Daedalus 2017

Daedalus

DAEDALUS DAEDALUS DAEDALUS DAEDALUS

Greenwich academy 2017

Dӕdalus, the ancient Athenian, created the Minotaur’s famed labyrinth and invented wings so that he and his son could escape from King Minos.

Dӕdalus reminds us that we are all creators and all inventors.

Editors-in-Chief Jo DeWaal & Erinn Goldman Art Editors Devon Mifflin & Anna Sargeantson Senior Board Olivia Coyle & Christina Normile Web Editor Anisha Laumas Caroline Baird Graiden Berger Lily Berger Heather Bienstock Ainsley Buck* Katie Callaghan* Lizzie Carrier Fiona Casson Olivia Coyle Rachel Dong Elizabeth Dunn* Olivia Falkenrath Madison Farello Emily Fernandez Jessie Freedman* Emma Gallagher Sofi Gallegos

Staff Sara Ganshaw* Marley Houston Phoebe Jacoby* Izzy Kalb Sammy Kallman Laura Kapp Mairead Kilgallon Brooke Lange Alex LaTrenta Anisha Laumas Helene Leichter Anna McCormack Lulu Meissner Zoe Morris Jaclyn Mulé* Winter Murray Rachel Ong

Renée Ong Elisha Osemobor* Sarah Packer Laurel Pitts Emmy Sammons Sadie Smith* Annabel Thrasher Grace von Oiste Lauren Wakeman Jane Watson Rachel Windreich Elizabeth Winkler* Grace Zhao* Lexy Zitzmann *Junior Editor

Five times a year, Dӕdalus sponsors a Writer-of-the-Month contest. All submissions are sent by email and read anonymously by the entire staff.

In March, editors narrow the selections and begin production, which continues through April with art, layout, and page design. Through May the editors collaborate with our printer through weekly stages until our final assembly, where we read from the issue, show slides of all art, and celebrate!

Faculty Advisor Jeffrey Schwartz

Visual Arts Advisor Sherry Tamalonis

Printer CompuMail, Southington CT Section entitled “...but the air and the sky are free...” from Edith Hamilton’s description of Icarus' escape in Mythology.

Colophon 750 copies of Dӕdalus have been printed on 80 pound Euro Gloss stock with 120 pound Euro Gloss for the cover. The text is set in Palatino, a typeface designed by Herman Zapf and originally released in 1948.

CONTENTS Cover: Drawing & Digital Design Inside Front Cover: Drawing & Digital Design Section Pages: Marker & Collage

Sara Ganshaw Sara Ganshaw Renée Ong

Wings The feral twittering of the stars Photography & Digital Design Een Bezoek aan de Tuin van Van Gogh Photography & Digital Design How I Became Part of the Sea Watercolor & Digital Design Oil Pastel Wicklow Parting Sculpture Sculpture Sculpture Oregon Pear Pie Pen, Ink, & Markers For Aspen Jane Melody Sumner Pen & Ink Achieving Thermodynamic Equilibrium Pen To my eye-twitch: Photography & Digital Digital Design Little Yellow House Knowledge Unbounded (A Speech) Watercolor

Erinn Goldman Maria Martins Jo DeWaal Graiden Berger Mairead Kilgallon Isabel Allard Avery Barakett Anna McCormack Hannah Tischler Clarissa Gillis Amelia Riegel Alex Sala Katie Callaghan Devon Mifflin Emma Gallagher Grace Zhao Renée Ong Phoebe Jacoby Jane Watson Jo DeWaal Anna Sargeantson Laurel Pitts Susana Vik Sara Ganshaw

8 9 10 10 12 12 14 15 16 16 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 30

Jo DeWaal Phoebe Jacoby

34 37

Labyrinth World's Best Lasagna Pen & Ink

Drawing & Digital Anna Sargeantson Salt Ainsley Buck My Two Cents (A Spoken Word Poem) Grace Zhao Drawing & Digital Maria Martins Pen & Ink Grace Zhao Torn at the Edges Rachel Windreich Graphite Drawing Rachel Windreich Scratchboard Etching Rachel Ong How You Know You’re Fat Brooke Lange Paper Cut Isabella Giammalva Galaxy Anisha Laumas Drawing & Digital Maria Martins Who’s Listening? (Five Found Poems) Charlotte Duty, Katie George, Charlotte Sarbaro, Natalie Walsh, Katie Kulesh Scratchboard Etching Sutton Mock Rowing in the Dark Fiona Casson Photography Daniel Dachille Photography & Digital Design Erinn Goldman Her Tears Run Like Rain Jaclyn Mulé From the Georgia Coast (A Villanelle) The D Word (A Spoken Word Poem) Grace Zhao Digital Design Jessie Freedman

38 39 40 41 42 44 46 49 50 51 52 52 54 54 56 57 58 59 60 61

Mortals and Immortals Homer, Louisiana Paper Cut Photography & Digital Design Room in Brooklyn Radio Waves (A Screenplay) Digital Design Pickles and Braids Watercolor Koroipata, Fiji Photography Sirens (A Film & Dance)

Elizabeth Dunn Jo DeWaal Elizabeth Dunn Rachel Ong Emmy Sammons Sara Ganshaw Izzy Kalb Anna Khoury Elizabeth Dunn Hailey Stern Jane Watson, Katrina Hannett

64 65 66 67 68 68 76 76 78 78 80

Apple, Apple, Chocolate Milk (A Film) Ink Micro (A Film) Little Caesar (A Film) A Scheyer Son Pen & Ink Photography Things My Mother Gave Me Recycling Watercolor

Haley Aube, India Stephenson Christina Normile Danielle Kwait, Christina Normile Devon Mifflin Alina Pannone Jo DeWaal Jaclyn Mulé Elizabeth Winkler Grace Zhao

80 81 81 82 85 86 87 88 89

“...but the air and the sky are free...”

