Albany ROAD
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Cover photo by Nikita Pelletier
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ALBANY ROAD DEERFIELD ACADEMY’S LITERARY & ARTS MAGAZINE Volume 51 Issue 4 Spring 2018
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L E TTE RS FROM THE EDI T O R S During our Deerfield days we cross paths with seven graduating classes, bearing the legacy of three, trusting that the next three can be custodians of our memories, of every ink and mark. And this faithful lineage begins from our first trip down Albany Road and lives on far beyond our last: words and pictures, pictures and words. Each spring we stare departure in the eyes, and in that heartache we cherish our dwindling teenage years; through fragments in time our works grow and accumulate, patched together as we keep on imagining. This imagination is uniquely limitless, yoking visions across time—and in that limitless imagination we in turn understand ourselves, setting out to pursue what we love and in that loving becoming one with what we do. So look homeward and look inward at those closest to you: your classmates. Beyond our four shared years, we celebrate each other’s bildungsroman. And this act of bearing witness, this learning and forgiving and learning to forgive, makes our experiences real and, in turn, unforgettable. Here in these leaves this present realness intersects with the past and the future. Art is the expression of a remembering soul, capturing every history that lives on far beyond our last: words and pictures, pictures and words. And in this capturing we seize not only the “diem” but also the “lux,” the light, of our humanity. Yet beyond remembering, art is a reckoning with what will come, for as James Baldwin wrote, “The artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.” So, creativity is like the clasping of hands, wielding history and memories on the left and empowered with imagination on the right. Much like the ancient Chinese proverb that reminds us that we can’t clap with one hand, the artist brings the two hands together, in a fluctuating harmony, in a throbbing heartbeat. Let art remain the testament to our days as we drive on with time, for time and time again we will look back towards the dreams we dreamt and legacies we left. And this art will become much more than words and pictures, pictures and words: this art is the heartfelt work of the place we know and of the many before us. Albany Road has been blessed with a proud line of editors, and it is with deep gratitude that Kiana and I place our names among this group of artists and dreamers. Next year, Sydney Bebon and Harbour Woodward, as Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor respectively, will guide Albany Road to new artistic vistas. So to the graduating Class of 2018, live the pulse of these pages as a peer, a teammate, a friend, and a hallmate for one final time. As art embraces you, listen to the dark and feel the light. To years to come, Johnny Xu Managing Editor
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In the Symposium, a conversation between friends and philosophers about the nature of love, Plato writes, “Souls which are pregnant […] conceive that which is proper for the soul to conceive or contain. And what are these conceptions?—wisdom and virtue in general. And such creators are poets and all artists who are deserving of the name inventor.” Art is a conception of the soul; it is born from that invisible well deep inside each of us—a well we can’t see, but one we can reach into, and when we draw up the bucket, the water inside is real—swishing, swirling, and ready to trickle into the cupped hands of thirsty minds. Further, in Plato’s Symposium, Socrates argues that the object of love is immortality; we love to find a partner and reproduce because reproduction is the closest we can get to immortality, the surest way to leave a legacy. Art, being conceived from the soul, is a kind of offspring—a way to preserve and pass on through generations that which we hold dear or deem significant in our lives, our worlds. In particular, portraiture, the theme of this issue’s contest, is a palpable act of preservation. We write, draw, and capture portraits to freeze in time a feeling, an impression, a life, a story. Beyond a historical record, in portraits we also find some inkling of fresh truth. They offer us a new way of seeing people and noticing the world, providing us with invaluable knowledge. And every piece of art is, in itself, a portrait of someone or something—intimate and close up, even when conveyed from afar. When we are experiencing art, just as much as we are feeling with our spines, we are learning with our minds. “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education,” Mark Twain once declared. As we continue the journey through our schooling, in high school or beyond, especially for those in the graduating Class of 2018, we must make the effort to maintain our education. In the midst of times like this, when a chaotic rush of things to do is packed tightly into the eight short weeks of spring term, we must remember to slow down. Take a few minutes, tune out the noise around you, and instead, put your ears to these pages. Take the time to quench your mind’s long-neglected thirst for inspiration. Let yourself be enchanted by the human capacity to conceive, to create. Let this art be part of your education. I would like to thank the students brave enough to showcase their tremendous work here this past year, as well as those who were willing and curious enough to engage with that work. The legacies we leave demand to be acknowledged. And the immortality of art is only as powerful as you—the readers—make it. Thank you also to Dr. Delano Copprue and Mrs. Sonja O’Donnell, Albany Road’s 2018 faculty advisors. This issue is dedicated to Mrs. O’Donnell, who will be leaving the Academy next year, but whose legacy will live on in the hearts of those she has touched, and in the marks she has made on those who were fortunate enough to know her—to learn from and with her; to love and be loved by her. Yours, Kiana Rawji Editor-in-Chief
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TABLE OF CO NT E NT S Kitchen Untitled Fruits Childhood Solved Confusion Jerash Plums Disarranged 11:39 AM A Beautiful Mess Notes on Kanye Ending in Survival Kapa Borobudur Connect 3 Reminiscences Aminata Flying Fries Flying Fries Every Trini Can Bounce Untitled Sauces Nocturnal Paramour Streaks of Light Edison Untitled Closer Look Galleria Herkimer Catch Snapshot of Existence Untitled
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
Heritage River of Jordan Where You Are From Untitled Where Are You, My Beloved? Untitled I See My Grandmother
30 31 32 34 35 36 37
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Jinghuizi He Benny Yang Katie Whalen Lachlan Cormie Nikita Pelletier Annabelle Mauri Jinghuizi He Amelia Chen Lachlan Cormie Uwa Ede-Osifo Helen Mak Harbour Woodword Jinghuizi He Aminata Ka Erin Tudryn, Jill Carroll, Claire Zhang Erin Tudryn, Jill Carroll, Claire Zhang Geraud Richards Benny Yang Sydney Bebon Harbour Woodward Amelia Chen Kendal Duff Madeline Lee Janis Chen Daisy Dundas Helen Mak Harbour Woodward Amanda Brooks, Cameron Snow, Claire Zhang , Erin Tudryn, Jillian Carroll Geraud Richards Nikita Pelletier Maya Laur Kendal Duff Joe Wang Tim O’Brien Maya Laur
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Portrait Contest Winners and Finalists Reflecting Pool Badlands Chest Pains The Eve Gene Layered Untitled Untitled Untitled Creationism by 38th Parallel Musée de Cluny Fragments of Being Bella Focus Untitled Lullabies Metamorphosis Man and Opium Untitled Underside Cantus in Aeternum Old Masters Palazzo Ducale Mei Painting a Silhouette Orion
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40 41 44 46 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69
Eliza Winsor Susan Li Fernanda Ponce Nailah Barnes Charles Shearon Anna Mishchenko Kendal Duff Hannah Abuaita Nadia Jo Julian O’Donnell Amelia Chen Caroline Car penter Harbour Woodward Isabel Gilmore Ismeraí Ortiz Sofia Novak Jinghuizi He Nikita Pelletier Jinghuizi He Joe Wang Sofia Novak Sofia Novak Amelia Chen Eliza Winsor Anna Harvey
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K IT CHE N Jinghuizi He Mama’s silhouette blurs at the edges, even in photographs, she is an aproned shape of yellow. I sip my jasmine tea and taste nothing but smoke and wine. Our kitchen is too spaciously small, too suffocatingly large. Mama speaks as if she’s talking to two, but I absorb enough conversation for one. The shatter of plates, like rotten teeth, frightens me. But Mama laughs as pale steam rises, her cold foot against mine.
