Understory 2020 Main Menu Masthead From the Student Editors and Faculty Creative Works: Poetry Haiku: Dewdrops Petrarchan Sonnet: Shallow Waters Cabin Fever: Cantwell Tree and River Dying Day Haiku Blue Moon Spring A Body of Water Seward Constellations of Ink and Dust Just One More Day White Flower My Night Sky How to Ask Deep Blue The Dancer The Senses Insomnia Physics for Poets Free Verse: Two Waves Within A Pond Love Letter Grief Evolved Good Days Window Seat Parched Runaway Boy Ballad of the Love Affair River My Body is Like Water Patience and Irony Lethologica The Cave Painter Miles Poem, Based off a scene from Into the Spiderverse Balloons Creative Works: Prose Fairy Dance The Starving Artist’s Lament Face of Death A Silent Spectrum Time Really Does Fly The Metamorphosis Indigo Skies 1807 Under the Influence Hall of Mirrors Creative Works: Screenplay Animal ANNIE WANG is a senior pursuing a Baccalaureate degree in English with a minor in Creative Writing. Annie is a student at UAA. She says she can write decently. Creative Works: Literary Nonfiction Friends in Strange Places “Major” Trauma The Tightrope of Addiction English Studies: Language and Linguistics Political Profanity on Social Media: A Sociolinguistic View on Public Discussions about US Political Events Alaska Resident Fishermen’s Union: Personal Statements Walter T. Granath: An Airmen in Alaska English Studies: Literary Analysis Female Voice and Agency in “The Wife’s Lament” The Protofeminist Perspective of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath Antithesis in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing English Studies: Rhetoric and Composition Ethos, Pathos, and Logos in Mr. Rogers’ Address to Congress Five Elements of Literacy in a Miscarriage Group The Library and Literacy of Technology Social Psychology in Clinical Practice: A Prerequisite for Effective Therapeutic Treatment Net-Working Together: Connecting (online) for Community Health Promotion in Southeast Alaska UAA’s Critical Thinking Ecosystem The Evolution of Planned Parenthood

Guiding Light

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Outside of city lights, and over the sea, a ship lies.
Only by lantern and stars can the captain hope to steer it,
through the inky gloom of a storm looming on the sky.
The ship is rocked by waves
as it sits in heaven’s lap,
waiting for its guide.

Suddenly, it appears from behind clumps of cloud. The guide!
Stars are free from lies
Even as the sea likes to lap
at the boat and aches to drag it
beneath the waves.
But always strong, is the eye in the sky.

Long ago, her maiden voyage started on clear blue sky
Without sight of her guide.
She received blessings and waves
as the ship over water lies,
unaware of the secrets under it.
Before any adventure took place, the boat completed a lap.

After the lap,
The boat sailed under honey and vinegar sky.
When the sun set, dark curtains closed above it
and the light appeared as guide.
Dreams, nightmares, truths and lies
Held a place in the waves.

Far past the onlookers’ waves
And in the midst of every hungry drag and lap
Of the sea’s lies,
dark is the sky.
Without a guide.

Seems hopeless doesn’t it?
Despair blooms in waves
Even with a guide.

The ship forgets it’s in the celestial lap.
Home is in the sky.
But even with that, ships can sink in lies.

Look though, can you see it? From the lap
above waves, in the sky
is the guide, and it never lies.

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LARISSA MARISCAL is a freshman pursuing a Baccalaureate degree in Geology with a minor in Art. Larissa has lived in Anchorage, Alaska her whole life. She enjoys writing creatively and hopes to make it as a big shot author one day.

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