Vibratro 2014 issuu

Vibrato XLlX • The Hockaday School

Nymph | SARA PANT | Acid Etching

ARTI STRY

Allow bridled desires to roam free. Channel your free-flowing artistic intentions. Chip away at the virginal stone that weighs upon your mind— Michelangelo insists, for David rests inside.

CONTENTS Book 01: Artistry

4 Literature:

5

6

Art:

Photography:

Literature:

Fossilize,

Washing Out, Wendy Ho

Audrey Kim

Emily Zhang

.

.

.

.

8

9

10

11

Literature:

Photography:

Hannah Matheson

Nishali Malik

Kendall Ernst

Kendall Ernst

.

.

.

.

14

15

16

17

Hannah Matheson

Ghost,

Literature:

Storywell,

Art:

Fireworks,

7

Literature:

9,000,001,

Literature:

Fireworks,

Literature:

9,000,001,

Art:

Streak,

Vapidness, Amy Tao

Molly Nelson

.

.

.

.

18

19

20

21

Art:

Literature:

Sydney Thomas

Kendall Ernst

9,000,001,

Kendall Ernst

Literature:

Sleepwalking, Taylor Pak

Natalie Henry

Help!,

Lily,

Conflict,

Art:

Self-Portrait,

Channing Tucker

4 Hannah Matheson It was not an easy thing, This gestation of the self-love, An aimless tenderness that swells The belly out, warm.

I spent millennia letting it cool Into amber at my center, A core of ancient knowing I cultivated beneath my sternum— Like penguins, ponderous, Holding their eggs between their Skin and their feet, I grew my contentedness like That.

Washing Out | Wendy Ho | Watercolor

Fireworks | AuDrey kim | Photography

White Flash

Fireworks Emily Zhang

I remember the taste of grass and dirt seeping into my veins, the searing pain shooting through my knee like how I always imagined a thunderbolt should feel, the moment of blankness like I had been wiped clean, a canvas without an artist. Fireworks popped and sizzled above me, but the ground beneath me was not so clean and spectacular, drizzled with tiny rocks now embedded in my knees.

You helped me up, carried my weight though we were both only seven (you just eleven months ahead of me) and whispered words only a mother would know. I cried and said I didn’t want a scar because princesses didn’t get scars, and you reminded me of heroes like Harry Potter and other ones you couldn’t seem to name or remember, but all I remember was the tiny imperfection (perfect) between your eyes like a small, miniature crescent moon and the warm, slightly sweaty feel of your chubby fingers as you led me back toward our parents. My limbs were shaky, but you were steady, like a gentle tide pulling me in and teaching me not everything in the world feels like tripping on a rocky road on the way to see fireworks. Even now, the irregular jut of skin on my knee is reminiscent of the sweet taste of the strawberry lollipop you stuck between my lips as consolation, the feel of your sweaty, sticky hands wiping over my hair in the only way you knew how to show comfort, and the sound of millions and millions of fireworks whistling through the air to explode into dazzling stars only we could see.

8 Ghost

hannah matheson

C offee and sugar know me well, and so it thins my blood expertly—it makes varicose veins rise to the surface of my skin, a roadmap for the eyes of a fortune teller to decipher where my body had been before I inherited it. If we took a blacklight, would finger prints appear in the depression between my cheek bones and the bridge of my nose? That would explain the braille purple under upturned eyelid, or if—no, the gypsy says—I’ll tell you this: the River Styx runs over the wishbone juncture of my tear duct, and your gods do not want it back. I think my body did this, because when I came upon the cottonwood snow in Juneau, I thought, “You again.” As mist gauzed the mountain, I remember descent into memory: the glacier moving infinitesimally closer, having already buried with or pulverized under its ancient weight the effigy of that past life, that began with licks of fire and ended in frostbitten ribs.

The gypsy, or maybe siren, did not tell me this, I had a floorplan in the arch of my foot and it recognized the echoes of its own footfalls.

Storywell | nishali malik | Photography

by Kendall ernst

900 000 001

10

Holden Caulfield was right: we are, in fact, surrounded by phonies. Every one of them, the bros gulping down foamy beers as if it would somehow prove their masculinity, the crashers getting stoned in some dark corner, the girls clustering together because they can’t stand alone, even for a moment—every single one is so typically high-school, so full of shit. Where am I? I’m sitting on a couch with two couples who have clearly disregarded my presence, so, trapped in between and unsure of where to look or what to do, I stare into the depths of my red cup and down its contents. Just you and me friend. It’s going to be another long night.

Finally one of the girls has to throw up and the other one goes to hold her hair, and I get the hell out of there. Scanning the room I have to wonder, is there some profound subliminal plotline here that I am too ignorant to uncover? Are people as disillusioned as I am but too afraid—or maybe too smart—to do anything other than play their roles the way they were written? Some second-string football player who I’ve never seen sober grabs my shoulders and spews unintelligible nonsense in my direction along with a cloud of breath that reeks of beer and Technicolor nacho cheese. No, I conclude, they are definitely not. It’s about this time that I realize I need a drink if I’m going to make it until midnight. Scratch that—ten drinks. I go sit next to some girl who looks at least half as miserable as me. She’s scowling and wearing a party hat that is slightly off-kilter and pink 2007 glasses with the zeros for eyes even though it’s about to be 2009. Easily the most interesting person here.

Hey, you alright?

I’m fine.

Do you go to Briarcrest?

Riverdale.

