English 302a Poetry

A 12 year old boy
shuffles down a corridor of the hospital.
Curiosity encourages him to peek into the rooms
of dying patients.

Thoughts of death circle through around his brain
and crawl down his spine.
Chilling spikes of electricity pulse through his body.
A giant wave of realization is about to crash down and
take the boy out to the sea of reality.

He lays in bed as the doctors connect him like a computer.
Needles and other sharp tools pierces his skin.
The boy stays silent out of sheer fear.

A gas mask covered his face.
The bubblegum flavored gas filled his lungs suffocating.
He began to suffocate, but before he could struggle
he was out.

- Taylor Schuurmans

Oversized blue-and-white

Pinstriped button-down.

It looks so perfect

Against my skin.

Like your hand

On my thigh.

Or my hair

On your pillow.

I love my bare feet

Against the grain

Of your hardwood floors.

And your tanned arms

In the porcelain shower.

I love that no matter

How much you love

Your oversized blue-

And-white pinstriped

Button-down, you love

It on me more.

I see it in the way

Your eyes cloud over

When I pull it

Over my head and

Do up the buttons.

It almost makes me

Want to undo

Them all over

Again.

-Jessica Napier

I just put this here because this course doesn’t use Canvas. -alice b.

There’s a little black-and-white dog
that is staring up at me from my fluffy blue comforter.
His ears are pinned back to his tiny head while he cries at me;
That means he wants to go outside and play in the grass…
but I wouldn’t expect you to know that. You wouldn’t care anyway.

The day you brought him home snuggled in your green hoodie—the one I bought
for you at Christmas—I was so excited. He had looked bigger in the picture you showed me.
But he was so small in person. But at that moment, what he looked like didn’t matter to me.
The fact that you brought him home to be OUR dog when I knew how much you disliked them,
shocked me. You did it because I loved them…and because you loved me. At least, that’s what I thought.

My eyes lit up like headlights shining on a wet road. The feeling I got when you handed him to me
was like that of a small child seeing their first meteor shower. He won my heart the moment
he tried to wrestle his way to a comfy position in my arms.
His cold nose found its way to my neck and then he licked me.
“Codence Lataine” better known to others by Cody, was here to stay.

I’ll always remember that warm August day. It’s one of the many pleasant memories I keep close.
He had been abandoned when we got him. A permanently crooked tail and a broken leg
were his burdens to bear. But he was never afraid of me. Cody knew I would never hurt him.
Almost a year went by in the blink of an eye. I watched you cuddle him at night before bed.
You told us you loved us a hundred times a day.
I guess that’s why it hurt so much when you took off.

That red Mazda was where we first kissed after your long singleness commitment.
We were courting to be married. An engagement ring was only months away…but you left before that.
My heart broke as you told me you had lied; that you never loved me.
I watched you screech out of the driveway as I was sprawled on the asphalt like a broken doll.
Cody watched you from in the chain-link fence. He waited for you at the door for days
but as time passed he knew you weren’t coming back. His cuddle-buddy had forgotten him.

He’s all I have left of you—of us.
He watched as I cried month after month; each passing slower than a snail stuck in bubblegum.
Holding him close, I watched Disney movies day after day after day. Pocahontas
and The Nightmare Before Christmas were rewound and played over and over again
as the pile of damp, sticky tissues grew bigger. The grocery bag they used to fill was replaced
by a 33-gallon trash bag of Puffs Plus wet with salty, depressing tears and Butterfinger wrappers.

They say that “Time heals all things” but I know that’s a lie. It only eases things a little
and that’s only because your mind becomes numb to the pain. It’s like hypothermia.
It creeps in, excruciatingly painful at first; A thousand needles stabbing you repeatedly.
But as the cold takes over your body, you have nothing left but a sense of peacefulness.
It’s an act of accepting that which can’t be changed. And that’s when I picked myself up off the couch.

