VIBRATO .
THE HOCKADAY SCHOOL 2012 Volume XLVII
Dear Reader, The human
experience consists of several stages, and each brings a different level of maturity and development. Vibrato invites you to join the adventure—call forth the nostalgia of childhood, bask in the spirit of adolescence, and discover the wisdom of adulthood. As you unfold this magazine, we hope that you see the beauty of time and its final human product: Life.
Vibrato The Hockaday School 11600 Welch Road Dallas, TX 75229 214.363.6311 www.hockaday.org
tABLE of Contents LITERATURE
ART
8 Rebirth by Evi Shiakolas 10 Words and Numbers by Caroline Sydney 12 Tooth by Katharine Lin 14 The shape of your return by Megan Gross 16 Sunflower Seeds by Michelle Li 19 Amen by Isabella So 20 Cano by Kristin Lin 23 Sweet Naïveté by Jennifer Davis 25 The spider... by Regen Routman and Megan Gross 26 Carcass or (Anatomy) by Nina Quirk 28 Citrus by Kaavya Balan 30 Gravité by Evi Shiakolas 33 You, illuminated by Sophie Lidji 34 Communion by Isabella So 37 Brass Instrumental...by Kristin Lin 41 You Walked In by Isabella So 43 A brief analytical... by Audrey Cockrum 44 Trench Warfare by Maisey Horn 47 How to Wake... by Audrey Cockrum 48 (retaliation?) by Kaavya Balan 50 Ursae Minoris by Meredith Hosek 52 jabber. by Lizzie Vamos 54 Poems to the People... by Giovanna Diaz 57 prismatic by Sophie Lidji 58 sálvenos, señor by Katie Mimini 60 Boxing by Maisey Horn 62 Fluorescent Adolescent by Mary Margaret Hancock 64 Cicadas by Allie Heck 66 Lock and Key by Regen Routman 69 Reprisal by Meredith Hosek 71 Goodbye by Mary Margaret Hancock 74 humidity. by Lizzie Vamos 76 Sand, intense heat... by Kaavya Balan 78 Virgin in... by Meredith Hosek 80 If My Heart... by Grace Howard 82 -ing by Michelle Li 84 Onions by Isabella So 86 on the sidewalk by Lizzie Vamos 90 Saving myself... by Michelle Li 92 Secret Slurs by Meredith Hosek 95 Dead Weight by Giovanna Diaz 96 viewing vagabonds by Sophie Lidji 98 Poetry After Dark by Audrey Cockrum 101 Story of Man by Annabel Lyman
8 Baby Progression by Katharine Lin 13 Lizard Girl by Olivia Karahan 18 Like Metal by Natalie Gow 24 Cracked by Olivia Karahan 27 Serrated Anterior by Katharine Lin 28 Giraffes by Olivia Karahan 29 Shell and Sky by Olivia Karahan 32 Contour by Megan Gross 42 The Photographer by Katie Bourek 45 Vortex by Caitlin Garcia 49 Unfriendly Seas by Caitlin Garcia 52 Seaweed by Ellen Cohn 54 Braid by Hope Reim 55 Colorful Disdain by Katharine Lin 66 Arch of Erectheion by Caitlin Garcia 68 Rocket Police by Hannah Cyr 70 In the Wake Of by Michelle Li 77 Man of the Times by Katie Bourek 79 Woman by Megan Gross 83 Flower Sisters by Katharine Lin 88 Bout by Katie Bourek 94 Dia de los Muertos by Hannah Cyr 100 Dance of the Cockroach by Evi Shiakolas
Division page artwork by Hannah Cyr
PHOTOGRAPHY 14 15 16 22 30 35 36 40 46 51 56 59 60 61 63 64 74 81 85 86 91 92 97 99
Remnants of Fall by Sarah Haemisegger Red Barn by Sarah Haemisegger Gravity by Kristin Lin Gagarin by Kristin Lin Moths by Ashley Chen Bell Tower by Maddie Mount Bottle Study by Kristin Lin Malibu by Ashley Chen Infinity by Isis Chen Feathers by Maddie Mount Eyelashes by Sophie Lidji Diana F+ by Olivia Lechtenberger Touch by Meredith Hosek Playmates by Nina Yanagisawa Venetian Reflection by Ginny Mattingly Wanderlust by Olivia Lechtenberger Night in Chicago by Fangfei Li Sunset Among The Trees by Sarah Haemisegger Consumed by Danielle Lamotthe Road to Nowhere by Devon Knott Doppleganger by Grace Dau Water Tower by Blair Johnson In the Street by Grace Dau Halo by Anita Wang
7
Rebirth Evi Shiakolas I reconnect with the dirt in the ground and jam soil into my fingernails when I need a good think; there’s something beautiful about being made of dust.
Baby Progression Katharine Lin
9
Words and Numbers Caroline Sydney Math is not my thing but writing is, I guess. So that would make writing about math kind of my thing. Unless the rule (or is it a law?) which states that negative times positive remains frustratingly, eternally negative applies here? Well, assume this is more like adding a slightly negative number to a larger, positive one. I don’t recall my first “one finger plus another finger equals,” pause, switch one finger over to the other hand, “two fingers” demonstration, but then again I don’t remember my first picture book either. The likeliness that the former exchange was truly traumatic enough to forever steer me away from the realm of numbers and symbols is infinitesimal, at best. Yet for whatever reason, I did not grow up a number cruncher, but a story teller, and the “why six was mad at seven” plot can only take one so far. Word problems felt contrived. I didn’t care how many legs eight chickens had, I wanted to know the ruffle of feathers and the secrets inside the eggs they laid, regardless of the rate at which they deposited them. Needless to say, Venn diagram-atically, my school career went something like this:
In kindergarten we had these number scrolls, each sheet tiled with enough empty boxes for the 100 digits my classmates filled in with the determined numbness of medieval monks copying ancient manuscripts. The competitive kids would roll theirs out down the hallway and compare to see whose was longest, counting up to the two-thousands, three-thousands, five-thousands. I tried to make the task interesting by filling out each page following a different pattern, counting by twos, then fives, then sevens, but I quickly abandoned these ten rather dull playmates for twenty- six fascinating ones.
