Fall arrives on campus as acorns litter Linfield’s sidewalks and leaves blanket the ground. The season calls for a warm cup of chai or spiced cider. It puts us at the Review in the mood to snuggle up with our steaming mugs and read a good poem. We dug up the work of a few of Linfield’s well-versed poets to put you into an autumn state of mind, too. So grab your mug and your softest blanket, and cozy up to these poems:

liner notes
By Jordan Jacobo, senior

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
— T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

oh, but we’ve had enough of these
Odyssean wanderings,
we’ve heard enough of Aegean’s
constant, hushed sound,

we’ve wept enough for innocence,
for the facade that’s been
peeled away, faded, tattered,
the stale yellow wallpaper of
a forgotten, forlorn aesthetic
and you—you tell us to have hope,
you want us to look forward
without fear, to stare out
at ocean waves on clear,
moonlit nights and not
be sad for the things
that have slipped away
silently and surely.

we’re resolute in this view
of the ever-changing,
windswept, maddened world,
where no man (or woman)
can discover any unknown lands.

all the treasures we hold are known
and the thoughts we have are built
upon the mouldering foundations
of ragged generations, for
the air here is musty,
there is chaos in the mind,
as the squalid people sit with
cups of coffee and newspapers
that go unread, echoing the calls
for lost truths that will
never return to us.

—let us go then,
leave this place
and not look back,
for the friends and
former lovers
we abandon
will forgive us,
will forget us.
time, ticking away
will take us to tomorrow.

cloud Gazing
By Sammi Mack, senior

Meadow flowers fragment
and float downwind
scattered dust, leaving wishes
like ashes, gently
dissolving.
Skyward, popcorn kernels burst
to life, caught by rays
that slant and bend
round bulbous curves, melting
butter yellow across smooth
smoky curls.
Pop!
Curious, I reach aloft and pluck
those soft, airy cambers
that bloom
brilliant in their blue bowl—
while sweet summer sunshine
melts like light
on my tongue.

indivisible
By Lauren Funtanilla, senior

Evening lights the pier as people
retire to husbands and to wives
leaving the woodened walkway vacant
except for you. You, wihose shadow lurks
amid the city’s silhouette reflected
in the bay’s drowsy, rocking blue.
Strangers. Seekers of solace. Stepping
lightly together and without words,
our silence pulls us close
and holds Time’s hands still.
Our bodies immobile by an invisible sail
folded, tucked and tightened
’round like the sea’s breeze. I breathe
wisps of rain, waiting for the morrow
carried in the undercurrents
of an organic moment. Heartbeats
pulsing in harmony, in and out,
matching the rhythm of the tide
a moon-tide lullaby like echoing quartz
weathering at the bottom of the sea.

Your eyes lock to mine, unlocking my lies.

And I haven’t the courage to not
blink. Releasing me from you,
saved from becoming indivisible
like water. The self left whole
as my feet, instructed by the mind,
carry me away.

real Estate
By Stephen Dennis, senior

We have only so much
space inside our heads.
Facts slide around like butter
on a hot plate, effortlessly moving
to the periphery of memory in
order to accommodate the push
created by an order for a tall,
non-fat, double soy, vanilla latte or
your mother’s birthday.

My Bible stories are hazy and I don’t
remember the generals of Gettysburg,
but I can recite Collins’ Aristotle by
memory and I know she turns
fifty-seven on February 23rd.

Eventually Collins will glide to a corner,
making room for two or three sets of nine
digit numbers and we won’t do anything
special on the 23rd of February.

All I will remember then of now is the
dryer running at your apartment,
tumbling my socks and shorts while I sat
in your kitchen watching you make
lesson plans. That, and the giant
oak in the corner of my grandparent’s
lawn, rising like a sylvan Hiroshima
over the block.

setting the Alarm
By Lex Runciman, professor of English

Late arc of stars
and clouds in slow revolve, six hours
to fall asleep and stay asleep dreaming –
but I’ve been reading about fear,
and now spring, 1963, I’m 12,
walking from school to my Aunt’s house.
No busses after a nuclear bomb: this is practice
for walking somewhere safe in half an hour.
(If it’s not practice, my father is dead.)

The road turns and dips, all downhill.
My toes bump at the ends of my shoes.
The knuckles and bones of each hand swing.
Body and toes, and this mailbox and this mailbox,
and that broken glass and those tall grasses
and that crumpled paper will all go white,
white hot to ash, white hot to ash, white hot
to ash – it’s just a rhythm, nothing happens.

Sky to the west is clouds,
crazy tops increasing out of themselves,
flat bottoms widening and almost black.
I walk. They drift this way,
east and north. Soundless. Slow.
They just float.