by The Rutgers Review Poetry Collective
Aging
Shannon Paz
Learning what attracts me to myself,
Undressing my judgement rather than my clothes,
Seeing my soul bare and authentic,
Trusting my body will protect my peace.
Love Underneath Strange Toxicity
Zachary Kauz
Passion pours out from a hollow center
Into my chalice
Red and plastic
A spirit circulates between bodies
Fixation constrains the room
No space left for obsession to wander
The room is the size of our eyes
Our focus travels from opposing ends
Its course unwavering in its distance from others
We’re bound to a single volume
Distance depletes and space repositions
The shape of us closer together forms
Time metabolizes passion
We exhale lust as it suffocates the room
Paint peels and walls retract
The room is the size of our desire
Abstracted and uncontained
Eternal and out of focus
Lust for Life
Faith Franzonia
A lonely grin on the weighted walk home
A flash photo
A hurried scribble of notes
A new feeling of love
A bowl of hot soup and half a sandwich for $5
A conversation that leaves you wanting more…
These Words
Anonymous
I’d like these words to speak meanings,
To provide the truths that encased those mysterious blue whirlpools you call eyes.
I’d like these words to fill you with some sort of evangelical zeal
That makes your world feel whole again.
I’d like these words to sustain your life
And allow it to grow into something beautiful and memorable.
I’d like these words to sit here long enough
to spin into webs of gravitas and exemplar.
I’d like these words to follow you as you sit alone on the train
waiting for some kind of sign as you stare blankly out that window.
I’d like these words to give you hope as you finally arrive home
After a long journey outside your comfort zone.
I’d like these words to have purpose–
To have meaning
To make you feel something outside of yourself.
But these words can only hold you for so long.
You Haven’t Finished Unless I Say You Did
Anonymous
You strung out your sentences
purposefully, exposing a cadence
To soothe me into submission.
i feel your indentations
Commas, and punctuations
Lazily slung up in the air, slipping
out of your mouth with conviction,
Tells and ticks of a boy who
never knew of self-restriction.
I don’t trust your tongue and
the way my name drapes off it
You trace the letters and
outline spaces, gently
Tug and evenly pull,
pry them loose
Make them yours.
Seek me out in your musings.
Bottle them up along your bed,
Such desires remain evident
in your scrawls of annotation,
sitting in stacks of misgiven
and well-placed intentions.
You must learn to
pull me out of my skin.
Will I feel the same once I step off this train?
Faith Franzonia
Everything has seemed to move particularly fast today.
Or maybe I drank one too many coffees.
What is this overwhelming sound of chaos
in the cool air around me?
Why is it making me want to climb out of
and back into
my skin?
This breath,
so tense and new.
I’d been walking so slowly,
failed to realize movement had ceased altogether.
Smiling larger than someone
in that split-second moment before a laugh.
A jumping hunger
to move something, and move.
As though I have something to feed
beyond myself.
As though I finally have some of my life
to share with myself.
All this clambering makes me want to
knock something over too.
How I long to peel back the covers
to the tomorrow of today.
Will I feel the same the next time I wake?
Once I step off this train?