She’s leaning against a bookcase probably drunk out of her mind and looking anywhere but at me, and for some reason, I feel like she needs to know what I think; I feel like she might understand. I don’t know, maybe I’m just lonely.

You ever get a feeling that none of this is real, that everyone here is an actor in someone else’s movie and they don’t even know? I mean everything here is so formulaic…take high school, anyone could be popular: play sports, supply the alcohol, flirt around but never have a girlfriend. Like I could run this place if I gave a shit, you know?

No. Yeah, no I was kidding. I make a weak attempt to salvage the conversation: Got a New Year’s resolution?

Stop talking to losers at parties.

I probably should have seen that one coming.

She grabbed a beer from the fridge and walked away. Maybe that’s it. Maybe she has the right idea—drink until I can let go of all of my existentialist baggage or at least until I’m fazed enough to believe that someone else is gripping the handles with me. Right then. I take another sip from my cup but I can’t even feel it go down; I need something stronger. In the kitchen there’s a cluster of girls huddled around the liquor cabinet griping about how there isn’t any light beer and the only liquor they will drink is pink-lemonade vodka or peach schnapps or whatever. I must have been standing there for a while because one of them looks over and slurs, “Do you, like, need something?” Just grab a bottle and go. And that’s what I do.

Me alone with my thoughts in a distorted universe—it’s disturbingly beautiful. The streetlamps are buzzing but it isn’t really a sound, more like a static that prickles at my skin so that my muscles can’t relax and I’m on edge and somehow that isn’t a bad thing though, you know? Probably not, probably just the ramblings of a drunken philosopher wandering the streets with his sloshing bottle of tequila.

Maybe.

No, I don’t really believe that, I meant what I said even if it doesn’t make sense to you. It’s strange how the truest things can sound so false on paper. So here I am, stumbling through intersection after intersection, the most familiar streets now the most foreign.

And that’s when everything mutates—one minute a Hopper, the next a Dalí, then only

A BL 12

LACK

14 It took a while for everything to come back to me after I woke up and even three years later I sometimes still doubt the presence of a vacancy in my memory. I feel the bottle’s neck toppling between my fingers; I hear the thud of my skull hitting the concrete; I watch the fuzzy ring of faces around me succumb to yellow light.

I don’t think it’s a real memory. When an amnesiac with a wandering mind and a predilection for the romantic is told by a trio of doctors that he’s been hit by a bus and catapulted six years into his future, it’s impossible for him not to build himself a fantastic lie about his gloriously tragic demise.

Now here I am, twenty-six and living in a dumpy flat with three roommates in Queens, writing stories far better than whatever New York Times bestsellingpiece-of-crap you’re reading. As far as I’m concerned, writers on that list (or any bestseller list for that matter) may as well slap a scarlet S right there on their pretentious thousand-dollar-suits, those damn sell-outs. My philosophy: each person who reads your work chips a little at the foundations until its feeble pillars collapse and the soul of the piece comes crashing down. Eventually, that lofty enterprise is so cobbled that it may as well be Fifty Shades of Grey fan-fiction.

My roommates interrupt these musings.

God can you imagine what Bazin would have written about it?…So reminiscent of Bergman but a touch more baroque, don’t you think?

Please, it was the epitome of gauche, a Fellini knock-off, and a poor one at that.

Oh spare me, you say that about everything. How many times can a man say gauche before he becomes gauche as well?

Touché, but my opinion stands. Come on, tell her I’m right.

He’s addressing me, but I shrug it off because really all I’ve been able to think about today is that flash I’d seen in the gaps between subway cars this afternoon, a girl in a green coat standing on a subway platform whose presence I can only suspect is some undiagnosed symptom of decade-old head trauma. The party hat and the ironically-worn 2007 glasses were gone, but the air of aloof misery remained.

Yesterday, even this morning, I would have steadfastly asserted that the movie was in fact neither, but rather a ripping commentary on devolution of American culture and its fixation with eroticism. Now it just feels like a wasted twelve dollars and

THREE HOURS. Streak | NATALIE HENRY | Oil Sticks on Canvas

va p i AMY TAO

d n

to outer space! your eyes dry, and your brain fuzzies. the surface of your eyeball chills. instinct kicks in, and you blink, you experience the most transient, subtle form of relief. soft shocks, your brain awakens, your senses sharpen, and you understand what it’s like to be alive.

e

s

s.

Conflict | Molly Nelson | Oil Paint on Canvas

18 Sleepwalking Taylor Pak It’s 4:15 and the spaces between the clouds form cryptic symbols Like the folded note written in green crayon Or like the shells embedding wet cement sand.

The sound of your keys taste like pennies, And this note in my hand feels like the soggy paper cup wilting on my kitchen counter.

I wish the night covered its eyes so I could run with reckless arms and feet Until my thoughts drifted like floating lilies, Lying with their noses pointed toward the sun.

After drifting eastward on this briny sea After slipping into wrinkled slumber, Horses will flex muscular calves and chew the moon with their back Molars, slurping ocean water with a rolling tongue.

The oven fires call me forward like a siren and I stare with wolf fangs, hissing.

What if my thoughts melted like wax, Rolling over closed eyes in thick, hot streams, Seeping into pores like a puckering orange.

Don’t touch a hot flame Because it is only there until it isn’t.

It’s 4:16 and the spaces between the clouds form cryptic symbols.