My problem could be summarized as such: I cannot divorce the numbers from their prose. Constantly forced to translate 1+1=2 into long form one plus one equals two, I lose track of the narrative arc. The tension builds and mounts, builds and mounts yet the downward sloping caress of the resolution—the Solution—never appears.
After a particularly poor showing on a math test, I went to talk to my teacher. He reassured me, saying that right now I was AP scoring at around a three, but probably I would most likely go up to a four. Still, in that moment, facing a man whose scores ranked him among the top ten teachers in the state, I felt like I was breaking some Sacred Winning Streak. The idea of math intrigues me because at its core, it is also a narrative, albeit one I’ll never truly be able to read. Math encodes the story of nature, the cosmos and growing/falling/expanding/subsiding. A page of formulas can hold the answers to questions writers struggle with for entire careers but I can’t lose myself in them the way I can in a good book. I just get lost.
11
Tooth Katharine Lin Oil beads. A golden, buttery dome. Perhaps the work of artisan microwaves. Or maybe the handspun-labor of six cafeteria ladies. Take one from the mounded pile; then set it down. Glittered with specks of haphazard salt, the crust pulls a taut shell. Sitting in solitude, it has a sheen that only transparent-grease-slicked bread rolls can emanate. The plate underneath is an altar—a pedestal for the unholiest of idols to be worshipped. Miles away from the dangers of the oil wells below, a hand perches on the edge of metal. The fork spears this perfect round, plunging through its glass dome (constructed with Arabic precision) to reach the floury flesh. In the faint background, a discordant symphony of chattering voices plays as if the people in the lunchroom believe it’s actually music. In a moment absent of attention, bite into the bread and feel an unsettlingly loud—crunch—of hard tooth hitting tooth, bone against metal. Discouraged from chewing further and/or stunned by this unplanned altercation, sit frozen in this seat as the obliviously raucous cacophony—suddenly ashamed—muffles with temporary permanence. With the fork and bread remaining where you last left them (in your mouth), please care to examine the shooting pain in the tooth by the bottom-left canine. How did that even happen? I wonder, carefully putting down the fork and bread; one wrong movement might pull the rest of the tooth from my imaginary angry, bleeding gums. I trace the contour of my arm down to my fingers still clasped tightly around the slim metal appendage; it suddenly seems as if the metal—not I—was eating the bread. How alien that shiny silver was; at that moment, I looked around and the only thing I could see were culprit clusters of forks—unnoticed parasites—colonizing nonchalantly in bins on the lunch tables. You know “civilization” has gone too far when you’ve chipped a tooth on a fork in a roll of bread (the fork being there in the first place because you didn’t want to dirty your hands). Does this not embarrass you?—do you not want to cast down your fork, comb your fingers through angel hair, sculpt Michelangelesque figures out of ground beef, and pull slippery bread rolls apart with your helpless, weak extremities? Do something different today: feel the mushy pulp of something once-living in your bare hands; run through napalm streets, hair unshackled by elastics; taste the blood rising in your throat at the speed of two hundred beats per minute—Go!
Lizard Girl Olivia Karahan
13
Remnants of Fall Sarah Haemisegger
The shape of your return Megan Gross Your red coat with the loud buttons and salty piping smells like the time you took my hand in your own singing fingertips, and let me in.
Red Barn Sarah Haemisegger
15
Sunflower Seeds Michelle Li My mother used to make home sound like shells breaking, like seeds cracking. I remember sitting in the study, always trying to tune out the resounding crack of my mother’s teeth on sunflower seeds—it came at a constant every four seconds, right on the dot. Incredible. I didn’t need to see her to know exactly what she was doing. She would be laying there on that king-sized bed of hers—nearly motionless—except for her nearly robotically timed right arm that’d move the seeds from the pile to her mouth, from her mouth to the trash, and back. Eyes just pinned to the Chinese soap opera on the computer screen. I swear days, seasons, years even, could pass by and she wouldn’t even notice. Just the rhythmic crack, crack, crack of those sunflower seeds. And now she’s thrown it all away—“I’m on a diet,” she said the day she emptied the cupboards. Now the only sound of home there is are the tinny voices of Chinese men suspended in the corridor between my room and hers.
Gravity Kristin Lin
17
Like Metal Natalie Gow
Amen Isabella So Boxes do not forget your offenses that reproduce just as fast as hares do through the lustful seasons of our youths. The box knows, knows of your terror, the damage forced onto that poor, newborn baby who never asked for her flesh and bones and god, by no means she asked for that corrupted heart. You are not blameless or pure, regardless of the prayers your mother breathed as blessed water showered your forehead for the name of Jesus! How unholy you are! Go ahead, offer the box an apology and beg to hear your overturned sentence, that the box accepts your betrayal.
19
Cano Kristin Lin Right now, as the rain forest burns into a particular brand of black char called greed, and women, men, children take to the streets in fear or exaltation or boredom, and the only-certain promise of new life and jaded death lingers on every square kilometer of this country, I am here; detached from it all, but in the smallest way a part of 7 billion (known) universes. Intricate is the world; Here is mine. A universe—did you know that it is the only physical application of calculus? While our existences wax and wane, the universe endures, without escape, truth and hardship. We are because it is. Yet, I don’t think I’ll ever know what “it” is. Though I have been told of its form: when I was twelve, my cousin cut off a strip of the Sunday newspaper and taped its two ends together. “This is the shape of the universe,” he proclaims with terrifying certainty as he hands the delicate structure to me. A Mobius strip, one-sided and tenuous. As I cradle it in my hands, I wonder what might hold up our galaxies and supernovas. Flesh? Newton says that it’s gravity, but sometimes that’s hard to believe. Meanwhile, the moon orbits the earth, the earth the sun, the sun the Milky Way. And I, carrying this model in my palms, point to a particular semicolon on the newspaper Mobius strip and wonder if Earth could have such a purposeful niche in the grandest scheme; could it separate two thoughts? My cousin answers. Grabbing a pair of scissors, he takes the strip from my hands and makes a cut down the middle. Snip, snip, snip. My heart hurts. Such a fragile makeshift dream and he has to destroy it, dissect it! He makes the last cut and— “It never ends.” I watch as he unfolds the strip to reveal that splitting it down the middle did not result in an apocalypse. Instead, the edges look thinner. He entrusts the universe to me before going back to watch the baseball game from two thousand miles away airing on the TV three meters away. The Yankees are playing the Red Sox.
