2 minute read
Campus Culture
Collage: A Journal of Creative Expression is a biannual publication of the Middle Tennessee State University Honors College. Each semester the Collage student-led committee receives entries of creative work, such as art, photography, short stories, essays, short plays, song lyrics, poetry, audio, and video from students and recent alumni. The publication is available at mtsu.edu/collage.
Nature's Milkmaid
Photography
Alyssa Williams
Denial
Markers and ink pen drawing
Dante LaBelle
Our Heart’s Silent Rapture
Video
Lucas De Freitas
Donuts, but I’m Gluten Intolerant
Acrylic paint pens on canvas
Ava Byars
Paris
Photography
Misael Avalos Madera
Canvas
by Kirstie Frank
I am
trying to practice self-love
until it becomes almost
as unhealthy as my self-hate
and still not enough.
I want to be a mixed-media painting,
watercolor that’s dripped
and bled and blended, pinks
and blues that make the purples
accenting my under eyes.
Soft yellow acrylics, brushstroking
my cheeks and my thighs,
the canvas texture peeking
through, always, like
the goosebumps on my skin.
My freckles connecting
like a constellation in someone’s sky;
I am their whole universe,
but a universe which still expands
even when no one is there
to observe it.
If I could hold myself up,
beauty forward,
my legs an easel,
I could walk like an art piece
worthy of preservation
in a museum that will always
display my value
even in the afterhours.
