Sine Cera Anthology

I am excited to be published with Sine Cera's April 2012 anthology, Bread on Mondays! Join me for the publication debut, where I will be reading one of my three pieces this Thursday at 6 p.m. on the fourth floor of the Salt Lake City library. You can pick up your own copy of the anthology at the Salt Lake Library or the Community Writing Center. You can also browse the digital version when it is up here. Thanks for including me in your anthology, Sine Cera!

@ 2012 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved

What We Weren't: On Choosing a Graduate School

They said they saw in us some unequivocal something.
They thought we would fit in their gold-trimmed boxes.
They sought to keep us on their neatly-paved sidewalks.
They assumed we wouldn't wonder when we looked upon the sky.

But we have walked to the edge of their fortresses.
And we have stood at the crest of their constructs, where all the sidewalks end.
We have seen the place where the world is all quietness - 
have felt the pulse, the heartbeat of the earth when lying against her,
have felt the weightlessness of gravity when standing to our full height. 

And we have found the others who had been there. 
We have felt the silent jolt of envy when we found their creeds in droplets of ink,
their breath still heaving in and out with each turn of the page.
We felt as if we were there, heir to that last lingering vowel upon their parted lips,
so very raptured by their audacious inditements. 

That was the day we discovered what we weren't. 
We weren't able to turn our back on the sound of our own rhyme.
We couldn't ignore the blank space between the lines. 
We had not the aptitude to drop the pen, nor any remorse that may purge us of our mutiny. 

We weren't anybody's lock-pickers.
We weren't the suppressed, the compromised, the unfeeling;
We weren't to be boxed, nor held within a concrete barrier.
We weren't in want of privilege, born into it or not.
We weren't the unknown, and we could never be the unscripted. 
For we weren't, most inconveniently - nay, most delightfully, anything but writers.

@ 2012 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved {photo}

Monday Quote

We are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will. To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Ulysses, Lord Tennyson

A Secret Garden

@ 2011 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved {photos via and pinterest}  

Rush Hour

They are my rivals

and yet -

also my comrades.

Each one of them,

boldly making their way across

the battlefields of the home-bound.

Bumper against bumper,

cheek-to-cheek.

Notwithstanding the trappings of

our own tires,

we press on.

Against the peril

of waning time,

we persevere.

Despite the dangers of

our wielding the wheel,

we march forward,

foot

to

pedal.

We are the unclaimed front-liners,

left to our own thoughts.

{for some, a treasured rarity; for others, an unsolicited terror}

We are the absent subscribers,

unaccounted for upon the first step before the front door.

{when the moment has at last come upon us}

We are the unsung lovers,

waiting for the moment of remittance,

{against the crude barriers of a road block}

We are the flightless birds,

lingering restlessly in a sea of frozen schedules.

We are the presumptuous cretins,

who have the audacity to dare defy the dimensions, the breadth of this world.

Mock us, if you will.

But you do not know us if you presume we will lose grasp of the wheel.

@ 2011 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved {photo vi.sualize.us}

snoitcelfəЯReflections

Her tiny, balled-up fists

pounded my clear surface,

as she stared inquisitively back

at the endearing rug rat

the reflection of her eyes so bright and blue

Everything so beautiful to her,

so full of wonder, so new

Smears of peanut butter fingerprints

smudged upon my glass exterior's tint,

blending between the freckles

of a pig-tailed one with unsteady ankles.

Passing me, she lingers,

her reflection a moving target

for whatever object lay within those fingers.

She had scampered, unnoticed, to mother's closet,

Returning before me with red, off-centered lips

Scooting on tips of oversized heels,

The pearls swayed against her in numerous teals.

She straightened her posture and curtsied with valor

to the girl who stared back;

the girl who had sought to grow up in an hour.

Morning alarms brought her before me again,

but the girl looked back this time in repulsion.

She pulled and tugged at her hair, allowing no assuage,

burying freckles upon her cheeks beneath layers of camouflage.

The wish to grow up still her it did tempt,

but only long enough for her to

stomp out in contempt.

Hours we spent, just her and I

before she left for her friends and the new guy.

Giddily she primped, perfection she sought to mend,

mulling over the length of her hair, the size of her waist, every split end

hair dyes became her everyday composite,

as she was

Consumed between the colors of fabric in her closet.

College brought her to books and intellectual charades

living between early-morning library visits and late-night research escapades.

She spotted me sometimes, before she left the room.

Hand on the doorknob, her trip to campus she'll eventually resume.

Stopping to first peer back at the girl with glasses, hair tossed atop her head,

wondering what this inspired, overworked girl will do with the life ahead.

She cantered into the darkness one Saturday night, smiling like a fool.

She sung off-tune symphonies to me in the mornings, as she danced upon the stool.

She scribbled poems upon me with toothpaste at night,

whispering soliloquies to communicate her delight.

Her eyes twinkled every time she glanced at the girl singing the song,

seeing something she hadn't yet seen,

though it had been there all along.

Frazzled hair, sleepless nights of lullabies and tantrums;

Her reflection ran back and forth daily, leaving me to my quiet pendulums,

On those sparse nights when she slowed down,

leaving the leftovers out, the toys on the ground,

she gazed toward me, no longer seeing herself as the only gem,

but three others within those aging eyes

that began to hold forever in them.