Help! | sydney thomas | Acrylics on Canvas

20 Lily kendall ernst Nothing can soothe like a freckled lily that stains my fingertips deep orange and coats my lungs with honey.

Self-Portrait | CHANNING TUCKER | Collage and Acrylic

Dancers | SARA PANT | Mixed Medium

WHI MSY

Remove yourself from the monotony of accepted routine. By snapping the tethers of conformity, ignite the mind. Walk on your hands, dye your cat, fill the pool with Jell-O! Balloon your imagination and float higher into the clouds.

2 CONTENTS Book 02: Whimsy

4 Literature:

5 Photography:

Thursday Night Observations from Under a Goose Feather Comforter,

Child’s Play,

6 Art:

Literature:

Audrey Kim

Charlotte Toomey

The Romantics were Right about Everything,

Tai Massimilian

.

.

Katya Lopatko

.

8

9

10

11

Art:

Literature:

.

Literature:

Cherry Jell-O,

The Devourer,

Bulb,

7

Art:

Katie Miller

Lingerer,

Hannah Matheson

Liquid Blue,

.

.

.

.

12

14

15

16

Art:

Literature:

Photography:

Taylor Pak

Sadie Lidji

.

.

.

Hannah Matheson

17

18

20

21

Art:

Photography:

Mary Margaret Hancock

Interstellar Markings, Ginny Crow

Art:

Hunch,

Stejara Dinulescu

Summer,

Glass,

Nicole Joseph Literature:

Doves and Olive Vines, Mary Margaret Hancock

Child,

Hang,

Emily Yeh

Audrey Kim

Literature:

The Constellations you Created,

.

Literature:

Motivation (and a Lack Thereof), Jessica Cloud

4 Thursday Night Observations from Under a Goose Feather Comforter Tai Massimilian

I. You are blueberry pancakes.

II. You are sunburnt forearms on the first real day of spring and you are asking me to kiss you in eighth grade [Editor’s note: I stopped running away].

III. You are the pipe in your backyard wrapped in turquoise fleece, with valleys and rivers and hills of plush, with buttons and with cuffs that taste bitter if you chew on them when you’re wet and cold or squinting at me and hoping I can understand.

IV. You are large; you contain multitudes.

Child’s Play | Audrey Kim |

Photography

6

Bulb | Charlotte toomey | Oil Paint

Katya Lopatko

The Romantics were Right about Everything

Charged with the task of describing our eerie overlaps as a function of time, (one month & one day between birthdays) it was the most I could do to coax f(t) to equal an unknown constant. (absolute max of hours in your presence: eleven) Instead I delineate the force generated by the pressure of your toe against the side of my boot (I feel the gravity in a wholly unscientific way).

Somehow, I cannot rid myself of this hypothesis: even in a vacuum I would have fallen for you.

Your teeth are perfect squares, like the one Uma drew on the TV screen, the proportions just barely off.

But in the vaporish twilight, I stop trying to calculate the area under the curve of your lower lip, content to succumb to the blood-orange-flavored delirium.

8 Cherry Jell-O Mary margaret hancock Maneuvering the blade, he traces the ridged edges of the skull. The knife glides in with the ferocity and grace of an ice skate cutting into the rink.

One slit, two slit, another dollar. Smothering the inexplicable butterflies that flutter against his stomach, he suppresses a smile. Pluck their wings!

Staunch the immoral, unjustifiable feelings! Head reeling, he cannot explain the electrical current of serotonin that flows through him every time he makes each cut. Without fail, the first incision sends pop rocks to his brain.

He peels back the peach-skin layers of flesh.

His patient is one of those high-end business junkies. He was fresh out of California, where business ideas copulate with the energy of Adderall addicted rabbits. A technological-minded company named Cherry, his business model competed with the likes of Apple. Recently taking his company public, the man moved his family up North (following the scent of another Benjamin). He did not like it. He was not made for New York.

Written off as an eclectic billionaire, he was impervious to social construct.

To avoid reality, he shrouded his face behind mink coats. It was July. He wrote dissertation upon dissertation on how to survive a velociraptor attack. Penning conspiracy theories, he believed JFK was a marketing scheme to sell televisions. He reduced JFK to a Technicolor smile. Fearing “what the neighbors would think,” his wife never left the house.

To cope, the man turned to food. Finding solace between folds of lasagna, he forged into a calorie wasteland. However, he miscalculated his kitchen’s temper. Starting a strike, his kitchen revolted! Led by the toaster, they banded together. With the front of unionization, they screamed that they felt abused, overused, and bloated from carbs. They always sent him steely glares.

His wife took him to a neurosurgeon to cut out the crazy.

The monitors beep in hollow metronome. Lying on the plastic-sheathed bench, the man twitches in comatose slumber. Dressed in a hospital gown, the gray-haired man has surrendered his masculinity for sanity.

The doctor reaches deep into the man’s head. Instead of brain, however, the doctor finds a sweet smelling, sticky, quivering substance. Dipping his finger into the goo, the doctor brings the substance to his mouth. Taste buds tingling, the doctor asks How Can It Be? It’s Jell-O. An odd smile creeps across the doctor’s face. It’s cherry flavored.

The Devourer | KATIE MILLER | Oil on Canvas The Devourer | KATIE MILLER | Oil on Canvas

10

Lingerer Hannah matheson I. Let’s condense: I cannot go on Clipping my nails Hoping you collect The shavings from the Garden.

