The Blue Pencil 2014

TBP 2014 COVER

THE BLUE PENCIL 2014

THE MAGAZINE OF THE CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM AT WALNUT HILL SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS

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IN MEMORY OF EMZARA

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COMPOSED BY JUREE KIM LYRICS BY FIORA ELBERS-TIBBITTS

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TABLE OF CONTENTS FICTION

PLAYWRITING

FIORA ELBERS-TIBBITTS ’14

MAEVE BENZ ’17

8

4

Calamidad

Wednesday Night

SAMANTHA MACKERTICH ’16

OLIVIA LEGASPI ’15

27 In(de)cisions

18 Pizza

WILLIAM MCGOVERN ’14

MADISON MURRAY ’14

30 Bus Stop

34 Funeral

SHAWN VAZIN ’16 39 Check Up

WRITER/COMPOSER COLLABORATIONS ii-v In Memory of Emzara Composed by Juree Kim Lyrics by Fiora Elbers-Tibbitts 44-46

Inbound

Composed by Ben Travers Lyrics by William McGovern

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TABLE OF CONTENTS POETRY/SONGWRITING MAEVE BENZ ’17

ALEXANDRA LEWIS ’16

7

24 I’ve begun to love

Last Flynn

FIORA ELBERS-TIBBITTS ’14

NOAH LEWIS ’14

10 From an Untitled Sonnet Crown

26 Lighthouse

SOFIA HAINES ’14

WILLIAM MCGOVERN ’14

12 Spotted

28 Division Street

13 Swollen

29 On the Writing of the Murder Ballad

14 post-partum

EMILY KESSLER ’14

MADISON MURRAY ’14

15 Statue

32 Versatile

16 Human Suit

33 Orangutan

“Division Street”

17 Megabat PAULINA UKRAINETS ’15 OLIVIA LEGASPI ’15

37 Transit

22 Bleeding Out

38 Rat

23 Mile in Paradise WALNUT HILL COMMUNITY 3

Parade

42 Index 43 About Creative Writing

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2013-2014 CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM WRITERS AND EDITORS Maeve Benz ‘17

Noah Lewis ’14

Fiora Elbers-Tibbitts ’14

Samantha Mackertich ’16

Sofia Haines ’14

William McGovern ’14

Emily Kessler ’14

Madison Murray ’14

Olivia Legaspi ’15

Paulina Ukrainets ’15

Alexandra Lewis ’16

Shawn Vazin ’16

FACULTY Margaret Funkhouser Director of Creative Writing Poetry

Ronan Noone Playwriting Screenwriting

Mike Heppner Fiction Publishing

Betsy Blazar Design and Layout

Walnut Hill School for the Arts © The Blue Pencil 2014, Volume 79, No. 1 All rights reservesd. No work is to be reprinted without written consent from the author and of Walnut Hill School for the Arts

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TITLE THE BLUE GOESPENCIL HERE 2014

2014 THE BLUE PENCIL 1

WALNUT HILL COMMUNITY

PARADE

TITLE GOES HERE

He can recognize most of the people by the backs of their heads, but she is just a girl sitting next to him, and he doesn’t like the way she smiles.

Moment of silence.

The lights are abrupt; the shadows in this room remind him of home.

What’s the fastest way out?

They sit, waiting to be dismissed. No matter how jangly the sound, how bouncy the music, he always wants the room to be quieter. They fall asleep with open eyes; only music can wake them up.

Written for the occasion of Black on White, April 2014 by students in the Creative Writing Program with the assistance of the Walnut Hill Community

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MAEVE BENZ

WEDNESDAY NIGHT Ivan is a 23-year old grad of a mediocre college in a dingy city. He lives alone in an older apartment building. His income is below average, but he gets by. Despite his crassness, he is relatively controlled.

Ivan is smarter than he lets on to be. His gravelly voice fluctuates in volume depending on his investment in what he’s saying.

Scene: Ivan is sitting in a plastic chair, center stage.

IVAN There’s this shit bar, The Lucky Keg, two blocks from my apartment. I go there every Wednesday night ‘cause my landlord has his trumpet lessons below me. I mean, Christ, heeza a full-grown man taking trumpet lessons. Not to mention he’s half deaf too, so all you hears him screechin’ out these parade tunes over ‘n’ over like some kid in middle school band.

I normally get my friend Eddie to come with me. He’s still in college, but actually is my age, he just doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life, yet. He says he’s taking a “victory lap.” His mom’s pretty pissed off.

Eddie meets me there at seven. We both get beers and a soft pretzel. I tell him about work and he’ll go on some fifteen-minute rant about how the dorms don’t let you have microwaves in your room anymore. He’s kinda funny sometimes, but a real pain if you know people are listening. It’s sorta good then, I guess, that we go out on Wednesdays.

The Keg’s owned by this couple, Marth and Stewart. They’re both seventy-somethin’. Marth is this trippy goddess who waltzes around in moccasins and has a Hells Angels tattoo on her calf.

She always refills our drinks without asking, but doesn’t charge. Stewart trudges around in combat boots, and talks really quietly. Eddie thinks that he’s actually a madman or something, but I

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kinda like him. Like you would never cross Stewart, and he doesn’t even have to say anything to make you think that.

So I meet this girl there one night. Eddie is in the bathroom. She comes in sopping wet in a jersey and shorts. I feel like some ass of a king in my coat, drinking beer, as she’s wringin’ out her hair in the corner. I ask her if she wants my coat, and she says no, so I ask again, and she takes it. We’re quiet for a bit, and then I notice her jersey. She’s on some presumably high school soccer team from Waitsfield. We kind of stand there a while. I go back to the bar. She keeps in the corner.

Eddie comes out of the bathroom, and we drink a while before he notices the girl. He asks me why she’s got my coat. I tell him why.

