The Submission
Emily M. Stewart Winner of the Environmental Studies Award
A pillar made of rosebuds and violet,
an aroma swept across empty and rugged spaces.
A city stood, swallowing overgrown gardens, with the dead brush
bleeding into every crack and crevasse of the cool, rough cement.
Lamps brightened the dark streets and did little to enact more
than a dull and vacant glow, flickering intermittently as tiny cream
moths flew helplessly against the glass of searing gold.
To blurred eyes, they almost looked like petals dancing in the
wind, celebrating the sweet night air.
But this scent is not pleasant, a mephitic draft that holds you,
gripped tightly in your throat and squeezed by your lungs.
Sickly, yet tastefully, this confusion blankets everything you see,
hear
smell
touch.
The people who pass by are unknown to themselves, idling as they
seek to refill their engines with any fuel they might find in this
man-made jungle,
rearing their heads at the growth that once took place here,
singing tunes to the melody of the great soul destroyers,
weeding out these gardens, plucking every sign of viable life from
the warm chocolate branches until they shrivel and crack, grow-
ing cold with decay.
I writhe in this putrified muscle, how I have gotten sucked into
the forest of death,
the death of dreams.
Tastefully, I may keep my composure despite the stench of all this
rot,
this compost building over walls that were once carefully laid.
How robust, nature’s greatest mechanisms, more pure and effi-
cient than
the tin we call flesh and the bolts we use as joints.
Slowly, all of these people will begin to corrode, just like the old
posts in this garden,
the stiff and lifeless ivy that slithers around each groove and bend
will begin to grow,
to wander again.
White moths, like snowflakes swirling, a white flag waving as a
plea.
Over and over,
pressing against the burning bulbs each night until the sun ris-
es, only to come again. Helplessly playing out their destruction,
blinded by the danger and harm caused to their being.
If you are still enough, you may be able to witness the frail flowers
peering past the layer
of dirt that clings to our guilt.
Timidly rising against the stratum of shame and disgust laid as
mulch by the machine people.
These wires twist and curl inside me as a medley of insects and
fallen oak leaves eat away my being.
I lay beneath the pillars,
the buds sprouted from all those before me who wandered here,
and all those who remain.
A fragrance of broken intentions is sent adrift in this palpable
silence as I gaze at these columns made of amethyst, made of em-
eralds.
A bursting of life reclaiming itself, these violets and roses whisper
tell me your sorrows as streams of oily tears pour from automated
sockets,
and we will come and submit to the earth, lamenting over every-
thing we did,
and everything we could have done.
an aroma swept across empty and rugged spaces.
A city stood, swallowing overgrown gardens, with the dead brush
bleeding into every crack and crevasse of the cool, rough cement.
Lamps brightened the dark streets and did little to enact more
than a dull and vacant glow, flickering intermittently as tiny cream
moths flew helplessly against the glass of searing gold.
To blurred eyes, they almost looked like petals dancing in the
wind, celebrating the sweet night air.
But this scent is not pleasant, a mephitic draft that holds you,
gripped tightly in your throat and squeezed by your lungs.
Sickly, yet tastefully, this confusion blankets everything you see,
hear
smell
touch.
The people who pass by are unknown to themselves, idling as they
seek to refill their engines with any fuel they might find in this
man-made jungle,
rearing their heads at the growth that once took place here,
singing tunes to the melody of the great soul destroyers,
weeding out these gardens, plucking every sign of viable life from
the warm chocolate branches until they shrivel and crack, grow-
ing cold with decay.
I writhe in this putrified muscle, how I have gotten sucked into
the forest of death,
the death of dreams.
Tastefully, I may keep my composure despite the stench of all this
rot,
this compost building over walls that were once carefully laid.
How robust, nature’s greatest mechanisms, more pure and effi-
cient than
the tin we call flesh and the bolts we use as joints.
Slowly, all of these people will begin to corrode, just like the old
posts in this garden,
the stiff and lifeless ivy that slithers around each groove and bend
will begin to grow,
to wander again.
White moths, like snowflakes swirling, a white flag waving as a
plea.
Over and over,
pressing against the burning bulbs each night until the sun ris-
es, only to come again. Helplessly playing out their destruction,
blinded by the danger and harm caused to their being.
If you are still enough, you may be able to witness the frail flowers
peering past the layer
of dirt that clings to our guilt.
Timidly rising against the stratum of shame and disgust laid as
mulch by the machine people.
These wires twist and curl inside me as a medley of insects and
fallen oak leaves eat away my being.
I lay beneath the pillars,
the buds sprouted from all those before me who wandered here,
and all those who remain.
A fragrance of broken intentions is sent adrift in this palpable
silence as I gaze at these columns made of amethyst, made of em-
eralds.
A bursting of life reclaiming itself, these violets and roses whisper
tell me your sorrows as streams of oily tears pour from automated
sockets,
and we will come and submit to the earth, lamenting over every-
thing we did,
and everything we could have done.
Emily M. Stewart entangles a melody of psychology, philosophy, and magic in her writing. A Communications student at Cal Poly Humboldt, she has spent the later years of her education focusing on her battle against chronic illness, and a pesty genetic disease. Despite her best efforts, the common university experience was thwarted by forces beyond our human comprehension, and thus her writing career began. Through her poems, she found a spark of something indescribable, and now only wishes to one day share that spark with others as she mends the wounds of herself and others, one word at a time.
