Mud

       He swam in the tank and yawned. Bubbles floated up. Then he went into his castle, which was green. He thought of Ariel in the Disney movie with her flounder friend but he knew he was better than a flat fish. He opened his mouth to Mr. Bridges. Mr. Bridges sprinkled some powder into the water. He was hungry so he gulped it down. Myla was face down in the blue sand, digging for something. What could she possibly find? Only glass. This life was not so great, but he could remember nothing better.
       Mr. Bridges left, to go to the train station. He waited on the platform for the train. He could easily imagine himself with a hooker. The train came and went. He turned around and whistled.
       Stan bubbled.
       He tried to scrape some gum off the cement platform.
       Myla was jumping out of the tank now. Great gulps of air.
       He walked home.
       Stan hoped for more food.
       Mr. Bridges was in no mood to argue.
       Stan was happy.
       Mr. Bridges thought.
       Sunlight spread across the valley like splayed fingers on a table, propping up his arms so that he could see more clearly.

Julie P.

A Perfect Pear

Forbidden fruit is
less tempting when not so ripe
or past juicy peak.

Lisa S.

with a coffee that she announces will make her hands shake later
Tory is sitting on a couch in a coffee shop on the corner of ninth street and avenue A and she is talking on a cell phone that isn't hers

and as I am watching her talk on the phone the way that her mouth moves catches my eyes
I never noticed before the way that her lips close over every word
and the way that her d's and t's are crisp like lettuce

Tory is one day older than me
and she is the kind of person you'd like to see in silhouette
to photograph with barely any background and only a void Tory
and you can imagine her outline contrasted against a light sky:

Alexis G.

Dying between the whiteness of new sheets

Said you noticed me because I'm silent
Said you liked that I was always alone
Never thought the striving to be invisible
Would be the thing to make me known

I've been left on promenades
Called too needy, been too cold
I've broken hearts, or so they tell me
I don't remember, and they grew old

You tell me you hate insects
I might as well be some kind of bug
My size is always changing
Never know what you'll get in a hug

I may look slight but I am heavy
I could crush giants with my weight
You've never met a girl less buoyant
I warn you now, it's not too late

Hate this poem because it's whiny
Hate the writing because it's fake
Hate the ending because it's boring
Hate the time I had to take

Living inside the obsession of unrequited love

Cody S.

Chewing absent-mindedly on his lower lip, he walked the remaining distance to the mailbox rapidly, his high-topped work boots raising puffs of dust on the hard earth surface.

A car whipped by on the adjoining blacktop road, trailing wind behind it. Dust and grass stems blew by Jim in a storm as he opened the mailbox with a creak and reached inside.

As he'd been almost certain would happen, nothing but dust and cobwebbing lay inside, and Jim, fearing spiders, withdrew his hand hastily, scratching it badly on a curled-up scrap of tin thrust upward where the support post, rather than being attached to the bottom, punched up into the mailbox's guts. For a second, as Jim examined his hand, it appeared unharmed; then blood beaded and welled up from a long, shallow gash towards the back of his right hand, at the base of the thumb.

He shook his head and applied pressure, and the sting of the cut deepened to a low throb. Slowly, taking his time on the deeply rutted road, he walked back to the house where he was spending the summer, the house he'd hoped to have repaired in time to meet a letter and a person who now, he thought, would never come.

Back in the comfortable little frame house, in the cool dark of the bedroom, insulated from the outside heat by thick brick walls, Jim turned his mind to his injury, bathing his hand in water from an outside tap (the inside plumbing remained a nightmare of exposed pipe and solder) and rummaged through old wooden boxes for antiseptic and bandages.

Then, unbidden, his mind wandered to a girl in Baton Rouge who had cared enough about him to force him to speak clearly, to put his thoughts into plain language rather than the joking half-truths in which he regularly dealt, whose glossy picture he still kept taped by his bed. Her hair was pulled back from her ears, which were big, and she was smiling hugely, with huge white tombstones of teeth, and her teeth were big, and her ears were gigantic, and he loved every atom of her, every freckle on those tremendous ears, the whiteness of those staggering teeth. He would not, he thought, have traded the sight of one eyelash for a kingdom.

