poetry volume 3 | The Western Border

Poetry

Ophelia / Lauren Workman

Editors' Choice Poem: bad apple

Elana Morchower

Editors' Note: This piece contains depictions of violence and sexual assault.

i don’t trust my neighbor
he’s loud
and bossy
and he revs his machinery
past the children playing
he huffs
and puffs
while he blows down
the houses on our street
when he comes to the door
the people inside go missing
for days
weeks
months at a time
i wonder if i’m next
but he tells me
he’s on my side
i heard of 61 people indicted
suspected of domestic terrorism and violence

i scanned the list

for my neighbor’s name

but instead i saw him smiling
with lingerie of women he murdered
and bearing gifts to his wife
of high heels he ripped off their bodies
on december 1st,
flames consume one of the houses nearby
a warning
about our radical neighbor
in the distance
the forest remains silent
except for the echoes
of shells hitting treehouses
and my neighbor’s laugh
today is february 25th
and the flames are growing stronger
another house
engulfed by smoke

and orange haze
i hope the others smell the burning
because i surely can’t trust my neighbor
he put his hand on the trigger
before even reaching for an extinguisher

Frances

Sara Stone

I have a framed picture on my vanity
The face is foreign, fuzzy, and unknown
Her eyes reflect mine in a familial fashion
Once I thought I felt her through the walls
Memorized and romanticized in antique frames
Like the bug embalmed in wax - forever gone
His eyes have forgotten what color to seek
Depressed and burdened by the questions unanswered
Maybe she's in the wind, but who can say?
Maybe she's just in the pictures hanging in the frames

Untitled / Cristal Quintana Luna

Untitled / Ansley Pecoul

Letter from a Soldier in the 1945s

Wrap Around

Will Slaughter

The shards are unrecognizable
What piece goes where?
The tape can’t put it
Back together again

The pain, it’s too much
It’s unbearable
The foundation is cracking
And the caulk is running out.

There was nothing to do to help
Prevent the inevitable.
Saying goodbye now
Seems too soon

And the paths have
Now been erased
By the winds of fate.
How can you be gone?

The ground is unstable
Rocks begin to slip
And everything comes
Crashing down.

What piece goes where?
The shards are unrecognizable
And the cracks in the
Foundation are irreparable.

Diego Paz Abate

What will be of destiny
When war can truly fade?
When the blood remains inside of us
And yelling halts away?

Shall we take a vague illusion
For an awkward reservation
With the things that we desired
For our hopes and preservation?

I cannot wish these thoughts allow,
The things we have to face
But our lives are quickly passing by
And bombs are on a break!

If it’s up to you this evening
Can your vowels say the truth?
Can your eyes face to the future
And your heart towards the moon?

‘Cause it seems like all
The rushing and the
Pushing of our lungs
Will end in nothing

More than memories
We wish would never stop

But to say that it
Won’t happen is a lie
We cannot trace
And it hurts me to
Confess to you
The way that it’ll break

You’ll stay here for a
Moment and will live
A life of ease
I’ll go there to the
Threshold to prevent
A big disease

A something that will hurt you
That will screw and
Turn against you
My dear, my love
Don’t cry for me
As I indeed desert you

Keep wondering about life
Keep wondering for love
Keep up the thoughts about me
As I leave you all alone

Your final kiss will be to me
The reason for my fight
If I don’t come again to you
I die a happy man

Untitled / Ansley Pecoul

10.

Seasons

Sara Stone

Summer Boredom nearly worked me down
Driving me up the walls
My conscience slipped away
I was a creature hiding away from the heat

The Fall slanted in with the Changing of Colors
Floundering in the falling-off leaves
The Beautiful smell of death in the air
Rendered my joy

The Deep Winter was very long
Summer’s End Came Faster Than We Wanted
Hot drinks and warm sweaters
The heat of sleeping next to a familiar body

The flowers bloomed in the light of Spring
Emerging with my legs bare
Nature was healing and
I found myself lying about in the wet grass

Morning Sailing / Nathaniel Spates

Grace Lazarre

I sit here in my college dorm, contemplating what my 10-year-old self would think. She
wouldn’t recognize the people in the Polaroids taped to my wall. She would be impressed
with how clean the floor is. She wouldn’t know what the pills inside orange bottles are
for. She’d wonder when we got so ‘girly’. When our favorite color turned from purple to

green.