I forgot. Another (meta)physical application of calculus is to delve into the mind. This morning, I poured myself a bowl of cereal and took out the latest issue of TIME magazine. A bird watches me scoop, crunch, swallow. Scoop, crunch, swallow. But what he doesn’t know is that, beneath my flesh, where my cereal has traveled, is this— Most adults disgust me; their walls are too thick, always on the defense. All I hear these days from them is, “No one is going to care about your grades when you get to college. You have to watch out for yourself.” I only know hate when I see Apathy So here’s my question to you: How can you not care? You coward. The reason we’re all on Xanax is because we have to constantly strive for redemption, the hope that one day someone will find a second in her life to just give a shit. How is it that there are almost 7 billion humans on this planet and every single one feels lonely? And don’t tell me “Welcome to the Real World.” Do not dare tell me I am naïve for hating your Apathy. The world may be ugly and harsh; we may not get everything we want. But that is not even a fraction of an excuse for not caring. —among other things. I have been taught that Hate will take me nowhere. But even if I love these people with all of my pulsing heart, would they be aware, awake enough to take it in at all? The bird flies away. Scoop, crunch, swallow. On the headlines: “The Upside of Being an Introvert.” I wish I could write something more honest than what I just did. But in this gauzy oatmeal malaise, I am isolated, reduced to romanticizing dreams and secrets and transient memories, when I would rather look into the eyes of a stranger and ask what honesty she is willing to entrust upon me. (Probably not much, since we are strangers and divided by fear). For just one tiny moment, I want to grasp clay instead of sand, to feel my own hand create form, to see a refrigerator and think, “This is how all humans see the world.” But maybe that doesn’t exist. And anyway—everything flees.
21
Sweet Naïveté Jennifer Davis
We were so close. We could poke the stars with pool sticks and pretend that the meteoroids were cue balls. Hope’s reflection stared at us from the faces of the asteroids. And then The sun-streaked planets spoke the truth None of this was real. None of this would be real.
Gagarin Kristen lin
23
Olivia Karahan
Cracked
The spider, the cat, the pig, and the scientist. Megan Gross and Regen Routman
25
It was the night before the Saturday before Halloween. The air crackled with the sizzling promise of fresh bacon. Doctor Augustine Carnoffovitz tapped his fingers together, in a formation that could be easily mistaken as a five-legged spider attempting a push-up on a mirror. “At last, Persimmon, I have done it! It shall all be mine!” he cackled, stroking his hairless cat. The cat merely bared his hairless fangs. He could only feel sorrow for the loss of his friend: Linus, the very hairy pig. Dr. Carnoffovitz recognized the cat’s sorrow. “I know, Persimmon, I know. But Linus is going to be much tastier than he ever was loyal.” SMASH CUT to: thought bubble of Carnoffovitz. He is recalling Linus’ betrayal. Enter PIG. LINUS: Oink. Oink. CUT TO: Int. Dr.Carnoffovitz’s lab. Present. While Carnoffovitz was lost in his thoughts, Persimmon dimly recalled, somewhere in his hairless cat-brain, all the good times that he and Linus had had. They were like the yin and yang, but instead of peace, hair. Carnoffovitz’s fists clenched inside his heavy, rubber, mad scientist gloves—gloves he usually used while washing the dishes. “Silence, Persimmon! Your cat-thoughts are interrupting the radio waves that are necessary for the Device!” The clock struck 4:36—the hour was nigh. “It’s time!” he shouted. He extended a gloved finger. Three feet from his glazed eyes, the button lay in wait. “After days of suspense and anguish, I can finally activate the Device!” The tip of his finger inched closer and closer to the button, averaging about a millimeter per minute. “Soon, Persimmon, soon!” he whispered. The cat commenced the African drumming. “NOW, Persimmon, NOW! My arteries are ready!” With a final surge of hunger, he lunged towards the button. It glowed menacingly in the light: “BACON.” His finger struck metal—“YES, PERSIMMON! BREAKFAST IS OURS!” But unfortunately he missed the button by about three feet, because he was blind.
Carcass or (Anatomy) Nina Quirk There is a rusty bicycle at the end of my street. Vines permeate its organs Marrying it to the earth The earth lays there in silence The silver bones cut the air Bite-sized ice cubes Like the ones crystallizing on the rubber I remember the labor you put into the assembly Polishing the red steel until the cloth disintegrated Tinkering with the gears hoping to adjust to the harsh conditions Greasing the tarnished spokes to flexible fibers Only the force of a pebble Could end such a pure run Seamless until the demise Now there is a bicycle at the end of my street Holding winter between its hollow pipes
Serratus Anterior Katharine Lin
27
Citrus Kaavya Balan Tomorrow he will tell me how many jams he has created—lemon curd pooled in the depths of his collarbone and the spilt blueberries beneath his feet made me believe he was lying. I pulled up the blinds, outlining shadows, eliminating him. But I had forgotten that only a sliver of moon was out, and I was defeated by citrus oil silencing the afternoon innocence. Now I can feel his stained fingers— cracked, stone-disguised, with cold crimson, melting in dwarf stars. And I’ve already hidden— in the matchbox under the pillow of our bed. Only my shoes wait on his porch.
