UReCA: The NCHC Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity 2020 Edition
Something Old, Something New; Where Classic Literature Meets Creative Writing
Holding my Happiness ~ After reading the Tao Te Ching
If I could hold my happiness in the palm of my hand
I would play it for you
Hum it in the ditches
Where we gathered dandelion seeds to salt our dinner
If I could hold you in the palm of my hand
I might drop your heart in the dust
Pick it up and rinse it with cold water
Put it back on the bookshelf and hope you don’t notice.
If I could compare you in weight
Hold you under my tongue, a gold coin
My rook of immortality
I could warm you in the microwave on cold nights And place you at my feet
Or hang you from my rearview mirror
My lucky die, my rosary
False idol, gold statuette of my self-worth
If I could hold myself in my hand
We are so much better with others than ourselves
I crumple me up, break me against brick walls
I hold myself, a small purring thing
Flighty in my identity. I was not hand raised.
I place myself, a leaf in the water
Gently upon this earth
If I could hold my happiness in the palm of my hand
I would look from every angle
Let you feel its texture
You could ask me where I bought it.
Perhaps then
Then would I be able to tell you
They call it a painful case ~ After reading James Joyce’s Dubliners
Perhaps to meet at the docks, a bouquet of Dahlias in hand
To slip through the railing, hold that pink tissue papered waist
Listen to it crinkle—the fumbled opening
A stark surprise to a soul’s innate lonesome
Then a withering
A sudden failure of the heart’s action
The eyes draw back into the skull, the hand draws back from the fervor of a happy mind Sudden failure
She watches you fall, blushing in her newly cheapened wisdom
Failure—To break the ossified shell
If I open my arms wide enough, can you not see yourself in them?
Remove your timepiece dear, and forgive your paralyzed element
Do I not hold weight? Do I not hold water?
Too long have you lived in this county, let me show you the world
With a sudden failure of the heart’s action
He returns to his papers at home
Dearest, why do you withhold yourself from life?
Bruised Bluebird ~ After reading Terry Tempest Williams’s Refuge
I came to know the science of a bruised bluebird day
Heads buried deep in sand bars slipping away
A mother sowing salt, it flows from her daughter’s scalp
This hapless happiness giving way
Earth running into the faults
I came to know the creature I killed with my wires
Not from the evening post, no, I stepped outside
Each burning tree a funeral pyre, loss shaken from the boughs
Like the weight of the wet spring snow
The branches cracked
I looked back
Down geologic eras, the barrel of a gun
What claim have I to lay
Creature of the clay
The sea urchin has seen my earliest infancies and remained
Call me great mover, great changer, great builder
You call me the ant in the cancerous sun
I have seen the runoff
I have called the river home, said it held my soul
And spit in the clearest pools
A sheen of kerosene I have laid upon the world
I am the match and the god and the mouse in the house on fire
My daughter came to Carthage
No salmon make the journey
The sea pours into the open wound
I came to know the science, I came to know the creature, I came to know my children
Still I carve my name
To bloody the aspen trees
Their roots extending for miles
Entwined in prayer
The Lady of Shalott reimagined as an indie rock ballad ~ After Sir Alfred Lord Tennyson
Today is Sunday/ I woke up late again.
The days are gone before I have the time to make a change.
My eyes are bleary/ Can’t seem to focus now
Life’s a hoax I feel like one great big joke right now.
I am half sick of shadows.
I am half sick of shadows.
When I’m lonely/ I watch the television/ But the people on the screen never listen to me. They keep on lying/ And chasing vampires.
Getting drunk and sleeping with their boyfriends’ stepbrothers.
They’re so stupid/ What an ugly life/ But at least they’ve got plans for Friday night.
I am half sick of shadows.
I am half sick of shadows.
I need a hobby/ Maybe Volleyball/ But I can’t spike and they say go pro or not at all.
I get so bored I go/ To the grocery store.
But I can’t pretend the produce section’s a garden anymore.
I am half sick of shadows.
I am half sick of shadows.
Think I’m too tired/ To sing along today/ But if I do maybe this headache will go away.
I am an artist/ At least emotionally/ But I lack endurance to pursue life professionally.
It’s such a shame how/ People waste their lives.
Parking cars and breaking hearts and standing in Pharmacy lines.
I am half sick of shadows.
I am half sick of shadows.
I’m being carried downstream now.
I’m being carried downstream now.