My ivy vine vertebrae mimicked a city loft’s metal staircase,

                    wrought-iron ribcage gnawing at imperfection from this spiral scoliosis.

                                 They said I’d need surgery — a spinal fusion. To me: a death sentence.

                                     Medical mishaps in mind, I begged for another choice where my rusted

                                 tears don’t succumb to anesthesia in less than a year, confess “time’s up.”

                     I wondered if I’d die in a sterile grave, each day closer to my last:

          last holidays, birthdays, last year of school, last breath of air.

Spending sleepless nights with WebMD questions left unanswered,

I learned I had little choice but to operate on my melodramatic tragedy.

    Prepare for my descent down the vertebrae stairs to the operating room,

                    haunted by the thought of shifting my spine from a spiral staircase

                                  to normal. Titanium hardware straightening my body, easing the climb,

                                  yet this looked like a straightaway running out of time.

                      Down a straight hallway, I was running out of time,

                                saying “I think it’s working now,” going cold a moment

                                  later. Several hours unconscious, doctors and technology

                                         worked to fix me. I awakened to ask, Where did everybody go?

                               Hospital beds, ICU, throbs of pain through my drugged brain,

                               x-rays, refusing opioids because what if I get addicted?

                   Walking felt better than sitting, or standing white-faced to greet

                      the rising sun of infirmary lights. Four days in hospital hellscapes,

                         read-aloud fairytales shook me with laughter, so hard the pain

                               was worth it. Woken up to factory reset walls by nightshift nurses;

                              Wondering “When can I leave?” I walked to pass the time.

                           The factory lineup: three IVs, bruises burning painkillers down my wrists,

               sleepless nights, yearning for freedom. I wondered when this world

              would let me go home, bedridden with a spinal staircase unfurled.

                    They let me go home, though bedridden with my spine unfurled.

                         I slept in the basement because it was closer to everything:

                  to the kitchen upstairs; the bathroom; my mom, whose home office

                        was an arm’s reach away. Fighting time and eagerly awaiting

                          a layoff from this job of reading just to forget another day.

                         I would write my way into a love for the craft, and I would

                              walk the same half-mile trail over and over and over,

                                   until I knew the birdsong like a favorite record,

                         and the path warped into a concrete aisle cutting through

                             the factory of recovery. I had little else to do but wait

                                 for school to start at break’s end, for the surgeon

                                     to say I was free to move again, for healing

                          to reach beyond the confines of “a summer well spent.”

                              I was spiraling before I knew what spiraling meant.

Kiley Flynn  is a College second-year from the Pocono Mountains, Pennsylvania.  She is majoring in Creative Writing with a minor in Theater. Her writing interests include fiction, poetry, playwriting, and everything in between. She wrote Spiral Fusion, a three-sonnet sequence, to reflect on her experience undergoing spinal fusion surgery for scoliosis. This sonnet sequence focuses on breaking some of the rules of a “traditional” sonnet and experimenting with how form can reflect the content of poetry.

As Corvid calls to be followed

I think to craft Her wings of dust

As fervid fears must be swallowed

Yet just as I am fastening them,

Predacious eyes meet anxious heart

Before my frozen limbs can thaw

Wretched claw rips sense apart

Perched on the edge of my senses

Crow waits for premonition

From I, the lonely half-prophet

Wallowing in almost-visions

With birds now circling every sky

How can I stop believing?

God I worry that fear of grief

Is worse than really grieving.

Olivia Das Gupta is a College first-year from the suburbs of Chicago interested in becoming a Creative Writing major. She wrote “January Bird” about a period in her life when her anxieties about the future, which at first seemed irrational, kept coming true.

of green growth that stretched to the heavens

and now the great great giant in the sky–

      Yes

      He

      Was

      Here,

rich with wonder, and now he is gone,

ditch or blunder,

fallen twenty-six stories from the sky

over my life, from the eden over my

better judgment, to the dirt at my feet–

       Yes

       He

       Was

       a Hero

and now he is an idea which flickered past

my blinking wheezing fizzing eyes–blink–

sigh–to the grave at my feet–

      Yes

      He

     Was

     Heaven and earth and sea and sky and

the origin of order in my mind all packaged

squarely in the match box, in the coal (of) mine,

and now he is lost in a sea of experience, a

hole in my cerebellum and I thought

      MY GOD

                                                                          I’mmortal.

and i go gently,

succumb to the snow

and golden leaves

as the world leaves me behind.

the rain ushers me away,

carries off the last of my strength

with its gentle reassurances.

when autumn takes my place

i smile from the wings,

settle into this season

even as my coffin is lowered.

i would like to be remembered

as i was in june,

shining and splendid

beneath the clear blues 

and sparkling stars.

to be loved in all my glory

was a wonderful thing,

but now i will bide my time

until the next emerging sun.

