WAM! Writing, Art & Music Forum

The following poem by Katy Kim ’18 was published in the summer 2016 issue of Canvas Literary Journal.

“Bitter Words”

Cinnamon dust flecks on a persimmon mortar
the tang of our stone and bone dinner, that rests stout in the alcove —
And all I can hear is the static— by some clock’s syncopated heartbeat,
as my calloused hands constrict the earthenware swell of your pottery class mug.
“No thanks, nothing for now.”
But I am hungry and thirsty for the melodies that rang before in this life kitchen
all the baseline tapclicks on formica, a sizzlesnap of avocado oil on skin and sometimes bone
cocooning me in time with our own symphony here— and Now.
Now you speak with no melody, and your turned back accuses me
and I am still drinking a cold horchata you made—
yesterday. When the Timex I bought for your twenty-third birthday beeps a constant and you turn—
I don’t want to play anymore
with the knives you will wash last, soap still on your elbows —
So I toe a piece of gristle on the carpet to be whistled up into the Electrolux vacuum — later
And say it, “I’m not mad at you anymore.”

Joint Pain

I move my joints and marrow
leaks out. The bones are cratering like moonshine,
pulling Corinthian lines over my ribs–
there’s a dull ache in my back and
no way out.

Consider the architecture of falling apart–
cartilage, grudge-swollen,
stiff rills of memory splitting it down the middle
like firefly-wings.
Consider deep breaths, muscle blistering
between inhalation and skin.

I take the stagnant pulse of my hand and try to pluck out tendons until
they sing sweet. They snap back bitter and this is what chronicity means:
never easing the ache.

I’ve swallowed up the aching,
the bile-bite of envy,
and stored them here,
in the interstitial space
between bone
and growing old.

by Jeremy Thomas/ www.unsplash.com

Legacy: A Sestina by Maggie DeNoon

As time marches forward, mythology
shows you the same characters.
A hidden clue to life.
How could it be that a people
who are separated by oceans and see the sun
rise at different times, tell the same stories?

The essence of humanity is to create stories.
We look up to the sky and create mythology,
stitch together stars, from Acamar to Zosma, into characters.
We look into the dark of night and find life.
Or perhaps we borrow history’s people,
and make a legend, knowing there is nothing new under the sun.

And so these figures live to see yet another sun
arise in a new land. They travel in the stories
of sailors and traders. Their collective mythology,
the world serpent, the Leviathan, becomes a new land’s characters,
the Greek names are Romanized, but what stays is the life
of the gods and their trials, because they’re symbolic of a people

Interconnected, just by circumstance of being people.
The uncertain love that compelled Zeus to stitch his unborn son
to his thigh, compels us all. Cultures disconnected by war but united with stories
that are told around the fire that Prometheus stole in mythology.
And he was punished by other gods, but his character
was celebrated for the giving of life.

And so the clock turned, and life
immortalized these figures who stole fire and gave it to people,
not just Prometheus but Māui, Nanabozho, countless others gave the essence of the sun
to humanity, the theft of fire a repeated idea in the stories
of innumerable peoples and their mythology.
To repeat, to share is to be human, defines our character,

shows our good and our bad in our allegorical characters.
It tears down barriers, leaves just the life
of humanity and our struggle to survive that defines a people,
the struggle through famine, war, poverty, that all appear under a sun
that rises relentlessly, ringing out a new day, an opportunity for stories
to be shared. Your heroes and the legacy of your culture and its mythology,

appears in the classrooms, movies, novels, of a modern people, the same characters
and their life stories show up in our Harry, our Skywalker, our Katniss.
Your mythology lives to see yet another rise of the tireless sun.

This poem by Valery Tarco ’16 won a 2016 New Jersey Council of English Bronze Medal for Poetry.

“Daughters Become Their Mothers Become Their Daughters”

1998
at 6 a.m. they dragged me out of You-
You would have heard me scream for the first time,
if You had been awake to hear me.
instead You awoke to a warmth in
your arms, and the promises
of new beginnings

2015
at 6 a.m. i wake up and drag my body out of bed
down the stairs
across the street
i sit in my car and
i stare at the keys in my ignition.

1998
You needled me a blanket of all Your old clothes
so You’d always be with me.
i hope that blanket has kept many warm since
its journey from the salvation army box
You left shut outside our door.

2014
You had to stand there
outside the window of room 409
Your mouth slightly opened in horror as
a doctor needled my left wrist
shut.

(i’ve been trying to needle our family back together every night since)

May 18 1999-2015
You’ve always tried to barbecue on my birthday.
every year they predict cloudy
every year our kitchen is littered with half eaten hamburgers
forgotten hot dogs
left from the friends You dream for me.
lipstick stains on wine glasses left from Your friends that attend.
i stand outside with an umbrella to make sure Your hair doesn’t get wet.

