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 Guiding Light 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 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

Under the Influence

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Driving into a valley of streets, off into the distance. The road extends in front of us. Smooth black skin leading us home. We rumbled in 3 am jungles. Roaring like lions, breaking up concrete and we left the grumpy half-asleep world reeling from our pillage. Oh, this rowdy youth. We ooze invincibility while escaping into the vault of heaven filled with constellations whose names we can’t remember. We shout our names into the atmosphere. I beg the stars not to forget me. I’ll always remember this past life of mine. Hopefully, I’ll reminisce with a smile. I like the shimmering glow of the street lights. I like how the road unfolds like an ancient scroll. I like how the night time version of me belongs to the rain-soaked roads and feels at home in parks after closing time. The me shaped impression I leave behind is washed away by the cold showers and dissipates into the morning fog. The soft Fanta orange sky melts into an azure sea. Heavy night air grabs me by the throat with it’s unyielding hands. We swing dance in the dark. We whoop and shout like hyenas prowling the darkened Serengeti. We drive with no hands and flee from the scolding lights of flashing red and blue. Chewy bits of nostalgia stick in between my teeth. My fingers are wet with remembrance. I carry the scent of adolescence in my hair and on my skin. And my clumsy stumbling into adulthood will always linger under my tongue and behind my eyes. Monotony turns my world into a hazy vhs tape. The days bleed into one another and the clouds march by at an achingly slow pace. Until suddenly the world opens up before me and reality is bursting at the seams, bending at the edges.

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JANÉE WILSON is a sophomore pursuing a Baccalaureate degree in English. Janée has always had a love for reading and writing. It is her favorite form of self expression and a helpful emotional outlet for her.

 

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