Thursday, December 30, 2010

Tanvi

nonfiction by Emily Northey

In my travels, I found a wonderful friendship with my Hindi teacher, Bhavani, and her young daughter, Tanvi.  This piece is dedicated to both of them in thanks for the joy and love we have shared.


Thursday, December 23, 2010

Words That Are Close

poetry by Melissa Goodrich

plover, seal, pledge, place, stent, flush, flight

a lover is not a bird
near shore, short-tailed
with long
pointed wings
nor the sea
torpedo-shaped
with four
flippers, nor a sealant

a ledge is not something
promised, bound by
promise, the
promise to give

nor lace a room,
region, or part
devoted
to a special purpose

a tent
is not a surgical device
to hold tissue
in place, as inside
a vessel of blood, keeping
the vessel open

to lush is not to glow
or be washed
out sudden with a flow
of water,
or startled
up from cover, said
of birds

nor is light a fleeting
as from
danger, a soaring
above, a set of stairs between
landings





Melissa Goodrich has been PANKed and Routed.  She's served as the co-editor of The Susquehanna Review and the poetry editor of RiverCraft the past two years.  As a senior, she's started becoming nostalgic, phoning old grade-school English teachers, exhuming retired poems...it has all of it been a pleasure.

Coming next week: nonfiction by Emily Northey

Thursday, December 9, 2010

(This is a love poem for Ally.)

poetry by Elizabeth Deanna Morris


Bee Sting
And your tongue of bees stung
me in between and that’s all my clit
is now but a swelling from when you
kamikazied yourself before retreating
further within me to your hive
where you would die and now
I carry you with me, calcium
& amber; when I dip into my honey comb
these days, I lose myself in the buzzing
in the space behind my right ear.


(Ally)
these days
i carry you with me
and now
you retreat
a swelling
and your tongue



Elizabeth Deanna Morris is soon to be a graduate of Susquehanna University with a Bachelors of the Arts in Creative Writing.  She has been published in Variance, RiverCraft, The Susquehanna Review, and Transformations.  She is the poetry winner of Lazy Eye Press's Fall 2009 Chapbook Contest.  She also finds time to blog about writing.  She loves knitting, spinning, and other domestic activities.  She often dreams her poetry before she writes it.  She isn't sure if this means that she's cheating or working even as she sleeps.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Outrageous Fortune

The fall 2010 issue of Outrageous Fortune—a national online undergraduate literary magazine produced by students at Mary Baldwin College —launched this week, and it’s packed with writing from Susquehanna students!

Half of this issue’s poetry and prose contributions are from writing majors here at Susquehanna University:

Bumbling Hearts,” a poem by Michelle Bayman
Untitled,” a poem by Amber Cook
Cake Top Figurines,” a short story by Audrey T. Carroll
Forgotten” and “Smother,” two poems by Alex Guarco
Patterning,” a poem by Elizabeth Deanna Morris
Rhythm,” a short memoir by Ryan Rickrode
Plastic Soldiers,” a personal essay by Dan Wilhelm
Next week Logogram will be back on schedule with poetry by Elizabeth Deanna Morris. Until then, enjoy Outrageous Fortune!

Ryan Rickrode, editor       

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Worship

fiction by David Joseph

 Harper’s hands curl into each other as his tangled fingers acknowledge God’s presence and begin to pray.  His face is veiled by the sunlight filtering through the tinted glass that frames the congregation.  They are all on display.  Harper imagines they are fireflies.  Fireflies, proud to be airborne gems in the overcast night, the envy of all ants in the grass and all worms in the soil, the only stars closer to earth than the sun, the only ones anyone can touch.  They are fireflies, pursued and swung at and chased up and up and up by a curious child in mud-covered overalls and, one by one, captured in that stained-glass jar.  Then the jar is sealed.  You can’t fly in a sealed jar.  The mother had advised the child to make holes so that air could get in and out.  There are none.  Harper can’t breathe.


Thursday, November 18, 2010

Corn Stalks

fiction by Rob Rotell

The sky is a clear, ashen blue, devoid of the faintest of clouds. The sun is blazing white, illuminating each emerald green ear of corn in the field that stretches for miles. The stalks wave lazily in the faint wind and a little brown-haired boy named Jacob is sweating through his flannel shirt, drenching it a dark maroon.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

To:

poetry by Staci Eckenroth
Midnights dissolve into mid-mornings and
sleepless stumble. Through hours of fog,
driving down well-lit highways, they hope for
illusions that others are as forgotten in the blanketing
thick enough to blackout histories, like

memories of a boy’s body. Posed
in his casket while a girl in the corner steals
tissues and prayer cards, stuffing them in fistfuls
down her pockets. She keeps him as a reminder.