January Tan Photography requests from a poet, sent at 10pm sharp The Survivor Tree: A Memento of 9/11 (A Pantoum) Digital Design The Shelves Between Us Photography Pastel Crisco Cookies That Don't Crumble A Woman at Dusk Pen & Ink Exploring Grenada A Long Line of Strong Midwestern Women Markers Flight Illinois Roots Photography & Digital Design August No More Drawing & Collage

Devon Mifflin Emily Fiorentino Mairead Kilgallon

92 94 95

Helene Leitcher

96

Lindsey Pitts Erinn Goldman Devon Mifflin Phoebe Jacoby Olivia Coyle Laura Kapp Phoebe Jacoby Sarah Packer Olivia Ferraro

97 98 98 100 101 102 102 103 104

Devon Mifflin Alex LaTrenta Jo DeWaal Lucie Kane Rachel Dong Emily Thomas Renée Ong

106 107 108 110 111 112 113

The feral twittering of the stars* Erinn Goldman When she looked up at the night sky, there wasn’t silence like there used to be.

After that it was smaller things.

Her shoelaces began to quiver when her feet were still as stones.

The smooth wood back of a chair felt like the slippery ridges of teeth.

She smelled pine needles on a subway in the city.

At first she tried denial.

It didn’t work.

So she told herself it was internal, digging her nails into the world as she knew it, grasping slick sanity.

One night as she lay awake, the threads holding her pillow together spontaneously unraveled.

She lay on a swath of cloth and feathers wafting silently about her face.

The stars were bickering.

She listened as they shone.

The paper on the wall began peeling, and the raw, scared pipes writhed: naked.

She wondered what to remember.

*Line from "The Great Chain of Being" by Clare Rossini in May/June 2015 Kenyon Review

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Maria Martins

Photography & Digital Design

9

Een Bezoek aan de Tuin van Van Gogh Jo DeWaal Er bestaat niet zo’n tuin, maar ik ben er geweest zonnebloemen schetsende zware gouden hoofden, vogelverschrikker vervangers.

Ik volgde ze met met mijn vingers, omduikelde hen, de blonde verf met mijn eekhoorn haarborstel en legde de draaiende hoofden vast.

Waar geel is een grote een Jupiter en rood zo sterk als Mars Ik stond op en nam bloemen op in het geheugen van de zomer.

Graiden Berger

10

Photography & Digital Design

A Visit to Van Gogh’s Garden Jo DeWaal There is no such garden, but I have been there sketching sunflowers heavy golden heads, scarecrow stand-ins.

I traced them with my fingers, looped the blonde paint with my squirrel hair brush and fixed the turning heads.

Where yellow is as big as Jupiter and red as strong as Mars I stood and captured flowers in summer’s memory.

Graiden Berger

Photography & Digital Design

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How I Became Part of the Sea Mairead Kilgallon I say I am going for a run.

And I do. I run the line of the beach.

My sneakered feet dislodge dirt – the earth receives my steps, pushes me away, moving me towards the sun.

When the packed dirt loosens and turns into sand, I stop running.

Warm blood hums loudly enough to drown out the cold, but I stuff my hands in my pockets anyway.

I look up. In front of me, like I have arranged it on a picnic blanket, is the sea.

The waves throw spray, rejoicing in the December wind and white sunlight.

I remember when I would strip off my socks and sneakers, when my bare toes would churn the simmering sand until it cooled into something more tolerable.

Now I step onto the untouched carpet of beach leaving footprints that are more like sneakerprints.

I snap some pictures. Who wouldn’t?

The clouds cradle the light and sun breathes life into the crests of waves.

I can see where Poseidon got the idea for his gift of horses.

Clouds stand like a blue-gray wall along the horizon and the sun balances on its silver edge.

I stand just shy of the surf, hands still in pockets.

The wind’s cold fingers tug strands of hair out of my ponytail, they squeeze my ears, my cheeks, my nose.

The sun pools in my eyes; it is mirrored in rainbows on the water.

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If someone could see me now, I think they would stop and stare, if only for a little while, at the statue stuck in the sand: a freezing girl with a face of fire.

The sun sinks, slowly melting onto the other side of the clouds, where I imagine it dripping slowly into another sky, setting fire to someone else.

I stand until the last handful of sun is sucked out of sight. The wind wraps its arms around me, a faint song on its edges.

It sounds like a goodbye, or a thank you, or a call to stay just a little while longer.

Eventually, when all that is left of the sun is the line of brightness topping the clouds, I turn to leave.

I take one last, long look at it all: clouds, sky, sea. Wind presses into my eyes, but I do not blink. The song lacing the cold air strengthens.

Salt water saturates my lashes, torn from me by the wind. Drops race o my bright cheeks.

They shine like watery stars, illuminated by the dying fire in my face.

When they fall, the waves swallow them like they would an errant seashell.

A smile stretches my tear-streaked, numb mouth.

The wind still calls, but I turn my back.

Minutes later, my run is over.

I sit on the steps to the side door of my house, in an eddy that wind cannot reach.

I listen to my breath and I think about those drops of salt water I added to the sea.

A final drop is startled out of me when suddenly a gust rushes out of nowhere, taking an impossibly sharp turn and arriving like a slap in the face.

I burst to my feet. The call is all around me now, lilting, singing.

I tilt my head to the sky and answer.

Isabel Allard

Watercolor & Digital Design

Wicklow Anna McCormack In County Wicklow I saw one hundred shades of emerald.

Dense green moss covered gnarled trees and weathered wood.

Rain droplets clung to jade-colored ferns with unfurled fronds.

Every thread and filament of greenery glittered, and each leaf and branch slumbered undisturbed in a rare and perfect silence.

It seemed like an illusion, this placid glade, where rain fell silently on a lush carpet of jewel tones.

It belonged in a golden realm of folklore and myth, impossibly distant from the present.

But I had seen the vibrant green foliage amongst the unchanging copses of birch trees.

I had once lost hope in finding a place so untouched.

