Take a break from your end-of-semester stress and view the collaborative efforts of the PSU Poetry Club and PSU Art Club in a joint exhibition of art-inspired poetry. All the works are on display in The Commons Cafe.

Dear Geoffrey

by Nicole Bailey; inspired by Alyssa Hanchett’s Wrath, oil on canvas

I need to break you apart from me
Because I don’t believe you
No more.

Before I gather my things out
Of what used to be “our place”
I need to break you apart from me.

This photo will stay intact
I need to break you apart from me
This one will be torn in half.

I need to break you apart from me
Because it means nothing
Your letter is now crumpled.

Let’s not pretend no more.

Hungry

by Carrie Waldron inspired by Tamara White’s Cat’s Play

Colorcat is
rich and fat.
Gold whiskers shine
like chains

of bling! His
bulging eyes
bright, emerald-jade
stare down reflecting

dollar signs.
Sharp quartz lips twitch
and dreams of fish
tell satellite-ears:
SEEK OUT
NEXT FIX.

On the Brink

by Jennifer Jones inspired by Takuya Yoshida’s Untitled, Lithograph

There’s a crow
On the brink of my dream
Rapping, rapping,
Beckoning me

No more is my skin smooth,
My hair dark as midnight
My gate without a limp
The days without end

The crow laughs
The mountain erupts
In fiery dust
Of sins that haunt the past

This dream of dreams
This hateful beast
Does not see the changes
Or regrets in me

Always on the brink of waking
There’s a crow
Black as the Valley
Of Death watching me

Beckoning me
Rapping, rapping
Always I reach, to crush it away
And see it nevermore

Purged

by Celeste Karpf
also inspired by Untitled, Lithograph

A deep seeded egg, planted past birth,
the source unknown nature or nurture?
I hatched you in harsh climates
then fed you insects, worms,
and sorrows.
Your black wings shown
polished onyx, turbulent oceans
and violent fits of 
finding truth,
shedding childhood,
and breaking the cycles:
body changes, expectations,
failure to meet perfection.

I kept you caged
beak clacking against
metal slats, wings bent
awkwardly upon the bars.
I fed your life force
forcing you to survive,
never live.

Finally, the landscape
opened up.
Grounded by hills,
extending to peaks and
summits of success.
I took responsibility for your existence.
The black bird the caged darkness,
those emotions I shouldn’t own
or show.

I pried through my belly,
and reached tentative fingers forward.
I touched your well-pruned feathers
flaking across my weary skin.
I sent you flying,
fleeing the past, accepting my
part and parting with it.
Spiraling upwards, I let slip
your cage crashing and reclined
facing towards an ever rising sun.

So this is what it feels like

by Carrie Waldron also inspired by Untitled, Lithograph

insomnia: thirty-two rounds
of solitaire; thirty-one losses and one
i can’t remember.

csi: miami is the same
episode i saw three hours ago, or
there’s the last twenty-six minutes of the matrix
or castaway or some lifetime-hallmark
bullshit love story on channel thirty-three. maybe in some other
lifetime i’ll make movies, make money and hire
only the bored and the ugly and the sleepless.

there’s the poem i started about
a cat, and the poem i didn’t write about god’s hand
and how it always seems to be messing with things. there’s the guilt
because spring break is over and i haven’t finished
the dishes, guilt because it’s
almost my sister’s birthday and i still haven’t
done my taxes, guilt burning like the burning
bush because it’s easter and did someone

really have to ask me why i didn’t go to church on
friday? why i’m working on sunday? some people are so
religious. i used to be that way, back when
i could sleep twelve hours in
the blink of an eye, back when
i didn’t believe in anything
but god’s will, back when my conscious was
empty and back when I was honest and naïve
like this girl in the lifetime-hallmark
bullshit love story i’m watching for the
fourth time because i’m sick of the matrix, sick
of castaway, sick, sick sick
of losing solitaire and of god’s hand
always getting in the way

Cancer moves this way

by Carrie Waldron inspired by Katie Dexter’s Untitled, photograph

creeping,
climbing
spiney-vine slides
its ruthless belly along
the throats of unsuspecting
roses, twisting, winding
roots into sacred love-knots that
kill: suddenly, bluish petals shiver
like the lips of a dying soldier
shot by friendly fire. I never thought I’d die
this way, I never thought

the blood wouldn’t stop. Murderer! murderer! this spiraling
cancer rush will surge like a homesteader-
skirmish for the most fertile corners of the heartland; it will thrust
iron thorn-stakes into chests or breasts, lymph nodes,
livers, lungs; and it will plant
its feet, and build a house, and plow
the land in silent declaration:
absolute, arbitrary ownership
of the land that isn’t theirs.

