2021-2022 Iris

Cover Art

Liliana Stinson ‘23

IRIS

The Art and Literary Magazine of Chatham Hall 2021-2022

Head Editor Carrie Midkiff ‘22

Sponsor

Dr. Mary Edmonds

The Board

Madelyn Boltz ‘22 Grace Brooks ‘22 Starr Brooks ‘22 Whitney Byington ‘22 Jordan Craven ‘22 Alexa Keating ‘22 Kellyn Norman ‘22 Ruby Kyle Spencer ‘22 Marisol Helms ‘23 Ginny Hopkins ‘23 Sarah “Fish” Leineweber ‘23 Liliana Stinson ‘23 Krystal Lin ‘24

6:55 am

Eva Melendrez ‘23

September Moon If I could take from thee My blood, then midnight water Would sing through aching ribs My eyes would crane behind the edges of glow-torn shadows I beg the rosy sky Last forever The flies swarm my rotten organs Let my limbs wilt beneath me Eaten by the sun so wide By morning my heart is ripe Whitney Byington ‘22

I Sit With Time Today my chair is chrysanthemums Because I like the way their petals speak.

Time speaks no words.

How are you today?

The corners of the table worn?

How many autumns have the canopies turned?

We sit for four seconds Or four hours Four whispers Four fingernails Four knocks at the door Four seasons searching For the sky Tell me when we have enough.

Slide a star, Burning rock, in my palm.

Why don’t we breathe the water of the river?

Why do we pretend we can trade the leaves?

Whitney Byington ‘22

Read With Me

Sunny Xu ‘23

Getting Dressed I know I’ll come to regret dressing comfortably bland When some stranger’s silk flutters past my boxy cotton I dog-ear that forecast as I pick over the clothes in my closet like they’re folders in a filing cabinet My arms briefly cross over my chest as I peel my sweatshirt off As if I’m asking for a blessing The stale garment matches the array of grays in the overcast morning It lands on the laundry heap that sits on an askew floral rug I make haste to recover my skin Before the bite of the broken heat Gives me a reason to crawl back into the residual warmth that soaks the flannel sheets I couldn’t bother to tidy I make peace with my clothes though they have not made peace with me The brown material hangs off of my ribcage like it’s afraid of my skin My faded jeans are saturated with the scent of borrowed laundry detergent It sits in my nose until I can taste its sickly sweet perfume Ruby Kyle Spencer ‘22

Lilies

Sophie Croker-Poole ‘23

Frost

Catherine Nichols ‘24

Bare Skin

Sophie Croker-Poole ‘23

Ziva

Jordan Craven ‘22

Reykjavik

Jordan Craven ‘22

Springtime in Pruden Krystal Lin ‘24

Glowing Iris

Starr Brooks ‘22

Dancer In Fire Sunny Xu ‘23

And She Holds the Sunlight in Her Hair Liliana Stinson ‘23

Cranes An origami of cranes hangs above our heads, Beacons of hope, Just out of reach.

Our hands grasp at their pointed tails, Too high to catch, But we will try again.

Standing on our tired toes, Jumping and stretching our bodies further, They flutter higher, left, and right.

We climb up ladders, trees, and each other, Like haloed angels they are impossible to capture, become, or understand, In the clouds they fly like divided pieces of rainbow.

Stuck below, we can not escape into their pure world, Past the clouds, the mountains, they fly, Our highest perches are useless in our struggle to join them.

As they float around us, We can only admire their natural beauty, Our hearts heal as we listen to their songs.

Our praise reaches their invisible ears, Their hearts, their souls touched, They guide us to their kingdom of the sky, of all their goodness.

Now we are gone from the ground and land, but now we fly in their flock, Born again to guide others.

