
Lock Up the Louvre
Someone has got to admire
the artwork that is my bare body.
Otherwise it would be like
locking up the Louvre; like tying
back the hands of Picasso
so he can’t create, can’t express,
can’t paint the colors, curves,
and conflict coursing
through us, running as raw as
creatures crafted by a God–
a God with an eye for the beautiful
and a heart for the romantic.
Fuck the F Word

I don’t want to run from Failure.
Or hide scared under covers
with my eyes shut. I don’t want
to hold it at arms length, looking
anywhere but it’s large ugly
face on it’s little disfigured body,
like someone who’s ashamed,
like the mother of a monster,
like I’m the friend of someone pitiful
who’s just strong enough to stab
me when my guard goes down.
I don’t want to run from Failure–
but I want to call him by name.
I want to give him a space to sleep;
I want to listen when he cries
and I want to wash his face–
even though it’s always messy
the next minute. I want to sift through
the dirt he tracks all around the house
and cherish the joy that can sprout
from some of the sorriest soil,
when the right amount of rain
falls down from the same clouds
that blocked the sun in the morning.
Carly Onnink is an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Morehead-Cain scholar. Her creative writing has been featured in Carolina Arts and Sciences Magazine and the Health Humanities Journal of UNC. She hails from the mountains of North Carolina and is passionate about poetry, mental health advocacy, and climbing.