Deeper

by Jennifer Jones inspired by Elizabeth Naro’s First Impression, oil on canvas

What do you see
Looking at me
When I smile and laugh
And tell you it’s my first date?

What do you see
Looking at me
When I hand you my resume
And tell you I’m good at this?

What do clothes
Tell you about me
When the truth lies
Deeper than my dress?

Yards of fabric
To cover the soul
To cover the lies
And you’re deceived

There is more to see
Beyond the colors
Of dyed threads
And rage of trends

If appearance
Is deception, then
Look at me again
And tell me what you see

Bagism

by Nicole Bailey inspired by Tonya White’s Untitled, oil on canvas

What if instead of…
Looking at what is
The color, shape, and style
Of my hair
That’s all the way to the ground
Or in a short boy cut.

Instead I’m hidden
Concealed in a bag
Not a certain color
But more like a sheet
Would you know
It’s me?

Instead of observing
The tapestry of clothes
Someone wears
The brand names like Nikes
It wouldn’t matter what jeans
You wore.

If all of us here
Not observing the shells
But communicating our
Thoughts, beliefs, and ideals
Only seeing the stencils of
Mouths but shapeless to the
Human eye.

Last Night

by Cassandra Stone, also inspired by Tonya White’s Untitled, oil on canvas

Was amazing.
We tumbled through
Sheets and dreams
Tangled ourselves up
In red, purple, love
Moved with the rhythm
Of a quiet duet
That only we could hear
Because we were the only ones
Singing
Our whispers and moans
Mixed to become our
Own chorus, our bridge, our
Solo
Our album cover
Would be a pile of blankets
Left behind after
Our farewell concert.

There’s no shame in this

by Cassandra Stone inspired by Heather Wiltshire’s Untitled (Reclining nude), pastel on paper

There’s no shame in
Warm, honey skin
Wrapped over smooth
Round thighs.

There’s no shame in
Long, untamed hair
Trailing over a
Naked, smooth shoulder.

There’s no shame in
A clean, cool sheet
embracing quiet
feminine features.

There’s no shame in
Enjoying your body.
Look at me.
There’s no shame in this.

The Rejection

by Celeste Karpf also inspired by Untitled (Reclining nude)

Covered and exposed,
her secret beneath gossamer.
She teeters on the thin line between
expression and whore.
Display the feminine but disguise
the woman.
She is beautiful, as long as she is
demure,
restrained, suppressed.

Be sexy, but lose your sex.
She is ashamed of what splays
between crossed legs.
If she isn’t the collective perfection,
she isn’t loved.

So she lays, stilled by society
paralyzed by the sight of her own form,
her functioning limbs rendered
worthless.
Believing the woman
should not be womanly,
folds and mounded flesh
disgust her ever waking nightmare,
bared skin, pores of imperfection,
freckles become disfigurement.

She rejects herself, craning her neck
to avoid the sight beneath her.

Tug of Words

by Celeste Karpf inspired by Miranda Lord’s Learning the Ropes, pastel on paper

You held your truth,
and I held mine,
like ropes of fiberglass.
Stubs of toxic splinters
digging into pores,
pouring our energies
against each other.

The ropes took hold of us,
as much as we gripped our ends
either side of a thread less power.
Tangled in our blinded spectrum
weaving and churning but
never meeting.
Meaning our words and
taking them back.
We wove a security web and
refused to let it go
Spiders clinging to the lackluster masterpieces:
it isn’t real.

We force ourselves to suffer inside it,
choking on the triumph we can never reach.
A struggle to win
the other’s demise.

You realized
we kept ourselves apart, not the truth.
So we pulled the outside in,
encompassed ourselves in light and
scattered false euphoric hopes
shedding dead skin.
Bloodied palms opened we
let loose
our ropes to lie
tattered in the mud
and found ourselves standing together
in the endless expanse.