Avery Barakett

Oil Pastel 15

Parting Hannah Tischler I arrived at the bus stop two minutes late. Two minutes late. My entire morning was thrown off. I always wake up – right side of the bed, right leg down, then left. My slippers go on right foot, then left foot. I always reach for my phone and check my email for a daily update on my schedule that I had organized the night before. But this morning I grabbed my phone with my left hand. Ugh, not today. I put my phone back where it had been, take off my slippers, left then right.

I swing my legs back into bed, left then right, then lie down the exact way I had 30 seconds ago.

“Come on, you can do this,” I say to myself out loud.

I can’t be late. Not today. I begin my routine again, making sure everything is being done the way it has been for the past ten years. Today, there’s no more room for mistakes. I have scheduled an interview. I have to talk with a person. With people. But I haven’t been able to talk with anyone outside of this building.

“Yes, you can,” I say to myself once again. That time around, I finally grabbed my phone the right way. With my right hand.

“What if they don’t understand me? They won’t get your ways,” she said.

“Yes they will. Stop talking,” I said back.

“You’re a freak, they won’t understand. They hate you.

I hate you.”

“You’re not a freak. You’re not a freak.” I got up and began my way towards my bedroom door, slowly opening it with my left hand, my phone in my right hand. I was a special case. None of us are allowed to own our own phones, let alone allowed access to the public without permission. My case is different than all of theirs. They’re either on the verge of creating their end or five-year-olds trapped in the bodies of forty-year-olds. Some of them can’t pour their own bowl of cereal because they can’t remember how. Others need to hear that it’s sunny outside all the time. Always. I walk into 16

the kitchen and begin preparing my breakfast, following the same specific steps I have been following since I had begun life with just her. My mother couldn’t hang on, she couldn’t fight the battle that was going on inside of her. She left the both of us to live, while she got to die.

My breakfast always consisted of a bowl of Lucky Charms cereal and an apple. Always. It was all that we could afford at the time. My sister was working two part-time jobs to cover the bills and such. I didn’t really understand much at the time; I never understood why I was alone. Things were going all right until they caught her stealing food. They told me she lost her job. They had no choice. They did let her keep the food, though.

Clarissa Gillis

Sculpture

After I had finished eating, I put the dishes in the sink, soaking them for exactly three seconds. Looking up at the clock, I see that I’m exactly three whole minutes behind schedule. I should be putting on my sweater at this point, right sleeve then left, maintaining my routine. But it has been broken.

“No, no,” I say out loud. “You can fix this. You can do it.”

“No you can’t,” she says again. “You can’t do this. You can’t.”

“I can fix this. I can fix this.” I speed-walk back towards my room, making sure I follow the same path I always do and proceed with my usual routine. I take off my pajamas and proceed to put on my outfit that I always wear. White tshirt, right sleeve then left, then sliding the shirt over my head 17

and my torso. Green army jacket, right sleeve then left again, hood over my head. Black jeans, right leg then left, phone in my right leg back pocket. White socks, right foot then left.

Then my white Converse, right foot then left. I quickly run to the bathroom, brush my teeth, exactly two minutes long.

I grab my wallet with my right hand, opening the door with my left and shut it behind me. I make my way downstairs, two flights, 36 stairs. I go to open the door, but I can’t.

I haven’t opened these doors since I was fourteen years old. That’s when they discovered us, what she had been doing to me. The night she lost her first job I was twelve years old. Then it began.

Amelia Riegel

Sculpture

“I can do this,” I say out loud. I’m finally able to open the door and the bus is not there. I check the time on my phone and see that it’s 8:32, two minutes after the bus had arrived.

I walk to the bus stop, making sure to step over every line, avoiding the people who are going way too fast. My sister rushed into the house one night, swinging the door open so hard, it left a small dent in the wall. She would stumble around, like she was trying to do pirouettes. She would always smirk, almost like she was happy. It began with the yelling, then the pushing, then the shoving, then the hitting, the punching, the slapping, the slamming, the cut— The second bus arrives five minutes after the first one has left.

“You can’t get on this bus. You just can’t,” she tells me in a slurred voice. The bus doors swing open, and the bus driver looks me straight in the eyes.

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“Just turn around, wait another ten years and miss the bus again. They don’t need you,” she says. She yells that I’m not perfect. The neighbors hear the screaming, more screaming to stop the screaming. I get onto the bus, but she misses her chance. She stays back and doesn’t get on.

I haven’t seen my sister since the day they found me. It’s been ten years since I’ve seen her, you know.

Alex Sala

Sculpture 19

Oregon Pear Pie Katie Callaghan Eastward bouts of wind entangle your hair Knotting brown strands behind your ear.

You traipse through the shade of the orchard Thumbing pears for ripeness.

Mama needs a dozen for the pie.

You stand unevenly on your tiptoes Tugging each fruit towards your nose.

Inhale syrupy swirls of pears Twist the stems of those that make you salivate.

Smells like the soap Papa only lets guests use.

Caress the dirt off of each pear under the lapping stream And bind the felt skin in tattered gingham cloth.

You toss the crooked core of a pear into a thimbleberry patch Wipe away the sticky streaks of juice from your mouth.

Graham’ll be jealous if he knew I ate one.

Flour fogs the kitchen in the failing evening light Mama kneads pale dough in slow hypnotic circles.

You arrange the pears into two lines of six Parallel to the glass containers of sugar & cinnamon & flour.

I’m gonna help make the pie so I can have two slices for dessert.

Dough rests in the pointed corners of the pie pan Drips of warm butter pooling in the center.

Mama maneuvers a knife around the pears’ curves She invites you to slice the pears into even meaty chunks.

My favorite part.

Careful not to maim your “piano fingers,” Your knuckles pale around the dull silver knife.

Graham continues his attack on the keys Crafting an interpretation of “Rondo alla turca.”

Next year I’ll start lessons, too.

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You cut each pear into a dozen uneven slices Fan them out like albino peacock feathers.

Layer the cuts across the pillow of sandy dough Sprinkle crystals like dew across the fruit.

Just a little bit more sugar…

50 minutes and 350º taunt your cavernous stomach Despite a dinner of chuck roast and cabbage.

