In honor of National Poetry Month, enjoy these works by alumni featured in past editions of Clamor, UW Bothell’s literary and arts journal. There will be a virtual launch event for the 2021 edition on June 11, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Follow Clamor on Instagram and watch its website for a link to the launch event.
A Beautiful Remembrance
G. Fox (Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies ’19)
I figured it out.
I fell irretrievably in love with you.
That’s why it hurts to think of you sometimes.
It is both a beautiful remembrance,
And a painful realization.
Saguaro at the End of the Yard
Stephanie Segura (MFA ’20)
Summer afternoons are spent on the block, watching people line up at the corner to eat meat rolled into food blankets. We hide behind house silhouettes, sneak inhales of marijuana between passing cars. When it’s hot, we run to the paletero , plead for ice to grace our tongues, and turn our lips blue. We drive up to city night lights and gaze at existence below us and listen to baby coyotes whisper behind caves in the burned hills.
Sometimes I’m not on the block. I’m in an abandoned house with a boy I think I love. The ghost of the family that used to live there watches us sip Arizona Tea kisses between our tongues. A haunting of recklessness. Friday nights are howls beneath bus stops, walking under street lamps and meeting friends on the patio of a house full of dirt listening to beer bottles chime against gravel while eyes wander to a saguaro cactus at the end of the yard.
Yellow Flower’s Confession
Kristine Jeanyoung Kim (Interdisciplinary Arts, Media & Communication Studies ’19)
A brown tiny seed travels in the air and prepares for its landing on a speck of moist dirt
The seed cautiously settled on a land nowhere
Waiting for the body to reach high into the sky, she hears people criticizing, machine generating, and numerous planes flying by
In her mind’s eye, a world is bittersweet
But she smells a scent that is indescribable
She feels a warm breeze, that forms a nostalgic mood
An underground shelter is unsuitable for a flower like her to live, for which she is confident to show off her beautiful presence and is unwilling to see an upper world
Without standing her curiosity and hastiness, she urges to move upward;
Her entire body electrifies as if trying to alleviate the itchiness
A sudden wind blows on to her tender body as she approaches outside like the instant moment of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus
She inhales deeply and puts all away from her thoughts and feelings, and shouts:
I am free, I am beautiful, I am eternal.
