An Anthology of UL Lafayette Creative Writers

Click on the photos below for samples of writing by our

Creative Writing faculty and graduate students

Joseph Andriano

Chapter 1, Poe’s Lost Cat It was shortly after Circe appeared that I first saw Poe’s ghost. . . .

Cindy Childress

Poems unknowable And what if Keats thought the urn was only a pot, after all? . . .

Rita    Costello

Poems A Sunday Symphony for Papa’s Study Sunday mornings I wasn’t allowed in; as if that room magically disappeared . . .

Patrick Crerand

About the Font

This text was set in Sükerhunde (Condensed), a typeface once thought typical of the Dutch Golden Age, but now more commonly known as the creation of Benny “How Sweet It Aint” Van Tiffin (1893-1943). . . .

Jarita Davis

Poems Atlantic Coasts These boys could be in Praia, I think. Dried sea salt coarse across their shoulders. They dig their feet into the sand . . .

Keith Dorwick

A Joyful House Usually, I hate to fly. It’s inefficient, I tell myself every single time I bustle to the nearest airport, wait till my flight is called, and then spend hours in the air, time I could use for my writing, or my research, or anything else other than feeling the pressure build in my ears; however, my real worry is how I’ll look in my casket after the fiery death that follows the plane crash. . . .

Matt Dube

Baby Juju My sister Jillian has never been able to say no to me. . . .

Rikki Ducornet

The Dickmare It all boils down to this: does she present to the Dickmare or not? . . . .

April Fallon

Poems Roaches Time caters to the exoskeleton. Its march through progress calibrates endurance, feeds the millennial fodder. . . .

John Fleming

“Weighing of the Heart” I was out driving one day and saw this girl drifting along the side of the road, and it appeared to me she was riding air . . . .

Billy Fontenot

From “Early Fall” They could have filmed It’s a Wonderful Life in my hometown. . . . .

Skip Fox

Poems I was thinking this morning about transference and transformance in communication even when we hear ourselves, especially when we hear ourselves! Surely thou shall not die, sinuous baseline from beneath a luminant corner. . . .

Ernest Gaines

From “Miss Jane and I” I wanted to see on paper those Louisiana black children walking to school on cold days while yellow Louisiana busses passed them by. I wanted to see on paper those black parents going to work before the sun came up and coming back home to look after their children after the sun went down. . . .

Hedwig Gorski

From Calling to Yeti The skeletal workers called “ghosts” grab an extremity and swing the corpse back and forth to build momentum. Her hair catches fire in one pass and sails through the air looking like a flaming torch. . . .

Lisa Graley

From “Larry and the Pelican” When a pelican followed Larry Grass home from Florida to Alum Creek, West Virginia, he naturally took it as the sign of a calling—but from whom or for what, he did not know. . . .

Martha Highers

“Breaking and Entering” At night as I lay in Cotton's bed I could hear the sounds of music, laughter, and slamming car doors coming from the beer joint down by the river.

Dennis Humphrey

From The Hainstraße O-Club: From the Autobiographies of Ward Singer Sachsenhausen turned out to be a suburb of Frankfurt, about twenty kilo-meters west southwest of the Hainstraße O-Club. . . .

Mike Jauchen

What We Do With Everything We Know We place everything we know into a box, packing it so tight, locking it away . . .

Chip Jones

Mules for Manhood But since it’s Sunday and my daddy ain’t nowhere to be seen, I’ll let you have ‘em for one-fifty, and I’ll tell my daddy I ain’t the man he is and I’ll never do business again with one of ‘em shrewd-type businessmen from near Dallas. . . .

Chantel Langlinais

Poems UNDER THE HOURGLASS MOON You show me Barthes’ garment gape . . . .

Mark Larue

Poems THE UNIVERSE FROM THE FRONT PORCH On my brain, as on Jupiter tonight, there is the Great Red Spot¾a monstrous storm centuries old, thousands of miles wide: gouging up a beachhead the size of the moon . . .

John Laudun

From “Gusher” When asked later, no one could recall, really, where the Gusher came from, or, at least, they couldn’tagree. . . .

Jerry McGuire

Poems From “THE BLIND MIME, SCENE 13” The circus must be in town, for tonight there's a strong animal smell in the air, and strange sounds, like crying and laughing, and also the sense that tonight the village's sons will run away, and all the daughters after them . . .

Peter Melman

Poem and Novel Excerpt AN ISTHMUS JOINS TWO DISTINCT CONSEQUENCES To be a man of consequence, she said, means knowing who to call when your back’s up against it, don’t you see? . . .

Deborah Moore

Poems FIELD GLASSES The bird you see isn’t the bird itself. Nothing is ever left as it was. Spoiled, stained, tainted; Encouraged, engendered, renewed. . . .

Jared Pearce

Poems MODES OF DISCOURSE Speaking of ebonics, table manners, terrible films we stayed up too late for, and trying to find light-foot words to chase . . .

Nathan Pritts

Poems ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, NATE A tornado roughs its way  through town, chops down  a whole city block with just  the edge of its gusty palm  & not a single person is hurt. . . .

Marthe Reed

Poems waves of black wings pressed against air (blue). . .

Rhonda Robison

Poems in the beginning winter.  this fruit and flower  kingdom . . .

Denise Rogers

Poems I STOP TO CONSIDER ZHUANGZHI’S PARABLE ON THE WAY TO VISIT MY GRANDMOTHER’S GRAVE Between being a butterfly  and being a woman,  there must be a difference. . . .

David Saffo

Poems patron to The art  I’d rather be the patron saint of mediocrity than the patron saint to the most clever reaction on high and shit shit, what did my uncle used to say  contain multitudes? . . .

Holly Schullo

Poems Reinventing the Jukebox Sometime after midnight, in a powder blue Bel Air, top down, roaring down Route 522, we are inconspicuous as the soft sound of insects hitting the window like rain, . . .

Jessica Shadoian

Between Here and There Tuesday morning and March, drizzling in the cold, inimitable drizzle of not-yet-spring in Syracuse. . . .