Selections from PLU’S literary magazine

Love Song of the Stockbroker

Sara Bergman ’05

How do I love thee?
Let me diagram the ways on an Excel spreadsheet.

Your skin is as flawless as my credit history.
Your eyes sparkle like the gold standard
Your hair is a glorious cascade of loopholes.

When I see your breasts rising and falling
like the Dow Jones Industrial Average
         let me tell you,
         baby,
it’s better than tax evasion.

Ever since the second quarter of the last fiscal year
when you performed a hostile takeover
         of my heart
my love for you has grown
like a 99 percent interest rate compounded hourly.

So come on sweet thing,
Let’s merge.
Make me the happiest man on Wall Street,
         and be my primary shareholder.
I may be but a simple stockbroker,
But I can promise you this:
We will make sweet, sweet
         net quarterly earnings together.

Escaping the Tongue

Mariesa Bus ’05

   She says she feels like an ice cream cone.
Not like, “hey let’s go get an ice cream cone”
         But LIKE one.

Like
   being
         ONE .

As if she’s dripping slowly down a chubby arm
            in the August sun

Parts of her escaping the tongue
            to land on the sidewalk

To leave sticky smudges around a child’s thirsty mouth
Wiped off with spit, scold, and a dish towel
               in a kitchen with apple red wallpaper

Wiped away but savored all the same
Escaping the tongue
but not
            its memory.

NOTICE

N. Kent Leatham ’06

H.N. Swanson, agent, said
whenever he is asked what kind

of writing pays the best, he says
the ransom note. Therefore, on that

note, I’d like to point out that,
although you haven’t felt the loss,

I’m holding your attention captive.
You can have it back for thirty -

seven cents – just write and say
You read me; that should be enough.