Most of the things you left have made their way to the garage. I sighed when I found
the green hoodie from two years back. It smelled like you. Squeezing my eyelids shut, I tossed
it in the bag with the other stuff.
Only an Open-Heart necklace, a picture of us at my graduation party, and dead flowers in a vase
you gave me from our first Valentine’s Day remain as scenery in my room.
I tried to take them down too, I promise, but when I reached for them I cried. So I left them there.

That small dog is the last connection I have to you.
Not the “you” I heard that you’ve become,
But the handsome man with the chocolate brown hair and stunning eyes I fell in love with;
My soul-mate that I was supposed to go through time with.
That person left when you drove away in that convertible down Route 3. And I’ve never seen him again.

I know you probably haven’t thought of me in the slightest since July 2010
but that is okay. Because as long as I have Codence Lataine you’ll still be a part of me.
He is what keeps me together when my life is falling to pieces all around me.
Just hearing him snore wrapped up in a pink panda bear blanket on one of my pillows
lets me know that I’m still alive.
And I’m alright.

–Rose Bristow–

Business suits, security uniforms,
and kids wearing backpacks,
stand close to their parents
to keep from getting swept
up in the constant flow of people.

Boarding pass in hand,
through the security line
that always bottlenecks and
results in anxious passengers.
Success! Through the body
scan machine without a beep.

Down the hallway of the terminal,
lined with bookstores, souvenir shops,
and Starbucks after Starbucks.
People rushing by, others meandering,
trying to kill time during their layovers.
The gate number sticks out
on a sign attached to the wall.

The plane boards, and finally
the oh so important boarding
pass can be thrown away.
Two tiny cups of water, and an
even tinier bad of peanuts
later, the Houston sun greets us.

Like soldiers into battle,
we know not the targets we seek
nor the mines ahead.
We cannot see
the jumpers from the boughs,
the fire lit in quiet,
a flower droops in smoke.

Like cattle into slaughter
we glimpse the pastures never claimed
the prongs we never bore.
We cannot see
the green, the blue, the yellow,
the cool within the shade
of an oak tree ten feet high.

We are the herded squadron
who rest our weary heads
on the bodies of the dead.
We are the blackened eyes,
the charcoal hands
the poisoned ears,
the polished apple.

But who wields the blazing torch
that burns our senses,
and pours the wax into our minds?
Who is the shepherd
of the huddled horde
sealed from the sun and wind and rain?

-Rebecca Turner

My hands are never dry
nor cracked with that snake
like skin that turns a gruesome
gray. No. Instead they are warm
and wet like the backs of naked legs
after sitting in a wooden chair.
Moist, clammy, and dusted
with blonde hairs that illuminate
in the sun like glow worms in a cave.
A faded freckle marks the hand
that I know as my right.

-Chelsea Edwards

That hole isn’t big enough
for someone who is better than everyone else.
How will it fit the dreams you had when you were eight years old?

The future you had already made for yourself
that made me call you stupid,
that made me hate you because I knew those dreams would come true.
I was always angry that your dreams were beating mine, but
I get no satisfaction knowing that mine are winning now.

The impact of your kindness and the sympathy in your smile
will no doubt seep out of that ugly, shiny box.
I should tell them that you’ll be uncomfortable in such a tiny casket.
But I don’t think you’d fit comfortably anywhere in the ground.

How come their hands aren’t sticking to your coffin?
How come they are covering you with that disgusting soil?
How can they walk away without looking back, not needing
to fight the impulse
to lie in your grave with you?

Because they don’t know you.
They are strangers and they won’t remember you soon.
It must be nice to be able to forget about you tomorrow.

I keep running through

The open field. My

Legs grace the grass and

The wind blows my hair up while

I stomp my bare feet on

The dirt. It all feels

So unreal.

No more sirens,

No more flashing lights,

No more cries.

Kind of hard to think

The grass isn’t greener on

The other side when all you’re

Used to is concrete.

The sun drops but

The stars rise and

I sit down to stare into

The night sky. Never have

I felt so safe in the dark.

Stars.

I close my eyes,

Open them—

Still see stars.

Denzel Minnis