Willard and Maple Underground

I have recently learned the news that my school's student run literary magazine has been cancelled for reasons that no one seems to be at liberty to discuss. The news breaks my heart.

I learned about the magazine, Willard and Maple, from my advisor and later on favorite professor during orientation, and I fell in love with the idea. I became a member of the editorial board and got to read an review poems as well as decide whether or not to put them in the magazine. I'm sure I blogged about it plenty, but it was just such a highlight of my freshman year.

This year class schedules conflicted and I wasn't able to attend the Willard and Maple class, but I recently found out that the submissions have been closed, the class cancelled, and now I hear that the magazine itself is permanently cancelled.

I even submitted a few poems to Willard and Maple at the beginning of this year. It was such a huge step to send my work out to a literary magazine that would actually publish it, only to find out that apparently no one is even going to read those poems. It's heartbreaking.

A couple of my friends and I are trying to figure out how to make an underground version of the magazine. We all love this school because of opportunities like Willard and Maple. It was a publication for poets and fiction writers, and it was a huge chance to grow as an editor. When I emailed to ask for details I got a basic, "I can't tell you any details but there's nothing you can do."

I refuse to believe there's nothing I can do. Somehow I'm going to get Willard and Maple to stay alive, even if that means creating a poetry themed blog for Champlain students. It won't be the same, but anything to keep publishing Champlain poetry and give ourselves a chance to be in control of something. I refuse to give up.

Skeleton Key

The leaves are starting to turn into fire on the trees here in Vermont. There's still a lot of green but as I walk I have to step over the leaves on the sidewalk and stop to stare up at the outlines of the trees against the sky. It's beautiful, but it makes me a little bit sad because it's not as pretty as I remember from last year.

I tell myself it's just too early still. I'm waiting for the days when the grass is all decorated in red and orange and yellow and the air smells like dust instead of rotting grass.

While the sunflowers bend over in preparation for the coming ice age, I've taken on a project called 100 Happy Days. I take a picture a day to try and find the happiness in every day. It's exciting, forcing myself to find the good instead of just saying that I had a bad day and letting myself feel upset about it. I have to find the good things. Plus I get to take a lot of pictures, and I love pictures.

School has been a chaotic mess lately. So much work, so much writing, so much editing that I should be doing but am not. How do I focus on fixing one story when I'm in the middle of writing three new stories and a proposal and a poem? I feel like the second I start to catch up twenty new assignments come up, or old assignments I had forgotten about.

Plus registration day is coming up and I'm trying to choose classes, which also means thinking ahead to study abroad and future semesters. "You're going to run out of writing classes your junior year." But I want to take the writing classes now. Then again, all the writing classes I want are all scheduled for Tuesday, and I can't handle five classes every Tuesday. I have about a week to figure it out. Most likely all the classes will be filled by the time my registration window comes around anyway.

College is stressful, though it helps to have friends who will sit in the cafeteria with me all morning, or beside the fireplace, or in various rooms around campus. I have a friend with a bed full of stuffed animals, and sometimes I go over to her dorm and cry a little into her raccoon's fur. I always feel better after I cry.

I also feel better writing non-school related things. Writing a blog post to de-stress with a poem that doesn't quite make sense and will probably never be edited and improved. It makes me happy, though, to drip words into existence instead of stressing about whatever assignment I didn't do...


Skeleton Key

Too often the key doesn't unlock any door
I'm left with just this empty metal bone
That I picked up off some dirty floor

It's like I've found the sword in the stone
But I guess I'm not the chosen king
'Cause all I can do is pull and groan

I like to think the world has all this meaning
But just I keep hitting up against a wall
I can't seem to make sense of anything

I'm tempted to just get one my knees and crawl
Dig down 'till I find the earth's core
Let my tired self just give in and fall

Maybe then I'll find the door
Understand the meaning of this key
Figure out what I've been created for

Raging Against the Light

I tried to write a blog post this morning but it sounded like complaining and I'm trying to avoid that. I decided instead of ranting about how much I need the upcoming fall break and the rest that will come along with two days of no class I will instead share a poem.

Warning: the poem is pretty much ranting also, but it's a villanelle so it's okay, right? Isn't that how it works?

Today the world is just a cage;
I woke already craving sleep.
My tired heart becoming rage.

My heart is far too old for age,
and my eyes opened just to weep,
because today the world's my cage.

I'm wishing I could turn the page,
because this story's far too deep.
My tired heart has turned to rage.

If all the world is but a stage
then the stairs are far too steep,
and so today the world's my cage.

Too many tasks for me to gauge;
I'm buried neath a heap.
My tired heart has turned to rage.

I wish that I could disengage,
and back to loving blankets seep.
Today the world is just a cage;
my tired heart has turned to rage. 

