Oklahoma Arts Institute at Quartz Mountain

 Our guest blogger is Catherine Roberts, PR Counselor.
 

Today’s blog post will get a trifle sentimental. I’m writing as a former OSAI student, a creative writer from 2006. It’s seldom that I practice my craft these days—I’m a journalist, so I tend to stick to facts. Nothing has compelled me to begin again to write creatively more than returning to Quartz Mountain as a staff member. That’s because the work of the students here—not just in creative writing, but across all the disciplines—inspires. But instead of telling you about it, I’ll let the art speak for itself.

The following poems are the collected works of the OSAI creative writers, composed for inclusion in the centerpieces of the tables during this year’s Visitors’ Day.

let your hands be a resting place for time

and rejoice in the aging of your body

let your skin grow rough from your dances in the wind

and celebrate the grace that will come to crease your eyes

from the depth and frequency of laughter

exalt the blaze of seasons

for you will not fade with the fading of the light

so let your  mind burn and falter

when it is best to fall

revel in the salt of your mistaking

because there is the world to be tasted

taste it

—Alex Rivas

Steeplechase Road

Let there be children who

drink orange soda through sour patch straws

and raise dandelions in Mama’s glass bowls.

Let there be children who

lay rusted pennies to sleep on train tracks

and carry thin copper luckthings on thread.

Let there be children who

weave muddy caskets from grass to send a

friend, bumblebee, down the creek.

Let there be children who

climb electrical towers to watch the sunset

and hold nervous currents at their toes.

—Alison Liu

Let there be a soothing slap of skin parting from the gaudy protection

Of the band-aid decorated with the heroes who fought on

A cartoon you never watched

Let there be a cavity in gravity you’ll miss in ten years

When you can no longer fly on construction paper wings

Instead staring out an office window

Let there be rooms that forget the alphabet

With white washed walls that can no longer spell your name

Let there be water that tastes of his favourite flower which died in the glass

Before your thirst was born.

—An-Li Bogan

Where Petals Go

Let there be an unpaved road

with a field beside it and a sky dunked in pinks and purples until the blue drowned above

Let there be daisies in that field

floating in the grass like spirits tied down with green string

Let there be wind to find the daisy

to touch its face with cooling lips and cherish its petals enough to take

Let there be you to watch the petals like white flames

leaving smoke not allowed to touch the sky

And let there be you to free the last petal that clings like heartbreak

so it can move on to higher things

Let there be another wind to help you do the same

—Brooke R. Busse

Let there be lunch lines and clusters of students with red trays.

Let there be rain and clouds that block the Twin Peeks from view and cast a grey shadow across the Oklahoma Arts Institute,

giving the photography students and their cameras a break from the sun.

Let the acting students sit in the lobby in silence as they memorize monologues.

Let the dancers stretch their legs as the sun drifts through the windows.

Let the Rubix Cube hidden on campus be found before nightfall.

Let it solve itself.

Let me write like the Quartz Mountains that rise up and down against the sky.

Let the mountains fill up with green grasses growing on its sides like grass in a bowl.

—Candace Osterhout

Let there always be caramels in your grandmother’s glass bowl.

Let there be a fat cat to sleep in your lap,

and an old dog to lay at your feet.

Let there be lemonade summers and hot chocolate winters.

Let there never be a time when you can’t come home

and sit on your childhood swing.

Let there be Snuggies, ramen noodles and mystery novels.

Let there be days in which you just do nothing.

Let there be sunlight to wake you up some mornings.

Let there be scary movies and friends to watch them with.

Let there be rain.

But most of all, let there be medicine to heal your body,

and art to heal your soul.

—Erin McCoy

Let there be quartz and people who keep the door open for those

coming out of a crowded concert.

Let there be daisies and marigolds and azaleas.

Let there be jazzy trombones, wrapped Andes mints,

and cats with question mark tails.

May there be casual hellos and soothing cellos.

Give us fountain pens and fantasy books to feel through.