II. Another view: The Grand Canyon Makes your bone marrow Ache, recognizing Negative space.

Even if I took Your shape like Water, like stone Cleft, you would not Want me to obscure

Such commendable Erosion.

III. I have telephone Numbers hibernating In the pads of my fingertips, Calls I almost made Stored as potential energy In this lonely Muscle memory.

IV. I did not know How to spell your Last name until After you’d gone.The letters descended, Afterward I am not ghostless.

Liquid Blue | Audrey kim | Ink and Watercolor

I feel each character One by one

Pressed into my pulse

By a rusted typewriter Even your name tastes of iron

As it spells itself to me In rhythm Plodding as footsteps

To an address behind the fog— A dissipated daydream, unmappable A lilting waltz On phantom limbs Swaying to this Unrequited love song…

(Your absence has manifested In that peculiar pain;

I miss you as if You had belonged to my body.)

V. I’ll anchor down Again.

I’ll suffice With the watermelon

Seeds you spat In my backyard.

If August makes Them swell alive, I will not eat them.

That pregnancy Went rotten.

Your vacuum Pulls I will wait For the next thing To come, Pass as thread Through the needle’s eye You’ve made of me, Exit again, Leave me gaping wide hungry, Dropping sweetness In breadcrumb trails.

12

Interstellar Markings | GINNY CROW | Acryllic on Canvas

14 Summer Taylor Pak

Summer is a barefoot child Bent elbows scooping deep blue weather, Sunburned lips sipping from a purple straw.

Child | Sadie Lidji | Photography

16 Constellations You Constructed Hannah Matheson

Do you remember What if felt like inside The walls of our mother?

We can’t, obviously, But when I hear white noise I think about the flickering halfExistence that filled the gap Between nothing and molecules Cooking us up.

I think of her womb as Soil depleted by a bad system, No crop rotation; You got 6’1” and social intelligence And broad shoulders to wade Through bullshit; I got bruised Apple skin and oatmeal heart And 5’1” and 3 quarters.

I think about you often. I hope Your love extends beyond The compulsory yearnings Of blood to blood, And does it jostle you to admit That we came From the same dammed-up River, salmon swimming upstream?

I’m giving my tenderness to you As a fallen pigeon, heart Beating faintly in the whisper And meter of wing flaps.

Don’t forget me, please; I will never wring the neck Of that broken bird.

Look for me, always, and Remember how we lay Under the sky of glow-in-the-dark Stars you’d pasted on your ceiling And how then we’d breathed in Uniform, falling asleep One by another, not questioning The close quarters or that, Maybe, in my 6th year, We had loved and slept and dreamt The same.

Hunch | STEJARA DINULESCU | Ink Monoprint

18

Doves and Olive Vines Mary Margaret Hancock

Trinket crosses of a tortured man line an Austrian market – salvation for just 99 cents.

Glass | Nicole joseph | Oil on Canvas

20

Hang | emily yeh | Photography

Motivation (and a Lack Thereof) jessica Cloud

My sock is growing.

Not with my feet (my feet haven’t grown in a while), not with wear, and certainly not with mold.

It’s bursting at its own seam.

The growth —like a teddy’s love-worn insides— surges behind the bars of errant stitches before ripping white thread from white thread as it reaches for the floor, desperate to savor the dust and foot sweat and gum, to cling to the mildewed carpet, perhaps to greet shoe soles that will leave it behind two steps later.

I covered it once with blue masking tape, hoping to stifle the unseemly bulge.

When I ripped the tape off days later, quick like a band-aid, the growth lay flat, smothered in dirt, but still grappling for the ground.

Maybe I should crawl along the floor for a few days, figure out what’s so great down there that my sock fibers labor to reach it.

Nothing tugs my organs from my chest anymore, so it must be more inspiring than the weekend.

Touche | Channing tucker | Oil Paint

MOVE MENT Awash in the sweat of exertion, shake it off!

Move to create, to change, to quench a dry thirst within yourself that drives your mind towards innovation. Taste the salted ridges of cracked lips as you advance, striding off the edges of the earth.

2 CONTENTS Book 03: Movement

4 Photography:

Desert,

5 Literature:

Kamikaze,

6 Literature:

The Subconcious,

.

.

11

12

Literature:

Literature:

Cate O’Brien

Kellen Weigand

.

.

Kellen Weigand

.

.

9

10

Art:

Photography:

Nicole Joseph

Olivia Lechtenberger

.

.

13

14

Art:

Photography:

Stejara Dinulescu

Anita Wang

.

.

Mary Margaret Hancock

17

18

Ballerina,

Photography:

Grandparents, Nicole Joseph

Seal,

Jennifer,

Art:

Red Leaf,

Stejara Dinulescu Literature:

Typo,

Jessica Cloud

Art:

Bound by Wild Desire, I Fell into a Ring of Fire,

Emily Yeh

Skull,

7

Brooke Jessen

October 15th,

15 Literature:

Miranda Helm

Lux,

16 Literature:

To Return to Adolescence,

Family, Run,

.

.

20

21

Literature:

A View of August from Seat F Row 23, Taylor Pak

Jane Gu

Art:

Mountain Pass, Julia Corsi

4 Desert | Emily Yeh | Photography

Kamikaze KellEn Weigand

we Poets like to think ourselves above prejudice but we pick favorites like the one ripe piece in a bunch of nearly-there fruit neglecting the green soldiers who when the future is more near than far will surge their walls Kamikazes.

