Fabled | Fall 2020

Calliope FABLED

Calliope FABLED

EMILY YUNDA -RAIJER

I’ve searched far above the arctic heights, The tower ing mountains.

The winds howled in anger at me ,

The trespasser

Who had dared to step on their sacred mounds. The guardians of the hills sent me tumbling down those heights.

THE FOUNT

What has once kissed my forehead

And covered me under the war m cotton sheets

Alas, it was not there .

I had swum down until the deep blue

Became a suffocating black.

Deeper and deeper

Until the seagr ass twisted and spir aled

Until I could swim no longer.

The seafoam taunted me ,

Venus her self pointed and guffawed

I was cast ashore , the tides

Sneer ing and snicker ing

It was not there . Not there .

Where was it? Where . Where . Where?

Only the speech of liar s, of cr uel jests

Rip my hear t out

Pound it to a pulp, tear it to shreds

Feed it to the beasts in the realms below

For giving me such a futile hope , for

It was not there .

Rumored elixir s

Golden droplets of youth.

Lead me to that pond,

So I can wor r y no longer about what is to come

So I can cr y no longer about what has slipped through

What has bandaged my scar s

Of foolish ar rogance and playfulness

No, it was not there . It was not there

The memor ies

The simplicity

The blissful meaninglessness

The time .

The precious time

The fount was nowhere to be found.

It’s gone . Long gone . Goodbye , That honey sweet nectar, The fount I thought would never r un dr y, The fount I believed would always be waiting

Never to be found again, Now to be for gotten,

The fount.

Goodbye .

S T ORGE

HANN AH JON of course .

The cr ack of lightning and thunder followed by the groan of a mattress,

the subtle r ush of air as the door swings open, and a pause .

“Can I sleep with you? I’m scared.” The shift of the bedspread and a silent nod.

i’m sorry.

Raised voices upon shouts upon cr ies. Locked door s.

The shudder of unsteady gulps of breath and two, wet, salty mar ks on a pillow.

The creak of the door and yellow sliver s of light seeping in through its cr acks and his falter ing steps.

“Are you asleep?”

A steady exhaling breath with one ar m over my eyes.

The sigh of the bed leaning to one side and the gentle shifting of my ar ms and a soft, cool hand on my cheek. thank you. She sets the glistening smooth egg on my plate and Takes the other pockmar ked, Cr atered moon, dr ying Her wr inkled hands On her apron.

LUCID DREAMING

LEAH GOLDENBERG

when four legs became two and our two heads became one our hear ts became halves year ning to be whole

my life is devoted to make our hear t whole again

the faces of other s tr ying to mend their own broken hear ts

with ever y jagged spike on half hear ts that don’t match i grow even closer to you and unknown you an anonymous you

i could easily live my whole life never knowing you which would be the greatest tr agedy however

knowing you are searching for me too reassures me that we can be whole once again

- hopefully forever this time

DAEMON LOVER

MARGARITA KAZAK

As each day passed and the year s built up, She began to fade away Slipping to the back of my mind

I star ted to doubt her existence Because the image of her Seemed too fantastical, Like the legends were all I had ever known All remnants of her had been Er ased from my mind As I was from her s, Until I found a water stained card Signed with her name .

She began to retur n to me , Memor ies of day tr ips and laughter Flooded my mind

But the sense of abandonment

Revived as well

After she left, I clung to her postcards Memor izing the quir ks of her wr iting, Analyzing ever y word, Waiting for her to come home And asking myself why she had gone But I realized I was holding on to shadows.

As I have grown up, I wished to have even a fr agment of her But now I only wonder how someone Who shaped my childhood Could become such a str anger. Her stor ies still echo in my head, Romanticizing her mistakes. I long aspired for her life , But I am car ving my own place And wr iting my own stor ies.

BEAUT Y SL AY S THE BEAS T

RACHEL SMITH

The scar iest thing about the tr ue villains in this wor ld is that

Though I may be looking

At the vicious monster that broke me

Belle sees her Pr ince Char ming

And won’t discover he is a beast

As she ignores the claws slowly sprouting from his hands

Or the fangs showing in his mouth

Because Belle is so blindly devoted to his love

Convincing her self

Her doubts do not deser ve a voice

Until it is too late

And her hear t is clawed out

Just as mine was

And Belle is shattered

For the fair ytales she read

Taught her how the beast would blossom into a spellbinding hero

Fit for the end of her stor ybook

But she will lear n

Just because her happy ending

Is not as str aightforward and simple as she thought it would be

Does not mean it will not ar r ive

Or that she is unwor thy of it

For Belle is discover ing

How to tr aver se on a winding path

With nothing but an open hear t

And a willingness to gain a couple of br uises

Along the way

ANNEMAIDENVOYAGE,TWILIGHTCRUISE RIBORDY

Sword held high, she fended off the enemy, and became a hero They par aded her to a pedestal, waited until her ar mor came off, and stabbed her, in the back, twisted dagger s, bloodied; her castle cr umbled. Her body a broken vase , fell r ight through. The beauty and pur pose of life , plummeted into the void.