I wonder if she’d even recognize me. Sure, we would look the same in some ways. We
both have our father’s eyes, our mother’s smile, our grandmother’s nose. But would she

know me? Would I be all she’d dreamed of? All she’s hoped for?

I hope she’d be proud. Proud that we’d made it this far. Proud that we’re studying
something we love. Proud that I’ve made friends. Found my people.

It’s hard to separate myself from her. Where do I stop and where do we begin?

As much as I would want her to feel accomplished with how far we’ve come, I can’t help
but think I let her down. I’ve left her friends behind. I’ve become concerned with how

people see me. What people think.

But I also know better than her in a lot of ways. I know that I’m allowed to say ‘no’. I
know that I don’t have to let myself be walked over just because they’re older or they’re
family. I’m allowed to speak my mind. I know that I don’t have to fade into the
background. I’m allowed to let myself be seen. I like when people’s eyes are on me

because I know I’ve done something worthy of their attention.

A part of me hopes I never lose her. She has always been inside of me just as much as I
am inside of her. Sometimes I want to talk to her again. Not just to reassure her, give her
hope for the future, but to get to know her better. How do I keep her alive?

I must focus on the things I know she would recognize the moment she stepped into my

college dorm room.

The earrings Mom used to wear hanging in my jewelry box.
The birthday card in my drawer containing my grandmother’s handwriting.

The Taylor Swift poster hanging above my desk.
The stacks of books next to my bedside.
The person staring back at her in the mirror.

No matter how old I get, how many times I cut my hair, how many inches I grow, I will

always know her.

And she will learn to know me.

queen of the neighborhood / Chloe Hendrick

PILLAR / Nathaniel Spates

Ten Thousand Kamikaze

Diego Paz Abate

Ten thousand Kamikaze
On a mission they’re about
They are brave and feel inspired
In the pleasures that they scout

Ten thousand Kamikaze
With excitement on the rise
To bases of the jet planes
That will take them to the sky

Oh! The beauty of the heavens
Is reflected in their minds
With the thoughts of earning big ones
That their heads cannot do blind

They all look to serve the purpose
That have brought them to these sides
They all long to get a landscape
And to go down with a dive

It’s a grief to think about it
That not all will make it through
Some will turn before concluding
Some get fired with no clues

And to those humiliation
To the ones that make it back
There to pay with total shaming
For the courage that they lack

It’s ironic how this planet
Praises dying more than life
And how those who try the hardest
Are the ones without a wife

Ten thousand Kamikaze
That are soaring through the light
Fall for something so dystopian

And protect it with their might

They all get this lonely chance
To provide what they believe
But will all of it be worth it
Unlike Adam with his Eve?

Yes! Some landscapes, they are cruel
And their beauty’s just a lie
It’s not fair to see the youngsters
Risking all to fill their pride

Ten thousand Kamikaze
In each body there’s a heart
And in many fatal cases
The red organ breaks apart

Autotroph

Sara Stone

Plants are a primary source of energy
soaking and bathing in the sunlight
ringing in moisture and nutrients
becoming the basis of energy for the world

stepped upon and degraded
under the foot of the oppressor
crushed, and wilting, and Rotten
tilting out to coldness

it's so cold now
tundra with Nothing but snowy abyss
it has been so long without the sun-blistering kiss
it's been so long

The sun's energy enters
the cells alight within my veins
the crunch of my arms in your mouth
energy continues through the chain

life is no longer
Life is No Longer