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Poems Submitted for April 28, 2021

  1. (Re)Emergence: Asian American Histories and Futures
  2. High Stakes Culture Series
  3. Humanities Without Walls Predoctoral Career Diversity Summer Workshop
  4. High Stakes Art
  5. Jill S. Harris Memorial Lecture
  6. Marc and Constance Jacobson Lecture
  7. Norman Freehling Visiting Professorship
  8. Past Programs & Projects
    1. Humanities Without Walls
    2. 2022 HWW Career Diversity Workshop
    3. 2022 Poetry Blast!
    4. Octavia Butler Week
    5. 2021 Poetry Blast!
      1. Prompt a Poem!—A Daily April Poetry Challenge
      2. English Translations
      3. 2021 Poetry Blast Prompt a Poem Submissions
      4. Poems Submitted for April 1, 2021
      5. Poems Submitted for April 2, 2021
      6. Poems Submitted for April 5, 2021
      7. Poems Submitted for April 6, 2021
      8. Poems Submitted for April 7, 2021
      9. Poems Submitted for April 8, 2021
      10. Poems Submitted for April 12, 2021
      11. Poems Submitted for April 9, 2021
      12. Poems Submitted for April 13, 2021
      13. Poems Submitted for April 14, 2021
      14. Poems Submitted for April 15, 2021
      15. Poems Submitted for April 16, 2021
      16. Poems Submitted for April 19, 2021
      17. Poems Submitted for April 20, 2021
      18. Poems Submitted for April 21, 2021
      19. Poems Submitted for April 22, 2021
      20. Poems Submitted for April 23, 2021
      21. Poems Submitted for April 26, 2021
      22. Poems Submitted for April 27, 2021
      23. Poems Submitted for April 28, 2021
      24. Poems Submitted for April 29, 2021
      25. Poems Submitted for April 30, 2021
    6. The Humanities at Work
    7. 2018-19 Year of Humanities and Environments
    8. 2017-18 Year of Archives & Futures
    9. 2016-17 Year of Humanities & Public Policy
    10. 2015-16 Year of Conversions
    11. Early Modern Conversions Project
    12. MCubed Humanities Projects
    13. 2023 Humanities Afrofutures

The stranger is back. This time the stranger has brought you a burlap bag. All the summers of your life are in it. Open it. Dump the contents on the ground. Describe. This can be some sandals or this can be a school bus or this can be the Pacific Ocean. (It’s a magical burlap bag.) Before you begin your ten-minute freewrite, take about 30 seconds to jot down at least 6 things (or up to 10 if you like) that you’ll be surprised to see again, from all the summers of your life, in that bag. Feel free to be negative if you like. My bag would have, for instance, a housefire in it. And some crutches. But also a bunch of popsicles. 

SUMMER

Summer dumps itself
all over the floor again.
Burlap bag full of memory.
The three days
every summer at the lake. The hotel
room sink filled
with ice
filled with bottles.
My uncle.
I wish you could’ve met him.
A man in every direction at the same time.
Hawaiian shirt, some shame. His
wife, my aunt. I’ve
scraped my fingernails all over the bottom
of this bag, and all
I can find are my own broken fingernails.
The sound of rocks being shaken in
the collection plate at church: that’s
the ice machine.We’ve been
here before. We’ll never
be back here again. Or, if
we are, we’ll be different.
My mom, alive, points out
a dead seagull before she
goes into the air-conditioned room, lies
down on the hard mattress for a long time.
Remembers:
It’s all over, whether
I liked it at the time or not. Look
at anyone of these snapshot
before you thrown them away:
Not one of us was spared.
Except you. You’re
all there is some days, dumped out, in
chunks and threads and the scent of
chlorine in your hair, coating
your teeth. Jane
Austen said something (I think) a bit
like this:
Remember the past only
as it gives you
pleasure
to do so.

Summer memories of striving to belong are best forgotten now
By Renée Szostek


A stranger brought a
burlap bag bulging with six
blue blouses I bought
for my internship. Success
in dress still did not impress.

Pennsylvania Pastoral

We were so white –
Everything was white –
Everywhere I went –

Black lives were the women in my grandmothers’ kitchens.
Civil rights was what you watched on TV.
Diversity was the one Amish boy in seventh grade, my Mennonite boyfriend, the lone ear of yellow corn they mixed in with the rest.

A Lifetime of Summers Belched Through a Patchy Carpet Bag
By Logan Corey

A pair of roller skates
Medical-grade adhesive
A fistful of stray cats
The smoggy after smell of fireworks on the beach
Thick rubber heat on parade float tires
Gritty damp stain of wooded bogs
Pink skin before a scar
Rolls upon rolls of undeveloped film