That was the kind of thought she would laugh at, he knew, but he thought it anyway.

She was silhouetted by a flash against the deep warm black of a Louisiana summer night, in her prom gown, which was green and satin, and he'd told her she looked like a giant iguana, until she hit him. When the days grew shorter where he was, and the shadows lengthened to the cold thin black of winter nights in New England, he would take the picture down from the wall and just look at it, just stare at her face, memorizing every trace and contour, until he could pick her very shadow out of others crossing and recrossing themselves on a dark green lawn.

She would laugh at that, too, he thought, but he would do it anyway. It was the sort of thing he was good at.

There were plenty of other things he was not good at: he had never been able to dance well, for instance, not with anyone; he stepped on feet, fought when well-intentioned dancers had tried to lead him, and made a mess of the simplest steps. He'd tried dancing with her once, in someone's kitchen in New York City, but she hadn't really wanted to and he had been as clumsy as ever.

He sighed. It was a real shame, not only because she would never know how badly he'd wanted to dance with her that day in New York, but because he never would dance with her, not like he could imagine, both their feet gliding faster than the eye could follow, floating over the ground. He sighed again.

It occurred to him that he had time now to repair the plumbing however fast or slowly he chose, now that there was no more letter. He pulled the picture from its tape on the wall. Might as well start now, he thought, and lay back on the foam mattress he'd laid next to the bare brick bedroom wall, eyes roving over her fixed and smiling face, picking out each freckle and shadow, remembering and inventing what it had been like, what it would be like, to touch her, hold her, dance with her, silently, effortlessly, gliding over the ground like summer winds.

Unconsciously, his right work boot twitched, then twitched again, tapping the side of the wall. He was smiling.

Josh L.

The other ran her eyes
across the sky
and looked down at one from
so far away
She sighed at the ignorance
but inaudibly
so as not to offend youth
Raising one hand she said
to her daughter
"Look up."

Dutifully the daughter also
ran her eyes

Smoke filled the air and the noise
was incredible
The air was dank and warm
and did not refresh them
as they walked
The mother held her daughter's hand
across the street
The sun tried to shine through the buildings
and the daughter said
"Can we go up there again?"

Annie C.

Garcia

We spend Saturdays in sunshine in the Dominican laundromat
somewhere on the Lower East Side
My beaten Casio and your family's cars parked in radius
sputtering out Merengue
while we parle,
you and I, ja ja, superfly

I know your mother, call her cariña
and she informs me, to her I am flaca, of how
if you hadn't known me, O'scatty fool,
you'd have seemed a bum, a bandito, hobo like rolling sage and stones
and she calls me your vocation.
Remove your socks, woman, pattering barefoot through the
undulating windows of the laundromat like the theatrical bohemian you are,
say you'd have sent him apacking
out for the train yards and freight cars, congruent like your grays.

And like some automaton you, boy, desire mepale nipples or morning breath
so good it could be jazz
or rare meat/ we fleet and gallivant and teeth on these days
in bucolic Central Park, our Ballantines bearing their weight at our knees,
knowing that at any given time our offspring could be marauded,
left undone as all brassieres on this here rock
our laundromat taken for all it's worth.
Your gouache painting
of my butt-prints on the Whirlpool

Idiosyncracies
so many lavish cliché stories with which we've cushioned the other.
Automobile incidents, accidents claiming
my father's grandmother, like Isadora in her long, posh scarf
and just your father like Dean, Pollock, amorettos them all
and the Alize so good it could be jazz.
There is a man so old, so wandering in his veteran tense
at the feet of a cathedral north of the Cordillera Cantabrica
living vicariously through the corners of so many postcard photographs,
his face sunned and no nose,
no nose.
Alas his wife, your father's sister, who has a paralysis on half of her lips
so that the tea sometimes seeps out and she clenches her cigarettes like a bulldog.

Garcia, like the name of a bull fighter
strong, like clavicles should be defined
soft, like the triangle between and the bosoms below,
your thumbs,
(you are all thumbs) Garcia.

Lily W.

