StarWound Concert Program

StarWound: Interiors Sponsored by the School of Writing, Languages & Cultures and School of Music

October 18 @ 7:30 PM Kaeuper Hall, Perkinson Music Center Millikin University

About StarWound StarWound is an alternative Anglophone band based in Athens, Greece. It consists of three musicians: Konstantina Stavropoulou (vocals, synthesizer), Petros Bouras (piano, synthesizer), and Dimitris Azorakos (drums). Their songs reflect upon the philosophical and social dimensions of the human condition. Their debut album, “Miles to Walk,” released in September 2015, provides a musical reflection of the Greek financial and social crisis.

About “Interiors” “Interiors” represents StarWound’s survey on the lyrics of contemporary US-based poets. The goal is to provide musical accompaniment to original poetic compositions and to present these songs in a multifaceted and multi-institutional concert program, based on the thematic concept of “Interiors.” One professor from each of the selected universities has contributed to the project with a poem. For the 2024 tour, StarWound solicited poems from professors Amy Ash, Carmella Braninger, Brenda Cardenas, Chris Forhan, Jennifer Moore and Nynke Passi. The Greek trio will also perform songs composed to accompany poetry read by Millikin students from their three albums that deal with the theme of the project, as well as song-poems read by Millikin students Isabella Blohm, Karley Blau, and Grace Talbert.

Concert Program 1. The Wolf 2. What Do You See? 3. Corona: A Suite (2020)—poem by Sandra Meek 4. I Hope the Owl Remembers Me—poem by Jennifer Moore 5. You’re in Pain 6. Student Poems 7. Marianne Loup 8. Prophetess—poem by Jonathan Fink 9. Wonderful and Empty 10. Open—poem by Amy Ash 11. Echoes—poem by Kerry Brackett 12. Insane 13. Student Poems 14. Over—Portishead cover 15. As They Always Did 16. Bucketsful—poem by Brenda Cardenas 17. Rose 18. Toward What’s Beyond the Self—poem by Chris Forhan 19. Student Poems 20. Hidden Heart Drum—poem by Carmella Braninger 21. Orpheus—poem by Kendall Dunkelberg 22. The Opposite of Love—poem by Nynke Salverda Passi 23. Unspoken Tales

Poems & Poets Corona: A Suite (2020) by Sandra Meek Almanac Lampblack sparks arrant stars, flak’s avatars. A bat’s a hatchway: gangplank. Wand.

At stalls, hands hack what flaps, a day’s catch; a palm’s wan map charms data drawn as dash—what was strand, swarms.

Bluff Truth unspun, untruths spun murmur trust us. But drums trump susurrus.

Whipstitch Silk lining twilight rips,

night’s nihilist vigil civil’s the poems rising bright splits, twilling with light its miring mist; still, midnight is sizing mind in binding stitch: wind circling in mill’s kniving twists.

Eyeteeth Eggshells nestled between trestles, we were bells steepled between vespers; then, fever beget fewer, melt beset meld: lest let’s beget less, helterskelter we sheltered; wed beget web, the deepest velvet tether.

Lockdown World of blossoms blown to two rooms, two doors to doom:

moot, now, who to whom; who’s cork, who monsoon.

Sandra Meek is the author of six books of poems, most recently Still (Persea Books, 2020). She is Professor of English at Berry College in Mount Berry, Georgia.

I Hope the Owl Remembers Me by Jennifer Moore In a land of needles and mosses, I want to know what the prey and the preying bird knows. I will sleep with both eyes open.

Who wants you, little star?

Who wants you, hatchling?

No wind moves the blue evergreen. I cannot find the source of noise.

I know she lives with the moon in her eye, the hazelnut moon, hazelnut sky, and she sees the thimbleberry light in mine.

If, like the owl, I could look backward.

If, like the owl, I could mimic the texture of the forest.

Instead I guessed the cryptic plumage, the beak hooked at the tip for gripping— but what I want to grasp is the grimmer meaning of the owl’s locking foot, her practically silent flight and asymmetrical ear.