Oregon pear pie infiltrates the savory dining room.

Mama excuses herself to the kitchen.

Finally!

Papa whispers across the table, milk drips from his whiskers.

Janey-girl, grab a couple plates ‘n forks and you can have my slice, too.

Devon Mifflin

Pen, Ink, & Markers 21

For Aspen Jane Melody Sumner Emma Gallagher My fifth summer at Camp Spruce Hill, when I was 14 years old I was told I would be living with Aspen Jane Melody Sumner.

The flash behind her eyes and the flash of her nose ring terrified me and Julie But her hair was the color of soft butter on blue white china on a Saturday morning.

I was told I would be living with Aspen Jane Melody Sumner Who had only brought 3 t-shirts, 2 pairs of shorts, and 1 bathing suit, one the color of the sky after it rains Whose hair was the color of soft butter on blue white china on a Saturday morning Who didn’t smile for the first three days I knew her (for the record, I was the one who made her smile).

Her head lay in my lap, my hair the color of rusted sun sliding through Julie’s fingers.

Aspen told us that she kissed a boy, a boy named Joshua, behind her church every Sunday.

Stars collide and turn to dust in the sky above, and I wondered if she knows what love is.

The moon shivered across her face, and she says that she loves him.

Aspen told us that she kissed a boy named Joshua behind her church every Sunday And her mom’s boyfriend is Zeus, throwing shards of light and sound that shake the ground.

Stars collide and turn to dust in the sky above, and I wondered if she knows what love is When she talks of a foster system that wouldn’t let seven children see their mother for years.

She smiled a crooked smile, a smile that split her face open the day her mom sent her a letter.

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When I made her laugh the Earth split, butter melting on blue china.

I held her as she told me what her mom’s first boyfriend did to her when she was only 3 years old, I held her when hissing fire scraped across her cheek, leaving behind a grinning scar.

When I made her laugh the Earth split, butter melting on blue china, I told her secrets in velvet midnight that I had never intended to tell anyone And I held her when hissing fire scraped across her cheek, leaving behind a grinning scar My fifth summer at Camp Spruce Hill, when I was 14 years old.

Grace Zhao

Pen & Ink 23

Achieving Thermodynamic Equilibrium Renée Ong I, then a compact, vaguely spherically-shaped child, desperately tried to pry open the sliding glass doors that barred my entry to Singapore's brand new, we-spent-half-our-GDPon-this mall; my mother, embarrassed by her humid, sweaty daughter, apologized to the various half-alarmed shoppers that passed us on their way out. One man, sensing my imminent temperature-induced doom, crouched down towards me: “Hey, you better go in and get some aircon, all right?”

And so began my lifelong obsession with the word “aircon.”

As the years passed and I took on a more humanoid appearance, this fascination remained largely untroubled until I left Asia; I had not realized that in America, it is not referred to as “aircon,” but as “AC.” Suddenly, I realized that almost everyone I knew was an AC person, I alone aircon’s loyal subject. My friends pleaded with me to make the switch, arguing that aircon took too long to say, that it made no sense abbreviation-wise, and that it even reminded them of a “convention for air.”

In my struggle to find the right word and better relate to my clean-lunged brethren, I did test the phrase “AC” once.

It tasted foreign in my mouth, the syllables “ay-see,” a trivial and yet significant betrayal of the aircon I knew and worshipped. Other names also failed miserably; “AC” was too clipped, “air conditioning” slippery on the tongue, “Conair” ruled out because it is apparently the name of a personal grooming appliances brand. Despite my own hesitation, my American mother and sisters effortlessly switched over; my Malaysian father and I, however, refused to, widening the cultural divide within my own family. Despite all wellmeaning arguments against its usage, the term itself had become inseparable from my childhood memories and faraway homes—or rather, my life before moving to America.

It was aircon that had protected me from the suffocating Singaporean heat and blew away the muggy Hong Kong humidity. It was aircon that had saved me from Beijing’s 24

horrendous air pollution, which would only be considered fit to inhabit if one did not possess working lungs or a general wish to continue living. AC people were sterile, abiding by the traditional rules of abbreviation and leaving no room for adventure; aircon, on the other hand, was as fond and unusual as my childhood. Throwing away my true identity as an aircon person would be akin to replacing my childhood in Asia for my years in America, to disregard the intricacies of my journey to where I am today.

Phoebe Jacoby

Pen

Aircon was there every step of the way, over the course of living in four countries and visiting over twenty-eight.

My global upbringing has literally defined who I am, from my lifelong passion for traveling to my affinity for jumping into new experiences headfirst; being a global citizen has taught me how to adapt to any situation and learn about each culture without prejudice or preconceived notions. I carry a part of each place I visit long after I leave— aircon was one such trinket. Indeed, aircon was not just a vehicle to achieve comfortable thermodynamic equilibrium but was also representative of a stubborn insistence on returning to my roots.

Now unabashedly proud of a youth made up of muggy equatorial summers and airplane tickets, I’ve chosen to embrace the moniker regardless of its supposed unfamiliarity.

I remain a lone aircon lighthouse in a sea of AC individuals, its rarity in the American English lexicon far outweighed by my fondness for my childhood quest for pure, sweet air. I’m sure the sweaty child flailing at the mall doors would agree.

25

To my eye-twitch: Jane Watson You are younger than I am.

This leads me to believe – well, it confirms my belief – that I know more than you about each second in sixty minutes, and glazed eyes in need of coverage by aching lid and the curious contagion of yawning.

Just because you decided to show up now, a little late to the party, I must say, doesn’t make you fashionable.

O, great tremor of the oculus, O, perpetuating wink, O, raging hangnail of the soul, you are annoying.

You break eye contact.

Now, they think I’m unsociable!

(And in high school, that's the last thing we need.)

But because you are young, dear twitch, sweet stress-induced disturbance, because I know more than you, I know that I’m not those numbers on the page, that succession of permeating nightmares and bad sleeps – I am not anything that attempts to destroy me.