Isabella Croker-Poole ‘25

Dream

Zhaojiayi Zhang ‘23

Fox Demon

Sunny Xu ‘23

Summer Ice

Zhaojiayi Zhang ‘23

Contentedness Liliana Stinson ‘23

purple Selfishly, I miss you. I miss who you used to be. When we first met, you were so quiet and guarded, unwilling and maybe even unable to crack a smile for fear that all of your emotions would come spilling out, and then there you would be, all liquified and transparent on the floor. I understand what it’s like to not want to be seen. I think that’s why we came together so quickly, you with your stoic face and fresh scars, me with my compulsive humor and quick temper. I stood in the spotlight so you could take up the dark corners, because you never smiled and I wanted you to know that I cared about you. You never laughed at my jokes, either, and I have never been so humbled without being simultaneously angered. You kept me calm even in the wake of my untameable rage, even when some part of me knew that you had to be afraid of me but you stuck around anyway. When the leaves began to change and you switched out your Converse for thick boots that I would never have imagined you to like, we parted ways. And then a year passed, and I saw you again, wearing all black in the place of greens and blues and grays, and you smiled. You smiled and laughed and I resented you for making me laugh when I could never do the same for you. You cut your hair, and I think you cut some of that negativity out of your life along with it, even if you didn’t realize it. You continued your quiet observations but were no longer afraid to put them out into the open, drawing attention and intrigue, and it feels like you grew so much while I shriveled without you.

Sarah “Fish” Leineweber ‘23

Post She liked to fit people into her world like puzzle pieces. Slotting them in, side by side in her organizer. Name, date, address, name, date, address. Rows upon rows of ivory or cream, unsealed and waiting for their day at the blocks. To see the gates open up, the flag go down, and watch the mail truck trundle them away to a new home.

It was an art, she informed her ill-attentive grandchildren, an art dying a slow, digital death. The purest form of communication, she would tell the postal worker behind the counter. Coin stacks slid across ssshhhhhk for a roll of holiday special stamps. She had never been one for talking over the phone.

Pen to paper came as naturally as breathing or walking to her. At first, the letters were simple. I LUV YOU, scratched on the edge of her father’s work. She thinks it might have been an overdue plumbing bill. Either way, he smiled at her.

Then they were to her mother. “Send more socks. It’s freezing up here. They said they won’t turn the heater on for two more weeks! I shall pass away.”

The socks came a week later.

She met her best friend, Judy, in college. Not every girl went to college, and her father wrote how proud of her he was. She passed the letters by, leaving them untouched in the mailroom. They could wait. The letters never slowed. I love you. Write home soon. Your mother sends her love. Stacks of them in her mailbox.

When the rush of college ended and the roller coaster slowed just enough to drop her off at teaching school, fate snapped taut, and their eyes locked as his coffee spilled down the front of her blouse.

An inauspicious beginning.

He was neither tall nor handsome, but Abel had a good laugh. Nights became long and slow drafts in the hot busy days; lazy, and burning deeply with the swirling stars above. They moved quickly after that. Life spun wildly along, and she spun with it. One summer night on the porch, she felt a tiny kick against her abdomen wall.

A month later, her father’s letters stopped.

Judy wrote to her after the funeral. This time, the response was almost immediate: a tearstained envelope was popped into the bright white mailbox the next day, and a new roll of stamps appeared in the top desk drawer of the upstairs office.

From then on, she always wrote. To her children, her grandchildren. It was a good quality, she assured herself, to communicate so regularly. It was considerate and loving, and attentive in the best way. Abel wrote to her from the base, Judy from her home in Madison where her dogs wreaked havoc. Her mother, from her kitchen table in Baltimore.

Even after they were all gone, she continued writing. To her son, her daughter, her friends from church. Especially after the accident, when the world shrunk to a circular driveway and the downstairs carpet floor felt through threadbare slippers. Treading pained circles to the box, morning and evening.

It showed people you cared.

And truly cared, she protested to her son.

Computers may be shiny and sleek and take half the time, but a handwritten note was time well spent. She pushed the keyboard away. Stubborn, they said. Unwilling to learn. Or unable. It doesn’t mean much if other people don’t communicate that way. The kids won’t read it.

He was right, she thought sadly to herself. The kids won’t read it. They spend their time, locked behind their bright glass prisons. In-touch means nothing if they are untouched enough to sell more time to that, than to a few words sent with love.

