Inscriptions 2015, Lit Mag

Inscriptions 2O15

5800 West 107th Street Overland Park, KS 66207 913.993.7500 www.smsd.org

shawnee mission south presents...

inscriptions

Untitled

Julia Rose

literary magazine

one is All

Michelle Chan

I’ve tipped the scales.

The gold outweighs the bronze, Requiring you to show A little bit of alms To even out the glow I’ve tipped the scales.

The merchants choose again The buyers that they wish For their primary gain; They heap upon the dish I’ve tipped the scales.

Libra

James Naylor

I know this in my heart: I’m not the best of friends.

Still I will play my part Until my lesser end I’ve tipped the scales.

Oh how I wish that one Not only wish but lack Would care more, leaving none, But carry all the slack I’ve tipped the scales.

Would someone tip them back

untitled

Steffen Seamon

The Ballplayer Travis Gatewood

The boy watched From the cool blue shade Of a hot June afternoon His hero Step to The gleaming white plate In muddy black shoes And fat tobacco lip His helmet A mess Of resin His bat Giant Ferocious Yet swung with ease Graceful and fluid A brute artist Downward and leveling Knuckles tight Hands inside A short quick Powerful stride Hundreds of Opposite field Line-drives Screamers just above The outstretched hands Of vaulting shortstops Into the gap One-hoppers To the warning track Not ridiculous tyrannical blasts Of false inflated men But the stuff

Of unsung legend Of the man To those The hometown boy Who toiled and grunted Who know The old school workhorse Flirted with four hundred That they spent themselves Stretching singles Partied and caroused On the field Into head-first doubles Lit up the town Of battle Into tangles Played his heart out Achieved a satisfaction Of dirt and leather Gave his soul Few understand The rebel idol To the game Not just With long hair So when it was time Plaques and stats And unkempt beard To go Which crumble Arms carved You didn’t see him To ash And muscled In stupid commercials In the amnesiac sands A body built Those vapid thirty-second ads Of time For heavy lifting To hawk cheap products But the rare sense For carrying his team To sell his image That he lived it The city To lessen and defile it Did it On his back To pander and grub Used his The sure-gloved For wads Work talent passion Quick-handed Of greasy cash Was who he was Third baseman No Exhausted Dependable Rather Fulfilled Courageous He receded Productive Sacrificing himself From the flashbulbs Contributed something By laying out Into the shadows In the face To patrol Where he became myth Of the void The hot corner Blazoned While most live Doing the hard necessary The way we remembered him Disconnected labor A king of the diamond In small occupations A hall of famer Not rusting in front of us In small houses Who drank Desperate In small cages Cold beer A caricature Of doubt and regret From pull-top cans A crippled impotent animal Blunted With a red-headed reliever No Misshapen And cauliflower-kneed catcher He was still the lion Not fully lived Hanging his rag Rampaging the bases But not Of a cap And roaring The ballplayer On the same old hook From the dugout No Right next to At peace He had His big white With himself What all men want Number five Able to retire A name made That emblem To the small contented life By his own ability Of a generation Promised to all heroes Sweat muscle virility

Then to leave it all To heal And to mend In the corner Of a downtown bar Playing some cards Or maybe fishing At a small pond In the quiet country Away from it all Where all heroes go With clear head And free heart And the boy saw In the look of his dad Who sat next to him In a small plastic chair With painted iron rails Something big And profound Something electric In the air Which buzzed With blue static And the hum Of one Collective breath Right before The crack of ash Then The white flash The crowd thundering With applause For the ballplayer hero god Who was above Yet one of us Swinging his pinetar saber Like an immortal Who we could touch

GOlden Butterflies Michelle Chan

My Heart Lawson Yang

-When I was in 6th grade, I cried to myself I would never grasp it again.

-This feeling of sorrow that marked on my bland crescent heart within.