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U NTI TL E D FRU ITS Benny Yang
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C HILD H O O D Katie Whalen Graph paper marred by crayon shapes unevenly pinned to the wall of a fifth grade classroom I used a purple bendy ruler to measure the diameter of differently sized hearts Although ugly, it proved that I knew how to convert inches to centimeters And thus had a fundamental understanding of how to measure Four choppers descended from the Pakistani skyline on a May morning And fifty feet touched the unfamiliar soil outside the haunted house Of a man who forced thousands of Americans to live with empty seats at their kitchen tables “His demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.” Within forty minutes the choppers rose through the skyline again Like the planes that cut through a cloudless September sky ten years before With the body of a man with a bullet hole above his left eye My forehead was kissed and a lunch box was packed, I went to school on May 2nd, 2011 Osama bin Laden had twenty-three children His married twelve-year-old daughter watched him die from the corner of her bedroom And her pregnant fourteen-year-old sister hid downstairs “Tonight I called President Zardari ... he agrees, this is a good day for both of our nations.” CNN played during snack time in my fifth-grade classroom For eleven years, I was taught that death and dying made the heart hurt To allow the diameter of my heart to shrink and shutter for the end of another’s life But that morning, Americans sang “USA” like their hearts had never been so full I do not remember the burning buildings, and death has never looked me in the eyes I was taught to measure the distance between lines on a paper Not how to measure love in the face of death, or prove that I know the fundamentals of humanity “After nearly ten years of service, struggle, and sacrifice, we know well the costs of war.” But I didn’t Because I was born to the pursuit of happiness To reap the benefits of the star-spangled banner, and hold hands with lady liberty The problem with freedom is that it’s only known by the free I watched the good guys win again, as if assassination was a simple fairy tale Unknowingly a witness of both freedom, and its price Both on our superheroes, whose shiny copper is fading green And on fatherless little girls, whose hearts will shatter like the skull of our villain
“We can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al Qaeda’s terror: Justice has been done.”
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S O LVE D C ON FU SION Lachlan Cormie
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JERASH Nikita Pelletier
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PLUMS Annabelle Mauri As a child, Melitta would gather the ripe, slightly bruised plums fallen from the trees by the side of the road. Her mother would bake Pflaumenkuchen, or she would just sit in the tall grass and eat, juice dripping down her chin, sweet and warm. When the Communists arrived in East Germany, (she told me, years later) eating the fallen plums became a crime: stealing from the people. Well, she huffed, the people didn’t have anything to eat. In town, the stores were open but the shelves were mostly empty. Melitta went anyway, wandering the lonely, vacant aisles, and came home empty-handed. Maybe she thought of plums (or were they cherries?) as the train pulled into East Berlin, as she looked out over the border between East and West, maybe she thought of the life she was leaving behind – but maybe she knew that this life had disappeared years ago. Maybe as she began to run, a mad dash across the then-invisible border, Her children in tow, ignoring the shouts of police officers behind her, as she became a refugee in her own country – maybe she had a moment of doubt – and perhaps she thought of plums, warm in her small palm and only slightly bruised (just like her) sweet on the tongue, deep purple, (finally) free to pluck from the ground and eat.
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DI S A R R AN G ED Jinghuizi He
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11:39 AM Amelia Chen it’s college application season and i can feel myself slowly wilting, the numbers and topics and “why do you want me” questions stripping away the originality i tried to plaster to my skin. im no kitsugi. im not poet enough to spin yarns about me. “why do you want me,” they ask and expect me to say something new, something they haven’t seen before in their billions upon trillions of applications, speckled like stars in their memories, blinking, dull. “why do you want me,” and i can’t answer “i do” like i would a person. i want you because you can give me a future. i want you because this is what they expect. i want you because i don’t disappoint. i am curling inwards. this is how the rose feels when it blooms; it was only ever a tulip, lost in an orange field. -- 11:39 am
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A B E AU T I FU L M ESS Lachlan Cormie
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NOTES ON KANYE ENDING IN SURVIVAL Uwa Ede-Osifo If it is a Saturday night, at any dance ever, someone is asking me how to dougie or how to twerk, or how to dance, And I smile, doing my little thing You know the type of boogie-shuffle Stale shit Dance that you learn, When you’re the nearest black person around, Grabbed off a conveyor belt, Like the latest accessory, Appropriated and turned into a comedy And I mean i guess i’m a coon? Being put on blast like it’s a minstrel show, And isn’t that how why people loved watching Kanye go crazy, Pulling up front-row seats to watch his “Beautiful dark twisted fantasy” As he speaks wild on Jay-Z’s name, Black man turned against black man, And i guess his warnings only came in the form of hallucinations, Because nothing else was powerful enough to make him lucid, So what I’m trying to say is: there is no salvation for people like us, I mean we don’t get here By being sane, So we’re insane in the membrane, Remembering a time when all we wanted to do was live And all we did was survive.