Still. She sorted her letters and pulled envelopes from dividers and smiled at the names scratched on their creamy white stomachs. The people she loved, who she crafted her art for. Whose recycling bins she filled with tokens of appreciation. Who left unopenable voice mails in her new phone.

Stubborn. Unwilling.

She didn’t know which it was. Things did come so much faster now. Faster and faster as she slowed down more and more. Until she stood at a standstill, in the eye of a whirling hurricane. Life was no longer waiting for her.

So she wrote in circles, like a loon circling, circling, waiting for the drain to unstopper and take in the vortex. She filled up recycling bins with her love, and hoped that the words might mean something when they stopped.

Grace Brooks ‘22

Evolution

Catherine Nichols ‘24

Run I open the car door, spilling out in reluctance as I drag my feet across the pavement bedecked with vehicles large and small, and runners upon bicyclists upon gaggles of grandmothers proudly speed walking, nearly indistinguishable from peacocks.

A masterless puppet, I lift my own legs into submission, careful with the weight of each ache as I grimace And quicken my pace into a clumsy run.

The wind made by my own breath wraps the back of my mouth to coat my throat, with each step the drum of my heart gracelessly concedes to my heels, the trails made bloody with each footstep.

Eyes locked on the ground; I battle against the concrete, until the semblance of hurt is numbed, sent out of every joint and limb through shattering exhales.

I now nearly float if not for my foot’s marriage to the ground.

I fly until I can scarcely breathe, suffocated by the ghosts of the graveyard I passed a mile back and my own folly.

Liliana Stinson ‘23

Untitled

Angelina Jin ‘23

Portrait It is January and we must be brave.

Clouds pass by Kettles cry The world is cold As it touches faces with Rosy burns made of Sharp, Piercing, cold that seeps in through the fog That enters with you.

But your eyes shine like the warm sun As I paint your face onto This old canvas.

Paint spilling over the wave of your Hand through the Grey in your hair.

You stand up to admire The view every once in a while.

The window looks out Across a sea of construction And it confuses you.

“You taught me this,” I say, As I begin to find your expression in The paint.

Your grey eyes smile through Black and white photographs and Perfect, trapped thoughts That flood your mind.

Ellery Blurton ‘24

You say I must be brave.

How?

Gloria

Zhaojiayi Zhang ‘23

The Bride

Sunny Xu ‘23

Columns & Stairs

Taylor Xu ‘23

Flower

Sunny Xu ‘23

Family Ties He looked like a cross between Harry Potter and Harry Styles.

Handsome, not in an intimidating way but more of a boy next door type. He did live next door to my grandparents who my cousins and I visited every summer and Christmas. We were the closest of playmates when we were young. Our families always joked that he and I would get married, and “Gee, wouldn’t that be the perfect way for the families to join together?” When I was younger this irritated me greatly, for I thought of Marty as a regular yucky boy who was good for wrestling but nothing like the princes in my fairytale books. But it would be a lie for me to say that, as we got older, I did think about that possibility quite a bit. I don’t want to sound vain when I say this, but for a time I thought he considered it as well. That ended abruptly last summer when my cousin Phoebe arrived. Phoebe was a year or two younger than us, and I guessed that she’d been longing to catch his eye long before she was old enough to sneak beers with the rest of us from the porch cooler. She had always been a loud and exuberant girl. According to her brother Peter, last week she’d chattered throughout the two-hour drive about how fun this Christmas would be with the family and Marty. She was now sitting in the corner of the party, staring into her drink. Marty was there as well, however, his behavior had not changed a bit in the week we’d been there. He stood in a group of uncles, chuckling about college life; football, and whether or not he would rush the same frat as his old man. Peter was on the outer circle of this conversation, looking like he’d rather go through frat hazing than listen to Marty’s praises being sung. Our eyes met, and he gave some polite excuse and made his way over to me.

“I’m going to get a drink from the porch,” he spoke loudly. “Do you want anything?”

“Oh no, not now.” I raised my voice, “I believe I might go on a walk.”