6 Bound by Wild Desire, I Fell into a Ring of Fire BrookE Jessen

Convicted of first-degree arson in 1892, Mr. Abner Snopes currently resides in Jefferson County Correctional Facility serving the eighteenth year of his life sentence. Through his reflection caused by hindsight, Abner Snopes enlists the aid of two inmates. The first being Ms. Emily Grierson, incarcerated for twenty six years for negligible manslaughter and tax evasion, and diagnosed with necrophilia; the second, a young black woman by the name of Nancy, newly imprisoned for several counts of prostitution.

Hard to believe, but till I started living in that there jail cell, I was a lot like the two of y’all. Living independently like that bruises a person, not having no one to care for you nibbles at the soul. I had a family once too, but now I figure they’ve done forgotten ‘bout their screw up of a father, since I couldn’t ever tend to them as well as they tried to tend for me. I am a changed man: at least, something slightly better than the scum they threw into this hell hole, that’s for sure. Now, I don’t mean to confuse the two of you’s, so I best start from the beginning, before I was lit, before my soul forged a new form. The year was 1862, December, I remember because the wintertime would steal the warmness from my fingers and toes, then the tips of my ears and nose, till you felt like each shiver would be your last. My fingers would tingle at the small burst of flames ridding them of any bitterness—the sensation of toxic longevity, small glorious stabs on each finger pad. With coherence back in my hands, I’d go strangle some wretched thing that deserved no more life than

the leather of my boot…my apologies, I don’t mean to scar you nice ladies with these war tales, but I ain’t speaking of them for my own pleasure neither.

Anyway, my loyalty laid to myself not the confederates, that needs to be set straight. I ran from the authorities till the end of the war, and even stayed running, hauling my family with me, till I finally got caught some eighteen years ago. Right before my trial, my youngest son abandoned me. You have to know I didn’t mean for it to get so bad, but he’s somewhere up yonder living a fatherless life, only God knows whether he lives a damned life like mine or whether he’s fixing to make something out of himself. If I could’ve done things different, controlled myself, I reckon my family wouldn’t have been dragged through all it all. My biggest regret is having my boy give up on me.

The worst of all is that I ain’t got even a chance to fix any of it.

With time, my hatred for this place bred within me like the mice in my cell. By now, I’m surprised that my skin isn’t already charred with these stripes. I’m fixing to waste away; I can feel it in my bones; I’m ‘bout out of time. Thank you for listening to a loony old man’s story, but here’s where I figure to use y’alls help. Before I die, which ought to be all too soon, I want to see my boy.

Now, it’s taken me eighteen years to accumulate everything I need, but I got it all. Emily, without you I couldn’t have done none of it. Being a good friend to this ol’ piece of jailbait has kept me sane and kept me focused on finding my boy. Neither of the two of us want to be lonely ever again, right? So if my plan

The Subconscious | Miranda Helm | Oil Paint

works out like it’s ‘spose to I will go to my son and you will go to Homer like we talked about. And Nancy, all the woe you’ve been through, although it makes me sad, I reckon I’d make your same choice in the situation you’re in. Our success together will make all three of us happier don’t you know.

One last thing, I just want to double check the details behind it all. So Emily will make the changes to her will this afternoon, which Nancy will be the official witness for. You got to do everything through “official” channels if you’re fixing to burn down a jail. Then, once the Grierson money is in my name, Nancy, I’ll see you at dinner to give you the signal. When you are returned to your cell, you’ll proceed like I told you with the tying of the knots in your dress and the tying it to the steel bars right above the window. Some noise, whatever it is, has to come from the suicide ward as to luring the two guards from my end of the hall towards you.

I’ll be with Emily in her cell. Waiting till we hear the noise, the two of us will say our farewells. Upon refastening her shackles and locking her cell door, I can head toward locker 696 to retrieve my materials all the while the guards won’t be paying no attention. The kindling and the oil is already in the kitchen stove all I got to do is start it. I ain’t even got words to describe my gratitude to the both of you. Eighteen years of my life, and my sons, consumed by the Jefferson authorities but to be set free by hard work and companionship. An old man don’t cry, but I got happy tears in my heart forever remembering the blessed actions of Emily Grierson and Nancy Walker. A kiss on the cheek for the two of you, and I will see you at dusk.

Ingredients for a Jail Fire:

18 years and 10 months

1 window of opportunity

1 bottle of stolen kitchen oil

4 months of saved napkins

1 lonely and wealthy woman

1 suicidal prostitute

2 dumb jail attendants

1 string of bullshit

8

Skull | Nicole Joseph | Oil Stick and Ink Resist

April 15th

Seal | Olivia Lechtenberger | Photography

10 Cate o’brien

Thin, white strings extend to each corner of the molded, toasted wood of the damp dock.

The web, drooling leftover raindrops, glistens, sparkles, when the sun sneezes light onto its delicate pattern.

Other webs stick to the wooden boards, still, silent, and newly spun from the night.

Small waves knock against the boats, tied to the creaky wood of the dock.

Car tires hang down from the boat house, and keep the boats from tapping each other.

We find ours at the end of the row.

He lays the poles down at the bottom of the boat, and sets one foot in – the boat leans towards him.

The motor rumbles, screeches, roars, and the eye-watering smell of gasoline leaches and stains the water like washed off sunscreen floating in the pool.

He motions toward me to sit on the floor of the boat among the thin poles and colorful bait.

I spend most of the hour scratching away at chunks of blue paint on the side of the boat.