Marth is out with her eight o’clock smoke; “lemon verbena flavored tonight, boys,” she announces. Eddie is cacklin’ at some reporter on TV who’s getting blown over by the storm. The girl is freaked out, you can see. I go over. Her name’s Felicia. She got left behind at some pep-rally or whatever-the-hell-it-was event. I ask if she needs a phone. She says yes. She calls, gets an answer, then we wait. Her mom was gonna drive from an hour away to get her. Felicia looks pretty embarrassed.

Eddie and I decide to wait with her. I mean, she’s a kid, and she also had my coat. Eddie thought her mom might pay us for waiting with her. He’s a real pig sometimes.

So, we wait, and Marth gives her a Coke and turns on the weekly Horror Hour on channel 15 ‘cause she thinks that’s what high school girls like these days. I don’t know. Maybe they do.

Felicia’s one of those weirdly old looking girls. Like she could be our age if she wasn’t in

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a soccer uniform and shin guards. I think Eddie would have hit on her if he knew Marth wasn’t watching.

It was goin’ on like eleven when this hulkin’ drunk brute comes smashing through the door. He smells like gin and throws his arm around Eddie as he thuds down onto a stool. Eddie’s nerves are all thrown off from the night already, so he laughs a little and gives me a look like, “we’ve gotta get out of here.”

Felicia is shrinkin’ into a corner behind a coat rack. Even Marth looks a little scared. Felicia coughs and the brute whips around. He stumbles off the stool and starts over to her. He’s grunting and nodding his head like some psychopath. I’ve got no clue what the hell’s gonna happen.

The brute’s inching closer to her now. Pretty soon she’s backed up all the way into the glass. Eddie is hyperventilatin’, and Marth looks sick. I think about choking on my beer as a diversion.

Stewart comes out to watch “The Great American Auction,” like he does every Wednesday. He see’s what’s goin on, then he starts yellin’ at the brute and shoves him off Felicia. The brute starts swipin’ at Stewart. Stewart gets a good grip on his arms and throws him out the door. Marth is tossing down shots. Felicia forces gulps of Coke in between heavy breaths. When the brute’s down the road a ways, I start to breathe again and my mouth feels hot and salty.

So Felicia’s mom ends up coming at like eleven-thirty. She looks pretty skeptical of us four. Eddie says she has a lovely daughter. She nods, annoyed. Felicia gives me back my coat, thanks Stewart, and leaves.

Eddie and I say g’night to Marth and Stewart. Eddie goes back to his dorm. I get to my apartment. I’m heading down the first-floor hall, and there’s this high-pitched wailing. My landlord is practicing “Mr. P.C.” The frickin’ bastard is ruining Coltrane.

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MAEVE BENZ

LAST FLYNN I wake up sideways, hip sunk deep into the mattress.

Braid, a spill down my cheek.

Lemon shampoo, loose curls at the last plum pit vertebra.

My fingers are faceless snakes that unravel the shrugged Z. Splintered matchstick toe bones tap the screen window in time with the broken sparrow.

The mid-section of mesh craning over its loose silver pins.

I stole a bible from a church last week. Slipstitch linen cover, Flynn family tree inked on the back. A girl, Saoirse, born 1845, Carlow, was left in battered black loops, an unanswered dash.

A compendium of silences sifts to blue chalk dust, and makes pastel air, a surrealist’s world.

I find my body, stripped of analogies, in stride out the back-porch door.

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FIORA ELBERS-TIBBITTS

CALAMIDAD An 8.2-magnitude earthquake hit Chile, but no one died. Roofs became campfire sites speckled with withered driftwood, and white foam sizzled in the gutters like leftover empanada grease, but the Chileans rode the tides and surfed and let the water fill their lungs with buoyancy. There was not a single case of pneumonia, or crushed limbs, or baby snatching amidst the tide-induced transmigration, and the people all complained the following Friday when the mail arrived an hour late. The streets flooded with four feet of muddy brown water. It whittled neighborhood dogs down to wet scraps and lapped at front steps and made the Chileans anxious about island living, but the impulse to bask proved greater than the impulse to flee.

The earthquake hit at 9:46pm. It started in the middle of the earth, and the Chileans could feel it. From their beds and gardens and markets, they sensed a distant trembling, a resignedly released sigh, an aaah that relaxed salon-coiffed curls and stretched the spines of nascent erythrina cristagalli as they split from their maternal branches. The earth stretched. The stirrings were quiet at first, non-obvious, unassumingly fractal. A grandfather welcomed a long-submerged memory of his first cueca, the handkerchief that soaked up his sweat, the girl whose feet he followed. A young visitor to el Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes found herself forgiving Dedalus for his stern brow as he looked upon the dead Icarus cast in bronze. Dedalus relaxed his jaw.

The earthquake swelled up to the earth’s surface for 12.5 miles, until it reached the desert city of Calama. The first fissure in the ground appeared at 22°28'S 68°56'W between two shrubs by the side of the highway. It spread in both directions, raced the cars on either side of the dividing line, and, in one fell swoop, gathered up all the cars’ children and pressed their noses to the glass in wonderment. They’d grown up hearing about absolution, a rare occurrence during which all of the earth’s sins were belched out of the ground with a triumphant crack, like the audible pop of altitude change from the Atacama Desierto to los Andes, or the solemn snap of a braquiuro crab leg as the preface to an evening of poker. The Calaman commune, determined to create truth out of

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childhood fairytale, marked the scrubby rift with a wooden cross and blessed it for the four letters that had saved Calama from calamidad.

The gap raced along ancient fault lines, through reverberating mountains, across fields sated by less than two inches of rain each year. The shifting of the tectonic plates sent a rumble through the ocean’s belly, and tsunami waves rose from the water, gathering speed and height, bleaching white at the tips as its seven feet tumbled to shore.