Icarus Uprooted

I am too full of words tonight.

I read too many stories for class: stories about sex and suicide and cannibalism and murder and drowning. I wish I could miss class so I do not have to talk about them anymore. I want these images to leave my head.

I forgot about all my responsibilities and enjoyed the company of good friendship, and I want to never forget how many friends I have. How surrounded by friendship I am.

Sometimes an uncomfortable question digs a deeper conversation. Who knows what flowers will grow out of the hole?

Equity Blue gets another go, but I still can't put enough words together to call these pieces art. I wish my brain could function in instants. One instant I am filled with ideas and want to write them all down but cannot because I'm in class or walking up the hill or sitting in church. Next instant I have pen and paper and laptop open and even typewriter ready but words just won't come any more. Too bad I can't intersect instances.

Happiness and homesickness sometimes seem far too similar. Every morning I smell the roses my boyfriend sent me. The orange ones included in the bouquet look like the sunset but I miss the sunsets I've spent with him. Hour long Skype calls with my best friend and two hour phone calls with my favorite travel partner make me smile more than ever and I am full and happy, but also left with a deep sort of hollow I can't quite ignore.

My family is moving my home. I try to remind myself how often it did not feel like home when I lived there, but all I can think is how much I want to get back. It's like they kept me tied to Mexico even when I left, and now even that piece of me is uprooted. I am uprooted.

Give me wings
and I will show you
I can fly downwards.

You keep talking about Icarus;
blame his downfall on his pride-

I think he didn't have a choice.

No one ever talks about that other fear.
Don't you realize
once you've touched the skies
earth won't ever be the same?

You can't go back,
not after you leave,
you can't be who you were
when you've become
someone else.

I can fly toward the ground
as often as I want,
but it still won't change
the sun I've almost touched.

I have my Icarus wings
and I'm too scared
to fly back. 

Poe Jam

What is the ideal way to spend a Friday evening in college?

Poe Jam! Poe Jam all the way.

My school has this awesome event where writers can go read poetry while a Pro Jazz band plays music to fit the poem. This event is incredible. As my professor said "when it doesn't work it sounds good. When it works it sounds surreal." Or maybe he said "phenomenal" or something else. I don't remember, but either way he was right. Poetry and Jazz mix crazy well sometimes.

This Friday the Jazz was awesome. My non-writing roommate comes just for the music because even without a deep appreciation of poetry the music sounds great.

It's a little hard to read to, for sure, because you kind of want to listen to the music but you also want to read the poem and you have to read louder and more precisely. I sometimes have issues enunciating so it's really good reading practice for me.

I read one poem, which sounded better on paper, but came out all right. I sat down feeling super proud that I managed to get through it without shakiness. I have this awful tendency to either get super shaky hands or voice or both and people think I'm really nervous or about to cry when I'm not really.

Then the end of the list came half hour before the event was supposed to end, so I jumped in to read a second poem. It was a spur of the moment kind of decisions. There's this poem I wrote five or so years ago and the first line is "I want to hit something. No someone." It's pretty emotional and captured a lot of feelings and thoughts I had been dealing with for a while. I've worked on it a bunch, and it was my go to for workshops with my mom's writer friends.

I love reading a poem about anger and revenge to a table of, uh, can I say old people?

So now I read it to a room of college students and professors and maybe some passers by who just happened to step into Speeder and Earl's coffee shop. I don't think anyone was quite expecting it, but man oh man did it sound so good with the music. I had to yell a little by the end, but those jazz players brought my poem to life and it felt so good.

(Also felt good to read the poem from an outside kind of perspective years after writing it. It's good to see that a lot of the feelings have changed or shrunk and there's just a lot less anger in me now. Healing at its finest. Or maybe just time and distance blurring the memories into less than they are. Either way, it's good to know I am not angry.)

I suppose in a post all about poetry it's only fair that I post a poem. I'm going to post the first poem I read because it's easier to access at the moment. I know I'm lazy. It's a problem but I'm kind of working on it.

The Cycle of Fading

Can you hear the heartbeat
of my silhouette?

One thousand and two
memories of you, of us, of me
fill this skeletal heart of mine
until I trick myself into believeing
the pieces are all one heart again.

I am all chaos and spattered paint,
I am the globe,
the sky,
the uneven ripples of the ocean,
the lines between stars
of the constellations.

I am the echo
of all the times you've stopped my breath
and the whispers of your voice
as it follows the wind.
My life is made up of remnants,
all the shadows I have loved,
until I too am a shadow soul.
A million pieces
slung across the skies
in search of a heartbeat.   

Dry Bones

Lately I have been writing a lot of poems about bones.

Don't ask me why. I'm just drawn to this image of dry bones baking in a desert sun. I can thank Ezekiel chapter 37 and the song Skeleton Bones by John Mark McMillan. I first heard this song the summer after tenth grade, which I like to say is the summer that changed my life. Turned my dry bones back into a living person, so to speak.

