Light Spun From Ashes

Honors Seminar 398 A, Winter 2016

Brain and The Healing Power of Poetry

Give sorrow words; the grief that
does not speak
whispers the o’er-fraught
heart and bids it break.

Shakespeare

As a neurologist and poet, the opportunity to teach a class to extremely bright

students
was both exciting and challenging. Recent attempts to soften the edge of
technology
that has found its way into every aspect of medical diagnosis and treatment
have
resulted in a new approach to the education of medical students and
relationship centered
care giving. Humanity sections have appeared in many peer reviewed
scientific medical journals that incorporate submissions of poetry and short
stories by physicians and other care-givers, and anthologies of poetry by
physicians have been incorporated into medical school curricula. In this
honors class, I charged my students with the creation of three poems of their
own making, and expanded the horizon beyond the personal, to include
environmental and socio-political issues confronting society, that require
exploration and healing. Their task included the assembly of the chapbook
titled, “Light Spun from Ashes” and cover design graphics. The outcome is
laudable, and it has been an honor to coach and work with these gifted human
beings.

Special thanks go to editors, Sasha Cordier, Simone Schwartz-Lombard ,

graphic designer, Grace Novacek, and Josh Nolette, bookstore wizard who
waved his wand over the final result.

Arthur Ginsberg MFA, M.D., FACP

Sasha Cordier
 brainiac

you call this

mushy lump
beautiful well
i disagree
from one
mushy lump
to another
it’s fucking ugly
people say beauty
isn’t skin deep
but obviously
it isn’t buried either

no
we are the disguise
of a sad
creased bundle of
intentions
that will never feel
the light of day

a hunched old man

crippled
suspended in dark space
a parasite
cut off
helpless
with disgusting little
grasping tubes
binding it down
force feeding us

yet somehow
we are able to construct
a standard of beauty
and not base it on
what makes us
who we are
how cruel is that
this poor thing
this network
that comprises the net worth
of our personalities
a corporation
involved in insider trading
the stock of exchanges
dispatching messages
so we can function
invisible as telephone lines
an equally understated
instantaneous magic

if you close your eyes

ignore the vain veiny drawings of what
our essentials look like
face
the warm dark inside
the music
innate to our humanity

all that we are

and have created
fueled only by oxygen and sugar
it’s almost beautiful
this idea
that something little
vulnerable
and egotistically ugly
can create so much
not alone
but connected
 stages of nov nine

there’s a stasis
when the dread sets in when
this can’t be real
can’t feel
anything
hearts stop beating
can’t think of eating
mentalities retreating
no conceding
to what my brain realized
want to slide lids over eyes
in the dark some new disguise

who are the fucking idiots that let this happen

there’s been some type of cheating
a meeting led by the scum of the earth
why didn’t you fucking vote
there’s no antidote
for apathy
what the hell are we
now

i’m thinking of pleading

to higher powers i never believed in
before
but with what’s in store
if this is allowed
then there can’t be more
there’s nothing in the sky but clouds
they look beautiful
but they don’t catch you when you fall
you fall through

tipped over the edge of

the too-still plummet
blood morphs into slugs
it’s a l l s o s l o w
agonizing
and slimy
can’t f o c u s
i know this
shouldn’t be happening
unraveling
what’s the point of doing
anything

my heart is a jagged rock

covered in salt
it cuts and burns and kills and my
veins are crashing
like the canadian immigration website
due to the exodus of what was blue
let it run
leap outside
a joyous savagery
like what i’ve seen
on the results map
crimson spilled across the page
like the mistake it is

this state of thinking isn’t sustainable but

i don’t know if i’ll reach acceptance
i don’t know if there’s any positivity
left in me
i guess tomorrow we’ll see
long live the land of the goddamned free
 Light only lies.

No one is safe from the light

because it keeps the dark at bay.
The only truth is the night.

All their lives people fight in fright;

a frenzy to present the best false display.
No one is safe from the light.

It renders everything in sight

to neverending tones and shades of grey.
The only truth is the night,

when the wrongs we pretended were right,

and our true selves, come out to play.
No one is safe from the light.

We must instead accept our plight- the blight

we created. In order to breakaway,
the only truth is the night.

With this cold realization, we can finally smite

the monsters that were hiding in the day.
No one is safe from the light
if the only truth is the night.
 The opposite of found.

Do you feel the distortion

caused by life’s daily contortion?
A jumble of limbs,
reaching
on the jungle gym, kids
screeching.
People so far in the dark
they forgot they don’t need light.
Cities building life into a constant fight
to leave our scorching mark
bleeding fire on the night.