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K A PA B O ROBU D U R Helen Mak
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C O NNEC T 3 Harbour Woodward
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R E M I NI S C EN C ES Jinghuizi He
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A M IN ATA Aminata Ka Aminata Names and words arise, change shape and form to serve and to fit the people they are attached to. There isn’t a word in English to console another in pain. In Wolof the word is “masa.” In Senegal, Aminata becomes America. In America, Aminata becomes Africa. It seems that no matter how desperately I clutch, I am neither and both. America America is defiant. She doesn’t know what’s good for her but she is expected to do what’s right. She doesn’t know about culture. She doesn’t know enough words— like the names of Senegal’s presidents or the lyrics to the anthem. It doesn’t matter that she can hold a conversation in English or Wolof, perfectly peppered with “pleases” and “thank yous,” without skipping a beat. Her sentences? Clumsy. Her gaze? Too direct. America is culture-less, rude and cutthroat. Naive. Young. Africa Africa is opinionated, tough, socially liberal and Black. She couldn’t care less about politics but dutifully hates Trump. She tirelessly seeks new achievements to check off. She raves about Basquiat and is unimpressed by Andy Warhol. Africa is book smart, stumbling between politically correct and social justice. Fierce. Aged by circumstance. Aminata When she gets to Deerfield she becomes another mass of living particles in the ecosystem of trees, grass, ties, white shoes and more grass, no one tells her that this will become her existence. Like how no one told her that American was a brand that all of the water in the Atlantic couldn’t wash off. She is no longer the gangly girl caught between Africa and America; now Deerfield defines her existence. She hurts when she can’t open her mouth to speak her mind, the mass of white faces clutch at her throat and threaten to silence her forever, the darkness of her Sahara desert dermis burning holes into her courage. She hurts when another boy, probably as tall as her thirteen-yearold brother, is added to the mass of hoodie-wearing black bodies brutalized on American television.
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She hurts when she doesn’t get that grade on her bio test. Each pain cutting through the equator of her heart. Bleeding and battered, still, she thinks “here, I can be Aminata, here, I will stay.” Aminata? Tell me, who is she? Is she lady liberty beckoning black bodies to her shore, promising education and success? Is she the matronly figure of the monument to the West African Renaissance— cowering in the shadow of her muscled protector, his stern brow a sword venging to slash the white demons that dare sully his red-sanded shore? Or is she the simple girl who dares to claim Africa while reaping America’s fruits? Well, Africa, Africa just can’t have that. Africa turns her nose at Aminata’s American education, Aminata’s American Islam, Aminata’s American clothing, Aminata’s “ideals,” Aminata’s “dreams,” Aminata’s hard-earned love for her body and mind. Worthless. Every curvature and tangent of her being screams “outsider.” So, America must embrace all of Aminata’s dreams of freedom, right? If tired eyes, tired mind and tired limbs battered red, white and blue can perform a strange alchemy that turns tears into treasure then, yes, America is the motherland of dreams. But America is culture-less, loud, rude and cutthroat. Africa still stumbles between politically correct and social justice. Names and words arise, change shape and form to serve and fit the people they are attached to. There isn’t a word in English to console another in pain. America needs healing. Aminata can’t heal America; the wound is too deep and Aminata is too weak. Aminata longs for mother Africa to console her “Masa, masa. Come home.”
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FLY I NG FRIES Erin Tudryn, Jill Carroll, Claire Zhang
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FLY I NG FRIES Erin Tudryn, Jill Carroll, Claire Zhang
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E V E RY TR I NI C AN BO U N C E Geraud Richards In your beautifully old kitchen we danced. Mosquito coils bur ning, the dutch door screaming, as the night car ried the wind br ushing on ever ything. The gust never more restless than your legs, they moved swiftly while controlling my little feet to the uptempo Parang the little radio whispered. As we moved we kicked away the tiles, the stove shook, pans chimed after brief collisons and Peppa sauce stained our clothes a fier y red. I thought I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t get dizzy, But tears flew off my face while we spun. Aleg ria, Aleg ria was the only words I remembered. They dispersed in my mind, as I sit now I can feel the thrill of dancing with my eyes closed. Grannie I wish you taught me spanish. So I could appreciate that song you loved dancing to. So I could Laugh at the jokes you made with Audra. And make sense of your sayings in ear nest, maybe then I would have realized your hips moved g racefully from the inspiration of Daisy Voisin the parang queen. Modesty always suited you. I loved how you believed in my ability, saying dancing was in the veins of ever y Trini. But I am thankful you taught me anyway. Always equating my stiff and offbeat body to the unripe mang os across the road. You took time to tend to those fr uit as with each impromptu dance lesson my legs loosened, my hips became fluid, and our hear ts more in tune with each other’s.