This caught Marty’s attention. Right as Peter went out the back door, Marty approached me and asked if he could accompany me on the walk. I said yes and we were on our way.

We made it to the end of the snowy street and climbed an old wood fence that bordered the neighborhood and a public park. We kept our conversation merry as we walked. I feel guilty admitting this, but at that moment, I thoroughly enjoyed his company. I had briefly forgotten the reason we were there and had lost myself in the beauty of the winter night, his humor, and oh, his eyes. Those damn eyes. Thank goodness I had pulled myself together once we got to the wooded area of the park. I would have forgotten to move out of the way when Peter ran up from behind, swinging the field hockey stick like mad. It was lucky I did because the blood from hits one, two, three, and four, of Marty’s skull created a bit of mess that would have been hard to explain if it’d gotten on my clothes.

“I thought we’d planned on a shovel?” I asked Peter as we pushed Marty into the shallow grave we’d dug early that morning.

“Forgot it here. Anyways, we can’t burn a shovel.”

“Fair point.” We took turns shoveling the dirt and snow over Marty and then headed home.

Before we went inside, Peter snapped the field hockey stick on the curb. I took the broken pieces and threw them in the downstairs fireplace, where thankfully no one was in the room but some sleepy aunty. I met Peter back upstairs, where he had a drink in hand and was talking to Aunt so and so about who knows what. Phoebe was still in her chair, but when she looked up at me, I gave her a wink as I told Marty’s parents that he’d stopped back at their house for more cheese platters and would be back soon. Although Phoebe still wasn’t the same girl she was a week ago, and probably wouldn’t be for a very long time, she seemed a bit more relaxed knowing that Marty would never touch her or anyone else ever again.

Kellyn Norman ‘22

Jill

Ginny Hopkins ‘23

Wire and Wood

Sophia Hurst ‘25

Good Mourning Observing the past, as it all seems to flash right in front of me.

Walls covered in posters, and a space curated far before my time.

Interested in everything it has to offer, but still feeling like a stranger looking in.

Grasping onto the character of the artwork, and the dust that collects on tattered pages once read.

Days gone by, tears dried, friendships formed, while I was somewhere else.

Conversations in which I never gave my input, books in which I never turned a page, and a completely different life, in which I never got the chance to live.

Annie Wells ‘25

A LOUD NOISE

Johanna von Holleben ‘23

The Virus The snuffles slam the door Clinking mugs left on wood floors No dog or wife can he hug For he may have gotten the bug By himself in the master suite Sweat dripping on the sheets This illness is not his alone The side effects sweep the rest of the home Oh his poor grey wife All she does is fear for his life And the pale daughter The lonely room left by her Forced to flee to another house She’s shaking like a mouse If she were to catch it, it’d be the end No more school or friends Three people in one home But all diagnosed as alone Kellyn Norman ‘22

The Virus Companion

Krystal Lin ‘24

Jack O’Reaper

Aryana Satti ‘22

Portrait 2 of 2 Gloria Guo

my aquarium is haunted There’s a dead woman in my room.

Sometimes I’ll feel alright, and then suddenly everything comes crashing down like ice-cold ocean water and I can’t breathe and my lungs are filling with salt, and I look in the corner and she’s there, wearing an old flannel nightgown and a long face. Her hair is falling out, and I rush downstairs to make sure everything is okay. “Nana?” I call, peering into her bedroom. “You need anything?” And when I return to my room, feeling sated and calm and alright again, the dead lady is gone.

When I’m at school, I see her a lot less, but it’s always very sudden. I’m warm in my bed, floating in music and daydreams, when suddenly a cold hand grasps at me and doesn’t let go, doesn’t relent until I pick up the phone and dial that number. “Nana?” I say, and the hand inches away and I can breathe again. “How are you doing?” And when I hang up, awake but no longer shaking and afraid, the dead lady is gone.

