feet
by karliekauffeld

I like shoes. I like to look at them. I’d really rather not wear them. My feet are feelers. It’s like I’ve got antennae-toes.
When I walk to class I fight the desire to unlace my shoes and carry them in my hand with the heels knocking together. My feet like to feel. I think they get nervous when they don’t know what they are walking on.

I like the sound my feet make on dirt roads. It’s not a slap, it’s a thwap, and my feet like it too.

I hate the sound of flip-flops. That’s a slap. It’s an arrogant, plastic-Barbie slap. My brown converse is sick and it cries on every step. The rubber soul slaps in a drawn out manner because it knows it’s not supposed to be slapping-it knows it’s far above the filthy flip-floppers, and yet there it is slapping down the path, but really dragging it out in denial.

So I walk barefoot, and wet grass goes ahead and makes a sock on my foot. I pull it off in clumps. Sometimes I step down hard on a stone and my foot longs for the protection of a shoe…the corseted armor.

But mostly my feet dance on the linoleum, on the carpet, on the tile. And I feel guilty and think of how now I’ll get swine because I’ve probably stepped in someone’s infected excrement. But my feet don’t know-so they go on dancing anyway.

first and only
by lizcantrell

it started off so slow,
like leaves reaching toward the sky
i thought i was fine on my own
but you took somewhere i had known all along
my first and my only
my always
my perfect day
never forget the tan warmth of your skin,
the way you laughed like a soft morning rain
you told me i shined, you pulled me in,
and right then i knew you were
my first and my only
my always
my perfect day
dreaming up at the stars
calling on God to take us there
it was always the two of us
thinking we could fly anywhere
my first and my only
my always
my perfect day
even now i see your smile, when i whispered those three words
i told you i would say it first
and now i’ll say it last,
i’ll say it forever
my first and my only
my always
my perfect day
my love
that will never go away

neighbors
by ariellemuller

You live next door.
You give us booze.
I’m not a whore.
You like to snooze.
You play loud tunes,
And take cold showers.
In many moons,
We see late hours.
With baggy shirts,
And tripled rooms.
We wear short skirts.
You eat with spoons.
Glow sticks alight,
And unmade beds
My roommate said,
She’ll give you head.

nap time
by meganlong

A stiff neck falls loose
and a head bobs back
look to see if anyone noticed
weights on eyelashes pull them shut
about to slip into a deep sleep
my eyes burn and i struggle
to keep them open
asleep i go
on this desk
in the first row

pinocchio's promotion
by marierobinson

Pinocchio tottered after President Fogel toward the cruise ship dining salon, his little wooden head still reeling with the thought of his promotion. Vice President of Marionette Affairs—it was so large, so important! He, a little wooden-headed dummy who had at one time wanted nothing more than to become a real boy, he was a Vice President at a university! And not just any university, either. Oh, no, no ordinary SUNY school for him. No, he was a Vice President at the University of Vermont, the most expensive state university in the entire United States of America!

And this entire trip…well, it was for him, to recognize his promotion. An entire cruise ship sailing the Mediterranean Sea, just for him. Pinocchio hadn’t even known that cruise ships could be rented.

Fogel held the salon door open for his new Vice President, smiling at him the way he smiled at all his VPs. This is going to work, he thought. After last spring’s Waterman protest, he needed someone that everyone knew, someone to be a liaison to the wholly unreasonable student population. Someone honest enough to make the students believe him and trusting enough to believe whatever he was told. Fogel knew he had made the right choice in Pinocchio. Vice President of Marionette Affairs—what a clever cover title for the wooden-headed dummy. It was the perfect way to diffuse the students’ anger: give them a vice president they could not doubt. Fogel smiled at his own brilliance.

Now to introduce his new VP to the 23 others.

The cruise ship salon was lavish, carpeted in thick red-and-gold carpet, with gilt-frame mirrors along three of the walls and large windows on the fourth looking out over the ocean. The room was mostly empty—as it was supposed to be; Fogel had spent most of that tuition hike to rent this ship, so the room had better be private!—the one occupied table drawn close to the four-piece jazz band that played unobtrusively in the corner.

“Ah, the new Vice President!” called one of the 23 well-dressed men at the table.

Pinocchio waved. “Hi, I’m Pinocchio. I’m the new Vice President of Marionette Affairs.” The title slipped off his wooden dummy tongue like butter off hot toast, and he relished it.

The men at the table laughed. “Of course you are,” a different man agreed.

“It’s a very important job,” Fogel added, taking his seat at the head of the table and beginning to pick through the food loaded on the table. “Many students today are bringing their marionettes to school, and we need someone to make sure their rights are upheld. And I believe that you, Pinocchio, are—What’s this?” His sentence cut short as his eyes fell on the china dish set in front of him, and Pinocchio watched with some alarm as his usually-reddened face turned greyish with rage. “Beluga!?” Fogel shrieked. “I specifically requested we all be served giant squid!”

A waiter in a white suit and black bowtie materialized at his side and whisked the offending dish away. Fogel smiled at the VPs around the table and resumed. “You are, I am sure, the best marionette for the job.”

“Oh, yes, sir,” Pinocchio said. “I won’t let you down!”

The VPs clapped politely.

Pinocchio smiled at the man to his left. “Hi, I’m Pinocchio, the Vice President of Marionette Affairs.” Never would he grow tired of saying it—it made him so very important.

“I’m Tom, Vice President of Piano Benches,” the man replied.

“And I’m Dick, Vice President of Spider and Ant Welfare,” said the man on Tom’s other side.

This sent off a round of Vice President introductions. Pinocchio didn’t catch all the names and titles at once, but he couldn’t help admiring the brilliance and importance of the ones he did hear: Vice President of Burnt-Out Electrical Sockets, Vice President of Potato Starch Utensils. (“They’re compostable, so they reduce landfill clutter. At the moment, we’re looking into a 1.2 million dollar campaign to get them in every dining center on campus,” the VPoPSU added.) But the dummy’s favorite title was also the very most important one: Vice President of Davis Center Upholstery. Mmm, how did Fogel come up with such brilliant ideas?

The white-clad waiter returned, this time bearing a bowl that he swore contained specially-prepared giant squid. Fogel smiled at him, the particularly kind and sympathetic smile he lavished on students during his listening tours, and served himself a liberal helping. “And I want to tell you, my little wooden-headed friend, the salary for the new Vice President of Marionette Affairs will be quite decent. I’m thinking of starting you off at $500,000 a year, but that is certainly negotiable.”

Pinocchio was surprised. He had never seen that much money. Stick that in your flesh, all you real boys, he thought. I’m the Vice President of Marionette Affairs and making $500,000 a year!

“Hmm, another Vice President making a half-million a year…that’ll require more students and another tuition hike to support,” one man, the Vice President of Cell Phone Service, mused.

“And another round of professor lay-offs,” another, the Vice President of Lawn Mowing, added.

Fogel shrugged and ladled more squid onto his plate. He loved giant squid. “Aw, they’re just college kids. Their parents pay for everything, and they never go to classes anyway.”

“That’s true,” several men agreed as they tucked into their own personal banquet on their own personal cruise ship sailing the Mediterranean—and they didn’t even have to pay for it out of their pockets!

Halfway across the world, on the University of Vermont campus, 11,000 students lived in forced triples on Redstone, crammed into overfilled classes taught by under-qualified teachers, and were arrested for protesting against their ever-increasing tuition.