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U NTI TL E D S AU C ES Benny Yang
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N O C T U R NAL PA R A M O U R Sydney Bebon She lived in red velvet booths of rooms filled with the br r r r r r um tum tum of a tum of a tr umpeter and pretty little things that sang in smoke She gleamed like light on liquor
In war m viscous seductions of
lifted brows, g rasping hands, and swollen lips
She was careful to move in tune with the music
that curled slow and sweet
that wisped through the air and disappeared
She was careful not to star tle the smoke
scared of what she might see
if the silent symphony ceased
if the smoke cleared
if the music stilled in the air
the sweet
sweltering air
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S T R E AKS O F L IG H T Harbour Woodward
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E D ISO N Amelia Chen it’s afternoon, and you sit in the wallowing sun and listen to the day rot. the air is heady with the perfume of passing cars - the brick, the smoke, heat-stroked metal careening into paint and asphalt - and you sit in front of a monstrous magnolia bush, its leaves stiff and prickly, like candle wax, dripping, do not touch. they do not belong to you, nail-bitten fingers and split-skin palms, the feet in your converse too cramped for your expectations. do not touch says the magnolia bush with wrinkled lips. do not touch say the ants skittering across the sidewalk. do not touch - the sun, too hot - do not touch - that sweet stench, that rot - do not touch, do not touch. the library is closed. your shoelace, desiccated, a worm. the sun watches you pick at your teeth. -- edison
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U NT I T LED Kendal Duff
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C L O S E R L OOK Madeline Lee
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GA L L E RIA Janis Chen
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H E R K IM E R Daisy Dundas Upstate New York summers can slow down time. The air heats up ‘til it gets all soupy, and you have to fight to push it in and out of your lungs. Some folks love the weather, but most men get cranky and stay inside as often as they can. I remember my father used to invite his friends over because a few of ‘em didn’t have cable, and they’d call me Cherry ‘n wrap my hair around their orangedusted fingers. My mother was a deep Catholic, and she’d hear ‘em all garbled, yelling at the TV, so she’d sit on the bed and pray and pray. I never liked being religious myself. I’d always get scolded at confession for questioning God, so I’d hide behind the bushes when Sunday rolled around. It didn’t do much—people don’t really get fooled if you hide in the same place every week. There’s some sort of beauty in a place falling apart real slow. The winters where I’m from were bitter in every angle of the word, but there was something else about ‘em too. Something that kept the folks that could afford to leave from getting the hell out of there. Everyone got unbearably religious in the winters too, of course. Perhaps it had something to do with the primal feeling of desperation that everyone felt when the temperature dropped too quick and the first frozen deer skeleton showed up in someone’s yard. I don’t know how God was supposed to bless some more heat into our house. I learned from a young age the difference between summer drinking and winter drinking. In the heat men drank because they were thirsty, and being drunk on a warm summer’s night usually ended in some stupid or greedy blunder until the women sent ‘em to bed. But in winter, there’s no good reason to drink. It’s not too hot, there aren’t any barbecues. So men drink in winter because they’re bored or hopeless. And if that’s how they start drinking, you can be sure they get right dangerous when the alcohol has stripped the logic from ‘em. The kind of poverty of where I lived was quiet and persistent. Even if a family drove a car and had a little meat on their bones, you can bet they still had a cash jar dangerously close to empty in the house and a pile of broken dreams under the bed. It’s kinda like a twisted love story—how upstate New York reaches inside you and pulls the hope right out. But God knows it’s beautiful in all it’s grime and glory, and God knows it’s home.
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C AT C H Helen Mak
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S NA PS H O T O F EX ISTEN C E Harbour Woodward
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U NTI TL ED * Amanda Brooks, Cameron Snow, Erin Tudryn, Jill Carroll, Claire Zhang
*Photo Courtesy of Betty Hall
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H E R ITAGE Geraud Richards I I I I I
am from Soca music am from swinging hips at Panorama am from the rhythm and chimes of the Steel Pan am from the house that blasts Reggae every Saturday morning am from the mother that knows every Mighty Sparrow Calypso tune I am from the father that knows Beres Hammond just as well I am from Doubles, Bake, and Saltfish for breakfast I am from curried everything I am from whatever uncle killed that day I am from mama Pauline’s pastry truck, Pholourie The Tamarind sauce made sweeter as she played the same Calypso tunes my mom did I am from chipping down San Fernando until your feet hurt Playing mass and staying up Jouvert morning I am from bacchanal at the parlor Those tales passed down to children I am from whining up strangers; no, not complaining, but dancing The feelgood state of mind is contagious at any fete I am from cheesy proverbs My favorite regards the Battimamzelle I am from Grannie’s Christian life lessons I am from church, all day on Sunday And bible study half the night To ward off the Jumbee in the week I am from Los Bajos I am from a community of family I am from a village of loving people Where everyone knows me as Pumpa’s son The magga boi I am from a land Forged from the love of liberty In the fires of hope and prayer
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R I VE R O F J ORDAN Nikita Pelletier
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W HE R E YO U A R E FRO M Maya Laur Grandpa, You come from the old country, A child of immigrants. From your father smuggled onto a wheatship at age eleven, Your mother fleeing the cossacks under a starry sky. You come from latkes simmering in the kitchen Of a crowded toronto home, your grandmother singing you to sleep with yiddish lullabies, Your grandfather waking at dawn to say the morning prayers. You come from being too poor to go to Kindergarten. From newspaper packed into second hand ice skates and cold dinners Eaten alone. You are from the rain-slicked streets of the Bronx, From selling oranges to rushing passersby, From scurrying along And keeping your head up. You come from divorce. From infrequent visits with your father and long nights without your mother. From hauling pushcarts through the narrow alleyways of the tenements, Stuyvesant high school, and Scraping pennies off cobblestone streets. You are from skinned knees and grass-stained knickers. From picking yourself up and dusting yourself off. From eleven gold battle stars and a Cornell diploma. From the thick leather bootstraps you pulled yourself up by and Made with your own two hands. And seeing success not as a choice, but an obligation. You come from a winter party in 1947, from Harriet Wald and your four children. From missed family dinners and late nights at the office. From lost hope and unanswered questions, from new life and moving forward.
