GROSSMONT COLLEGE-Students and alumni shared stories and poems dealing with deep feelings and their personal experiences during an April 30 session of the annual Literary Arts Festival. All displayed their abilities to write descriptively and to create clear imagery for the audience.
The literary concert started with Nikolai Beope, a Grossmont alumnus who today holds a Masters of Fine Arts in Fine Writing. With the first sentence of his piece, “A Boy,” I sensed I was in for a weird piece. It began “A, Boy, Carries. A Bucket of His Feces, Behind 3 marching lines of Boys.” I must admit I didn’t understand “A Boy”.
Another piece that caught me off guard was by Grossmont student Shonna Gillis. Her story was sexual and lustful telling the audience of a relationship between a man named Mr. Turner (also known as Walter Williams) and an unidentified girl. Her descriptive writing enabled listeners to imagine the sexual situations that the two found themselves in such as the girl’s breast grazing Walter’s chest, her spreading her legs wide, opening up her hips and straddling him. Yes, I wanted to hear or read more.
Student Raymond Vera Cruz wrote “Falling Awake” which told of Jaz who dreamt of being with a girl, whose name was not mentioned. Cruz described in detail the feelings a man can have when he’s with a woman he likes. “Her voice is creamy, slow, like caramel drizzling, only twice as sweet.” He described the anxiety, insomnia and impatience a man may experience during the waiting period for the moment of truth; does she like me?
Sadly Cruz also tells of the bad part of finding out; Jaz learns that girl likes actually likes his brother Noah. “As my heart sinks, her smile widens….the bridge sinks violently as the building topples onto it and we are inches from death,” he writes. He goes into a state of depression realizing that the bridge or relationship they had is crumbling.
The readings read by students and alumni were entertaining. It was easy to tell that the writers understood descriptive writing very well. They were able to create imagery that enabled audience members to experience in their mind what was written.
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Asuncion is arts editor of the GC Summit. He may be contacted at sean.asuncion @gcsummit.com
