Vassar Student Review

Featured Author

On Commission

Somebody told me once paint them a picture and they will love it for yourself 

So I agreed and made it dapple sun shines in on winter grindstone surface like the frozen moon

Monolith of purpose made to crush the necks and hands of me for trying to paint it all at once

It pays to take your time when hurting snow is falling said to me

This painting here is not a grindstone not because of you

We see the figure you have sketched in pencil lying in the corner

Take me back to your apartment I wish to see the life you draw

Upon to create empty floor where moon hangs circle empty full

And chalk can break a thousand organs over a cup of clocks and chimes that move together like two lungs when breath complains about his love

And chalk can taste me in apartments one you drew with grindstone lovely

Why would this painting be allowed to prove my love for anybody

I merely tried to captivate the space above my crown and look how you have done me wrong

Narrator must interject and notice here the lies she told

She and he and we must lie the moon is soft but still is cold

Le fou roux goes to a party

Mascara excesses, cheap delights
Delicatessen plates, Christmas lights
Shrimp and scampi, skirts and ice
That’s what makes up love

Myrtle bushes, heavy with snow
Cobalt blue and painted toes
Long embraces and short hello’s
That’s what makes up love

Piano keys in jello molds
Gravy boats that never fold
Ginger sighs, his hands are cold
We should make him dance

Light a candle, swirl a glass
Slip some sugar in your purple sash
Put your shoes on the mantle dash
We have a famous friend

Scalloped plates and oyster bowls
Margaritas, salted roe
Caviar is on a roll
Kiss him for a drink

It’s our job, it’s our delight
Our party’s now, tonight’s our night
Let’s show him how to make love right
We have a famous guest

Contained

I wish someone would wrap my back within their arms and hold
And place their chin upon my neck and rest it there until
They grew the strength to draw their lips into the picture frame
And never let me hurt myself
And never let me go
I wish someone would lie on top of me and press me down and in
Place their hands upon my skin
Painted ridges, bumps and lines
The smoother part, the part that faces upward toward a looking eye
When I am laid upon my back, open to the world
I wish someone would cup my face within their hands and make of me
A well of water, still and deep like mirror sands and emerald mines
And take a picture of my nose and keep it in their fingertips
And never let me close the world by taking back my back
I wish someone would lie on me and brush my ears with everything
Lips and face and hair and eyes and fingertips not least
I wish someone would hold me still when I am crying in the night
And turn me on my back and hold me, never let me go

Live Lobster

Pianos bluntly wandering down aisles with unrolling intentions
Repeats skip-skip-skipping on dirty water- collectives uncurling
Jawstrings and drumstones snapping
Paperbands and rulers who are too taxing
Gentle goodbyes and forwarn lornings
Corpsy chords clutching eggs in oyster shells
Yolks running half-marathons from the necks of oxen
Greeks unfolding origami on Normandy beaches
Yellowfin and wallface cutlets, redbread in circles
Scissor parts handles leads or leeds or leads or leashes
Brushes cutting both ways
Roaring separation of paper from other paper that flips pils nils nil O
Gift-wrapping station
Yellow bow
Bows that unfold people like china bulls and papal bulls and hot wax pressed into the skin
Mottled Frisian stomachs with anvils like gall pebbles, pork on the stove (my face) smelling like piss (my face again)
French tastes in shallow seas, housing projects, foundational myths, postlapsarian afterbirth swimming pools
Top tip of the mixed-up god tower global bubble Manhattans that never fall down
Bubbles in the saucepan, pane of window like pregnant men
No escapes
No removes
Beluga whale with throat cancer balatine balenciagas Balotelli loves it on the glass table
Basking fish bakes himself on tanning bed
Bass line loves ecstacy, six fingers turn loving when the mini-golf windmill falls down
Basically basuda drakes with Nigel Farage drink in hand, swerving at the bar
Bondsmen and Bond grappling fully clothed in the steamroom
Cedarpines chairsitdowns
Circle skylights on minimalist chandeliers of fire alarms and jungle gyms
Pushups on the jaguar’s back, situps with the ocelot
Costs a lot to be there, costs a lot to live
Delivery service brings back dish asked for in Lebanese in Genovese hardware JavaScript design mug, porcelain stain on titanium sneakers, Goya cologne and Frankfurt bombing smell, department secret department store fire conflagration scandal coverup scandal (tragedy) disease not gotten
French flight attendant of true mortality striking blow for blow for blow for blow with snakeless spines in lizard manes and polar bear capes
Chimpanzees at anthole Nasdaq with big stick screaming
Crossed viaducts in airvents and elevatrices and ways out that too big are not for heros our, hero sandwich in hand like islands farway from rock aways from rock two thirds from son
Rockefeller missing in macy’s arms like forgiven startup job cancer scare malignance averted turmeric
Bloody cheeks add bared hearts, then you make for two
Broken bones that are just bones, bones really and alonely
Just bones
Real bones
Teeth stretched out across eras, Minogue to Spears to Swords to Bronze to Mesozoic to Mesa to full table to watershed finances, highlands in present days, not so might now and again
Baryshnikov botulism in gourmet spam can fruits in suspended juice like democracy dates julie ates juliennes at dinner party paris 1960 something different entirely
Soul food in our lie, their lie, my lie
Two saucers, two bowls, two cups, two sets, couple parties, one kid, one tv, couple pigeons in the square outside
Squares and rectangles on walls like cleats on shoes poking holes in narratives, voting with et cetera and Ctulhu contraption non-negotionable notaries
benighted Baked eggs running full marathons like Greeks in broken city states copied from Ur
Pianos doing jogs in halfway markets like little lions
Celtic tabby purrs, sips cyanide milk from massive glass
Blue party straw
Lots of twists and turns   

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