Greater Harrisburg's Community Magazine

Student Scribes: 3 Poems

Screenshot 2014-12-29 09.09.42Fish

Listen to feral cats screech on the other side of my window

Hiss poison, kill through play

Splinter, contort my spine to seem menacing

Lose the luxury of being angry, anymore

Made a nest of these dirty sheets

Hunt for the wrong kind of prey.

Everyone tells me there are a lot of fish in the sea

An abundance of them

But they’re slimy,

They have gaping mouths and bulging eyes;

I never acquired the taste.

 

Consumer’s Cathedral

The earth threatens this place, oozing through cracked skin

Bathed in the artificial longing light

Great pyramid of fragmented need, wasteful want.

Pray to the Gods whose temples destroy the land who bore –

Yet security was born here; she will be buried in a toxic landfill

Mousetraps left half open, and still they make the pilgrimage

Checkered ceiling, beige colossus

Unsanctimonious housewives numbed by the malaise of their golden years

Pillaged villages hidden by drywall, glass too tough to break

I still inhabit certain empty, forgotten spaces

Where my monuments grow taller

Where others’ gods creep in from every corner

Where I listen to the ever-fading silence

Where I go to hide

 

Arithmetic Lovers

Transforming faces

I can’t tell if my eyes are an unfit tool, or if my subject is disingenuous

Your enigmatic cheeks lost their warmth

 

Warmth

Molecular movement I associate with love, comfort

Being in state of flux

 

I don’t want your flux

You oscillate between extremes, no logical pattern emerges

I can’t quantify you, your tears test acidic

Yet your needs, basic

Am I to trust the Truth or your truth?

Neither exists

I’m on my 7th spring roll and none of them taste as satisfying as a cigarette

I think of fire and smoke, of pleasant meetings with strangers

Jokes

You laughed

More faces swirling into contorted smiles

Handshakes with skeletons, smiles for the decayed

I don’t like your friends any more than mine like you

 

If 2+2 is 5 then our conversations are an imaginary number

One text, two texts, no response, no answer

 

I can extrapolate a line from any two points, but I’m operating on a different plane

You have no line, and I can’t measure the slope of the arch of your spine

I derive no pleasure from accusations, corrections

Yet I yield to your subjective proof

You are a tautology of negativity, damaging my DNA.

Still, I produce my ruler and measure the space between us

 

Insurmountable

Mary Imgrund is a senior English major at Penn State Harrisburg.

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