-Yet today, it’s nostalgic, that feeling where my tears would fall -Reminiscing of memories, wishing I never had at all -Yet I look back, and I cry, bawling in sadness because they were true -These memories that bestowed within my love and I. I wish I could redo -But I can’t. this is the real world. I just have to persist -forgiving and forgetting these memories my mind consists -But these heartful memories are hard to forget -Being that there lies nothing from the memories we shared that I long to regret -She was beautiful, she was kindhearted, and sweet -She looked past my deepest flaws and my ugliest feats -To this day I lay grateful for she was always “she” -Being herself in whom I loved so dearly -If I could rewind time, I would do everything the same -Hold her hand, buy her flowers, dance with her though she probably thought it was lame.

-But within this date I would stop myself from making the mistake -of letting her go, I hope in this dream of sorrow, someone shakes me awake

by Jenna Fackrell

Untitled Abby Conaghan

Ghosts Anonymous

Ghosts know nothing of walls. They care little for the creaks strangled by each passing step.

They seep through mirrors and slip through open windows.

Ghosts know nothing of walls, of doors, of the abyss. The humans, the living care for boundaries, borders, and lines. They decimate life by drawing it into sections, they slaughter the imagination, ripping it to shreds, dicing and obliterating the open into a frigid ice cube tray of reality.

I’m quite certain they’re following me. Wherever I wander they pursue like shadows, stuck to my shoes like gum that I stepped in sixteen years ago.

Lurching behind me, flying, floating, and hugging the dust I leave behind. They’re following me. I feel them with each raised prickle of hair standing like a forest of pines on the back of my neck.

These ghosts know nothing of me, they pile in my pockets like abandoned wrappers. They clamor and shout, distract me from my work. They press down - all clamps compressing and squeezing my skull until it explodes into a thousand fireworks, lighting the skyline inside me. They watch me as I write, and as I sleep, as I shower, and as I eat. They peer from behind the curtains and under the bed, pop out from the closet and lurk under the stairs, biting my heels as I run up them. They wear my shoes and shirts

and skin, bear my body like a tattoo on their spectral complexion. Stretching out my flesh like a canvas, they paint my appearance with their past lives and purgatorial purposes. They become what I’m too afraid to be. Wearing my body like a winter coat, they bundle up, waiting for the storm. I do not mind, it is only what I know. These ghosts have always stole myself from me, now I don’t know what I’ve lost.

These ghosts are not friendly. I tread carefully as if running with scissors, I walk on glass, balancing spirits and shades atop my head. This tightrope is fraught with a life of suspense. I’ve blindfolded myself and only want the rope to catch me when I fall. These ghosts glide spitting spite, hissing malevolence. They tempt me with their apples, while whispering promises of the future in my ears. They spin me, round and round, a twister, until I’m walking on water and force me to pin the stars to the moon.

They bite and scratch my legs, run their claws down the length of my body rooting out a garden, so that I might plant promises they died with the taste of in their mouths. They are the uncertainty of the future sloshing around in a sea of past mysteries. They navigate my boat through riptides, gusts, and tidal waves. They see the light house, they always see

the light house, but never call out. We always crash, but none of us die, we wash ashore, seaweed woven in our hair and salt sieving from our eyes.

These ghosts chase life, hungrily, armed with a fork and knife, making meals out of each day. They gobble down my memories, consuming what I used to know.

These ghosts are my friends. They understand the prison of inconsistency, they understand the shackles and bars of nothing. They feel the equilibrium, balanced like a seesaw I swing continuously on. I sleep on a scale of injustice, where my thoughts weigh themselves against my actions. These ghosts torture me so - they are hosts to my life, they usher me through each day escorting me, pointing me blindly in a direction. I have been captured, and I’m not sure I can escape.

Without these beasts, I know not of what I will become? Strapped to each blood cell, white, red, and black, ripping us apart would tear me fiber from fiber, I would become dust, I would become wind, air, but energy I would remain. Velcroed together, unzipping us seam by seam, I would cease to remain as they know me. I have been jig sawed together by these ghouls, the behemoths, I can’t go. I see in each one, like clouds above a desert, an image, novel and ever changing. I see what I will become, mirrors each one is, and mirrors they manifest themselves in.