The bird, of course, is a kind of misdirection— another way of saying that I will fill my own coffin with bark.

It will be like a nest that knows something.

Treehouse, take back your architecture.

I want to live in the structure of a feather and the gaze of an absolute eye. When I leave the world with a sleeping tongue, the door of the forest slightly open, I hope the owl remembers me— the owl I hope she remembers Jennifer Moore was born and raised in Seattle. She is the author of Easy Does It (2021) and The Veronica Maneuver (2015), both from the University of Akron Press, and a chapbook of centos, Smaller Ghosts (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Bennington Review, Tupelo Quarterly, DIAGRAM, Interim, The Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. She is a professor of creative writing and Director of the Honors Program at Ohio Northern University and lives in Bowling Green, Ohio.

The Prophetess by Jonathan Fink The slightest breeze becomes a voice, a message on the air. I neither wish for it, nor want it gone.

It settles over me the way that darkness falls— a veil upon a bride. The visions shake me every time.

I see the faces of the strangers in the marketplace and recognize in them the forms they do not know they will become. The man who holds a garment like a book across his open hands, who folds it tenderly, a wedding gift, will pass nine months unspeaking to his wife until, two days before his daughter’s birth, his wife will leave him, loudly, just outside his shop, the shadow of an awning cutting him from waist to feet.

A woman buys a terracotta bowl and in my mind I see her pouring water in the basin. Both eyes closed, she leans above it, cups the water in her hands and lifts them to her face. The water is a mirror writhing under her, her gaze distorting, mouth and eyes, her cheekbones and her teeth. Her hair

descends around her face so that the tips of curls submerge into the bowl like quills into an inkwell.

What I see, I cannot help: her lover’s hands around her throat, the way she tries to turn, to call his name as stillness enters him, some silent beast, and falling from the table to the floor, the terracotta bowl.

At first, I tried to speak of what I saw. The more specific I became, the more the listener would disbelieve.

I saw the fall of Troy, the wooden horse, the sight of Paris, naked, stepping from a shroud.

The more the strangers turned from me, the more I learned to trust the visions I received.

There’s power as the dispossessed. My name became a curse. Now, men and women part before me like I am their queen. The air around me is a chariot.

My robes are flames, my words a long-forgotten tongue. (from The Crossing, Dzanc Books, 2015) Jonathan Fink is Professor and Coordinator of Creative Writing at the University of West Florida. He is the author of three books of poetry, including the forthcoming Don’t Do It—We Love You, My Heart.

Open by Amy Ash On the clothesline, your shirts hang open, outstretched.

I walk into their flimsy embrace.

The curtain is all shift and witness, in the light of the window.

Footsteps inaudible on the soft wall to wall.

There is nothing wrong with want, only lack.

No way to escape the ache of a slammed door.

In the corner, a Kleenex expands into an orchid, but what I see is the open mouth of the vase.

(Amy Ash, “Open,” The Open Mouth of the Vase, Cider Press Review, 2015.)

Amy Ash is the author of The Open Mouth of the Vase, winner of the Cider Press Review Book Award and Etchings Press Whirling Prize. She is co-editor of Imaginative Teaching through Creative Writing: A User’s Guide for Secondary Classrooms (Bloomsbury, 2021). Her work has been widely published and is currently featured in Poetry in Transit, a public arts project of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. She is Associate Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Indiana State University.