Very rarely, when I’m laying between the sheets and it’s just edging over into morning, it’s so late at night, I’ll see a man in the corner. His face is swollen, and his fingers are all crooked and gray, and there’s so much emotion in his eyes that it makes me cry, and I have to hide my face in my pillow. I lo e you, he says, and his voice makes my heart ache. I hope your’e doimg wel, and all I can do is cry until I wake up, and the sun is shining through my window and everything is beautiful and I feel empty and he’s not there. I can’t even feel relieved.

Sometimes, there’s a younger woman. Her face is smooth, bare of any features, and she’s wearing a worn white tank top. You are my sunshine, she sings, and when she touches me, I see a messy house with an orange tapestry taking up one wall, just before she hides my face in her shoulder. When I look away, I can almost see her as she’s meant to be, all beautiful and happy and big, brown eyes, but when I look back, she’s hollow again. Honestly, I don’t think she ever really goes away. I just don’t always see her.

Sarah “Fish” Leineweber ‘23

Octopus

Taylor Xu ‘23

Hob Nob

Ginny Hopkins ‘23

Dante’s Ballet

Tie your weary feet Down to the branches Kellyn Norman ‘22 Encased with lead Good angels don’t cry But you’re so ugly And God is dead Wither and dip in your flight Plummet straight to Hell There the fire burns so bright It doesn’t even matter That you died in the daylight Crumple up and float in the ashes Smooth your wings with their delicate dust Gilded in charcoal All to burnt powder eyelashes That catch no tears Fear the fire you’ve lit with your broken halo And love it with what’s left of your heart A jagged crown Of burnt down Painted red with flame Burn little birdie Fuel it with tears and rage Blame it on the Men The Gods who wrote this play Your role was to fall And then to burn Spin in the flames, prima ballerina of the fallen angels Frail as paper And just as likely to burn

The Watched

Hui Lin Khouw ‘22

The Town Gossip A man rests a cigarette on his bottom lip.

His presence isn’t out of place In a town so eager to conceal its worst traits.

He bears the mantle of the town gossip And never forgets a face.

The town gossip knows it all.

From the mundane to the absurd, Brumal estrangements to heady passions stirred, Childbirth to scandal, Nothing is more natural than the spoken word.

King in hand and board splayed out, The townsfolk leave no pot unstirred As they unearth each folly or debt ever incurred.

Never before has he seen disciples so devout.

Nothing is more natural than the spoken word.

It isn’t long before the first casualty arises.

The town gossip lights a cigarette and inhales, When the klaxons start their wails.

Comprised of men and women of differing sizes, When he speaks, the townsfolk listen.

The names of the individuals in the mob He cooes honeyed words, light like cotton, are lost in the details Spits words gone rotten, And hisses words of cunning ambition.

The aftermath is hardly pretty: The words he lets fall rarely go forgotten. Thinking like a flock, gathered in a herd, Paperwork is not filed nor are corpses Tongue coated in silver and lips made of interred pyrite, The town’s gossip calmly departs for a new Truth and lie and speculation are blurred city.

When the townsfolk try to repeat all they’ve Nothing is more natural than the spoken heard. word.

Whispers become shouts as tensions ignite Nothing is more natural than the spoken word.

No one eludes his gaze.

Thoughts shared in secret reappear On the tip of his tongue like a cheap souvenir.

Entrenched in a nicotine-tinged haze, The townsfolk cannot see his oil slick sneer.

Carrie Midkiff ‘22

Curie It comes alive inside my bones, pulsing strong in weary joints, creeping as a fungus grows with roots sunk deep into my lobes.

A parasite of my creation, with darkness swells, with daybreak glows.

A manic fever was to blame: I caught it as a flame and let it burn within my palm to lead the way.

I searched for that creative spark, I brought it to me, tended it.

Burning nighttimes to the wick in some attempt to unveil an element of surprise.

A pulsing orb of glowing ore that caught the eye.

That caught the eye.

The hunt of a hound on the heels of a hare.

To catch, to claim and to plant with haste, and cream or crush to miracle paste would be my greatest break to date.

Heft my shovel pen in hand; pick a spot and start to dig.

Pressing leaves as gleaming lace of laud, and painted onto crescent necks to rot the throat and twist the larynx, cause skin to sag and teeth to rot.

