Tag: poetry
The Sculptor
by Elizabeth McGinn on February 25, 2021
Portfolio
by Sarah Heavren ’21
I am a block of marble.
There is potential hidden inside.
But from the whole outside world,
My purpose and value seem to hide.
I exist for my Sculptor
Who crafts me with unmatched care and skill.
He has a unique vision
Of a purpose that I can fulfill.
Sometimes He carves out large parts,
Ones which I once believed I needed.
He reveals something better
That has been hidden deep beneath it.
I have learned from my Sculptor
That I myself can’t know my true form.
I must trust my Sculptor’s work
And His graced hands to make me transform.
Cargo → Flight → Crashing → Demigod
by Elizabeth McGinn on February 25, 2021
Portfolio
by Sam Ward ’21
CARGO
The captive in the cargo hold
Was the captain of a space vessel, Captured, or so we’re told,
With ancient symbols superimposed On her chest, classic bodies,
What are they worth,
With no cause or effect?
FLIGHT
Do you hail from a distant star? Some planetary figure,
Where foreign tongues scratch Alien fibers stitched up in the skins Of strange beasts, like some Rudimentary interface for Pre-space faring communication.
CRASHING
The creative impulse embedded in creatures, To conceive, to birth, to raise,
Has released sources of energy,
Unfit for the hands of their makers.
I still think of her, or what was told, Clutching her possessions, Crashing to the surface.
DEMIGOD
You skirted evolution,
Caught not in space,
But some time lost
To the atoms of enlightened matter. Your cursed tombs will burn,
When we break through the atmosphere. Down, down, down, down, descent.
Hypothetical Imperative
by Elizabeth McGinn on February 25, 2021
Portfolio
by Kate Ward ’23
My sophomore year of high school my parents gave me some advice
You can’t control how others react, you can’t control their emotions
At the time this was some pretty bad advice and I threw it to the wind
I can do whatever I want, people will listen to me
Four challenging years later I sit awake at night
The whispers of lies about me swirling through paper thin walls
She’s rude, attention seeking, a liar
I come back to the advice I had received as my heart begins to break
I can’t control how others react to my differences
I can’t control their emotions towards me
It all seems fairly narcissistic if you think of it
But then again, it takes grace to remain kind in cruel situations
So I make a new hypothetical imperative
My goal: be my truest self
My command: relinquish control over others and be true, be firm in yourself
I don’t know if Kant would like me much but then again
I can’t control how others react
This October Beach
by Elizabeth McGinn on February 11, 2021
Portfolio
by Marelle Hipolito ’22
Tuck my hair behind my ear, just one more time
Before we leave this October beach behind
Let’s look for one more shooting star
Before you go and break my heart
Take a hundred pictures of me in front of a blue sky
Before you drop another goodbye
Tell me you love me, just one more time
Before we leave this October beach behind
Skip a few rocks, just one more time
Before we leave this October beach behind
Write me a letter, with a Valentine’s rhyme
Before signing it “this is goodbye”
Call me up in the middle of the night
Confess you miss me, that you’re not alright
Send me a playlist, make it John Mayer
Then text me “listen to it all,” then call me later
Become my world and flood my life
Before we leave this October beach behind
First Place
by Elizabeth McGinn on February 11, 2021
Portfolio
by Sam Ward ’21
Love is strange, strangers turn
To best friends and back again
When the feeling is less intense.
Still, you left a mark on my heart
Like an indent, and we typed the keys
That codified the sequence.
“The sun still sets in paradise”
Even butchered Maroon 5 lines
Reflect memories of moonlit eyes.
Tell me why, tell me why.
Finally home but feeling withdrawn,
Take my hand, lead me too far.
Where has it gone? Where has it—
They had me living in a pit
I have one lofty wish:
Fix this glitch, fix this glitch.
One day an eternity,
From two to three, all for just five,
That I wish you’d spend with me.
Opened like a locked box,
Trifled for my jewels,
I gave it all away, I’d give it all away.
This heart heals quickly,
The brain feels forever.
Conditioned to take it with me,
Where there’s always never.
Sabotaged to start with,
Finish line or just quit,
Ego death or panic,
I am losing and I’m in first place.
Twin Flames
by Elizabeth McGinn on February 11, 2021
Portfolio
by Mariela Flores ’23
You are not the other half of me.
You are not a better half of me.
You are not a nicer half of me.
You are not a half.
Love, you are the roots of old pine.
Love, you are a perfect cadence.
Love, you are the spine of my favorite books.
Love, you are the streaks of light that blind me while I drive.
Love, you are the color green.
How lucky are we, to coexist at the same time, in the same place, in the same life?
How lucky are we to have met each other, lost each other, and found each other again?
As we grow and move through this timeline I hope just one thing,
you will find me again, wherever we might begin.
As two wholes, two flames,
you & I.
