These two outstanding poems were recently featured in the Institute’s 2013 Aspirations newsletter.
SHE
Brianna Breaux, Creative Writing, Level II
Assume the gulf’s wide mouth, a sharp outcrop
of rock licked with sea-slicked lichen. Assume:
alone, dawn. I beat my bones on the sand
and run, tight-skinned, not she but all body
and all outside, all hoping animal.
A mile out, I swim out to the rocks and out
stretch across the water, stretch out and sun
salute. From the jetty just opposite
a youngish fisherman also alone
in his body’s sunrise sees and wades waist
deep to ask for bait. Closer, we each see
clearly: he almost all bird, arms held up
to still smoke in the high tide, I answer.
Assume damp flannel, conscious skintight cling:
none and sorry, and assume, saying so
tamely, she.
TECHNICAL REFLUX
Tyler Despenza, Creative Writing, Level III
highsound talisman
sing us the horn how
the soul threads,
how it hums the doubletounged
pith of it
||: oh mercy, mercy:||
pragmatic as a horsefly
too blue to be beguiling
watered mouth when the watermelon split