Issue 28
The S.C. Creative Sociology Writing Competition invited undergraduate and graduate students from any discipline in a state college or university to use creative writing as a means to think critically about our social world.
Museum: a depository of grief displayed aesthetically;
I carry the mishaps of things I want to forget
like the fragments of a brittle artifact—
we say the knife is dead,
or the mouth of the knife is dead
because the death of the mouth is the death
of purpose, or the death of the potency of life
It’s my wife who makes the announcement. She says the word just as I turn a page in the book I’ve been hoping to read a good portion of on our quiet day at the beach. “Nipple.”
You’re walking down a canyon road at dusk with the fireflies and a boy named Billy. He says between Marlboro Man puffs that he had a date last Saturday with one of the popular girls. Her name is Liz.
The shop was small and had a sandwich-board sign outside, ‘unearthly delights inside’ written on it in chalk. Bobby looked up at the awning, above which the same logo as the letterhead shone in pink neon.
Say it straight.
Say how the grasses wave you along your path.
How the small nod of the field mouse sends you up.
My father says, with a laugh,
I don’t see color. He doesn’t say it
while looking at me.
sound of shattered glass
whiplashed mother
in her long dress
muscles tightened
one summer night
Say the ambit of Italy is the sea, you rather find your way back or your way finds you back.
Remember when you were a kid on the first Earth Day, how you decided to celebrate it by
walking your neighborhood to pick up roadside trash?
Man so mean
eat carnivorous plant leafy greens.
Break a bottle on his wiener.
Pay for gas with teeth.
Bring a gun on a plane