This is my second time introducing my Advanced Poetry Workshop to the magnificent and potent 32 Poems. This year, like last year, it was one of the highlights of the course: a truly eye-opening and heart-deepening encounter with poetry as well as a useful peek at the gears behind the clock face of a journal. My enduring gratitude to David Clark for speaking with my students about the editorial process, and to everyone at 32 Poems for making each issue so impressive.

After a couple of classes of discussing issue no. 42—where we noted the lines or poems that surprised, were revelatory in their mystery or thrilling in their showcasing of the extraordinary range of possibilities—I invited my students to write poems that responded to, leapt from, built on, or otherwise engaged with one of the poems in the journal. What you see here is a selection of five student poems that have flown through the windows opened by the work of Steve Castro (and yes, Steve, that metaphor is for you), Stephanie Staab, Hailey Leithauser, Will Cordeiro, and Elizabeth Metzger into formal landscapes and emotional territories they might not otherwise have found.

–Rosalie Moffett, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing
University of Southern Indiana

Infenestrate
Autumn Cohara

After “Defenestration” by Steve Castro

I am daydreaming of minnows
as we meander across the bridge.
Staring over the side into the shallow river,
I notice the way the light reflects,
and squint as if I can see their tiny
bodies cast shadows
onto the silt.

I think of when we were younger,
the afternoons spent bathed in sunlight
filtered through leaves, when we attempted
to catch the elusive fish between our fingers,
with our uncoordinated splashes
and unburdened laughter.

I think of how the wind might feel
rushing through my fingers in a stream.
I think of the sound of my body hitting the water.
It is a sinister and subtle ideation that approaches
me with the casual stride of an old friend,
plucks my tongue from my mouth
and pinches it between
two slices of bread.

You ask me why I’ve stopped, and I am unsure
how to explain the abrupt entry of such a thought
through the narrow gap of my mind’s window.

So, I don’t, and it thrashes
against the walls of my mind until its wings break.

Dreaming Is My Lifework
Nathan Ruppel

After “Safety Coffin” by Stephanie Staab

In the space between dreams and awake, for a moment, I enter a new realm, a new feeling where I don’t remember anything. I believe this is what peace feels like. And this lasts 5 seconds until I reentered my old familiar life.

*

In a conversation with my brother, who knows all the unnecessary facts, I learned that sleep is always accompanied by dreams. Dreams are forgettable. They are invisible but always there, accumulating in a creeping mass.

*

During the day, I am constantly daydreaming. I don’t believe there is ever a moment when I am not dreaming. It’s hard to tell, and I think I sometimes prefer to daydream. My appearance is always different. I am never myself.

Dreamy
Courtney Glover

After “The One Who Ate the Sugar” by Hailey Leithauser

The one who stole the moon,
gave me goosebumps, helped me
bloom, gifted flowers, shared
showers, talked for hours until
I opened my eyes and could not see
yours. I had never felt a love
a love that all consumed, please
more than a dream, a wish, desire
I am burning fueled by our fire I must know
you, the one who stole the moon.

After Will Cordeiro’s “Elegy for Myself”
Kelsey Lang

Where did time go?
The time where the world was filled with
technicolor brilliancy,
when our father would carry my
sleeping form from the car,
to the bed,
even when he knew we were truly awake.
Grass blades grappling our bodies
as we roll down the hills,
ignoring the sting of their micro-incisions,
until we wash the day from our bodies.
When rusted swings creaked and moaned
their discordant hymns
as we sat upon them, flying higher and higher,
fruitlessly reaching for the higher power
our ancestors once craved.

Beach Day
Maci Crowell

After “Into Her Future” by Elizabeth Metzger

I went to a beach full of people
and they were all dead.

The sand was hardly visible
and the water pink-grey.

I stepped over the
Alvin’s island floppy hats and

Black-red stained swimwear.
To find a poor little bogue fish flopping on the shore. Helpless it jumped

side to side
Like a white flag waving in war.

I threw him back to the sea
Not a chore, but a remedy.

I feel sandy hands grab my ankle and beg me for the umpteenth time
to call an ambulance.

I tell the hands that not everything is about them.