Jamestown, VA
by Elizabeth McGinn on February 11, 2021
Portfolio
by Angie Nguyen ’22
falling in love with someone you shouldn’t is like an ending is written before the beginning. you don’t listen to the bells, warning you of the heartbreak and the tears and the way the sparkle in his eyes dulls eventually because you’re so enraptured by the i-love-you’s and the morning kisses and the midnight adventures in his foreign car (a toyota is still foreign to me). we were only running on borrowed time.
how could i be selfish enough to lay claim on your eyes and their haunting depth—the way they changed with your moods. i never realized dark, brown eyes could hold so much feeling until i looked into yours. how could i think that a piece of your heart was reserved for me? that heart is as wild as a stallion, and i thought i’d harnessed you, put you into my stable. how could i even begin to think that laugh was meant for me and only me? you share your joy so effortlessly—i even envy you at times.
i know you said you were mine but that’s like trying to claim the oceans and its waves, the forest and its wolves. the way you move, the way you carry yourself, the way you think—it was never mine, always yours.
i always thought love meant surrender. but i’m so tired of trying to make myself a home in your amazon. i don’t want to be a colonizer of your lands. i cannot confuse breaking you with appreciating you.
but when you tell me you love me, when you kiss me and hold me, for a split second, in this wild world, you are mine.
Suicidal Love
by Elizabeth McGinn on February 4, 2021
Portfolio
Trigger Warning: This poem includes
references to suicide and self-harm
by Toni Rendon ’24
Can we dance like Snowflakes?
Tumbling down until we hit the ground
Blood pooling around us
Scaring anyone who finds us
You should’ve known this love was suicidal
When I told you I’d die without you
Because I know the sun won’t peek past the clouds
If you’re not around
So, when you decide to step out on that ledge
Remember to grab my hand
So we can both greet death together
We agreed to “for better or worse and in sickness and health”
But what happens when the sickness and worse stick around
Like a generational curse we can’t break
Do we sit around and wait for the inevitable heartbreak?
Do we slit our wrists and stop our heartbeat?
Or do we pop pills and catch chills
As the world fades around us
We fell in love with broken people
The type who were labeled evil
Because we’re not afraid to watch the world end
We’ve already seen how the sky bends and breaks
And we’ve shed all the tears our hearts can take
So there’s nothing left to do
But dance hand in hand in the air
Like snowflakes until we hear the sound
Of our bones break
Poetry
by Elizabeth McGinn on February 4, 2021
Portfolio
by Sarah Heavren ’21
What is it to write poetry?
It is more than merely meeting a meter
Or pairing words to form a rhyme.
I believe it reaches for something much deeper.
It pulls and tickles emotions.
It awakens them from a heavy slumber,
Suppressed by the weight of this world.
Poetry reminds us to pause and wonder.
It asks the challenging questions
Through imagery, metaphors, and examples.
Sometimes it’s passively active,
Sometimes quite concise, and sometimes it likes to ramble.
Some people don’t have the patience
To delve into the magical world of words.
They want things quick and straightforward,
So their innermost reactions go unheard.
To feel is really quite human.
It is inseparable from our being.
Poetry always calls us back
And puts words to what we are truly feeling.
Aggressive
by Elizabeth McGinn on February 4, 2021
Portfolio
by Mariela Flores ’23
Today me and my peers were called “aggressive.”
We were given the title and told to bear the weight of it, the weight of the word, the weight of all our ancestors before us who had heard the same complaint by the same white mouth, we are aggressive.
We are aggressive when we write, when we sing, when we dance, when we laugh, when we cry, when we are angry, because an institution is spitting in our faces, it is telling us to hold back, to hold on, to wait.
We are aggressive, I am aggressive.
I am five feet tall.
A hundred and five pounds.
I struggle to open their doors.
My appearance has been demonized because my tone is not right, but I do not have the energy to police myself today, not today, not tomorrow, not again.
I am not aggressive when I am surrounded by a sea of white.
When this whiteness swallows me whole and I am left choking, spitting out a freedom I do not own, I am not aggressive when I am being told to stay shut.
I am not aggressive, I am afraid.
Afraid as I walk through the campus and they throw their words, their chants, “build that wall!”—it rings in my ears, my hands, my feet, I can feel their hate, it hurts me.
And I am afraid to let them keep hurting me, because soon I will be nothing more than a bruise on their campus, on their world, and nothing, no one will heal me.
I am not aggressive, I am tired.
Tired of holding up the image of someone I do not like anymore. The perfect image of the person “deserving” of a spot here. I keep trying to plant myself into their soil, but my roots will not grow.
I am not aggressive—I am kind, strong, brave, far too patient for my own good.
Today I will not apologize for the version of me you get when the patience has run out. I will not accept a title I did not earn, my humanity is not aggressive, my incentives, my motives, the dream I keep so close to my pillow, these things will not be tainted by a word from a mouth that does not feed me.
I am not aggressive, you are.