How can we find ourselves

when we’re so focused on everyone else?
Searching with our wrists,
not fingers,
blunders bashing pain
that lingers.
Palms looking in, arms thrust out;
we need to decide
whether we should hide
or learn how to shout
what we really care about:

our children, with their endless wonder

plunge through worlds wrenched asunder.
The future of us:
helpless.
The cost of love:
priceless.
Tremendous eyes begging to believe,
easy to deceive.
Don’t show them how to leave
because what they perceive
will shape their lives,

like cookie cutter knives

pushing through sugar dough.
Don’t go
or else it will be all we know,
leaving us so
lost.
Samantha Fredman
 Apology

these words I write for you

beautiful glimmer of my past
in the hope of forgiveness and
understanding for the way
I allowed him to shatter your soul and
poison your heart with a simple

goodbye

when all you wanted was to

adorn your hair with flowers
plucked delicately from abundant fields
to sing love’s praises rippling
from your breast like rain drops on a still pond
to feel the sun’s gentle kiss
filling the hollows of your bones
a warm like honey sort of

bliss

but instead I made you slowly crumple

onto the cold gray of a sidewalk long since abandoned
and left you there
flowers wilted song paused frost covered
a silent reminder of days
that should forever remain

forgotten
 understanding

how is it that we are so

damn content just
continuing along as
shadowed paper people
with colored vibrant souls
hidden behind masks of

our own construction

knowing that behind the next disguise
lies someone else burdened

staggering under the weight

of a hundred worlds of their own creation
of a thousand ghosts of a million pasts

whispering infinite possibilities

into ears that are almost too eager
to listen to words they are not prepared to hear

and yet we are still dismayed

when we are unable to understand their convictions
or dismantle their logic

as if simply recognizing the mask

could allow us into the complexity of
a shadowed colored soul
 Broken Strings

Gone.

Memories appear as shaded photographs;

frozen moments and shining faces
on decrepit walls in rickety homes
destined for demolition...

Done.

Minds turn to intricate mazes

where unencumbered feelings are unleashed.
Without the ability to navigate,
our thoughts lead us nowhere and yet...

Always,

the mandolin hums lonely on the quiet street.

Aged agile fingers gracing its eight strings,
finding the same melodies they have for these many years
singing songs and speaking thoughts that permeate

Everybody.
Emma Greeven
 Beyond Perception

A pastel sky with tufts of white and grey,

a steady breeze that shuffles yellow leaves--
they dance with a graceful intensity.

Just stimuli through bleary eyes and ears,

slight waves that fall through cones and rods and drums -
both quantifiable and infinite.

Our brain – the core of all humanity.

It dictates our reality and yet
perceives nothing of what it cannot sense.

In such a thing there beauty lies untold,

a consciousness that tries to understand
itself, in every interworking way.

Our only means to know what’s truth or lie

with eyes that see so much, and yet we die
never having seen what lies beyond ourselves.
 The Procession

Hearts with ankle weights shuffle towards the door,

chains gently clinking against souls shackled with wooden weight.
We march, weary, our fine suits soaked in grieving silence,
through the prison yard decked with pews and fine white blooms.
Side to side we sway,
one foot
in front of
the other.

Mother, father, sister of just fourteen – they lead us by our heartstrings,

their stoic faces streaked with liquid solidarity, for an end met too soon,
like fire incinerates newspaper in an instant.
So, through the silence our voices swell, hymns
like waves on the sea,
for the brother,
for the friend,
for the son,

until finally we halt, the crematorium before us,

our song now just one voice – as the fires rage,
the mother’s wails drip down marbled walls.
 Five Waves

Words emerge through pale lips, slow and calm with news of the unthinkable,
then the silence hangs still, heavy like the lab coat she wore,
with the writhing weight of how you must have looked, grey,
dressed in white, smothered in chemical stench-
your beautiful brown feathers marred,
my sparrow, it can’t be true,
it isn’t.

Then the beast’s mournful howls slip between the dust, floating like golden tears
in the single, sunlit window that escaped my wrath of darkened walls,
its teeth rip and tear as it shreds through my chest,
feathers in its teeth it hovers there – red with rage,
expanding against the weight of the truth
my strangled breath
unsteady.

And from this broken state I beg, I plead for Him to cauterize this pain inside,
that splinters me with broken shards of lost youth and days wasted,
if only I had seen it sooner, worked less, cared more
perhaps you would have been spared, and I
would have a moment re-spun,
a moment rerun, a moment
returned.

You soared with grace and beauty, my little sparrow, despite your sickly wings,
and the way your body decomposed around you, phobic of life, splitting
fraying, fighting your every move with the terrible force of fate,
but all the while your songs and stories never ceased,
your spirit never wavered, and
your feet never touched
the ground.

