FUSION Magazine

One Winter Morning

by Kikuta Norihiro

Cold Bright day. White Breath. Beautiful low peach winter sun. Birds are singing in the middle of pale tree. Storm brought snowman to a new jacket last night. He is smiling with carrot mouth. Picked up the newspaper. Under the sunbeams, colorful advertisement becomes stained glass. Looked up the garden. Small playground is covering by decade of time and scent of snow. Read more »

Train

by J.T. Welsch

Characters:

STEVE: 30-ish, travelling businessman

SIMON: early thirties, academic

KATHRYN: university student on holiday

LISA: university student on holiday

HOSTESS: attractive, French

A train carriage, rumbling along at night, empty except for four passengers: a pair of female university students, speaking to each other quietly; a professional-looking man in his early thirties, reading a packet of papers in the row ahead of them; and another man of about the same age, slouched in the seat facing him.

Read more »

En La Republica Dominicana

by Hannah Ferber

I saw him there

Bare toes curled into black earth

Hunching over the infected gutter

Where water runs the color of injustice.

I saw him there, so small and beautiful

Eyes heavy as the stifling tropical air

So small and beautiful, unnaturally aged

Tiny fingers gripping the plastic cup

He knew he had no choice

But to drink

Hannah Ferber is currently a student at Berklee.  This poem was written for the Poetry Workshop .

The Sunset Tree

by Eric Bolton

It was during the summer in which I was 17 when I became the invisible boy around my house. It wasn’t so much that I had a bad home life. In fact, comparably speaking, I was raised pretty well. It wasn’t like something out of “Leave it to Beaver” where we’d all gather around the dinner table, eat a roast, and talk about our days. My parents were fairly hands-off. They never reminded me to do my homework, but at the same time, they never hit me for not doing it. Really, my childhood could’ve been a lot worse. Read more »

Questions

by Matthew Baamonde

EXT. NORTH BOSTON – BY THE WATER

JACK and LÉA are walking side by side through crowds of pedestrians along a breezy boardwalk. The remains of the summer sun reflect off of nearby buildings and light the bay in a red orange glow. 

Still uncertain if this was meant to be a date or just a friendly outing with a classmate, Jack awkwardly tries to find a balance between giving Léa room and being romantically close.

Léa, clearly a lover of conversation, is rambling as they walk, but focusing more on the beauty and excitement of the world around her.

LÉA

…so in realistic terms, we’re talking about a bunch of people from all over the planet pursuing a very expensive, emotionally draining… dream… that will ultimately not pay off for most of them. Read more »

Poems from the Chinese

translated by David Hinton

Listening to a Monk’s Ch’in in Depths

Carrying a ch’in cased in green silk, a monk

descended from Eyebrow Mountain in the west.

When he plays, even in a few first notes,

I hear the pines of ten thousand valleys,

and streams rinse my wanderer’s heart clean.

Echoes linger among temple frost-fall bells,

night coming unnoticed in emerald mountains,

autumn clouds banked up, gone dark and deep.

Li Po (701-762)

  Read more »

Word and Violin–Spoken Word Poems

by Pireeni Sundaralingam with accompaniment by Colm O’Riain

LETTERS FROM EXILE

These are the letters I leave behind me,

dull lines written for the censor’s eye.

There are no stories here, only headlines,

statements of fact, shielding the truth.

But how can I write my life without politics

when each word placed is part of an equation?

Talk of my income will be translated

into an exact amount for blackmail or ransom;

Talk of our culture will be interpreted

as a covert call to arms.

Read more »

Snow

by Parisa Roohipour

A torrent of white

noise affiliates,

Pressing firmly

against my

ears.

Feel the pressure as

silence floats

by.

Parissa Roohipour is a Berklee alum.  This poem was written for the Poetry Workshop. 

Disturbed

by S. Kean Cattaneo

The battered gray mailbox at the end of our cul de sac used to read  “400″ in red letters before some neighborhood kid (who wasn’t me) stole the four and probably hung it in his bedroom next to a Red Sox poster.  The red zeros they left behind looked like two eyes.  During the summer, when waves of heat made the asphalt blurry, they almost blinked at you if you squinted real hard. Read more »

Fooled by the Fifty-Seven

by Aidan Sherry

The fifty-seven bus has a strained relationship with its riders.  It is a bus with unrivaled convenience and comfort.  It takes its loyal followers sometimes within feet of their final destination.  While it is a good friend to many, it is also an unreliable friend, a friend that should not be depended on in desperate situations.  Many have fallen victim to its sporadic schedule.  Classes have been missed, deadlines passed, and relationships ruined because of an incredibly late fifty-seven bus. Read more »