dust bowl blues

by Michele Morgan ‘24

stand like a stalk in the empty field, please

howling gusts let the dust blind my eyes,

fill my stomach, petrify the blood in my veins,

flying cornhusks sandblast skin muscle organ into the air

it was all nothing but rust anyway.

bones bleached white by the hot december sun,

they always sleep well out west. gogi grant, tex ritter,

let the hands of the wayward wind (a restless wind)

bury its next of kin under six feet of

topsoil blown in from the west.

maybe someday there’ll be corn growing

above my teeth, always smiling,

maybe soybeans, sugarbeets, sagebrush gone fallow,

maybe they’ll till me over and plow me apart until i’m

sailing eastbound with the rest of the swirling dirt.

i’m the haze in the air, breathe me in

the grime on your windshield, wipe me off

the grit in your teeth, wash me down

i’m in your sinuses, your contact lenses, your food,

you cry to the brown-grey heavens for the wind to stop but

i just keep rolling on.

“Kujo,” Ann Douglas Lott ‘22

“Luka Barrena,” by McCoy Patterson ‘24

Man Made World

by Jensen Rocha ‘23


Have you ever

walked home, alone,

in the kind of darkness

where the emptiness is broken

only by the crunch

of your feet on dead leaves,

where the skin of your cheeks

is tingling

with a chill from the still

air, and,

as if to account

for the lifelessness

of the towering houses

and the fact

that the whole world

seems silenced

by slabs of cement and brick,

your mind races,

unstoppably,

to the realization

of its own remoteness

from everything

but that which it has made?

And, inevitably, you try to quell

those thoughts,

conceal that truth,

because even the star-dim

darkness settling

on your skin

is less lonely

than that.

Scourge

by Sophie Kidd ‘22

Murmurs trail along my cheek. 

I clench my eyes, swat blindly 

at invisible parasites, 

fixed on blood. 

Red welts blister and 

my heart pounds, 

telling me to claw through 

swollen skin.

Primitive urges overtake me

I am engulfed 

in fleeting ecstasy. 

Fiery streaks radiate up my calf 

like tectonic cracks exposing magma. 

Raw skin puckers. 

I leave nothing behind

to shred apart. 

Sometimes I stand on 

the edge of the woods 

when the heat begins to bottom out 

and mosquito scourges hang low. 

I wait with blood-crusted arms 

and scabbed over mounds, 

invite toxic kisses, 

offer my flesh. 

Soon I will be the decaying girl,

pulpy skin tearing 

as a stranger brushes past, 

these scars proof of my sins.

 
 

“Chasing Rainbows,” Grace Williams ‘23

 

“Untitled,” Ann Douglas Lott ‘22