HFA Creativity Contest: Poetry

This spring, UCSB’s Humanities and Fine Arts Division hosted a creativity contest to highlight creative student voices across the UCSB campus. The following are the winning submissions in the poetry category.

1ST PLACE WINNER

Hormones Mixed With Poetic Hunger

By Kiana Perez

There is an electric current in my stomach; Stormy skies unleash anxiety and paranoia And the once blooming cicadas are watered down… Now I bare a wetland, marsh, slough of

Dead organisms

The microbes cry. I hear them in the grumbling, Like a sorrowful thunder that roars of petty hunger, They fear I might crush them; Forceful feeding can be scary

I’ll shove a dozen baby ruths Down my throat between each Lightning strike

And spin round and round For a sloppy tornado.

Everything slushes together I feel my cheeks become red and hot like Piping habaneros,

This new climate is tropical; I sweat through my camisole

And the world around me Becomes the breeze It travels East, then West There is friction as it blows Against my face,

I am never prepared For such fickle weather.

I feel I can bear unlimited emotion. There should be barriers, dams To calm the hurricanes and monsoons But I have been chosen, like Jupiter and Saturn To host self destructing weather In the depths of my organs In the depths of my womanhood.

I bleed through the days; I flood and it looks as though Someone has stabbed Mars,

I like to be compared to planets What complex do you call that When you feel you could nurture An entire population if they let you?

I can have babies, They can grow inside of me But all the flowers I’ve ever had Died in the storm, I cramp, is it endometriosis,

Can I have babies, Can they grow inside of me? My planet rots, slowly From the inside out.

This is chaos… Utter chaos.

Hold my hair while I ruin Mom’s carpet You can watch as I spit up Like a newborn baby Pat my back, please

I can be useful My tempests are not All that scary if you Know how to swim Or survive. I pain; this is my version Of hurting, though pain Punches the gut when you hear It out loud, makes you want to pity pain,

Pity me And my fucked Up brain.

But, wait!

There is hope for me, Somewhere,

If you don’t mind Searching a bit longer, I spent years, like an archaeologist To excavate the good in me

You’ll find sterling silver Laced around my heart And gold lurking In the caves of my eyes If the sun hits just right,

There is light, There is light, Even in the night… In an infinite space Of black and midnight blue There is the moon

Who they say is a woman, too.

“Even in the night…
In an infinite space
Of black and midnight blue
There is the moon

Who they say is a woman, too.”

— Kiana Perez

Kiana Perez is a second-year student double majoring in English and Black Studies who hopes to specialize in Creative Writing. After graduation, Perez plans to apply to NYU’s Master of Fine Arts program in poetry and fiction writing.

2ND PLACE WINNER

“And Venus will shower again above us,
Pouring herself out and over onto our
barren shoulders,
Loving us wholly, loving us in totality.”

— Aran Hosseini

Aran Hosseini is a third-year Biopsychology and Writing & Literature Double Major with a French Minor. Hosseini also serves on the UCSB Promise Scholar Advisory Board as Activities Coordinator.

A Romance

By Aran Hosseini

The sheets are wet and smell like the Soul-blood of a sunset somewhere standstill, whereupon a pier, dire and stained with tears, drowns its end deep into a tar pit full of hands and hearts.

Two passersby cross the pier, their veins and pupils unknown in the exchange of a phantom kiss. A trickle of blood passes between their bared backs

Give me a touch— Breath— A violet glisten from a glass eye— Wet lips carved into warm necks— Fingertips— A lavender glow weaved between our curves—

This is love’s red fountain, dearly beloved— it sits beneath a black bed, layers upon layers of coarse skin, that endless pit, sweat sewing its own skin, scarlet-like, quiet-like, upon our cheeks and brow, beading across our temples,

searching for some voluptuous god or goddess to fuck or make love with, Release—

It was either Aphrodite or Ishtar who rented us this room. A note was passed down to me, torn from the notebook she held close:

And now the room we live in sits in the middle of the flame, maybe that moistened up by hell’s tongue. The butler who tends to it calls himself a devil, but to the ordinary eye he comes off as a regular at Barma’s Cabaret. The whores always gather ‘round when he comes in. Each, by a shaky, craving hand, over pour whisky into his glass until a lake rises from the ground up and pools around their thighs. Their gold-dipped breasts are a void and their faces are all careful matte of musty gray and smeary black.

