Eraser Shavings
by Danielle O'Farrell,
'11
"I didn't hear you."
"I was wondering
Are humans erasable?
Think about it --
Rub your skin
And you are rubbing off cells.
Could you rub yourself
To death
With an eraser?
How hot would it get
Before the friction burned Skin?
Could a heart be sanded away
Into eraser shavings?
Making heart powder.
And the goo that surrounds
Your eyeball --
Is that erasable?
Would it be a bloody death,
Death
By
Eraser?"
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I built a city for myself
by
Eli Wolfe, '09
I built a city for myself
From the clay of my birth to the clay of my death,
I carved out of soft asphalt my niche
I haven't gone much
further
From each landmarked tree and
bankrupt electronics store is
The decaying scent of fish that
bones the flesh of Irving
Sallow wax faces
hacked too hastily from the same teetering
candle
A nose and mouth and eyes slit
into putty with a pen knife checks my
twenty
for evidence of counterfeit
Not knowing I drew the watermark on his life
Bodies held to the light to check
for
authenticity
Like cans of marbled laichi
Expiration is a matter of opinion
Every inch of plate glass and brick
The plaster crust shed from buildings by nesting
magpies
Quarters
lost
to the boulder comforts of MUNI
Chopped and cut
from nature
Tired pigeons
beaten from ink and pressed against picket fences
Excavated chimneys foreclosed by rats
Putter closer
to this street
and hear how long its moan runs
Shaking the shriek from burglar
alarms
Rattling the pompadour out of hair
Before passing into sigh through the
thistle-whistle grass
creasing the beach's comb over
Puttering forth,
The avenues stall on
hills
and rubber neck garage sales
Like blind pants-to-their-nipples
men,
running their fingers over the
dry walls of Irving, searching
for the crack that runs from one
building to the
next, Like a
mile long birthmark
Like a fault that grows into the
flesh of the new homes,
A city of cracks and color
ruined blue print or stunning mosaic
Dropped
from the back of a truck
and shattered
But the pieces stay close together,
and no
long
legs
are needed to cross between the fragments.
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Collision
by
Adrian Kane '08
When I was too young and
in love a cinema with red curtains
gave me my hands. Halfway
down,
between friends and
between selves, in
the sweating place where
colas and cushions met we mixed
our hands. It was
a film spun out of nothing like
cotton candy. We watched
our hands, found that when
molecules collide without breaking
and becoming other, up sprouts this
ruby flower, sensation. But
collision grows old, molecules grow
old.
A plate of callus grew between
our nervous palms --
I will not have again that
miracle of buttery dark, before
my hands were my, where
black whites danced on our hands and
whispers could be her, or me, or
ghosts behind
the red curtains.
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