How are you in transit? How are we in transit? We a campus. We a city. We a society. Submit your creative works to issue 10.1 of our journal for Fall 2019!
Dogwoods and peach trees will bloom soon,
Patching white-pink beauty across highways
And state lines where rusted kudzu- covered
Signs spread lies that bite like sand flies.
Voices rise over backseat bus rides and echo
Through the Alabama green grass hills:
We Dare Defend our Rights as long as we are white.
Charleston-white paint peels from crumbling
Plantations while Proud Boys chant in the streets:
While I Breathe, I Hope blood and soil, now we choke.
Mississippi magnolias stand proud in a crooked way
Over the Delta where toads and Jim-Crows sing:
By Valor and Arms racism is just a part of Southern charm.
In Georgia, thrashers warble from the mountain loblollies
Down into the dusty peanut plains where old words grow again:
Wisdom, Justice, Moderation welcome to the new nation.
[Gage is a senior English student at Georgia State University. Originally from Zebulon, GA, he has been living and writing in Atlanta since 2014.]
WELCOME! Cayce Tiedemann, here— your Editor in Chief for the upcoming 2019-2020 year. Underground Journal is GSU’s only art and literary journal featuring our students, by our students. We publish art, prose, and poetry from undergrads twice a year via our Fall and Spring issues. Our website, social media, and entire organization will be undergoing some major updates in the coming weeks. If you’d like your writing to be featured virtually in between calls for submissions, please reach out to info@undergroundjournal.org.
A little about me…
I was previously Poetry Editor of Underground and before that— featured twice with poems I wrote after taking a loooong hiatus from creative writing. I’m proof that it’s never too late to start (or return to) your creative endeavors. I’m eager and grateful for the opportunity to connect with all of you. Please stay tuned for details on our monthly Creative Writing Workshops held on campus and Open Mic Nights at the Troy Moore Library.
With cowbells and castanets,
My heart goes like a fat bird.
I want you to find me.
My body curves limply
like someone falling through air
but I am caught and cradled,
rolled inside a metal ball.
I am the little breathing pupil
in a mechanical eye.
The ocean moves in my ear
like when mom showed me
how seashells have an ocean in them.
It is like winter here and everything
is white, the white so big it dazes you.
I am nobody if you can’t see me.
I float in white air with no face,
just breaths coming and going,
until you find me and your voice
makes the cold metal tremble.
[Atlanta native Flannery is a rising senior at Georgia State University.]