I ask, of what? She answers, of losing,
and fading scars from answers injected into

veins. My mother begs between inhales
of her cigarette, words hanging with smoke
trails: don’t ever do this to me.

But when sunlight spreads through maples, I
watch the sky move from black to purple to blue
like gradations of pixels. My grayscale eyes
knew these colors once, but now I only see cloud coverage

pushing the memory of his calloused fingertips
running over my hipbone from my mind. I still feel
the flutter of his eyelashes on my shoulder blade,
and goose bumps pimple across my skin
in waves of passion or loneliness

or misunderstanding. There was no note,
no one worth mentioning, but the sleepless
continue because we promised we would.




Staci Eckenroth is a senior creative writing major at Susquehanna University. She's obsessed with notebooks, the color yellow, and how memory works.  She has been previously published in RiverCraft, The Blue Route, and The Susquehanna Review.
 
Coming next week: fiction by Rob Rotell

Friday, November 5, 2010

A Letter to Anya, October 2009

nonfiction by Lauren Bailey
    

Anya, the temperature is dropping, and we’re not doing very well. At night we eat dinner in the cafeteria, and our friends watch every bite you put into your mouth. We smoke cigarettes on the patio beforehand, the uncomfortable outdoor furniture embedding diamond patterns into our arms and legs. Most nights, your eyes fill with tears. You tell me that our friends are all so obvious, that when we sit down to eat, they don’t even try to hide the fact that they’re watching you. I can tell, as you talk around exhales of smoke, that you don’t think I watch you. I can tell that you think I’m safe.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

About Logogram

logogram
('lo-ge-græm) n.
 a sign or character representing a word; a single stroke which, for brevity's sake, represents an entire word


i.e., in ancient Egyptian, "rejoice, support, exalt"

   
What we publish is short work by writing majors at Susquehanna University, every Thursday.  Stuff that only that only takes five minutes to read, stuff that won't have you clicking that little down arrow in the right corner of the screen all day long, but stuff that nonetheless feels complete.

About The Writers Institute

“Susquehanna University has the best undergraduate writing program in the United States.
        – Robert Boswell, author of Century's Son

The Writers Institute at Susquehanna University gives undergrads the opportunity to seriously study the art of writing in workshop-style classes led by accomplished writers.

The Institute’s Visiting Writers Series brings several acclaimed authors to campus each semester for readings, Q&A’s, and interviews.  Often these writers will guest-teach classes and even share meals with students.  Past visiting writers include Andre Dubus III, Ron Hansen, and Sue Miller.

The Writers Institute also publishes three student-run literary magazines.  RiverCraft features fiction and poetry from Susquehanna students, and its counterpart, Essay, features memoirs and personal essays from Susquehanna students.  The Institute’s national magazine, The Susquehanna Review, publishes fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction from undergraduates across the country.  The Institute also publishes poems, stories and personal essays by high school students in The Apprentice Writer and connects with other undergraduate literary magazines through FUSE, the Forum for Undergraduate Student Editors.

For more information about Susquehanna’s writing program, as well as excerpts, pictures, and other interesting things, visit the Writers Institute on the web, here.

2010 - 2011 Contributors

Aaron Abel

Aaron is a senior creative writing major with a minor in business. He is from Malvern, Pennsylvania. He enjoys reading and writing poetry and fiction. He is a proud member of Phi Mu Delta. He is also a singer/songwriter and enjoys performing frequently on and off campus. He has appeared in RiverCraft and The Susquehanna Review.
READ: "Asleep"
Lauren Bailey

Lauren is a senior creative writing major with a French minor. Her essays have appeared in the 2009, 2010, and 2011 editions of Essay and in her chapbook, Maybe I Can Be Done Writing About Sex Now.  She is also the winner of the 2010 Bennington Nonfiction Prize.
READ: "A Letter to Anya, October 2009"

Amber L. Cook
Amber is a senior creative writing and English secondary-education major from Long Valley, New Jersey. She has a dual passion for modifying the poetic form and teaching her students. She has formerly been published in The Susquehanna Review, Prick of the Spindle, Outrageous Fortune, and Rivercraft. Her plans include getting an MFA in Poetry sometime in the near future.
READ: "Untitled"