Giraffes Olivia Karahan
Shell and Sky Olivia Karahan
29
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Moths Ashley Chen
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31
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You, illuminated Sophie Lidji Can I creep beneath your collar and find the cashmere-sweater-string (maybe it’s at the nape of your neck or tucked under the dip of your shoulderblade) that I can tug to make you unravel?
Contour 33
Megan Gross
Communion Isabella So I walked into the church with a light-headedness fogging my vision—it had been about a year since my last visit. I dipped the tips of my fingers into the holy water and continued walking, motioning the Father-Son-and-the-Holy-Spirit across my head-chest-left-shoulder-right-shoulder. My mother tugged at my hip and said, “Remember to pray for her.” I nodded, remembering how I carried her children out of smoky backseat and the blood that drooled down her neck. The routine of mass continued, the standing and sitting and kneeling, the “amens” and the “hallelujahs,” the off-key confidence of the woman beside me and the toddlers army-crawling through the rows of pews. My Papa always said that something felt unfinished about churches, the way masses in front of the cross filled with songs of people wanting to please Him, not serve Him, and that they only learned their purpose at the end of their journey. Was it wrong that I did not feel moved?
1 2 3 4
Avoided holding others’ hands during Our Father X X X
Previous Trips to Church: A Matrix Accidentally made Tried to sing louder eye contact with the than the choir father X X
X
Forgot the Nicene Creed X X X X
I felt compelled to pray, as if guilt or ignorance or indifference were prodding me to do so. I was never a good Catholic, and I felt ashamed to admit that I attended church only to be in God’s presence, not necessarily to connect with Him. The world contained within the nave intimidated me —the congregation might have been full of mindless, “unfinished” people, but they understood their destinations and connections to God and ran with His support when I myself could barely crawl onto God’s lap and ask Him about faith and the creation of man and if Adam and Eve were ever truly in paradise. If He were glorious, He surely would not want anything to do with me. The friar told a story about an old woman’s encounter with the devil, and how she simply laughed in his face, fearless. He said that the small woman stood strong only because of her trust in God, speaking about her meek physical state as if nothing else in her being held any worth of power, as if nothing mighty within her belonged to her, no, it was just God’s beauty. No, that old woman was just an empty case and God simply breathed life and energy into her bones, with a sway that barely reached her fingertips and a heart filled with love not strong enough alone. No! Not everyone is helpless or unfinished without God! How dare the friar deny the existence of her own strength! All at once, I grew irritated, angered by everything, the pitchy woman beside me and the screaming child in front of me and the woman judging me beside me watching my sketches—was I unholy? When the father declared “Lord, hear our prayers!” my mother nudged me, trying to use the moment like a bargain between guilt and God. “Don’t forget,” she said, and I whispered that woman into my prayers, wondering how speaking to God would change another person’s heart. But I prayed anyway, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, an apology for my incorrect left turn and the four passengers with me and the crash that left her arms and neck in deep red, and I’m sorry, God, because I want You to know I was actually trying to drive to church that Sunday morning and I’m sorry, God, because this is why I was scared to return to Your house for so long. I’m sorry, God, because I’ve been unfinished for too long.
Bell Tower
35
Maddie Mount
Brass Instrumental Cover of a Chinese Song Kristin Lin My grandfather, who with Picket fences of Tobacco-stained bicuspids Enters through the door and Says, “Sunday morning; Bicycle; Hello! How do you do?� Plucking tissues from his years as an English teacher for those literate in Chinese; His voice a double-shot Of rust Deep Wheezing Booming; a tuba.
Kristin Lin
Bottle Study
37
39
Malibu Ashley Chen
You Walked In Isabella So You walked in with an undeniable glow, leaving me a beggar at God’s golden flip-flops.
41
The Photographer Katie Bourek
A brief analytical summary of my dealings with one particular individual—who currently resides approximately 1,570.2 miles away (1 day and 2 hours by car with traffic)—that dragged on for some months prior to the dispersion of my delusion and my feeble attempt at reclaiming sanity Audrey Cockrum
The Terms There were no terms. The Mistakes There were no terms. The Result Valuable time lost and would-be-wonderful memories shrouded in discontent. The Discovery No one is worth that.
43
Trench Warfare Maisey Horn My thoughts are acrylic daggers, dipped in acid and free-falling through every vein and artery in my starched, craggy body. All I can hear is a high, resounding hum. And the yawning thumps from my tired heart. In my mouth, sadness plasters my tongue in a matted fur coat. No flavor can penetrate its disgusting layers, so I decide I would rather not eat. Weekends bring subtle relief in the form of closed doors and painfully obscure silence.
Vortex
45
Caitlin Garcia
How to Wake Up on a Sunday Morning Audrey Cockrum December 11—it wasn’t supposed to rain today, but it did. I’ve been driving so fast for the past two months that I stopped looking out the window, and only now, after I can no longer see through streaks of water and dirt, do I notice this problem. When I walked out to my car this morning, I realized the big oak tree that hung over the porch had gone missing. Alert issued? I wondered. My neighbor was raking leaves next door. He saw me standing near the remains, a pile of brown grass and dried mud. He told me the city had uprooted it in October. October. I still can’t figure out whether the days speed by and the weeks drag on or whether the days drag on and the weeks speed by. I speed everywhere. Ages ago, it seems, you sat me down and told me what had happened. Yet your words fell toward me in late-November. And it feels like just last night that we sat on the bench, my feet laced backward around its legs. We waited for the rain to stop—even though it already had. Or maybe it doesn’t. Seem ages ago. Because memories that once felt as warm as your fingers tracing my lips are cooling. I glance down at the dashboard – 39 degrees. Time. It twists, ripples—like the microvilli folds of an intestinal cell. Maximizing surface area, minimizing volume. But I think that’s the opposite of how it used to be. The past two months maximized volume at a minimal surface area. I park behind your 2001 Honda Civic, its turquoise paint peeling, its license plate rust-covered. My engine stutters to a stop. I never noticed that your mailbox was blue. The ratio of time to change, time to growth, surface area to volume—startling ratios. I can only find dynamic equilibrium in the ratio of how much I still care to how much I want not to.
