If you have this name, your ancestors’ gifts were stifled by the jangling discords of racial inequality,

but your grandfather’s thick hands were strong enough 

to play tug of war with society

and his windpipes stable enough

 to support eight children. The name is full of

dark carpenter musicians from city streets

and light skinned athlete musicians from country fields.

P. J. Settles ’15 
 

If you have a name like this

There’s never a disappointment in someone making fun of your name.

For this name—born out of true love 

Is no accident—this change in this family history.

It is my name, that of a young man

Who came out the womb different,

Out of the wound different.

The start of a new beginning.

Tavarres Jefferson ’09 
 

If you have a name like this 

 Your grandmother took soup to shut in neighbors

 And went to bed every night with the Bible on her table

              And her hands lifted in prayer.

Trent Holt ’16

Your name is full of mothers

with thick skin

and men with thick accents, telling the story

of where the shards flew

when the glass

                                Shattered.

If you have a name like this,

your existence beats the odds.

Your history is full of cattle cars,

men in uniform, and chimneys, smoking

brothers and mothers to the sky

                                Six   Million  Times.

Talia Mayden ’13

If you have this name,

your parents managed to find each other 

in a foreign country, the land of the free,

spotting each other         

in the middle of a no-name expanse, 

the perfect horizontal line, stretching from east 

to west.

Marco Mirnics ’16   

The name is full of women 

who get their hearts stolen before even reaching twenty 

and whose hair   the color of caramel    glistens with sweat 

as they use their soft nimble fingers.    

Ana Darielle Nunez ’16

I never knew I liked 

night following the fading colors of the sun like a mosquito follows a bright light—

I don’t like comparing night’s coming to that of mosquitos 

Natalie Overby ’17

And here I’ve loved bricks all this time.

I know more and more are being added to this place every day,

Filling up our home on the river.

I know there will always be uniformity

in size, shape, and color,

I know men are devoting their whole live learning how

to place them just right,

I know just like relationships with those around you—

they seem so strong but can be broken easily by human hands—yet   

I know the ideas learned behind these red brick walls,

Will forever be built into the foundation.

I have a question as I sit here in my familiar nook before games,

my back pressed against a bookshelf

filled with books telling of Confederate generals,

and my eyes searching the quad:

whose finger carried the drop of water

that cooled the anger of your tongue into calm protest?

Peyton Terry ’17

Today I sit in a coffee shop listening to The Black Keys,

wondering how I never knew I loved Frank Sinatra,

and Sarah Vaughn for that matter—I never knew I loved her singing “Black Coffee” while I sang along inside my head,

trying to understand why the Electoral College exists. 

Ellen Hardcastle ’14

The name is full of judges

with black robes and a belief in equality 

       and generals with white skin

and a belief in a separate nation;

Sally Seitz ’13

What People Give  

Long faced, half smiles

Reassuring hugs,

Sympathetic phone calls,

Non-stop check-in text messages,

Old photographs of when we used to play together,

Wallet-size happy faces,

Stories of how you made everyone around you smile

And not a selfish bone in your body,

Assortments of flowers sent to your mom,

And casseroles to help fill the deep wounds.

Our old uniforms sown together cover you now.

There’s a picture on my dashboard of you in your golden days—

And a guardian angel who has my back.

Daniel (Boone) Davis ’15

Aboutness                           

This poem isn’t about the Chevy tires on the dirt roads,

Or the surprise visit from a husband on duty,

Or a child’s first birthday with candles and presents and cake

And it’s certainly not about what music does for the soul,

Or how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie pop,

Or Trump and Clinton and Sanders,

Or the wide and long gleaming shoes one must fill.

No, this poem that you’ve just read, 

This poem

Is about a willow tree.

Hannah Doochin ’17

Some Questions I Have

Is the soul solid like iron,

Or is it soft—like pillows on a bed at a furniture store?

       Who has it and who doesn’t?

One question leads to another.

Does it have a shape? Like wrinkled t-shirts?

       Like the ripples the children left when they ran through water?

       Like footprints in the dirt?

       Like a motorcycle print on a dirt road?

Why should I have it and not people who live on the streets and sleep 

                                    under bridges?

Why should I have it and not the animals that cower at the raise of a hand?       

Come to think of it, what about the roses? 

What about the magnolia trees?

What about the catfish in the pond?

What about the people who question God?

What about the quiet ones?

What about me?   

Jarquis Hendricks Jr. ’17 

If you have this name, your grandfather began plowing fields and planting seeds

In the fourth grade—and never learned to read,

Even after spending countless hours

Trying to decipher words in a book.

The name is full of women 

With hair the color of grain and sometimes the color of chocolate

And eyes the color of the forest

With the blood of Ireland and Italy running through their veins.

Maggie McGraw ’16

The name is full of 

Wistful women

Sweating gold

with small rough hands

Pounding dough

against the stone

with a Ferocity that matches

Hardened Spirits

Such a name my

Ancestors wore

like soft pelts

draped against brown skin

displayed

with High Heads

In the desert

like precious

water

Ashanti Charles   ’15

It was a day in July

Three weathered men sat playing

slow domino games at CC Bess.   

Silence enveloped the game

as they slid dominoes worn smooth around the edges 

until they lined up with the others

               just right.

Silence turned into chatting about the heat that

turned into grapples—about gas prices—that 

turned into how fix Larry’s lawn mower—that 

turned into why RC ran out of bottled Coke—that 

turned into a fight as to why they came here anyway—that

turned into how it was possible that Mary made chicken pot pie

two nights in a row—that 

turned into Silence.

Caroline Morgan ’16

You

You smell rain and think of the grass seeds that can now sprout

You are picked up and carried around by that melody

You know exactly what Elvis meant when he said he couldn’t help it

You know that the smell of the grass is the distress pheromone of every blade

And you feel the gap where that person used to be every day

No one will ever see it just the way you do

No one will

Ever

Nathaniel Taylor ’17

I sat on a gray stone bench 

Ringed with the ingenue faces

Of pink and white impatiens

And placed my grief in the

Mouth of Language—

The only thing that would grieve with me

Corrina Gill ’19