Wednesday, March 13, 2019 // The Statement
2B

Managing Statement Editor

Andrea Pérez Balderrama

Deputy Editors

Matthew Harmon

Shannon Ors

 Designers

 Liz Bigham

 Kate Glad

 Copy Editors

 Miriam Francisco

 Madeline Turner

Photo Editor

Annie Klusendorf

Editor in Chief

Maya Goldman

Managing Editor

Finntan Storer
statement

THE MICHIGAN DAILY | MARCH 13, 2019

There is a man who listens to no song twice.
Or a woman, as always their gender irrelevant.
Every thought is new – containing
a mental puzzle missing thousands of pieces
that he will never finish.
 
 
An analytical mind salvaged from a scrap yard full of toddlers.
Each flowering thought stemming from ‘why?’
He returns to nothing in leaving everything.
 
His ambitions collapse into piled past actions,
sand castles forged from too-dry sand.
 
 
Everything is washed away in waves.
 
Who relishes in the wonder of unanswered questions
Who owns no mirrors
And who stares down the cavern of his consciousness instead
 
 
An unlit tunnel that he is still assembling.
 
In leaving the tunnel, outside colors vibrate in living saturation
and he hears gravel squirm under the burden of passing cars.

The smell of chlorine and freedom lives sharp my mind.
I could recreate our bonfire dances for you.
 
But how can you not remember?
It is as if July slipped away, replaced
 
by fraying textbooks and burnt Ramen soup.
I feel it on the soles of my feet: Pavement.
Burning. Solid. Neighborhood cement and chalk.
 
Remember this: we pretended we started a tribe of
kid bandits in the woods behind my house. We listened for
 
deer and tried to drown out the highway. Intrusive in
our fantasies, we knew the snow was magic and would
 
catch its blare. Do you remember? Frayed size 5 cleats,
Tate’s old Honda truck, cannonballs into icy blue water.
 
The dream of a generation written into the knees of children.
Time capsules in their grinning cheeks. Our slender youth.
 
We could hold onto it forever with this memory.
A year etched into minds, frozen in numbers.

after Seamus Heaney 
 
Poem
makes me think of pomme,
apple, eden, pomme de terre, myth
in earth, God caked in mud and root.
Spading at the clay, Prometheus became
the first poet. Bite with the mouth bones
he gave you and feel like Heaney. Potato digging
is heaven---resurrection, collection, storage-- heaven
is death---absorption, amalgamation, collapse onto a lover---
a relief. Completion. My thought apple
is picked, furrows harvested.
The work is corked and
buried.

The houses have roots here. Even the air is
entrenched, an aftertaste of passion. The breathless
trees trap with resin, and for
 
good reason. The dark fields of the republic
are sinkholes. You can melt into the earth’s black carcass
easier than you think. These hills know how
to make one from two, they were once the glaciers’
 
lovers. If in need of a guide, look to the steeple,
rising like a North Star, and nestle around
its glow. Do not be afraid if your heart
sprouts stakes. Things that aren’t bolted down
get lost here.

A man
BY JOE RIESTERER

Afterlife
BY SEBASTIEN BUTLER

2009
BY MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA

Smalltown
BY SEBASTIEN BUTLER