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You are from warm fireplaces on cold November nights. From grandchildren piling plates high with food, and Dancing to Hava Nagila (Or Bob Marley, your pick). You come from late-night phone calls and kisses on the cheek and sunsets painted on Cape Cod skies. So don’t you ever think that you come from nothing. For you are from everything you built for your children And everything your grandchildren Will grow to be. You are the reason that I come from ski slopes and summer streams, sailboats and beaches, A Deerfield diploma, And a home free of fear.
And you are the legacy That I carry with me, you are the story I will tell my grandchildren When they gaze at me, bright-faced and wide-eyed, And ask me Where you came from.
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U NT I T L ED Kendal Duff
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WHE R E A R E YO U, M Y BE L OVED ? Joe Wang The sky turns grey before the eye goes blind, rust plagues the pipes, yet the water still drips. Birds fall like the autumn leaves, Void of wind to carry them away. The great bell cries out its final tolls, As the mice are crushed under its gears. The water is dyed by the decaying fish. Covered with dull bones and scales. Oh my beloved, What has happened to you? Starved cows scream to the dry, crusty earth, While the earthworms and maggots crawl out, Begging for death to come take them. How could they cut our time so short? The memories of us are dissolving. The forest fires can no longer continue, The earthquakes shake pointlessly, A solid barren ball of nothingness. The tsunamis are stopped by all the corpses. No miracle can return you to me, Good and evil are one and the same, If they are both unable to find you.
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U NT I T L ED Tim O’Brien
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I SE E MY GR A NDM O TH E R Maya Laur I see my grandmother Walk down the staircase of the old cape cod house Bracelets jangling gently on her wrist Lightly hiding a smile That gleams in her eyes The aroma of paprika, garlic, and nutmeg wafts from the kitchen Pots boil gently on the stove Over in the living room my grandfather sits in his faded blue armchair And hums a song from the old country The cousins will be here soon She looks into my eyes And is unable to suppress her smile any longer “Maya.� My name is etched with pride and love and also A hint of fear That one day I would grow too big for her to hold That already I am leaving her Even as descends the staircase towards me Before she can say anymore The door bursts open and The family begins to pour in She greets each of us with a hug The smile in her eyes shining brighter and brighter Little do we know Already the cancer is brewing in her body Masked behind her smiling eyes at the Thanksgiving Dinner In six months time she will be leaving us Not by way of stairs But by the angels Who will take her gently from this house Before I can grow big enough to want to leave her arms
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I wish once more she would hold me with a love that is bigger than the entire extended family too infinite to ever die As she did But as I stand at the bottom of the very staircase she came down One year ago The very place where she looked into my eyes And said my name as if to say I love you I realize that her love has outlasted her body And continues to live It reaches beyond her Grave And surrounds our family It holds us together Even after she’s gone Even as she was the pivot point that we once circled around now it’s Her love That warms us at our Thanksgiving dinners It’s her love That is baked into the sweet potato pies And floats on the Yiddish melodies my grandfather Still sings Even as she is no longer there to listen It’s her love that fills the laughter of my cousins Her love That fuels our stories And her love That carries me up the staircase she came down so many months ago Where she is waiting Eyes once again full of joy and life And calling my name Maya
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PORTRAIT CONTEST WINNERS
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R E FL E C T I NG POOL Eliza Winsor
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BA D LA N D S Susan Li 一. my mother said in this land we make our own names. today i am two hundred thousand english words and all of them are absolutions. every syllable is a new skin, so i bloodlet my vowels, wash the dirt from my sentences, let the morning light stretch my throat raw and ragged. i slip on my new name like a dark dress, look smaller in it than anything else. my mouth ripens into ruin. my mother said in a dying star you can see the entire history of the universe. all points collapse together and down. next to me my father sleeps, dreaming of another water as my hands are flying away, bobbing into the sky like lanterns. somewhere my mother is falling to her knees. somewhere i am walking through my body and its black rooms of regret, touching every artifact. somewhere a nation is singing o america, o haloed land, and the golden light is fleshing through the flaps in my skin, straining through the whip of the wind, weaving with my yellow body till they can no longer be divorced.
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二. the slick swollen night balancing upon the bow. a million pinpricks of starlight floodin-g the boat. i am engulfed by alien bodies, hundreds pulsing together, breathing, against all odds. before me, hundreds of futures unfurl and crash into the distance like atlantic waves. behind me, a woman converses with her son in graceless english. back and forth, they practice please and thank you and where is this, where are we? but their chants fall into the dark waters. i’m not interested. what i want lies not in these banalities but in the silence afterwards, where the go back to your own country and i don’t have one anymore and where is home? where is home? hang in the still air. ten feet away, a man pleads to the sky, a-men, a-men, but the night only blinks in answer. sometimes the only thing that exists is the hour folding and unfolding into itself. all this time, the boat stutters forward but the ships of our bodies spin in confusion, groan and point home, home. 三. american, hyphenated. i feel myself sink in these insurmountable distancesgenerations, epochs, oceans. a single dash that i will carry for the rest of my lifea bridge that i will never cross. my body is all rendered in negative space. here, a hitched breath. here, a chink. down here every pause smells like singed flesh. down here every day is a new violence. how much remembering is still left to happen? we pretend we don’t think about it anymore. years away my mother thrashes in her sleep, cries out for sister soil, for the tracks of a name long lost. but me, i have traversed the country, wandered all over its trodden terrain and i know, i know: there are no mountains sharp enough to accommodate my edges, no oceans vast enough to fill the canyons between my skin and ribcage. there is no earth rich as
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the map of my body, where each crook and ridge is soaked through with myth and memory. all this land, all these spacious skies and plains and sea to shining sea, and i know there is no nook for me. 四. are we dead yet? are we dead yet? my body warbles with the aftershocks of living. a-men, the old women croon / a-men / the only thing that anchors me to this world. the ancestral spirits weave in and out of our bodies, trying to make houses of these bones. perhaps they will have better luck than us / a-men / but i know they will not find their home in me. i’ve already left the old mythology for this new land, torn the old saviors from my soul, chained myself to the new idols; so now i gaze into this great flood and i see wild hungry flesh and spirits reflected back and i pray to them, oh do i pray. i bring myself down to the knee for every one of the tired overworked gods of America and say: o do you see? our blood you sip like wine, my frame you batter and bruise? what do you know about our fight, the bone-deep memory of bombs bursting in air on me; tell me, what do you know about that crescendo? / a-men, a-men / but there is no room for god in the two duffel bags and one carcass i carry. i am stuffed full with stories and songs; i am gravid with all the ghosts i cannot afford to abandon. i can do nothing but swell and swell until my bones heave and split open, and the stories dribble out, and my red blood and blue soul slosh over ivory bone, and all these ratty flags of surrender unfurl from my body / a-men, a-men, a-men.