The waves made the world new. Trash from the dirty streets was sucked into the traveling whirlpool. Milk cartons and bent forks and convenience store receipts were carried away from restaurant dumpsters; old linens and pantyhose and clothespins were blown from drying lines.

The maelstrom of forgotten amenities was hurled so far into the sky that it looked like a cloud. It became a cloud: heaven-bound. In its wake, the streets filled with water.

Neighbors paddled. As the water cycles waxed and waned, and the streets remained flooded, Chile became a country of canals. Street vendors built gondolas from the branches that floated past their drenched carts, and tour guides adapted to the climate with scuba certification. Basements and warehouses developed aquatic ecosystems; dolls became entangled in sea anemones, and angelfish darted in between the slats of dusty furniture. Grandparents guided their heirloom rocking chairs into the ruts of their thatched roofs, children swam naked in the streets, and parents surveyed their town, present, trusting. Chile’s water became clear.

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FIORA ELBERS-TIBBITTS

FROM AN UNTITLED SONNET CROWN We are born as dust mites. Our lungs are clumped full of a congestion that breathes life, thick with new soul tenderness, into our slumped conduits. We are clay and silt. God sics his crumbling artisan hands on our scrap bodies and forms our tendons, one by one, in an assembly line of wet clay slabs.

We are all umbilical to the sun.

God’s kiln fires too quickly, and we crack.

What was once pink and supple becomes hard and callused, crumbling. The fiber retracts itself from our tired bodies, discards our bloodless heaps, leaves us, docile and curt.

We are born to be buried in dry dirt.

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We are born to be buried in dry dirt. We strive to be cacti. The encasing body is a hollow of nourishment; it is a personalized, garage sale casket embossed with old lizard skin that seizes up in the sun. The cracks are diamonds. Duckett and Sons charges 85 years for the whole thing. They gut us out with rusty tools and our bodies embalm themselves like spiders eating their young.

We are bound by our cactus thorns: our desert moat, the sand and I, dry like a cat’s tongue on peeling skin. Here it is red and tastes like Mars. Dirt fills our babies’ mouths and carries our parents’ shoes, is thrown onto our coffins.

The men who drive the nails speak in tongues.

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SOFIA HAINES

TITLE SPOTTED GOES HERE I am prodding myself, probing a shoulder. My fingers are insulin needles.

There’s no more fresh air to give my organs, and I’ve thought that I’m a liar ever since I saw the difference between honesty and truth.

“I’ll set you on fire,” I say.

“I’ll set you on fire—” and afterwards, everyone looks like they’ve been drowned (bloated and white and bloated and blue).

The agenda was pried from my fingers.

She’ll be informed when everything has melted.

I am dragging my arms through the pine needles (a piece of yellow wrapper clings to my sweater).

Even they, these fallen hairs of the trees, won’t bend, no longer brittle and orange like koi fish.

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SOFIA HAINES

SWOLLEN

TITLE GOES HERE

I think to myself that it is not wrong to have a body that is not mine. I think my hands shake of pure gratitude.

There is a war snapping between my ears.

Seeds instead of bullets are shot back and forth by gun after gun after gun, an early-evening battle between my synapses that wail like banshees. Perhaps my shudders are a sign of metamorphosis from stream to lake to July to April.

Plantlife has begun to understand me so well that it follows me like a lost sheep and we keep one another warm.

The moss that springs from beneath my bed tells me that the lines in my hand have been scrawled there because my place is waist-deep in black waters, as a fly fisherman snapping my lure, grazing the fish below me.

I learn to take in what I am taught. I learn to become deft with a needle and how to ask the fish to respond to my prayers.

Calluses spring like buds across the notches in my fingers and the grasses beam with joy.

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SOFIA HAINES

TITLE POST-PARTUM GOES HERE Touch my home. Touch my walls and tablecloth and the coat I bought my son; he will be a small blue boy, blue like paint, and his round hands spell out something like milk or salt.

I want him to sleep in the crook of an avocado.

Night breaks but does not open. you are a beautiful woman said the blue boy. Now, once he is here, I see that he is blue like an egg in the dark.

He leans in from a window that wasn’t there before, kicking his toes against the wall as he looks at the pink boy in the cradle.

Open this jar for me, I ask.

Our yarn has been cut, but open this jar for me: see, it is filled with childhood and melted plastic.

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EMILY KESSLER

STATUE

TITLE GOES HERE

Like cold danger I am in curl of beasts and naked.

We don’t shower here with the insta-hot—the sink opens wide enough, me inside, arms cobblestoned, alien.

Now I touch Marcus Aurelius, stone Emperor of Quad. I imagined him less heavy, bejeweled as water dreams to. My ears as indifferent as wilted narcissus, the shouldering stride of a heron.

New is edgeless steel and citrus.

He isn’t dressed for winter.

We are invited to touch him.

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EMILY KESSLER

TITLE GOES HUMAN SUITHERE I’m gorilla hands padded leather family blood heat husky, the animal in grandpa’s coffin.

I connect to vacuums on a deeper level outer space the esophagus in the mirror empty: spiderwebbed small world.

My friends are the same well-dressed solipsists peeling toe to knee.

My mother a mammal in the family room unclassified hairy neck zippered like mine.

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EMILY KESSLER

MEGABAT

TITLE GOES HERE

I’ve never had a headache. Common misconception. I’m bloodless, pale lipped as toilet-sick kids. Hanging isn’t as hard as it looks. No, my bane is calcar: the wing-stretcher bone, brittle as early-March underskin.

Born to tree fork and white eyes in nighttime, swing now between fists. I swaddled alone in my own wings, bit fruit, slept upside down huge in broad daylight.

Strand of tibia, elongated tooth. Those are bones too.

Hello to the space my body wants and sorry from a long line of skulls.

