Founded in the fall of 1991, Laurel Moon is Brandeis' oldest, national literary publication. Each issue we publish features original work from undergraduate students.
It comes in waves
Like billows of gushing lava
Running down my tightened throat
The visceral burning from a gulp of tea
Without the sweetness of honey
We used electric fences as tightropes
Cracking my back on the ground underneath
Felt painless in comparison to the
Lightning that shot up my spine when I stayed on
I saw fireworks when you touched me
Not the kind that light holiday skies
But from spark plugs and grease fires
And loose metal dragging behind a car
I feigned sleep
I thought my being unconscious
Would silence your conscious desires
That your matchstick fingernails
Would cease to search for ignition
Cigarette stubs burned the
Canvas of my writhing back
I would use barbed wire sponges
If they cleaned the trails of ashes off my skin
The sound of your beating heart
Helped me fall asleep as a child
But the sound of mine now
Only kept you awake
Haley Brown is a first-year student at Brandeis University. She needs poetry far more than it needs her: a loving, yet imbalanced relationship. She writes recreationally and out of necessity.