by The Rutgers Review Poetry Collective
One Last Reminder
Zachary Kauz
One last reminder of distance
Disconnect between phosphorus burn
Frozen in expanse
And crystalized discipline
Of the climate contained
By four meager walls
Humbling to consider that glass holds its own color
For now it’s absence
Unimpeachable absence
An outer cornea obstructed
White noise insulates
Blankets the screen door
The world stops short at the opaque
I awake to blinding ambiguity
Unshakeable thought of intangible protest
Of lightning striking a sandglass center
Where cold and warm fronts meet
Only time intervenes
Frost peels revealing what’s beneath
A picture of the outside world develops
Captured through the sun’s aperture
The subject solely known as everything in between
Could I Ever Understand You?
Anonymous
This body is my first defense,
a natural barrier.
i can almost place
the spot you rooted yourself into,
but each time I attempt to reconcile
the image to your essence, I abstract further
from the point at which I started.
These fingertips may trace your skin,
get lost in every pattern
every mark you’d like to forget,
this point of connection will never serve as attachment.
i am only as close as the space you’d allot for me.
Can’t tell if it was meant to isolate.
is this physical divide to remind
me that i am whole on my own?
I existed before your context
I will exist when you’ve left.
Must we suffer still at the abhorrent
fascination with what seperates
my thoughts from your own?
It can only consume us,
this goal to unify some sense of self
through these fragments we steal from
each other was never plausible.
would it ever end well?
Tease out what you like,
I am only what you choose to remember me by.
I alone cannot make sense of these parts.
These Winter Days
Cassie Rosario
Fragmented light hits my face
as I pass along.
Searching for answers to questions
that are unknown.
Trying to reach for some sign of hope,
but getting lost in a void of others
trying to do
the same.
Etched together in a flurry of childhood hopes and dreams,
forced to leave them behind
for the light of a new day.
There’s only so much one can accomplish
among the mangled whispers,
but we hold strong
because it’s the only thing we can do in moments like these.
Not in the
Faith Franzonia
It can not always be found in the lone word,
but in the space after a word.
In the stutter that pushes a stack of words out.
See how they clumsily clatter onto the kitchen tile.
Look behind the word,
in front of the word.
Try ripping the word in two
Look at how the sun shines through it.
Does the word resist hearing itself?
Or does it intrude mid-conversation?
Can you hear it climbing on the roof of the party?
Or is it half of a whisper in an empty hall?