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OLIVIA LEGASPI

PIZZA CHARACTERS Blue: 26.

Rachel: 17.

Angelica: 17.

SCENE: Late spring. The stretch of sidewalk in front of a Domino’s Pizza. Rachel and Angelica are sitting on the concrete, their backs against the side of the building. Rachel has her legs stretched out in front of her, and she is holding up a handheld mirror and tilting it back and forth to look at her hair (shoulder length and choppy) from different angles. Angelica sits with her knees drawn into her chest.

Angelica sings to herself quietly while Rachel frowns and inspects her reflection.

ANGELICA (singing):

AND NOW PURPLE HEARTS COVER MY FINGERS

PURPLE HEARTS COVER MY STARS

YOU OPEN AND CLOSE ME

YOU CUT ME AWAY

AND NOW I’M MADE OF MASHED POTATOES

IN THIS GREAT BIG WORLD

Rachel tugs at the ends of her hair, glaring at herself in the mirror.

RACHEL: Like, I gave her the fucking picture, what else do you need?

ANGELICA (singing):

I’D TELL YOU I LOVE YOU

BUT I’M ROTTING AWAY

MADE OF MASHED POTATOES

IN THIS COLD, COLD WORLD

Rachel snaps the mirror shut and drops it into her purse, exhaling. Angelica stops singing.

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RACHEL: She had lipstick all over her teeth, too, damn slut.

Pause.

RACHEL: I should just shave it off. Or I could just go shorter, like Miley and Beyoncé and all of them, but my cheeks and chin would make me look like a... What do you think, Ang? Angelica picks at her cuticles. She doesn’t look at Rachel.

Pause.

RACHEL: Ang! ANGELICA: Everyone can tell anyway.

RACHEL: What?

ANGELICA: What?

RACHEL: Everyone can tell what?

ANGELICA: That you’re gay?

RACHEL: What the hell, Ang. I’m not gay. I’m talking about— ANGELICA: Oh. Sorry.

RACHEL: Angelica! I mean, I hooked up with Emily at Jared’s party on Friday, but that’s only ‘cause I knew Will Bloomstein was watching and it totally worked—oh but I already told you about that night, didn’t I? And, yeah, there were rumors about Jen Thompson and me last year but that was all her, obsessed with me, I swear, but we never did anything.

Angelica holds her knees tighter.

ANGELICA: My parents are getting a divorce.

Rachel looks out at the parking lot while she talks, gesturing with her hands and tilting her head from right to left.

RACHEL: I mean, I almost called her one time, Jen, I mean, it was like a Friday and I was supposed to hang out with Brandon but his grandma died or some crap—wait, what?

Rachel stares at Angelica.

ANGELICA: My parents are getting divorced.

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RACHEL: Why the hell?

ANGELICA: I don’t know.

RACHEL: Did someone cheat? Your dad’s always seemed like he might be the type. I wouldn’t have pegged your mom, but now that I think about it, she’s so quiet and everything, like she’s hiding something.

ANGELICA: No one cheated.

RACHEL: Is that a fact?

ANGELICA: My family’s being ripped apart either way.

RACHEL: Jesus, Ang. ANGELICA: Yeah.

Long pause. They both look out at the parking lot.

RACHEL: I wonder how hot it is on the surface of the sun.

Pause.

ANGELICA: 27 million degrees.

RACHEL: But like, how hot it really is. How it feels.

Angelica doesn’t respond. Long pause.

RACHEL: Who are you gonna live with?

ANGELICA: I don’t know. My dad left but he hasn’t found a place yet.

To their right, the glass door of Domino’s opens and a woman in the Domino’s uniform walks out. She has short, blue-streaked hair and wears dark eye makeup. She is heavily pregnant and carrying a large pizza box.

BLUE (as the door falls shut behind her): Someone cancelled their order but I already made this, you guys hungry? On the house.

Rachel smiles at Blue without showing teeth.

RACHEL: I’m on a starch-free diet.

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BLUE (scoffing): Everyone likes pizza.

For the first time, Angelica looks up at Rachel.

ANGELICA: You had a croissant at the bakery before school.

RACHEL: Oh shut up, it was little.

Angelica turns to look at Blue.

ANGELICA: When’s your baby due?

BLUE: Few weeks.

ANGELICA: Is it a boy or girl?

Blue puts a hand on her stomach and smiles.

BLUE: Boy. Joseph.

RACHEL: After his dad? Ooh, after Joseph Gordon-Levitt?

BLUE: After Mary’s husband.

The girls look at her blankly.

BLUE: The Virgin Mary? Jesus’ mom?

RACHEL: Damn, you don’t look like a Christian.

ANGELICA: Shut up, Rach.

Angelica extends a hand.

ANGELICA: I’ll take the pizza. Thanks.

BLUE (to Rachel): What do I look like?

RACHEL: Nothing. I don’t know. What do you think of my haircut?

Blue smiles and hands the pizza box down to Angelica. For the first time, Angelica unclenches her hands from around her knees and stretches out her legs to place the pizza box on top of them. She opens the box and takes out a slice.

BLUE (smiling, cradling her stomach): You girls be good now.

Blue goes back into the building. Angelica eats pizza. Rachel pouts.

(END)

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OLIVIA LEGASPI

TITLE GOESOUT BLEEDING HERE The day is done but I’m not going home—my feet ache to roam lonely sidewalks and bridges of clay. Bruises fade to dark flowers, barren eyes, you drain me through your fingers, salt water to rain. I grow farther from knowledge every stride to remember falling asleep I shed my jacket and absorb the wind and ice I deserve. Your laughter hard to find, now turns to iron on my every nerve. your voice through my veins pushes me on— day is done but I’m not going home.