Infinity Isis Chen
47
?) ( retaliation Kaavya Balan
Caitlin Garcia
Unfriendly Seas
S
o then it decides to ruin my day, like ash, dripping through the parchment sun that blisters away the rest of the universe, no longer like mine. My hands rush above my head in a pitiful excuse for protection; the ash slips through my finger’s transparency; it dyes the silence, smothers my mind. Sneaking up from behind, desperate slyness leads to attack. I don’t want it now, I don’t want jealousy today. But the ragged beats invading the maniacal threads that are emotion draw me into the drenched boulders, the piles of charcoal fringes. And I am trapped with my constant desire for the unattainable object, wanting to forever slip away, shameful that I am, indeed, feeling such things. But if I let that innocent Jealousy slip away, the last clean-cut square of humanity will bury itself within, always behind the faux-silk pocket squares and “first edition” memorabilia. Finally, I realize I want to dive in; I bury; I hide; I fear. I’m left in torn bits, the beastly remnants of two-year old coloring—playtime filled with oddities outside the lines and frivolous hope.
49
Ursae Minoris And there I was, weak-kneed and dripping in the wet hustle of moonlight, you watching me under satellites and crawling galaxies, offering your body, a burning building without fire escapes. I wanted to make all my mistakes beautiful in your name, lost in the hottest stars of white and blue.
Feathers Madeline Mount
51
Seaweed Ellen Cohn
jabber. Lizzie Vamos
I’m afraid of what she’ll do but mostly because I’m afraid that you don’t feel the same way. No one’s pretty when they’re upset I guess. You’re just a much better person than I am (which I already know is true, but the last thing I need is more proof). I’ll just live in a huge, rambling Victorian house painted pale blue or yellow or something and maybe run a boarding house. And it’s a bingo hall…that must be the saddest thing. Like a less sinful kind of casino, but with the same sad old zombie people with their walkers and canes and thick glasses and fedoras shuffling in and taking seats in a soulless fluorescent room to play a silly, meaningless game where they don’t even do anything, just wait for chance to make them win and maybe time to tick away on their useless, unproductive lives. I really shouldn’t, but I might. It’s really kind of cool except creepy, like someone ordered things perfectly. Just sit there in your armchair feeling your mind slip away like grains of sand or colored paint swirling away down the drain, like Frankenstein went all hipster and took some Polaroid pictures of himself. -which is really bad because I shouldn’t immediately make that connection but I guess I do. He’s staring down at you like he doesn’t even care if you exist or not. If I were a Japanese wood spirit and I saw Princess Mononoke (not that I would, because last time I checked wood spirits don’t have TVs) I’d be pretty mad. I’m not really a terribly special snowflake, but I guess you kind of have to believe that to keep your soul and whatnot. I can handle ugly truth, but not ugly lies, you know? Actually that’s a pretty terrible comparison.
53
The counters in my kitchen are kind of this weird color, like green or gray or black maybe with white sparkles and flecks of mica and I don’t know if it is mica or marble or whatever it is but it gets awful dull lines on it when you don’t sponge it right and my dad yells at me to do it again and I do even though I don’t care. I still wonder if it’s an act sometimes, but I think that would be worse. I have to drive because that’s freedom freedom freedom from how boring this town is because there’s nothing to do and if I could maybe drive myself around maybe just go somewhere or nowhere just drive drive drive until I run out of gas or run out of road and just gogogo until I hit California or drive right into the sea or maybe go to Alaska and meet bears or something. I don’t know. I feel terrible because I didn’t realize it was me. California by the sea with great big fields of fruit so I could go into them not sit on the road but run through fields of peaches and grapes and vegetables and delicious things that are all yellow with California sun and just taste like freedom and not like school or cafeteria watermelon which has been getting really gross and sandy lately anyway. God knows things are better when it’s not about me. Who knows what art is anymore anyway. Of course I couldn’t say that today because
Hope Reim
Braid
Poems to the People With Whom I Would Share a Slice of a Tangerine Giovanna Diaz
I. My hand outstretched. Your hand shoved into empty pockets or wrapped, suffocating chess pieces like a robe of thick wool. You wouldn’t dare take this from me. You wouldn’t dare. II. To you who bit my cheek and tongue, I would give the piece with the seed. Oh, how I hope that you are left in a public place with a tangerine seed in your mouth and no napkin or trashcan in which to put it.
III. Honored? Are you honored? That this segment is for you? Well then, floss your teeth with the pith! Burst the pimples with your tongue! IV. For the one I love a crescent that splinters into a million jewels. Pull down your sleeves! Protect your palms like fresh magnolia petals from the embers, their glow pooling a buttery copper in the corners of your eyes in the creases on your forehead. V. Keep it for myself. Keep it deep within me.
Colorful Disdain 55
Katharine Lin
Eyelashes sophie lidji
prismatic Sophie Lidji I. God, I wish I could draw: the one single photo of you is too dark, from the streetlamp above that flickered out into ignited dust. I would shade in that artificial starlight that used to live beneath your ribcage with a little yellow colored pencil (yellow because all I have a 12 pack—you required ones with grandiose names like cerise and citrine and coquelicot). This photo of you doesn’t quite know where to find the birthmark on the back of your neck so I’d draw that one on, too— in a celestial blue, perhaps a tangerine— because you never fit birthmark-brown. In scarlet, I would sketch the way you once split your lip with a smile and in carmine, the way the blood dried while you slept and I would draw your nervous-tick tongue darting out to taste the wound (not a thirst for blood, you would drawl. It was the craving for familiarly chapped lips and the corners of your mouth dry and cracked). II. I would not draw the metal and burned rubber crushed against your spine or the bruised bones of porcelain or the blood on your busted-up lip (you fell asleep but you never saw it dry).
57
sálvenos, señor Katie Mimini
I got it from an El Salvadorian bible seller named Jesus, or Jesús if you will, who spent his days in the parking lot of La Michoacana inexplicably selling English-language bibles while wearing a white shirt that said “salvador” and watching drunken teenagers send amber beer bottles hurtling across the road.