2008
the dinner table was a battleground
and You made sure the forks and knives
were delicately placed over a napkin,
fingertips erased from the glasses,
but it was never enough to eradicate
the ghosts
the echoes of your voice
and
i’d bring you dinner to Your room.
i’d keep my voice soft.
i made sure You ate.

2014
it’s all going to be okay.

2015
You stopped eating.
You stopped cooking too.

(sometime in the past three years
You got tired of You.
i heard You scream for the first time.
i tried to keep Your hold but
i was scared of falling
and i had to learn to let go.
i haven’t been able to keep hold of anything ever since then)

but
Mother knows best.

“Ode to a Spring Semester” by Maggie DeNoon ’16

The first sign of spring creeps
up, not like a lamb, but like the
ant who found its way onto your book,
inching across the pages.
A faint small breath of life
into dusty tomes. The trees rustle. The swing creaks.

The ant finds its way onto your hand, dances
lightly. It has come far, up from rocky ground.
Yet it inevitably leaves your page, with only
A memory remaining, and you clutch it to your heart.

The cold stone of the concrete step stings your palms as you
lean back. A winter’s breath lingers.
Every moment is the last, you think.
Every moment must be savored, and
you feel like a child who discovered
you can only hold water in your palm so long. Continue reading →

Photo by Gordon Warlow

The Soldiers in the Night

The soft lifeless snow packed down with every step they take.
Changing colors.
From a beautiful soft white,
To a darkening hard grey.
Their boots imprint the ground as they march.
Step by step in the cold winter night.
Their bodies covered in snow,
Their arms and feet freezing with every moment.
They look down to see children smiling and hugging them,
No longer cold,
No longer freezing.
Thanks to those soldiers in the night.

photo by Jason Kinnan

The following poem by sophomore Young Se Choi was selected as a topical winner for the “Of Faith and Inspiration” issue of the Live Poets Society of New Jersey and was published in their Fall 2015 issue. Bravo, Young!

What the Stars Hold

Thinking about how beautiful and yet so difficult life is,
I look up at the gleaming stars
The stars hold memories
Closing my eyes, those memories rush into my head

Remembering that penalty shot for my soccer team,
Too afraid to shoot
Remembering that saxophone recital,
Afraid of bringing out a high-pitched screech,
Too afraid to try
Remembering that time I should’ve stayed up all night,
Studied harder, harder, harder…

Night ends, but the stars come back tomorrow
And the day after that, and the day after that
I was afraid of being called foolish…
We are meant to be foolish
W are never meant to regret
Stars shine bright in the night
But never in the glory of the Sun
Never regret, risk everything

Photo by Ron Pierce

This poem by Isabel Young ’17 was published in the Fall 2015 edition of Live Poets Society of New Jersey. Congratulations, Issi!

Hold Her Hand

1
That uneven terrain,
the grounds of swollen veins

like the roots of an elderly oak
on a family-owned farm,

with a sun-kissed surface

shriveling into
senescence.

2
The warm embrace
of the ancient agriculture

he claims the hold-

only after wiping gently,
with young hands

each crystalline raindrop
from her cheek.

3
Her hands were preparing
to rejoin with the earth,

her roots intertwining
with the surrounding

He chose to bury her beside
a blossoming sapling

and each time he touches the young tree,
he feels he is holding her hand

Desert Highway And Mountains At Sunset, Death Valley National Park, California

Here is where the road begins
and where adolescence ends.
Here the weeds die, breathless and expired
and here the moon melts, a powdery grey
and here the sundog awakens from his rest
away from the sweltering cinnamon glow.

Where the mist sucks white
and the lit roads elongate and straighten
near the bulge where the maple tree dies
the road merges.

Resist the intersection of the lines
where adolescence ends,
and where the road begins.

Persephone

Long ago you poured
the orange juice with both hands.
Your knuckles turned white
from a weight too heavy for
your songbird wrists.
Someone called you honey.
The carpet tickled
the skin between your toes
and cereal took you far at breakfast.
The spoon was your pickaxe,
you mined what you liked.
All things tasteless,
left to dissolve.

Your mother waited in the earth swell.
But you slept in,
asked the gods for five more minutes.
You left your phone between couch cushions.
Didn’t hear it ring. Muffled screaming.
Now you hide your face in the collar of your shirt.
At night, you lie next to him
and the radiator snores for you.
When you stare up at the brain-dead
ceiling, all you can remember is the rye
and the wailing wind,
the sun coming up every morning,
the seasons never changing.

