Monthly Archives: October 2009

Hillary Juster – 3 Days of Crime

On Tuesday I buy some candy walnuts, go to the library, eat a salad in the cafeteria, and go up many stairs, which are all illegal.

Wednesday I wake up illegally in the middle of the night, and I remember the cookie nightmare I had, which was also illegal.

I skip classes against the law. I go to the bathroom against the law. I go to a christmas movie function with a fog machine against the law. Illegally I don’t finish my wine which everyone knows is against the law. I now have a cold which is very illegal and I eat some illegal vegetable broth with rice noodles.

Thursday is illegal. I eat oatmeal with raisins in my kitchen for breakfast illegally. I go to the bureaucracy against the law and wait there for 1.5 hours illegally. I make some copies against the law, write down my riverboat zoo dream against the law, sort through my things against the law. I have not showered once against the law or brushed my teeth against the law since I’ve been against the law.

I see the woman who tells me that I am against the law. The man keeps looking in my face for some signs. I pay my money and get into bed. I listen to my computer. I eat many American crackers and drink a cup of tea.

Olivia Smith – stop, pulling.

snap crack the razor whips
the sharp tongue in two,
the atoms split

stop pulling my hair out
it’s standing on edge and
i can’t help
scratch
scratch
scratching
your coarse hands feel like tiny little

bugs. they sit on my scalp
and i
rub them away.
wash my fingers
scrub my toes
god. why are you so annoying?

do you wonder what an itch is-
because i do.
it bothers me, i don’t get it.

but i’m not frustrated for too long
because my mind begins to wander and
i think about things like
what did my dream mean last night?
i soon forget about
my hair being pulled.

Elliot M Richman – Heart and Brain Poem

Look at me! I can say the most beautiful things, but nobody knows! I have a heart and it beats beats beats but so what, so what?! I have a brain too and it throbs throbs throbs and I feed it and it reaches down into the heart and plucks it softly at first, pizzicato, and then Arco ARCO ARCO it breaks its back and makes it supple and cry and its tenuous fabric is thin and thinner and gauzelike until it contracts while part falls off and it’s solid and stolid and sturdy and here for good. That’s it! That’s my heart and it’s been that way for a while. Thanks brain says heart and brain says hey, it’s why I’m here. Wasn’t easy though… Yeah I know says the heart, and they shoot a spasmodic love signal through my spine and my skin shivers and my organs jolt in the aftershock. A tremulous heart so sturdy dying it’s bright like a star before black.