The leaves have fallen and the leaves have grown, the world continues to turn,
undisturbed, like you never left, as new birds sit among the branches,
their feathers of bright shinning colors sorely lacking the tones
of earth that warm my heart and soothe my soul,
and never since that dreadful day,
have I heard a sparrow’s song,
but I know in the grip of cold, cold death you found where you belong.
Gayatri Jaiswal
 The voice

Under the blanket of anxiety

scuffled in the frigid sheet, I exhale
neck throbs, heart skips through the calamity,
drowsy, palpitating - I must remember to inhale.

Do I? If I am tired of breathing,
sinking down the spiral descent to my
new home - pitch black; fairy lights are teasing,
screaming, the glare hurls me through the black sky.

Cheek stings, wide-eyed, hyperventilating,

I see your supple hands rubbing my fists.
Concern bleeds, frère your gaze penetrating,
warmth oozes through my joints, I rise from crypts.

Adieu bleeding palms, rubber legs, farewell.

Scars fade out, love relieves my heart to swell.
 Fahrenheit 201.6

History repeats itself,

don’t be mistaken
9/11 happened again,
humanity is shaken.

A special kind of rising ember

is born in every heart,
head throbs, soul screams
when will your fight start?

“I believe in capitalism”
“I believe in feminism”
Goliaths that underrate individualism.

“That’s not right”

“You aren’t white”
Yes, please. Set the divide alight.

“Don’t be so dense”
“It makes economic sense”
How about we drop the intellectual pretense?

The dance of dragons

has been so false,
the candidates performed
their final waltz

And we are left

with our vote theft.

Remember, Remember,
fire blazes from this mortal sin.
November, November,
was when we set ablaze from within.
 Sing me to Sleep

Sing me to sleep
when my threshold is near and I am weary.
When thunder is pain and aches are dreary,
sing me to sleep.

When red lights flash

EMERGENCY
screaming through faded vision…
And is that breath yours?

I’m back now, just,

not quite,
I can’t remember what I left
between those wrinkled sheets.

My tongue is tainted with

numbness
or was it the clinical air
with its anesthetic taste,
fresh, sanitary and metallic,
like blood.
But there was none that night;
how could there be such gore,
when it is merely my “imagination?”

Thanks again for the morphine, Doc,

thanks for getting me hooked on it too,
for leaving me woozy and blind.
Yet, the lonely are the ones who are drunk
with resentment.
You fools, why do you crave this life?
Attention is not worth
drowning under turbulent waves,
dying,
when the world believes
that you will live if you just keep
bloody swimming!
When I surfaced,
once the waves had done their part,
I cautiously tore open my heart.
Therapy is trust,
but trust is fiction,
like the one you read me that night
when you taught me how to fight.

Sing me to sleep
since you are my eternal heartbeat.
I will survive, don’t call this bittersweet,
Sing me to sleep…
Marissa Lorberau
 Cat Got Your Tongue

It’s pink and fleshy

between the great striped cat’s teeth,
looking sad and soft and gruesome.
I feel its loss in the hole in my mouth
and the hole in my stomach
and the hole in my heart.

The tiger’s eyes roam me,

staring me down from the other side
of the antiseptic laced room
as it prowls beside the hand sanitizer bottle
they make me use whenever
I come to visit.

It mocks me with its whip of a tail,

flicking about, rustling the
eye chart that no one in this room
is ever going to be concerned with.
Who cares about 20/20 vision when
you’re dying?

Its teeth slowly pulverize the fleshy

delicacy clenched in its maw,
and my throat tightens as my mother
guides me toward the bed
to say something to Grandpa.
 My Mermaid

Your eyes were not the blue of the poet’s waves

nor the writer’s seafoam green,
but the soft brown of the seafloor
that stared so lovingly.

You had mermaid hair as you dove

from the docks, amidst the swaying reeds.
Long and loose within the waves
as you sang and laughed, carefree.

Your nails, painted, shone like scales

iridescent blues, silvers and greens.
The light caught your face and my heart did
a flip at that smile you wore just for me.

Warm and happy those days were

filled with joy and peace.
But then Poseidon called you back,
his daughter of the sea.

“Terminal,” the doctor said,

though I couldn’t bear to believe.
You smiled and asked “How long do I have?”
but the answer was lost to my grief.

Your hand found mine as we got to the

house, tugging me toward the beach.
We curled together in the sand and let
the salt from our eyes be our speech.

Your robust figure turned to bone,

and a healthy tan to ash.
Your neck and head, prone to chills,
were covered with an aqua sash.

