On the Other Side of the Glass 

by Nora Jacobsen ‘26

Late rays of golden sun stream 

in through cobweb-laden garage windows, 

quarter past seven in spring, 

illuminate row upon row of 

rhopalocera in glass cases. 

Preservation is duplicitous. 

Saving oneself, protection, pressing 

between pages, encasing in amber, 

mummification, weaving into the tapestry 

of a lexicon of memory, drawing clear blood 

with every puncture of a kiss, a touch, a word. 

Why are they kept entombed? 

Does no one hear the screams? 

Delicate, beautiful, desperate, 

noiseless as a wing’s flap, 

The butterflies are screaming! 

One shrieks, 

I remember us, though we haven’t met yet. Haven’t 

even begun, happened, simmered 

long and hot til we hit our boiling point 

melt from each other’s arms, never seeing the fall. 

Another friend, 

I can’t decide what season I want 

to be in. I am nostalgic for living all of the time. 

A victim, 

I don’t know who I am 

anymore. I know I’m not where I’m supposed to be, 

and that scares me. 

One among hundreds, 

I will never be doing enough 

that is going to change the world. 

Over all the rest, 

Is it better to speak or die? 

I can offer only words in return.

Moss

by Kalli Walsh ‘25

Tracing the curves

of the mountain arches,

I find a home.

I thread my love

into divots in her skin,

caressing her soul.

We belt ballads

as the sun sprinkles on our faces,

decorating us in light.

Soon my vibrant green

turns to muddy brown

as I start to fade.

I must not go,

I cry,

I want to stay.

Hush,

says the mountain,

everything dies except for her.

the buckhead girls (inspired by james dickey)

by Alison Christmann-Vener ‘25

i’m coming home, not for real yet,

just a couple months in a mirror image of the past.

in the pages of the north atlanta yearbook, i am immortal.

sometimes i forget what it is to be from that endless infinitesimal 

land of piedmonts & peachtrees.   how red dirt collected 

under my fingernails,   the cool summer shade of magnolia branches

stretching over monkey grass.         golf balls half-buried in the sandy 

mud of the chattahoochee & nancy creek.   there’s not a lot

that i think james dickey would recognize about our buckhead now.

his drug stores & pool halls wiped away by past-fresh malls & parking lots,

north fulton moved into a newer building, then a newer one still,

got a twenty-first century name with a skyscraper to match.    but there’s something 

eternal there i see. the roaring games of his youth are mine as well.

where he sees the traces of the buckhead boys, i see the buckhead girls.

sun-pressed hair & white jeans, darkened eyes & laughs to fit

the vibrance of a city that won’t hear them.     when i was 16 

& in love with a boy who i never really knew,         i wrote a poem

about them,   it started:     “do you love those aphrodites––”

james dickey might understand that it took leaving buckhead behind to understand 

it’s my home. that north georgia belongs to me as it does to them.

that there is something in me more atlanta than any other place, 

more tree-lined streets & pecan shells & perpetual summer than any other thing.

that it took leaving buckhead behind to remember who i am.