So I could tidy up for you, tell you to make yourself at home, and stay for good, but I’m too busy throwing a flirty wink at the thought of you trying.

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Jo DeWaal

Photography & Digital

27

Anna Sargeantson 28

Digital Design

Little Yellow House Laurel Pitts There’s a little yellow house With indigo trim And seashells on the blue green walls And old books with olive and maroon bindings in the library It has a white and brown beach Guarded by black rocks And it looks over the still navy water With a meek pale yellow sun In the foggy gray sky There’s a garden in the front Overgrown with mild lavender and thick ivy And a rosebush on the gate Peeling with white paint The glass panes are foggy The widow’s walk is spiderwebbed A yellow raincoat hangs on a hook Next to matching boots A candle sits on a windowsill, waiting As day turns to night and night turns to day And summer turns to winter to summer again In the rain and the sun and the snow and the wind And nothing changes in the little yellow house

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Knowledge Unbounded (A Speech) Susana Vik I have some random facts for you: Doctors give C-sections most often around 5 pm and 10 pm. That’s probably because at 5 pm they want to get home for dinner and 10 pm they want to get to bed. Here’s another one: Up until 1883, Cannabis was the largest agricultural crop in the world. The Declaration of Independence was written on cannabis hemp paper. How about this: Legalized abortions are correlated to a reduction in crime rates.

I could go on, but I’ll save you the headache. All of these bits of info are from documentaries I’ve watched. Yes, documentaries are my dorky guilty pleasure. I sometimes watch one on a Saturday night rather than hanging out with friends. I am honestly embarrassed to think how many times I’ve prefaced some fact with the phrase, “So I watched this documentary….” Even though I know filmmakers have biases and usually I develop my own perspectives outside of what I have seen on screen, I absolutely love all the random facts that they have given me – especially because the facts help me satisfy my admitted fondness for always being right.

The first one that I remember watching was Waiting for Superman at the recommendation of my sixth grade English teacher, Ms. Mooney. I’ve seen it over 20 times. No exaggeration. It follows four families through their struggles with a public school and their attempts to find something better. In spite of their dedication – to carving out a brighter future for their children – they find themselves powerless in the face of an unwieldy, impenetrable, and immutable government system. Over my many viewings of that film, I came to see the power that true, human stories had to change me. To open my eyes to my reality – to the opportunities and the privileges I have been given. Until I could sympathize and comprehend a different experience, it was hard for me to understand my own. The stories of those four families revealed a world to me that was so much bigger than the one I knew.

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Waiting for Superman, Food Inc., 13th, Girl Rising, and countless other documentaries invigorated me by forcing me to consider my life, to become more introspective and discover my own place in the world – to see where I fit in. Reflecting on the advantages that have been bestowed on me – and thinking about what I did to deserve them – I’ve come to the realization that it's not that I’m undeserving of what I have, but rather that I’m not more deserving than anyone else.

It took watching documentaries for me to really understand how valuable GA is, how lucky I was to be a student here – and, most importantly, how many random facts I would know if I took full advantage of GA’s education.

After all, until watching my first documentary, my hard work at school had been in the interest of one thing: Grades. I looked past the real purpose of education – the development of knowledge – because I was too focused on results to be bothered to know more than what I needed for an A. Watching documentaries – and seeking a greater truth amid the fog of bias – I came to see how much more satisfying knowledge – deep knowledge, unbounded by practical necessity– how much more satisfying that was than the results it earned me.

And there is so much knowledge to be had here.

Just look at all of our teachers. Think about how much they know among them. Look at all the freedom we have been given to be curious, to draw from their teachings. So, as I stand here, more than anything else, I feel grateful. When I do finally leave this place, every time I learn something new or spew another random fact on people’s indifferent ears, I’ll remember GA and all the people here who have shared their knowledge with me – and given me the confidence to embrace my dorkiest impulses.

Sara Ganshaw

Watercolor

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World’s Best Lasagna Jo DeWaal Judy Bartels Benson cared. She made sure the brass knocker in the shape of a pineapple stuck on her wooden front door glimmered in sunlight. She made sure the tangy wallop of vinegar mixed with tap water made the windows facing the street sparkle. Judy, born twenty-six years ago in Muncie, Indiana, made sure she cooked the healthiest dinners for her family of four. At six-thirty sharp every evening, Judy made sure her Revere Ware pots and pans with shiny copper bottoms were set square on her electric range cook-top, ready to go.

“World’s best lasagna,” said Judy.

On a Thursday night before a long weekend, Judy slipped the ruffled-edged pasta into a pot of rapidly boiling water tinged with olive oil. Moist steam rose like a spirit. As she wiped her long fingers against her pink polka dot apron cinched tight to her trim waist, she vowed to make the lasagna with different layers tonight.

She pulled the stainless steel mandolin 44-blade slicer from the cabinet and pried the “plastic pusher” safety guard off with a screwdriver. The stacked razor sharp blades gleamed in the overhead fluorescent light. Judy beamed.

“Girls!” called Judy. “Come help in the kitchen, I need your small hands.”

Judy busied herself filling an eight-quart pot with water.

As the kitchen nozzle gushed ice-cold water, she became impatient for her daughters’ arrival.

“I’ve got Parmesan cheese bread too!” Judy called out.

“Come nibble!”

Her brown eyes, like polished agates, followed her deft hands as she quickly slathered her famous mixture of butter, garlic, white pepper, and minced fresh parsley on the bread dissected lengthwise on the red cutting board. Cutting off thick slices for the girls, she pushed their pieces toward the mandolin. She snapped open a box of Reynold’s Wrap aluminum foil—“most important tool in the kitchen,” she 34

was known to say—and swaddled the remaining loaf like a newborn.

“Come and get it!” she called.

As two whole cloves of garlic, cut free of papery white skin, chopped, diced, and minced, sputtered in hot oil in a teninch frying pan, Judy reached for her Wusthof paring knife from the bamboo slotted holder. She caught her reflection in the shiny blade winking back at her. A “kitchen magician,” as her sister Jackie called her, Judy reached for the purple onion, as round and smooth as a World Series first pitch, and began slicing.

