ScholarWorks @ SeattleU (Seattle University)

Klosowski, Daniel

Fragments 
Volume 62 Interlude Article 24 
2020 
Crowded 
Daniel Klosowski 
Seattle University 
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Recommended Citation 
Klosowski, Daniel (2020) "Crowded," Fragments: Vol. 62, Article 24. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol62/iss1/24 
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English

Crowded

Shields, Hannah

Fragments 
Volume 64 Emergence Article 11 
2022 
Snow in February 
Hannah Shields 
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Recommended Citation 
Shields, Hannah (2022) "Snow in February," Fragments: Vol. 64, Article 11. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol64/iss1/11 
This Poetry is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 
Snow in February 
 
 
 
It’s snowing in February.  
 
I reach for the hand that used to warm mine  
On frigid nights like these, 
And I find  
A cold lifeless one, 
Frostbite to its fingertips. 
 
It’s been a month  
So, tell me, 
How can I still feel your ghost 
Curled up beside me  
As I sleep? 
 
I still taste your tongue  
Tingling against my taste buds. 
 
Lick me like you mean it, 
And warm my breath with yours. 
 
Let me tell you  
What I couldn’t back then.  
 
That my heart aches itself a somber melody 
Without yours beating against mine. 
That all coherent thoughts are ripped to shambles  
When I see your name on my screen.  
That I think of you  
Every night   
And that my tears haven’t stopped  
Since you walked out that door.  
 
That I could love you in a way nobody else could  
And that when I say that, 
It’s not just what everyone else says. 
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That I really mean it,  
And I want the softening in your eyes  
As confirmation  
That you truly understand  
What you’re giving up so willingly.  
 
That next time,  
I would beg you to stay. 
And despite my silence, 
I needed you to. 
 
It’s snowing in February,  
And it is ever so cold outside  
Without you beside me. 
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Fragments, Vol. 64 [2022], Art. 11
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Snow in February

Kelly-Jervis, Lily

Fragments 
Volume 64 Emergence Article 20 
2022 
Hoʻomaluhia:(Sea)ing Serenity 
Lily Kelly-Jervis 
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Recommended Citation 
Kelly-Jervis, Lily (2022) "Hoʻomaluhia:(Sea)ing Serenity," Fragments: Vol. 64, Article 20. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol64/iss1/20 
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inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 
 
Ho‘omaluhia   
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Hoʻomaluhia:(Sea)ing Serenity

Lake, Erick

Fragments 
Volume 63 Pivot Article 6 
2021 
Through the Glass 
Erick Lake 
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Recommended Citation 
Lake, Erick (2021) "Through the Glass," Fragments: Vol. 63, Article 6. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/6 
This Prose is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 
Through the Glass 
Erick Lake 
 
 
 