The pieces float down like autumn leaves, and sway away on the ripple of the water.

Slumped over in his chair, his back faces me, and the tip of his fishing pole barely extends above his head.

His head nods up and down, like the bobber floating up and down with the waves, and I can tell he is trying not to doze off.

12 Lux

kellen Weigand These sheets are rich sails of silk, billowing.

You are spun sugar on my tongue— Blue veined, pink skinned, wonder.

Wandering as breezes do on lost starlight.

Fingertips like tall grass when the rain beats, dragging the muddy ground of my imperfections.

Ballerina | stejara Dinulescu | Ink Monoprint

14

Jennifer | ANITA WANG | Photography

Jennifer | Anita Wang | Photography

To Return to Adolescence Mary Margaret Hancock

Black, oil greased hair Clings to the wide manta ray of a back Arced over dented, knocked up knees— Two floating moon rocks— Set adrift!

But anchored, shielded, enshrouded, By clasped arms and blue fingers In a golden pawed tub.

Too old to be a Lolita, a Nymphet.

And the silhouette of smoke-stained, dusty night Swirls in gray kitten water, Purring and rubbing against Porcelain handles of hip bone.

Eyes reach up, brown and hollow, like open faced sunflowers.

Sunflowers who stick their roots in porous minds And sponge up perfumed desires (Too early, too fierce!)

That burn the undertongue.

The man, charcoaled into shadow, Rests at the edge of the tub.

His morning after, slept-in sheet expression Murmurs, “Why is patience so elusive?”

Sighing. Exiting.

And the acid, jaw-cracked taste Of sour, green cherries blisters over thin lips— The sting of stillborn youth.

16 Family, Run jane GU

3:00pm, and no one had appeared. The fan continued to spin overhead, cooling the flies that I brushed away from my lunch. I glanced away from the torn crusts of my sandwich to the faded sign overhead. Family-run convenience store. The previous owners had sold their only successful business endeavor to some corporate machine in order to achieve their life-long dream of running marathons. I laughed. I shouldn’t have. They stopped running when they had nowhere else to go.

The half-cracked bell above the door rang, and a middle-aged man walked in with bags under his eyes that could hold the coins in his pocket and with a solemn humility carried around his shoulders. He reached in his pocket, counting the exact change for one bag of apples and two stems of broccoli. His forehead wrinkled, and I watched as his hands moved slower and slower to a halt. He didn’t have enough.

“Look, Daddy!” His daughter held up her hands, filled with strawberries.

“Look what I found!” He smiled, picked her up and proceeded to walk out the door. She squirmed in his embrace, and I caught a glimpse of her berry-stained lips. About to ask them to pay, I hesitated; by then the bell had already stopped clanging.

Grandparents | Nicole Joseph | Photography

18

Contrast | Meredith burke | Oil on Canvas

Typo

Jessica Cloud We curl against each other: commas on the sofa, tails intertwined.

But who writes two commas side-by-side and sees anything more than a mistake.

20 A View of August from Seat F Row 23 Taylor Pak

Steady streams of cars crawl forward like ants, thick and slow and marching. And like lines of sweat, they weave through grassy patches, and even I, up in the air in seat F row 23, can feel the heat from the view of my plastic window.

In fact, I find it rather curious that the figurines of Suburbia do not melt under the sun because I certainly feel like I will expire. Above the great plains of the Lone Star State, I see yellowing balding fields.

I see gray tops of office buildings which remind me of sidewalks and raw red feet and burnt earthworms hardened into a permanent S. In August, we are dried, and we are thirsty. I wonder if the splintering clap of a falling branch will ignite a spark. Dressed in red hats and shiny, yellow coats, firefighters will wield leathery hoses, throwing them over their shoulders. But even they are no match for the roaring waves of flame.

The Heat, fat and mustard stained, rolls heavy in the air. He sweeps up mountainous piles of salt and seasons his soup with the toil of man. In this final stretch of desert, we trek forward. We wrap our heads with white linens and hide our canteens and sneak guilty gulps. And even though the nights melt into mornings, we press on, basking in summer’s timelessness.

The Mountain Pass | julia corsi | Ink

Spotlight | Sam taussig | Oil Stick and Collage

VOCA LIZE

Speak out with robust intonation—muscular and flexed. Shout until the dipping curve of your voice spikes with a buzzing uproar, until your words crash and flood and numb. Leave us, your humbled listener, at the whim of your sound.

2 CONTENTS Book 04: Vocalize

4 Literature:

5 Art:

6 Photography:

8 Literature:

Grandmother,

Blake’s Dementor,

James Smith,

to the waterline,

.

.

.

.

9

10

11

12

Monique Beyers

Photography:

Shapes,

Nicole Joseph

Literature:

White Flash,

Emily Yeh

Art:

Traveller,

.

Nicole Joseph

Literature:

Broken Water Records,

Tai Massimilian

.

Hannah Matheson

.

Ivy Deng

13

14

16

17

Art:

Photography:

Photography:

Literature:

Channing Tucker

Grace Zacarias

Ellie Bush

Mary Margaret Hancock

18

19

20

21

Art:

Vibrato Staff:

Editors in Chief:

Shade,

.

Literature:

Peaches (cont.),

Mary Margaret Hancock

Spike,

The Peach Nest,

.

.

Peach Study, Audrey Kim

Colophon

Katie Miller

.

Peaches,

.

Many Thanks

4 GRANDMOTHER Monique Beyers

My grandmother Seemed to have been all docile words and needlepoint tapestries.

