Mo Gaither
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
genesis: erasure
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
genesis: erasure
What’s the Word for Necrophilia but the Other Way Around?
little rascal, cut me open
naked on a metal table
flesh and bone and fat and acid
all for you, pathologist
rip in two my jaundiced thorax
waltz your way through my aortas
ferret through the thing that silenced
long before you ever came
stomach like a dusty attic
on a humid day in August
enzymatic greenish tinted
torso missing more than breath
empty-headed, gaseous thing, I
swear to you that I would offer
everything you ever wanted
if we weren’t in this position.
lover, you must know i linger
here among your other bodies
before i go, i have one question
did you ever learn my name?
Mo Gaither, a Baltimore native, spends her free time feeding stray cats and pretending she won’t let them into her house one day. She also has a fondness for clowns. Gaither studies creative writing at Edinboro University and will be graduating in May 2022. In 2019, Mo was awarded a Scholastic Art and Writing medal for poetry. In the same year she self-published a collection of poetry, titled From Eden, with her senior class at George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology.
Liam McCue
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
Restless Revere
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
Restless Revere
For bones to see restless revere,
Yet, they will never know or hear
They have been sleeping for many a year
While the seer searches in fear.
Yet, once they walked and talked
Atop this solitary ground.
So now we mock and stalk
For what they did leave to be found.
Let us drop the pale--
And sound for the gale--
As we are amidst our own tale.
Solitary Sea
Floating atop a solitary sea With a
crew that consists of only me, On an
aimless ship, I saw another.
Drifting, alone, I had found my lover.
The waves brought us abreast--
I wish I could say ‘we anchored And
that was the rest’
Yet, the merciless tides had played at sea
They encountered two, but left only me
Once more, I float atop this solitary sea.
Yet, they will never know or hear
They have been sleeping for many a year
While the seer searches in fear.
Yet, once they walked and talked
Atop this solitary ground.
So now we mock and stalk
For what they did leave to be found.
Let us drop the pale--
And sound for the gale--
As we are amidst our own tale.
Solitary Sea
Floating atop a solitary sea With a
crew that consists of only me, On an
aimless ship, I saw another.
Drifting, alone, I had found my lover.
The waves brought us abreast--
I wish I could say ‘we anchored And
that was the rest’
Yet, the merciless tides had played at sea
They encountered two, but left only me
Once more, I float atop this solitary sea.
Liam McCue is a secondary education English major at Edinboro University of PA.
John Patterson
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
Purple Hills
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
Purple Hills
The troubles of life
Are swept away
By purple hills
This winter day.
Back behind
White farm fields
The gentle mounds
Lie unconcealed.
As day grows old
The cool blue sky
Seems to let
All troubles fly.
Something in
These purple hills
Lets worry die
And cures all ills.
Are swept away
By purple hills
This winter day.
Back behind
White farm fields
The gentle mounds
Lie unconcealed.
As day grows old
The cool blue sky
Seems to let
All troubles fly.
Something in
These purple hills
Lets worry die
And cures all ills.
John Patterson is a secondary education major at Edinboro University who enjoys writing short poems about nature and the world around us.
Abby Regal
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
abandoned
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
abandoned
a yellow and purple blanket woven carefully by hand,
gracefully detailed designs created among the yarn,
a pattern of knots and holes making up the covering
while white strings hang loose at the end
you had reappeared to hand it to me,
like an armistice after all the blood and pain
so I reached out to accept the offering,
because what else was I to do
after years in the cold?
you must have spent more time
loving that blanket
than you ever spent loving me,
beautifully mastering the art of giving and leaving
that I forgot what it was like to gain without loss,
leaving me uncrafted.
so as I lay in my bed
wrapped in that damned yellow blanket,
the worn intricacy
wrapped around my body,
grasping for any warmth I can get
yet feeling the coldness
rush through the holes in the fabric;
I begin to feel a sense of numbness towards you.
and whether that’s bitterness or forgiveness,
I have yet to discover.
gracefully detailed designs created among the yarn,
a pattern of knots and holes making up the covering
while white strings hang loose at the end
you had reappeared to hand it to me,
like an armistice after all the blood and pain
so I reached out to accept the offering,
because what else was I to do
after years in the cold?
you must have spent more time
loving that blanket
than you ever spent loving me,
beautifully mastering the art of giving and leaving
that I forgot what it was like to gain without loss,
leaving me uncrafted.
so as I lay in my bed
wrapped in that damned yellow blanket,
the worn intricacy
wrapped around my body,
grasping for any warmth I can get
yet feeling the coldness
rush through the holes in the fabric;
I begin to feel a sense of numbness towards you.
and whether that’s bitterness or forgiveness,
I have yet to discover.
vestigial
how you could possibly ask if we could still be friends
after i’ve already digested you,
breathed you into my mouth and
out through my lungs,
soaked your body into my skin
and melted your presence
into the entirety of my being,
yet somehow i am left incomplete;
i can’t seem to remember where i begin and
where you ended us
Abby Regal is a sophomore at Edinboro University who is currently obtaining her degree in psychology. Some of her favorite things are her grandma, hanging out with close friends, crocheting, and writing poetry to vent about her shitty feelings.
Flora Trost
Clarks University
Spotted Lanternfly
Clarks University
Spotted Lanternfly
Appalachia opens its arms to me,
Low mountains roll in like waves–
They show their true faces at dawn.
Your breath collects against my neck
In a far more concentrated humidity.
With a rip of wind, the eggs hatch,
And a new generation takes to the sky.
I watch as the promise of the harvest
Is surely wiped away.
In a swarm of gray and red wings,
New mountains form and morph
And divide against the horizon.
The planet is changing without meteors, without collision.
There won’t be apples in the fall.
Static
In pastel pink rooms, I sit and dream of bombs
As rainbow light refracts against my ceiling.
Out my window, my only window,
Hotels remain full
People get into cars
And scurry along dirty sidewalks.
They dodge and swerve
As aluminum rains from the sky.
Glass in fast pursuit.
Through the radio static,
The last of the satellites hum a weak transmission,
And I know I surely am alone.
The crust of the bread slices the roof of my mouth open
Cold, hard cash rolls off my tongue.
The government man says a prayer,
Weaving in and out across the airwaves.
A tapestry, begging for forgiveness,
is cut off with a flash
Flora Trost is a rising junior at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, where she majors is Screen Studies and minors in Creative Writing. She splits her time between Worcester and Dingmans Ferry, Pennsylvavia.