Inez Williams: Introduction to the Poems of Armen Kassabian

Armen’s journal-like poems righteously convey his eccentricity. However, under the surface of his unique portrayal of expression in his poems lies a foundation of intimacy and regularity. The body, the colors of nature, the dichotomy of reality: they all play roles in his poems as they relate to an unspoken familiarity with an emotion we call love.
“Ease” portrays the delicate emotional relationship between the poet and “Jess”. The third stanza is where we first notice any mention of an interactive character with the poet. If each stanza is to be its own room, the third stanza is the hallway with which each room is connected. In the first stanza, the poem presents its setting. The second stanza helps us both visualize and question: Where are these children going and with whom? What is on their minds? What is in their hands? What are they talking about? The second stanza leaves open our imaginations to explore what is going on in this world. The children foreshadow the innocence and curious of the poet as he encounters “Jess”. What is so intriguing about “Jess”? Who is she? Why is the author being cautious?
In “Two Lips,” Armen takes us on a step-by-step journey through a particular moment in the day. This poem deals in the subtle existence of normal, human emotions: anticipation, infatuation, rejection. Once again the complex structure of love is presented. However, in “Two Lips,” there is more than the presence of the two people; rather, it is the painting that works as an emotional wedge between the poet and his beloved. With the last five lines of the third stanza, Armen signifies his defeat for as he tries to capture a physically intimate and romantic moment with her, he is rejected and returns home alone. What makes this poem magnificent in its simplicity is that this rejection may not be noticeable to the beloved at all.
Armen does a wonderful job compartmentalizing his stanzas into rooms which work well together or by themselves. With these rooms, he offers us a guide to an eccentric life with his poems as the open house. His poems are constructed similar to a journal that moves our attention to the glistening moments in the everyday life. Enjoy.


Ease

sun sky settles in blue.
REM eyeball half.
eardrum rustles.
against fall concrete.

three children pass, with.
on their lips,
in their hands,
on their brains.
in their voices,

Jess walks too. On her.
I walk to Jess. On my.
legs over hands.
oil spills? Cautious fingers.

I return to green.
mudra hands half.
nose itch.
sun ray pupils, blink.

--Armen Kassabian


Two Lips

“Hello, Armen?”
“Hi, Sarah, I’d love to see you,”
“I’m at the Traina art center, drop by if you’d like to,”
“yea, sure, see you in a moment.”

flying down Florence Freeze, wind brushes frizzy hair into forehead,
2 red pimples emerging, as I ride my red bike.
Wheels stop, lock bike to tree stump, walk into
102, to watch her take her time, thin paint brush
between two beige fingernails, Glazed eyes dissolve
into painting, she can’t see me, but I can see her
lips, they talk to mine, chapped,
luscious, resting a top each other.

After 18 minutes I claim that Home
work Calls. step outside to wait
4 minutes later, she scuttles
off to the women’s bathroom,
I stop her at the door and stutter to myself, try to kiss
her left cheek, but she darts her head
away, I return to my bike,
ride it home
alone again.

---Armen Kassabian

Aimee Gagnon: Introduction to the Poems of Ayaan Agane

In her poetry Ayaan has mastered the challenge of doing more than just telling a story. She creates vivid images and lines that will reverberate through your brain for weeks. One of the best examples of this is her poem “Everybody Smokes.” Ayaan tells the story of how she was drawn into smoking; however, she also gives an intimate glimpse into the culture of smoking. The poem tells how she was seduced by “the scent” of cigarettes, blending it into the story of her parents. Ayaan describes the images “of a smoker and non’s lungs/ juxtaposed” within which she sees her “parents’ marriage.” She shows the way relationships are formed through objects or habits.

In “Love Poem,” the narrating voice explores her feelings by reflecting off another couple’s love. Even though the other is a TV couple, Ayaan makes their love vivid:

She follows him without reservation,
Stirring thunder in the water.
They sit, two fish, with Sunday ease, natural

The love between this couple is described in such a way that it is comforting and intimate; however, it ends in tragedy—showing us, in a fresh way, the sweet bitterness of love. We are left in the last two lines with: “tea kettle voices that start as whistles/ and then turn into screams,” deftly moving from intimacy to the tragic, leaving us desiring more of her poetry.


