This week I’m proud to submit more poems from our peers. The weather is turning colder, and sickness stalks us on our late nights. It swept into my house and shook me over the toilet before throwing me on the couch, hot, tired, sweaty and ill-brained. Best wishes as the mid-semester comes coldly. Rest well, drink fluids and keep reading.

As always, if you have any poems or prose you’d like to publish in The Beacon, please send them to me at liammwoodworthcook@smccme. Now, dear professors, this goes the same for you! Please submit your work if you have the interest. Also, if you happen to be reading this and know some creative writers and poets, mention that The Beacon is always looking for more work!

This week I present a poem from one of the loudest writers we have, Alex Downing!

I also would like to introduce Magella Cantara joining the submission list.

Not a Victim Just The Result
By Magella Cantara

A victim, is a person harmed, injured even killed in the event of an accident or crime.
Result, is a consequence, conclusion or outcome.

There’s not much difference in between.

While Mother cried over the sink vomiting up her own misery from the day he arrested her with a wedding ring she is now his victim.

Their only daughter, at 16, peeling off chains down her back the way a tattoo does, is now a result.

An asylum of a dogs jaw getting broken by passing sirens, buried his darkest secrets he believed where hidden in that nightclub

Their daughter is tearing between seams of a couch in the living room he tucked her goodnight in.

Mother started to deny his insanity after locked in a crazy house once he held that shotgun at his side.

The way her words repeated like a trained parrot made it hard to see he wasn’t a good man.

After all their daughter was full of pride to call him a father until the day he never held her hand.

Mother couldn’t see through the cloudy breaths of his drug deals in the back woods, couldn’t see he slept with his employees, can’t see he’s a liar, cheater, coward, not even the trophies he kept of all those women in his office beside her wedding picture.

Even though my mother won’t admit she’s under a routine of power, a victim to a crazy man, she still loves in lies.

After all the remarks made too her face out of hatred from my mistakes.

People have said she’s strong when they don’t recognize she is weak.

Too tied to escape.

Mother when you look at me.

Do you see the victim or just a result of your mistakes.

Exploitation
By Alex Downing

We met under grey suede skies.

I, an unkempt vagabond of a forgotten time,

And you, a structured jacket on the shoulder blades of society.

At first, you seemed fair and impartial to my muchness;

Like a curious onlooker to an event in which you held no bias.

But I remember the day in the coffee shop downtown.

You told me that my tragedies had become your music.

That my sorrow was enviable in the way good things are enviable.

You said, “You are the type of girl that men write songs about.”

And then you left, without so much as a goodbye,

And wrote a song about me.

Patience Holds Close
By Liam Woodworth-Cook

Fragile heart ponders purple

departure.

Fragrance coils nostrils a swift

scent.

Inscribing forgiveness

open sky pelts my forehead.

10,000 conversations

underbelly of our eye lashes.

Gash in tongue swallow,

silence of Winter ferment.

Your anvil heart thaws-

My pillows melt with salt healing.

We don’t touch certain words as slumbering nudity

Greets yesterday’s clothes.

Here is a whispering bell,

A braided blanket,

relics uncovered in steeping of spring.