Founded in the fall of 1991, Laurel Moon is Brandeis' oldest, national literary publication. Each issue we publish features original work from undergraduate students.
Some things you’d best know before you know me best.
To name someone is a re[flex]/[flection], a coat of
hairtrigger silver on the silhouette, that’s the shape but they
see themselves thrown back, thrown back
like my ass for you whenever asked, some things best left in
bed before you knew me best. If I’m a sheep shagger
then what’s that make Mr. Sheppard, the heard[ed]?
What clothing are you in, then? Where have you heard[ed] them?
How reflective is your sheep[coat]/[cote]? Can’t be as silver as mine, I’m
a dancer pole chromed by re[flex]/[flection]: slicked thighs and polished bills, hard
as dick and easy as the money that comes with. A wolf amongst them,
before knowing me best that’s all I knew: sheep's clothing.
To name me wolf is to name the most obvious thing: it is to pluck
a dollar from your wallet and put it under my fleece thong (thinking you
are the first to have ever tipped).
Sam Richards is from Bristol, Maine, and primarily writes from lived experience as a poet of witness both to his own life, as well as the lives of those he feels representative of his place within the greater 21st century diaspora/despair. Currently enrolled at Brandeis University, in the undergraduate Psychology department.