But the devil is a kind man—he neither smacks his lips at the tableau staged before him, nor does he unspool his eyes. All is forbidden. The devil is an angel and the angel on stage, stripped down to nothing with the jazz ensemble behind her, is the devil; tonight, she will sing with tears in her eyes, then ecstasy will unravel her through and through, her legs will fly up high, split corpse-like into two, the soles flattening on the bed with knees darted up for the rest

True-love fabrication—

Flowers rush out of the floorboards and the peelings of paint on the walls. The lustrous green blooms from out of the carpet, taking out from its neck-side mole more lilacs, roses, and carnations, all monochrome, half-withered, half-wet, half unbloomed. Vines creep in from the cracks in the edges, from the corner-holes, a waterfall breaking through the roof from no-place and holding our bed afloat, two wavering lovers hiding parts behind veils. And when love’s red fountain has finally dried out, all that lives inside will remain dead forever. Our daguerreotype, 1848, will have faded out completely; whoever’s child is left within it lies buried under the claw marks of recombinant love, ever flowing, ever whispering. The closed door will reopen, the bastard sun will reveal itself, and the moon will have been gone, seduced by her envious old-lover

modern man— modern man of infinite flesh— modern man of hollowed pleasures— modern man of the eternal rot— modern man of ripeness deprived—

O, modern man— stab thyself with thy causal blade,

cleanse thyself of conceited sin,

For if it is love whom you wish to bear, then love it is whom with the barest hands you will sculpt on your lonesome, for love is who you yourself, in all your starry quintessence, were sculpted out to be.

And that will be when we turn away,

Either to some memory or to another, The lighted things now botched up and crackly. 4:00:38 and he crumbles, for he does not love him, And what she had written for her was never poetry, But perhaps something more delicate and vile deep-down, A lullaby for herself alone, wordless, soundless, tired of the world and tired of those who claimed to love. But the hands never lie. The crumpled lines whisk on through and then a runny nose, Back to the bitter field she goes, Tired of the world alone, Tired of those who claimed to love her.

And Venus will shower again above us, Pouring herself out and over onto our barren shoulders, Loving us wholly, loving us in totality.

Paris, paper-mâché— New atoms lace whole between our held hands— The ridges on the palms warm, fit— Hairs blowing in light wind— Hope.

رد شوغآ کی زیچ

Aimer:

J’écrivis une fois un poème pour Eurydice. Je ne fus jamais son amant; je ne fus jamais Orphée; mais j’écrivis toujours pour elle. Peut-être que je l’aimais comme lui. Est-ce possible ? Aimer quelqu'un comme un démon ; quelqu'un que l’on ne recontra jamais, mais dont on entendit des histoires ; quelqu'un pour qui même la poésie ne tremble pas.

J’écrivais une fois pour une autre. J’écrivais comme un enfant, avec des mots cassés et une innocence inconnue. J’écrivais pour elle dans toutes les langues de l’amour. Je ne fus jamais poète; mais j’écrivais toujours pour elle, pour moi

même. Peut-être qu’elle m’aima

Mais je ne l’ai jamais regardée, donc je ne saurais jamais.

Et alors pour qui est-ce que j'écris cette amère histoire de mélancolie ?

Deux amoureux sont assis sous un cerisier noir en fleurs. Ils s'embrassent - le printemps est arrivé et les pétales blanches descendent comme la neige des nuages qui tournent au-dessus. Son parapluie tombe sur le sol. Et s'il y a des cygnes, il y en a des milliers, entourant le couple, volant et emportant avec eux leurs vierges solitudes dans la brume. Car il va bientôt pleuvoir, et elle peut mourir de maladie — la maladie de l'oubli, de l'étreinte, de la romance et de la tragédie, du passage éphémère façonné entre elle et son amant, alors qu’ils entrent les portes du ciel, deux yeux qui se ferment en une paire de cils froids. Auxdieux

—où qu’ils soient.

3RD PLACE WINNER

Notes to Emily

By Vivian Walman-Randall

First line left unsaid I must pretend this stunted rose bud Is as special as all that I can make the unused tampon at The bottom of my trash can -sing I can sing Unopened- red wax seal Emily - - -

Are you listening? Do I make you cry?

And so, then, the dice is thrown I am again left To be butchered By the mistakes of my own making Harsh night, harsh thoughts Turn me to Candied violets So I can be Sweet to taste and be Seen.

Simplicity.

This is good I must bite the hand That offers doubt Each page heavy With writers blood The stupid and inconsequential -It must be wrung out- each drop

I beg you Tell me it’s meaningful.

At a lunch event, the third-place winner in the poetry category for HFA's creativity contest, Vivian Walman-Randall, accepted her award from the Acting Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts, Mary Hancock.

Vivian Walman-Randall is currently completing her undergraduate degree at UCSB with a major in Creative Writing and Literature and a minor in the History of Art and Architecture. After she graduates, Walman-Randall plans to pursue creative writing at the graduate level.