       They were not swimming from Scott. They were not swimming from an ugliness, a repulsiveness, from dry dronings on awesome aquatic accomplishments. They were, in fact, swimming towards ice cream, swimming towards nice warm towels and Kaitlin's older brother's friend Scott, of whom they had heard much to be desired. But that was not the point. The point was that they were not swimming towards him. He had been in that chilly water for half an hour, swimming about apprehensively, before anyone ever noticed him. And even thenthey were there and then gone. Sweetly amused with their ten minutes with a "nature boy." They were not creatures of great agility, these girls, clad in bright bathing suits that were clearly not used to being worn. They screamed and giggled in silly, high-pitched voices that perhaps, in a year or two, would be silenced in an overall effort to suppress the superfluous and impress the more important. Even at that age, they were grasping at the society of the world, beginning to notice the difference between one particular cut of a bathing suit and another, beginning to notice the difference it made on their own bodies and in the eyes of others. But not here. On the whim of the urban parents who, when summertime comes, feel pangs of guilt that they aren't providing their children with an "outdoorsy" experience, these girls were thrust out into the wild New Hampshire countryside, where reclusive grandparents reside. A sister and a brother, each with two friends, were treading on the hospitality of grandparents who rarely got to see their grandchildren and felt equally as guilty. For a week they were trying out their skills as botanists, animal preservers, hikers and minimalists, grappling with the idea of a resting society at one with nature. The sister and brother had made a tradition out of this week, looking forward to it at the end of the summer as their last furlough from urbanity before plunging into the routines of school. They embraced it wholeheartedly when alone, yet still felt it necessary to put up an aloof, sophisticated front for the friends that they had that year been allowed to bring. The grandparents disapproved of this coolness, and, wishing to immerse them in natural beauty, used all their wits to bring their defenses down, rallying Jacob and the trumpets from Jericho in their pursuits. It had been long and arduous, yet the week was coming to a close, and with such immersion in nature they could only succumb to its charms. Now, timid yet enthusiastic, they embraced the wilds of what was unknown.
       Scott's parents had been, or so they thought, much wiser in their upbringing policies. They chose to live "upstate," chose to forgo the worries of the hectic metropolises from which they had each come to live a life that was peaceful and serene. They were not hippiesproducts, perhaps of a generation wholly influenced by them, but not hippies in the actual definition of the word. And Scott was the same. Floating shyly around in what he considered to be his own private swimming hole, he observed from afar the nereids at play. He saw very little of such creatures during his normal daysonly his sister Norma, a few girls from town, and the cousins that visited them with almost pitying faces each Thanksgiving. He wondered how to approach them, how to attract their eye. They were not good at what they were doingjumping off rocks and gasping merrily as if they had not expected it to be cold. Impressing them was a task to be reckoned with. Perhaps, if he showed them some tricks, they would respect him and ask him to be their friend. Perhaps he would even marry one. That was, he supposed, how it all workedof course, he had some time before marriage, but it would be nice to have it all planned out, not to have to think of it until later. He swam shyly but fleetly through the murky water and came out behind the protection of an overhanging sycamore, wiping the wet hair from his eyes with caution in every movement. Now was his time to prove himselffor having been brought up a shy child secluded from the usual neuroses of the world, his main tormentor was his older sister Norma. Norma, who had responded to the wilderness by becoming a flamboyant, self-righteous sophisticate, would tease him about how he had no experience with girls and wouldn't know what to do if he met one. Norma went to parties in town, Norma seemed to know. But these girls were different. Timid in the unknown waters, they were also open, open to the small things that only just now seemed to matter. Frogs, minnows, wide leaves, cool breezes. They werethere were only two. Where was the third? Was she drowning, pulled by the current, sunning on the shore
       "Oh wow, there's a boy here!"
       Scott was so startled that he fell off his tree branch. Righting himself under water, he emerged embarrassed but thrilled. The introduction was no longer his to make. But she was laughing.
       "Sorry I scared you. Hey Julia, Mallory, come look what I found. There's a boy here. I told you I saw something moving." Scott felt rather like an unusual species of frog. "Look what I found here." What was that supposed to mean?
       "Hey, it's neat under here."
       "Almost like a little tree house. Too bad we're leaving soon."
       "Hey, is this your secret place? Do you live here? What's your name?" They all spoke so fast, so excitedly. Scott could hardly keep from laughing.
       "Yes I do. Live here, I mean, live in that house. Well, you can't see it but it's there. Behind the trees. Those. My name is" Had they even asked him that? "Scott."
       "Oh, Scott! Isn't that the name of Jake's friend, the really cute one?" Julia hit Mallory, or maybe Mallory hit Julia. The whole matter turned into a splashing fit of immense proportions and induced Scott to swim away from the tree. Waiting for the girls to come over, he watched the ripples his feet made underwater.
       "Hey Scott, where'd you go?"
       Delightedly he saw that they'd actually realized he was gone. The one who'd found him gave him an encouraging smile when she emerged from under water. He decided it was best to speak. "Sowho's Scott?"
       The three exchanged looks of pure feminine confusion. "We thought you were Scott."
       "Oh I am. I mean, well yeah, I meant the other one. Your friend. Jake's friend. You said" Self-consciously he stumbled through his speech, all the while noticing the beautiful ripples that their hair made on the water. Julia or Mallory laughed and proceeded to tell the whole story, from beginning to end, of how they came to be in that particular swimming hole and on that particular day. Scott found that he didn't care but listened attentively anyway. Occasionally he noticed that he was being watched quite closely by the one who had found him, there under the tree. It made him uncomfortable yet elated, as if he was part of some larger plan for the world. Time passed quickly then, for as soon as the story was over, one of them suggested that they all take turns jumping off the big rock, and Scott, waiting for any excuse to prolong the relationship, went along. It couldn't have been five minutes of jumpingfive minutes of unadulterated exhilaration as he realized that this girl was staring at him, five minutes of wanting and waiting to be able to stare back before the call came. Scott Sr., standing with Jake and Paul on the far shore, beckoned with towels, ice cream and smiles, all sent from what was in Scott Jr.'s mind the cruel house of the grandparents. The girls squealed delightedly, and then, just as suddenly as they had come, they were gone, swimming with all their might towards the far shore. And the point was not that they were swimming away. It was that they wouldn't stay with him.