The ocean had always called to you

in ways I could not see.
You said to spread your ashes here
and that promise I will keep.

The beauty of it doesn’t escape me,

sunlight casting a crystal sheen.
My memories here will always remain
of my mermaid who returned to the sea.
 The Morning Egg

The sizzle is what draws her ear.

The sharp snap of oil in the pan,
music that only she can hear.
A staccato beat for the egg
as it dances in its death throes.
The strange rhythm is infectious
a reminder of her dancing
days. The skunky smell of sweat and
the feel of her pelvis grinding
away at another lovely,
lonely soul.

In her distraction, the yolk breaks.

Quickly, she grabs her spatula
and cauterizes the leaking
wound. Her meal is streaked with its
own guts, thick yellow effluent
that mars the sunny side up.
“Such is life,” she thinks to herself,
and raises a forkful to her
mouth, her dropping jowls catching what
falls away as she chews her lush,
faulty prize.

Her wife left for work at six,

clean and fresh before the grease stains
could mar her wrinkled hands and clothes.
The egg was her daily breakfast
routine, a simple thing she no
longer thought she could do without.
The phobia of idleness
she experienced in her younger days
had long since abandoned her,
replaced by a comfortably
ordinary life.

She washed her plate after the last

bite was chewed up, as one should with eggs.
otherwise they’d stain her dish
with their yellow goo. The flange that
attached the sink to the basin
made a nice resting spot for her
dish towel as she finished up.
Her wife wouldn’t be home ‘til eight,
so she sat on the couch and slid
her slippers off,
thinking on her
empty days.
 Red, White and Blue

We paint the streets red

with blood of children and then
label them criminals so that we
don’t have to feel so guilty.

We paint sidewalks white

with foamy spittle from our mouths,
too angry and sad and spent
to muster words.

We paint the skin around our eyes blue

with fists that meet in the
heat of battles that were never
designed to have winners.

We paint our flag not

with the valor of patriots, the
innocence of new eyes, or the
justice of righteous belief.

We paint our flag

with the sad sacrifices of a
country so hellbent on being right
that it forgets to be good.
Grace Novacek
 going under

you can’t speak. so,

first, you dip your toe in.
an interwoven web of momentarily
fluorescent vessels,
fast moving sensation,
neurons firing.

it hurts, it aches, you squirm.

the web cauterizes your skin
from within you,
a forest fire that rages alongside your blood.

you slip deeper into the sea,

the reverberating latticework
reactivated by water’s touch,
egging you on.
your infirmity pulls you
down
down
down.

in an attempt to stay afloat,

you spit from your mouth:
the water you’ve inhaled.
but, the tugging within you returns
with all the might
of a thousand strands
of string lights.

floating, fluttering arms --

your last form of resistance
as warmth creeps up your scalp.

you fall heavily below the surface.

your toes finally greet the floor.
the web within you glows blissfully;
what falls away turns to vapor.
calmly, you whisper,
“i can’t breathe.”
 second sunday of may

for years, i heard the echo of my mother’s tip-toed treading clicks on finished wood. she
tried to slip past my room quietly, but she woke me anyway — i was listening. some
mornings, when i rushed to catch her, i sprung from my bed with such urgency that we
collided in the hallway, full force, spilling giggles. “goodbye” was only for half a day,
but that felt like an eternity.

for years, i watched other moms whisper gusts of words amongst themselves on the steps
outside school. i didn’t have to wait long after school to feel her hand intertwined in
mine, synchronized swimming with our shuffling shoes. but i did have to wait. the five
minutes it took her to arrive each day was enough to keep the moms blowing wind for
years.

it was those same mothers that played a game of telephone with their sons and daughters,
who then coaxed me into listening. it was those sons and daughters that i hurled angry
words at, verbal combat that flushed my face a deep beetrose, after i had picked up the
phone. my mom’s public display of unapologetic femininity in “a man’s world” was a
dam in their river, but they didn’t hold back.

these days, it isn't just those sons and daughters. half of the nation is rooted in soil
fertilized with traditional values. my mother, my sisters, myself: we are all reduced to our
monthly flow of blood, our ideas a result of the endocrine system’s tendency for
melodrama. the exclamations degrading our worth overpower our abilities; our backs are
strained bridges. how do they so effortlessly shout “pro-life” while our flowers are
wilting, dying, planted in their ground?
 japanese maple

the leaves of the tree

that was awake through summer
flutter to join their friends.

their chorus of red

meets the absence of earth’s sun,
bite of rotation.

scrambling, you escape;

your feet gliding over the
fallen, masking the

concrete. a path to
the new: hurling limbs onward,
away from the trees,

until you surface

from the pile of red that had
inundated you

in memory. friends
float back up to their branches,
leaves facing upwards.