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OLIVIA LEGASPI

MILE IN PARADISE

TITLE GOES HERE

Your sweat rains like a prayer, threadbare desire coursing into the veins of the concrete. Red nail polish, blood, laughter, fire, you carry me home. Snakes under your feet, my shoulders burn from holding on—so long before the mountaintops bloom, surrender to body heat and a nighttime of song. The first sunrise calls to us, so tender, wet with salt from the city lights above. Skyscrapers, or mud. This street is now ours—the cement where we became the word, love overgrown, overrun, by black stars. I cling to you as the barricades grow—all is against us but we won’t let go.

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ALEXANDRA LEWIS

I’VE BEGUN TO LOVE an extension of myself

I was born full

whether or not we’re real.

grown, a mom with kids, gentle, even.

My perfect day,

I’d be empty

numbing, naked in snow.

Warm and gold, absolutely plump.

Six weeks ago, on the floor

+++

above a Laundromat, I died, head in the lap of a vivid

Everything,

hallucination. I watched myself

cry the life out of me.

absolutely everything,

has begun

I was the air, absolutely

to glow—

tingling, breathless,

empty. I’m an angel, I’m a

white stains

my eyes—unforgiving,

bulldozer, I’m running

it beats and buzzes.

up a sideways flight of stairs.

People become

each other, humming funny profundity, if they were words they wouldn’t matter.

+++

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+++

Both of us out my window, peeling oranges, smoking green spirits by the lake.

I can’t indulge in myself,

Everywhere, I see the ocean.

so I indulge myself in her.

I am breathing bubbles.

As air, I was far from

You stand, hands wet, wonder

eternal, I was present.

if the water’s warm.

+++

When I was thirteen, I had a dream about grandma death shoveling coal into a furnace.

She asked me how much time I wanted.

Everything rewound to now, sitting, scrubbed, engulfed in love and lust. When they call me better it’ll be because she’s left me all alone.

+++

Lovely, We were gypsies. Dirty, half-hanging, we were boys and bloody, we had elbows, we had toes.

Thieving, though, has lost its rush.

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NOAH LEWIS

LIGHTHOUSE The rippling waves don’t ever seem to fade, Against the sails from far beyond your watch.

We moored the boat along the sand then stayed At Topsham Inn and drank away the scotch.

But now the waves sit, broken by the stone, With memories in a squinted eye. The waves And whisky drip on crystal lips alone And stop to sigh against the four of spades.

It’s only when the phosphorus ignites, That waxy drips of paraffin caress The open arms of tangled twine that slight The icy path of empty sinewed chests.

Then fettered wrists reply a song of red, From flames to melted tears, take me instead.

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SAMANTHA MACKERTICH

IN(DE)CISIONS I gaze down at the project lying in front of me, its IV slowly dripping. I trained for this, I tell myself. I deserve this. But my gloved fingers still shake, holding the sterile instrument, and that is the only movement I make. My project takes a shallow breath, and I look down at it, its pale skin interrupted only by the blue veins that spread across it. I should get this over with, I should start, but it has to be perfect; there is no room for mistakes. I lower my hand and draw a small jagged line on the torso. I take a breath and steady my hand, and the line lengthens. I try to imagine myself drawing a picture, a simple drawing. But this is different. Training taught us that it would be easy, and the books showed the loops and dashes like a fluid language—one that I know the letters of, but I just can’t construct the words. The skin is soft, sinking slightly under my hand, but I can feel the air rushing in, and the blood pulsing. My hand slowly drags the instrument, and I watch as the thin line chases its tip. I can’t help feeling that I am ruining it, that I am destroying the flawless white skin, desecrating the peaceful bliss that the plastic tubes give my project. But I know that this perfection is only on the exterior, and I can feel the irregular stammer in its chest.

I shouldn’t be alone in here. There should be someone else here, someone with experience to tell me what I’m doing wrong, to ease the tool out of my hand and correct what I’ve done. I steel myself, gripping my tool, white-knuckled. I deny the urge to blink and ignore the single strand of hair that refuses to stay behind my ear, dancing in front of my vision. The harsh industrial lighting hurts my eyes, but leaves the edges of the room dim. It gives my assignment a ghostly glow, almost shining through the skin. The beeps and drips of the machinery cause my heart to twitch, but they continue their rhythmic little chirps. I finish the last of the dashes, and mark the final X. The heavy doors swing open and a man in a crisp white lab coat strides briskly toward me while pulling on rubber gloves. The man turns to me, stern lines creasing his face. “Have you finished yet? We have to start surgery!” I put the marker down.

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WILLIAM McGOVERN

DIVISION STREET Sergio, oh Sergio,

He spent him many afternoons

hardworking all his life.

working masonry

He loved drinking Genesee

and drove his old Econoline

and sharpening his knife.

down Division Street.

He spent him many afternoons

Driving down that country road

working masonry

our friend felt so free,

and drove his old Econoline

“I love the sun, I love the trees

down Division Street.

on Division Street,” said he.

Well, one fine day in late July

Sergio, oh Sergio,

just like all the rest,

hardworking all his life.

our fair-tempered Sergio

He loved drinking Genesee

felt right at his best.

and sharpening his knife.

So, he loaded up his stones and bricks,

He spent him many afternoons

his level and his rose,

working masonry

slid his buck knife on the dash

and drove his old Econoline

and headed down the road.

down Division Street.

Sergio, oh Sergio,

With all the sunshine in his eyes

hardworking all his life.

he couldn’t see behind,

He loved drinking Genesee

couldn’t see that semi truck

and sharpening his knife.

hit his old Econoline.

The doctors came and saw the boy with a buck knife in his side.

In a spun-out van in late July sweet Sergio had died.

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Sergio, oh Sergio, hardworking all his life.

He loved drinking Genesee and sharpening his knife.

He spent him many afternoons working masonry ‘til he drove his old Econoline down Division Street.