Diana F+ Olivia lechtenberger
59
Boxing Maisey Horn I. I see sorrow in the buttery curl of smoke he sighs out of his arid lungs—they must be parched, desiccated from the inhales and exhales of gentle poisons. II. I thought I could fill the vacuum between his shriveled organs and inflated shell. But I forgot to pad my banana skin and his steely bones prodded into the crevices between my ribs and pounded my arms into a tender, blue pulp. III. He bum rushed me. And I sank to the pads of his feet. Punchdrunk, I clung to his porous muscles, letting everything spill out my mouth; with a final, groaning breath—so strong the creamy smoke turned thin and grey and sour—he knocked me out.
Touch Meredith Hosek
Ringo Nina Yanagisawa
61
Fluorescent Adolescent
GINNY MATTINGLY
Crossing her heart and hoping to die, she lets go of butterfly kisses and poisonous sighs. Her horizon is a field of heat hazed cornstalks and smoldering moonlight. And away she goes. Submerged without flailing, metallic breathing shoots up her spine. It is 11:59 and nothing can stop her. She pricks her finger on a spindle and wonders why her blood looks black. Wonders, where is my fairy godmother now? God, my mother. Never at peace and always in pieces. And where was she now. Now that she needed her the most. Now that she was in a kamikaze (or was it swan?) dive toward the breaking tides, and saw it written in the clouds. But it was too late. It’s never too late to dissolve into his sickly sweet smoke and thick rimmed glasses. An all American girl rolling herself into his exhales‌and enjoying it.
Venetian Reflection
Mary Margaret Hancock
63
Cicadas Allie Heck I wish that, just once, the sweet knockings Were your tender pebbles, not the dismayed Cicadas
Claire Banowsky
65
Wanderlust Olivia Lechtenberger
Lock and Key Regen Routman The key feels old in my hands; it makes me feel more mature. I had a different one a few years ago, upon which I Sharpie’d the word “Alec” because the key brand is “Baldwin” and I thought I was clever—I stopped having to live with my dumb joke when we changed all the locks. The top part is broad, too big to fit in any one of those decorative key covers that they sell at stores like Urban Outfitters (owls, cupcakes, etc). I ordered one that had a taco with a moustache—I lost it a few days ago. Other than its plainness, the key is a thing of beauty – on the long hot walk to my car I turn it over in my hands, rub it with my fingerpads. The lock is another matter. Both doors, back and front, hate letting people in—not that odd for, say, an introverted person, but odd for an object whose sole function is to allow me into my home. There are tricks one can use. For the back door, you have to pull the door with both hands as you twist Alec to the left, hard. And you can’t half-ass it with the both hands thing – you have to put down whatever you’re carrying and really pull, like you’re breaking in. For the front door, just pray. You’ll never unlock it, and once you do, the door sticks—the ultimate screw-you. I’ve had other keys and locks in my lifetime —mostly to summer-program dorm rooms— and with each door-opening click I feel like I’m cheating on a spouse. Other keys lack the coin-like flatness, the simplicity of my house key, and the locks yield too easily. I can practically hear them sighing, like in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. If this were a Douglas Adams book, my lock would be Marvin, the depressed robot, and the key would be my towel.
Arch of Erechtheion caitlin GARCIA
67
Rocket Police Hannah cyr
Reprisal Meredith Hosek A distant lamp light shattered in windows specked with a multitude of minute raindrops, its swarthy hand sprawled through chandeliers like iron spiders, stretching our shadow in a nocturnal radiance. The wind tumbled onto us from behind, silently, violently, relentlessly tickling our spines with its downy paw. Behind bloated clouds, black thunder swelled into velvet folds. Eyes glassy and protuberant, maybe filled with iodine, we gathered momentum until we turned inside out, drunk, boozy, and buoyant in a state of blissful lunar inebriation, throwing our arms open to clutch at whatever astral spirits flew past. May our souls rest in peace amid the dust of congealed plasticine, trapped in a semblance of sleep amongst the speeding sounds.
69
In the Wake Of Michelle Li
Goodbye Mary Margaret Hancock burns my tightened throat, it makes me think of the animal skins tanned to make teepees and the Indians and red-orange poppy flowers. And then the Trail of Tears and how we always have to go and fuck everything up. But you always talked of this Freedom, of dying for your country (and would you?), of the one final atomic blush anyway. Soon I would forget to listen, and fade into your sound.
71
Release me from this rinse cycle (the blue soap rips at my swirling eyes) and hang me out to dry. Am I lemony clean perfection? We are always watched: the eyes of the stone cold wire-birds, Big Brother. Sometimes my own voice scares me, cyber and opaque, glassy and sterile, like the rocks at the bottom of a fishbowl. Can’t slip on the mess I’ve made of myself. And when the smoke air
73
Fangfei Li
Night In Chicago
in the joltjoltscreech of a screaming hydroplane death has never felt so near as in the back of a taxi cab Attila trembles on the seat beside me. turbaned man in the Liverpool jersey, my life is in your hands. down the gleaming LIE, BQE, XYZ a dilapidated Nissan bright yellow duck dashboard ornament like that makes it better the dark green oak leaf, a public park skinny kids in skinny pants waiting for a day of nothing to waste to nothing everything crumbles in the aquatic air. up lurches Manhattan silk-screened by the haze postcard-perfect but for the Orangina billboards of Queens and to the left, a cemetery yawns wide: tiny skylines.
it’s a long ride back from LaGuardia
humidity.
Lizzie Vamos
I.
75
II.