But how, how can I stop?

How can I not satisfy the hunger preying deep within my stomach’s walls?

No witch doctor can cure this ache— it pits and sours and tastes of decay, of softened tomatoes or cavities.

My very own uranium tree.

Grace Brooks ‘22

Curie Companion Catherine Nichols ‘24

Grand Self-Mythology (A Bloody Sword to Swing) Carrie Midkiff ‘22

The House of a God Long Gone There’s something about a cathedral in the middle of the countryside, breaking the leagues of grass in between the sundry farms and towns, barely moving so that you could scarcely know our imperial race ever kissed the land.

Only the dead live here, the graves meticulously carved and placed, labyrinthian, so that with every step, a body despairs beneath. The wrought hinges on the door bruised by the rust from centuries lie dead; the door stays stagnant, open just enough so that the birds can waft through the cracks. A certain slant of light always breaks through the bygone stained window, rippling fractures dance through the air as the dust paints it all on the floor below. Footprints smear the rubble beneath the pews, sagging under the weight of years of people sitting, backs straight upon their disparaged frames.

Rumors say it’s haunted, the ghosts waltz before the unadorned altar, the brass cross and embroidered cloths stolen decades prior as shadows hold their breath. Echos of ministries drift through the air carried with the heft of oppressed sin, laid to rest on the pulpit marred with the grip of heretic preachers.

Dust covers the stained floors, blood mixing with wine as the whispers tell of frayed nooses hung from the ceiling and corrupted knives left to rot between the ribs of godless men. The stairs to the organ loft lay vermin-bitten, with wood rotten as they’ve been for years. But the organ is afflicted not, proud and long sealed by time; the memory of hymns resound as the bitter wind whistles across the pipes. The sated wood beneath it falters with the weight of long-forgotten promises of song. They all say it’s a matter of time until the organ falls through; death will come for it eventually.

Untouched, barely held in a memory, there’s something about a cathedral forgotten to time. The stories say it was once remarkable, but without a sound the organ will someday crash, and naught but the birds will care: the house of a god long gone.

Liliana Stinson ‘23

Satisfaction Brought It Back Five human skulls and the shattered remains of another welcome Nina home from their perch before the front door.

The first skull smiles with a gold-toothed smile—rough, craggy lines erupt from the roots of a golden canine and invade its right maxillary bone. The life it lived was tough and hard and has thus rendered it weary of the world. However, a smidgen of discipline kept its jaw firmly locked in its socket, Nina sees. Its eye sockets look at her with a questioning gaze: it does not know her face, but, as its missing eyes slide to her hair, recognition flares with the intensity of a flash bang.

The second skull recognizes her immediately, and Nina recognizes it, too: her mother’s skin-stripped skull meets Nina’s eyes with cold murmurs of brumal rage and infernal shrieks of righteous bitterness. Her mother’s skull resembles the first with a tightly locked jaw, the mandible not yet knocked askew of its shallow socket in the cranium, and everything tied tightly with the tight laces of learned discipline.

Nina looks to the third skull, and her father looks back. In the shadow of her mother, he is dwarfed, just as he was in life. His cheekbones jut from his narrow skull, and his nasal bone is chipped, but he meets his daughter’s beseeching gaze passively—almost as if to say, “What’s to be done?”

Like the first, the remaining whole skulls do not recognize Nina, nor does she recognize them. When they see her hair, muted and confused recognition fills their gazes. They know her hair—they know its hue, its thickness, and the gentle curl to it, but they do not know her foreign face. Her face is too pointed, narrow, and thin for it to belong to the head of hair they know—for the sister they know. There is no iron in her spine, no sour twist to her lips, and no steely iciness to her eyes.

The two skulls regard her for a few seconds more but ultimately pull their sticky gaze off and away from Nina. To where they look next, Nina doesn’t know. What do skulls look at in their free time, besides the living?

The shattered skull does not look at her. Nina isn’t sure it can, so she looks over it enough for the two of them. Its shards bite into the porch’s soft wood, and its teeth wedge themselves in the gaps between planks.

