TIFFIN UNIVERSITY
VOLUME 2, ISSUE 2
T HE APRIL, 2016
T U
R EV I EW
SPRING POETRY MONTH EDITION
DALVA CHURCH: EDITOR
We Are The Daughters By Kellie Gruber New Carlisle, Ohio.
INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
POETRY BY
1
Please go on. Tell us how to dress. We are thrilled to be your project.
KELLIE GRUBER
We’re only here to give you sex, it doesn’t matter what we love. POETRY BY IAN COTTER
POETRY BY
We will always be your object. 4
This is what happens when we are sold.
2
You’ll never understand being sold.
GRANT TABARD
POETRY BY
Nothing is left on our backs. Dress 3
CHRISTOPHER BARNES
POETRY BY
how they tell us, just an object,
Somehow we still hold on to love.
while we fight to end this project.
We wait until the day that the object
Bring in people who seek to find love,
falls from the sky, in the white flowing dress:
and give them relief while forcing sex.
“You should not be forced to have sex, what they’ve done is illegal. You’re sold,
5
Did you ever stop to thing, that sex
CHER BIBLER
is no longer for pleasure? It’s sold EKPHRASTIC
6-
by people who can’t find love.
POETRY
11
They only want to grow their project
BY WOMEN IN ART CLASS
because money is their vital object. Sometimes we wonder where the object
ADDITIONAL
aspect of our lives came from. Sex
PHOTOGRAPHY
should be sacred, but your project
BY DALVA CHURCH
CONTACT INFORMATION
12
but then what? We will rid you of this project.” That’s all it is—a sickening project. Now girls won’t trust or ever find love. The memories lasting, now being sold in a bookstore. Titles like “The Object” and tales of your daughters as sex slaves. In the background a burning dress.
is about how to sell and be sold.
Help us to completely end this project, so we are no longer looked at like an object.
We were taken and stuck—only one dress,
We want love and not just sex.
and were torn from the ones that we love.
Our stories will be sold of this awful address.
153 to Liverpool Street By Grant Tabard Essex, UK The eye spy weeping stave of fatigued notes of dogged tyres that stretch their mark on the January snow, committing to a lifetime of one route through to bed, to bed, to attain the perfect pause before a start again. Space, air, punctuation point, ring-a-round primrose gravedigger hours, a last kiss of lavender notes playing on repeat, stubborn as a gorse fiddlehead. An eye lash flutters a semi quaver in a drowsing dance between reflections of ash to ash, this spring lamb has become a fatted pig reduced to wallow in the first free seat, a note in minor key. An ode with a vulcanised string section, opaque white hair flurries of a duvet recollected. Shadows blue and jade out of kilter, playing with names. The etched out clef of a last attempt to put on a show, this curtain rose to an empty house, a theatre of cellophane laid out so perfectly. These ghosts, drowning in a echo of themselves, looked content leading to ovation. A dinner table spread of all the kaleidoscopic colour of the city, a show put on for her grand staff, elegant as light, creating music that floats above London’s rooftops.
Blood-Stained Pillow Anne Boleyn disentangles prompts On the Washeteria’s speech bubbles. Self-run gearing is ecoaffirmative. Her duvet and pillows outline jauntiness Quickened by a hyperallergic gargle, Phosphate deficient. The dizzy-bouquet whiff Spins and hour into memory.
By Christopher Barnes Newcastle, UK
Flash Gear Foot-long tresses, plum and tangerine blouse, Ink-smudge breeks - Admiral Horatio Nelson struts. Carnaby St. is a kinetic three blocks. In Lord John’s portal he rib-digs Joe, Land-pirate to a clutter of pharmacies, Shopping list: four honeypots – French Blues. Currency for peacocks is revels or frills.
.
Boredom Tradition By Ian Cotter Blissfield, MI Nothing is I am inside Boredoms flash and upside down Endless yes whittled down to fetid no My white light is fading with rising sun Consider the child Born with intelligence Hacked down by armaments of servility Fields of wheat and soy of something Endless ands harvested Quickened procession fucking what Watch ego death but do not comment Confidence is sexy (in men) Disorderly boys being murderers American football inspected Afar for my sisters Masculinity judged by action Tradition is your father’s father
I Am of Many Minds By Ian Cotter Blissfield, MI
I am of many minds Every corner of my skull contains a wish My arms and legs waiting to disconnect and finish all my started tasks My many minds are endlessly beginning Creating a new something Continuing to halfway and fading into undone Pacing myself I hang Lugubrious and slow Slippery okay falls away and I will sleep it off Tomorrow my many minds will start Fans will spin and process all I will forget my whelming and start anew
Spy
By Cher Bibler Tiffin, Ohio
Crabapples crushed. The sickly sweet smell and bees hanging around. Mowing the lawn, maybe the last time; frost has kissed us once or twice. Make room for fall, make room for winter. Time passes, times comes, time goes; the only thing that changes is me! I hear the echo in the wind; I am an old girl now. I am a croaking old thing. I am a tired ghost of myself. I dance in the twilight; I dance in the wild twist of the willow branches. I have babies that sing; soft kittens that sigh, soft kittens that cry. I am a lonely tree, I bend and glow and scatter my leaves like ashes. Ashes glow in the grate. I am a lonely woman, the ashes are grey and dusty and hollow.