Third Avenue is burning tonight a Saturday night, a vodka-tequila-gin-drowning night runs through the gutters and rises like a shout. I go go go, speed walk in unmeasured stumble past the two Chinese cats in plastic lawn chairs whacked out and squinting at rooftops past the poet’s fluorescent supermarket bargain boxes of cereal locked up for the night and the hobos in their plastic-bag bus-stop kingdoms dig it, dig it, dig it all, it’s all nothing, man, it’s nothing and everything jewelry-box poet in a white dress with streetlamp eyes and an invisible smile walking, walking, sidewalk reaching up through thin-soled shoes walk until the subway steam cleanses you and the crosswalk lights cannot stop you and the tinted eyes in taxi windows cannot see you through the light blossoming from the crown of your head and splintering into the fog.
Sand, intense heat, and a bullet Kaavya Balan He started to leak: leak like a busted plastic bag, a bag severed in two by the horns of a charging buffalo, manically pinpricked streams of charge flowing over his trainers onto the plastic sidewalk of the up and the down of afternoon suns. And as that charge left him, flowing faster as he ran his way home, the energy left him too—the movement, the life of his smile forever lived as he did not. He was still on the steps; just conducting shells, multiple, layering his inside and out, like the ancient tree rings, everything on the outside in a pretty green/orange/dead spectacle. The rust on his eyelids told his age to his children, the stone on his toe-nails to his grandchildren, his dust to those who forgot.
Man of the Times Katie Bourek
77
Virgin in Lusterless Darkness Meredith Hosek After four glasses of port and two of burgundy wine, she fell beneath an avalanche of dull sounds— footfalls, screams, and heartbeats, accompanied by the full-bodied resonance of a rippling harp and vicious cursing in terza rima. Ringlets of keen, volatile moonlight trembled across her walls and onto her skin, until she lifted her boneless, dampish hand, her pointer finger reaching her temple. With a light tremor, she pushed down her thumb, collapsing like an empty suit of clothes, leaving only a small funereal mound of ashes, and lungs full of midnight.
Woman Megan Gross
79
If My Heart Could Speak: Grace Howard If my heart spoke I would be a librarian, Surrounded by red-stained pages, torn from books of propriety plagued by ancient desires, fermenting in every sea-bottle, curious fingers clutched onto during the five-o’clock news. But my blood-stuck bones remain trapped inside a shell, too small for an ocean. But if you hold it close, you can almost hear their silent whispers.
Sunset Among the Trees Sarah Haemisegger
81
-ing Michelle Li
I.
Eternal recurrence is time of an infinite loop Points in time stretch out to endless centipedes of images “Mother,” I said. “Father,” I said. I put my rings in my mouth. It will forever taste like jade—all that of bonsai trees and birth. Perhaps I could stop it all but in the end, it has got the better of me.
II.
So there I was right? Just lying there, drinking it all in: life. Just plain old life. But it’s not plain and old, so I lie. It’s all we’ve got, us creatures of the earth. And sometimes I wonder why we think there’s any more than that.
Flower Sisters Katharine lin
83
Onions Isabella So Delirium is a careless, bearded man who rips at vomit-green wall paper and bursts through the cement, that aggressive sonuvabitch. I once found him dancing about in my trashcans, singing to the banana peels and kissing the burnt light bulbs in the dark, stray hours of the night. We met in dim garage-lights, and his eyes stroked mine with an insanity flickering like an untamed lion at the feet of pale Tinkerbell. It may have been love, but it may have also been the rotting cantaloupes. “You broke my windows!� I shouted with fist to the air; but he ignored me, ran to my kitchen, and stole all of my onions.
Consumed
85
danielle lamotthe
on the sidewalk Lizzie Vamos
Road to Nowhere Devon Knott
where do people go when they get into cars together? not destinations, not the dull highway dotted-line GPS pathway excursions to Best Buy or the grocery store because you drank all the milk again— but conversations quiet intimacies in the brainless car-fog mundane details of dialect daily life doctor’s appointments and who’s making dinner the silent I love you’s and the silenter I don’t’s the why can’t we ever say anything nice’s and the hopeless I love you, I love you, please smile at me at the next red light and touch my hand on the between-seat console and turn off the radio and listen to me breathe everything louder in the sodium-light silence thoughts crowded inside a steel shell until they shout at the edge of hearing —but just out of reach.
87
Spine Katharine Lin
Bout Katie Bourek
89
Saving myself on a Sunday afternoon Michelle Li I fit my mind into a ceramic pot—I can’t have it any other way, especially in those moments when I gaze at the dusty black of my childhood’s wrought iron fence or when I awake to my foolish nakedness succumbed to incubus attacks or when I gasp at the moon’s honest halo against my lips. In times like these, my head drips of humanity through the sockets of my eyes with nothing to catch them but my own stony palms. Isn’t it better to be left in that cool, lovely shell—those smooth ridges to splash against, rub against, lap up against—nothing to stop you now? But I still found myself in breaths, in lulls, in such inevitable quietude.
Doppelganger grace dau
91
Secret Slurs Meredith Hosek There are now thousands of moths hiding under the tongues of wooden floorboards. I heard their silent beckoning last night, like lifelines on the palms of Christ when the nails went through, echoing violently in dust particles as I crept over sardonyx wings.
Water Tower Blair Johnson
93
Hannah Cyr
Die de los Muertos
Dead Weight Giovanna Diaz “Honey, you are an old soul,” my mother used to say. There once was a man who claimed you lost weight when you died. No, not the weight of your flesh, tendons, or bones. Nor the weight of your decisions, opinions, or regrets. No, this man believed the, upon death, you lost the weight of your soul. People scoffed, and he became angry. “I will PROVE it to you!” he vowed (for souls have to be recycled somehow). So he conducted an experiment. Placing the dying on a very long, very wide, scale, he waited waited waited for them to die. Can you imagine? As you lay on your death bed, succumbing to the inevitable, you look to your side and see a little man peering at no! not you! Not the person who will cease to be a person in mere moments, but the number on your scale. But I am dying, you would think, I believe this warrants some attention! Yet you do not say anything for you are so tired and decide to tell him when I wake up from a short nap. As you close your eyes, he grabs his notebook. As your fingers start to relax, he pops off his pen cap. Excuse me, sir, for I am not—and as you cease to exist as a human being, and become yet another human, living on only in the minds of others, he scribbles down a number.