Love Poem

Upon finding her
husband in their bath tub, fully clothed,
Sandra is unconcerned. She
follows him without reservation,
stirring thunder in the water.
They sit, two fish, with Sunday ease, natural
And years of this seem to flow between them.

I watch this from my living room, eating, thirsty
Waiting for my tea to boil.
She's so much older, Sandra, over fifty now
But the camera is kind to her
sympathetic because her husband is dying,
knowing that any age is too young to be widowed.
And as it slides across her face to
reveal it smirking, unashamed
Years of it seem to flow between them

I have sat up some nights
listening to television noise
coming from other rooms
thinking that maybe the tub is so big, is big enough
that it can hold these kinds of histories, like when
you sometimes rub your beard against my face.
And in those nights when I sit alone
I hear younger women laughing,
tea kettle voices that start as whistles
and then turn into screams

--Ayaan Agane


Everybody Smokes

I first took up the habit
for the scent.
My love
smoked black kreteks
to make me inch closer
to his musk.
He burned me once
in error
believing his car lighter to be cold
he pressed it into me,
he was always pressing into me,
and my words, my pleading
only seemed amidst his gleeful laughter
a part of the ruse.

My father, not surprisingly
smoked an unfamiliar brand
so naturally I assumed his colon cancer
was of the lung,
and at ten, when
they showed me the pictures
of a smoker and non’s lungs
juxtaposed
I thought I saw my parents’ marriage.

I have walked campus all day
past people too breathless to say hello
admitting to myself that
others take me in so easily, rhythmically.
We smell our own.
Even my professor asks to
bum one while I wait between classes
and I assent, apologizing for
my young, pretentious brand,
for the clove some Indonesian
has put in my cigarette,
only to find that he has his own exotic type
that was young when he was young.

And now when I linger
outside the back of the school building, smoking
hoping to run into my professor,
hoping to run into compliments,
it’s my excuse.
The back entrance dark, my intentions darker
and me there, proffering things

--Ayaan Agane

McKenzie Michaels: Introduction to the Poems of Kaitlyn Sephton

Kaitlyn’s disposition upon encountering the varying situations of the everyday produces a type of poetry that reveals the base and visceral aspects of life. The imagery used in Kaitlyn’s poem, “Email,” suggests the “space. between.” two people, spanned by modern day devices; yet, there is a sort of isolation which prevails, such that any person feels when in the absence of another. Her poem muses between the points of isolation and animal communion, oscillating between the, “Ocean, text messages, nail clippings, orgasms.” It reveals the exacting act of living.

Kaitlyn’s ekphrasis poem, “Insulation Astrology,” seems to “unhinge” the makings of the artwork to which it refers, baring gritted teeth to the things that are, “sliced and stabbed for hours”. Again, Kaitlyn allows for fluctuation in her poem, alternating between raw feeling, persistence, and the end satisfaction of such. Her symbolism evokes the visceral nature of life; blunt words and images seem to jar us into the harshness of acts which are “sharp to the touch, hot with charred edges” and cannot help but be felt down at the base of one’s being. Kaitlyn’s poetry reveals the brute stringencies of life, all mixed with an air of inexorable beauty.


Email

I can crawl across time and space into you.
Ocean, text messages, nail clippings, orgasms.
An idle mouse, a black screen.
Fingers find plastic squares. Cold. Neat.
Sometimes.
Butterflies inside from words that appear when I. Click.
It occurred to me.
Not to mention the mess of splattered blood and organs.
I think the Ancient Greeks were on to something.
Space. Between.
Build-up of something today. Love? Frustration?
Then I looked at the 40 Watt light bulb.
And. Sneezed.

--Kaitlyn Sephton


Insulation Astrology

(after Liz Adamczykan’s sculpture “Autobiography”)

Tight-rope walk your autobiography
three stories high, wire bones poking,
sliced and stabbed for hours,
set to gather dust and envy
while we tilt our heads, you move on.

Sharp sun rises, a dainty umbrella above pina colada pin-
wheel rays that pierce the tropical day pink
and raw, like the inside of a cheek
or fiberglass in the walls of an attic whose
persistent spines sting fingertips.

Capricorn, an Earth sign but lover of sky,
sure-footed, stubborn, bitten heart
unhinged against the music note—
Goats like to nibble all
over, climbing into a moon hammock to wane, wax.

