Founded in the fall of 1991, Laurel Moon is Brandeis' oldest, national literary publication. Each issue we publish features original work from undergraduate students.
Mama would declare:
some people could be told
— “the stove is hot,”
and, for them, it not take much not to touch.
certainty, then, led her to the conclusion that
i was not of that variety, definitively.
tapping along to smoky crooning pitter-patter oven-made rhapsodies, it is all i can muster not to inquire of this fire, consenting instead to a constant curious burn tiptoeing its own way up
across my spine, ^ my mind, igniting
a buzzing thrumming hum into my quotidian.
each a spark but a-skitters haphazard-like, tickling
my membranes, my
most
deeply personal planes,
sending so many inquisitive waves through my being.
why does it seem to me:
the more i dream of what i dream to be
smoky half-familiar silhouettes of excellence elude
me,
burning, crisping quickly
into dusty, unreachable smithereens;—
and Yet,
Again: i’m pressing
already-charred palms into unbearable stovetop heat:
dead cat!
Richie, a Haitian-American creative drawn to sound and emotion, seeks to spread paint across canvas in his own special way.