“In the year of our Lord’s rising this April first” by Idris Anderson (poetry ’06)

“In the year of our Lord’s rising this April first” by Idris Anderson (poetry ’06), published by Peacock Journal.

In the year of our Lord’s rising this April first

Easter and Fool’s day. Aren’t they the same?
Well yes, today anyway. And it’s spring,
cherry blossoms full out, blowing like snow,
scatterings of snow, for it has been cold
and the sky is castover, the air not clear,
trees hiving with bees humming one sustainable note,
electric tremblings,  hundreds of tiny fluorescent bulbs.
Light! Light! The sun has risen but is dimmed.

[…continue reading “In the year of our Lord’s rising this April first” as well as four other poems by Idris Anderson (poetry ’06) at Peacock Journal.]

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“The Children” by Dilruba Ahmed (poetry ’09)

“The Children” by Dilruba Ahmed (poetry ’09), published by Four Way Review.

The Children

How each one is taken  
with care from car 

to school doorstep, each one 

hand-in-hand with an adult.  
How the mothers 

and fathers kiss 

their foreheads, first 
pushing aside their bangs 

or smoothing 

a stray wisp.  One 
parent straightens 

her daughter’s velvet 

headband; another wipes 
dried oatmeal 

from his son’s pink lips.  

[…continue reading “The Children” as well as two other poems at Four Way Review. You can also find another poem, “When the Time Comes,” at Blackbird.]

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“Portrait of a Becoming” by Candace Walsh (fiction ’19)

headshot of Candace Walsh (fiction '19) gazing at the camera wearing a blue cardigan.

“Portrait of a Becoming” by Candace Walsh (fiction ’19), published by Pigeon Pages.

Portrait of a Becoming

Ludlow Street will always be stuck in 1994, the year I moved from Buffalo to live in an Alphabet City summer sublet. I may also always be stuck in 1994, in complicated thrall to the Perland sisters. 

When I made a reservation to stay at a glossy, high-rise hotel on Ludlow last year, I did so with the urge to collide my present-day self against my younger self. I wanted to slip into the old Ludlow’s grotty sepia, walk past paint-tagged storefront gates closed like brittle eyelids over vacant shops, jam a toehold into my chimerical youth. I also wanted to know what it would feel like to press up against Ludlow Street’s new skin: In short, I ate vegan ice cream scooped at one a.m., found the rooftops of Loisaida buildings to be free of charm, and walked along Houston, feeling both like a ghost and far more solid and grounded than I ever did as a callow twentysomething. 

[…continue reading “Portrait of a Becoming” at Pigeon Pages.]

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Two Poems by Cynthia Dewi Oka (poetry ’19)

“You Don’t have to Be Tough All by Yourself, You Said” and “Zuihitsu with Love for the Moon’s Failed Rebellion” by Cynthia Dewi Oka (poetry ’19), published by Scoundrel Time.

You Don’t Have to Be Tough All by Yourself, You Said

and if I returned the favor, it was much later. Or
I lied. At the airport, waiting for my turn to sleep. Like a leg
bone inside a grasshopper. In the selfie I sent, darkness

curtains one side of my head which hasn’t thought
of Christopher for years. Aside from his occasional Facebook
posts captioned #blessed below boys in blue

jerseys #despite the Canucks’ losing streak. The Rockies
look photoshopped, but not the beetlelike sacs
under his mother’s eyes. All seasons, petals by a jacuzzi. Cherry-

flavored hospital jellos on the lid of the grill. Unless
they’re margaritas, O, winking emoji #FUCKCANCERGOCHEMO!
I should’ve sent his mother a letter. Something about that year

[…continue reading “You Don’t have to Be Tough All by Yourself, You Said” and find “Zuihitsu with Love for the Moon’s Failed Rebellion” at Scoundrel Time. You can also find Cynthia Dewi Oka’s writing on Aracelis Girmay’s “Arroz Poetica” at Poetry Daily as well as another poem, “Meditation on the Worth of Anything,” at Tupelo Quarterly.]

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“Suspense in Flannery O’Connor’s ‘The River'” by Alyson Mosquera Dutemple (fiction ’19)

A craft essay by Alyson Mosquera Dutemple (fiction ’19), published by Craft.

