Tall Fescue by Eamon Costello

I am in the moonlight I am
The green remaining untouched
Beside the trodden way.

I lie in wait I do not know
Why others wish to be stepped on today.
I would rather sweet senses
And the bosom of surrounding
And the relief of knowing I’ll
Be the same with imminence.

While I comfort myself, I’ll wilt
Of life’s accord and wonder
What the comfort was.

I will want experience
I will want to feel the injury against purity
And visionary destruction.

Eamon Costello (he/him) is a student at Columbia College studying Comparative Literature. He can be found on Instagram @eamonc2.

Groveland, California by Eve Girzadas

Showerhead spews dusty water kneading dirt
Into muddy soft and clean
I’m leaking grime, nudge aside
the space galaxy curtain and blink droplets
Down my eyelashes to dry in the barbeque-time sun

Cieran squats all shrub-like
At the wheels of his 2007 rust-red minivan
Blistered toes in the brittle grass as he twists magnetic
Words to craft a new bible on his mobile front door.
The rotting wood of this roofless shower came stripped from the inner walls of that car–

Where he nailed them together to sleep
In the trunk in rootless pursuit
Of open skies and cliffside faces slackjaw.
But then we stunk, and for the greater good
He tore up his home to clean us.

Hamburger smoke burns seventeen years off the grill where it’s Friday,
Metal mugs and vanilla wisps of jeffrey pine cusp the sweet delusion of exemption
From shoes and socks, from TV ads,
We sway boundless to blasted bluegrass and I shake my tangled hair in time
An hour west by switchback roads from the wilderness boundary line

We are almost in the weeds, play hopscotch till the border swims blurry
Calling my mother, wading in the creek, a day's walk away and asking to be trusted,
Please.
I’m thinking liminal
And I’m craving it all in.

The outskirts are for the indecisive, and we are living large
In Groveland, no it's not the Valley– but there’s a hot tub, if you're sneaky.
Blackberry bushwhack crosshatch on hardened fingertips
Juicy runoff of hushing thunder, counting to five,
To breathing in brinks of bright

Baby steps from the trail and just a talus field past twenty-one
Snuggled pebbles on the bed beside Crown Lake, I swear I’m one of us but
It's October, and the granite is crisp this season.
To scrub a dirty face and squish my earthy heels between tupperware dinner dancing
And the blare of the fading green.

Eve Girzadas (she/her) is a junior studying Environmental Science and Sustainability at Barnard. She is from California and her favorite tree is the Jeffrey pine. She can be found on Instagram @evegirz.

An Modh Coinníollach by Reese Alexander

I would like
to remember you.
I would not like
to roll the rock back up the mountain.
If I were
to build a ship, a Big Ship, an ARK,
I would
cross and (re)cross playground puddles.
I would
call them all ‘the ocean.’

Reese Alexander (she/her) is a senior studying English and Creative Writing at Barnard. Her stories have been published in Quarto, Echoes, 4x4, Flash Fiction Magazine, Five on the Fifth, Literally Stories, Laurel Moon, The Greene Street Review, and Trinity College Dublin's The Attic. She may be reached via carrier pigeon or tin can. She can be found on Instagram @erinreesealex.

Chiropteran Contact by Haven Capone

the day I found out about echolocation, I was rocked.
in the when, not the if – a country I salivate for –
she could find me with her eyes closed.
she says my mouth falls open during sleep.
hers does that also. we sleep wings in. I hear her feet, soft
like the cat’s biscuits on my pillow. we sleep
upside down, to most. but I'm kept a lot safer
that way. if your eyes were brown, you’d look like
a bat. I bet. she would know. she sees me in higher frequency.

Haven Capone (any pronouns) is a senior at Barnard College studying Creative Writing and Italian. Free Palestine.

On my heels by Haven Capone

It’s okay if there’s a little sand in the piece of gum you gave me,
it’s only a little bit of sand. These are the sensations I seek, besides. I’m idiosynchronizing, patient.
Blowing one big bubble on the library top floor.
Blowing a bunch and listening to the soap pop on my keyboard. The silent Monday on my heels. I am
coming up with a party trick. To be less convincible
and make clairvoyance conversational. I kiss you back when you say the right thing and find pleasure
in freezing water. I sink into the ink. I talk to my cat
like she’s my attorney. You’re not used to my face without lipstick, but we make it work.
Chewing, itsy rock rolls through my molar. Clean on the outside, rotten within.
Cheeky both ways. Premonating
through the flicker of a birthday cake, which should always be the only light in the room, when
applicable. Me, my family of felines, and the idea of
you: we wade past the knee, the neck high. We lose track of the day of the week. This mascara has
lasted me remarkably long and you find me quite convincing.

