Wordplay

Alex Harrington ’19

This month we’re especially excited to feature the creative work of Ben LeBlanc ’20, starting next semester as a new Associate Editor of The Words! Ben started writing in third grade with a full length “Michigan Chillers” fan-fiction series, and now half of his poems are about how much he hates doing laundry. His long term goal is to publish a work of experimental poetry interpreting old Japanese academic texts into English. Welcome to The Words, Ben!

Shovel

I’m
scooping beards
ripe out of the hilltop
you, exposing tumbling mouths you
need to find out yourself
how the sky uncovers pockets
pushed into wishful hands by rogue roots
they catch the light like tunnels
caught devouring streams of bolted seats
little suitcases and tapping fingers
on windows, wet skin-peeled bandages
all at once, ripping
day dreams across a lateral cave
undealt weight of
mountain
I’m

feverish
shoveling pounds
of swampy self-affirmation
asking understand to a comforter
buried deep into my chattering mouth
I swim caverns of gripped books and backpacks
dripping missed calls into toothy constructs
and you, yards west in a shed slanting
off an oily, peeling backdrop
you know I’ll dig, bring
a splinter home
withdraw

to streams
of silent groundwater
and kneel
and cup the fresh between my lips