When the wave swept the surface , the weight of betr ayal sunk her ship, but she chose to stay on board, never emer ging from the ocean

As gr ains glean on the rocky shore , from the waning hour glass of lore , the memor y of a woman that dared, lay tar nished, a for gotten

CINQUEFOIL

NZAH TAJUDDIN

Dr ink up child, dr ink, It’s a hot day, you must be parched, my dear,

Come to the picnic blanket, I’ve made a small glass of submission for you, Downed with a healthy dose of anger for me , Together we can make the “perfect” household

Shush my dear, don’t look now, Something loud is happening in the kitchen, Life gets quite messy sometimes, Dr ink up my child Dr ink up and for get,

MIDAS KAYA IBARDALOZA

FABLED

Come inside little one , It’s time to dr ink up, There is no way to escape , Remember, family is forever. Forever dr ink my poisoned love .

One day venture into the garden, Where the spir its whisper war y war nings, Do not dr ink, evil, tr apped, captured, escape not so little one

I hate you, she r ages. Insolent, idiotic , for getful being, The screams of your sins haunt you, You can’t do anything r ight. You apologize for hur ting her

there is an end to a stor y, i think, wherein the pr incess loves the dr agon. she sits in her spire of a tower with stained glass on her skin and acne scar s on her jaw and she loves and hates with fer vor, of cour se she does, because ever y fair ytale is bor ne of a shar p mind and ever y love stor y is somehow a tr agedy - shakespeare thought that was a creed but we know it now to be the tr uth, know it well enough to know the tr agedy is not upon the lover s but the hunter s. this pr incess is not weak because she does not know how to be strong but because she knows what it’s like up between her three hear ts to the little human pr incess who is the victim of a “once upon a time”. she promises there is an end to a stor y wherein a pr incess loves a dr agon, and a kingdom is consumed for its hubr is.

KOIBAY JIHYEKIM

A NEW MORNING

MARIE KU

Golden r ays peek through the dense forest, Mud cakes her boots and sweat lies on her brow. Suddenly, she sees a light, small, yet shining br ightly through the shadows.

“The end?”

She emer ges from the tunnel of trees into a new univer se: A symphony of silence , And a blanket of cool wind with the gentle strength to br ush all cares away.

This is the place:

Where time is only told by the r ising and setting of the sun, Where humanity is no longer King, Where life moves in the way it was made to move And where no matter how vividly an ar tist painted, Or how passionately a musician perfor med, Or how deeply a poet spoke; None could possibly capture its majesty

If only they could see; knowledge

That they are mere specks in the landscape of the univer se ,

Unnoticed beneath the mor ning sky’s br illiance .

She smiles and throws her ar ms in the air, embr acing the wor ld set before her.

“The end? No, not the end. This is only the beginning ”

FANTAS Y FOR ONE JOSEPHINE MO

LOS T WONDERS

AKBAR

Guided by the wind, a child strides down the boardwalk and towards the whispering waves. Balancing on the ver y edge , he lets the water brush over his feet and the cold wind caress his face . The boy can sense he is the subject of one’s observation, but when he looks up all he sees are the clouds- dark yet fragile . As the little one turns around, the light from the gold sand warms his cheeks. Into one ear, comes the delicate and drowned out amusement of the crowd.

D AN GERS O F T HE SE A

EMILY YUNDA -RAIJER

Children laughing. Mothers humming. Into the other, a mysterious and eerie allure . Life had been simple until he walked into the realm of Poseidon. The howling of the sea disrupts his focus and he faces its forbidding presence . The water meets his skin anew, but it is no longer the gentle touch of before . There is urgency in its grasp- a sinful and hypnotic attraction. He wonders what the sea desires. And what a pure soul could offer such a merciless force .

WIT H IN RE AC H

NICOLE SURCEL

MY S TIC AL AVA HAGER

FINGER P AINT

MAIA SCH W ALLIE

a childish way of loving.

gr ubby hands to giant canvas, she paints our hear ts in color s that don’t exist, some sor t of blend between sunset dr ips and a rose-colored glaze . so i pull her hand from the lopsided image and paint her palm with mine ,

gr ace sugar-coated handpr ints down her back. i don’t really know how to paint,

back at ever y wayward stroke . i don’t like the way she changes ever y hue

from black to pink, or blows out my candles so i must paint in

the glow of her glimmer ing ego but sometimes i like the way she takes my hand

and a garden down her chest a forest on each leg a whole wor ld in each palm.

and the trees hold my shoulder s back and lift my chin with their boughs. i lean in to kiss the roses, for get the thor ns, what a foolish way to fall half in love paint.