Suspense in Flannery O’Connor’s “The River”

Long before we discover that the main character, a little boy named Harry, will drown in the final moments of Flannery O’Connor’s “The River,” we are unsettled while reading the story. On the surface, the main actions before the drowning are not particularly threatening (Harry visits with a new babysitter, takes a trolley ride, and attends an informal religious service down by the river), but O’Connor makes specific choices that turn these ostensibly mundane activities into ones that seem rife with potential danger. Using setting, characterization, and pacing, O’Connor infuses even the smallest moments of Harry’s day with heightened suspense, building piece by piece to the cathartic but fatal final moments in the story.

[…continue reading at Craft.]

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“Apella” by Dilruba Ahmed (poetry ’09)

“Apella” by Dilruba Ahmed (poetry ’09), published by Poetry.

Apella

This morning, a light
so full, so complete
we might ask why

the god of sun
is also god of plague,
why the god of healing

also god of archery.
The children under trees—
unaware their hearts

have become targets
red and inflamed
as the eyes of men in thrones—

find sticks in the grass
to fashion into guns. Some brandish
a branch-saber. They are sniping

the golden light
with squinting faces.

[…continue reading “Apella” at Poetry. You can also read three more poems by Dilruba Ahmed (poetry ’09) at Four Way Review.]

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“The God Structure” by Chloe Martinez (poetry ’09)

“The God Structure” by Chloe Martinez (poetry ’09), published by The Common.

The God Structure

“It has a god structure. I think it will resist a long time.”

—Customer review of the Uniqlo Beauty Light bra, $19.99

O keep me up, keep me going. Keep it together. Smooth me. Reduce
excess movement. There is a heaviness. There is around me a
God Structure. It helps me organize my thoughts. It has laid out
plans, I think, for various eventualities, and the existence of plans,

though they change, is a comfort. This morning the God Structure
led me to a vine that was drooping over the far edge
of the front lawn, covered with ripe blackberries. God Structure said,
Eat them, and I did. The stain of them still on my hands when I heard

that the God Structure had also made a disease that is suddenly taking
from my friend his body, among other things. It seems the God Structure
doesn’t give a shit, has no alternate plan. Keep Google-ing it, nothing
appears. His tongue tries to choke him in his sleep. His God Structure is

written into his code: it was always there, in silence, inevitable.

[…continue reading “The God Structure” at The Common. You can also read more of her work in the recent Fall 2019 print issue of Prairie Schooner.]

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“On Chickens, Children, and Fascism” by Emily Sinclair (fiction ’14)

“On Chickens, Children, and Fascism” by Emily Sinclair (fiction ’14), published by The Missouri Review.

On Chickens, Children, and Fascism

Before I got baby chicks, I attended chicken class at Wardell’s Feed and Pet, a few miles down the highway. Eric, the chicken class teacher, sold me a brooder. If you don’t know, a brooder is a kind of substitute mother hen: it’s a box with a heat lamp and a feeder and waterer. The chicks live in it until they’re eight weeks old and ready to move outside to the coop. It’s obvious to me why a substitute mother is called a brooder. Motherhood for me is characterized by an ongoing sense of worry and inadequacy.

[…continue reading “On Chickens, Children, and Fascism” at The Missouri Review.]

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“The Book of Kells” by Joy Manesiotis (poetry ’86)

“The Book of Kells” by Joy Manesiotis (poetry ’86), published by Poetry.

The Book of Kells

But then four crows—no, maybe ravens—those large, black birds big as dogs, 
like gentlemen, crossed the path, looking up, contemplating something invisible,

feathers on their crowns at attention, as if waxed into style, sun polishing each upright stalk, 
asphalt, grass visible between each black spear, the way, when younger, we spiked

our hair before dancing all night at an after-hours club, but I don’t know
what it means now: Rocking gait: slow procession: pondering a shared question—

unseen force drawing them across the road or a predator overhead
or walking away from despair hidden in the heart. She looks

to be holding a miniature man in her lap, the Mary of Kells. He has
two left feet. And she stares, her face a mask of sorrow, eyes flattened, looking ahead.

[…continue reading “The Book of Kells” at Poetry.]

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“Permanent Girl” by Amanda Newell (poetry ’17)

Two poems by Amanda Newell (poetry ’17), published by Cultural Weekly.

Permanent Girl

She’s fifty now   tired of riding the blue anchor etched into his left
bicep    tired of being his USNA pinup girl   always fighting gravity   bubbled

tits & ass sagging on the freckled folds of his skin.  The things she’s seen!
The pool halls!   Sundays at Charles Town   the Hollywood Casino   his favorite.

[…continue reading “Permanent Girl” as well as a second poem, “Black Angus,” at Cultural Weekly.]

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