Thursday, May 1, 2014

The Self-Portrait


The Self-Portrait
Anna Segner

A Face of Pastel

A Face of Pastel
Anna Segner, 2014


Reflective Past

Reflective Past
Jessica Schleich, 2014


Why I Never Bother with Irish Writers


Why I Never Bother with Irish Writers
Ashling T. Meehan, 2014


Hummingbird

Hummingbird
Elizabeth Schmidt, 2014


The Hunt


Hunt
Paul Schmitt

Hugged by cold snap haze, I trudge on plains frosted
thick like steel wool but tinsel to you, my gait lurching to match 
yours (fixed north as if your toes were magnets)
toward our deerstand rising
from a cluster of bramble. Its ladder
invites us to take a shelter
that you fill with the low grumbles of sleep
translated to me by the morning fog
as my rifle leans uninterested in the corner,
and I let a whitetail family pass beneath us
to let our haze remain.

Moon-Bearer

Moon-Bearer
Andrea Hillesheim


For My Eulogy:


For My Eulogy:
Augustine Esterhammer-Fic, 2014

Take the body I had as a home and take it apart, dismantle it.
Move from the outside in, learning more about me than you thought possible:
here was where he felt tendonitis, here is where he fractured his elbow slightly,
things even I have never seen myself...
Take the heart out and weigh it. Catalogue the crooked teeth.
Blast apart these extremities. Shear off outer layers: skin, muscles,
find the skeleton that held me upright all those days, 
and the organs that tripped when I was drinking, trying to hide it.
Cut my brain into 1 micron slices, 
the way they did to Henry Molaison, the man who couldn’t remember anything, 
and under a microscope, carefully, 
search out the parts that hold my secrets.
The number of times I thought of you when you weren’t around,
my opinions on pornography, songs I forgot to tell you to listen to,
days marked so strong I swore I would never forget.
I’m sure they must have burned shapes into my cerebrum.
Mark all of this down in a book of empirical measurements,
a book of all the facts of my life.
And now, before you wash the blood down the sink 
and throw out the plastic sheet used to keep the table clean,
Look at all of it drying -- 
all of what I was.

And then say that you missed the man these once belonged to. 
A man who, as it turns out, only knew how to do one thing: 
write love letters to people he knew in passing.


Uniforms

Uniforms
Douglas Leonard, 2014


Untitled

Untitled
Elizabeth Arnold, 2014