Time releases her scent slowly, a stale odor gradually soaking the tiny closet walls like mothballs; slowly I am overcome. Bee stings healing, ugly red blotches, tired red pancakes, fried eggs bloody side up. Numbers trying to catch time. I will take you far away. I will hover in your ear till the sand swallows us. I will nestle in your arms till the swallows fly. Time to dance. Time to close the wounds, apply glue. Dance on sour toes.
Dance in sore clothes. Time in training for ultimate death. Soap opera dance, eternal lovers, the african violet dance. Fall is here, trees change, crabapples, lawn mowing. Enough
Untitled By Mariah Sterns Mansfield, Ohio
All white, red laces. Structured for a popular men’s foot. My mind wonders directly to the value in these shoes. Red laces trigger the image and representation of blood. Young men gaze on these shoes with greed, at the pure white against the deceiving red laces, and can steal, fight and kill for them.
Photo by Mariah Sterns
That distinct silver symbol, known as Jordan, in the middle of the tongue, make these shoes “to kill for”. If that symbol wasn’t there would bullying diminish? Would killing cease? If the silver wasn’t there would the red have any meaning? Would this plain white shoe cost $300?
After all, they are just white shoes with red laces.
Strange Little Girl #7 By Rebecca Lang-Hurt Tiffin, Ohio
She stands a mere four foot tall, Her birdlike eyes flitting about the room As if she could see everything As if she could see right through me.
Her palms face outward, Meaning she means no harm but Her Raven-Feathered wings and Knowing eyes suggest Otherwise. My eyes were drawn to her immediately, As if I’d seen her before. As if she’d materialized from something hidden, Buried deep down inside of me. “I thought you’d be…” I trail off, Trying to find the right words to say. “Taller?” she chirps. She tilts her head in a strange, birdlike Unhuman way and I nod. “Taller.” No, Death was not a tall, lanky figure shrouded by darkness. Death stood a mere four feet tall. Photo: Rebecca Lang-Hurt
A million pieces in me by Euniqueca Jenkins Accokeek, MD They see me as a whole I see myself in pieces Waiting to be put back together again Into one glamorous piece of roughness... That is what a black man goes through
My black hair is thick-textured
Photo
And my nose might be a little broken my mouth is not seen It is covered by something
one of my eyes tells the story Of all the pieces in me
in reality I am just one person Being viewed through millions of eyes‌ That are looking through the sky at me
by Euniqueca Jenkins
Photo by Peter Impelizzieri
And Then There Were Three By Peter Impelizzieri Syracuse, NY There is an explosion of euphoric bright colors, with a sense of wonder and awe, It forces you to stare longer, but the longer you stare, the more lost you become, Sections of vibrant yellow circles, overlapped with vertical lines of red, contrasted with sections of bright purple circles overlapped with vertical lines of red, The red changes intensity as it travels from the yellow circles where it is blood red, to the purple circles, where they look like a softer red, As you follow horizontally with your eyes, the vertical lines change in width, giving a wavy feeling, The pin straight lines appearing over the curvature of the circles causes a distortion, which leads to the painting seemingly morphing in a way, as a puddle would if a pebble was dropped into it,
The drastic changes in the widths of the lines, over the constant size and shape of the circles, gives the illusion that the circles are actually behind the lines, Making it seem that it is possible to enter into this colorful array of a universe held in place by the lines themselves, Reminiscent of the “Star Gate” sequence in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
A hard woman, Completely bare Composed of bronze
The hardness of her exterior Contrasted by A blank stare in her eyes. She looks forward. No emotion shows
Untitled By Megan Belch Wattertown, NY
On her smooth, hard face. No smile. No joy in her chore. No distain or disgust.
She is washing with reason. For a reason Hidden in her Bottomless eyes.
She is somewhere between Sitting and kneeling With her right knee on the ground and her left foot close to it. And she is naked, Exposed to the world. Her hair is done up, Done with precision With intent. She is hunched over Like she is trying to take up As little space as possible While she is washing Her garment. She uses both hands, A determined effort to clean Her garment. It hangs loose, And yet she grips it tight, As if the garment is the last Little bit of reality she has In the world.
Photo by Megan Belch
Photograph by Whitney Weinandy
This month’s special edition is in honor of
Www.tiffin.edu
National Poetry Month. It includes Ekphrastic poems from CUL 410– Gender in Society. All
TIFFIN UNIVERSITY DRAGON WRITERS
works of art pictured along with the Ekphrastic
Prof. Dalva Church 88 S Sandusky St Tiffin, Ohio 44883
poems come from the collection of The Toledo
Phone: 419-448-5132
Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio. All rights remain
Fax: 419-443-5027 Email: churchdk@tiffin.edu
the sole property of the museum. Special thanks to the museum for their Ekphrastic writing
Tiffin University
workshop.
For more information on the student/community writers group, or to submit work for consideration, contact Professor Dalva Church at churchdk@tiffin.edu