Skulls are like eggshells, Nina has learned. And the brain inside: a special yolk supplemented by fluids, which constitute the egg whites, to ensure the bone does not chafe at its innards. As Nina pores over it, the skull’s debris forms a loosely defined imprint in her mind: a booted footprint in white shards and dust.

Nina knows this skull. She knows what sound it made when it shattered, too. Her gaze darts to her mother’s skull. She glares back from empty sockets and hollowed cheeks.

Nina puts one foot on the porch to get a better look. Curiosity spurs her on. It might kill her one day.

The front door creaks open on its rusted hinges.

Carrie Midkiff ‘22

Lighthouse I watch alone from a cliff side post, Searching, searching in the night.

My eye sweeps the rolling swells; Alights on swaying ships at sea.

I watch in despair from my solemn post, He has fallen asleep downstairs; Deaf ears that do not hear Their calls for help.

I wait for him to light the torch, To sound the fog bell in the dark, But he has had too much to drink; And rests with head held in his hands.

A day has passed and then a year, I weather through the wind and snow.

He stands upon the railing now, Watching the unforgiving sea.

The sea below hisses and grins, Receding from the rocks below It swirls around the little ship, Pulls it closer, closer to me.

A wind whistles through the mast, Wedged between the rocks below; A lilting tune of sailors lost.

He grips the railing tighter now.

It lifts it up and pulls it in, Crashing up onto the rocks.

Jagged croppings rend its hull Water floods, gushing inside.

He does not go inside Where bottles sit unopened on the shelf; He watches the sea in his lonely guard, And he does not blink.

Yells ring out as sailors jump And fall into the waves below, The water roils in tumultuous curds; Pulls them deep into its embrace.

Marisol Helms ‘23

Pearling

Zhaojiayi Zhang ‘23

Untitled

Anonymous

Blinds

Grace Brooks ‘22

Blinds.

They are a simple farce a mental crutch of wooden slats or heavy cloaking terry flaps stained by last night’s water splash.

The glass tipped helpless off the table seething armless before crashing down soaking through the midnight gown.

They drape the glass to give a shield for us weary and impaired, who build our little barricade against the fast approaching, soon encroaching, Loud, Inevitable Day that snuffles gruffly, bumping roughly against the shuttering, shuddering panes.

A simple act, to reach across and twirl the string round numb fingers and yank the pulley down to cede.

Day will enter just the same—it tosses unavoidably, throwing dashes through the sashes long enough to catch a splash of daybreak sun between two furrowed eyes.

The other option is denial as you crumple back under cotton waves Staving off another sunrise, cloistering yourself away.

It will not erase your troubles purely to delay the same caustic battle another day.

Such is impermanence—neither will last, Hide and crawl beneath the covers

Sea Glass I feel like a plate Or maybe a bottle Maybe inside Not the contents or remnants, The sustenance of melted sand Shattered from the Sun Stretching into the shallows Sinking, The glowing butter melts into a cast iron hollowness The taste is a draining, Stillness from a fluttering, Still tumbling This is when there are no mountains No feet or fingers or ears Everything is wide And always breaking And always folding back together I fray, A fistful of cicada wings pressed into a vein, Rolled against the rock And here is sun again, A new skin pinched into glittering life, Full Of body Of blue.

Whitney Byington ‘22

Glass

Ruby Kyle Spencer ‘22

From Decay

Liliana Stinson ‘23

I see a body.

Dissolved bones Like a branch, The trapped dew, Pulp.

At the Cusp Before Spring

Whitney Byington ‘22

Each fleck could be Paper Sky. The sky is stinging My eyes.

Sharp crumpling In the palm of the iris.

No sun.

Hidden sun.

Papered over Sun Shatters the shadows Blank.

Crumpled sky.

Wetland sky.

Rusting sky.

Grocery list Jean pocket In the washer Sky With no words.

Iron organs, Their metal arteries, The keys eaten In mycelium Sky. Raining and singing Through my fingertips.