v.autumn.iii

Night-Side
by Benjamin Braus, M3

Once upon a time
Frog skin was known
As the material of the moon
A luminous totem
Of resurrection and decay
And perhaps today
Under misfortune's penumbra
That incandescent stroma
Still might guide us
As we abide
In darkness
Amid rumours of recovery
Which we inevitably anticipate
No matter how speckled
Slippery, or gray

v.autumn.iv

Death Stalks the Sushi Bar

Kathryn Weaver, M2

The smell of salty fish fills up the room.

The man sits, unaware of his sealed doom.

With his two chopsticks he manipulates

The sushi to extract it from his plate.

A figure enters, hidden from all sight,

While pulling with the shadows of the night.

The spirit hovers near, death in disguise,

Concealing in its cloak the man's demise.

Death searches his robe, visible to none,

Revealing from his cloak a faint, small gun.

Death points the gun straight at the man’s warm heart

And aims to shoot a small, metallic dart.

The wounded man collapses to the floor.His lungs inhaling gulps of air no more.The sushi stops the man from drawing breathAnd gives the man his unexpected death.

v.autumn.v

The Code

By Aaron Crosby, M3

Incessant beeping in this room.

Screw shut your eyes but for that one

glimpse of these jagged cracks of doom.

Electric waves of her crumbling

heart are retraced there in her eyes,

blue and ready.  Perched high, her mask’s

wide maw sets to devour her cries

like carrion.  Her chest, she turns

to unstick the walls to bring her

one last gasp of ice cold relief.

Metal dangles from the finger

of the arbiter, the smooth blade

whose long, cold curve the power holds

to arrest her descent and save

with one small lift before she folds.

She finds her brother at the door.

One puff into her sodden lungs,

and one and one and one and one,

but how many breaths to expunge

the mounds of cancer there entwined?

They speak secret their own language

whose syntax and style long ago

they honed in joyful garden shouts

to hide and seek the passing day.

What she says I cannot transcribe

or understand before he waves his hand.

No more. Attending angels slide

to wrap him in warm embraces

and bear her weight in arms more sure.

Endless beeps still drip like water.

Though stiff her body, they endure.

Deciphered here they seem to say:

Love life outstrips along the way.

iii.1

Torn

BY Megan Wood

I miss the innocence I never knew

I can see each time I look at you

Clear as it could ever be

My eyes looking back at me

There’s no question you’re my purpose

Still it boils beneath the surface…

I’m summoned now--it’s pulling me

My Calling, my Passion, my Destiny

Born before you, it staked its claim

Thrashing now inside my veins

Demanding that I follow through

Tearing me away from you…

I’ve never loved two things more

The life I have and my life before

When I could give it all to you

Just like a Mother ought to do

I wish there were another way

That I could go and I could stay...

ii.1

ANCESTORS

BY ANNIE JACOBSEN

Mother,

A golden thread

Looping in and out of darkness.

Your bones, heart, skin and breasts

Have died and been reborn,

This body is your testament.

From where did I arise

With these million voices on my lips,

A siphon of your consciousness?

At night we dream of each other

Like holding mirror to mirror,

Eclipse.

ii.4

COMMON PATHWAYS

BY JAVIER CABRERA PÉREZ

In our dreams I was a fool

in search of a missing fibula and you

were a failed superhero in need of

newtonian mechanics.

We met in a clandestine location,

a small bar about to close,

and discussed the possibility

of finding bones with parabolic

equations.

Kissing in the street corner

we approached each other

as spiral galaxies in eternal rotation.

our years of walking in tightropes

and creaking floorboards

fell behind, and the pain
from dislocated shoulders

(past encounters in the wrong hearts)

was dissipated by the warmth

of our bodies in your apartment

near the outskirts of Cambridge.

I wished I had been there before

to percuss your chest,

listen for breath sounds,

caress the small of your back.

You translated my babbling

(as a polyglot of my brainspeak)

through similar neuronal impulses,

common pathways for tragedy and romance.

You said, would you believe pulsars

are keeping time so well?

here is proof that some things can have a frequency,

the way souls can have frequencies,

and that maybe we are two pulsars

between extremes of dark matter

flashing at the same speed.

In the Boston museum my electrons

transferred weight between my nose

and yours, which confirmed our hypothesis

of being repellent magnetic fields,

not because of being opposites

but simply because of sharing smaller particles,

things too small for the average person

to comprehend unless delirious

or in love.

I have said to you how I wished

I could rewrite all my poems to you,

but the truth is that the most important

poems I have will always be in my dreams,

which, as we already know, you occupy

as a superhero of physics.