Laura Grafham is a senior English Literature major at Seattle Pacific University. She has published in her school's student-run arts journal Lingua, of which she now is a staff member. Currently, Laura is writing her twenty-plus page senior thesis on Leslie Silko’s novel Ceremony. Having lived in the lovely Pacific Northwest all her life, and worked as a bartender and waitress on Orcas Island in the San Juans, she dreams of climbing mountains in the Rockies. Laura is currently applying to graduate schools within the Mountain Time Zone.

Frickatives (April 20, 2011. Issue 27.)

This wall needs staring
stared into it,
good and hard and
using German fricatives,
his mind swears:
there's so much taupe
on these here walls.
Frick. atives.

Don't answer the phone.
Don't do it there
it is again, ringing the
hook off the wall
till the paint chips
chips chip chip chips
and you pick picks pick
them off.

Sometimes I'm so perky
when I talk about
what is me, what color
this wall needs or what
you need, me, sometimes.
It's just as good to get:
get some air.