You were once brave.
You ate chocolate chips in palmfuls.
Now you eat quinoa. What is
quinoa? You have pomegranates
sometimes, when you’re with the girls.
You gorge yourself on the bloodshot seeds.
Infanticide, you think.
They keep you caught in this world
as punishment. You eat anyway.
The girls ask if you started working out.
Dieting? New routines?
Actually, you’ve been smoking.
You kill babies for youth.
You look younger, they say.
Which is funny, you think.
That’s real funny.
You tell them you’ve been working.
Just working Continue reading →

Castle of Connacht, Seefin, Galway, Ireland by Mike Searle

Broken You Fall                                  (After “Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou)

I cannot tell you the future
without my candied, fraudulent truths.
I cannot halt your isolation,
so broken, deserted, you’ll fall.

When has your silence ever comforted me?
When am I happy without camaraderie?
You’re alive but you’ve avoided living,
withdrawing to your ultimate decimation.

Excluded like suns and like moons
in the currents of uncertainty,
ostracized like despairs and dwindling low,
broken you’ll fall.

Should I avoid you, overlook you?
Turn my head and avert my eyes?
Shoulders block you from my sight,
Fortified against your soulless laugh.

When has your frailty ever comforted me?
Should I give you my devotion unquestioningly
since you cry like you’ve no strongholds,
no roof and no walls?

I cannot unearth you with my clamor.
I cannot recover you with my struggle.
I cannot save you with my fondness,
so broken, like rubble, you’ll fall.

When have your delusions ever comforted me?
Must I explain to you
how you sing of glistening glass jewels
when you feint caring but call me by her name?

Into the castle of isolation
you fall.
Down to a future that’s fixed in solitude
you fall.
You’re an obscure sea, constricted, sinking,
looming and depressing. You’ve snagged me in your undercurrent.
Erasing all chance for cheer and ease
you fall.
From a murky twilight
you fall.
You’re a fear to master, a nightmare.
You’re a penalty to bear.
You fall
You fall
You fall.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

When I write over this poem,
I will cross out every word but time.

repeating
time
time passing
passing time
passing

You can never go back
if you drop a glass
you will never pick up the pieces.

You will cut yourself.

You will pile on regrets.

That is the law of entropy
that is describing the simplest of motion as complicated theory and page long equation
that is the realization that time is endless
and if time is infinite then,
1/∞=0
my time is zero
I am zero
I am nothing.

Time is disordered,
time is unsatisfying,
but
this time
this time is relative.

If only I could be big enough.
If only I could be massive.
I could slow down time just enough
I       could       make       time       stop.
I       could       reach       out         and        change       something.

I could soothe Baltimore’s rage with equality
I could build a school for 200 missing Nigerian girls.
I  could  tell every teenager that’s ever been kicked out of their home how beautiful they are.
I could have that talk with my mother, that I should have had a year ago…
I could give everyone here, everyone that feels a bit too small, a bit of advice:

The key to studying thermodynamics,
the key to understanding,
the key to not giving up,
is throw all the laws out
become Einstein
and unapologetically believe in the power of yourself.

Continue reading →

Photo by Stefano Lunardi

Night Without Words

As I approach my father
lying serenely in his hospital bed,
I feel ashamed to be called his son.
What kind of father would abandon
the ones he says he loves
and look so peaceful lying there in silence?

I try to speak, but my mouth is silenced
by memories of you, my onerous father,
back when you did display your love,
your presence steady beside my bed
when I cried for you like an abandoned
child, waiting for you to save your son.

Back then, I was proud to be called your son.
Always watching you in silence,
I fooled myself into thinking you would abandon
anything that hindered you from being the best father
you could be. Now, as you lie tranquil in your sickbed
I realize there was something more you loved.

I want to get back your love,
to be able to feel like your son
and return to the time in the bed-
room when you wrestled me to silence
to show how strong you were as my father,
but weak against the thing that made you abandon

us, the family you promised to never abandon.
Despite this, I can’t say I don’t love
you. After all, you are still considered my father
and I am still considered your son.
So I sit here, weighing the silence
and watch you breathe in your sterile bed.

How can you look so contented in that bed?
Don’t you realize this child you abandoned
is in agony watching your suffering, your silence?
Wake up! Say how you miss and love
me. Tell me how proud you are to have a son
like me. I want you back, Father.

But my love can’t reach you if you stay in that deathbed.
Your abandoned son, I want to wail and scream.
Instead, I sit here in silence and stare at the man I call Father.

Photo by Peter Rosbjerg

My father looks down, and though half his face

Is shrouded in darkness,

I can see his eyes.

I love his eyes.

I always wanted them, though

They would never suit me.

My features are dark. We are opposites

On the outside. Every light feature of his,

A counterpoint to every dark one of mine.

I have my mother’s eyes.

In fact, I’m pretty sure I have my mother’s everything.

Well almost everything.

He smells of sawdust when I inhale,

I can taste it in my throat, feel the slight burn.

But with it, comes the sweet aroma

Of infinite memories.

His voice is low and his eyes swirl when he’s excited.

I don’t know what he’s talking about,

But I can tell it’s something that makes him happy. Continue reading →

Peacock Butterfly

* Line contributed by Danny Laks ’19