Spring 2008: The Creative Campus

People sitting by fountain, photo from Alloy

Fountain of Love in Montmare

Cheryl Yi/Alloy

An Outlet for Student Art

Alloy, the Emory student literary magazine, serves as a creative outlet for undergraduate writers and artists across disciplines. A staff of six editors and other interested students meet throughout the academic year to review submissions, which are kept anonymous until selections are made. The annual publication is distributed free in the DUC and the University Post Office, giving thousands of students the opportunity to enjoy the original poetry, short stories, photography, painting, and drawing of their peers. “Much of the student population here is so preoccupied with their studies and their futures that, unless they are arts majors, they don’t have much time to spare for the arts,” says junior Jing Zhong 09C, a creative writing major who has served as editor-in-chief of Alloy for two years. “Hopefully, when they read Alloy, they can glimpse a little of the escapism and release that the arts have to offer.”

Following are two poems from the 2006-2007 edition of Alloy.

In the Museum of Our College Careers

there is junk food aplenty lying about. Cheetos,
Cheez-Its, doughnuts, and half-eaten pizzas.

There are pictures on the walls, of Johnny Depp,
Orlando Bloom, and your little three-year-old cousin.

Paper plates and plastic forks strewn around,
even though your mother gave you silverware.

There is a full-length mirror, that lies leaning
against the wall, hoping one day to be hung.

There are the unmade beds and filthy floors,
decorated with mismatched shoes and dirty socks.

A TV sits atop the dresser, loud and crackling,
forever tuned in to Grey’s Anatomy or The O.C.

And on top of the desk lie a heap of unread
books, and that little blue pill.

—Jing Zhong 09C

To Procrastination

You are the red-and-green plaid sofa
tempting me to sink down into plush cushions
and watch hours of reality show reruns.

You are the velvet-smooth, bittersweet dark chocolate bar
pushing Atkins, or South Beach, to another day.

You lead me everywhere and nowhere
on the entangled strands of the world-wide-web.

Each afternoon you call me away;
four chapters of Dan Brown or Stephen King
replace Romanticism, WWII and cell wall synthesis.
Your low, ominous voice whispers in my ear,
beseeching me to obey every one of your commands.

You leave me scrambling for textbooks,
my stomach roiling with anxiety every evening
over the twenty. . .nineteen. . . more pages to annotate.

Every night, I vehemently swear to the ceiling
that our relationship is through.
I will free myself from your shackling presence

. . . tomorrow.

—Yihan Yang