exhale as the sun

greets your pores, with the corners of
your lips upturned.
 dad

the minute hand rushes to catch the hour

a pair troubled with being paired
their race claims nostalgia as reward

i see the clock’s frenzy in his pupils

the lightless windows illuminating
what is forgotten

i feel their rhythm in my own chest

the thump of my heart entrained by this timepiece
its ticks ripple through my body
apprehensive of detonation

the ticking pulses through his fingertips

a lesson in somatic communication
tremulous with the passing of time

someday he and i may once again

wind our intricate systems of timekeeping
together

but until then

i wrap my watch around his wrist
in an attempt to tether our time
and i ask him again
do you recognize me?

and when he greets me

with aphasia's empty gaze
i remind him again
i'm your daughter
i love you
Simone Schwartz-Lombard
 The Brain: Mystery, Liberty, Poetry

Where do dreams come from?

The beat of a drum?
Perhaps, sweet hum—
of a lullaby
hum hum sleep sweet, Brain

How do ideas
pleasantly free us?
Are these fabulous
thoughts indigenous
to angelic hush,
in ears booned to us?

How do we explain
triumph and our pain?
Are our heads simply
balls of thick lead? Or—
sharp as metal tacks,
full of complex facts?

Where do song lyrics

come from? Do the words
rumble from the paths
of great gazelle herds?
Or do they come from
inside of me and
you? Who is to say,
but the three-pounder
upstairs, rather than
the oceaned founder?

What’s responsible
for telling us who
we are, who we love?
Pink mushy gears swiftly
on the move—chitter
chatter chirp chirp chirp
Corpus Callosum,
Amygdala, and
hippocampus—boom—
lighting bolts away,
working to unveil
the mystery of
our liberty and
love for poetry.
 Autoimmune

Why can’t
you get out of bed?
She asks,
and my face turns beet red.
Why can’t
you tie your own shoes?
And in that moment
I lose
my will to try.
I slowly move
my sluggish body up.
But I lost my groove.
She frowns.
A single tear slips down my cheek.
Down,
Down,
Down—
I fall to the floor.
No one waits to catch me.
There’s a war
in my body.
The pearly protective,
hearty healers
have turned
against me.
They wish to
destroy me,
to dismantle
my strength
and livelihood.
The neurologist
diagnosed me.
Not a psychologist,
like my mom said
I would need.
Picked out of the earth
like an unwanted weed.
Now there was hope,
he said,
but it wouldn’t come easy.
Can you cope?
I nod.
The ivory milk
is injected into my
skin like white hot silk.
Burning, itching.
The headthrobs and a
churning stomach leave me flinching.
But the price
I paid to the piper—
Oh, Christ.
It gave me my life.
The tingling leaves,
my muscles repair,
and I can once again breathe.
 Monster

The dribbling jowls

of the beast jubilantly gape
open wide, emanating wicked howls
and clenching down—
chewing through meaty flesh,
through impassioned resolve.

The monster
is cutting me down,
with its long,
sharp claws,
making me weaker,
smaller. Vision narrows,
everything looks bleaker.

And as I stare
at the effluent
emanating from its nostrils,
reeking of skunk and rotting egg,
phobic of what comes next,
the beast crunches my
pelvic bone to dust,
the flange that
holds my body
together.
I know this is the end,
the glorious gossamer is just around the bend.

What falls away,

it is not me.
The beast of sickness
aims to victimize,
but as warriors,
we know to cauterize
our wounds and to
move on.
To heal,
or at least,
to repair
myself and to send the beast
back to its dark lair.
 the colors of Jim

Red
the color of the first jacket
you ever bought me Jim
on the trip you took to italy
i ran my childish hands
over the smooth leather
rubbed my cheek
against the silky inseam
and thought it smelled like you
although i knew you never wore it

Grey
the color of Luke
he was your first husky
i remember running down the halls
of your house with him
while the singsong
of my elementary laughter
filled the hallways
as his soft fur brushed my legs

Black
the color of the backpack
from saint tropez france
that stayed on my spine
and carried your stories
and your strong
voice with me
i trace the
smooth trim of the case
and think of the
border of a map
and the endlessness
it promises

White
the color of the walls of your new condo
my mom and i helped you
move into and decorate
your new home
which shortly thereafter became
part time residence
in the cancer wing at the hospital
that room was also

White
we picked out the menu
together whenever i visited
and i cajoled the nurses
to give you extra pudding
they never seemed
to fight it too hard though