On the Writing of the Murder Ballad “Division Street” The murder ballad is one of the oldest song forms in the country. A brother of the traditional ballad, the murder ballad usually includes the events leading up to the death of the main character with a repeating refrain throughout that contains the main theme of the song. With all of these constraints in mind, I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to do lyrically: introduce a tragic character, have him live for a while, and then kill him. That was the simplest narrative I could think of. I listened to many murder ballads, my favorite being Townes Van Sant’s rendition of “The Wreck On The C&O,” in which the moral engine driver Georgie gets killed by a landslide on a train track in West Virginia. The song contains a common murder-ballad feature: a person or thing (in this case Georgie’s mother) that warns the audience of the future catastrophe.

To make sure I made things a little more interesting, I took a cue from that ballad and employed a similar device. My main character Sergio loves “sharpening his knife,” a foreshadowing of how things are going to end for him.

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WILLIAM McGOVERN

BUS STOP Tired of walking, Greg sat down at the bus stop bench and opened his magazine. It was GQ, which in Greg’s opinion straddled the line between popular entertainment and girlie mag nicely.

He was stoned, and had impulse-bought it at the 7-Eleven to counteract his somewhat suspect purchase of Visine and pocket-sized Axe body spray. Still, it was the “Men of the Year” issue, making it respectable bus stop fare. Despite this firm rationalization in Greg’s mind, the girl sitting next to him at the stop peeked at the inside of the magazine from time to time, glaring. She wore her hair in a tight bun, with bright orange corduroy pants.

Josie glanced at her phone: it was 9:14. She stole another glance at the guy’s magazine, which was open to an article called “What The Duck?” which showed glossy pictures of the cast of Duck Dynasty holding uncooked hams. The guy stared at the bearded men in the magazine, dazed. His lips were dry, with uneven facial hair on his chin and neck.

As Greg turned to the next page of his magazine, the bus pulled up to the stop. The girl got on.

Greg, waiting for his bus, sat slack-jawed, and the heat moved slowly around him, syrupy and red-orange like the light pollution that illuminated the clouds. Greg wanted to know if he had creeped out that girl, or if she’d left wishing she had gotten his number, or if she’d left indifferent.

Greg smoked pot most nights; he’d pick up a dime bag behind the 7-Eleven, get snacks and whatever magazine he felt fit his mood, and sit at the bus stop for a few hours. Here he was again, and there was a girl, like there were before, and she was gone.

Greg put his hands down, releasing them from the magazine, and held them on the sides of the bench. He saw a yellow faux-leather purse on the ground; the girl must have left it at the stop.

It was small, with a shiny pair of rounded clips at the top for opening and closing. Still wondering about the girl, Greg decided he would look through the purse; he wanted to know her name.

Greg bent down and picked it up, feeling the back sweat clinging to his shirt as he extended his arm.

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Opening the purse, Greg found a pair of green eyes and a strained smile staring back at him from a California I.D. card that read: WALTERS, JOSEPHINE M from the other side of its reflective laminate. Putting the I.D. aside, Greg picked up a striped mitten, within which was a whistle, a small teal comb, and a crushed rectangular box of Frosted Flakes. Greg opened the box and funneled some of the broken flakes into his mouth. Wiping off the crumbs, Greg saw orange legs walking towards him under the streetlights. It was Josephine, Greg thought, a stranger. The girl would be there soon, though she couldn’t see him at the stop from where she was. Greg quickly put the comb, the mittens, the I.D., and the cereal back into the purse. The cereal box was not closed.

Josie finally reached the stop. The guy with the dry lips was gone, but her purse was still there.

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MADISON MURRAY

VERSATILE This bedroom is the only place I pulse.

Hands remain transparent with black nails— she wants me harder, while he prefers smoothness— into the pillowcases and over the floorboards. Every woman knows it is difficult to focus: the camera, the lights in the corners, all of the men with their beards, too afraid to shave after winter. Underneath the beds, there are two here, brunette and black ladies curve their tongues in love with liquid.

Magazines and Fathers taught me The Bigger the Better, no matter the scenery. I drink coffee and honey and juice and wait to lay bare across my inconsistent bed sheets.

Each time I am touched, and I touch, I forget where I should put my arms. As plastic as they are, my fingers navigate towards lipstick, whether it is mine or hers or his.

The women that gag for salt water, remind me to remind myself, gradually, but with veins— my mother in the same position, muffled.

The dripping of Death’s fist inside her mouth, I always finish too quick.

I never wanted California.

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MADISON MURRAY

ORANGUTAN Babies were made to hang around my neck, creating static.

I will never be Amelia Earhart.

As an amputee, I could survive the man who never calls me wife. You motion for me from the barest branch with ooh’s and ah’s, out of traps and forty-five feet away.

Concerned because I groom myself alone, I wake up in the afternoon. Without clocks your meat traces my wrinkles, grooved by flaking sticks and water-less leaves, always in attempts of finding out how much older I am.

You know that he still wants to eat the leftover fruit from off of my toes, I suction to them.

Tomorrow you will wish that you were born a male, with glass eyes spitting their own seeds out from yellow and bone. My hands are no longer weapons, that I never had to use.

No need for protection from stones and rivers, I bask in vapor without lungs and wait naked and used up.

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MADISON MURRAY

FUNERAL State Park. Sunny afternoon. Trees and grass and bird noises.

MOLLY (14), the youngest but most physically mature sister, dressed in “skimpy” clothes, is sitting on the dirt next to a miniature, almost doll-sized gravestone. Her older sister LINDA (23), dressed in all black—sun umbrella, gloves, dress, and even a sheer black veil—is weeping and blowing her nose loudly into a handkerchief. Linda could be as pretty as her sister, and they both know that, but she’d much rather dress how she feels on the inside: old. Molly stares blankly at the gravestone and picks at the grass beneath her.

