The Communicator • A Student Voice

“I’m not sure why I stopped when I saw her, maybe because of how long it’d been. Maybe it’s because of how much I had missed her. I can’t be sure though, as to why I stopped. I just did. I stopped right where I was, in the middle of the sidewalk. Countless people milling past me, some of them hissing rude remarks that I had ignored. I barely heard them at the time, but now with some time past, I can remember them clearly. Funny how that works, isn’t it? More…

Stefan came back from the war with a thousand-yard stare and a girl who never moved, spoke or ate. He set up a room for her, with a moth-eaten cot and a guttering oil lamp that fitfully illuminated the enormous brass lock set into the center of her chest.

The keyhole was like a star, around which three concentric brass circles orbited, made up of endless rods, pins, tumblers and gears. The minute, frozen lines of gold-colored metal were so small that they looked like some kind of calligraphic script, and the craftsmanship of the lock was such that it didn’t protrude more than an inch out of her pale, waxy skin.

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A few days ago I asked Stephen what the suicide was like. He told me about a Leni Riefenstahl film documenting the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

In the film, special attention is given to the divers. Shot lovingly in slow motion, they leap from their diving boards and as they swerve down into the pool twenty feet below, they go through an incredible serious of flips, turns, spins and whirls, their bodies tight and controlled. When they reach the pool, they are totally vertical, hands at a perfect point in front, legs stretched out in the back, bodies taut between the two like vibrating piano wire.

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Mike Moriarty

Mike Moriarty is a local Ann Arbor writer. He is the president of the collegiate poetry troupe Ann Arbor Wordworks. This entails running meetings, organizing Wordworks instructors for the VOLUME Youth Poetry Project, and making final decisions on content for their big upcoming show, Homegrown, which is this Friday, January 29.

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For the last nine months or so, I’ve been having pains in my left hip that come and go. Over the holidays, I was working long hours without sitting down, and my hip began to hurt all of the time—shooting down my thigh, and spreading into my lower back.

Last Thursday, I finally got it together and went to the doctor. My mom and I spent almost an hour speaking to an orthopedist, but we left the office with little information about my hip. I have to go back.

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He waited until they were alone to speak.  “I’m glad you came,” he told her.

“I’m glad you called,” she said.

“How are the kids?” he asked.  She looked down at her feet and felt a lump form in her in her throat, like she had just swallowed a hard boiled egg.  “I’d love to see them sometime,” he said.

“Oh yeah, of course,” she said.  “They’re really getting into chess,” she added.

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A bag of pretzels
a lack of mustard
a stag he wrestles
he cracks a cuss word

he knew the beast
would win the round
the two would cease at the bells sound

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Scott Beal

What projects are you currently working on?

Oh, who knows. Last summer I started a weekly-ish blog on parenting for AnnArbor.com. The whole blog genre never really cried out to me, but I got invited to do it, and I find it hard to turn down an invitation. It’s been a fun challenge, mostly, and I like the pieces I’ve produced. It’s like writing poetry in that I don’t get paid, but it’s different in that people in the community may read it.

Meanwhile there are always new poems to work on, but the pace slows when other things get busy, as they have this fall. I wrote a ditty the other day riffing off the phrase “Too legit to quit,” of all things. I’ve got others in mind, half-jotted down, waiting to take shape. Actually, I’ve got a whole roster of unfinished things to get to: a story, a couple of children’s books, one sprawling poem I started 5 years ago based on a heavy metal song. And I promised myself that I’d revamp my book manuscript in September. I still haven’t. Now I’m aiming for January.

This week I’ll participate in a write-a-thon for Dzanc Books, the nonprofit publisher who sponsors my residency at Ann Arbor Open School, among other things. So I’ll come up with something for that.

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The man rips back a fistful of her hair

and it flares into barbs.

Like that, his fist shreds. She dashes

but his screams ring

the alley with no doppler

downshift, she flees at the speed of normal panic

while his left hand cradles his wrecked right:

last fist it’ll ever make

to raise for breakaways

or saviors, to clutch a fork

or forge a check, offer a balloon to a child

or teach its mother a lesson.  These things

don’t happen, but here she is next week

leaning against her school locker,

barbed hair snagged in the vents. More…

“Everybody look up at the sky.  Look at the alien ships as they fly.  Why must they come? I don’t know why, but humans must prepare to die.”

The Aliens
are coming back to attack again
so protect the children
and prepare all the men.
Bad shit is going to happen
so hide when I count to ten
because the Aliens are playing hide and go seek.
This ain’t no little kid shit like little bo-peep.
Mothers are gonna weep
and it might be hard to sleep
but just put down the tissue
issue everyone a jeep. More…