Campus rhythm: Poetry submissions by Westwind

prime.winter.poetry.delivery.girl

prime.winter.poetry.delivery.box

Delivery

Zoe Goldstein
Third-year, English

Her lips, dry, taste like
Mexican rattlesnake hide.
She left her extra
Skin. In a mailbox, hidden,
On an empty beach.
The package was marked in blood,
“Return to sender.”
And, attached, a postcard to
A fossilized shark,
Whose teeth she still finds washed up
In her kitchen sink.
She visits fairly often –
Not to check the mail –
She likes to watch the ocean
Exhale. In tide pools,
The sea urchins remind her
Of geisha slippers.

prime.winter.poetry.delivery.teeth


prime.winter.poetry.leaving

Leaving

Justin Kinnear
Fourth-year, English

Her blackened blue eyes follow
the falling westward sun – all efflux
dried out – with bloodstained words
caught in her throat, she considers
her breathing and leaving for the blue-
gray Pacific where waves ebb, flow: hope,
despair, hope, despair. With breakneck
January winds and marked city streets,
strewn palm fronds undone
like lost angels, Los Angeles is hell
on earth but good heavens! never looked
better. Returning to you. Smelling salt
so close like dried tears on a face, she
smiles and sighs through her bloody lip.


Terrains

Gabriel Malikian
Alumnus, English

Silver City: I sift through
saved stills under my solo shelter

pitched between a bleached steeple
and the ghosted homes of old

Idaho’s gone gold rush – here’s
us: dust-bathed urchins

blocking Yucca Valley’s rubble and bokeh
background, shoulder straps slung

over our torsos in khaki crosses, matching
cocked hips, ripped hems, and

raccooned eyes focused on slowing
the sunset: this makes magic light.

That promised-next pit stop
never came. Our abandoned

hospital honeymoon, Chernobyl,
expired.

ILLO2

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