We are all instruments pulling the bows across our own lungs. Windmills, still startling in every storm. Have you ever seen a newborn blinking at the light? I wanna do that every day. I wanna know what the kite called itself when it got away, when it escaped into the night..
Andrea Gibson
The purpose of Engage is to raise awareness and promote undergraduate research among the student body.
purpose body awareness student research
The interesting aspect of this publication is that it was produced and written by undergraduate students.
interesting written students
All the students were in charge of interviewing, writing, brainstorming ideas and designing.
writing ideas students
This year we were given a one-time fund for this special edition of Engage. We hope to secure funding from the university for a future publications.
future special university hope
He is over in Iraq now,.. I worry every day when I wake up. 'How's he doing? I haven't heard from him, what's going on?' Every once in awhile I get an email and he'll say, 'I'm okay, I love you' and that's pretty much how it is.
worry iraq day pretty love wake
Political poems are love poems, and then love poems can be political in this society where people can be so separated from each other.
people society poems political love
A lot of my inspiration came from the kids. But then other things; like the news, everything is pretty inspiring these days.
inspiration days inspiring kids news things pretty
Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling, and they're falling likethey're falling in love with the ground.
autumn
poetry
Sad is. Scared is. That is all. The rocking chair I live in rocks like a paper boat. Sometimes I am all words, and no boot. No muster. No yes. All lag and tired pray, all miss my hometown. Miss the woods and the quiet porch and the talking slow. I caught the snow on my tongue. Snow angel, I. My heart a blue lamp. My mother calling me home. We cannot be called home enough times in our lives. Dear lonely, what is your name? I will open my front door and ring it through the streets.
Safety isn't always safe. You can find one on every gun.
That night when you kissed me, I left a poem in your mouth, and you can hear some of the lines every time you breathe out.
poetry relationships romance
. When a war ends, what does that look like exactly?do the cells in the body stop detonating themselves?does the orphanage stop screaming for its mother?when the sand in the desert has been melted down to glassand our reflection is not something we can stand to look atdoes the white flag make for a perfect blindfold?yesterday i was told a storyabout this little girl in Iraq, six-years-old, who cannot fall asleepbecause when she doesshe dreams of nothingbut the day she watched her dog eat her neighbor's corpse. If you told her war is overdo you think she can sleep?
war
For JennAt 12 years old I started bleeding with the moonand beating up boys who dreamed of becoming astronauts.I fought with my knuckles white as stars, and left bruises the shape of Salem. There are things we know by heart, and things we don't. At 13 my friend Jen tried to teach me how to blow rings of smoke.I'd watch the nicotine rising from her lips like halos, but I could never make dying beautiful. The sky didn't fill with colors the night I convinced myselfveins are kite strings you can only cut free.I suppose I love this life, in spite of my clenched fist.I open my palm and my lifelines look like branches from an Aspen tree, and there are songbirds perched on the tips of my fingers, and I wonder if Beethoven held his breaththe first time his fingers touched the keysthe same way a soldier holds his breaththe first time his finger clicks the trigger. We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe. But my lungs rememberthe day my mother took my hand and placed it on her bellyand told me the symphony beneath was my baby sister's heartbeat. And I knew life would tremblelike the first tear on a prison guard's hardened cheek, like a prayer on a dying man's lips, like a vet holding a full bottle of whisky like an empty gun in a war zonejust take me just take meSometimes the scales themselves weigh far too much, the heaviness of forever balancing blue sky with red blood. We were all born on days when too many people died in terrible ways, but you still have to call it a birthday. You still have to fall for the prettiest girl on the playground at recessand hope she knows you can hit a baseballfurther than any boy in the whole third gradeand I've been running for homethrough the windpipe of a man who singswhile his hands playing washboard with a spoonon a street corner in New Orleanswhere every boarded up window is still painted with the wordsWe're Coming Backlike a promise to the oceanthat we will always keep moving towards the music, the way Basquait slept in a cardboard box to be closer to the rain. Beauty, catch me on your tongue. Thunder, clap us open. The pupils in our eyes were not born to hide beneath their desks. Tonight lay us down to rest in the Arizona dessert, then wake us washing the feet of pregnant womenwho climbed across the border with their bellies aimed towards the sun.I know a thousand things louder than a soldier's gun.I know the heartbeat of his mother. Don't cover your ears, Love. Don't cover your ears, Life. There is a boy writing poems in Central Parkand as he writes he movesand his bones become the bars of Mandela's jail cell stretching apart, and there are men playing chess in the December coldwho can't tell if the breath rising from the boardis their opponents or their own, and there's a woman on the stairwell of the subwayswearing she can hear Niagara Falls from her rooftop in Brooklyn, and I'm remembering how Niagara Falls is a city overrunwith strip malls and traffic and vendorsand one incredibly brave river that makes it all worth it. Ya'll, I know this world is far from perfect.I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon.I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic. But every ocean has a shorelineand every shoreline has a tidethat is constantly returningto wake the songbirds in our hands, to wake the music in our bones, to place one fearless kiss on the mouth of that brave riverthat has to run through the center of our heartsto find its way home.
life dream daydream
Do you know they found land mines in woman's souls.
poetry feminism
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