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Blue Marble Review

Literary Journal for Young Writers

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The Cambridge Girl

By Alex Walsh

On sleepless nights, I take to envying

the Cambridge girl: the embodiment,

with her short, metropolitan hair,

striped blazers and scuffed shoes,

of all things literary

which I am not.

She has already made her peace

with the language that soothes me

but cannot sate me, buried

her shameful roots in Austen and

Keats while mine rear lustily

through each letter I write,

for I cannot twist my words

until my will has nothing more to say.

She and her studies flaunt

their joy like a ring,

she as happy in her books

as they are to have discovered

a new mistress, a rising talent

come to lift them from obscurity;

but I do not trust so openly

what I read or what I leave

in my wake, its power too great

to reckon with or claim as my own.

 

 

Alex Walsh studies Math and Literary Arts at Brown University. Her work has previously appeared in Coldnoon, Eunoia Review, Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, and Catalyst, among others.

Filed Under: Poetry Tagged With: Issue Four

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