Founded in the fall of 1991, Laurel Moon is Brandeis' oldest, national literary publication. Each issue we publish features original work from undergraduate students.
You hum within your rib cage on the road from Pittsburgh,
the field beside you like a greyhound keeping pace,
darting forward, folding back to take you by the face
and aim you, girl and righteous smoker, toward
the underbelly of the Northeast, electrolyte
supper, a desperate noise that might
be coins skipping from one cup to the next.
You hum at us spending so much of our lives
weeping in the supermarket, mooning over the wives
of men who work in textile factories, on steamboats
or pockmarked highways, every stranger washed clean
as the Bible. Hum for good ol’ cotton jeans
and railroad schoolboys, a plucky son of a firearm
who never got his tail kicked by the tracks, mister.
You hum at bake sales, long winters, baseball pitchers
both novel and decorated. Servicewomen, immortal pastries,
a rich and varied armchair built for studies and reviews.
Those old men, only thirty, wearing many different hues.
Road twines with grassland, army brats, and sheep. Inevitably,
you will always seek that girl, your rainfall suitcase,
the field beside you like a greyhound keeping pace.