Quick, Peel back your lips. Expose every tooth, every molar. Remind yourself that under mere millimeters of tissue, rests a once-soft skull.
95
“Honey, you are an old soul,” my mother used to say.
viewing vagabonds Sophie Lidji she felt she should have wanted scarlet-glinting stoplights stained red on rainy pavements, spilled light of streetlamps dissolved golden into air that smells of tire screeches, city filth in her veins, stale wind on her skin (for that’s what the stories of wanderers told her to want). but she found herself curiously content with consistent alarm clocks and the brake-pedal-brake of foggy morning traffic.
In the Street Grace Dau
97
Poetry After Dark Audrey Cockrum
I
I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it the pleasure of wringing my soul dry of desire and hope in such times becomes our most powerful asset because we cling so strongly to nothing else deludes us or leads us so far off the long, hard, beaten path forming in the clearing where the sun dazzles upon fresh parchment and hides unpleasant truth in the undergrowth.
II
It takes time to resume the muscles of the hand and reclaim the spirit once vested so deep in the ebb and flow of the knuckles wither with time to remember where you’re going and time to realize it’s no good and time to turn back before it’s too late and your heart will beat for nothing else. Nothing more.
III
And they urge you whose shoulders they grasp with tense fingers holding you still with widened, weary eyes that watch with a glimmer of distrust and fear mostly and breathe I’m worried about you. I’m really worried about you. All you can do is smile laugh shake your head hold up your hands. But that relentless flicker of concern dissolves. And though it only settles at the surface burning just beneath the skin its presence is one to be reckoned with after dark.
Halo Anita wang
99
Dance of the Cockroach Evi Shiakolas
The Story of Man Annabel Lyman
He would chase them along the water’s edge. He would sacrifice his onerous soul to the searing light of the moon and follow those dogmen until the hair rose on his chest and in the water’s slowbeating surface, he would recognize himself at last—raw. And as he romped among the beasts he would feel the swell of the tide inside him, the bursting of life, and at last he would hatch, and fall—so utterly exposed—to his knees, to the grit, to the hot sweaty soup of humanity. And morning would
break, and with it returned all that which he had sacrificed. Struggling against the weight of that burdensome soul, he would rise to his bloodied feet and see slithering beside him on the sand an amorphous shadow, and in the water, as he washed himself, the distorted reflection of some grotesque mask. His eyes would flit backward, ashamed, almost, but the dogs had long gone, their feeble tracks lapped up by the voracious tongue of the tide. And with every moment that passed, the sun would rise higher, burn brighter against his pale, hollow skin. And finally, when all the mongrel’s blood had been boiled out of him, he would return, pulled by all the weight of his soul, to the ramshackle town that owned him.
1 01
There, cowering among the molting trunks of birch, a bent old man, in ragged swathes of loosely woven twine, peers through heavy eyelids at the mongrels’ moonlit flight. Though his body is still, his eyes drift unfettered.
Colophon EDITORS-IN-CHIEF
Isabella “password, please” So
Rachel “rack city” Barber
MANAGING EDITOR
STAFF
Meredith “great personality” Hosek
Jessica “just waiting for approval” Cloud Audrey “shut up! she’s talking!” Cockrum Jennifer “freshman poet” Davis Mary Margaret “technicolor bunnies” Hancock Rachel “I feel uncomfortable” Lefferts Annabel “timeless” Lyman Katie “hand-raiser” Mimini Cate “better nickname“ O’Brien Taylor “prodigy” Pak Julia “I saw that on Tumblr” Teeter Kirby “who’s in that corner?” Young
ART EDITOR Maisey “8:17 AM” Horn
LITERARY EDITOR Avery “Avraham Lincoln” Youngblood
PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR Angelika “Dennis Too Fancy” Dennis
ASSISTANT ART EDITOR Sarah “excuse me!” Simmons
ASSISTANT LITERARY EDITOR Ashley “yes, with nudity” Deatherage
FACULTY ADVISER Ana “we’re in class” Rosenthal
ASSISTANT PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR Sophie “#unff” Lidji
Many Thanks TO: Mrs. Rosenthal for all the hours you put into shaping our ideas and inspirations into a final publication. Your patience and cheerfulness never dwindled, even during the most awful and slow 8 o’clock mornings. We appreciate all that you brought to Vibrato, from your legendary design skills to your video inspirations. Mr. Vaughn for your literary feedback and for giving so much of your time and energy into digging through the literature folder. We wish you had E-period free. Ms. Wargo, Mrs. Murphree, Mr. Ashton, Dean Matthews, and Mrs. Higgins for your encouragement and support Katharine Lin, for illustrating the fabulous gears on our inside covers and on our table of contents. Thank you to Melanie Hamil at Impact Graphics and Printing for helping us plan the production of this great project.
Clockwork Caitlin Garcia
Vibrato is a magazine that exhibits the art, photography, and literature of Hockaday’s Upper School student body. Together, our staff members closely review and carefully select the pieces to include in the publication, design the spreads, and distribute the magazine. As you follow our journey in these stories and artwork, we hope you find one of your own. Explore and experience. We remember: YouTube inspiration days. OK Go music videos. “Photoshop assault.” Wall decorating. Deleted analysis essay. Blacked-out pages of Wuthering Heights. Collaborative story-writing and picture-drawing. “Waaater!” Blow-dried melted crayons. Doughnut days. Grooveshark playlists. “I hate it.” Elevator dance parties. Down-the-hall stenches. “All These Things That I Have Done,” by The Killers. The text of this issue is set in 9 pt. Centabel Book and the titles are set in Glasket 20 pt. Variances in size are used for titles of literary pieces, art, and photography as well as names of authors and artists. The magazine was designed using Adobe InDesign CS5.5 and printed on 120# Galerie Art Gloss cover for the cover and 100# Galerie Art Gloss Text for all text by Impact Graphics and Printing.
This is issue
of 750.