This project introduces poetry to wider audiences by presenting poetry in collaboration with design on UWG buses and in other areas. The project aims to share the talents of students in the UWG English, Mass Communications, and Art Programs while making daily commutes more interesting and inspiring. It also allows for creative students to engage in unique collaborative experiences together and influence the perspectives of the UWG community of students, faculty, staff, and visitors. Poetry by UWG Creative Writing students, illustration by Art alumnus Nancy Vu, BFA Art '22.

Self-Checkout

By Auhjulay Hickman, B.S. Psychology major with minor in Creative Writing

The lady in the yellow vest
her eyes didn’t like the crowd
her eyes liked Mama’s dance
Mama’s bent back and swaying arms
Mama’s sly fox steps and curses sung in alto
her eyes followed Mama’s counts
from basket to scanner to bag to basket
like a western gorilla molding a nest
no, her eyes didn’t like the crowd
the crowd didn’t have Mama’s skin
the crowd didn’t move like Mama
like a cobra charmed by a pungi
and when I stepped in front of Mama
looking at her looking at us
her eyes didn’t like me either
her eyes didn’t like me or Mama
her eyes liked the crowd again

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo

By Billy Campbell, B.S. Mass Comm with a minor in Creative Writing

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo

A prayer Grandma Oba learned in Okinawa,
knee-deep in green rice paddies and mud ditches
as she gathered rusted Coke cans
and spent bottle caps from seeds of glass
into her frayed rucksack and pockets.

A mantra of devotion,
muttered dozens, hundreds,
thousands of times in practice
to the salted breeze that matted
her bob of black-ink hair.

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo,

A whisper of language,
shared by the star-shell sand
that pinched her white sandals
and clung to her damp shorts
as she lifted her weight in metal.

A promise to her Buddha nature
as she traded in the scrap for lunch,
a handful of cherry suckers,
she repeated at every wink of sun
and every evening to dead lights.

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.