A-MUSE-ments from Assumption

  Efter tre veckor med PMC återställs måndagarna till rubriken "Studenttidskrifter". Fast den titeln är en sanning med modifikation. Det var inte så lätt att hitta rena student newspapers. Min lösning på problemet blev att välja sex litterära magasin som har sitt ursprung, eller en koppling, till något college eller universitet. Dagens journal, MUSE, är den enda som verkligen kan betecknas som en studenttidskrift.

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  "Assumption College is a private, Roman Catholic, liberal arts college located on 185 acres (708,000 m²) in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States. Assumption has an enrollment of about 2,117 undergraduates.[3] The college confers Bachelor of Arts degrees in its undergraduate program, Master of Arts and Masters of Business Administration degrees in its graduate program, and associate's degrees through its Continuing Education program." Citat från Wikipedia

  MUSE är den officiella litterära tidningen för Assumption College. Tidningen innehåller poesi, kortprosa, essäer och konstverk som bidragits av medlemmar i Assumption-gemenskapen. Alla studerande är också välkomna att bli en del av den personal som organiserar och distribuerar tidningen. Källa: Assumption College

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  Ur "Volume IV" för 2017-2018 har jag valt två textexempel. Den första är riktigt rolig, faktiskt.

What am I? (...... 24601), by Joseph Abruzi
(From MUSE : Assumption College's Literary Magazine. Vol. IV, 2017-2018.)

I’m not complex
I don’t intricately carve subtle nuances
Like Michelangelo in Florence
I’m overt and obnoxious
An on-fire caveman screaming in your face
A flaming homo erectus.
I’m not methodical or consistent:
Just some of those habits I never picked up in
middle school
Like studying
Blowing gum bubbles
Or having high self esteem

I’ll go through a year long drought
Before jumping into a river
Forgetting that I don’t really know how to swim
But I don’t really know how to drown either
So I just kind of chill there.
Oh wait that’s hypothermia.

I sift through the word-vomit that I spew out
Looking for a lump of fool’s gold
And after the words that would have had resonance
In the hands of someone better are spent
The tide of sickening motivation passes.
I am abruptly nauseated to my core
At the sight of what is before me,
And that’s just my face reflected in the computer
screen.

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Fruit pieces with peaches covered by a handkerchief (ca 1819)
Raphaelle Peale

Brick children and bruised peaches, by Nina Lynn Gonzalez
(From MUSE : Assumption College's Literary Magazine. Vol. IV, 2017-2018.)

There were those bruised, split peaches for sale,
All hanging in the corner,
Bathing in the neon, chipped paints
Of whatever sleeping bodega they chose for their shot up skinnies
To lean against for the night.

These spicks were swagging some pants
From a ghetto disco era
A few sizes too large for their shady figures,
Faces hidden in the caves around their heads,
Brown skins, black skins
Mostly brown skins where I was at—
Walking, mouths pissing on territory.
They want to own everything
With their profanities.

They came—the pink skins.
Raised their guns to the fifty stars,
Blood white and true,
Fireworks sang freedom to these streets.

The brick children looked outside of their tiny windows—if they had windows—the windows where those boxed up air conditioners stuck out of,
Looking like the bellies of their drunk papis who have no work,
Passed out dead on the couch
While mami cooks him a dinner
That he no longer tastes.

I was under a blanket
On some couch
In some living room.

A Chihuahua was with me,
Near the window of these scenes,
Tried to close my eyes to dream
But then I heard sounds coming from my wall.
My new neighbors.
Two men. Swearing.
Beating each other.

The children fell out of their windows,
Each and every screamed,
“The country I left behind
Is all around me.”