Quotes
are like promises
of remembrance
like framed pictures
or little mementos
of journeys
like compasses
or letters
maybe they are
relics that shroud
the present
like ghostly art
forms wandering streets
of unpaved concrete
I think quotes
are like
“going to sleep
right here
in mid-road”
like tempting time
to standstill
or drive on over
-Angelica Toumbas, January 2013
There’s nothing scarier
Than being on the edge.
There’s nothing more frightening
Than looking down
And realizing
That you can’t see the bottom.
There’s nothing more thrilling,
More ice-cold,
More exhilarating
Than being this close
To something so utterly unknown.
It is so terrifying
Yet so alluring
And it sends chills down my spine
Just to think
That I could take that step,
That I can leave.
-Abigail Sokolsky, November 2012
I.
The cold rips holes in my clothes but leaves my fingers and toes whole. Tattered
like sails I fly, complete like nowhere else can be/understand I go. Don’t stop me not
now no edge or ice can beat me, I promise. You are thin lines groomed. I am not, I
am too busy, I am being wind.
II.
I am not a treetop. I am not a treetop. I am above. I believe and am believed in, which
is to say have faith and be trusted, which is to say serve and rule. I am overtop,
mountaintop, lodgeside lookdown queen of the world. Cold air is the ultimate rush.
Please take away your signs and your metal and your nature, but you can leave –
down there – the tiny of the village, the farness of the mountains, the blueness of the
hills.
III.
This is control: the slip of a tip around a tree and through snow so deep you can’t
but hold still. The turn on a dime. The duck at the last second. The slide, the bend,
the subtle motion. The obvious. This is not: the decision to go and let your body stop
you. The unexpected rock. The jump unseen, the lack of depth perception, the flat
light, the flat, awkward thrusts. The falls.
IV.
Images beautiful of auld are overlayed by the world’s wintercrispness. Even the
beauty of fresh blackprinted text on a parchment coloured fresh new page is
dimmed by snow: no page is perfect white, it is dirty next to snow, it is trash, litter,
forgotten, a relic of the indoors and the warm and the fire and the fire is not here or
now. Compared to the coldbared treebranches against the flat purplegray endless
sky words’ elegance is overcomplicated, soft, fragile. This tells you nothing stands
against winter, even me.
-Elizah Stein, January 2013
Drawing By: Emily Popov
mxiris 