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C H E S T PAIN S Fernanda Ponce
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PORTRAIT CONTEST FINALISTS
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T HE E VE GE NE Nailah Barnes I don’t know how I got here – I was once the one who had it all 1 I We are black women Carrying the weight of our world On our Brass-Plated shoulders. The music of our song, Some sweet arpeggio of tears, Is written in a Minor key. 2 II We have a dream. A dream of our sons Blood on the leaves A dream of our fathers Blood on the leaves A dream of our uncles Hanging in the summer’s breeze 3 Observing their Own deaths Over and over And over Again. III We cradle our sacred anger A ritual in this land This land is your land This land is my land 4 Words yearning to jet from our tongues, To slither through Earth’s muddied grasslands. But they are not our truths.
We are of unshakable purpose
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We are fecund Filled with acres of near ripe, Prophetic fruit And utopian dreams of freedom That will never bid us a restful goodnight. Yet amidst wretched mortality And the haze of our deepening trauma, Our words stick to the back of our throats And we are lost outside the windows of our souls. IV But, If you are broken, We cannot fix you. We can hold your pieces within our Bones and Atriums Until you learn to piece yourself whole again. And we will love you wholly And we will love you without judgement And we will love you sans peur 5 Because we birthed a nation Rather, We birthed the world. 6
“Ring Off ” Beyoncé Knowles “I Am A Black Woman” Mari Evans 3 “Strange Fruit” Billie Holiday 4 “This Land is Your Land” Woody Guthrie 5 French meaning “without fear” 6 As a whole, this poem is inspired by T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. 1
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L AY E RED Charles Shearon
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UNTITLED Anna Mishchenko
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UNTITLED Kendal Duff
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U NT I T LED Hannah Abuaita
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C R E AT I O NI S M BY T H E 38 TH PARAL L EL Nadia Jo The 38th Parallel is a common name for latitude 38°N roughly outlining the border between North and South Korea, chosen by U.S. Military planners in 1945. Like Genesis, it begins with a body of water. 1 Here, there are no boundaries: head/fission, throat/shockwaves, tongue/vapor. Like Genesis, it begins with a body. The arm is removed from the shoulder socket, and I go on walking with my body drooping to one side. After Hiroshima, people’s shadows were imprinted on the ground. Which is to say, violence does not end with flesh rupturing; the body knows to translate trauma into silhouettes. Which is to say that in war, messages are disseminated from the sky, and people channel a response through their bodies. Like how broadcasts boom through radios saying there is no war. We wedge our throats with promise, muffle the pulsating fear. I walk with a cavity in my shoulder waiting to be filled. I walk with a mouth waiting to be drained, paranoia threatening to flood over teeth. Until we see another’s mouth empty: bombers spitting above the border. A message written in splinters. After the rain, who will be left to gather my limbs? What ground will be left to chart my body’s wailing? I imagine my ribs becoming a shelter for all the wreckage, and I imagine wearing my fear like a cape, pulling it so close over my backbone it will cast a shadow over me and my arm when the bomb flashes overhead.
Genesis 1:2 – “Now the earth was formless and empty... and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”
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M U S É E DE CLU N Y Julian O’Donnell
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FR AG M E NT S O F BE I NG Amelia Chen i. golden shaft of light shifting through water so clear, 清水 1, 清醒 2 / but night dawns still where day holds true, this summer and chiffon and tumbling down, drown / down, down, like feathers, swan song / 月亮的明光 3, footprints sinking into ground / grass and reed, rustling, finger across finger like brush, cricket wing / and i see, sitting in moonlight: golden, otherworldly, 仙 4 blooming in body of dream-bones and skinned knees ii. beauty and beast, beast and beauty, fur waxed ‘til smooth for this fairytale suburbia – above, the sky stretches like fingers spread from palm, like a turgid wish, blue as the latex of birthday balloons lost – pigtails and lipstick on pillowcase gnawed in the dark – they say you have galaxies brushed onto your cheeks, constellations scattered years thick under your eyes; is that why when you look up you see no stars, only sky? – the moon invites no transformation. she just smiles, light reflecting forlornly on the polished stumps of your teeth iii. is it strange that i feel no hunger? my mouth is dry and my hands, empty // all is quiet and there’s only the starched keening of laundry line-dried in the wind [now the clock strikes; once; twice; echoing leaden, dissolving; the twilight] iv. how does it feel to drown? can you taste the fire slicking down your throat? does the salt burn like vodka, like an endless shot pouring past your clenched mouth; does the water pound relentlessly on your head, beating wave after wave as you flail beneath the surface – rippling – wave after wave after wave – so you drown in a sea of molten pyrite gold v. do you see it, there, in the distance? there lies a field of ghosts, endless, and in your hands the dead husk of a monstrous sunflower, a corpse, drinking golden dew from your fingertips
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vi. this is how the world ends || this is how the world ends | with fingers tangled in your hair and sunset wavering through the air || concrete cracks, brick-twined ivy || bottle caps scattered like marbles from dead body || rooftop party for those who know not better || catch breath kick step bare waltz caught by ledge || and smoke and lemon haze but breezy in the wind || this is how the world ends || this is how the world begins vii. hush now, baby, don’t you cry, i can’t sing you sweet lullabies // you see / the words don’t fit around my tongue and all that i can offer you / is all that i’ve become
Clear water (Qing1 Shui3) Wide awake (Qing1 Xing3) 3 Bright light of the moon (Yue4 Liang4 De Ming2 Guang1) 4 Deity (Xian1)
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BE L LA Caroline Car penter
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FO C US Harbour Woodward
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U NT I T L ED Isabel Gilmore
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LULLA B I E S Ismeraí Ortiz Childhood memories. Memories full of joy, and laughter. Sunny days, green lawns, Dark nights, red and blue lights, Lullabies, of sirens close by, in the distance, Locked doors, stuck inside, no going out, too dangerous. My mom never sang me lullabies, She didn’t have to - I had my own. At night, lights outside, blue and red, Sirens close by, hide inside, deep, deep under the covers, close your eyes. Close them tight, don’t open. Crackling sounds in the distance, fireworks? Or gunshots? Can never tell the difference. Next week, a body found. A mother mourning. Our neighbor. Every day, drive past the corner where the body was found. A cross and candles, and flowers and other gifts. The dead appreciate this sentiment. Childhood memories. Never-ending memories. Memories on repeat. One after the next. Kids in their beds Covers over their heads. Good night. Sleep tight. Close your eyes. Pray for no more lullabies.