Mattias RowenBale is a College first-year from Davis, CA. Mattias is an aspiring Creative Writing major who has been writing for years and recently self-published his first poetry collection. His poem, “a summer’s farewell,” was written for class as a persona poem from the perspective of the summer as it ends.

My coat is on a different hanger now.

The closets shuffle lives within their doors.

The newer ones, they often disavow,

because they’re partial to their former tours.

And since I want to leave my current place,

the exploration itches to begin.

I’m slower than I think, but still on pace. 

The motor fizzles, kicks, begins to spin.

I know I’m flying just to chase a thrill,

but can you blame me? Cheaply found unrest

is growing on me as a way to kill

the panic that undoes me at my best.

The mountain’s growing closer by the mile.

It’s time to turn and fly north for a while.

II. Flight

I’m looking out across the turning earth,

believing for the first time that I’m free.

The journey’s destination isn’t worth

the undercurrent pull of destiny.

And so I rise above the cloudy sea

to greet the sun in all its distant might.

I’m blinded by the sunspots’ filigree;

disorienting spirals rake my flight.

The mountain pokes anew into my sight.

I’m not like Icarus. I have a clue

about my limits, so I pull hard right

and stall the motor. Shot, and done, and through

with this long journey that I’ve dragged it on,

the motor says “Adieu, goodbye, I’m gone.”

III. Landing

It sets me down among some leafless trees,

so now I’m left to leg my journey out.

Perhaps I’ll learn what destiny’s about;

for now I’m simply focused on the breeze

that’s blowing at my back. I feel at ease.

I feel the forest opening about

me as I start toward home. I know this route.

I find it nicest during winter’s freeze,

beneath the gray skies. Wrapped inside my coat,

I’m ready to return to where I know

there’s always room for me. To be at home

is sweeter than the songbird’s favorite note.

Next time I’ll take my motor nice and slow.

Next time I’ll leave my place before I roam.

Charlie Forster is a fourth-year Creative Writing major from Pittsburgh. He wrote and revised this sonnet series several times over the course of his semester abroad in Bath, England last fall. 

at noon this time of year:

they are flourishing sun contrasts,

perfect vacant silhouettes.

The air stings here but is not unbearable.

My shirt hangs heavy with sweat;

hair grasps my neck tearfully

like a failing, exhausted lover.

The sun has blithely promised us 

a persisting, furious Patti life,

each young flower bright and defiant,

the old ones withered little birds.

The eventual slowing haunts me.

I long to walk with no approaching end,

with no happy hand in the clouds,

no sister to help me up the stairs.

I lapse in pace like a child

to stop and admire and feed delusion,

but my destination has remained

scrawled in the sand since birth.

This dirt prophecy is divinely established:

to enter the unmarked final spot,

to leave my bag at the door,

to greet home with a long cold shower.

Micah Gresl-Turner is a College first-year and enjoyer of words originally from South Bend, IN. She is fascinated with the capture of small, fleeting feelings, and aims to achieve that in her poetry.

i am where i’m from —

8 dead cats later,

buried in the yard of a house i drive by

whenever i can bear it

& my sweet dog 

doesn’t follow me through the woods 

unless heaven is real. 

they left me & i left 

myself splattered on the pavement,

spilling over the side

of the wall that separates 

the beach from the park, i’m hooked on a fence

i tried to hop and got

stuck on

you tell me the smoke

is gonna kill me, because for you it is simple:

if a building was burning you’d

jump out the window but 

my father kisses me with dragon breath. 

i am a sequoia & my roots

run deep:

i remember when they knocked me out. 

i swallowed the astroturf and then threw up 

behind the net so

i still think death tastes like burnt rubber 

the ER doctor said my brain was only bruised, 

not bleeding, give it a few weeks

& you’ll feel normal

that was seven years ago, i’m afraid 

the worst is over

& i’m no better,

the worst is over & i’m no better.

you tell me i’m not a sequoia, i’m your sunflower

& i don’t need an ax

to cut me from this town’s woodwork

but if i wasn’t birthed

& toughened by the flames

what was i? this is good damage

i’m not just damaged 

goods i swear i am also

the bubbles that came 

from my own pursed lips

when i was two and happy 

i am still cheering at the concert 

just another face in the crowd. 

the truth is when i got hit

in the head it didn’t change me

just blurred my vision

into clarity:

it took 7 years to wrap

my mind around the fact

that home is a feeling —

next time you ask me to come with you

i’ll get in the car

watch the forest melt to fields 

endless & inviting — country roads, take me home

Lucy Curtis is a fourth-year Creative Writing major from Beverly, MA. “damage” is the first poem in a series that centers on the concept of home — how it can be lovely and how it can be haunting. She has worked with COUNTERCLOCK Journal and has other pieces forthcoming in the Plum Creek Review.