Judy aimed the pointed blade of the Chef’s knife into the skin of the onion and pierced the pungent flesh. As the round form lay in perfect exposed halves, Judy wiped tears caused by amino acid sulfides released from the onion with the back of her hand.

“No need to cry,” Judy muttered. An inhuman grin spread across her face.

The overhead fan in the white-tiled kitchen hummed as the FM radio she still had from college whispered jazz music in the background. The far-away lyrics of Charlie Parker mixed with the honking of Coleman Hawkins’ saxophone.

Judy didn’t sing along or bee-bop to the swinging tunes. Her feet, tucked into sturdy athletic shoes she only wore while cooking, stood firm. Judy was focused on her task at hand.

She glanced at the face of the dinner plate sized clock stuck to the wall above the door leading to the basement. The long, strong arms of the clock pointed to the hour she had been waiting for: assembly of her dinner plan.

“You’re gonna love this!” Judy called out.

The woodsy C-sharp to B-flat tones from one of Bill Evans’ marimba tunes mingled with the saturated garlic and onion air. Judy caught herself crooning into a slotted spoon she held up as a makeshift microphone. She didn’t know the words but she hummed like a throaty Ella Fitzgerald, improvising as she went along.

“G-i-r-r-r-i-l-s!” she called out in a singsong voice.

Twisting from her waist, Judy hefted the blood-red 35

Kitchen Aid Artisan and Ultra Power Tilt Head Pro-Mixer to the counter. She slid the seven-quart stainless steel bowl into place and thought about the bread, biscuits, batter, and cookie dough she could make. But not tonight. Tonight was different. Tonight was going to be extra special.

“You will be so surprised!” bellowed Judy.

First born to a family expecting a healthy boy, Judy knew she wasn’t wanted. But she tried to find favor anyway. She learned to put the brakes on her tricycle before careening down a hill, and she learned to tie her blue Keds tennis shoes tight, weaving those big-mouse-ear-shoestring-loops together, without any help. But she also learned it was easier to create something new rather than rub up against what was expected. Tonight would be no different from all the other times she had tried so hard to be accepted. Tonight she would create something new. Really new.

Judy spun the silver volume knob on the radio as far as it would go to the right. A raucous rendition of Duke Ellington’s East St. Louis Toodle-Oo blared into the kitchen filled with the aroma of melting Parmesan-Reggiano cheese, heated oregano, and sweaty anticipation.

“Mommy’s wait-ting!” cried out Judy.

Homemaker, cook, party-giver, handwritten-note-sender, plastic-bottle recycle sorter, sock-finder, fifteen minute email responder, par excellence, Judy spun on her heels and flung open the door to the tiny broom closet, off the kitchen.

Swiffers, Wet-Jet mops, O-Cedar brooms, cans of Pledge, Endust, and Raid, and an orange bucket crammed the crowded space.

“It’s gonna be the best,” screamed Judy.

She bent down and grabbed her gagged daughters, aged five and six, by the wrists. Hauling the petrified children to the counter, she placed the soft palm of the younger girl on the mandolin and began to slice.

36

Phoebe Jacoby

Pen & Ink

37

Salt Ainsley Buck “I think you’ll want salt on the zucchini,” Dad says in hopes of drowning out the yelling coming from below.

It’s been five years of this now.

I’m used to his tactics, his distractions and I can tell his fake smile from the genuine one.

But I go along with it anyway.

“Is there a difference,” I ask, “between white salt and pink?”

He feigns thinking for a little, but I can tell he’s just listening to my brother’s fireworks that are already too loud.

I bite my lip, hard, to stop myself from crying.

Soon, I taste the blood.

Great, I think. More salt.

Anna Sargeantson

Drawing & Digitial 39

My Two Cents (A Spoken Word Poem) Grace Zhao if you’re going to talk about SEXISM, spend more than two lines on it, don’t limit it to feminism because here’s the thing, you see, women work every bit as hard as men, but they get the perk of being a man, and while we’ve been on our knees, they’re the ones with higher salaries ‘cause as WOMEN we grow up being told ‘be pretty, be proper, have kids before you get old’ but how about my life, my dreams, my career, now part of me harbors the greatest fear that someday a little girl will ask me, Mama, why? how come they’re telling me that i can’t, just because i’m a girl? and women will watch that poison unfurl perhaps now’s the time to start a new page because at least in this day and age, it seems that i’ve got a shot to be feminine and FIERCE but that hasn’t been the case in past years from suffragettes to activists we learn about the women who helped us start to earn the EQUALITY that we’re still fighting for and i wish i could name more than just Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Ida B. Wells because there were so many others, and each story tells of yet another LEADER, not just the lot we might see in books, or the ones we may be taught There’s Mary Wollstonecraft writing with conviction to right the misleading depiction that women are unworthy, with Alice Paul rising in mutiny to follow the tracks of Susan B. Anthony 40

and while they won the vote, right now on this earth there are beautiful women who don’t know their worth girls who grow up without what they need without education, let alone a book to read and yet the FUTURE runs from our flesh and bone men can try all they want to reproduce on their own no, we are gifts, and we are GIFTED, strong, resilient, unafraid to acknowledge the long history that we’ve spent serving below the feet of men; equality, don’t you know that’s all we’re asking for, not what they might think not the “feminism bullshit” they say without blink-ing their eyes, and i APOLOGIZE ‘cause i really didn’t mean to patronize as if women don’t know how it feels to be made lesser, stuck preparing meals for hungry husbands, so now we’re HUNGRY too we see a tomorrow, but there’s a new world to be built before we get there and i have a DREAM that my girl will have it fair.

Maria Martins

Drawing & Digital 41

42

Grace Zhao

Pen & Ink 43

Torn at the Edges Rachel Windreich I watch as the erected barracks slowly come into view.