May there be homemade Valentine cards.

Let there be mothers, water,

fathers; let there be children who sing in showers

and men who rent tuxedos.

Let there be the color brown.

Let there be breath.

—Giselle Willis

Let there be hands to create music, words, ideas.

And people will know and invite the owners of the hands to a cradle of stone and foliage.

And the trees will bow and the rocks will tremble in their presence, because the hands

will make them again.

Let the does graze below the bridge on the uncut grass, knowing that no hands will harm

them, and they will be alive.

And the hands will meet other hands, shake, and flourish in their craft; create a beat to

dance and live to.

And the hands are surely placed by the words of a woodsman, encouraging them to

live deliberately.

Let heroes, heavens, and spirits of Helios flow from their fingertips and erupt in song,

heard as far into the universe as the dust of Saturn’s rings.

The hands will find new ways and the people will come to see.

—Madisyn Bowen

Let the doe ever wander green meadows where the dandelions go

Like lions without teeth or claws, each seeds small parachute ready to break its fall.

Silence of the meadows as a haven where the heavens see foals knobby knees.

Let this be sacred ground where nature comes to lie while earth whispers lullabies.

The brook where the doe and her fawn pause to drink,

The shuffling of grass and of leaves in trees and they rustle in the breeze.

Let these tender songs ever comfort those forlorn, the lonely and the lowly,

When the constancy of morning like the certainty of night are to never cease

And let green remain.

—Meredith Winn

Why Do We Let Them Let?

Let—to allow—it is a word of a different color than timshel—thou mayest—less gracious, more furious, a salt-green flexing rather than its nebulous deep. It is not the game of command, ask permission, and the generous timshel—it is, as in, let us go—let us ride our bikes like horses and tilt at the telephone poles. Let us build our medicines, locomotives, bridges—

Let—

Let us—

Let us spring furiously from the chthonian body of our home, go!

Go! Rocket—let go gravity—

Burn you trillion cosmic lanterns, spin, other earths. We see you if the gods will

Let us—

go!

—Erin Fuller

Let there be dirt- crumbling, warm, soft

smelling of growth,

pushing forward new life, taking on old.

Let there be silent mornings

alone with a dainty tea pot steeping

and a simple saucer of browned bread.

Allow words to spill forth from pens- an outpouring

 transforming and transformed.

Allow there to be pages, strong enough to cut

 and carry as a vehicle the words,

taking them where they are necessary.

Let there be sound, a taxi bleating, a sprinkler clicking rhythmically along,

 a murmur as  trees converse with one another, a cacophony saying please.

Allow there to be grass, a cushion to lie on,

and the residents building in their own universe.

—Bethany McLemore

Remember your favorite word and remember who gave it to you, precious as any physical gift.

Remember the books and people that changed how ideas appear to you, outside insight is an invaluable thing.

Remember the smell of breakfast, mornings spent among the rustle of readallaboutit’s and the feeling of time spread around you.

Remember your favorite pair of shoes. Impractical, outrageously priced, your mother clucking her tongue, not this time.

Remember your hands, they are the first to meet a new friend, everything is written in your hands.

Remember how much time you spent trying to please others, think about how often you played the kazoo. Weigh the importance of each.

Remember the first time you were told to grow up. Act your age.

Now forget it.

—Tori Hack

Let there be Orwells

and Hemingways

Plath

Fitzgeralds Shakespeares

Dickinsons Poe

Let there be contradictions

Abstractions

Complexities

And then let there be words

too simple

for simple.

Let there be poems while I’m brushing my teeth

And stanzas while I sleep

And meter in my shower

And syllables

In every moment

That words

Can barely touch

Let there be Holy Sundays

And let there be Sundays

I set out to write the

King James Holy Bible

And this is how

The words have settled.

            —Evan Rathjen

You can hear more from the Creative Writing class during ONSTAGE Weekend performances. Creative Writing performs tomorrow at 4 p.m.