Derek Otsuji
I am moon shaped on the lips nothing so tangible as you imagined though it is true I have no soul but a core. This lack keeps me pure as the flesh of grapes so that plucked from a river I am its memory: permanent, cool, and distant. But at the last when even memory fails, dissipates like mint on the skin, I am measureless— the slow months passing deep in my center. Derek Otsuji will soon graduate with his Master's degree in English. He has been awarded the Hinckley Scholarship, the English Department's Thomas award and cleaned house in the Vera Hinckley Mayhew poetry contest. If you're nice to him, his family may bring you macadamia nut cookies from Hawaii, as they did for us.