I fear staring too long into the glass pane bordered by wooden planks, navy and mustard. These twigs hold a portal to a world deviant and evil. They hold every iniquity known to humanity.

I fear walking past open doors. Each a shutter into a new sphere unchecked in context. What waits there is decided by demons that howl at my brain as if it were a full moon.

I fear the dark. A panegyric mural of nothing. In

that nothing is everything I have ever known and hope to never know. The switch from luminosity to nocturnal nightmares conjures death and dissections, turmoil tantamount to Armageddon.

I see in that picture frame of darkness a family portrait beheaded, a shallow rut of graves gone before labeled, I see my past prorogued, as if I were reading my life like a record player set to repeat the mistakes that cut like butter knives and healed reluctantly. I fear the dark for what I do not know. I fear what is watching me. Naturally.

I fear the silence. The silence is a crocodile spying as a log, wrapped in moss like a ticking time bomb.

Silence begs whispers to reach out and strike louder than thunder. It allows the mechanized human conscious to manufacture thoughts that fall faster than bombs. It expedites a bureaucratic industry to wrap your throat in red tape quicker than you can swallow. Silence is the broken flood gate, drowning acres upon acres. Silence sits happily in the corner knowing what it has done, worked to its full extent.

Silence mocks you without saying anything.

These things do not scare the ghosts. At least they do not let onto it, never once have I seen them scared. They remain composed, quiet, and unseen.

They are a symphony that plays to my command and is invisibly conducted. They play in unison never faltering, this band is infallible, invisible. They play only to me.

I am their mirror, I do not scare them. They laugh at me, cackling, it sometimes sounds like a breeze.

Each door is only a continuum of everything they have known. An arch that holds in place something they once knew. Doors are archaic to them. Fire burns like doors in the eyes of these ghosts. Each handle a test, the frame a window.

Ghosts know nothing of walls.

{

Spanish Poetry Lawson Yang

{

probablemente no vas a entender estos palabras de amor que voy a decir pero ojalamente no lo traduces porque es un poco embarazoso, esto poema dulces pero Si que solamente pudiera ver como bella es tu sonreĂ­r tus ojos y personalidad tambiĂŠn que dos son como helado, tan bien.

Dulce, tranquillo, y asombroso Pero no se si que estĂĄ delicioso gracias por me haciendo contento ojala que te gusta la poema como yo siento

Untitled Abby Conaghan

Shattered Leorah Addadi

I got you a watch Jenna Fackrell I got you a watch But I broke it With a hammer and I never spoke it I imagined it on your wrist Thinking it might give you a hint I like you and I want you to stay I got you a watch But I broke it Because the time came and went I lost it It cost double my pay But it felt all the same

I got you a watch But I broke it It was Christmas You were going to come But you didn’t I figured you weren’t being distant I refused to see The possibilities Of you loving someone other than me

It was New Years They told me I then broke it It felt good Like I smashed all my emotions With a clean swing of the mallet I lost all balance I broke down and started to cry I gave you my heart but you broke it So I got you a watch and I broke it

It kills you, ya but.

Steffen Seamon

struck

Leorah Addadi

L etters to Myself

Gabrielle Brazzell

To my past self: I am sorry that things had to be so hard that there were more nights of emptiness than ones of blissful dreams that your days were spent empty, your emotions hollowed out like a jack o’lantern that you knew the feeling of tears slipping down your cheeks like rainfall more than the feeling of a tender embrace I am sorry that you felt like you were worthless like you had no place in this wide expanse of an earth because you knew, that the worst thing was feeling alone in a crowded place You thought you were just another face one that wouldn’t even be missed I am sorry that you felt the need to harm yourself to feel anything at all

that you could only feel release when you could see scarlet ribbons on your arms and legs I am sorry that your smiles were too often broken ones But you did it I am thankful that you didn’t give up That even when you came so close—standing there on the tightrope teetering between life and death you chose to try another day I am thankful that you finally learned you are worth something you are not another face in the crowd your loss would be felt I am thankful that scarlet rivers no longer pour from your veins And to my future self when the nights feel like they may stretch on infinitely take a moment and remember me

Untitled

Jenna Fackrell

mAYBe Anonymous

I never saw the issue with it until I saw it painted across their faces, eyes stretched wide like canvases, tears welling up like ink, all deer caught in headlights waiting for the imminent impactSee I never saw an issue with it until I spat my story in the wind’s face and insulted nature.