Hand and feet and knuckle the knobs and burls of an oak cut down for the fireplace.

Hair from red to yellow to white to nothing.

The wood stove grows so cold it traps birds, the illusion of safety in a summer storm.

It used to glow bright against the valleys of your smile,

A fire all winter long, so hot the family was gifted a second sun.

How do you free a soul from the floorboards of a house it never left?

The ghosts you carefully studied flutter from floor to floor. 

They listen from the grate, false fingers pinched between wrought-iron vines.

Did you get to meet them before you went away?

Light shifts through a blue-glass bottle in the shape of a violin.

It sits on a thin ledge above the sink.

Cooking clutter, children bumping into cupboards, knives, rolling pins, marinade.

Nothing could ever make it fall. But it’s empty. It didn’t used to be.

Faucets leak and are fixed by hands that are not your own.

The daffodils came and went with a snap of father time’s fingers.

Clovers spring up beneath your daughter’s feet as though to cushion her as she walks.

I see a man gardening and cry because his back has the same curve as yours.

In between is empty space and then the sudden rush of a river underground

We’ve turned into water-seekers, fork-shaped branches in our hands

As we search and search for you

Gwynn Frisbie-Firsching is a fourth-year Creative Writing major. She wrote “Grief” after her grandfather’s passing in 2020. Each image in the poem is specific to her grandfather’s hobbies, passions, and home. She hopes to portray the universality of grief in everyday life while also honoring her grandfather.

]]> https://oberlinreview.org/30317/arts/photo-from-2006/ Fri, 05 May 2023 20:54:08 +0000 https://oberlinreview.org/?p=30317 Two blonde braids
thin and bent
frame that small, serious face
tiny pink elastics holding them together.

There are bees swarming splintered wood,
wind messy-ing wispy hair
I am small and trusting and safe with my legs swinging
in the empty space beneath me,
half-smiling for my mother who crouches in front of my swing
and beams behind her camera, laughing at my furrowed brow.

She says,
You always knew what I was talking about,
even when you were a baby.
I used to tell you everything.
But you got older, darker,
blonde hair turned brown bleached blonde again;
I miss those curious eyes.

Clara Carl is a College first-year and English major with a strong interest in creative writing. Her 2020 poem “Photo from 2006” is a short reflection on growing up. It highlights that the transition into adulthood is gradual, but the realization that you have changed can be very sudden.

(They deserve better)

But who am I to say anything? I don’t
Yet have my degree
In letting people down,
I don’t have a resume
Backed entirely in banknotes

(I am but a fledgling following).

I just have these thrifted jeans and crying
My waterproof mascara off in a classroom
Full of English majors—who just want to read
Margaret Cavendish in peace,
Undiluted by institutionalism

(We are little hippies)

I just have this small voice
In a copper-coated collective that’s being ignored
By a few claiming to be one of us
But who actually just want to treat
My education like a doomed case study—

(In depravity)

I am just participating
In protests for the sheer amusement
Of alumni — a technicolor snapshot
Of what they used to do when they were
Young and had something to be angry about

(Dancing for promises of the past)

I am just experiencing my first year
Of college as a senior with one foot
Already out the door, and the other wedged
Beneath a paint-chipped window hoping
It won’t close before others get a chance
To see the blue Ohio sky the way I did
Once, if only for a few
Bitter-cold seconds of fall

Kate Margaret Luke is a fourth-year student with majors in Creative Writing, Cinema Studies, and English. Her poetry and other creative work have been published in The Plum Creek Review, Wilder Voice, and Illustrations. When not writing, Kate can be found chairing the Experimental College, performing with VIBE Dance Company, or volunteering with Writers in Residence at the Lorain County Juvenile Detention Center. Kate wrote “Learning and Labor in the Key of De-” in 2022, around the time of the faculty protests and the revision of the bylaws earlier this school year. She strives to capture the melancholy, anger, and fledgling hope that she and many others were experiencing. The poem also anticipates nostalgia for a place equal parts special and fractured.