Haven Capone (any pronouns) is a senior at Barnard College studying Creative Writing and Italian. 

Stranger by Thai Loyd

The axe turns the woods into a field.
The lumberjack leaves the stove on,
embers falling like stars.
The dynamite turns the field into a hole.
The hole swallows itself,
deepening into a cave.

The years turn the cave into a sky.
Tonight, a deer grazes the cloud.
Hooves stomp the prairie,
nose nipping at white yarrow.
There’s a quiet solitude,
covered by this incensed fog.

Imagine if
you were buried twenty years ago.
Tonight, you wake from the sand,
hungry and strange.
A stranger to these woods.

Thai Loyd (he/him) is a junior at Columbia College majoring in Political Science. He can be found on Instagram @thailoyd.

Neighbor by Reese Alexander

Giggling from our hiding place deep within your garden, we used to wait for you to appear. I never saw you, not once, but laying under your prized hydrangea bushes, she whispers to me your story. How you are prince of the faeries, banished here for starting a revolt. She points out the goblins that watch from your upstairs window, and sprinkles bits of crackers on your doorstep for the pixies to enjoy. It is the end of summer, almost fall. But the snapdragons have not yet died. The sunflowers’ ruminative faces bend to lend us shelter. My old husky waits two driveways down for me to return. She declares me a prisoner in the troll war, and binds long strips of monkey grass around my wrists and ankles. I collect flower petals in one of my mother’s old china teacups, then bury it deep under the roots of your dead azaleas. I fall asleep next to her, cradled in the garden’s womb. I hold you in my mind. Later, the next spring, each of your azalea buds open to reveal a single baby tooth.

Reese Alexander (she/her) is a senior studying English and creative writing at Barnard. Her stories have been published in Quarto, Echoes, Flash Fiction Magazine, Five on the Fifth, Literally Stories, and Trinity College Dublin's The Attic. She may be reached via carrier pigeon or tin can. She can be found on Instagram @erinreesealex.

yes in spirals in the chapel of hope by Ava Min

let me teach you the when-where
following away the film
of his breath that pots up my
lips. let me teach you shattered
men, & run the curves of his
spine, say it’s too much to bear
even now. to speak of faith,

come here.
i’ll be the ruin of sevens

let me promise irreligion
in soft & quick shower sex

in tangerine rinds & my mother-spit,
by cracked yellow eyes

august palms. in a ham-and-cheese bao

or flesh-free,
every other thursday. yes, come in–
– it’s two-thirty-and-some
past the sensible known but yes, I’ll sit

come away from there &
slip to church with me, I
tell you now this is a good man,

a man with
four corners & earnest hands saying
come here, come eat the
earth and keep the faith &
don't be anywhere else. yes. let me
show you ruin

yes. yes.
now this is a good man.

Ava Min (she/they) is a sophomore class of '27 at BC, majoring in Urban Studies, longtime lover of Ocean Vuong & confessional poetry. She can be found on Instagram @ava_min.

For Luquitas by Isa Farfan

you turned four during my finals week so i missed your party at a
trampoline park where i didn’t meet the preschool girlfriend who 
you got in trouble for kissing last week. you speak in full sentences
now, something I worried would never happen. you could only say
no for so long i told your mom i was worried about your language,
but i didn’t know what i was talking about. you’re learning two
languages and i don’t think you know whether to ask for something
in Spanish, English, or Cry. Me too, i’m missing Spanish and only
Crying. with your newfound ability to speak you ask me why i live
in New York. i decided to leave just before you came out (of my
sister), not understanding how much of you i’d miss. you’re as old
as my decision. i want to tell you how much i miss you but you
don’t know what missing is it’s like when your mom takes your
iPad away at Sushi Heaven or when i turn off salsa sensory
vegetables on Youtube and you tell me you hate me but much, much
worse. on my floor i turn to the words capricious, cleavage,
temporality, and ubiquitous to sound smart enough to be here
instead of doing the work to be here. i couldn’t explain those words
to you if i tried and i haven’t figured out if they mean anything. no
is perfectly fine.