Dark. He awoke in a dark room. Dark, save for the light from a large candle at his periphery 
atop a cluttered table; dark, save for a radiant beam of light that came from a source he knew 
not where, for he could not turn to look at it, he knew not why. Moonlight, surely, for I have 
not awoken out of restfulness, but as if from a dream you entertain before sleep takes you, as if 
by a stir in the shadows across your room as you try to rest. Awoken not from sleep, but as if 
by mere thought through force of will, torn from a moment frozen in time. Feverish. The 
candle by which he made sense of this room burned brightly and sickly, flickering with a 
feverish intent, its trail of smoke drew mercurial shapes on the ceiling, its shadows danced a 
revelry he could not hear, a revery he knew only in that dream. And yet the candle flickered 
only in thought and not in time. A shadow would change only when he looked away and 
maybe back again. To look upon the candle straight on produced only a steady flame, 
unmoving, a stable shadow, undancing. The candle frightened him. Would he but reach out 
and touch it, to feel its warmth, yet he had no fingers to touch the flame. It seemed a force 
more powerful than he could resist. If wax should flee its approach, why not he? Cold. A 
breeze seemed to set the tablecloth aflutter, and yet the feather in his cap did not stir. Why 
should this room feel a cool breeze and not he, feel the warmth of the candle and not he? Out 
an open window, he might escape this room and that candle that frightened him so, and yet the 
breeze had not come but was merely there. For a breeze to have passed this room, he thought, 
he would have had to have noticed its passing, and yet he did not notice it passing but its 
presence, as if the breeze had been there all along and it only showed its force in the tablecloth 
and not the feather in his cap as if by his recognition alone. And why should the tablecloth not 
return to its unmoved stance, frozen as it is as if in constant breeze, though it does not move? 
As though the candle, the tablecloth only fluttered when he looked away and maybe back 
again, for it was in a different shape by the second gaze. Hewn. And there he saw the ship, 
labored after for so many days as he watched. How could he know this if he had truly only just 
awoken, he unable to name its builder? He did not know, but felt as if born from the same 
timber, as if labored after in the same mind. Impossible. And how should such a small vessel 
carry a host of souls? But ah, it was by ship and candle, not by ship alone, that such a voyage 
be possible. The ship’s shadow by candlelight was cast so great against the far wall and its 
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shadow danced so gleefully that it seemed to chart the seas by merely sitting on this table, that 
he could but merely grab hold of it and sail out of this room, projection by firelight the wind at 
his back, and yet he had no hands to grasp with. Curses. Why must this purgatory treat me 
with such marvels, yet trick me only? He saw on that table, too, his violin, strung so tightly it 
promised to snap, and with it, too, he saw at last to which the shadows danced, his sheet music 
splayed across the table. Glee. It was a simple tune, known to any child, its tempo fast and its 
melody floating. Panic. He made to widen his eyes in shock and leap across the table to catch 
the sheets that cascaded from the wind, and yet he had no feet to spring with, and yet the 
sheets remained motionless in air, and yet they never really cascaded, they were always there 
from whence he awoke, suspended as if by his sight alone. How should it be that his music 
would inspire the air itself to ensure its floating? What fresh hell have I found myself in? 
Where the air conspires against the laws by which I was created, where the shadows 
themselves conspire to take my heart to freedom but not my body, where a fire creeps and 
warms beyond my grasp? Relief. It did not matter, for across the table sat his beloved of so 
many years, her hair as dark as her eyes, a warmth no candle could match, her smile more the 
ark than that ship for which he yearned. Would he but stride across the table and embrace her, 
and yet he had no legs to carry him, and yet she had no heart to meet him, for she was merely 
a painting, unfinished and unsigned. Damn it all. What cruel God would have me love that 
which I cannot have? Place her so near? Make me believe that she was mine to take? To curse 
me with the pretention to take but without the fingers to touch, the hands to grasp, the feet to-
Terror. He saw it then. Fire. Not of the candle at his side. Perhaps from the candle of that cruel 
God, of flames licking from beneath the door frame across the room. He saw the fire spread 
into the room from beyond as if through a glass distorting, for as he strained to freeze the 
flames in time as he would the tablecloth or the sheets, it grew and burned and ate and smoked 
despite his gaze. And as the fire approached the table this glass distorting moved with it for his 
gaze could not slow the flame and that flame consumed the ship and its shadow with it and 
that flame snapped his violin cord and it ate the sheets that hung in the air and the flame 
enveloped his beloved despite the screams he tried to scream that would not scream because 
his mouth would not open and he watched as the oil of her face bubbled and burst and burned 
until she was dust. The fire ate all that there was until he was all that was left, and yet he felt 
no pain at the coming of his unmaking, fire eating the oil of his shirt, as the oil dripped from 
the feather in his cap. Why do I bleed oil? 
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Fragments, Vol. 63 [2021], Art. 6
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Through the Glass

Fragments 
Volume 63 Pivot Article 8 
2021 
Locomotion 
Erick Lake 
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Recommended Citation 
Lake, Erick (2021) "Locomotion," Fragments: Vol. 63, Article 8. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/8 
This Prose is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 
Locomotion 
Erick Lake 
 
 
 
They didn’t know what caused the accident. Naturally with his luck it 
happened the day before they were scheduled to leave orbit. It was a 
routine survey stop, achieve orbit of the sun, take some measurements, and 
get out. Four days tops. These sorts of structural failures were not 
supposed to happen anymore. Supposed to or not, that sun was getting 
bigger and bigger on the viewscreen by the minute. 
 
He knew how these things ended. You would fight it, maybe ride it out, 
improvise, but in the end, you would rapidly burn up as the sun’s orbit 
pulled you in. Best to enjoy the way down, he supposed, firing up the 
ship’s intercom. His crew did not love his music and would grumble to 
each other when he got in these moods, but they were all dead, so it didn’t 
really matter now. Poor bastards, he thought, though he got a dejected 
chuckle from choosing the soundtrack to their funerals. 
 
Baduh-duhduh-duhduhbah-ba-ba-da-buhdumdu-dadadadada  
bluhbluhbluh bududududubu 
The opening drums drowned out the explosions ringing throughout the ship, 
signaling his final descent, no going back now. He strapped himself in and 
absorbed the music as he careened towards the surface, its excited energy 
keeping him centered and giving him meaning as he futilely tried every 
countermeasure he knew. 
 
And that sax seemed the sun to him. Its notes were a sort of searching, 
grasping for him. They were warm, Trane’s piercing vision wrapping around 
him as if the sun’s rays. They carried him forward like the waves of sunlight 
that his ship rode on, buoyed him as if at sea. That sun light, sun heat, would 
find him in those moments of darkness, and he could do nothing but stare 
into its awful beauty. 
 