Echoes by Kerry Brackett Sometimes I like to wonder and think about What these four walls in my house would talk about I ponder if it would be an intelligent conversation Or would it be unbearable with just shouting and debating It used to be fun to go outside to enjoy the sunshine Before the city shut down and it became a crime I only wore masks around October during Halloween Nowadays, it’s only my eyes that you’ll ever see I miss going to the park to play basketball Now it’s a ghost town, the hoops are gone as the leaves fall I can only binge watch movies and television every other hour The couch is tired of holding me hostage, so I take a shower These four walls may talk about my trials of cooking at home Or when my wife told me to leave the stove alone But I can only eat fast food for long And I can only nod my head so many times to the same songs My kids can only watch the same cartoons so many times So we have to make up games just to make the time fly by It’s getting unbearable to watch the news these times Different cities, same problems across the lines My heart goes out to the doctors and nurses in the field Wearing invisible medals of honor as they fight in the battlefield I cringe as we continue to count the losses of our loved ones

I wish I can hug the ones left behind, who are still stunned Teaching students through computer screens takes a special talent Giving class work is one thing, keeping them awake is the challenge Entertaining through education as they stare through laptops and tablets Keeping them engaged and motivated, I deserve to own the patent Sometimes I like to wonder and think about What these four walls in my house would talk about I ponder if it would be an intelligent conversation Or would it be unbearable with just shouting and debating Kerry Brackett is the Writing Center Director and Assistant Professor of English at Miles College in Fairfield, Alabama. He has published three chapbooks of poetry and several spoken word albums.

Bucketsful by Brenda Cárdenas When I was a child, I had a rusty bucketfull of ochre wonder, of mustard seed and yarrow, jasper stone and finch feather, of butterscotch and hopscotch, botched tongues and dizzy syntax.

Bullies dumped it all over the sidewalk, their pimpled hiccups echoing under overpasses while pigeons pecked at the granular wreckage, and the finch feather flew south in search of its bird.

Others stuffed my bucket with snarls and suffocating toadlets, ravenous revulsion and arrogant sermons.

One held a bucketful of Jesus to the sky, and the buckets multiplied.

I snuck away with the ugly bucket scratched by stars, dented by dark clouds, the lonely one ready to carry friends like shells and seeds, water and bone, caterpillars, ladybugs, mud and stone.

Brenda Cárdenas has authored Trace (Red Hen Press), winner of the 2023 Society of Midland Authors Award for Poetry and silver winner of Foreword Review’s Indie Poetry Prize; Boomerang (Bilingual Press); and three chapbooks. She also co-edited Resist

Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance and Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest. Cárdenas has served as Milwaukee’s Poet Laureate and is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Toward what’s beyond the self by Chris Forhan Past the sleeping bees and still pondwater, past silt-drift and updrafts of ash, past gravity, accretion, decay, the has-beens and who’s-to-come, past love and scruple, sadness, owing and aloneness—all that, go past it, go toward a purer aloneness, blackness past the galaxy, snowfall at the back of the brain, and what will you be then, and where, and what use as your hair falls out in clumps in the tub, as your small son calls for you in his sleep?

Chris Forhan is a poet, memoirist, and essayist whose most recent book is A Mind Full of Music: Essays on Imagination and Popular Song. He is also the author of the memoir My Father Before Me and four books of poetry, including the forthcoming The Ghost Won’t Go. Recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and three Pushcart Prizes, he is Professor of English and Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Butler University.

Hidden Heartdrum by Carmella Braniger Early you come with grace, in a dream, faceless, point to a distant Then rise

forest.

from heavy golden plains,

like misty morning haze, and my hidden heart drum, rhythm of hooves, beats hard.

A quiet, neverending strumming.

Until you

belt

forth

a carol, and purple crocuses inside me

turn up.

Your song burns like fall leaves aflame.

Even the sun cries with dark joy.

Not for me, but for

the winter ahead.

I lean in, removing all vestige

of you;

rise from the fire, pull a curtain the tide

of

against your coming.

Dr. Carmella J. Braniger is a Visiting Professor of English at Wabash College, where she teaches writing. Her chapbook, No One May Follow, was published by Pudding House Publications in 2009. She has also published over fifty micropoems, and more than a dozen poetry sequences in journals such as Sycamore Review; MARGIE: The American Journal of Poetry; Modern English Tanka; Altas Poetica: A Journal of Poetry of Place in Contemporary Tanka; Ribbons; Chrysanthemums; red lights; Magnapoet; and Eucalypt.