LINDA (singing):

STRAWBERRIES DON’T TASTE AS SWEET

AS THEY USED TO, BECAUSE YOU’RE GONE.

AND THE SUN DON’T LOOK SO BRIGHT

AS IT USED TO, BECAUSE YOU’RE GONE.

EACH MORNING, I WISH, I WISH I COULD DIE

AND LICK THE STRAWBERRIES FROM YOUR FINGERS.

I USED TO KISS BUT NOW I CRY

THOSE SMELLY OLD MEN DRINKERS.

I’M GONNA DIE ALONE, I’M GONNA DIE ALONE

I’M GONNA DIE, DIE, DIE ALONE.

Molly attempts to braid her messy hair into pigtails. She struggles with all the knots. Long pause.

After a while, Molly looks up at Linda.

MOLLY: …Do you want to talk about it?

Linda’s eyes don’t leave the gravestone.

MOLLY: Like, do you need someone to talk to?... I know you think I’m an id— LINDA: There’s really nothing to say.

Molly nods.

LINDA: Snickers is dead. Again. And there’s nothing I can do to bring him back.

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MOLLY: Yeah. (Pause) So what kind of box did you put him in? I know that with your other hamsters you’ve buried them in like Tupperware containers, so they can still “see” or whatever… did you do that with Snickers #15 or 16 too?

LINDA: No. (Pause) Snickers was blind so he couldn’t see anything anyways. I put him in a Kleenex box.

Molly nods. Linda blows her nose. Long pause.

MOLLY: Sometimes I wonder what’ll happen when I die…not to me, but to other people.

Like… how the people you think care about you are gonna react when you finally die. (Pause) Would you be…like, would you cry if I died?

LINDA: I don’t know. (Pause) Probably not.

Linda finally looks at Molly to see her reaction. There is no reaction, just silence.

An OLD WOMAN in a fuzzy pink sweater and orthopedic shoes, pushing her walker in almost slow motion, wheels past Linda and Molly completely unaware that they’re there or of what is happening.

Molly and Linda look at each other, now in confusion and curiosity. They both stare at the barely moving Old Woman.

MOLLY (hollering): Hey! … Hey! ... Lady!?

The Old Woman doesn’t hear and keeps strolling away.

Molly stands up, brushes the grass from her clothes, and rushes to the Woman.

Linda turns her attention back to Snickers’ grave. She blows her nose loudly, disrupting the subtleness of the birds’ chirping.

MOLLY: Excuse me, miss ... Are you lost? ...

The Old Woman turns around to face Molly.

She looks Molly up and down and then at Linda from a distance.

She grins like a baby.

OLD WOMAN: Oh! What a lovely day for a funeral! … Who died?

MOLLY (concerned): … Are you sure you’re alright? If you’re lost, I’m sure we could help you out.

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She looks at weeping Linda standing amongst at least twenty different miniature gravestones.

She turns back to the Old Woman.

MOLLY: We’ve been here quite a few times. (Pause) Ya know, it’s kind of hard to feel bad about how your sister’s pets keep dying after about the fifteenth dead hamster…named Snickers.

The Old Woman looks back at Linda, now realizing just how many gravestones there actually are. She laughs and shakes her head in disbelief.

OLD WOMAN: Oddly enough, I understand what you’re going through. Most of my friends are dead…and if they haven’t died already, they’re certainly going to be dead pretty soon. (Pause) Probably won’t make it until Christmas even.

MOLLY: Yeah…I don’t know how I’d feel about that. It seems different. I’ve never had anyone die that I really care about. Yet. OLD WOMAN: It’s really not that different. People die, people cry, people get over it, they find someone new, and then they all die too. Like hamsters.

Molly smiles while she thinks about this. She looks back at her sister and sighs.

The Old Woman sees that Molly’s not fully convinced of her theory.

OLD WOMAN: You’re good for coming out here with her. (Pause) Don’t worry.

The Old Woman grins like a baby again, then turns back around and continues her wheeling journey away.

Molly watches her leave and then returns back to the funeral. She stands next to Linda now, smiling in the same baby-like manner. She knows something Linda chooses not to know.

LINDA: What was that about?

MOLLY: Nothing.

They both stare at the gravestone. Linda pulls a carnation from her coat pocket and places it on the burial ground. This is her final goodbye.

MOLLY (still looking at Snickers’ grave): Wanna go to the pet store?

LINDA: Yeah.

(END)

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PAULINA UKRAINETS

TRANSIT Hide and seek, play with me.

The carriages whisk out and in.

Line Framingham and Worcester up and place me in between them.

Stamp and collect, send me to find uncertain tickets to limited places. There I’ll be lost. I run on trains, there isn’t you.

Windows slide underneath each other, when we turn towards Back Bay. The walls close in, but don’t touch. I jump on the platform and walk towards you—a black hole made of sound and electricity, bricks and humans. I want to touch you, but you last for tens of miles. Your arms stretch out past Watertown, then Waltham and swallow me whole.

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PAULINA UKRAINETS

RAT The trap worked. I am studied under glass within confines of labs, the ‘future of humanity’ injected into me. The future is almost here—there isn’t much time left to buy more time.

Humans rush through chemicals to save their own. All I want is to be left alone. My ancestors spread the Black Plague and didn’t even lift a toe. I did too much—ran through the sewers and found others, locked in cages, their DNA changing. Their eyes glowed red, but mine are black.

You and I seem closer, and all there is between us are bars of cages. We connect through needles and diseases, sharing molecules and thoughts.

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SHAWN VAZIN

CHECK UP I wish I had a drink of water. I want to scratch the sores lining my inner throat; instead I swallow.

The room feels too big, and so does the aquarium. There’s nobody else sitting here, except for the tabloids. It’s somewhere between noon and afternoon; my watch doesn’t work anymore. A nurse comes into the room and glances at her clipboard.