To me there was no problem. I was just “another normal teen.” I was just angsty, and for so long that’s what I had thought, but apparently normal angsty teens don’t carve their problems into their skin like a plank of wood, they don’t whittle themselves down into a twig and dream of death more than a future.

I created an origami reality, folded up what I knew into a beautiful swan, and watched as it took flight, but the truth was paperthin. Light shone through, but I was too blind to see the sun and the stars screaming out. I was

too blind to see the warning signs velcroed to their mouths.

This creates awkward glances in the hallways, whispers of regret that scream louder than our voices Minimizing my feelings was when we were alive. Funerals and always so easy, wasn’t I the one to memorials become shop windows blame? An enemy in my own skin, for onlookers and consumers, I was constantly on trial for crimes and everyone is cashing in on I did not commit- I pleaded guilty the sale. We fashion their stories and begged the judge for a death into umbrellas to protect us from sentence. the obligatory storm of grief that washes away the blood and pain.

And rationalizing my actions was always so much fun, isn’t it Normal angsty teens don’t have all just one big adventure? I ate to worry about hiding bloodstains euphemisms like they were cough on their carpets from their parents. drops and hocked up the lies They don’t find it harder to walk only to spit them down the sink. over those stains in the morning My mind played scrabble with than slit the skin that created thoughts and shook up the truth them. yelling “Yahtzee!”

Suicide is the looking glass into a Suicide - Hands on spiritual world of teens playing hide n’ seek experimentation. with reality. We close our eyes to count, hoping we won’t have to Insomnia - Sleep was a waste of open them, hiding to be found. time anyways.

1. There is no romanticism here Eating disorder - Swimsuit season. nobody told us growing up felt like a sprouting cactus lodged in the Self harm - Swim less this season. desiccated desert our chests have become, picked by vultures we Abandonment - Give me a reason. have been dead for a long time.

2. Fake smiles and choreographed This war does not create heroes, it laughs only get you so far, nobody creates esoteric eulogies. told me what to do when the It creates a story for a week, audition ended. for a month, for a lunch-time 3. Scar tissue in strange places is conversation. a ballot for questions.

4. Scars don’t go away. Why don’t they go away?

5. Waking up is worse than dying.

6. People always think you’re tired.

People always think you’re not hungry. People always thought you were okay.

7. Leave a note, the world will want to hear you sing one last time, hear the thoughts that ricocheted off your skull and in between your ears.

8. Moving through life shouldn’t feel like running with scissors, you should not be afraid to trip and fall.

9. The past two years have felt like one long day, death just seems like one long nap. I’ve dreamt about death so much, sometimes I think I’ve visited it in my dreams; I’ve tickled the edges of life, munched on the frays, and pulled strings away from reality. It’s all begun to unravel.

10. The rope does not warm your neck like you’ve always expected, the razor shaves away more than just skin, listen to your stomach.

Your body knows more than the chemicals in your head.

Killing yourself is so easy, and keeping yourself alive is the hardest thing ever. As easy as muting a TV, because Jesus Christ, the static has become so loud and there’s nothing to ever watch.

Michelle Chan

Beginnings a Self POrtriat

Gemini James Naylor

Against the billows of the wind The ocean's tempests crashing in, Still on the cliff you stand to know The true emotions of your woe.

The ling'ring sorrow holds its place 'Til judgement day shall hold our grace.

You think it best to feel its sting Than rather not feel anything.

The ocean surges 'gainst the rock; Refusing me enlight'ning talk You stagger forth into the sea A victim of your misery.

I ask you why you wish this pain For surely it shall come again; My mind is silent to my cry For minds cannot reveal their why.