The tinny clang of those symbols,  
 Tat-tat rat-a-tat tat-tat ta-ta-ta 
near constant, seemed in step with the rattling and shaking of the ship as it 
descended deeper into the sun’s corona, tools or parts falling into its metal 
chasms or bits of metal or bolts tearing off, the ship being torn apart by the 
bulkheads. He figured it would keep him sane in the moments he had left to 
focus on the symbols, rather than the metal bastion that protected him from 
the vacuum coming apart at the seams. 
1
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That hypnotic sound off to his right, 
Ba-ba duh-duh ba-duh ba-duh duh-duh-duh-duh… 
too, bothered him. He couldn’t tell if it was Chambers on bass, the water 
tanks or life support systems bursting open by the bolts, or the cabin rending 
off from the main hull.  
He should probably turn the music up. 
 
The ‘bone was the hardest for him to pick out.  
La-da-da la-da-da-da-da-da-da da… 
It seemed more transient to him, a voice at arm’s length that you sense but 
might only truly feel once or twice. That trombone made him feel weightless 
in a way, like things were smoother and nicer under the surface, where we 
couldn’t always see. He wasn’t initially concerned when Fuller signaled that he 
actually was becoming weightless, as the gravity generators began to fail and 
the air in the hull began to seep into the cold vacuum through the tiny 
breaches appearing across the ship. 
 
That shrill horn with no warning woke him from that trance. 
Wap! Pfa-da-da-la-ba-da-da-fa-BA-ba-ba-ba-ba… 
That trumpet reminded him that he had things to do and somewhere to be, as 
Morgan’s ascension matched his frantic attempts to seal off breached decks 
and reroute power to the gravity generators, to keep the music playing and the 
distress call running. He may be doomed to die, but he still had a job to do. 
This was still his ship. 
 
The keys always balanced him, though, 
Lee-tee-dee-da la-ta-da-da-da-da-la… 
That real peace, real understanding, came in those quiet moments, in the 
interim. Those keys felt like what it should feel like to pull that which is 
cosmic and always outside yourself into yourself. The space around him, 
Drew’s melody seemed, or maybe that magnetic field that pulled him in. A 
constant force that kept him centered on that sun, journeyed with him 
towards the sun, in many ways was the power of that sun. 
 
Each of Jones’ short drum interludes made him jump an inch or so out of his 
chair, Bu-du-bu-du-bu-du-bu-du-bu-du buh-buh-duh buh-duh-duh… 
as it tore his focus from the oddly comforting, if at least distracting, duet of 
instruments and cosmic destruction, marking in time some massive series of 
explosions in the engine compartment. The explosions would return to 
normal volume after a few seconds and he wasn’t killed instantly, so it didn’t 
seem that bad. 
 
And again,  
Boo-doo-do-lah-da-da-nah-nah-nah-nah-ah 
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Fragments, Vol. 63 [2021], Art. 8
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that sun returned to him, its warm and probing notes keeping him 
company as he raced to the center of the solar system, the bookends of his 
travels, piloting the sweet requiem of his final voyage. Trane kept him 
focused, fixated, on his destination. He felt like he had a friend here, 
needing him to join it at the same time that he needed it to guide him. 
 
He knew that to reach that object of his fixation would preclude his ability 
to ever see or appreciate it, or indeed hear it, again. And yet he continued 
to stare and to hear and to feel it as he hurtled through its orbit ever 
downward. As he began to vaporize, he was at least happy to have helped 
pilot this sun ship one last time. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Reference: 
Coltrane, John. “Locomotion.” Recorded 1957. 
Track 3 on Blue Train. Blue Note, vinyl LP. 
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Locomotion

Cruickshank, Keira

Fragments 
Volume 63 Pivot Article 21 
2021 
Life is a Curious Treasure 
Keira Cruickshank 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments 
Recommended Citation 
Cruickshank, Keira (2021) "Life is a Curious Treasure," Fragments: Vol. 63, Article 21. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/21 
This Poetry is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 
Life is a Curious Treasure1 
Keira Cruicksank 
 
 
On August 9th, 1945, 
my grandmother was born on a military base in the United States 
while far across the sea, death was borne by an American plane 
she took her first breath as the air erupted, replaced with 
heat that melted skin       dust that sliced lungs         and tens of  thousands of 
breaths and cries that ceased midair           suspended          incomplete 
 
Life is a curious treasure 
 
Tsutomu Yamaguchi told his coworkers of a bomb that had split the sky 
some hundred eighty five miles away 
his description so vivid, it came to life right outside the window 
like first light to never-opened eyes 
white, blinding   first or last     greeting and farewell 
Americans love a light show 
 
Life is a curious treasure 
 
And like pirates, they plundered, claiming that in order to save life you must first take it 
    merciful genocide 
 
my family wept for all they now had 
and an entire nation wailed for all they had lost 
and clouds shed black tears that quenched no thirst and extinguished no fire 
and my grandmother cried for the first time, though she knew not what for 
 