Isa Farfan (she/her) graduated in May 2024 and submitted this poem while she was studying Political Science and English at Barnard. She still lives in New York. You can find her on Twitter @isapizza60 and on Instagram @isaislearninghowtouseacamera.

Tide by Julie Chow

The midsummer tide arrives at the shore
gets cold feet,
returns,
and rushes back inshore
The swirl of affection thereamong your heart

Julie Chow (she/her) is a senior at Barnard studying English and concentrating in creative writing. She's from Beijing and she loves museums, doodling, deep conversations, taking care of pets, and brewing citron tea. Her Instagram is @julie.chow_9.

Forgive you what I do by Nickolas Vaccaro

When singing from the song sings
day away the singing and treads lightly there and
from then on, by ending feared and ending in the
singing seen, so fears the movement—and wren, the wren
with white dust-birds plays while dirt-
swans quaff-drink hard water in their
black stayings.

And lo by whiles there drips something, from
the dirt or high-dirt come and to dust returned, to
dust returned again—self and to self they
want and a self, what of it, a self though what
of it, a self though what of it—and it softly repeats
and softly uttered fails to do anything, oh anything, and falls
this tortured and the
fallings, these fallings and that
which stays down, beneath myself
and the drying sunflower—but ah but ah
lo and lo the sunflower dries still and notwithstanding,
and my words broken fingers, broken fingers,
fingers broken, please and please.

Had I a sire the sire
says and weeps for he
was dead and he
was dying and he is and
he is here and here—
here and here I find and
let fall and again let
fall that which I
don’t know which is
what, which is what, the hard
and past-forth going, the
passed—a dirt-swan goes
off with wider wings though
from the day no bread against
the falling and the dead, the sun,
the passed behind—and it and even
this it is behind knowing by want
and by its dirt.

By a sea we buried and
came home and sat and drank
and went away by morning
going there and quickly coming
here with sunflowers and in leagues,
we there or here, we proud in our quick
leagues, running down and down away.

Pardon oh pardon that I cannot—and I cannot and I cannot—please you—please.

Please.

Nickolas Vaccaro (he/him) is a first-year at Columbia College and intends to major in Philosophy and Drama and Theatre Arts. Poetry, for him, is perhaps the truest, at once most individual and universal, expression of the good and of the tragedy of the human. He has found that poetry fulfills the human need for myth, for symbolism, and for meaning, and becomes the domain where both poet and audience realize the great magnitude of their humanity. He can be found on Instagram and on poeticviolence.com and poeticviolence.substack.com.

Baba by Eleni Mazareas

Illustration by Tomiris Tatisheva

If you press your ear to the door you can still hear it—
forced rise and fall of the chest. Gasp in,
long wheeze out. The divet in his mattress.
No one comes in and he never left
and I’m still standing there, I smell him. As if kissing
the creases of his sweat lined forehead.

Eleni Mazareas (she/her) is a junior at Barnard College studying history with a concentration in empires and colonialism. Her most prized possessions are her Telfar bags and her favorite poem is "Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People are Dying" by Noor Hindi. You can find her on Instagram.

Dream Reservation by Julie Chow

I took a deep breath
And concealed the dreams
Flickering by the milky crescent.

The pink petals outside my black window
Sway like flags; my rouge seeped
In from the edges.

Therein lies an assertion of
Unbearable, leafy kisses.
Blind blades thrusted in a twig neck.
Vampiric licks gallop in

Their velvety clefts.
I become a patch of beaten skin.
The cobwebby folds rose a fumy flame for which
I wear against the glint of barb-wired eyes.

In the festive temple, a sacred prayer proposes
A toast
A cup of sap
Simmering a stampede of rusty foam and enormous
Burnt-black holes—

O; I am the goddess you are bound to invoke
With sacrifice. The dowry on a red bed and
A scoop of a lack of antidote,
Incapable,
In the incapable night,
Sending a secret signal to the hotel of dreams:
A room for two tonight
Pay you in person.

Julie Chow (she/her) is a junior at Barnard studying English and concentrating in creative writing. Recently, she has joined the Lost Women of Science Initiative to produce podcasts focusing on historically under-recognized women scientists. In her free time, she enjoys doodling, deep conversations, taking care of pets, and brewing citron tea. She can be found on Instagram and Facebook.

Octopus Poem by Phoebe Mulder

This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2023 Spring Print Edition.