Yellow
my favorite color,
was my favorite color
the color of Jim
the color of you
the last time i saw you
i walked into the ICU and
as the visits progressed
i had known
you were getting worse
but i didn’t want to believe it
after all
i love you
but
your blonde hair had faded
your eyes jaundiced cheeks a pale yolk
and even the whiskers on your chin
were tinted with the hue
your eyes could barely open
but you knew it was me
and you smiled and mouthed my name
with the faintest of whispers
escaping your pale straw tinted lips

Blue
the color of the sky the day we had your funeral
we sat around in the condo i helped you move into
such a short time ago
and we told stories about you
great legends of your traveling
adventures all over the world
your passion
for exploring new ideas
Major your new husky
who helped you make new friends
sitting around me that day
was there to comfort us
Jim we were supposed to
travel the world together
but i release you from
from this broken promise
your love and friendshindship is more pulchritudinous
than any mere place we could go
Claire Summa
 Action Potential*

The Ballerina slows the world

revolution by revolution.
The gasp of air between pastel slippers,
its focal point – chokes out
as She rises.
All else depends on this moment,
on the scope of her orbit
just above the world’s stage.
The precise angle of her foot,
all or none. Just as

the Neuron does not fire, unless

achieving precise polarity
amidst opposing forces.
Once fired, no nerve impulse
is unique from the rest.
Yet rising 1 millivolt short
of the normal threshold
yields nothing at all. Just like

the Ballerina on pointe

above the masses.
Her gaze unreachable
toward empty thresholds
promising potential beyond those
twirling beside her. And yet

the Neuron does fire

through the body, a drought-ridden wood.
Synapse by synapse, jumping the gaps
to build foundations and bridges and maps.
All 80 billion in each one of the billions
all hoping to be the one
who slows the world for their moment.

She spins precisely, rising above none and all.

*Action Potential: A localized change in the electrical potential of a neuron caused by an
influx of positively charged calcium ions; the neuron will only fire if the potential
becomes positive enough to reach the universal threshold.
 Exposed

What is it about
a barren tree
in the heart of winter?

So gorgeously plain.
No bullshit leaves
prettying up the skeleton,
which floats in the snow
as if preserved
between sheets of glass.

My mother sits at the foot of the bed.

She looks to
her own mother,
whose body lies
heavy
under years
of too thin sheets, like these,
dispensed by the sparrow-like nurse.

Pale blue with white trim,

the only adornment
my grandmother wears.
It falls like a curtain
over her being.
She keeps a hairbrush
on the bedside table
but threw away her mirror,

her gaze locked on

a soft candle’s glow
outside the lone window.

Wind screams through naked branches,

blinding mothers calling to
daughters calling to
mothers – afraid in the dark of truth
loafing about the frost, barefaced
in the low burning light.

My mother carries within her

the weight of winters, as I will do.
From the day I sit
at the foot of her bed;
To the day I trip
over the roots of her existence;
Through the day I light
lanterns to mark my own;

Until the day I lay bare, and float in the snow.

 San Francisco General, Ward 5B
1983

I hate it when you look at me.

I gaze up, searching those stars for the light
they must have stolen from your eyes
whenever they met mine.
Now just pity, guilt, love afraid to be caught
in its selfish act of existence -
I watch you watch me die.

You plot bloody campaigns, and I? I lie

trapped in this body I no longer own.
You blame yourself for my weakness;
I stash my burdens in your armor,
where they’ll be safe and warm
when I grow too cold to hold them any longer.

Never the champion you rose,

I couldn’t conquer the invisible monster,
couldn’t cover up the proliferation of ugly, the shell
encasing me,
black, blue, brown bruise
defining me,

I’m sorry.
I’m sorry my eyes are fading,
my face waning, my hands shaking.
I’m sorry you refuse to let go.
I care too much to let you suffer,
but you say the same to me.

Do you remember summer 1981?

We went to the beach,
the water sparkled, the sun
a warm cocoon only we shared.
Do you remember the way we dared them to stare?
The heat in our defiant glory?

Do you remember the day we knew?

The day our illusions shattered like the mirror
we used to gaze at one another through,
I do. But I don’t want to.

I want to go back to the beach.

For you to forget this body, succumbed
to a life spent lying in waste. This person
constricted by hyperbolic chains of literal degradation
as you wage war to save the ones
who can’t be saved,

please. Remember the man I was.

Forget this spectator at the race

where you marathon circles in place.
No matter the pain you burn through,
there it still stands, blocking you,
blocking us, from breaking through,
and I’m goddamn terrified
the invisible monster will catch up to you, too.

So please, stop running.

I know this is selfish of me, but I just
want you to be with me,
want you to hold me one last time
want you to kiss me one final goodbye

just want to let you

let out your cry.
Your presence is enough,
just your hand in mine.