Tw ins

Gemini II James Naylor

When I was nine My parents took me to the circus and my grandmother died.

I don’t know why clowns are used to try and make children feel better It wasn’t working they were crying it was pitiful I felt sorry for those poor babies with their tears pooling on the floor and how much they cared cause I used to be like that But I got fixed That well is dry because I didn’t want to be a child I wanted to be grown My parents always said that I had an adult sense of humor and I had to act my jokes.

So I pulled out my tears And I replaced it all with jokes I didn’t need that oasis I needed the sun and the sand to warm me up And when others would cry I would laugh and I would laugh so hard and they would cry so hard and I would be Better.

But then my grandmother died and even if I wanted to I couldn’t’ve cried My cousin wept my siblings sobbed everyone else welled up with tears yet I just stood there emotionless trying not to smile like some sick sociopathic-

Jenna Fackrell

But hey If being a writer doesn’t work I’ll always have a job at the circus on the sand.

The Complex Art of Humanity

Angelo Prado

It can’t be easy love makes pain but regret makes long stories they can’t hate and love there is space for one your heart can only feel one there aren’t reasons for hate because it snuffs out love please It gave you this love a love broken and flawed but it believes that broken things are meant to be mended and flaws are only human tell me is it possible to love something as human

as i? it doesn’t see difference it sees living dead white black lonely free lost broken all the same don’t watch pain close your eyes in the end you will feel it rather than see it not all live some only exist

we breathe and live creating the complex art of humanity the very idea that we exist to make scars the sounds have meaning the words are nothing until there is motion and a beginning stories are meant to be told and studied but never repeated things are meant for one existence one memory one ever

Untitled

Steffen Seamon

The artist I never thought of myself as an artist or a poet... until you said that I was one. Until your lips moved in time to the rhythm of my rhymes, and you narrowed your eyes because you couldn't comprehend the language. But your lips curved as you stole my words…

And you told me.

You were just speaking modestly. Lauding me that your emotional insolvency could never spawn a proper poem probably.

Poetry has been and always will be meant for prodigies.

But, you see, I found meaning in our mindless choreography.

I found poems we strung together in hollow words balanced between our two tongues, grasping for phrases and validation like oxygen, because there are a thousand glittering generalizations that I could gather from the hundreds of times we’ve corresponded that could describe the dozens of emotions that jam themselves into my psyche like pinpricks, and yet I’ve

found no words, and no poems have been written about us, no staggering works of art, or feats of nature, or glorious landmarks that I can pinpoint on the map I’d create to write my way back to you, pen in my left hand and heart in my right, but alas, such compositions will never be composed, as, you can see, I am just another teenage poet, choking on the complexities of run-on sentences.

So maybe I can’t write you verses of poetry without the lines tangling and catching in my throat like dueling fishing rods. And I can’t capture into words the mess you made of me, the same way that I can hardly manage to capture your gaze.

So if poetry is impossible, I’ll write you fragments instead.

Take words Off paper.

Carve my verses into tables.

Sing hymns false hope in the bark of dead maples.

Emily Wilkinson

But sentence fragments can’t stand on their own, and neither can we, Spinning separate yarns on the same spindle until our alliteration sounds illiterate, Second guessing whether our stories are accurately reflecting our reasoning for why our ardor hasn’t yet reached reality.

And now we’re back to poems.

And I’m hoping I’ll create you one that'll turn heads the way two quotation marks create a “turn of phrase.”

I’ll write a poem about you.

About how poetry died with chivalry and now they’re just two ideas in a casket six feet beneath our egos.

And how asking myself to describe you in words and intransitive verbs feels a lot like comparing the starcrossed flight of transient birds, writing absurd stories in words of us two intransigent nerds… again, and again, and again.

I tell myself, "Yeah, we’re two fives, but we'll always make ten.

What’s cupid’s arrow to the power of a ballpoint pen?"

But I’m scared...

I’m scared that these words aren't my own That I’m just printing these verses to paper so I’m never alone.