Bikini-clad girl could dive into the foam
swimming pool, edgier than a flamingo lawn ornament,
sharp to the touch, hot with charred edges—
something hard to blow-dry
then satisfyingly splinter against a wall.

--Kaitlyn Sephton

Sarah Gengel: An Introduction to Poems by Jeremy Shulkin

Metaphors are our tools for understanding the world we live in. We derive meaning from these comparisons because they get to the true essence; the nexus of that which is being described. Wallace Stevens, in his poem “The Motive for Metaphor” exemplifies the natural human instinct to define and order our environment. Like Stevens, Jeremy Shulkin explores this search for poetic truth through the metaphor. In “ A Misdiagnosis” blood poisoning is compared with the elusive search for romantic love. Through this extended metaphor, Shulkin shows us that things are not always what we want them to be.
There is something so honest in Shulkin’s work. His language is simple yet descriptive; conversational, but at the same time lyrical. His poetry is serious but definite comedic undertones can be heard throughout. Shulkin’s poetic voice is charming, evoking the romantic image of a mysterious stranger sitting at a bar offering life’s wisdom.


A Misdiagnosis

A friend of mine
with a blister on the
underside of his finger
discovered a red line
blushing from the tender
spot highlighting a vein.
The new color coursing
and weaving a perfect atlas
straight to the heart and upon
first-glimpse I imagine a swooning
Elizabethan believing this entwining
into a perfect metaphor we finally see
and touch like something we understand.

But love is never as perfect as symbols
and there the metaphor fractures this red line
within the circulatory system is
not love—but Septicaemia, a type of
blood poisoning, pathogens invading veins.
The body flirts with the tenth most common cause
of death in 2000 by unwittingly
pumping that perfect line through
the aorta, causing arrest, a sudden
stoppage charted by EKG readings as
legible as slips of sloppy penmanship

--Jeremy Shulkin



Done Got Old

Sitting on a bench, North Mississippi,
a still, dust-hung day. An old local,
when I ask “is that your guitar?” tells me
As long as there’s the color blue he’ll play ‘til he dies. And I say,
“One musician I’ve heard
lives around here—maybe
you know his name?—
Junior Kimbrough?”
And he moves both hands
faster than he ever did while sharecropping,
shucking the guitar from its case: “Kimbrough!
Junior Kimbrough!”
Two chords
resonate like a band of twenty—
he moves his worn
fingers over the vibrating steel,
with every bend, a percussive crack, lamenting
now we only move when he’s moved, E to A, E to A.


--Jeremy Shulkin

Susan Kraft: An Introduction to the Poems of Mel Pelletier

In “Take Me with You, Little Birdie,” Mel uses the pantoum form beautifully. The repeated lines vary ever so slightly, deftly and subtly changing meaning throughout the poem. This poem definitely has a punch to it and Mel seamlessly integrates the repetition in a way that keeps the reader mesmerized by the language.

Mel’s work also deals broadly with growing up. In “Then Now,” Mel uses a fragmentation form to describe the tension between childhood and adulthood. The poem begins with the speaker reflecting back on what their dreams were, with fragments such as “A teacher. A role model. Wonder Woman. Then.” The tension between “then” and “now” is used throughout the poem to create a back and forth motion between childhood and adulthood. With enchanting fragments such as “Ma calls my eyes. Whiskey colored,” the reader is able to visualize exactly what is going on in the poem. Enjoy Mel’s poetry as it describes tensions in everyday life that everyone can relate to in a way that is both refreshing and consoling.


Take Me With You, Little Birdie

“Birdie, birdie in the sky
Why’d you do that in my eye?”
My dad used to say that to me,
I’d wait for him till the cows came home.

Why’d you do that in my eye?
I’ll punch you back, boy, right in the kisser,
I’d wait for you till the cows came home,
To smooch you, without a cootie shot.

I’ll punch you back, man, right in the kisser,
After three hours of head-pounding class.
To smooch you without a cootie shot,
We grew out of those anyways.

After three hours of head-pounding class,
No more pj pants, straight to the library.
We grew out of those anyways.
And “I’m just glad that cows don’t fly.”

No more pj pants, straight to the library,
“I won’t laugh, I won’t cry,
I’m just glad that cows don’t fly”
We sleep, work, eat, and love—that’s it.

