The Leaning Landscape of the Mind

The hill on which the landscape leans is the very place our person grows keen. Below the town, the foundation sleeps the rest our minds long to keep. Oh, mind, great city, the darkness consumes. Beware of leaning, for that fall will be your doom.

Now, rest, young mind, for a battle awaits. Stand tall and upright, or rather meet your fate. Oh sleeping, silent, sacred mind, be present and conscious for safety to find. The placid lands that surround you will quake, if peace is not restored in the sentient, sapient, space that you wake.

Awake, young mind and save thyself. Awake and stop the leaning shelf.

Awake, and escape the darkness that creeps from below. Awake and gaze upon the stunning landscape that flows. Awake, from this slumber before it is too late. Awake, young mind, do not hesitate.

Oh, leaning landscape, your color radiates like flowers in the spring, but lean farther, and your light drains from everything. Listen like a bat, for the cries of the residents in the town, as the leaning continues down, down, down. Please dear mind, save the sanity that clings like a leech for dear life. Bring yourself back to the placid land, or face darkness and its strife.

Crack! as the supports slowly begin to break.

Rumble! as the clouds move in and sunlight aches.

Whistle! as the wind brings in the cold and dark.

Screech! as the leaning city continues to embark.

Whack! as the surrounding landscape is disturbed.

Groan! as the pressure on the mind is perturbed.

The great city in her glory cries for help.

She implores the mind to wake and yelp.

The sky closes in, and the residents of her beg.

The darkness encroaches from the side up her leg.

It is now a plea, a final hope.

Just then, the mind awakes and saves the slope!

Appetite:

An Ekphrastic Poem on Art Imperialism, Patriarchy, and Picasso

A landscape

Untouched by breath and light. Glowing horizon and inky blue sky Swells with anticipated stings. Trampled by Magellan’s finest leather boots,

Falls, husked, to the floor.

An animal; Poised sphinx with perfect curvature. Wise-muscled and warm Wrangled, howling, from her wild.

Stretches to the technicolor confines of her circus cage, Gaze sagging below the horizon.

A woman

Awakened from fitful rest. Spends the eve of her wilting Willing and willing and willing.

Holds tight to her mask, Submits with shaking hands and head.

A muse,

Lucklessly alluring. Radiant beauty bastardized. Bleeding like ink through sketchbook pages.

Invoked with sneering insincerity, Image beheld behind closed doors.

An object

Static, stale, discarded. Departed already to save herself

And bruised in tonesAn artist’s palette, Dangling limp in the hand of a god.

Last, a truth

There is an appetite in this world All the muses could not satisfy:

To own, to control, to claim by portraying, To sculpt with fingerprints and force, To capture that which transcends.

Margaret Eidenshink ‘23

I sit beside the fire and think I think of all that I have seen Meadows, fields of flowers, and warm April showers, The summer waves and golden sky

In autumn’s cold, with yellow leaves, The crinkle under my feet With the mornings silver sun shining high, The wind in my hair, my cheeks red

I sit beside the fire and think Of how the world will be

When winter comes without a spring And summer without an autumn.

Still, there are so many things That I have yet to see Places left undiscovered And oceans depths left untouched.

I sit beside the fire and think

Of people long ago…. And people who will see a world…. That I shall never know.