Creative Writing Febuary 2026

Opening statement

I’ve been thinking about work a lot lately. Not just work in the career sense, but work as the vague word that it is. With the start of the semester, I’ve found my previous workload has somehow doubled, in school life and beyond, and I don’t think I’m alone. This month’s submissions seem to be lamenting this experience, many people feel they can’t keep up and if they can, they’re fearful for the possibility of a nosedive.

However, I’m an optimist at heart, and I like to think that our collective anxieties aren’t going to waste; as cliché as it is, no matter how hard we’re struggling, at least we’re doing it together. Finally, the fact that our contributors chose to make art of their situations, and especially the fact that they chose to share it with others, is a reality so touching that I find it impossible to feel bleak. So, reader, I can only wish that after reading these poems you’ll feel, at the very least, a little less alone.

Creative Writing Editor,
Sal Francis

Oodles of Moodles

Anonymous

Contributor

What’s there to do today?

What academic penance must I pay?

Not much it seems at firs- DING!

But what could this assault convey?

That leaves in me a horrid ring

Just the start of a Dawson workday

You haven’t checked your Pearson?

If you want to succeed, listen hear son:

When working on Moodle or Cengate

Don’t be late,

Clean your plate

Lest “overdue” become your fate

Can’t get in?

Send a mio

You know that you’ve got work in Bio

Have you done the two-factor?

Hold on, we’ll send a text

Now recopy our google plext

We must ensure authentications

For the honour of our notifications

“Can’t come in”, say the docs

They think I may have chicken pox

Find an absence form on omnivox

You’ll also find your locker locks,

Office hours of Mrs. Cox

Why do all this separately?

“We put it all in one toolbox”

Now check it all, zealously

Or hurt your R-score irreparably

Well Einstein says it’s relative

But Léa says it’s summative

So I’d better get to work,

R.I.P.- My youthful smirk

I’ve got future bills to pay

I’ll just have to get through this Dawson workday

-Mr. Last Bean

Hope

Anonymous

Contributor

Hope is a four letter word

Healing of past experiences

To see is to believe

And to believe is to see

So believe what you see

And you’ll see what you had hoped

hope helps but hope is hard

Like a magnet so weak and brittle

With the right charge you can make great power to something so belittle

Hope takes the hop to execute

But hope with an l in its place can make help

And help is hard to hope

It doesn’t fall from the sky

But hope and help have differences however

Help is given, not shared

Hope is shared, not given

But what do I know, I’m just a man hopeful to help others somehow

To give the help no one gave me when I needed it

And to share hopes of success in your futures

So would it be too much for me to hope for a day where people will start to see my screams of

help surrounding my spiritual caged suffering?

Or will hope lead me to help mask it all away?

Only time will tell

Anyway, Hope this helps

-the somber smiling stranger

Shutting Down

Alicia J. Ferreyra

Contributor

The feathers of her wings. The trails of cobblestone. Fallen.

She no longer soared to the skies,

And drifted far from the spotlights.

The keys she released. The words she atoned. Forgotten.

She no longer sung and recited her harmonious melodies,

For she offered her voice to where the shadows seeped.

The pages of the drawn and written memories she mourned. Broken.

She no longer broke a heart and blew a mind.

And then, she locked the doors to hide from the World’s eyes.

Within her mind, she has lost her golden spaces.

For the internal and external anomalies piercing her body,

She wept in atrocious agony.

For her world going in no motion,

All of her journeys were left unspoken.

For no echo emitted, silence,

The idol she wished to be is crushed in defiance.

And WHAM! She has collapsed to the ground,

Shutting down.

Within her heart, she has lost her golden spaces.

In her empty little world, the middle of the blank, she lays

Grasping her chest, her body, her limbs in pain,

Knowing she’s lost the living life in her veins.

She’s shutting down.

Within her soul, she has lost. . .