amanda f. korman

Amanda F. Korman is a high-school student on Cleveland's east side where she enjoys nice people, academic endeavors, the theater, and field hockey, although she hasn't much talent in the latter. Her play, "What Happened to Connie?" was performed at the Doboma Theatre in Cleveland Heights in 2001.

Ten-Eight Arrhythmia

Life in ten-eight
give a little then choke back
never let anyone know you
in four
They might just grow to feel
the Beats of your heart

further the exposure
farther the control;
the sanity

But when we finally achieve her,
that arrhythmic time
by which we are unrecognizable
The corner where we scratch
out our tunes of oneness
will die a long way from home

Want

I could blare my trumpet
till heaven and nature swell
with animosity and screaming
at least they'd be honest
because I don't know souls who are
least of all about my trumpet

bigger than me they can tell
the others how I am
how I represent nothing but the style
or lack thereof
of youth today
This is The Style!
can't do it but I want to
though want isn't quite enough
This I know because if it was,
I'd be a very busy kid

I want a lot.

No, you need to feel it
knock down dreams and mirrors
close my blind eyes
stick out my verdant hand
then I can know
the hand knows
because knowing is feeling
Texture of my inside,
raise yourself up
Close my eyes tighter!
or these feelings may escape

I'll sign up for the class
Out of want
But the schedule of my soul
is already full

why wear turquoise underwear

In underwear, it is safe
a manifestation of the inner god
in the outer world

nothing is more intimate
than those that our clothes conceal
for who knows what's under them
the creased elastic superiority
them that know: you and yours
will smile up and down on your underwear beauty

curse to the gym class
that throws godliness to the mediocre
why should they sense
what you are wearing
underneath your clothes and skin

but oh know one blessing:
visible panty line
deliberate and truthful
a mere shadow
but closer than most will get

so curse to you who
hides her VPL
because this is too true in telling
that you hide god.

travels with tape

we will have been nicked and dimed
as we careen through the sticky strips of tape
stained red by the blood
of those who have died along its path before us.
and live so long as to find
we have traveled so far forward
that we are at the beginning again.

and then there, we can start eating the tape.
and even though it tastes like a lost tooth,
it's ok.