By The Rutgers Review Poetry Collective
Hourglass
James Boyle
Come drown in my hourglass
It’s wounded and torn
Cracked by past infatuations,
One dies and another’s born
Grains bleeding through the lacerations
Come drown in my hourglass
It’s Pictionary plastic
Lined up on one of those cookie-cutter streets
Sometimes I think my wounds are drastic
Maybe I spent too much time in bare feet
Come drown in my hourglass
We’ll patch the holes, paint the walls with red and chrome
We’ll dance through the fire and the rain
We’ll drift from houses to homes
Till the last grain of sand stops coursing through our veins
You Forgot to Say Goodbye Before You Left This Morning
Anonymous
Between the shirt I liked on you
Fading into the basket along your wall
And the navy coat slipping of your bed
I am conflicted with your mind,
the way in which it functions
At first glance, the arrangement
is one your roommate would overlook.
Clothes dripping from your side
Into the well between your beds,
Despite your habit of folding,
Picking,
Hanging every piece
Every article of clothing you own,
All those hangers bought at walmart
are still in their box.
You’re just as I remember.
Divide what pleases you
From that which pleases others.
You like your boundaries,
Categories you devise
To impose an order you can’t compose
within your own life.
Your shirt is inside-out,
pouring out of your basket.
I can make out the harsh embroideries
Of tangled up flowers
Bleeding in and out of its base of reds,
I can count each frayed strand
Remember how it looked on your hanger,
The one burgundy shirt in a mesh of
Blues and blacks in your closest.
You haven’t worn it in all the time
I have known you.
I’ve made a passing comment
of how I love the color.
The week we’ve been apart,
I can seem to only remember you in blues
The same blue of that worn out jacket
Sprawling out on your pillowcase.
I am confronted of a time
My skin remembers you.
The memory is suffocating
Clawing at my surface
Tentatively my fingers reach out,
I am assaulted with your scent
And other leftover sensations
of that september night.
Both of us reluctant for when
you’d have to go back to your dorm,
Wondering then if i’d have the courage
To kiss you goodnight.
Between the burgundy spilling
Out of your basket and
the sharp blue cloth on your bed,
Together their jarring presence
catches me,
Exposes you
I’ll remain in disbelief
that your shirt is free of its hanger
while I am still buried in your closet.
Table of Masks
Zachary Kauz
At home I have a table of masks
A tome that took root on my coffee table
To frame me an intellectual
Who craves knowledge imprinted upon me
Upon this table I have a glass
A cup of stimulation positioned against my mouth
To frame me a hedonist
A device sits upon this table
To obstruct my view–
The world’s view of me
To reflect an image of me
As hard at work
Unable to surrender my time
At home I own a table of masks
To obscure me from ceaseless recognition
The Practicality of It All
Faith Franzonia
Baked beans, mallomars, and belvita bites
Crowded together on a sagging wicker table
The dead weight of friendship by proximity
Sharing in a confusion on how to exist in this world
As a dented can of baked beans
As a box of stale mallomars
As a crushed package of belvita bites
They’re miserable and find each other’s company utterly distasteful
But they’ve been like this for weeks
Months
Years
Devoted to things that carry more weight than they ever could
What else is there to do
But exist in proximity
They wonder in silence
Waiting for something else to make a move
The motionlessness of it all is unsettling
The practicality, even moreso
Lovely
Cassie Rosario
Lovely laces hung by my door.
Delicate assemblés could not bring them flight anymore.
My nimble fingers untied them slow.
Mama always told me to wear them just so.
Dainty–too dainty, now they lay low.
Their lovely elegance was once one big show.
Lovely, lovely. I tried with all my might.
Maybe just maybe…I can bring back those fateful nights.
First position, second position, third position, and fourth.
Memories of my imperfections couldn’t simply linger, they had to course.
But alas, time revealed my truth.
All those images–pristine and proper–
now represent my disappointed youth.