They look out of place in the miles of barren desert. The smooth land contrasts with the great mountains in the distance. The bus continues its steady ride under the warm March sun as it brings us closer to the camp. Passengers converse with each other but the atmosphere is tense. My grip tightens on the sleeve of the coat in my lap. My parents keep to themselves, but my younger brother won’t stop pestering me. “Hey. Hey Martha. Hey,” he whispers as he tugs on my sleeve. Annoyed, I jerk my arm away from his grip and try to ignore him. I recognize a classmate of mine sitting a few rows ahead with a woman I assume is his mother. I hadn’t noticed him before, but his questionable haircut gives him away. I want to ask him about the book we never got to start in class or about why he had gotten into a fistfight with another kid last week, anything to take my mind off of the present situation, if only for a few moments. “Hey Alex,” I whisper, trying not to draw attention to myself. “Psssttt.” He looks back to see where the voice is coming from. His eyes quickly catch mine before averting my gaze. I try again, but Alex doesn’t even acknowledge me this time. As we pull into the camp, we are greeted with a perimeter of barbed wire along with an armed guard. There’s a line of dozens of people that leads to a crowd of about one hundred people, waiting, I assume, to be told what to do next. The bus comes to a halt. I can just make out the lettering on the entrance sign: “Manzanar War Relocation Center.”

School was never my strong suit. I had always struggled to keep up and my grades suffered because of it. Working in my father’s toy store was the only escape for me. Our business was small, nothing fancy, but it was how we made our living.

The stone building was fit with display windows at the front.

The words “Mizuguchi’s Gifts: Toys Treats & More” were boldly painted overhead. When entering the store, customers were met by a musky aroma with an after-smell of lavender 44

soap. A delicate sweet scent would creep in whenever we were selling treats. Taffy was always my favorite.

My father always took pride in running his own business.

He never hired workers if the sign needed to be repainted or if the lights were acting up. He was known for being a tough businessman but was always gracious with the customers.

Though limited, I valued my role in the store. I would clean the windows or sweep the floor, hoping that gradually, I would be given more responsibility. I was eager to learn and quick to help with whatever needed to be done. Even at a young age, I’d promised myself I would remain dedicated to the family business. I was determined to prove I was worth my father’s time. I needed to prepare to take over one day.

Executive Order 9066 changed everything. We were forced to sell most of our belongings. It pained me to watch my father lose his business, but the week we were given to organize our estate didn’t give him many options. The windows of our store became clouded with grime, muddling the view into our once impressive display. The front sign had begun to chip and fade. On the day of our departure, I looked out the store window and nervously watched as the bus pulled up to a line of people on the sidewalk. I fidgeted with my last piece of taffy. I observed a young couple struggling to hold on to their luggage as they waited at the back of the line. The wife’s petite frame strained under the bulk of her bags. She shifted her weight back and forth, trying to find a more comfortable position. Her husband dealt with his own pile of luggage beside her. I couldn’t tell if the woman’s porcelain face was flushed because of the strain on her body or because of the crisp wind. A part of me wanted to help the couple. However, another part of me observed with disdain.

Her luggage was probably burdened by the empty jewelry box she refused to sell. I bet she even had a few picture frames somewhere in there, a luxury we couldn’t afford. “Gus, Martha, let’s go.” My mother’s firm voice snapped me out of my trance. I swiftly unwrapped my candy and stored it in my cheek as I scrambled to join my family at the bus.

The taste of the candy reminds me of the Jones family that 45

Rachel Windreich

46

Graphite Drawing

would frequently visit the store. Their youngest child would go straight for the taffy. They were the kind of people who could afford to spend their spare time window-shopping or taking leisurely walks. I didn’t know what Mr. Jones did for a living, but he seemed like an important man. All four of the Joneses had the same handsome features and coarse, auburn hair. I often admired Mr. Jones's tailored coat, his sturdy build and confident posture, though his suspenders strained against his sizable girth. Their eldest child, a girl who I estimated to be around my age, was the most formal.

She’d patiently watch her younger brother run around the store but would get nervous when his excitement would go too far. He was like a wind-up toy that had yet to run out. I often had the urge to reach out to the girl, but never spoke more than a few words to her. I’d argue with myself over this matter as I watched the family, but by the time I’d make up my mind, she would already be walking out the door.

My father gently rocks back and forth with the movement of the bus. He maintains his gaze out the window, staring at the desolate land, as if he’s waiting for something important.

He dries his cheek with the sleeve of his coat. Gus has stopped tugging on my arm, his eyes now aimed at the floor as he tries to fight the inevitability of sleep. My mother’s youthful face now looks more tired than ever. Back home, she’d always take care of her appearance, making sure to properly style her hair before going out. Now, she continues to nervously smooth back any imperfections. “Don’t worry, Mom,” I reassure her. “I’m sure you can buy some more pins once we get there.” My mother just looks at me with sorrow in her eyes.

She gently squeezes my hand.

A few days into packing, Mr. and Mrs. Jones visited the store as I was sorting through our belongings. Mr. Jones came in with the same confident gait and strode over to my father, ignoring the CLOSED sign on the front door. His wife casually walked around inspecting the space. Her brow was furrowed in concentration, her delicate hands clasped in front of her.

There were boxes everywhere, the shelves had been cleared off, and the walls stripped, leaving no indication of our 47

family ever being here. My father’s expression remained neutral during his brief conversation with Mr. Jones. He wasn’t being his charismatic self, nor was he hostile towards his visitor. His voice was stern, his eyes dull and heavy. I tried to listen in, but I couldn’t get close enough to them without being too obvious. After a few minutes of talking, they shook hands one last time. Right before walking out the door, Mr. Jones suddenly stopped in his tracks. “Oh. I almost forgot,” he said as he turned around on his heels. My father seemed to understand this sudden cue. He reached behind the counter and pulled out the store key, then swiftly handed it over to Mr. Jones in an attempt to be subtle. I quickly looked away.

I try to block out the constant hum of the bus. The taste of the taffy has long faded. A tingling sensation creeps into my legs as I begin to feel drowsy. My brother’s head rests on my shoulder, his breathing even. I put my face closer to his, trying to get the last whiff of his shampoo before it fades.