Because when I’m trapped in my head my emotions don’t make sense And when I put them to paper, they make even less I could place bets on when you give up and realize you'll never be impressed.

Because, while I'm at the heart of things, I realize that you’re just a boy who couldn’t care less, and you couldn’t possibly comprehend the language.

But I’m an artist, And I wrote you a poem.

Isn’t that sad?

Afraid

Julia Rose

Half F ull; Half empty Michelle Chan

Love

Untitled

Angelo Prado

Jenna Fackrell

From now on i will refrain from using the most over used word in the english language.

A word that opens doors and crushes dreams.

The ill awaited one-syllabled word that torments teenage girls and hopeless romantics.

A word that means everything but nothing all at the same time.

Used by thieves and givers alike this word started wars and ended lives.

I heard this word and felt alive.

In a world of corporation they said this word was used and abused for the sole want for more money.

But i wanted to believe it was all worth something.

The word drove mines deeper and deeper into the blood red volcano. and it took years for the world to recover because there was nothing left after the ground crumbled but the seas cooled the fire and it began again The beginning was harder but i finally learned my lesson so don’t tell that word still has meaning don’t tell me i’m lost don’t From now on i will refrain from using the most over used word in the english language.

Rabbit king Michelle Chan

Flow Leorah Addadi

A Sparrow Caught in the Tar P its Emily Wilkinson

She tore the wings from your spine Because they say that time flies when you're having fun And she feared your escape to the clouds with the passing of precious weeks But you didn’t fly with the time, so you kept it instead.

Kept time Kept track Of violence that kept coming You kept time like a muted metronome in the faded symphony of love and deprivation that mangled her body and defiled your soul.

Minutes passed on the radium screen of a digital clock ticking by with no remorse for the living It was 8 in the morning and she was putty in your hands Tar 8:15 and she dragged you down to hell with her velvet nails and smudged lipstick snarl Tar 8:30 and she was choking on the

metallic taste of her own suffering

and throat.

and yours

In deep blue hues of guilt that dark stockings don’t cover And in purples and blacks: the ghost of humanity that quakes beneath flowers and kisses: validations of the enchantment you craved that she stole.

And of yellow flashes of teeth, of “please” and profanities, buried in the thick of her hollow voice that grabs you by the tonsils with every slice of her name on your wrist.

Lying in your burgundy, one-hour promises In a crimson conquest for love that was met with brutality In a sanguine smile and scarlet kiss,

Tar 9:00 A.M. and you've blacked out because you’re drowning in it She smiled. Cherry red.

“I still love you."

You weren’t keeping time.

You used to sing to her As a sparrow on her finger Of lovelorn truths and metaphors that would cleanse you of sin But of what could you sing that she does not already know?

You’re too empathetic to be her monster.

“Look what you made me do.”

Every blow and brushstroke against her canvas skin soaks through your bones like a sponge.

“Aren’t you in pain?"

Doesn’t she know her smile tastes like seawater and drives you just as mad?

“I still love you."

Doesn't she know...

That you carry your shame in the watercolors that adorn her thighs

It was 10:00 A.M. and she was covered in blood.

Red. Tar because you beat it out of her, Love because she asked for it.

You are bastilled in the impressionist prison of her ribcage with doors wide open, A sparrow who's lost its wings to fly

Self Portrait Jenna Fackrell

10:44PM

Jenna Fackrell

‘I don’t think you understand” I speak to myself living in my thoughts Thinking about how shitty I feel Not able to be beside myself I fill my lungs with hate and arms with blood I tell myself words Words with no meaning I write myself this poem to help stop the bleeding I can’t form a coherent paragraph There must be a reason for that And for some reason I keep on rhyming Even though it really annoys me I turn into something I hate Withering Gently falling away It’s 10:44PM and I’ve made a mistake I look myself in the mirror But feel so much shame

Editor-in-Chief

|

Julia Rose

Adviser | Julie Fales Staff Members Jenna Fackrell Michelle Chan Angelo Prado Gabrielle Brazzell

Cover photo by Jenna Fackrell