The Diamond Line

The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Literary Magazine

Waiting for My Father

By Morgan Walker   Caught in a snowbank, my skis  have tumbled into the evergreens   beside me, flipped and buried     for winter. Through the padding   of my helmet, I hear the rubbery  scrub of cold plastic against fresh     powder, the fading shouts of...

In the Dry Wheatfields

By Casey “Yaya” Wong   weeds are sprouting from the cracks in the concrete.  the old skin splits with the determination of things starved for sunlight  one or two of which will become dandelions,  their weightless wishes on the back of a breeze  which...

Dead Girls

By Charlotte Edsall   Ophelia lies    sinking    her placid face ensuring us we should not fret    even as her skirts mingle with the silt    this is beautiful    see how her hair halos    the color complimented by the pond weeds and the willow    her water-lily...

Ballad of the Rockstar

By Isabelle Rogers   Rockstar, rockstar,  my heart is full of grief.  I recall you sang about it  last night through your teeth.    Rockstar, rockstar,  my bones can take no more.  When you left Orleans with my compositions,  my love departed through the door.   ...

From the Bones of Nowhere, Missouri

By Claire Riddell     Your daddy kissed every knuckle before he swung and called it love and only married your momma because she missed her birth control, and they raise you on simmering arguments and secondhand thrift stores, and you never question why they...

Kintsugi, the Dish, and Me

By Susan Nichols   An incident, ill-timed, the careless sweep of an arm.  A porcelain dish, priceless in form, flies from its perch in a flash.  Impossible to catch, though the falling seems slow,  The piece hits the ground with a crash.     Countless shards ...