In earlier versions of this poem
I began with the moon. And how
she made windows from the maple
space and how you loved cranberries,
especially frozen, and how I once
believed you could teach the road signs
how to swim. Back then silence was still
something we could suck inside a twisty
straw and I was keeping rocks alive.

He drove a car that became a truck
and as he slowed down I remembered
Octopuses have three hearts and the
neighbors were away and headlights
are yellow teeth – they will rot if you’re
not careful. In earlier versions of this poem
I said my fingers pressed into your
thigh and I spun pipe wings from car
exhaust but mostly I remember Mary,
in the yard, your mother’s statue, hands bright
with lichen and how she made our burning
lungs sound like prayers. And how he sent us
scrambling for a porch. In school we read

about the dog they sent to space, she died
with starlight down her gullet, except
maybe it was just emptiness and I used to
wonder why tiny things look for homes in
their reflection – until I got my answer. And
they built her a casket of media – I’m sorry,
I didn’t mean to awaken, blinking, buried
arm deep in the electric dirt. I don’t mean
to write a poem about her. I meant to wonder
if he has children and if he noticed my
friendship bracelets and your missing
tooth and if that’s why he let us run.
Or if he was being kind – in his own way –
and we flew too fast and left him staring

at his own far starlight, his own pencil-tip
planet earth. God, I’m sorry, I keep writing
poems about her. I wish I carved more names
in baseboards and dried those recital flowers
and tried to be more than a body of guilt.
I wish I had two hearts, so I could give you
one and then you’d have three and then
you would be an Octopus.

Phoebe Mulder (she/her) is a first-year at Barnard majoring in English, but please don’t hold her to that. 

A fast-and-loose sketch of the Buddha under the bodhi tree, and a fig wasp taking him for a fig by Mia Xing

This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2023 Spring Print Edition.

Illustration by Watson Frank

The wasp recognized him at once
dude, prince, Buddha
for the wasp was an expert in things that bore fruit.

Butt punctured by; healed from
thorns of the ascetics.
If they so hungered,
did they know water could taste of color,
that of sparrows in particular?
Anyway, something dizzying about the way he smelled...
Why be still? The wasp asked,
maybe the Buddha still wants.
Well I am
expert of fruit
that are not really fruit but
quiet, inverted rooms
near the day’s wheeling areola.

So sitting mildly,
dude, prince, Buddha
inventoried a sting on his arm that burrowed,
and when the wasp reached his heart valve
he was visited by knowledge that a young baby wasp,
hatched, will soon drill its way out of his neck
and the younger sisters follow and find flight
to lay life elsewhere.

His muscle, recalling dew, grieves this parting preemptively,
while the wasp mother programs in him
the event of a sparrow—
She would die there, a mute dividual of suffering
and the epitaph too would be suffering.
Then light comes, an upwelling of his favorite prosodies.

Note: “water could taste of color, that of sparrows in particular” is taken from Memory for Forgetfulness by Mahmoud Darwish.

Mia Xing (she/her) is a senior at Columbia College from Canada and China. Her recent discoveries include osmanthus incense and brown butter in baking. She hopes to practice law and give back to her communities. 

Perfect Hours by Julia Luna

Runner-up in Quarto’s 2023 Chapbook Contest
Click here to view the chapbook

Illustration by Watson Frank

Julia Luna (she/they) is a poet in New York. She can be found on park benches or the one train. "Perfect Hours" is a selection from a larger work focused on noticing and the quotidian muses. 

Longing for Jiaoxi by Eleanor Lin

Runner-up in Quarto’s 2023 Chapbook Contest
Click here to view the chapbook

Illustration by Mel Wang

Eleanor Lin (林書意) (she/her) is a senior at Columbia College majoring in computer science and linguistics. In addition to writing the occasional poem for Quarto, she has also contributed to The Blue and White Magazine, the Columbia Daily Spectator, the Columbia Science Review, and Columbia Continents human rights magazine. She was selected as a finalist for the 2022 Betty L. Yu & Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize from TaiwaneseAmerican.org.

