Student Work

Opportunities abound for English majors to practice their craft. Undergraduate writers publish poetry and fiction in the student periodical, The Album, or the student literary journal, Cargoes.

In July 2005, Cargoes was awarded the Undergraduate Literary Prize for content by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP).

 

how they will be known

i. ashland park

when will i stop remembering that mustang, the dark
streaks on my ankles from the muddy rim of an oil can,
the way my bare back bonded to the cracking leather

of his backseat and when i asked is there ac in this thing,
a better man might have answered me with words
that didn’t bite or bruise the skin. there are always

ways to wipe away tears before they have fallen:
a trick i learned in theater art, adding a little green
powder to cool the reddened places on my neck.

ii. flashback

in his basement, i practiced holding my breath
after i took the hit, started coughing until i felt high.
i walked upstairs and listened to his mother talk

about times she’s doing laundry or putting away
cups in the kitchen cabinet and she twists her spine
a certain way, i mean when it really gets a good crack,

she told me she might be forty-two with three grown kids
and a paid off mobile home, but when that stored up acid
lets loose, she’s a size 2 zeppelin lady, seeing in rainbows.

iii. venus transit

when you’re sixteen a man can burn a place within,
strikes a match along your nerves: singing the same songs
for everyone as they blink back tears, did you write that for me?

and looking back now
between what he was
and what i tell myself:

it was just a stratocaster, it was just virginity.

Amanda Mitchell Dutton '12
Cargoes, 2011
Winner of the Nancy Thorp Poetry Prize, 2011

 

Half Mast

Fallujah in those eyes black set deep in the skull
lodged like a piece of shrapnel or human bone
poking out skin, pointing at all those erections still
hard for Hajis. In a motel room hear him moan,
tuning out rememories, a wad of dip jutting
from his chin as he rides me long and fast
then nothing but ana behibek while nutting.
In May he left for Ramadi & returned at last

wearing the smock of guilt.

This time there was no wait, the fuck was quick
in his truck, routine like paying the waterbill.
There were no whispers uttered in Arabic
or stories of small bodies rotting in the sand
just rain on the windshield and the shell of a man.

Meaghan Quinn '11
Cargoes, 2010
Co-winner of the Nancy Thorp Poetry Prize, 2010

Wisconsin Lumber Revival

Along the northern coastline
of this happy state, nearest
to the Apostles, Menaboju

the giant stone man
juts out from
the mainland on his side.

Matchi Manitu
entertains him with fits
of rage from his irksome
den, disturbs Mother
Superior into squalls, tempests,
and sweeping western gales.

That Great Lynx
dips his fingers, gazes
with wolfish greed
through her waters, translucent.

Behold an underwater
timberland—a cradle
for ancient logs forgotten.

Titan’s of the forest

of the deep

of her womb.

Ahead of you, logs appear
like apparitions, return
from the hey dei
when kith and kin
made this heartland.

Virgin White
red pine sugar
maple creeping
juniper black spruce
red cedar balsam
hawthorn hemlock
hickory ash beech
poplar crabapple
cherry yellow birch
willow oak and elm

They are twice as strong
—worth so much more
now that the forests are empty

The “Natives” dive again
—rape her one last time
for another waterlogged string guitar
like the one on Johnny Cash’s back.

Bend your ears
to these reverberations
this monolithic tree song
rooted deep within

and you will hear
still, the wood
it hums a story.

Dana Livermore '10
Cargoes, 2010
Co-winner of the Nancy Thorp Poetry Prize, 2010