The Palimpsest Review - Volume 10

Palimpsest onLine!'s Professional Writers at Work

Return to Palimpsest onLine!
 

Sarah Etter: “Concaves”

Marissa Molina: "The Day I Wasn’t There"

Andrew Timberlake-Newell: "Smokie"

Anthony Kocur: "To the Edge"

David Kim: "Young and Perverted"

Ryan Morini: "B – Movie Enthusiast"

Joe Giachero: "Whatever Came First"

Meghan Elliott: "Sound"

Veronika L Daddona: "Driver" and "Lamentia"

Ronell Smith: "The 1988 Holiday Barbie"

Charles Howells: "Bandwagon Patriots"

Andrew Noll: "Ten Feet Behind J.F.K."

Sarah E. Smith: "Autumn Skies"

Daniel Debiec: "A Morning in Missoula" and "into the rain"

Ryan Melling: "Hand in Hand"

Andraleen Zelonis: "Let’s Play"

Kevin Cope: "House Guest"

Becky Liscusky: "I Like Dogs and Frogs" and "You know the pan’s hot"

Amber Shinskie: "Scent of a Cherry Cigar"

 

The Palimpsest Review and Palimpsest onLine! are publications of The Pennsylvania State University. The words and ideas contained within their pages are the property of their authors and cannot be used for any purposes without the authors' specific written consent.

Andrew Timberlake-Newell – Berks

Precision-sliced tobacco,
Stored in a cylinder of paper
decorated with close, tiny, gray bands,
that end where dried leaf
meets clean, compressed cotton.

In the filter third:
gold bands and lettering proclaim “Winston.”
White paper embraces purest cottony white.
Near the end, a band of tiny holes
show where some would cut it short.

Inspecting the tobacco tip,
precious brown bits are well packed into the barrel.
The paper extends slightly past the tobacco.
My nose drinks deeply at this well, savoring hints
of raked leaves sprinkled with pumpkin pie spice.

Scritch!
Clear-blue flame leaps up,
sporting a pale yellow pointed cap.
The outer paper sizzles as it glows orange.
The flame removed, gray creeps down the paper.

More gray floats,
a stream with a thin, swirling upward flow.
The paper’s edge, now white ash, curls,
embracing the top of the ember.
The ash at the tip begins to crack.

Tap!
Over the bucket, loose ash falls,
leaving orange flecks to peek from ash-walled    caves.
Dark gray gathers in a thin border,
holding back the light gray ash as best it can.

I exhale my portion;
a plume of white floats to the roof.
A ring forms by chance,
weaves around itself and meanders gently
to cascade against the ceiling.