But, I swear she became her cigarettes.

Filtered through them as transparent as the smoke that rose from her lips.

She tripped over her own breath.

Thoughts became fragile, flammable lucid dreams.

She gave up the fire from her eyes to light the glorified matchsticks that killed her.

Blake’s Dementor | NICole joseph | Oil Stick and Ink Resist

James

6

James Smith | emily yeh | Photography

8

Nicole Joseph

Green water began to gently tug on loose skin.

Only seeping into dense structures: stomach, heart, marrow, joints, and always the head, sanding their distinct shapes smooth.

We wanted to care—to nurture once more—but the sick do not sprout in clear water and optimism, like the children and gardens we tend.

We tried to nourish the sick, holding on as they wriggled free from us and fighting itself.

Still the water pulls them as they want to go.

Green deflated his buoyancy to sinking.

And we were not yet in the water, not enveloped or prepared to feel it.

We did not know the still of bobbing in darkness.

Then he tugged our toes to the shore as if to say, I’m going, I’ll be fine. And so We waded in the shallows.

Shapes | Tai massimilian | Photography

to the waterline

10

White Flash

Your regret always bloomed in the morning, Dew descending on weary grass.

I got my feet damp With your apologies, Crossing the yard for the Sunday paper.

We patched up the hurt places With the weekly crossword, Dear Heloise, opinion columns...

Paper mâché dressings.

But you cauterized the place Where the contrition got out, So I woke to bruises and nothing.

Hannah Matheson No more bandages left Under my pillow like money From the tooth fairy, Reimbursement for pieces of me That I lost.

How did your remorse lose its regard For me?

Did you fall into the rabbit hole Tunneled between your temples?

Did your mind’s eye go blind When the sickness came to you From the inside out?

With the blitzkrieg heartache Exploding in your veins-Hormones like unpinned hand grenades,

Traveller | Ivy Deng | Oil on Canvas Released like hungry dogs on the scent of something raw.

Did I grow in the sadness swimming in your belly, Swelling it out as I rested, A walnut in the center of you, Shriveled and pruny, Waterlogged with your fluid?

Born from a battleground And so I became half-casualty and half-enemy, The innocence and the evidence-Proof of you, and of it,

And unsolicited inheritor.

I want us free of Your land mines and your flash floods.

I’m sorry that the Preston Hollow People Couldn’t close your wounds.

I’m sorry your I’m Sorries Did not embalm us both Before they ran dry-A creek like a sore throat, A canyon or a cavity We swallowed into ourselves, Simply to give the emptiness A way to be.

12

Shade | Channing Tucker | Collage

Broken Water Records Katie Miller

I crouch enfolded inside the mountains of those lungs; I crouch daze-gazed through and who and from between your yellowed ribs, sword-notched (from all the fights you withstood, the fights I was too tired to fight in my own head, pseudo-psycho-sicko-warfare submarine subversive fanfare) and caffeinewashed (on the nights when I needed someone to carve dark blue circles beneath their eyes with me, and stay my shaking bones). I feel the waves against my eyes, underwater currents drift drop drip drape; I see clear grooves in the invisible water, waiting for someone to drag the record needle across, take a drag from their lonely cigarette above the cracked pavement, behind the steel-drum music-man trash can.

14

Spike | Grace zacarias | Photography

16

The Peach Nest | Ellie Bush | Photography

Mary margaret hancock Marly saved a peach pit from lunch. It rests deep in her corduroy dress pocket, brushing against her upper thigh. Tracing the fossilized wrinkles, she strokes the hidden pit with the pad of her thumb. Her hand tightly grips the exposed heart. As hours come and go, she thinks of birth, of sticky blonde syrup, and of home; she simply cannot focus on Crayola shavings and chalkboard dust.

By the time the bell rings, she skates outside—legs flailing outward like a water bug. Mary Jane loafers pounding against the uneven sidewalk, her ruffled socks slip down thin ankles. She only lives a block away.

Billy sits on her back porch step, digging the toe of his shoe into the cocoa powder dust. Glancing into her flushed face, he notices Marly’s hand thrust deep into her pocket. “Whatchu got there Mahr-ly?” Holding the pit in her outstretched hand, she cups it so tenderly that Billy assumes she has an injured baby bird.

“A baby peach” she whispers in velvet tones.

Billy examines the tiny stone, reaching it up to the sky. Blocking the light, he squints at its sun-induced glow. In heat-heavy silence, Billy dives his hand deep into the ground and begins to dig.

As they toss dirt back over the peach pit, Marly thinks of MeeMaw, oak coffins, and Plunk, Plunk, Thud. New death, old life. A coffin and a peach pit paper-punched into the earth. The birth was somber and funereal—Marly believed in ghosts.

Sitting high up in the magnolia tree, Billy peers through the zebra-striped leaves. A few steps away, Marly rests her back against a warped trunk. The sun’s twilight rays trickle through the trees, speckling her body in warmth.

Sighing, Marly sets down her notebook and rests the crown of her head in faded hands. Her moonlight skin glows softly in the milky twilight. A white magnolia petal falls to her side.

And he thought she smelled as sweet as peaches.