I won’t laugh, I won’t cry,
Until eventually there’s no laughs left.
We sleep, work, eat, and—that’s it,
When research comes even before night cuddles.

Until eventually there’s no laughs left,
And now you hate me and my little plan book.
When research comes even before night cuddles,
Well, then instead can I fly away with you?

And now you despise me and my little plan book,
Becomes a habit that I can’t kick.
Then instead can I fly away with you,
Birdie, birdie in the sky?


-Mel Pelletier



Then Now

When I grow up. I am going to be.
Ma calls my eyes. Whiskey-colored.
I drink now…so I agree. Then.

But I always wanted to be.
A teacher. A role model. Wonder Woman. Then.

No more chalk. My camp limp on a hook.
Soon the whiskey leaks. Sometimes. Now.

All that I foresee now. A business suit.
Pinstripe handcuffs. Drunken crystal teardrops.

Then my knight. In glaring plastic.
Burn my crystal ball. Smash my suits of suede.

Nope? Ok, join me for now. For a while.
Soon. Sign your name. Then go.

--Mel Pelletier

Ayaan Agane: Introduction to Poems by Aimee Gagnon

Aimee’s work hinges on its ability to alter perception. As she writes in one of her poems, “Perception. All false.” Avoiding cliché, Aimee takes what her readers would expect and inverts it. Her poems often find the eerie or uncertain in ordinary subjects, like the changing of seasons or a first date. In “The University Children” she lends a frightening view of higher education, so that it seems more like a sacrifice than an opportunity. Aimee’s poems, however, are not focused on the disturbing. She takes a rather playful perspective on Halloween in her piece, “Midterm Monster,” again breaking from expectation.
Aimee’s form varies from poem to poem, revealing her keen understanding of structure. She often uses very compressed lines, allowing single words to suggest larger contexts. Numbers play a key role in much of her poetry, serving as concrete images that are still open to multiple interpretations. In “13,” for example, she plays with the many implications of that loaded number. Her work engages the reader, inviting them to see from a different vantage point.
Inspired by anecdotes, memories, and passing thoughts, Aimee’s poetry intrigues.




University Children

The children drive off with their cars full of belongings
And every night the mothers walk the streets
To collect bills, Franklin, Grant and Jackson,
That converse in multiple tongues.

And across the border
Are those who wait covetously
In grand offices for payments.

How symmetrical are the boxes
In which the children pass
Their papers of five to thirty pages,
Which crawled from printers at daybreak.

The institutions will instruct them with vigor
And the mothers shall scour businesses for a way out,
Finding their phones and answering machines silent
Bringing so little encouragement.


-- Aimee Gagnon




13

13 years.
mini skirt. Lustrous legs.
Visual exploration only.

13 thousand.
Burger King Cashier.
Lowly life.
Have it your way… not mine.

13 Friday.
Raging nerves
shackling sheets.
Life stands still.

800 Million
monetary Crash.
Solution to be found?

12-month calendar.
12 steps instead of 13
or skip right over it.
House 12 then 14.

Ramification of religion
departed from conscious.
Coveting convention.
Society’s Suits.

-- Aimee Gagnon

Jeremy Shulkin: Introduction to Poems by Sarah Gengel

Sarah’s poems are modeled in their ability to create strong visuals; after reading her poetry the images stick in your mind, not because the subject matter is fantastic or so strange that they beg to be contemplated, but because she’s able to describe normal, everyday experiences with such clarity. In her poem “October” the description of a New England Autumn is aided by careful line-breaks, making the visual so strong it can be felt just as much as seen:

from the sharp air of October
in New England
where there is not much to talk about
besides the weather

In an excerpt from her other poem “The Flutist’s Pantoum” she takes something we don’t think of as physical, the theme of a song, and describes it so that the reader can actually see the “melodies that linger near the ceiling”.

Sarah’s love for music (she plays the flute and guitar, and sings) heavily influences her style: her visuals don’t rely on shock value or content to leave a lasting impression. Instead, her line breaks and juxtaposition of long and short lines work like a Jazz singer’s “phrasing”, intuitively letting the rhythm and the spacing of the words work just as hard as the words themselves. Somewhere, Billie Holiday is very jealous.



