2020 LYCOMING COLLEGE SPRING MAGAZINE

CON L I T E R A T U R E . T H E A T R E . A R T Want to be featured here? Alumni are encouraged to share their recent works of literature, theatre, art, music, and film to be considered for future publication by contacting marketing@lycoming.edu . Charles Springer ’72 studied anthropology at Lycoming College and the University of Cincinnati, but he also had a passion for art and art history. He later attended classes at the Philadelphia College of Art and the Barnes Foundation, and today many of his paintings appear in private, corporate, academic, and museum collections, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Charley began writing when he experienced what he called “painter’s block.” It wasn’t long before he’d filled notebooks with poems. JUICE is his first book-length collection of poems which includes the one featured here, printed with permission from Regal House Publishing, 2019. Learn more at www.charlesspringer.com . THE TWO ARMSTRONGS Boy deep down inside the man has Keds on. Springy as a pogo stick. Divides his day-to-day among his pockets: maps, collapsible telescope, Mars bars, compass. On his belt, canteen full of life force: Kool-Aid or Tang. Boy’s been rattling the man’s thorax. Man just calls it gas, something he ate. Words come, sound like module, lunar. Doctor comes, pulls a beanie, bent propeller from the man’s esophagus. Boy launches like a Saturn 5 rocket. Lands in a silver-on-the-inside cape. When he lifts his arms, a thousand parakeets fall out. Doctor falls down. Man puts down his instruments. Throws his keys into nearby weeds and woods. Donates explorer/discoverer biographies. Stops the mail. Boy shows him how to walk all over again, leave prints that make good pics. How not to kick up dust, jar rocks. Eventfully they plant a flag. Place hands upon hearts. Never before, stripes wide as these. Never again, stars this close. 48 LYCOMING COLLEGE 2020 SPRING MAGAZINE