Explore powerful prose and poetry from undergraduate writers around the world. Featuring voices that cross borders, each piece offers a unique take on place, identity, and the art of travel through written form.
PROSE & POETRY
Birdsong Summer - Leah Nath
Hundreds of birds loaf in the waves, drifting leisurely in multispecies diasporas. From so high up in the air, the world stretched open like an endless accordion, as though nothing but the sun, the sky, and birds existed anymore when looking out from the vantage point of that tiny speck of earth.
makipai a karoro - lily schneider
You always say I’m the / pot that calls the kettle / black, just like these / white-winged angels. / Their shadows blend with / wings, dance in both the night and / light; a monochrome symphony / beneath the dusky coastal sky. / One sits among the / moonlit trees, while / it listens to its neighbor / beg for dusk’s attention.
September first - ella baker
The rain slows down, or you both forget about it, because then you’re walking down River Corrib, rubbled, wet, a dream. The path will remind you of him for the next three months, but tonight it’s brand new and just yours and, the water’s moving really fast, he says. A few times. It becomes a joke.
palimpsest - ellie taliani
The dull plastic window / throbs against my temple, / sending a low hum through my skull / I can almost see the clouds / out of the corner of my eye / as I read about the book’s hero / soaring through the sky / on dragon back. Warm / in the plane’s belly, / I curl tighter.
famagusta - sydnie A. howard
Famagusta— / you grave / of memories / of inheritance buried / in a shallow tomb / in the floral-printed nursery turned / tourist site. / Childhood / homes threaten to collapse upon / entry, under the watchful eye of / a gun barrel.
memmy - sydney greiner
The women—my women—love me with aching wombs. Feverishly itching for their child, they sleepwalk to the bus stop, into the woods, to the kitchen for tea. All of us, never able to rest, are always looking for something beyond the mountains.
traveling exhibit - ellie taliani
Only too tall, too long, too wide / I stick out of crowds / I uncover novelties / Every time I look out / I stick out of crowds / My glasses too dark for foreign suns / Every time I look out / I barely avoid collisions
Listening to norge - leah nath
cottoned eardrums, bloody fingerprints, blistered ankles, i walk. i gnaw on my own flesh as i wait for my shoes to find the perfect match of footprints, the / blunted tips of my teeth weathered down by years of relentless, aching hunger for something more than
lover, mine (death and romance in philadelphia) - ashton hall
Is Amour / The one below, / Nestled in the damp and dark / Laid to rest by the highway / Kissed one last time / Before they sank below the earth / Or is Amour / The one above, / The single pallbearer / The weeping priest / Who fixed their lover’s hair / Before leaving them in the dirt
thoughts on magdalen bridge - alexandria lauff
Frozen, imposing beside the never-still / The sickly, the restless, unquiet Cherwell, / They make me want to reach for you / And bridge the sea between us, too. / On my dull computer screen / Each night my shrouded sun sets / I see your darkness has not come yet. / Tonight, Mary says, if I truly love / I could hald the earth’s revolving / And catch you in a baseball glove.