She is interested not only in what is lost in translation, but also what might be gained. In "Four Replies to Sappho," can the poet's grace be grasped without her Greek? How does one capture the balance and conciseness of the original language in "Longing for Jiaoxi"? Is the mother's heart in "Dull Ice Flower" an emblem of self-sacrifice, as the Mandarin-language song suggests, or one of maternal frigidity, as the English connotes? How does the translation of the events of "Ballad of the Street Vendor" across boundaries of language, place, and time affect the lens through which we view those events? Do old songs lose their power once they are no longer "veiled by the mystery of translation," as "Hiraeth" ponders? These are just a few of the questions that the author hopes to raise in this work.

little day by Ele Gonzales-Poirier

Illustration by Watson Frank

it was summer
exposition
bodies smoothed
in clear blue
its length
that covered
broken carapace
you
to walk
day
the peaches
to take a page
wonderful
muteness
all of it
our deep bodies
it was wet
the condo
it was a $12
& it was
i cried hard & fast
my face in your hair
we ate well
wanted to do
it was a short time
of all the short times
to itself
was headed

it was the bliss of
we drank & our
it was floating
between us
it was a sweater
it was a scarab’s
it was me looking at
we left the vivisection
it was a shy windless
we touched we ate
from the beginning)
everywhere was
& long hours of
the dying beetle
with us
of warm water
in the back of
& a wad of damp cash
a pair of pewter wings
that did us in
it was visionary
we were happy
& everything we
it was a short time
in the beginning
gorgeous stupid fire
we occupied
on well oiled tracks

it was peaches on the fruit stand
& sunscreen & sunlight
into a crescent of forward motion
you & me & the short time
beautifully becoming shorter
half of a person
it was you looking at the cracks
we picked numbly at our lips
back down to the beach
& everywhere we glittered
(which you had taken
out of beginnings
even our thick swallows
& fresh memory of
swam the perfect sea
hosts for a network
footprints to the bedroom
it was hot honey toast
necklace dangling on it
the dead beetle
into the expectation of your corpse
my wrinkled weeping skin
& everywhere we wanted to live
we did
it was a short time
was a small candle setting
& the train of thought
for darkness

Ele Gonzales-Poirier is a student at Columbia College.

língua by Isabella Redivo

Illustration by Tomiris Tatisheva

in Portuguese the word for language is the same as
the word for tongue
so allow me to replace from now on
language for língua
tongue for língua
and my língua for yours
allow me to teach you the ways of my língua
and what I can do with it
here, let me show you
let me prove to you how I can twist it
in your mouth
bear witness to the twirls
and lashes
and backflips
my língua can do
don’t be afraid of my língua
let it consume you
and bring you the joys of its sinuous curves
the way it slides into
your mouth
your ear
your country
let my língua penetrate you
in your neighborhoods and schools and counties
let it seduce you
and confuse you
with its gendered articles and its wet caress
surrender yourself to my língua
let it make you moan
to its phonemes you struggle to pronounce
não, cão, mão
confuse you with its temporal verbs
serenade you with its sounds
and bring you pleasure with its perfect pitch

Isabella Redivo (she/her) is a senior majoring in English at the School of General Studies. She's an immigrant from Brazil who got to call California home for five years before moving to the East Coast and is now mostly seen roaming the streets of Morningside Heights, complaining about the weather. She loves to crochet, write silly poems, and hang out with Jennifer, her cat. You can find her on Instagram @bellasux and Facebook.

sticky like dates by Trey Purves

This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2023 Spring Print Edition.

Illustration by Kaavya Gnanam

muddy raindrops swallow
their pride single spaced
on the pavement
aquamarine and tired
distant enough from tomorrow
close enough to spiral
stuck between vanity
and the gum underneath
your seat on the train
tell me a secret
don’t act like
you mean it
i am good at enough
public transportation
cooking brussel sprouts sex
just nothing casual
and i’ve got a real knack
for enthusiasm, yeah!
my handwriting’s bad
but i look alright in blue
it’s been a while
since I left home
without my keys without
my sanity and honestly
it’s not about me it’s about
honey on the subway
seats and kisses in the
new york aquarium
miss me it’s a button
on your favorite band
the guys who know
how every word is destined
to taste a little handsy on
the waist hasty but not unstable
no I am able to find
my way back now thanks
something (no one) tells me
you know how this works
right? yeah. i want you
to know me like you think
you do twist off the top
peer into what’s ready to be yours
you’re a drag you’re a doll
i am nothing without my linens
hooking up before my hair
dries and you cry until laundry day
singing swinging ringing
out of time

Trey Purves (he/him) is a sophomore at Columbia College. He misses his dog back in North Carolina, likes the icees that are blue, and really wants to go to the beach.