LIGHT SHADOW S OLIVIA KIM

L ADYBUG

when i was young i stole a ladybug from a small garden on the side of my great gr andmother’s home . i lay her in a plastic container with tufts of gr ass

she slept in a dr awer in my closet. she was all alone , but that was because she was special, because she was the ladybug that i chose to love ,

brought into my own. the next day i dropped a splash of water next to her bed. it could be a puddle or an ocean or dr inking water, but it was for her and it was my best. a few days later she lay upside down, her feet crooked in the air, her wings dr y and faded. do you think her body remains in my front yard?

i hope she knows that i loved her the best i could, and i hope you know that, too, that i loved you with the gr ace i could spare , in the home i thought you needed. i am sor r y my love was so unr uly, though it swaddled you when it could, lighting candles with its lightning, r ipping r iver s into r aindrops. for give this elegy of misguided metaphor s.

my ladybug, i think you have for given, for i know you are at home in the soil, but i am sor r y i locked you away and bound your wings and loved you like i knew what i was doing.

SHANGRI-L A

because we will never be here again and that’s so losing battle to ash and dew in the cloudy recesses between lullabies and death cr ies, so can’t you see there is nothing yet left in those hor izons save for silted star light and splintered salt? it’s only ever been imagined things of a fevered dream, so close your eyes there’s nothing here for us anymore

AUTHENTIC LOVE

BELL A PEHAR Love

I don’t know why I wrote that just now. it looks so cr isp, so clean, so simple funny thing is; it’s nowhere near that. how could love be cr isp when it’s never clean never str aightforward never easy?

Love is reading between, on top, and under neath the lines, under standing comprehending analyzing the meaning in their eyes their smile , their embr aces.

Love is not even near to being simple simple means the answer is easy to know. do you know the essence of your love? what’s the answer to your beloved? To love? how would you answer?

I can proclaim to you that if your inter pretation is any br iefer than this poem your love is not real it is not Love .

VERONIKA GLIWA

L UBOMIRSKI GATE

Love is not at all clean

Love has messes

Messes of hear tbreak

That can become hear tache

tear s

emotional turbulence

despair & emptiness

messes that can be cleaned up: ar guments dusted off the top shelf, mistakes swept into the dustpan with a broom, hear ts mended like a window that once fell into a pile of fr actured glass breakups yanking both of you apar t like the tear separ ating the threads of cloth lampshade only and only if you authentically love them. that’s Love . perhaps even that is an answer too simple i know what Love isn’t and

We hope you e njoy our newes t edi tion of C allio pe, “ Fabled ” , a s much a s we did cr eating i t . A s

G le nbr ook Sou t h ’ s li te r ar y and visual ar t s maga zine , we showca se a var iet y of poet r y, shor t s tor ies , essays , photogr aphs , and visual ar t We value all cr eative s tude nt s at G B S and their wor k , and we s t r ive to pr ese nt their incr edible ar t to our communi t y

EDI TORS

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

Nicole Sur cel

Sar ah K im

PUBL IC REL AT IONS DIREC TOR

A lex Szmyd

PHOTOGRAPHY

Audr ey Hage r

A lex Yunda- R aije r

POETRY

Mar cel Hoang

J ose phine Mo

A nne R ibor d y

PROSE

Nz ah Tajuddin

Ru t h T homa s

VISUAL ARTS

Emily Cho

O m Patel

ADVISOR

M r s . A mie Elliot t

S TA FF

Z ain A k bar

Z ande r B r and t

Zoe Cos tianis

Maddie Da shnaw

A r ianna Dor an

Ve r onik a G liwa

Ava Hage r

Da sle Han

W ill K a she r

Olivia K im

Sydney K im

R achel Kunkel

Me ha k L amba

Hannah Lee

J ack ie Maciusze k

Elle Mile k

Sal Mona s te r o

M eghan Noe

Daniela Palille r o

Emily Pavlik

B ella Pe har

Ste phanie Pi t te r man

Eliz abeth Segal

Emma S now

Clair e Stoddar d

Tee r ada T hia

Noah Walch

N ur Yalinba s

Emily Yunda- R aije r

Lucia Zde nahlik

KI ZAIN AKBAR

EDITIONTWO