible.
Kiara Toribio
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Anticipación Cautelosa /
Cautious Anticipation
aquí estoy
siempre en alerta
sin saber si algún día llegara
mala noticia por la puerta
callada sin opinar
tantas opiniones que navegar
vestida de colores pero con una
sonrisa que no se ve
sigo en luto por el ano que perdí
y un miedo que haya otro que perder
here I am
always on alert
waiting for bad news to break
down the door
keeping my opinions to myself
so many others to navigate through
dressed colorfully yet my
smile is not seen
mourning the year lost
fearing another twenty twenty