Founded in the fall of 1991, Laurel Moon is Brandeis' oldest, national literary publication. Each issue we publish features original work from undergraduate students.
Mary finds it hard to believe anyone.
A walk home during a full moon,
stopping to admire concrete towers holding vessels.
The abandoned souls were drifting ghostlike and tumbling,
seen only as they pass under the tangerine hue of certain streetlamps.
Mary recalls it better.
In a low window, a curtain frames a living portrait:
A shadowed face of its blurred reflection,
only half seen, but taken
as symmetry. The valleys on a lid of a closed eye mark the dissonance
between sight and paranoia.
So close, the figure taunted her.
Not yet! Stare. A little longer…
She thinks they’re winking, but she’s only looking at one eye.
Claire Wilgus is an undergraduate student studying English at New York University. Working as a research assistant, she has been most inspired by the work of Marianne Moore, T.S Eliot, and Derek Walcott. She has lived in New York for two years with her dog, Emma.