 
Footnotes 
1Fujio Torikoshi’s (survivor of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima) wisdom to future 
generations 
 
Bibliography 
“After The Bomb: Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Share Their Stories.” Time, 
time.com/after-the-bomb/. 
Solly, Meilan. “Nine Harrowing Eyewitness Accounts of the Bombings of Hiroshima and 
Nagasaki.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 5 Aug. 2020, 
www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nine-harrowing-eyewitness-accounts-bombings-hiroshima-an 
d-nagasaki-180975480/. 
Takakura, Akiko. What I Want to Say Now. Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, 
www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/virtual/VirtualMuseum_e/visit_e/testimony_e/testimo07_1.html 
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Life is a Curious Treasure

Fragments 
Volume 63 Pivot Article 22 
2021 
the grass would grow too tall 
Keira Cruickshank 
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Recommended Citation 
Cruickshank, Keira (2021) "the grass would grow too tall," Fragments: Vol. 63, Article 22. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/22 
This Poetry is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 
the grass would grow too tall 
Keira Cruickshank 
 
 
If a mother smothers her crying baby 
What would they become 
Who would hear his cry        her cry 
Crying 
In instinct and unnatural 
Companions in their fear 
Both wondering 
What would come       next 
 
Then the grass would grow too tall 
 
Would they lie side by side in silence 
In thought and thoughtless 
Could either of them feel 
Or just know they had felt 
The silence would sing      a lullaby 
 
Then the grass would grow too tall 
 
Would she wrap him in a blanket 
The way she should 
As she carried him 
From darkness to light 
If she shivered in the sun 
The sun might shiver with her 
 
Then the grass would grow too tall 
 
Would she dig with her hands 
And feel the earth’s touch 
Softer than hers could ever be 
And more welcome 
Buried treasure 
 
Then the grass would grow too tall 
And when it was done 
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Cruickshank: the grass would grow too tall
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Would she know 
Would he 
As her feet trampled all that grew 
And they both returned       to the dark 
 
Then the grass would grow too tall 
 
Would she forget 
What the weeds would always remember 
Because her memory became part of them 
And they rejoiced 
In the only way they could 
The seedlings all joined 
In their joyous grieving 
 
Now the grass has grown        too tall. 
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Fragments, Vol. 63 [2021], Art. 22
https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/22


the grass would grow too tall

Manuel, Tamar

Fragments 
Volume 63 Pivot Article 34 
2021 
Fears of an Art Major 
Tamar Manuel 
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Recommended Citation 
Manuel, Tamar (2021) "Fears of an Art Major," Fragments: Vol. 63, Article 34. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/34 
This Poetry is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 
 
 
Fears of an Art Major 
Tamar Manuel 
 
 
 
I used to think my life would be a rococo painting 
Pastel colors and painterly strokes 
Of luck landing myself in a classical French period of love and lust 
 
Only to realize life is a little bit more like a mannerist contortion 
Bent out of shape and out of proportion 
 
You dream of a social life like an istorie 
Imagined by Raphael the school of Athens 
You are a figure of communication  
the lead in this fresco 
As the pigment is placed onto the wet plaster 
You know your life’s work is about to 
 
Go nowhere but become a disaster 
Coming to the end of the renaissance of life 
 
Are you truly the subject of your own baroque counter reformation 
A flexing of authority and control  
A celebration 
Or are you Berninis collapsing bell towers 
 
You are isolated and perfectly exposed 
No more hiding behind layers of oil on wood 
The tenebristic light collapsing to show all of you 
 
Are no better than a dutch genre painting 
In the eyes of the Academies 
Unworthy and a waste of paint 
 
Life is not a rococo 
There are no angels or baby cupids to save you 
From the reality that all work is finite no matter how perfectly preserved 
One day even sculpture will crack on Earth. 
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Fears of an Art Major

Ford, Max

Fragments 
Volume 63 Pivot Article 41 
2021 
Messenger Bag 
Max Ford 
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Recommended Citation 
Ford, Max (2021) "Messenger Bag," Fragments: Vol. 63, Article 41. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/41 
This Visual Art is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 
Max Ford 
Messenger Bag 
 
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moment in the clovers 
 
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Fragments, Vol. 63 [2021], Art. 41
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Messenger Bag

Fragments 
Volume 63 Pivot Article 42 
2021 
moment in the clovers 
Max Ford 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments 
Recommended Citation 
Ford, Max (2021) "moment in the clovers," Fragments: Vol. 63, Article 42. 
Available at: https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/fragments/vol63/iss1/42 
This Visual Art is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for 
inclusion in Fragments by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. 
Max Ford 
Messenger Bag 
 
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moment in the clovers 
 
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Fragments, Vol. 63 [2021], Art. 42
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