String Theory

by Brittany Brockner also inspired by Miranda Lord’s Learning the Ropes

I spend Saturdays making merchandise,
threading my heart
shaped, diamond, or tear dropped,
metallic or matte, solid or striped
beads.

Or, sometimes I don’t use the beads.
I slip one of my newly bought 19-cent bundles of
soft string out from its wrapper.

Today might be for stitching Chinese staircases
or friendship bracelets,
fish-tails or broken ladders,
totem poles or candystripes.

I hover over the Caboodles Craft box on my floor,
critical color decisions tangled before me -
I want my sales to be good.

I lick the string, tie a knot and start:
my fingers, sometimes as if braiding hair,
other times, as if playing a harp
weave and braid, twist, loop
knot, tighten.
Each final product has its own reptilian bumpiness.

On Sunday, I’m ready to launch.
Walking the sidewalk,
my Caboodles Craft box swings
like a briefcase.

Circles

by Nicole Bailey inspired by Bradley White’s Amusement Dry Point, drypoint etching

Green and white
Spilt down the
Middle pieces fade
Broken into small circles
Should be in quarters
And halves almost like
In a radii, making a fraction
Like crop circles
People swear the
Aliens have landed
But we know
It’s our own design.

From the Perspective of an Inchworm

by Brittany Brockner also inspired by Bradley White’s Amusement Dry Point

I’m not unlike you.
You call me “pest,”
but I’m not unlike you.

I, too, like to hang out on the cool green
in spring.

And I know how you feel -
life exhausts me, too.
Even walking - the hill of my
back always rising and flattening -
it’s tiresome.

I know what it’s like to be vulnerable -
I’ve escaped the peck of a beaked predator.
I take the plunge and hang loose, from a thread
until I am grounded, again.

And like you, I thrive
on the fact that one day,
I’ll be able to fly,
that is, if I manage to survive.

Girl’s Night Out

by Cassandra Stone inspired by Heather Gauthier’s Girl’s Night Out, photograph

There’s a day after feeling,
after a night of wine,
margaritas,
whiskey,
and a beer.
Or three.

You remember everything
Before ten o’clock
But eleven,
Midnight,
One, two,
Three you forget.

You remember putting on
A favorite outfit,
Mascara,
Blush,
Hot pink nail polish,
Lipstick.

The lipstick smeared across the rim
Of your margarita glass,
Shot glass,
Beer mug,
Is all there is to
Remind you.

Your smudged glass sits next to another,
still filled with ice.
Danny’s?
Mike’s?
Steve’s?
Who knows?

There’s a day after feeling,
After a night of wine,
Margaritas,
Lipstick,
Nail polish,
And… someone…

The Pill, from the Perspective of a Woman Looking into a Mirror

by Brittany Brockner inspired by Eric Knuffke’s Untitled, pastel on paper

One day, they’ll invent a pill,
a cure-all, so we can get rid of the
diet pills, anti-aging elixirs, volumizing
shampoos and conditioners,
moisturizers - heck even perfume,
deodorant, and hair wax
will become obsolete.

This pill will have it all:
it’ll pop out your wrinkles and dimples,
iron your cellulite, it’ll smooth and tan
and make your skin
GLOW.
It’ll make you lose hair
in the places you shouldn’t have it - but
grow hair - voluminous,
shiny hair,
in the places you should.
It’ll make you smell
like gardenias after a fresh spring rain.
It’ll make your eyes bigger,
your lips fuller
and your ass smaller.
It’ll make you skinny,
it’ll alter your bone structure
so you’ll have those high cheek bones
you’ve always wanted -
all for the low price of $29.99 a month
($10 off if you act now!)

Of course, it’ll have side effects:
dry mouth, blurred vision, drowsiness,
nausea, indigestion, diarrhea,
constipation, urinary retention,
heart palpitations, aches and pains in the joints,
confusion, anxiety, nightmares, insomnia
depression, suicidal thoughts
rectal bleeding, erections lasting over four hours
(at least I don’t have to worry about that one!)
(Please do not take if you are on MAOIs)
(Please do not take if you are pregnant or nursing).

But the way I’m feeling right now,
it might just be worth it.
So I might have cotton mouth,
and explosive (and maybe even bloody) diarrhea,
and maybe I won’t be able to see -
or know what’s going on around me,
and maybe I’ll be nervous and uncomfortable
and jittery and achey
and sad and suicidal -

but at least I’ll be
SEXY.