October

When did it all change?
my perspective of the leaves as a sort of nest
opposed to a laborious task
that precipitates another
long winter.
the wind burns
like whiskey
invigorating beauty, imagining
dragon’s breath on the trees, and I
playing in the ashes,
not knowing, but believing
my nest would protect me
from the sharp air of October
in New England
where there is not much to talk about
besides the weather


seeing the harvest moon for the first time
rising in between the trees
like a hot air balloon
on Halloween
I wrote spells
sending my broomstick
across an autumn sky
cape thrashing in the wind
flying towards the orange glow
of that harvest moon
conjuring Indian summer

--Sarah Gengel



The Flutist’s Pantoum

melodies linger near the ceiling

bright like the silver it came from

stories told in the Lydian mode

ancient traditions living

bright like the silver it came from

in the barroom a band plays

ancient traditions living

in the sleazy part of town

in the barroom a band plays

"Ilona Kudina," reeds

in the sleazy part of town

Latvian jazz princess plays "Soul Eyes"

"Ilona Kudina," reeds

Hopewellian panpipes were made of bone

Latvian jazz princess plays "Soul Eyes"

frequencies penetrating the human bone

Hopewellian panpipes are very old

The Greeks birthed the cool

frequencies penetrating the human bone

melodies linger near the ceiling

--Sarah Gengel

Mel Pelletier: Introduction to Poems by Susan Kraft

It is not easy to create meaning in a single, compressed line of poetry. Susan has a knack for writing poems that are simple, concise, yet powerful. This semester she has focused much of her work around personifying the mysterious snake. She entangles the creature’s actual flexing and coiling with its figurative, erotic nature—and thus, Susan is able to “hold” her readers “firm” and “engulf” them in her words.
This poet is not afraid to use “I” throughout her works. Yet, within each poem, she is a different “I”, keeping the reader attentive and on edge so that we are part of the interactions: “smoke” and “fire,” “vibrations” and “heartbeat.”
“Split” is a very different poem than “Snake Dance” by means of a different narrator, and yet they are similar in their compression. In “Split,” she uses only four or five syllables per line to create the images of a mouth becoming a “fire-pit,” escaping the cliché of teeth by the use of “charcoal”—such a strange yet intriguing image. Susan manages to “engulf” her readers yet again, but this time in the fires of “Split” through her unexpected images.
I really hope you enjoy Susan’s works, and appreciate the compression in her short, but effective poetry. Embrace the rare experience and the mysterious creatures. Let Susan’s words coil into your imagination.


Snake Dance

I am legless
a burrowing lizard
my body flexes
side to side

My eyes fused, transparent.
Yet, on the ground
vibrations travel low
faint rumbles near
your heat radiating

I pull you in
with my coils.
Squeeze together, exhale
grip tightens

you can't breathe
heartbeat slows
I hold firm
then, engulf.


--Susan Kraft


Split

I am not leather,
not armored for this
heat. Your mouth, too,
becomes a fire-pit
with charcoal teeth, smoke
rings around the pink
tongue.

I pretend
this won't repeat,
won't become a fire-
storm-dance with our arms
waving away
heat. It comes from
the two of us, we
travel in imperfect
circles around
each other, heat
waves propel toward
our insides.

--Susan Kraft

Lauren Schwartz: Introduction to Poems by Lana Petersson

Each stanza of Lana’s poem “Ascophyllum Nodosum” paints a great picture of how an individual perceives the world with all of their senses, yet leaves enough room for the experience to be a personal one. She tells us that nature is best appreciated when the “crisp pop the sea weed pods make when you squeeze hard enough that the sticky gel oozes onto your fingers”. The poem begins with a playful observation of marine biology at a young age, with disenchantment of the logic and a longing for the intuitive. It was great how Lana tied it up at the end with a contrast to the beginning and brings it together by pointing out that scientific names and definitions are irrelevant next to the knowledge of first hand experience and perception: “the common name is knotted wrack. And did you know it was edible?”
Lana uses similar imagery in her other poems as well. In her poem entitled “We Lived at 474 Huron Avenue” she captures the childhood experience with lines like “Baby Beluga, sing your little song”. The great line “stuffed bear on watch” evokes an image so familiar to my own childhood and assigns humanistic qualities to stuffed animals—as children often do.
In some of her other poems, Lana continues to let us look back into her childhood with relatable experiences from the reader’s own “The water smooth, just cool enough to ease sun tired skin and just warm enough to let the surface tension line the sides of my face.” It’s as though the reader is with her, in her youth, playing with this young Lana, experiencing with her. She shows the reader—and from that we can enter the past with her, letting our own memories dance with hers.