Melissa G.

Sometimes
Awake in the dead of night
As another crosses my mind
And leads me to you
I arch my back and strain to remember
The heat I once felt
Same configuration
And mirrored
Only
I find it is lost
As your face comes before me
Anyway
It is only sometimes
And in the dark
And I don't think of you that often

When I saw you last
You looked bad
I'd like to think
That I've caused that
Only I think you've always
Really
Looked just the same
It's my filter that's since disintegrated

As it goes
You fade into the recesses of my mind
The pressure of your fingertips
At the small of my back
The sounds you made
Your habits
Your smell
All forgotten
But your face
Looking at me

That face isn't yours
Anymore
You look small to me now
And repulsive I wonder
If I look that way
As well
To you
Or have I always?

Anyway
I don't think of you
That often.

Rebecca L.

Benet K.

She looked around for the other one
Who had disappeared into the branches
Afraid of the sun that could engulf him
She could see the flowers shunned the one who trapped them
Fearing the running liquid, living off the elements
The berries teared with poison shells
Protecting their sweet seeds inside
And she wanted to do the same
To hide from her other frightened half
Whose tightly wound flesh was entangled into her human cast
She saw the blossoms burst like the explosion of the planets
As she gained memory of her creation from the gametes
After she was able to use the mind she had been given
She could always remember how sweet that sin had been

Anya K.

My confused pupils,
once students of your heart,
contract
although not struck by bright light,
and still
they can't get past your melting
brown eyes.

While I am
beholding
a familiar stranger, you.
Is it déjà or jamais vu?
When you don't already know
and you over stand
and your real dream
has come untrue.

Spoiled, but not rotten,
realities stink,

Born in my own vertical fantasy
where parallel lines
intersect, asymptotes of love
reaching toward the end of
infinity,

Only to be derived,
harshly horizontalized
equational segments solely
equaling
zero.

Nothing again; empty
expectations,
wasted wishes wash
my decorated mind.

Plain, blank, and simple
my ideals of how things should be
gone. Seeing far,
finally through your eyes
I glance at a dim reflection of
how things are.

Jocelyn G.