Dana Diehl

Dana Diehl is a junior creative writing major with a minor in philosophy. Her work has also appeared online in The Dirty Napkin and Novelletum.
READ: "Airplanes"

Staci Eckenroth

Staci Eckenroth is a senior creative writing major at Susquehanna University. She's obsessed with notebooks, the color yellow, and how memory works. She has been previously published in RiverCraft, The Blue Route, and The Susquehanna Review.
READ: "To:"

Melissa Goodrich

Melissa Goodrich has been PANKed and Routed. She's served as the co-editor of The Susquehanna Review and the poetry editor of RiverCraft the past two years. As a senior, she's started becoming nostalgic, phoning old grade-school English teachers, exhuming retired poems...it has all of it been a pleasure.
READ: "Words That Are Close"

Alex Guarco

Alex Guarco is a sophomore creative writing major at Susquehanna University. He's president of SU Slam Poetry and a member of the Ultimate Frisbee and Club Volleyball teams. Alex has appeared in Outrageous Fortune, Variance, Tomfoolery Review, and Essay.
READ: "8:30"
READ: "Drive"

William Hoffacker

William Hoffacker is an undergraduate student at Susquehanna University where he studies creative writing, primarily nonfiction. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in The Susquehanna Review, Novelletum, The Tomfoolery Review, and Essay. He lives in Queens, New York.
READ: "Scrape"

David Joseph

David Joseph is a sophomore creative writing major with a minor in Editing and Publishing. Two of his (very) short stories can be found in the W.W. Norton Hint Fiction Anthology.
READ: "Worship"

Louie Land

It could be said that Louie Land is a junior creative writing major at Susquehanna University, but it could just as easily be said that Louie is the newest member of ZZ Top, has done uncredited studio work on most of Bob Dylan's records up through the late nineties and early 2000s, and was the one who taught Hendrix, Page, Clapton and Beck how to make those guitars talk. It might be that he writes primarily fiction but dabbles into all three forms, and it might be that he was the one who told Miles Davis to plug in and go electric. Whatever the case, it's certain that Louie Land loves telling tales, playing music, and conveying feelings, emotions and thoughts through any medium, from poetry to prose, from smoke signals to telepathy. He'd rather people take his writing seriously and let the writer never grow up.

Elizabeth Deanna Morris

Elizabeth Deanna Morris is soon to be a graduate of Susquehanna University with a Bachelor’s of the Arts in Creative Writing. She has been published in Variance, RiverCraft, The Susquehanna Review, and Transformations. She is the poetry winner of Lazy Eye Press's Fall 2009 Chapbook Contest. She also finds time to blog about writing. She loves knitting, spinning, and other domestic activities. She often dreams her poetry before she writes it. She isn't sure if this means that she's cheating or working even as she sleeps.
READ: "(This is a love poem for Ally.)"

Emily Northey

Emily Northey is a senior creative writing major, minoring in photography and Asian studies. Her poetry and photographs have been published in RiverCraft and she has had a photographic essay published in Essay. When she's not writing or taking pictures, she spends her time shimmying with the SU Belly Dance Circle, of which she is the marketing and promotions manager.
READ: "Tanvi"
READ: "Blink: Ramayana"

Ryan Rickrode

Ryan Rickrode is the editor of Logogram. He is a creative writing/religion double major at Susquehanna University. He has served as a genre editor for RiverCraft, a co-editor for The Susquehanna Review, and, in the summertime, as a roofer/carpenter/cabinetmaker.  His work has appeared in RiverCraft, Essay, Outrageous Fortune, and plain china: Best Undergraduate Writing 2009.

Rob Rotell

Rob Rotell is a senior creative writing major at Susquehanna University from York, Pa. He has done layout and design work on RiverCraft, The Apprentice Writer, The Susquehanna Review, and Susquehanna University's Common Reading. His fiction has also appeared in The Susquehanna Review.
READ: "Corn Stalks"
READ: "BCN Subway"

Mary-Kate Sims

Mary-Kate Sims received her Bachelor’s of the Arts in Creative Writing as a December graduate of 2010. She founded and was president and secretary of the Anime & Manga Association while she attended Susquehanna. She likes to read and write as much as possible and learns from one of her favorite short story writer and novelist, Amiee Bender.
READ: "Driven"

Kim Stoll

Kim Stoll is a junior creative writing major with a minor in film studies. Her poetry has previously been published in RiverCraft and her chapbook, Through a Pinhole.
READ: "Fever Dreams Pt. 2"