Inklings 2023

There is a small weevil Who lives in a cupboard His voice is awfully feeble His mind is often cluttered For the chewing echoes across the shelves His fellow insects swim in feed bags They never grow aware of themselves But the weevil simply wants to paint with the teabags This small weevil Sits pensively in the dark He brushes paint across his easel And finds beauty in every mark He sits atop the tomato paste and looks out at the great big world A skyline of cornstarch and sunflower seeds traced His paintbrush of dust bunnies twirls The bugs in this city only live for a day They’re born to eat And they chew chew chew away But this weevil feels incomplete Not gnawing away like the rest He wants to find something new He has to put this life to the test And open his eyes to the view His beady eyes glance over the highrise of stacked grains The light shines through a crack in the door Onto the canvas with blueberry stains The thought crosses his mind there might be more More than cornstarch and Mac ‘n cheese More than pasta boxes and crackers More than freeze-dried blueberries More than this city of perpetual snackers ALLEGORY OF THE CUPBOARD Eva Bricker ’23 36