Haiku

View Full Artwork

Haiku

May 3, 2026

Once
tell me tomorrow
how the things pretty and nice
stay once and not twice
Please
From the dirt, she speaks
With her face, pleated and pink
Please, just let me be
Wind
Where the wind follows
Through the graves, the land, my face
An archive of all

More Like This

two eyes with tears below them and people playing flutes and holding branches, looking like Ancient Greeks

The Act Collection: 23

Act One You love riding with the windows down. I hated it. But then I rode with them down without you, and I understood. Coming back from a place you once had said was the “scenic route.” Now it’s really more my route than yours: does that make you mad? I drove an extra twenty miles just to take that exit you took me on when there was a crash on the highway to see if I would cry when my wheels came to a stop at the stop sign. I hate having to stop.

Chloe Lyda

Poetry

two people with their heads down, sitting on outstretched hands

How to Weigh Loss

Even though see saws are a thing of the past, I’ll return to a warm June evening when my brother and I have walked to the local elementary school. We seat ourselves on opposite ends, hold onto the metal handles and rise and descend, one in the air, the other on the ground, small craters where other children have done the same with their feet. We pull out tangerines we’ve stashed in our windbreakers, peel them in unison, one of us suspending the other, trusting a smooth descent.

Charlotte Matthews

Poetry

a girl's face with blurred blue over top and a background of blue waves

Imposter Syndrome

Away from home with imposter syndrome Fading far from the plight of perfectionism Taunted by the unexplored, not on any exec boards Sometimes struggling to just get out of bed My roommate wakes up and runs ten miles While I have clothes heaped in piles And a hundred unorganized files on my desktop Too anxious to answer an email In constant comparison and competition I’m not motivated by grades or majors Student governance or unpaid labor But paranoid I need to fit in

Mary Katherine West

Poetry

a bunch of pink and orange peaches with light green and brown leaves

Ode to My Roommates

Nacho table, extension cords, a locket lost in the couch. This house crept up on me like a new year: it was judiciously January when one day I woke up to December frosting hello on my window. When I moved in, after a summer spent inert, the floor was covered in dead crickets and dirt. Now there’s unpaid parking tickets, fostered pups, half-melted candles on the window sill. In this house, I never want to be on my own, or still. When the second-floor bathroom leaked

Pasha McGuigan

Poetry

close-up of a green eye, with the rest of the face in a dark blue shadow

untitled poem

It’s hard To not see the bad, To not try and tune it out. To smile and commemorate momentous occasions On land others were brutalized on. The approach, I had been told Was to tune it out. Pretend nothing had happened. That worked well for the boys in my politics discussions. Not for me. You cannot tune out the brutalization of the enslaved peoples, Peoples that built The Lawn. That built Jefferson’s University.

Chloe Lyda

Poetry

Pale hand in orangey background

I Write in the Open, Writing to All and None

The weatherman said we were going to get a good seven or eight inches of snow, but as I sit here and write, all we have is rain. I guess rain can set the pace better than snow, though, as it taps on the window, in beat with my fingers tapping on the keyboard, my pads connecting with the clear silicon cover I put on last August. My keyboard covers never last long. I’m not sure if I want to type quickly, or if I just hope that getting my thoughts out fast enough will make this pandemic and this phase pass by with less ache.

Chloe Lyda

Poetry