Drunk Horse Thief
Pearce Boylan ‘28
On New Year’s Day I’d been stuck at a party reading Martyr by my uncle’s pigeon coop, when this idiom about a drunk horse thief versus a sober one really resonated with me. It made me think about incarceration and dehumanization, two subjects that tied into an earlier fixation I’d had on mummification, the preservation of one’s body as this dehumanizing legacy. After I got home I collaged an Irish bog body, Islamic calligraphic elements (Islamic creed, May God be with him) and other fragments into one coherent piece attempting to hold all of these ideas/fascinations together.
Body Made of Smoke
I keep going back and forth
wondering what I could’ve said to you
to pull you away from the path
you were dragging your feet down.
Is it my fault?
You’ve been tarring your lungs
with ash from the flower you burn,
rolled in spit-covered paper
by paint-coated hands.
Do you like it?
Feeling your lungs fill up,
unable to breathe, unable to feel.
The way it swirls in your chest
and hits your head, like waves
thrashing your body as you float offshore.
Does it feel like drowning?
To gasp for air, but taste something thicker,
something heavier
that weighs you down till you sink.
Under the surface,
the world seems so quiet.
Your mind is silent for once,
and your mouth is too dry to speak.
Peace. For once in your shitty life.
You sink deeper
and feel your skin crawl,
every molecule shaking and sighing as you go.
This is all you are now.
Weightless bones,
swimming lungs,
and a body made of smoke.
Carys Coleman ‘26
This piece is about the affects of addiction and substance abuse on a person and their relationships. I wrote this as a way to reflect on how addiction has affected my relationship with someone I am not friends with anymore. It deals with the guilt I felt knowing that I couldn't help them or free them from this loop they were stuck in.