Anyway, there isn't really a point to this. I'm just reminding myself that even death can't stop the one who conquered death. When life gets tough, and even in these days of sunshine I know it will, I know that I can be brought back to life. I can be made new time and time again. It's reassuring. So here's one of my poems. No title for it yet, but here you have it. 

I am all dry bones in a desert
leftover carcus
baked by the sun
even my blood begins to splinter

rough dust provides a bed
cactus thorns my shelter
I am dead weight
you pretend not to notice
parched skull
unwanted view

even these dry bones of mine
have forgotten how to hope
my rib cage
can't remember how to breathe

I wait for the wind to blow
wait for the river to flood
the rain to decorate my rotted flesh
my bones will be rediscovered

living breath
will pump my heart to life
this skeletal soul will fill
until the desert is an ocean
and I am walking on the waves
fully fleshed
glowing out life you've restored


On a much different note, I've been playing with flash fiction for one of my classes and boy is this tough. I thought I was doing well until I checked the word count to see that I am fifty words over. How do people write in so little space? I may have to start over entirely because I can't find enough words to cut without making the whole thing sound horrible and choppy.

Also, tons of drama in my writing class. It's been a weird few weeks of trying to find ways to challenge myself in a class that was simply not geared toward my level of writing. How do you politely mention to a teacher that the class is easy and boring? You don't, but it seemed just as awful to say nothing and continue to put thousands of dollars to a class that isn't improving my writing. I mean, I can challenge myself on my own time through the homework assignments, but three hours listening to the basics of plot structure. Really?

After a workshop gone wrong, an accidental plea to the higher ups, and a sassy email, I think the class might get better next week. Only time will tell, but I have high hopes. In the meantime I'll try and get as much as I can out of my two ridiculously overlapping writing classes and try to stay on top of the suffocating lists of Japanese words and symbols.

Van Gogh's Stars

I want to talk about art today, and Easter Eggs and poetry about stars.

For almost two years now I've played with this idea that God hides little Easter Eggs for us to find. I know this isn't a literal thing and maybe not the best way of explaning what I mean, but I remember having a conversation with my boyfriend about how the moments of finding God or hearing something from Him are like Easter Eggs. Since then whenever something particularly meaningful happens or I discover some new truth I'll write him to say that I found an Easter Egg.

The second part is art- Van Gogh specifically. I need to start by admitting that until today I really didn't care much about art. My criteria was "do I like this at first glance?" I'm now taking an "Aesthetic Expressions" class specifically called "Street Art" and we've been talking a lot about what art means. To be totally honest it's still not something I had much interest in.

But today we started talking about Van Gogh and the other students were discussing why people like the Starry Night picture so much, and about what they thought the picture meant. And then all of a sudden my professor starts to talk about Van Gogh's life. Which I actually knew nothing about.

I don't know if I just never learned this or if I somehow managed to forget everything I had learned. All I know is that when I think of Van Gogh I think of the posters and puzzles and calendar hanging on my high school English teacher's wall. I thought the paintings were kind of pretty, but didn't quite understand why she liked them so much. I hope she isn't too disappointed if she reads this. But anyway, those puzzles were all I knew about Van Gogh, so when the teacher said something about a cut off ear I was kind of shocked.

The story goes on and I'm not going to try and repeat it because I know I would get something wrong and my friends who are fans would be quite disappointed. But if you don't know anything about this artist look him up. Artists seem to have this common theme of depression and insanity. Van Gogh was no different.

But what I didn't expect was the story of him experience as a missionary, living with the Moraivians the way they lived with the idea that he would be like Jesus coming as a human to live with us. Of course the church at the time didn't like that idea, and eventually Van Gogh rejected the church but never quite gave up on God. I think this is a common occurrence, sadly enough.

And then my professor started to talk about this letter from Van Gogh to his brother about the meaning of colors in his paintings. He said yellow was the color that represented Jesus, blue was God's presence in the world, green represented faith and black meant sin and death. Suddenly the famous swirly painting meant so much more to me.

Suddenly I saw a painting that showed God over everything and Jesus shining through house windows and it was so beautiful. Our professor said that Van Gogh talked about finding God in the stars when he had lost hope in religion. It makes sense to me. I see God so clearly in stars. In the sky.

I've wondered why I love poetry about stars so much. Lately all the poetry I write includes some line about stars or sky, and my favorite poems all include mention of the sky. I find God in the sky, Jesus in the moon and stars. I know I am not of this world and the sky is the closest I can come to imagine heaven. The stars speak to me, as does this newfound knowledge of Van Gogh.

The stars are an excellent Easter egg. A never ending source of poetry.