Orpheus by Kendall Dunkelberg How do you leave the land of the dead for which there are no maps or manuals?

Can you walk upright like a man or crawl on your belly like a worm or a mole?

How can you leave the one you love, the one whose arms were once bony and strange, whose cheek turned ever away from yours. When you arrived here, everything was dark, lifeless, and cold.

Eventually you fell into that deep, comforting slumber of familiarity and forgetting, as your own flesh grew thin and ethereal and you lay beside your bride, dry and brittle like the husk of a locust, until you woke to the sound of heavy rain on the roof, no, on the earth above, a pounding rain that seemed to last forever. But now, the only sound is of sparrows scratching in the dirt and chirping to one another signaling the end of the storm and the sun rising somewhere far, far from here.

Now you remember you were granted leave for this visit, but only under certain conditions. Now you remember, you must return to the living, bringing Eurydice, and yet you already sense her reluctance and your growing impatience; you already

know you will turn too soon, only to see her lovely face fade back into the mists, her face nearly restored to its former beauty, a memory to haunt your final days. (from the forthcoming Tree Fall with Birdsong, Fernwood Press, 2025) Kendall Dunkelberg is Professor of English at Mississippi University for Women, where he directs the low-residency MFA program in Creative Writing and is department chair of Languages, Literature, and Philosophy.

The Opposite of Love by Nynke Salverda Passi My husband sat down on the flowered couch.

He was handless and heartless. He lost his mouth.

His fists flew like two black crows around the room. After pecking at the hard soil of my forehead, the soft ground of my womb, the black fists planted themselves firmly in the bruised green earth of my fertile flesh, growing pain quickly, efficiently into a wild bush blooming with purple roses.

It was the heart of winter. I grew roses from my skin. His eyes were craters. I looked away so I would not fall in. His face was the empty moon, pulling and pushing. I became fragile, layers of lace-trimmed water, a moving substance without face. Time cut off my hands.

His fists blinded my eyes. I grew burls and fissures, leaned sideways. No wind could have bent me straight.

He hid his loneliness in the suitcase of his chest so he could travel lightly, get out before soiling his perfect clothes with the dirt

of my grief and pain. I buried myself in a hole in my own earth deep beyond ice or snow, beyond freezing or burning.

Nynke Salverda Passi was born and raised in the Netherlands. She's the founder and director of MIU’s MFA in Creative Writing and the Soul Bone Literary Festival. She has been published in CALYX, Gulf Coast, and the anthologies The Anthology of New England Writers, River of Earth & Sky, Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace, and more. She was a finalist in the Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s Prize of The Missouri Review in '14 and '22.

burnout by Isabella Blohm im tired and sore and dont really care anymore ive got too much to focus on and not enough anything left to wear it my energy is gone still, I put on a smile to go the Extra mile when Duties require it. in other words: I grin and bear it. it doesnt help that im pushed in every direction:

from Politics to Womanhood to striving for Perfection theres Academics and Money and Relationships to foster but not even the grades or the scholarships make me feel less an imposter ive worked hard to get where i am: lost friendships and opportunities and joy to achieve it i feel numb im probably depressed but what can you expect when you have no time to relax to reflect its no wonder ive got no Motivation:

to move myself toward a better station not to get out of bed without panic setting in not to care about people whose lives continue morbid not even the state my home country is in ive lost my spark, my reason for being my meaning of life is shrouded in the dark of life that just keeps feeding off my soul, my love, my passion, my life I can only keep being. after all, when passion burns bright, it can only last so long before day must turn to night

My World, In Ink by Isabella Blohm A stroke in pencil leaves room for erasure: thoughts lost to an unsure nature.

Pen gliding over paper, personality & posture gilded forever in legacy and future I think: when I die, I want to be remembered.

I do not want to be severed from my life, and the thoughts that made me want to pry for moreI think: when I die, I want you not to cry from grief, but happiness.

After all, you have pieces of me, in the literature I write, and the books that I read.

I think: I write in ink for those who knew me, and those who don’t.