18 Peaches (cont.)

Mary Margaret hancock III. Impromptu and loud spoken, her lips dash across her face like smeared raspberry jelly. Pressing her lips against the wall of her gum line, she examines her teeth in the warped silver of a sun tanning reflection board. Coffee and wine and age have eaten away my youth. Resting it slightly above her wide-set, roasted Turkey hips, the board cuts deeply into her midsection. (Another tally to add to the accumulated years of slouching, appendix surgery, and C-sections). She adjusts the diaphanous fabrics swathed around her hips and shifts her legs, which stick to the plastic lawn chair in protest.

“Billy” she calls, without looking up. The sprinklers cackle and sigh in their heavy pirouette. Clack, clack, clack, shhh.

Her chin settles into the folds of her neck. She doesn’t expect an answer; she has no question to ask.

Sitting in the plastic baby pool, her husband repositions his gut. The displaced water spills over, baptizing the parched grass that stubbles the yard like steely tine. Praise God! Reaching above his head, Billy pours beer down his chest.

“You know, Mahr-lene, beer catches the sun better than any of your hot-shot tanning contrapschens.” He watches the encapsulated golden flecks swim down his burnt toast chest.

Trembling against soft furls of chest hair, the carbonated bubbles shine baby pink and blue. Taking a gulp himself, the beer burns like heated tinfoil inside and out. He burps and places his hands across his belly. I wonder where my ribcage has gone.

Beneath Marlene’s swollen feet, a pile of peach pits falls prey to an army of ants.

IV. His tongue sits heavy, covered in fur. Looking through the glass doors, his gaze rests on the form swaddled in floral comforters. Back towards him, she is pulled in on herself, compact as an unshelled pecan. Coke bottle glasses bite deep into the bridge of his nose. Hitching his breeches up by the belt straps, he shuffles inside.

Sweet, Sweet, Marlene. Cream, Marlene. Sweet Cream and Marlene and Peaches. Sweet Cream and Peaches, Marlene.

The dusk, the heat, the silence encloses Billy like the skin and flesh of an overripe peach sheltering its own seed.

Peach Study | AUDREy kim | Watercolor

20 COLOPHON

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF: Mary Margaret “John” Hancock

Taylor “Pak of Wolves” Pak

MANAGING EDITOR:

MUSIC EDITOR:

Tai “1:25 P.M.” Massimilian

ART EDITOR:

Jessica “Shaynes of Grey” Cloud

LITERARY EDITOR :

Rachel “Kale Salad” Lefferts

PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR :

Kirby “Under the Table” Young

Communications Editor :

Cate “Are you Texting?” O’Brien

Faculty Adviser:

Ana “This is a Class” Rosenthal

Jane “DJ GU” Gu

ASSISTANT ART EDITOR:

Mary Kate “The Prodigy” Korinek

ASSISTANT LITERARY EDITOR: Katie “Mini-Me” Mimini

ASSISTANT PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR: Julia “JTeetz” Teeter

STAFF:

Anna “Banana” Lim Paige “Badgal” Goodman Callie “Voice of an Angel” Smith Caroline “Sass-a-frass” Bhupathi Cameron “Against the Grain” Todd

MANY THANKS TO Mrs. Rosenthal for your endless commitment to the magazine’s publication. You never failed to offer patience and support even in our shenanigans. We are eternally grateful for your encouragement. You truly are the mama bear to our Vibrato family.

Mrs. Cranfill and Mrs. Bennett for your feedback in the review process.

We are so grateful for the time that you give.

Ms. Wargo, Mrs. Murphree, Mr. Ashton, and Dean Matthews for your encouragement and support.

Melanie Hamil at Impact Graphics and Printing for helping us plan the production of this magazine. Your flexibility allowed us to transform our wildest design dreams into a reality.

Payton Scott for being our lovely cover model. Audrey Kim for your oncall artistic talents.

Vibrato is a magazine that exhibits the art, photography, literature, and music of Hockaday’s Upper School student body. Each piece is an original work by the student. Together, our staff members closely review and carefully select the pieces to include in the publication, design the spreads, and distribute the magazine. As you follow our journey in these stories and artwork, we hope you find one of your own. Explore, experience, express.

Favorite Quotes: “Who’s under the table?” “Raise your hand if you have a boyfriend.” “Are you with us?” “Into the nipple!” “Have you been eating the advisory snacks?” “Not that that’s bad.” “Where are the freshman?”

“Find people’s tumblrs.” “I can’t do this anymore Patricia.”

The text of this issue is set in TypewriterT 9pt. The titles of this issue are set in Bahn 40pt. Variances in size are used for titles of literary pieces, art, and photography as well as names of authors and artists. The table of contents is set in Bahn and TypewriterT with variances in size for title and subtitles. The magazine was designed using Adobe InDesign CS6. Two books are 24 pages with a self cover Polar Bear Velvet Book 100#. The other two books are 24 pages self cover Cougar uncoated Bright white text 100#. The sleeve box and DVD sleeve are Cover Platinum Silk 130#.

All parts of the magazine were printed by Impact Graphics and Printing in Dallas, TX. Inspired by Things I Have Learned by Stefan Sagmeister.

EXPRE SSION Dear Reader, Tap into the subliminal mind and uncage the wild animal of self-expression. Feral and pure and frothing, creativity leaps from the bounded unconscious and spills forth onto blank pages.

Its goal: to innovate. Expression, however, is not bound to unilateral convention. Instead, expression channels its energies in five ways, through artistry, imagination, physical activity, speech, and choices. As you traverse through these pages, explore these modes of expression through the Dada concept of design. Immerse yourself within Vibrato’s art, literature, and photography. And remember: express yourself.

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