Sore joints, swollen limbs

wrinkled smiles, eyes going dim.

They would forever imprint the mark of something given,

something sacrificed,

the one thing for which she has remained driven.

Parched lips, shaky, frail arms,

at last she eyed me knowingly, under different terms.

Brushing back a whisp of gray hair,

Her body parting with all its wear.

I sensed the end was drawing near.

She would never again search my surface for herself,

for I ceased to hold anything for the woman who at last saw herself without a mirror.

@ 2011 by Rachel Lowry. All Rights Reserved {flickr & vi.sualize.us}

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Yellow Me

Yellow was the color of my first newly sharpened pencil.

Yellow were the blossoms that twirled to the earth each spring.

Yellow was the thread of my favorite sundress – the soft cotton that brushed my legs.

Yellow was the rippled topping of the custard I bought on the corner of Piccadilly and 47^th.

Yellow was between the cracks of the family beach house.

Yellowed were the aged photographs of my English and Scottish ancestors.

Yellow were the morning rays that dictated each new beginning.

Yellow was the beat of the bass within my size six sneakers.

Yellow I saw every time I came home again.

Yellow were the traces of human connection.

Yellow was the mysterious.

Yellow was the hope of something beyond this and the charm of the ordinary contained within.

Yellow was in the delicate whisper of my first love.

Yellow was spontaneity.

Yellow was the tanginess at the tip of both tongue and cognition.

Yellow were the shades of twitterpation.

Yellow was the warmth of my mother’s womb, the jolt of life outside it.

Yellow was the brightness of opportunity.

Yellow was the space between hard work and luck.

Yellow were the footprints upon paths taken.

Yellow was the perfume of productivity.

Yellow was in the seams of experience.

Yellow were the chords that lifted my heart and drew my eyes heavenward.

Yellow echoed in chant of maybe’s and what if’s.

Yellow were the unspoken thoughts between a good friend and I.

Yellow was the crunch of fall leaves underneath my galoshes.

Yellow was the softness of my freshly cleaned sheets straight from the dryer.

Yellow was the feel of my hand in his.

Yellow was the aroma of Friday Morning.

Yellow was the loveliness of femininity.

Yellow is the beam of my sister’s laughter.

Yellow is the ideology of my truest heroes.

Yellow are the giggles of a child.

Yellow was the taste of unconditional, inexpressible love.

Yellow was my song.

Yellow saved me.

Yellow awakened me.

It was Yellow for which I longed during those nights that would never end.

It was for Yellow I refused to give in.

It is Yellow for which I have always fought.

© 2010 by Rachel Lowry. All rights reserved. {photo via wolfandwillow}

Irregular as Clockwork

Irregular as Clockwork

I have known

the clockwork of the heart.

I know it to be as constant as a moment,

as buoyant as concrete

as predictable as life.

I know it to be as volatile as appetite.

as certain as doubt’s shadow,

as capricious as the sun’s agenda.

It beats,

a rhythmic jolt within the detainment of my body.

It pulses,

venturing to verify existence.

It thumps,

echoing the deafening cry of silence.

It flutters,

in erratic ecstasy.

It throbs,

with raw apprehension.

It yearns

with unrestrained longing.

It aches,

as fractured as splintered wood.

It soars,

above skies of untouchable and weightless euphoria.

It grinds,

between the jagged edges of consciousness.

It burns,

like red pepper seers the inside of a vein.

It skips,

at the shift of relativity.

It presses,

like a boulder to the chest.

It sings,

In frivolously vital giddiness.

It sinks,

With the weight of fallen possibility.

It expands,

In divine wonder.

It hums

as a small bird with a million places to be, but nowhere to go.

It murmurs,

In the sweetness of recollection.

It can be stilled

- Oh yes, it can be stilled.

And what of the heart when it is cold, motionless?

The answer lies not in its function,

but in its continuation;

Living still in the off-beat of another,

rising and falling in erratic rhythm,

for it is, I have always known,

as irregular as clockwork.

© 2010 by Rachel Lowry. All rights reserved. {photo via: coupdegrace}

The Paradox of Me

I shouldn't be blogging.

{shhhh. I'm in class}

But it's the only way.

This week, work has left every other realm of my life wanting, and so I resort to a melding, a synthesis of all, if you will.

I must disclose to you a confession. It has been churning from within, bubbling and boiling inside me, as the boy in the desk beside me belligerently chews on the end of his pencil:

I am victim of the Schizoid Complex. 

Reader, observe me from afar, as this most monstrous malady takes hold of me.

I am a liberal conservative,

a leading assenter,

a surreptitious prominency.

I am an anti aficionado,

a starved food addict,

a Californiated Utahn,

captivated by the idea of boredom,

dreaming of waking

from an occupied vacancy

of a most luminous night

I am a soulful caucasian,

a skeptical believer

a beggar, richly dressed;

a stationary traveler,

a knowing amateur.

I have exposed the facade of polarity with negation,

have minimized the infallible with question.
 

And I have pranced about in motley dresses of every color, 

only to find that on that first spring morning, all I could wear was blue.

© 2010 by Rachel Lowry. All rights reserved. (photo via: vis.ualize.us)