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M E TAM O RPH OSIS Sofia Novak
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M AN AND OPIU M Jinghuizi He
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U NT I T L ED Nikita Pelletier
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U NDE R S ID E Jinghuizi He
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C A N T U S I N AE TE R NU M Joe Wang The pain was unbearable. “It’s just the flu!” they all bantered, while her limbs stiffened and her head split. But her music told a different story. The passion never left even when her strength did. By the time they finally realized, She was already standing in Death’s cradle. But the music wouldn’t stop. The sound of piano kept drifting through the summer evenings, inviting the trees to dance with her, even though she could no longer move. Rest The lights bleached, the bed stiffened. And the smell of soap filled the air. The beeps of machines tried to exploit her notes, but they all failed. Needles felt like nudges, medicine tasted like candy. Even Chemo couldn’t keep her down. Hairless, ugly, weak, frail, No one could ever say. Death himself became mesmerized by her charming melodies. Twenty-four moons. The ondine returns, this time with blood filled with revenge. She conquers le gibet, and kills the scarbo. She brought the Devil to his knees.
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O L D M AS TERS Sofia Novak
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PA L A Z Z O D U C AL E Sofia Novak
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MEI Amelia Chen
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PA I NT I NG A S IL H OU ETTE Eliza Winsor
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O R IO N Anna Harvey I step out of the plane and onto the tarmac, my heart pounding and pounding. I am afraid to breathe, afraid of the memories that will come flooding back with the taste and smell of this air. My air. But then I am breathing and looking up at the sky and the stars, and my stars are still exactly where I remember them. When I see Orion resting just above the highway as we meander along beneath him, I remember a beach somewhere where, once upon a time, I laid on a blanket near a bonfire. The drone of conversation lulled me as I looked up through the leaves of the palm trees above, admiring the stoicism of the stars. How calm they were, way up high, above the tumult and the drama of the world of a little girl. How bright they seemed, how permanent. But then, that was before I learned of their secret: the light we see is not theirs anymore. It is a light that began its journey so long ago, before this island had a single living being on it, and before, perhaps, the limestone had even emerged from the stirring sea. How many times did I sit in the sand in front of a fire in those years? So many nights at Bathsheba, the roaring waves wearing down the boulders as I raced along the sand playing cricket. So many nights by that cliff wall, past the open field, chasing after ghost crabs and best friends as another bottle of rum passed between the adults sitting on driftwood. So many nights watching sparks twirl, swirl upward towards my stars. It was my brother, Christian, who first taught me to find Orion, starting with his belt. One, two, three stars sitting in a row. From there, his silhouette radiates out, standing ready to strike, dependable and strong. My brother also taught me the names of the fish pecking at the reef below us as we snorkeled through the water. Parrot fish. Cowfish. Triggerfish. Diving down into the sand, we would find sand dollars and conch shells, starfish and cuttlefish. Diving down down down‌ And then suddenly I emerge and I am back in the car, still staring at the stars. How did I forget how brightly they shine? I feel like I could fall upward and get lost in them, lost in the tossing and turning light, the rising and falling brilliance. But I am tethered here, to this ground beneath my feet, this piece of limestone in the Caribbean, this land in the shape of the birthmark on my left calf. Barbados. Familiar shapes and colors surround me here, even in the dark. Yet despite the familiarity, returning somewhere always feels strange. Every memory is haunted by the flittering images of long-ago days playing with neighborhood hooligans, throwing rocks at coconuts or climbing through halfbuilt houses. Every memory is haunted by it all.