Hold it tight until I fly away

free, to await your light in these stars
until the day you join me.
We’ll fly away together,
the way we always knew it would be.
Kao Takaya
 The Warm Breath
of the Summer Wind

A sender
of the pure
light blue sky
Once shared
a song of the land

A founder
of the green
grass was shy
Never tried
to leave the ground

With the touch of

the warm breath of the summer wind
Running sheep
forget the phrase and the angry mind
They say
It’s the power of the embrace
It’s the power of the trace
It’s the power of the place
Mother Nature
 The Night Sky

Jiji,
Can you see the star?
He said, I’ll be one of them soon.
When I was two,
The night sky was clear and bright.

Jiji,
Where are you now?
Silence, like an eclipse at the noon.
When I was four,
The night sky started to hide.

Little did I know,

Why the night sky was crowded with stars.
As much as they shone, some eyes were flooded
with tears,
for lovers,
they were rivers.

Jiji,
Can you see me now?
He smiled, I’ll be watching over you.
When I was six,
The night sky shared the truth.

Every now and then,

whenever the life tried to bury me in the ground,
I looked for you in the ocean of stars.

Jiji,
Do you hear me sing?
He said, I see you’ve inherited my talent.
When I turned twenty,
The night sky finally found peace.
 Oh, my…

Grandma Jo
had the warmest hands.
With those blue eyes,
she cheered me up.
“Oh, my little girl...”
The first stroke blew over her brain, and
she started to stay home.

Grandma Jo
had the cutest smirks
when she got snacks.
She chatted with me.
“Oh, my…”
The second stroke messed her Wernicke’s area,
betrayed her talk, and
she started to stay in bed.

Two years, I made no call.

Then I was told about her last call.

Grandma Jo
had the sweetest words
which made my day
She always said,
“Oh, my…”
Somehow, that was all I needed to hear to
know what she wanted to say.

Oh, my…
 Dear Amanda,

Thank you for being my best friend.

But here’s what I’ve always had in mind.

You are complicated.

The billions of signals that you send
make everyone confused.
Please do not focus on plan B to Z,
when you choose to go with A.

You are heavily weighted.

My pillow is dented,
because you like to sit there.
I do not blame you for this,
since you naturally need more energy.

You are sometimes rude.

Just because you are tired
does not justify acting so weird
that Jiji and Grandma Jo decided
to leave us here. But

you are kind.

When my heart
gets broken by all the lies and cheats,
you hug me with flowers of words
and encourage me to be who I am.

You are worthy of my love.

Amanda, you are my sweet brain.
Tracy Tran
 Apples fall far

In the end your vote didn’t matter.

Washington has always been
proudly painted blue.
But your vote mattered to me,
your daughter,
because in the end you chose.
You chose, and you chose economic prosperity
over human rights.
You chose tax bracket demolition
over what is right.
I like to believe that you, you support him,
but you are not like him.
But in the end what I will remember
is you raised two daughters to be
independent
hardworking
brave and confident.
(but maybe not too independent,
because life in the grad school scene
is rough when you apparently
need to play housewife: cook, clean)
And you celebrate this man who
puts his hands on her
without her permission
because he thinks he can.
(but maybe it makes sense
because you always told me to
wear longer dresses, not as tight
but you never once told my brother to
treat women right)
And you believe in this man who
broadcasts that my only value
is not what is in my head
not what is in my heart
but what is staring back at me
from the mirror.
And I don’t know
if I can
forgive you
for it.
 Mud Castles

I spot him on my path home,

shoulders shifting under the uncomfortable
weight of my backpack.
His soon-to-be-too-small blue jeans caked in dirt,
a nearby bench adorned by his bright red jacket,
a single leaf, unnoticed,
sitting atop his tussled hair:
a fitting crown for the king of this mud castle.
There is a cold oven waiting to be preheated, but
I pause,
even as the bus roars past to the stop ahead.
There will be
more buses.

For him, this boy

nothing exists outside of this moment.
There is, perhaps, the lingering thought
of the vocabulary he hasn’t memorized
for tomorrow or
the bed he forgot to make and that
his mother will doubtlessly pester him about,
but oh, the mud castle before him needs
a moat
and that moat requires a fearsome alligator.

In the fading light, a woman steps out onto the porch of

the house across the street and beckons.
His masterpiece forgotten,
the boy rushes into the
warm kitchen glow and the scent of fresh-baked banana bread
trailing a storm of twigs and muddy footprints in his wake.

