SPOTLIGHT SUBMISSIONS - Author Haley Walker Shares Poetry
Author, Haley Walker
I am a sophomore at Texas A&M University studying Communication and Sociology with the happiest of hearts, gig em ags! I am newly carrying the title of “author” as my book The Ubiquity of it All is published at for sale on Amazon as of September 22nd, and I could not be more ecstatic! I am also a content creator for The Odyssey, I am the publicist of our University’s literary magazine, and I play the bassoon in our University’s concert band. I spend all of my days chasing after Jesus, sunlight, coffee, concerts, and adventure. I aspire to be an editor or publisher of some sort upon graduating, visit every nation park in my lifetime, and continuously act as a groupie for all of my favorite bands.
“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”
- Sarah Williams
As Gold Hand Girls received Haley Walker's submission, we were in awe by her works. Haley is a recent author of her own publication of poems titled The Ubiquity of it All. If you happen to know her, or even if you don't know her, give this girl a hug because that is COOL. Congratulations Haley!
I.
An elegy,
the most serious, profound piece of writing a poet can muster up, yet I still find this arrangement of letters on a single page insufficient when praising you, my best friend. I have come to the conclusion I am a never ending artwork, Jackson Pollock and Van Gogh take turns decorating my existence, excitement, sadness, splatters of joy, blossoms of sorrow, back and forth and back and forth, and they’ll never be finished. I’ll never wake up and whisper la fin to them. And you are the first soul who isn’t waiting for them to drop the brush. You don’t stand there beside me, on the outside, as if behind some velvet rope at a museum, criticizing these men. No, you have found a brush of your own. You join them. You add to my masterpiece. You rinse off Van Gogh’s brushes when the sadness wins, when I take after him and I am forced to eat yellow paint desperate to feel something that resembles color, not the absence of it. You suggest hues to Pollock as he mimics the vibrations of my laugh upon a canvas, greens and blues, primary colors for these primary emotions, explaining to him where each streak should be placed to match the wrinkles of my eyes. You are not a critic, you do not suggest better paint or a different brush. You have formed new pigments out of your presence that I never knew could exist, and they are now added to my masterpiece, I wear you like that old coat you can’t get rid of because it smells and feels like home no matter how much time has passed and you have cultivated these parts of me that are more than Vincent and Jackson could have ever invented because their ancient voices are dull and lifeless over your timeless roar. You are a thread in every roped experience I’ve ever breathed, you are the ticket to this exhibit, you are the end of the sentence that picks up where I leave off and I am sorry this is just a rambled elegy when you deserve and endless galaxy. Just know I saved every last drop of red to say I love you, and that I always will. I cannot fathom how you praise and observe my being, always failing to realize you are its biggest contributor, you are a piece of me deserving this same praise, and I will never stop trying to drown you in it.
Love, Jackson, Vincent, and I .
II.
Growing up, they never tell you kissing the concrete hurts less than kissing someone who doesn’t love you. And of course the concrete doesn’t love you, but it never promised that it did.
Of course you never worry about waking up and the concrete not being there anymore, but maybe this is because the concrete didn’t promise that it would stay.
Sticks and stones may break your bones and pink band-aids only silence the reason you’re crying for so long.
Growing up, they tell you to check under the bed for monsters, never warning you of the one with the blue eyes who claims he loves you.