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And here I am again. I am here again. Back to the place where I climbed through that gully searching for nutmeg to bring home to Mom or African snails to crush underfoot or leaves to stick behind my ear as I crashed through thorns that caught at my arms. I am back in the place where my dogs would sleep on the asphalt of our driveway, soaking up the warmth from the earth, from the land. Our land. Here I am, back to the place where I watched monkeys steal mangoes from each other’s hands, where I learned to spell “color” with a “u” and “realize” with an “s,” where the wind in a sail and the freckles on my face were all that mattered. How strange does it feel to sit in this car on this highway on this night and remember the hundreds of other nights in a different car on the same road, heading towards my bedroom with its thick, yellow curtains pulled shut, the bars outside the window casting striped shadows against the fabric. The bedroom where my birds would sit in their little, white cage and sing to me in the morning, where my betta fish would swim lazy circles over blue pebbles, where the tree frogs sang my lullaby. How strange does it feel to know I can never go back to that room, even if here I am on this road on this night in this car. Even if the tree frogs still cry for me, even if the fish still swim through cities of coral, even if Orion still stands guard in my sky. Do I still exist somewhere? The me of the years spent in that yellow room, the me of those days of sunscreen and baseball caps and white school shirts. Do I still exist out there somewhere, sprinting across a field or sitting at lunch on peeling, green picnic tables? Am I not still that girl whose hands smelled of pencil shavings, who never brushed her hair, who believed she could be an artist or an athlete or anything? I must still be that little girl in that yellow room because I am not sure who else to be or what I am capable of being if I am not her. When I call Emma later, she will tell me that I sound so American (so different). Have I ever sounded any other way? I must have spoken once with those Anglicism that flew from all of my friends’ mouths, with those soft r’s and staccato t’s. I must have once teased my friends about a boy they fancied or chatted carelessly about a cricket match from yesterday’s PE class. How much of myself can I lose in three years? How much of myself can go drifting drifting away… And then I am gone again, lost in the tide of memories washing over me and over me and away. The sea rocked beneath me once as I sat sprawled on a surfboard, watching the reef below me. Watching the sunlight bouncing over the waves. I could hear in the distance my dad cheering as Joshua caught a wave, skiing and skipping and sailing over the fish and the rocks. I could hear, in the distance, my mom laughing as she sat reading in the sunshine. Or perhaps she was walking along somewhere, stooping low every few steps to dig a bit of blue sea glass from the sand. Holding it up to the light to see the colors filter through. Somewhere I am still there, on that surfboard that smelled of wax and sunscreen and sea salt; I must be. I have to be.
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And I am gone again again, drifting from sifting memory to sifting memory. I once woke to the sound of bottles breaking and wind screaming as a hurricane raged outside. The rain tumbled down in a ceaseless flow, washing away trees like they were chalk drawn casually on a sidewalk. The power went out, and the water, too. And my friends all came over to sleep in my house full of candles and water bottles and canned food and melting ice cream and leaking doors and buckets under dripping ceilings. And I am back again, and the lights are still passing indifferently by outside. One two three four gone. And the car still meanders onward. Five six seven eight. And why am I back here? What good does it do for me or for anybody? Nine ten eleven now gone. And I know the past is gone, so why am I here, revisiting and reliving? Twelve thirteen fourteen lights and we are turning now. On this new road — darker and smaller than the highway — I once drove towards party after party at my parents’ friends’ house, the house where I would fall asleep on the overstuffed white couches at eleven. Towards the trampoline tucked behind the trees and the pool where I swam in jeans. Towards the kids’ table and the sound of laughter from the patio and the TV room full of wild boys. Except not towards any of that. Just towards a house that is not my own, has never been my own. Just towards another memory in this deluge of memories. Just towards just towards… If I close my eyes, am I back again in my little grey school bus? Just towards school, past the old church and the two lines of palm trees, taller than anything else I could imagine. My headphones in, my eyes tucked neatly into a book, the sunshine filtering onto my arms as BBC News dripped out of the speakers. The swaying of this car on this road on this night is the same, and I am the same (I must be, I have to be) so am I still there? But, no, I suppose I am not and cannot be there. Because, like my yellow room, that moment is gone. Like my peeling, green picnic tables, that image has passed. Like the white couch, like my blue bird, like the orange lights of the highway. Like all those years of living. Gone, gone somewhere. Yet still there, abstractly, connected to me and connecting me to it all: this island, this car, my mom and dad, the triggerfish, Orion. He is still up there, above this smaller road, standing guard in a blazing show of will. He is still up there, telling me that nothing has changed (but he is wrong, seeing as nothing is the same). And after all, what does Orion know of the people below? He knows as much of me as I know of the fish in the sea. Only that I am here, meandering towards something, just towards. Only that I am existing — or trying my best to exist. Only that you are, we are, I am. And we all must still exist as ourselves of yesterday because who else could we be? Those stars must still be shining, too, since Orion is still there and will always be there.
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I don’t know where to go from this dark little road, or even if I am going anywhere. If I could, I suppose I would go backwards, step off of this path towards my ever-impending fate and take a step back to all those weeks, months, years ago and just stay a while. I would stay there under the mahogany trees and the blue doorframes and the lazy rain and the amiable sun. I would stay there, standing hand in hand with Shannon on the hill leading towards the school building. I would stay there, sitting in a pew in an echoing chapel saying the Lord’s Prayer. I would stay there if I could, freeze the frame, capture it in a butterfly net, anything. But there it goes again, gone as my eyes catch a road sign, pulling me back here to this car that is now turning up a driveway, now parking. Someday I suppose it will be this moment that I dream of returning to. It will be this moment caught on replay in my mind. After all, a new past is created with every passing day. After all, I will always be trying to escape this nostalgia and homesickness, even as it chases me across the sky with Orion’s three-studded belt. After all, I will always have my stars to throw me back…
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SENIOR EDITORIAL BOARD Editor-in-Chief Managing Editor Layout Editor Layout Editor Public Relations Coordinator
Kiana Rawji Johnny Xu Claire Zhang Amelia Chen Lynnette Jiang
Prose Editor Poetry Editor Photography Editor Art Editor
Nailah Barnes Susan Li Harbour Woodward Sofia Novak
BOARD MEMBERS POETRY & PROSE
ART
Sarah Jane O’Connor Emma Earls Katie Whalen Sydney Bebon Michael Wang Oliver Diamond Sam Crocker Angelique Alexos Christina Li Claire Quan
Hannah Kang Julian O’Donnell Erin Tudryn Helen Mak Lilley Salmon
LAYOUT Lisa Chen Elven Shum Katrina Csaky
PHOTOGRAPHY Hannah Abuaita Lily Louis Maya Rajan Emmeline Flagg Mina Liang Madeline Lee
FACULTY ADVISORS Sonja O’Donnell Delano Copprue
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