My ink is my legacy: Every stroke of my pen, every misspelled word crossed out and written again.

I want my mistakes in full view, so I can’t run from them.

I write in pen instead of pencil, so my thoughts are cemented so long as the book, or the paper, I write them in remain in trusted hands, again and again.

I write in ink instead of pencil, so I can be remembered as I was— Human.

Born in The USA by Isabella Blohm BANG! Blood splatters out of your head or your chest; you’re dead.

Maybe you’re lucky: it hit you in the thigh, so you can sigh in relief; that’s more than the others got as they were shot, And their parents flood with grief as— Their blood flooded the hallways, the streets, dead for being alive, wrong place, wrong time; too loud about their beliefs.

School is no longer a place to learn—

to grow— to be— Human.

This generation grows up to survive not thrive.

Give them your Thoughts & Prayers and perhaps . . . they’ll make it out alive.

THEY DON’T! From conception you’re a murderer, a sack to be shot at: target pra-ctice.

You’re important, until you’re not.

After all, you’re raised to be shot, or do the shooting— meant to be fought for, except when you start breathing.

Our attention is drawn to

fighting amongst ourselves, so much so that we miss the real villains involved: their corruption is shelved.

We’re pulled in every direction: Do this!

A cycling spat that never ends.

We’re “Born & Raised” and can’t see what we’ve been “raised” for: A never-ending war.

Isabella Blohm is a sophomore English-Creative Writing major and part of the Millikin Honors Program. She hails from Superior, Wisconsin, and attends Millikin to get hands-on experience for publishing and being published. She plans to be an author, and hopes performing with StarWound will help her reach that goal.

Sternum by Karley Blau I hate pity, Sympathy even, I’m a big girl And I can handle my own shit, I have my own life Independent life That’s mine alone to shape and craft Into something that I’m going to Be proud of when I die.

My life, My responsibility.

So when I’m hurting, I turn the pain into 4/10 star poetry That can only evoke any sort of emotion from me The writer…

Which means it fails, Because all the art I partake in Is meant for the viewer But if I can’t make them feel anything, I fail.

It’s really that simple.

Yet I find myself struggling to put one foot in front of the other– Hear the hammer pounding nails into a coffin as I’m buried alive, But my voice is clipped.

There’s a hole in the center of my chest, I don’t have a sternum.

I should have a sternumEveryone else has a sternum And can breath normally, So where is my sternum?

That’s not something that gets misplaced.

It’s gone.

I think that acid wore it away While I was focusing on shouldering other things.

I think I’m drowning?

In an ocean made of a million drops of rain…

A million tiny drops battering against my skin.

And I’m weightless as I sink to the bottom Lost and floating.

I don’t even try to claw to the surface– Shock racing along my skin leaving me paralyzed.

My sternum is replaced with salt water.

Stings.

Useless body, Can’t keep the ocean at bay– What’s it for?

I don’t even like her: Mirrors and minds Manipulate and meld the image of her.

I fear this shell is nothing but a magpie Leagues under the ocean With mindless mutterings falling from cracked, chapped lips.

She is too much And never enough.

Maybe if I slept, I’d have a chance to breathe.

But even in sleep I don’t get rest…

I’m tormented by visions of my own demise and ruin– Finding that there was a difference between the two Hurt worse than when I found my chest empty– I see in my sleep the ways I go.

If I described, in detail, what exhausts me and keeps me from shutting my eyes, I would be looked at With pity.

Pity.

I don’t need itDon’t want it.

Keep your pity And keep your sad looks.

I don’t want them.

If I have to go to bed, And live through my death Every night To keep marching and stumbling towards some future Then I’ll grit my fucking teeth And watch the last of the sun’s rays While I fall to the ocean floor, Because life exists down there too: Horrific and hideous But even without light Or air Or sternums, They find ways to live.

I can find the way- find the path to enjoying it.

I can see things that others will never And that has to be something special, Right?

