Student Poems from A190

POEMS 7 & 8  *Passion Project  (Maggie D.)   My grandparents (prior to my birth) bought a large plot   of barren land. They lived in a  meager trailer    for years and built  from the ground up: eight hundred trees,   all handplanted. Forest carved by four weathered hands.    The foliage  grew in, then birds, squirrels, deer, frogs,   life flourishing, watered by their sweat like ichor.    Yesterday my  mom drove over  to their new house   and reviewed their  finances, logged on that dinky   computer. Not enough money to retire on.     *NIGHTTERRORS  (Maggie D.)   My home bathroom is a punishment at the late hours of 12PM. Toes curling on yellowed tile. Gritty black electric toothpaste melded to its charger. Something is in the vents and it’s drooling hot air against my feet. There’s certainly a vicious presence standing behind me, impervious to the refle...

POEM 6   *loneliness  (Spud)   a segmented moon  hung above like an orange torn apart by an immigrant mother the only way she knows to show love a strawberry wine cooler passed between adolescent hands beneath a comforter  in the soggy heat across from the closet  where she tried to hang  herself with a belt grapes i’ll always crave  but never dare touch    resting on the counter i watch her slice the pear with confident fingers and wonder if she could learn to love as brazenly   *Light Falls and Never Gets Back Up (Gracie)   The backyard was covered in lawn chairs and empty cans  Everyone was looking up at the sky  Light that ascends and then disappears  As if it was nothing to begin with  Dogs whined under the chairs   Mosquitos ate at our ankles  Someone laughed too loud  As if noise could stitch the dark to a close  I tasted metal in the air  Somethi...