As the wind rustles up a carpet of golden leaves,

a sweet symphony of youth
a whisper of an oncoming squall
I absently wipe motor-greased palms on my jeans
and continue towards home.
 A Roof of Plastic

We laud each other:

the career fairs, the interviews, the offers
of jobs promising more money than
any of us actually deserve
In search of purpose
phobic of meaning
reeling from the dollar signs and stock options and proud mothers
no concealing
Last night Amazon donated ten million – can you imagine that? –
to the building of a building meant to house
more students, release them
from the jowls of the underground labs
into the real world
into corporate chronic carports
chewing and spitting out lines of code to sell

But my hands aren’t clean

they pass the man behind the hardware counter
my card, paying for a pair of fifty cent hex nuts
It is my housing stipend from last summer -
I think nothing of it
He looks at the raised numbers of the card:
“Four thousand dollars,” he says wistfully,
fingers rubbing over
my roof of plastic
“I don’t know what that is”

Raised voices, gesturing hands through the air

angry scribbles on a whiteboard and smudges of
eraser dust on our cheeks
hand on my hip, stress and time and money devoted to the release
of a software product I know almost nothing about
My whole summer, but most people’s entire lives
“What’s wrong with it?”
Nothing, I think, but what is right with it?
So much talent, so much passion, what more could we do?
And meanwhile our rivers run dry
and we kill, still we kill
The man on the floor of the Ave, tattered corners
of a cardboard sign
looking for his next fix
Underground, rivulets of radioactive effluent
winding towards the wells
of the tears shed over
soldiers who don’t come home and the different ones that do
the mothers made too young
the boys grown too early
too many things wrong in this world
I just want to make something right

Glass houses
we compile bits of ourselves into ones and zeroes
so we, too, can be cogs
in a machine
bigger even than the ones we build
untouchable, so damnable, bottom line
gross revenue
churning
the cauterized potential of the world
What have we stood for when
all is said and done?
when what falls away
are the accolades
the resumes
and all that remains is not
the code we wrote but
the problems we never fixed
About the Authors
I am Sasha Cordier. I am lost but poetry makes me feel like I have a place. I love
languages, dancing, animals, education and I hope to live vigorously. I’m a linguistics
major, I speak Spanish, French, ASL (some more fluently than others), and I plan on
traveling the world.

Samantha Fredman is a first year student at the University of Washington, hoping to find
that place where her talents and the needs of the world intersect…
For now, her days are consumed by friendship, studies, copious amounts of tea and
snacks, music, poetry, and ceaseless laughter. She is enthralled with the notion of a
collective and immersive healing process, the likes of which can be found nestled in this
book’s pages.
Emma Greeven is a freshman at the University of Washington. During her time at the
UW she hopes to discover an avenue to apply her talents and passions in order to improve
lives. She will forever be curious about the human brain’s ability to weather, endure, and,
ultimately, come together as one.

Gayatri is generally high on life. This class transformed her from an ameteur literary
critic to a poetry dabbler. She relates to this quote by Sylvia Plath on a soulful level - “I
have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad.
Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”

My name is Marissa Lorberau and I am studying English. I have always had a passion for
writing and I feel that poetry is a unique medium for expressing emotion and analyzing
the self. I aspire to be a lifelong learner and I feel that stories, from the standpoint of both
the storyteller and the audience, are an integral part of that journey.

My name is Grace Novacek. I was born and raised in Downers Grove, Illinois. I’m a third
year student at UW studying Cell, Molecular, and Developmental Biology and Law,
Societies, and Justice. I love genre-bending hip hop, animals of all sorts, the entire city of
Chicago, black tea, and cool colors. My family and nature inspire my poetry.
I’m Simone Schwartz-Lombard, an Angeleno studying Political Science and
Environmental Science and Resource Management at the University of Washington. I
love the sun, the rain, the Earth, and if you haven’t guessed it: poetry. This is my beloved
friend Jim Rosen’s husky, Major, who unfortunately passed away the year before I
became a UW Husky myself. The poems I wrote in this beautiful book are dedicated to
him.
Claire Summa is a student of the University of Washington graduating class of 2019. Her
current goals are to study neurobiology and public health, eventually going into health
research and policy. She will always be a writer.

Kao Takaya is a junior at the University of Washington, majoring in Business with a

focus in Entreprenurship and Management. This is her year studying abroad, and she
originally belongs to Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. She very much enjoys the
world of poetry, and likes to leave herself a note of short sentences everyday. Among
them, her favorite is “I’m living in the Garden of Hope.”
Tracy Tran is a junior majoring in computer science who’s interested in projects
involving human-computer interaction and environmental sustainability. She’s in love
with blue skies, mountains, dancing and making, and she has a penchant for (arguably
great) bad puns.