Maybe I should go to therapyToxic thoughts traipse through my thick fucking skull, They carve their own path, Then get trapped in it.

Running and sprinting Faster and faster Until the groove is so worn in, that the ocean, My friend, Marvels at her depth.

I know that therapy could help me, But the trickery in my mind says that if I go, That’s when I finally admit that something is wrong with me, That I’m broken and there might not be a way To fix all that’s been shattered.

Do you know how that feels?

To not want to admit it?

To absolutely believe that seeking help Means that you are beyond repair?

I don’t want to be like this.

I want to hold someone’s hand Laugh with a friend Greet a coworker,

Make love with someone…

And not think that they’ll leave Or that they’re using me.

I’m scared a sick part of me likes that one: Being used…

Because if they’re using me, That means I’m worth something; That I’m pretty enough to abuse, Useful enough to want, Treasured enough to shatter.

I am grown though, I don’t need pityI think that I can handle what’s mine.

I’ll carve myself a new sternum From ash wood

So What If I Die? by Karley Blau I will die.

Not today most likely, And tomorrow seems improbable too, But I will die.

I age and age, And so I’ll dieI die a little more with each passing breath.

Her boney hands beckon To my mortal soulIt can’t deny her forever- I cannot.

That has never been my goal.

I will die, And that doesn’t matter.

Does it matter…?

I know what matters.

I know I’ve felt the sun on my skinBeen burned and warmed by its rays.

I know I’ve ran barefoot across a beach, Been cut by a shattered shell.

I know I’ve tasted cinnamon and sugar, Been full with food made with love.

I know I’ve held my grandmother’s hand, Been cared for without the expectation of gain.

I know I’ve let myself be a fool, Been reckless and wild.

I know I’ve loved, Over and over again, I’ve loved.

I know I’ve been lovedBy so many.

So it doesn’t matter That She comes for me-

It doesn’t.

I’ll ride Her boat, Cross the river without a cry.

It doesn’t matter.

But did I ever matter?

Did I leave enough behind?

Will my words become ink, My worlds become known?

Will my creations make them think, Will they see that I had grown?

When She takes me, Will I have left enough behind?

Numb by Karley Blau To my left, a bright screen flickers, Images of violence and concerned news anchors, Spewing theories and facts recklessly intertwined.

The blue glow cuts through the depth of midnight.

Across the empty yet cluttered dorm My lover stirs in his sleep, Soft huffs leave his lips as he argues in his dreams.

To the right, Taped to cold stone bricks is a cheap posterBought for 4 dollars at the nearest Walmart:

‘Be kind to your mind’ And there’s a butterfly printed onto the paperThe colorful dots of its wings dulled Because the pattern on its face seems a twisted grin.

I lean into the pillow beneath my head, Both present and somewhere far away, And specks of dust dance in the air overhead.

What am I doing with my life?

The drone of static cuts through the fog in my mind, And a voice whispers, Disguising itself as anything but my own.

“You are wasting it” In the embers of my heart, The desire to rebel sparks and twists and fights to break free.

But I’m too tired to care.

Karley Blau is a sophomore who is double majoring in creative writing and music, and she's from Sauk Prairie, Wisconsin. She's extremely excited to be sharing this integration of music and spoken word. Always remember to treat yourself with love and grace because you’re with yourself forever.

Cost of Comfort by Grace Talbert Have you ever been buried alive?

I think most people know the feeling Coated in expectation and stereotype and tradition The edges of self defined by dirt and detritus It’s heavy weight: warm and close And it’d be comforting except you go to take a breath and realize you’re suffocating Feet held down Arms pinned to your side Even digging yourself out isn’t enough Because you stand by the graveside Feet forward but eyes glancing back And you look in that pit you climbed out of Weighted, warm comfort compared to wide open air That known place and name on the headstone A siren song of familiarity the call of the void to return to the role And bury yourself alive

Grace Talbert is a senior Digital Media Marketing and Spanish double degree student at Millikin University. She runs, reads, and has been writing since grade school.