by Brooke Weisenburger

I never believed you when you said
that mothers know best.
It was I who knew everything,
because they were my friends,
because Derek was my boyfriend,
because it was my life,
not yours.
But then again,
I get my stubborn head
from you.

I regret not spending that last night
with you and Dad and Ryan.
Going to dinner, then
watching the UMKC men’s team.
But as you may remember,
Derek demanded my devotion
those days.

Like I said,
I never believed what
you said.
The time you told me
my friends were not true friends,
The time you told me
Derek was becoming too attached,
and sucking the life out of me,
The time you told me,
I’d never appreciate you
until you were gone.

Well, you were right, Mom.

I need you, I admit it,
and you’re not here
to say those words
“I told you so.”
But somehow, I can still hear you
say them anyway.

I wouldn’t have accepted
this compliment many years ago
when I knew it all,
but my proudest days are the days
when Dad tells me
that I am so much like you.

By Nathaniel Mackey

—“mu” twenty-eighth part—

On Antiphon Island they lowered

the bar and we bent back. It

wasn’t limbo we were in albeit

we limbo’d. Everywhere we

went we

limbo’d, legs bent, shoulder

blades grazing the dirt,

donned

andoumboulouous birth-shirts,

sweat salting the silence

we broke… Limbo’d so low we

fell and lay looking up at

the clouds, backs embraced by

the

ground and the ground a fallen

wall

we were ambushed by… Later we’d

sit, sipping the fig liqueur, beckoning

sleep, soon-come somnolence nowhere

come as yet. Where we were, not-

withstanding, wasn’t there…

Where we

were was the hold of a ship we were

caught

in. Soaked wood kept us afloat… It

wasn’t limbo we were in albeit we

limbo’d our way there. Where we

were was what we meant by “mu.”

Where

we were was real, reminiscent

arrest we resisted, bodies briefly

had,

held on

to

“A Likkle Sonance” it said on the

record. A trickle of blood hung

overhead I heard it spurts. An

introvert trumpet run, trickle of

sound…

A trickle of water lit by the sun

I saw with an injured eye, captive

music ran our legs and we danced…

Knees

bent, asses all but on the floor, love’s

bittersweet largesse… I wanted

trickle turned into flow, flood,

two made one by music, bodied

edge

gone up into air, aura, atmosphere

the garment we wore. We were on

a ship’s deck dancing, drawn in a

dream

above hold… The world was ever after,

elsewhere.

Where we were they said likkle for little, lick

ran with trickle, weird what we took it

for… The world was ever after, elsewhere,

no

way where we were

was there

by Stephanie Kiersey

I saw a bird
          that was a leaf.
It fluttered in the wind
          as it perched in the grass,
ruffling one wing, then another.

by David Budbill

I want to be
          famous
so I can be
          humble
about being
          famous.

What good is my
          humility
when I am
          stuck
in this
          obscurity?

by Ben Coffey

With two loving parents – and no siblings –
there isn’t much need for privacy.

As a child, I never had a secret place.
I didn’t need to hide from pain –
I didn’t need to escape an evil sister.
I didn’t have a brother to teach me the ways
of the world.

As a teen, I never had a secret place.
I didn’t need to hide from pain –
I didn’t have an inconsiderate family.
I didn’t have a brother to trust me with
his naughty magazines.

I have my private spaces
but they need no lock and key,
they need no map with a red x and a skull
and cross bones.

I had only a loving, trusting family
with a nice house
surrounded by woods. More than anyone,
I had spots to hide.

But I never had a secret place.

by Emily Dickinson

There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields -
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come!

by Ben Coffey

There’s many a choice in life’s calculator
I ask, “Do I use seven to build or destroy?”
I have a feeling He’s been asked this before

With the numbers, I am at constant war
I can have the world, I’m an American boy!
There’s many a choice in life’s calculator

But are numbers in Haiti or the Ivory Shore
different from numbers in Illinois?
I have a feeling He’s been asked this before

Do we multiply prosperity or push for
a division as did Helen of Troy?
There’s many a choice in life’s calculator

Is the white fence truly a victory score
Or just a time-tested capitalist ploy?
I have a feeling He’s been asked this before

We created money, then war, then the poor
When total is pressed, do we deserve to enjoy
the many choices from life’s calculator?
I have a feeling He’s been asked this before.

by Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.

He slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –

Or rather – He passed Us –
The Dews drew quivering and Chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –

We paused before a House that seemed
A Sweling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice &ndash in the Ground –

Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity –

Nicole Keagle submitted this favorite poem. Nicole as a junior graphic design major.

by Allison Snyder

A weary wanderer dwells
As a misty illumination
Beside the starlit brook
His carousing spirit
No longer droops in shadow
But is intoxicated
By the singing harmony
He gently cradles tenderness
To his fluttering heart
And sighs

by Ann Sexton

In my dream,
drilling into the marrow
of my entire bone,
my real dream,
I’m walking up and down Beacon Hill
searching for a street sign -
namely MERCY STREET.
Not there.

I try the Back Bay.
Not there.
Not there.
And yet I know the number.
45 Mercy Street.
I know the stained-glass window
of the foyer,
the three flights of the house
with its parquet floors.
I know the furniture and
mother, grandmother, great-grandmother,
the servants.
I know the cupboard of Spode
the boat of ice, solid silver,
where the butter sits in neat squares
like strange giant’s teeth
on the big mahogany table.
I know it well.
Not there.

Where did you go?
45 Mercy Street,
with great-grandmother
kneeling in her whale-bone corset
and praying gently but fiercely
to the wash basin,
at five A.M.
at noon
dozing in her wiggy rocker,
grandfather taking a nap in the pantry,
grandmother pushing the bell for the downstairs maid,
and Nana rocking Mother with an oversized flower
on her forehead to cover the curl
of when she was good and when she was…
And where she was begat
and in a generation
the third she will beget,
me,
with the stranger’s seed blooming
into the flower called Horrid.

I walk in a yellow dress
and a white pocketbook stuffed with cigarettes,
enough pills, my wallet, my keys,
and being twenty-eight, or is it forty-five?
I walk. I walk.
I hold matches at street signs
for it is dark,
as dark as the leathery dead
and I have lost my green Ford,
my house in the suburbs,
two little kids
sucked up like pollen by the bee in me
and a husband
who has wiped off his eyes
in order not to see my inside out
and I am walking and looking
and this is no dream
just my oily life
where the people are alibis
and the street is unfindable for an
entire lifetime.

Pull the shades down -
I don’t care!
Bolt the door, mercy,
erase the number,
rip down the street sign,
what can it matter,
what can it matter to this cheapskate
who wants to own the past
that went out on a dead ship
and left me only with paper?

Not there.

I open my pocketbook,
as women do,
and fish swim back and forth
between the dollars and the lipstick.
I pick them out,
one by one
and throw them at the street signs,
and shoot my pocketbook
into the Charles River.
Next I pull the dream off
and slam into the cement wall
of the clumsy calendar
I live in,
my life,
and its hauled up
notebooks.