“Ian Hooks?” She is oddly young, with big uneven teeth and long blonde hair.

I stand up and walk over, mumbling a “hi,” and flashing a smile. I follow her out of the

waiting room, and she guides me through the maze of closed wooden doors until we reach room twenty-six. “Doctor Smalley will be right over.”

Patting my pockets, I realize I left my phone to bake on the dashboard. The thin paper

on the cushioned lounge crinkles as I sit on it. The walls are a solid beige. I miss my phone. There is a plastic bin of used needles hanging on the wall; it has an orange sticker with the hazard symbol in black. I kick my feet forward and backward, enjoying the momentum. I feel the palms of my hands.

I hear dampened voices coming from the neighboring room. A high-pitched voice

shrieks, suddenly. I remind myself to pick my daughter up at three.

Doctor Smalley comes in. He hasn’t shaved recently; I think he should. His jaw looks

rough, and peppered with gray hairs. “Hey Ian, what brings you here?”

I put my hand on the back of my neck and let out a long “uh,” as he reads through a

folder with my name on it in black Sharpie. The file is thin.

He furrows his brow and puckers his lips into an O shape. “Oh, throwing up,” he said.

“And headaches,” I say, “a lot, too.” He closes my file and comes over to the small table

in the corner, with the cup of Popsicle sticks on top. He opens a drawer and pulls out the small scope, the kind doctors use to check your ears.

“All right, turn your head for me.” My neck hurts.

The scope tickles my inner ear whenever he fidgets. “Anything else bugging you?”

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“Well, I feel bloated a lot,” I say.

I smirk and exhale a laugh as he takes the metal out of my ear. “Now, lay back, and take

off your shirt.” The ceiling tiles are beige. His hands are cold as they slide along my gut.

“That’s weird,” he says. I sniff, and roll my lips along my teeth. “There’s a little lump

right here.” He’s prodding my hip with his index finger. I mouth the word “what,” but all that comes out is flavored air.

“I think you need to set up an appointment,” he pulls a pen and a small notepad out of

his chest pocket, “with Doctor Bernard Catherine. He’s a specialist on this.”

I feel the note between my fingers, and my bottom lip between my teeth. “Okay—”

“It’s probably nothing, but it’s worth checking.”

“Okay.”

The bathroom smells like an old folks’ home. I should shave my stomach before the hair

falls out. And the janitor here should clean the smudges off the bathroom mirror. I’m pinching the lump as I hold up my shirt.

I don’t want to drive right now. I sit in the car looking past the steering wheel, at the fuel

gauge’s trembling hand. My eyes are burning and everything is blurry, but I don’t want to blink. I sigh and shift into gear.

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INDEX Arms, dragged through pine needles, 12;

Hair(s), fallen, 12; dancing in front of

cobblestoned, 15

my vision, 27

Axe, pocket-sized, 30

Hand(s), God’s crumbling, 10; round, 14;

Basements, with aquatic ecosystems, 9

wet, 25; drawing a small jagged line, 27;

Bed sheets, inconsistent, 32

transparent, 32

Body, stripped of analogies, 7;

Heat, syrupy, 30

as a hollow of nourishment, 11

Jaw, peppered with gray hairs, 39

Boy, blue like paint, 14

Kids, toilet-sick, 17

Braid, a spill, 7

Lines, creasing his face, 27

Bruises, faded to dark flowers, 22

Man, taking trumpet lessons, 4;

Casket, embossed in old lizard skin, 11

in a crisp white lab coat, 27

Crook, of an avocado, 14

Mashed potatoes, in a great big world, 18

Death, shoveling coal, 25

Maze, of closed doors, 39

Dogs, as wet scraps, 8

Mother, as mammal, 16; muffled, 32

Dolls, entangled in sea anemones, 9

Pop, of altitude change, 8

Ears, as wilted narcissus, 15

Phosphorus, igniting, 26

Eye(s), open, 3; in nighttime, 17; barren, 22;

Salt water, drained through fingers, 22

stained white, 24; squinted, 26; hurt by

Shudders, as a sign of metamorphosis, 13

industrial lighting, 27; found, green, 31;

Sins, belched out of the ground, 8

spitting their own seeds, 33; glowing red, 38

Tongues, dry like a cat’s, 11;

Fingers, as faceless snakes, 7;

in love with liquid, 32

covered by purple hearts, 18; gloved, 27;

Vertebra, as plum pit, 7

as plastic, 32; navigating towards lipstick, 32

Voices, dampened, 39

Fish, brittle, 12; responding to prayers, 13

Whiskey, on crystal lips, 26

Gravestone, almost doll-sized, 34

World, spiderwebbed, 16

Gypsies, half-hanging, 25

You, as a black hole, 37; seeming closer, 38

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ABOUT CREATIVE WRITING The Creative Writing Program at Walnut Hill brings together passionate young writers and supports their growth as artists. With emphasis placed on invention, craft, and practice, we ask them to invest deeply in the process of writing. In our studio setting, they meet one-on-one with distinguished faculty and choose from courses that explore specific ideas and techniques in fiction, poetry, playwriting, screenwriting, and non-fiction. We enhance their experience with hands-on training in editing and publishing, visits from notable authors, and collaborations with Walnut Hill’s other arts disciplines. Immersed in a community of kindred spirits, our writers discover a sense of belonging, as well as their own individual style and voice.

Visit us online—or, even better, in person!

Contact the Office of Admission at 508.650.5020 or admissions@walnuthillarts.org

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INBOUND

COMPOSED BY BEN TRAVERS LYRICS BY WILLIAM McGOVERN

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THE BLUE PENCIL 2014 WALNUT HILL SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS 12 HIGHLAND ST. | NATICK, MA 01760 WWW.WALNUTHILLARTS.ORG