Wednesday, March 10, 2010
- Jed Moch & Allie Ghaman / Daily
The Literature Issue
By: Magazine Staff
This week’s The Statement features the Daily’s annual selections of the best student-submitted poetry and prose.
Cold Water
By: Madeline Conway
Hysterics are for
the worst kind
of realizations.
Like,
I live
in a house that God built
for people to be alone.
Good thing
my father left me
something more useful than money:
a head-
no, a heart-
for the road.
Because I drove
25 blocks
blurry-eyed,
screaming into the night,
foot off the pedal,
coasting
on a riptide.
The Newby
By: Robin Goldberg
Your southern bob distains me-
so I’ll ignore you.
I don’t need your business cards because I won an Oscar and
I have connections (to the sandwich-maker).
I know where to find 1969 prices,
and I can sustain myself on animation and vintage tops.
“Yeah, I crochet,”
but you don’t seem to notice that I’m not a golfer.
I’m a carpooling professor
and “I’m very social.”
Funerals are not Appropriate Places to Imagine Priests in Bunny Costumes, and Other Reflections
By: Gaby Martin
Instead of feeling excited whenever anyone announced that he or she had adopted a new puppy or other infant pet, Ruby immediately felt a pang of sympathy, for her first thought was never of the happy life that the owner would share with the animal, but rather that the puppy or kitten or domesticated rodent would die one day.
Mixed Soil
By: Iris Brilliant
A chocolate croissant? A genuine latte? On Indian soil? Oui, merci! I create a shrine at my table made of various chocolate and flaky delights, bow my head, and commence. In my bag: a baguette and generous wedge of Brie for my new, eagerly awaiting friends. But I take my time.
Insomnia Love Affair
By: Jillian Bergsma
Your two-in-the-morning text message says:
I’m coming to see you tomorrow.
And all night I dream of you and all day I wait
and the parking lot claims no new arrivals.
So I put on my slinky jeans, fix my why-yes-I-just-rolled-out-of-bed hair
and prepare to forget you with the right ratio of cheap vodka to expensive friends.
The Dead, Naked Woman in Your Bathtub
By: Matthew Hodges
Alright, don’t panic. Calm. Collected. Untroubled. Don’t breathe too fast. Don’t look down too much. Assuage. Temperance. Relieve. Rest. Reprieve. Is reprieve a befitting synonym? Is she dead? She’s dead. There is a dead, naked woman in your bathtub. And what a bathtub! An iron-clad claw foot bathtub with solid brass fixtures and a marble soap dish.
Knees
By: Madeline Conway
how could I end up
with my father’s bones
not in a casket in my legs in my ribcage
the way he tore down our wallpaper he was a
Missouri hick he was a
coward he was a
pretender
he was a
coin toss he was a
missionary he was a
mortar and pestle
he ground up my mother’s womb and made me
out of the dough scraps of Christmas cookies that are
supposed to make up for
the times you screamed
Fists
By: Elizabeth Olenzek
I wish I could
fight you. Pull
over the car. Pull off
the road.
Open the windows wide so
that the oldies leap out onto the pavement
like a jerking staccato
And my fists would
sing harmony to your punches.
Afterwards,
when that tooth of yours is gone,
applesauce pit in its place,
And when my brow is
wrinkled silver with a row
of catgut stiches on my scalp,
afterwards,
The Statement is The Michigan Daily's weekly news magazine, distributed every Wednesday during the academic year.
- Jed Moch/ Daily
To the girl lying naked on my boyfriend's futon
By: Brittney Miller
Click the headline above or image to read this work.
- Marissa McClain/Daily
Pickle Jars in my Trunk
By: Jane Lawrence
They've been sitting back there for years,
Clear glass containers filled with brine.
(Make new friends but keep the old, they said,
And who am I if not one to comply with aphorisms?)
I drive slowly and steadily, and am so
Careful not to turn right on red or
Accidentally speed through intersections or
Change lanes without signaling.
I stop for school buses.
I brake for animals.
{i sit before mr.e.e.cummings}
By: Mo Stych
i sit before mr.e.e.cummings
as one sits before
any a who-artist:
naked
nervous(ly smiling.)
"paint me,” i say,
“paint me a poem
on your white canvas
waiting in your
click-
clack
typewriter,
waiting as i
for your
thud-
thump
heart."
he tries a line(tickitytacktackclick)
heaves a sigh:
"can't be done!
it must be mud-
luscious
Spring!Time
is jumping forward
too fast!too
The Hypochondriac’s Dilemma
By: Olivia Vander Tuig
I had planned to be home three hours and twenty-seven minutes ago. I had not planned to wait on the tarmac for an hour and eight minutes and counting. I am regretting eating breakfast now. The hotel the interviewer put me up in was shitty, and the dining room was filthy. I’m sure a rotten egg was what was causing me distress, but I can’t go to the bathroom on the airplane. I think of E.
Iowa is for Lovers
By: Max Bloom
We could go to the cornfields at night, maybe when the moon is full. We could stroll down the spaces between stalks like they were the avenues of Paris. The shimmering moonlight reflecting off the heads of corn could be elegant streetlights, lighting the way for us as we wandered between cafés and verdant parks.
judith butler folds her paws under her chin and takes a nap
By: Iris Brilliant
how do we undo each other?
i do up my hair,
by the end of the day
undone undone undone
i do a charade of pleasure
when complimented
that i can haul my bike
onto the rack of the bus
that happened five minutes
ago, i'm serious.
what are the politics of masturbation?
i envy the red fox that has
an entire file on its sexual
activity and where is my
goddamn file? i decide to
Wednesday
By: Mark Navarro
i fell in love with you on a Wednesday:
you always told me that you hated Wednesdays,
that you were born on a Wednesday.
i was born on a Tuesday,
2:33am.
whereas you were born in the rays
and beaming of the West Coast,
i emerged here, a child of aluminum
smokestacks
and premature love
that only the Midwest can harbor so well
in all fairness i probably should have
David's Dead Animal Poem
By: David Kinzer
I like lots of animals.
I like skinny monkeys with short
hair who jump up and run up
and down with one
another like pink plastic party
cups in electric
storms. And I like wallabies
because they’re just
little kangaroos and they carry littler
kangaroos in their littler-than-a-kangaroo’s
pouch.
I even like dead animals I like
animals so much. Dead elephants