Poems: Lana Petersson

Ascophyllum Nodosum

The only scientific name I remember
from marine biology eight years ago
when a love of the sea became a dream
of a job of playing with dolphins
at Sea World.

But science was much too logical.
Biology. Astronomy. Physics.
All I knew was it was there-
plants, tides, seals, gravity.
And that was real enough for me.

What’s in a name that can’t
tell you the crisp pop the sea weed pods
make when you squeeze hard enough
that the sticky gel oozes onto your fingers
or the salted crisp green that cuts into your nostrils?

Who cares of downwelling, climate variability or the temperature
of current sweeping East to West,
if you can’t feel the salt sting a hiding wound
or let it hold you and rock you,
toss you in its power?

The phytoplankton are key to the food chain,
but have you trusted beyond
the dark oiled sea surface of the night,
let the points of star light from the deep
light up with a sweep of your arm?

The common name is knotted wrack.
And did you know it is edible?


--Lana Petersson



We lived at 474 Huron Ave

Me second, her first
story we wrote in that double decker
all day to Larch Street Park
our pink Huffy bicycles and then ride
fast past the fierce neighbor’s bark
of birch trees we peeled slowly
to write never ending stories we promised to stick
from backyard we piled into secret shelters
played Peter Pan, stuffed bear on watch
ticks told moms we were not home in time
locked out, made ten times door bell ring
made of dandelions and marigold stains.

A story we did not believe in Neverland
when mom said we were moving two towns over
we hid in bunk bed made Noah’s Arch ship
stuffed animals suffocated in cardboard boxes
and away went Uhaul boxes taped
singing Raffi, Baby Beluga, sing your little song
stroked red curls out of best friend’s face
fact of new town, neighbor, friend
distance would not be bridged by flashlight signs
mom and dad the new deed
we did in secret to say Goodbye…


--Lana Petersson

Poems: Leeba Morse

Introduction by Heather Cenedella:

Leeba. Beloved. Heart.
Heart. One of the most clichéd words when it comes to writing a poem about matters of love is heart; so it’s a good thing that Leeba has such an exquisite grasp of all the other ways to express it. She doesn’t restrict herself to the love between two, but shows love in all its facets. She touches on the shadows in weddings, the pure, forgiving love between best friends, and the wonderfully bittersweet memories of time spent blossoming in Israel. Most importantly, Leeba threads through her poems the importance of loving oneself first. Beloved.
Her light words laden with meaning and lines that skip quickly down the page; Leeba lands sharp, breathtaking blows with her sweet, simple verse. She moves from comparing the limitations of college and marriage, to exchanging time for god, to the heady anticipation of a little, black skirt.
Leeba in Yiddish is interchangeable with both Beloved and Heart. As a poet, she more than lives up to her namesakes – writing equally clever poems about something as tantalizing as a confession, to something as predictable as love. Either way, Leeba’s poems offer the reader a delicious piece of herself; yet somehow still leave them longing for more.


The Bride

the bride treads
clutching lilies
bridesmaids harvested
dewed
white, pink,

along the aisle
those straining forward
breathing petals
crushed beneath manolo’s
white with gold straps.

Women cluster for the bouquet
pieced together from manicured gardens,
plucked, bound in bows
the bride
lets go,
her ammunition.


Splintered Fragments

What did I want to do in life?
Stand spotlighted to thunderous applause
Played dress up, did my hair all nice
Strutting for all the stuffed animals

spotlighted, get thunderous applause
But do it at school, get good grades
Strut for all the stuffed animals
Fragments of a childhood dream

Do it at school, get good grades
Push through until the next beginning
Fragments of a childhood dream
Splintered into adulthood

Push through until the next beginning
Starting over feels too familiar
Splintered in adulthood
Each phase comes with goodbyes

Starting over is too familiar
Impatiently awaiting the end of the start
Every phase comes with goodbyes,
It’s harder to say hello

Anxiously awaiting the end of the start
Played dress up, did my hair all nice
Each time it’s harder to say hello,
What did I want to do in life?