Aanchal Khanna

Smith College

Where are you, O my lover, O my depth

Oh love,

The infinite sky in our belly,

The deep violet ocean in our eyes,

The orange softness in our touch, where…

The touch that is sensual - that melts, that communicates, that walks us back to our

Silence,

The love that walks us back to our silence - is the only love ?

love that makes us our own friends - love that makes us forgive - not the other first - but first

Ourselves,

Love that has the power to melt us in ourselves,

love that meditates and meditation that loves.

My depths rise upwards

my eyes talk not to you - but to someone else in You,

my heart talks not to you - but to that heart which only knows wanderings,

That heart which is in you..

that body which I know, is not you,

I long to whisper the secrets of my soul to your soul

Oh I long to be in you

Oh I long to not just have our bodies make love

I long

I long

I long

For all to make love

I long

for our eyes to make love

I long for our hands to dissolve in love

I long for our feet swirling in the sky

Dancing on the stars

Playing hide and seek

Like children in the sky

I long

where are you

I wait

For you

To arrive

At our Master’s feet

Then I wait

to arrive at Love’s feet

Perhaps this is pain,

You have your time,

I wish

to keep whispering

keep whispering

keep

whispering

to

you.

Someday, one day, any day,

you feel ready

we’ll rise in love

rise

rise

rise

Oh love, just rise

Till then

I

will keep

dancing

swirling

walking

walking…

Gabrielle Martone

Smith College

I met a girl

While peering through a looking class

Where two selves bore their souls

As if it were Judgment Day

Where her body stood, two roads forked

Diverged in separate parts

While both parts clamored for her, reciting deep desires

Her face held strong

As if she heard nothing more than the wind whispering through the trees

Even a taut warrior poised to strike

Could find no fault in either choice of path

Yet she knew at the depths of her core

That there was only one way for her to go

One road would enslave her

The other set her free

But neither would be her own

Looking into her eyes,

Those dark sapphires that held so much more than mine

Admiration swelled within me

A longing to feel as if I could take on the world

Like her, who knew that her own date

Led down only the unbeaten path.

And when we met eye to eye

I saw many futures bellow about her

As she stood strong

All the choices she made,

They were fueled by her passion-ridden heart

I prayed that I might have a single ounce

Of what made her headstrong

So that I might live another day

So that I might leave another breath

I pulled away,

I turned to go

I was there that I could barely see a flash of who she would be

A flash across the eye, a semblance of a stormy sky

It held her heart in tact

And her head in place

As though she truly knew her own way

I was long gone before I could figure out the final chord

I whisked myself down an already beaten path

Whether it would enslave me, or set me free

I would not know

But now, at the end of time

Now that the Crone has called me home

I only wish that I had known that she was me all along.

Angela Law

Smith College

When I was younger I wanted to become a writer

I didn’t realize it rose out of loneliness

Or that my mouth would be full of words that had no navels

My sewing needle has thread too short to make a knot

The only jobs I qualify for require banter that does not end

Smiles that have no meaning

My life is just beginning when young women talk about marriage, husbands, children

I am no longer a child

I am no longer a girl

I see the snow falling outside

And I imagine myself like other women

I am not like the other young women I sit next to in lectures

I used to think Ivory Tower meant theories trapped in a tower taught by old white men with no practical application

Most of what I learn cannot solve social ills

I learned more about racism than I had in a lifetime through my straight white roommate

She told me what to call people like me and educated me about politics

I am neither straight or white nor care much for politics

I just want to live my life as a tiger lily growing in foreign soil with just enough shade to thrive

(Out of the shade and out of the sun)

Magnified a thousand times I will bloom to an indifferent sky and perish

The life others thought I should live

Gabrielle Kassel Wolinsky

Smith College

The girl with the dragon teeth

and fire folded in her red dress

orders a coffee, black, without making eye contact.

A single mother, age forty, watches her

six year old cram cake into his mouth-

wonders if he will one day treat a woman’s body

the way he treats his desserts.

The angry teen with the neck tattoo

and shaved head orders a bud light,

gets a call from the clinic; test: positive.

A veteran cracks his knuckles,

flinches at the sound.

The man running the 2014 Boston Marathon

straps revenge inside him

like a homemade bomb.

A divorced father has a dirty mouth,

a sucker punch and an appetite

for daughters.

A ninth grade teacher

reads my poem to the class-

calls it a tiny murder.

Christina Murray

Smith College

(as told by Eve)

Eve, Do You Love Him?

(the question my mother always wanted to ask her.)

Not if he were the last man on Earth.

He was the only man on Earth,

But I couldn’t see past the idea that

I could have my own ideas,

That the green apples could taste like something

Other than Heaven with such a bitter aftertaste.

Who’s to say you can’t argue with God?

Apparently Him.

But He named me woman

How could He expect me to cause

Anything more than woe?

I’d like to apologize to all of you

Women who wait for a savior

Who was once dressed as a man.

I’d like to apologize

Because I think God made some apples bitter

To spite me.

I’m just glad He remembers me-

His first taste of humanity.

I’m to blame for the word slut.

Don’t think it’s a bad thing.

Satan said words to me

Like he though I knew what they meant,

Knowledge existed between his legs.

I took it and I think

God was offended I didn’t want Him instead.

Now He gets men to look at you

Like they want you

What they really want is to be a god.

But, I guess those men weren’t lying to you

When they said education is bad

For reproduction.

Look how my kids turned out.

Don’t let that fool you-

Boys will be boys. They want to be gods, remember?

When he asks you if you love him

Say no.

That’s called the women’s movement.