I have a complicated relationship with the movies. In the last few years, I have come to dread the experience of going to the movies because I almost always have a bad time. Sometimes it’s because of the theater. Sometimes it’s the crowd. Typically, it’s the movie. To be clear, I am not a film critic or a film studies scholar—sometimes I really do just want to be entertained. That being said, it is interesting (to me anyway) that when I walk out of a movie I only expected to

What are we looking for when we look to the past? This is a question I find myself dealing with nearly every time I sit down to write a poem. My poetry is often image driven, and my image-repertoire is heavily nostalgic, homesick, and filled with objects and people from places I once thought of as home. Places I would return to if such a thing were possible. Of course, it is not possible. I will never again walk out of my first “Lesbian & Gay Film” class, twenty years old and

Allow me to present a particular series of images. The fourth scene of Michael Lucas’s Urine Fist Fest begins with Adam Killian and Christian Herzog passionately kissing and heavily drooling on each other while lying in bed. The couple’s exaggerated kissing lasts for several minutes as they eagerly lap at each other’s face and body with their tongues humorously hanging from their mouths. Killian quickly strips Herzog of his clothes, pushes his knees to his shoulders, and disp

A watershed is a geographic feature that divides water into different systems. A watershed also represents the tributaries and gathering ground for a central body of water. As graduate students at the University of Nebraska, we acknowledge the significance of watersheds to the agricultural industry as well as the ecology of the Great Plains region. However and perhaps most popularly, a watershed is known to be a crucial event or occurrence recognized as causing a turning poin