I’m tempted to unwrap some of the food my mother had packed but I’m determined to make it last as long as possible.

I ultimately give in to my craving but only allow myself to nibble the ends of the sandwich. I figure we’re almost at the camp. With nothing else to do, I try to remember the smell of my room, the feeling of my favorite dress that I was forced to sell. I squeeze my eyes shut, as if it would help lock away the memory of home before it’s replaced with the sight of mountains and the feeling of a thin layer of dust across my face. Even as the bus begins to slow down, signaling our arrival, I refuse to open my eyes.

I tentatively follow my parents into our assigned barrack with my brother lagging behind. Inside, there are a dozen metal-framed beds on either side, creating an aisle down the center. I briefly set down my bags to give my arms a rest. I observe the thin, uninviting mattresses and the stiff blankets draped across. Half of the beds are already claimed but we manage to find four empty ones in the far right corner. A few people watch us as we walk down the aisle, but I avoid eye contact with them, hoping to hide the mixture of disgust and uneasiness written on my face. I attempt to hurry by, but 48

my mother’s painfully slow pace prevents me from doing so. Once at the beds, I begin to organize our suitcases and unpack some of our belongings. Nothing is said between the four of us. Even Gus remains silent. Mother and father go off to the side and speak to each other in hushed tones; they look uneasy. As I continue unpacking, I find a familiar bundle of cloth neatly tucked away in my mother’s bag. To confirm my suspicions, I reach in and remove it from the bag.

I check to make sure my parents are still occupied. I slowly unfold the strip of rough material, which reveals the bold, black lettering: I AM AN AMERICAN. The thin, white canvas remains discolored from being hung across the front of our store. Though torn and a bit frayed, the sign remains strong.

I tighten my grip on the fabric, unable to bring myself to put it away just yet. I look up and find my parents staring at me.

I hold my mother’s gaze. Neither of them say anything.

Rachel Ong

Scratchboard Etching 49

How You Know You’re Fat Brooke Lange I wonder when people decide you’re fat.

Is it when you have to angle the heels of your feet outwards more than any of the other girls to show your thigh gap? Or is it when you sit down in a beach chair wearing a bikini and your stomach rolls over and over into itself?

Maybe it’s when a boy breaks up with you and even though nobody else knows what happened they assume it must be something to do with the cellulite on your thighs.

Maybe it’s when you’re put on a track like mice trying to find the cheese and they say go and you just can’t move your jiggling legs as fast as the others.

Maybe it’s when you and your friends go out to eat and everybody else leaves something on their plate (like half the beet kale salad they ordered) but you demolish your chicken fingers and curly fries even though they’re looking at you like you’re some type of animal.

Oh I know.

I know when you know you’re fat.

When at 11 your doctor tells you that you are in the 75th percentile of the average weight for your age, gives you a sympathetic look and asks if you would like to talk to her about nutrition.

50

Or when you’re 9 and only eat when your parents make you because you found the scale in your mom’s room and you looked up online how much girls your age weigh and it was a lot less than you.

Of course no one would ever just come out and say it.

You’re Fat. They’re too ashamed.

Too embarrassed. Instead, of course, they will talk about it behind your back until one day, roused by their whispers you follow the direction of their eyesight to your muffin top.

Maybe then. Maybe that’s when you know you’re fat.

Isabella Giammalva

Paper Cut 51

Galaxy Anisha Laumas Stars are places where thumbtacks of bright white light fell out.

Maria Martins Drawing & Digital

Who’s Listening? (Five Found Poems) Charlotte Duty, Katie George, Charlotte Sorbaro, Natalie Walsh, Katie Kulesh 1.

Yesterday, he opened the door for me.

No, he didn’t!

Yeah, we were both stuck and he asked if I had a fob.

He spoke words to you?

Yeah, he literally spoke words to me. I died.

Wait, so, did you have one?

No, yeah, I did and then he opened the door super cheesily.

Oh my God, that’s too much for me to handle. I would have died.

I know! And I was just like, “Thank you.”

Hahaha I would have died.

2.

I’m actually having a life crisis right now.

Let’s hear it. Life crisis, let’s go.

She’s been pissing me off so much lately.

Oh my god, it was so bad.

She came up to me and was like, “Can you listen to my problems?”

And I in my head I was like, “No shut up.”

But if you ask her what happened that night, she will tell you she did it.

But if you ask anyone else, they’ll say something completely different.

It was so bad.

The most annoying part is she always says how much she hates him.

54

3.

I feel sick.

You should go home.

I can’t be behind.

Feel better.

You said that two weeks ago.

Maybe you need more sleep.

I definitely do.

Then get more.

It’s not that easy.

Ok.

4.

I can’t take it anymore.

Can’t take it anymore?

I can’t take it anymore.

Take what?

Everything.

Everything?

Everything. I’m exhausted. I’m stressed. I’m emotionally depleted.

I can’t take it anymore either. I’m tired. I’m sad. I’m sick.

I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know.

5.

What are you doing? Mom! Huh, huh, relax, relax. I’m just checking the notifications.

Don’t touch my phone, or else.

Calm down. All I want to do is see if they sent them yet.

They are coming out in 12 minutes. You can wait.

Don’t tell me what to do, Honey!

Well, I am going to get food. If I come back and anything has been touched, there will be consequences.

Now you’re starting to sound like your father!

Very funny.

Bring me back food!

Sutton Mock

Scratchboard Etching 55

Rowing in the Dark Fiona Casson I push o from the dock and exit the small circle of light cast from a flickering overhead lamp. Leaving the opiate of certainty for the unknown, I find the water heavy and pungent with the smell of sediment that has been dredged up after a long summer of disturbances and churning oars. I settle myself in the middle of my seat, a false sense of security.

Adjustments will have to be made stroke by stroke. I plant my oars into the gelatinous, stubborn water, and it resists me.

After the season of ferment, it does not want to be moved. I see neither my oars nor the water in the darkness. I can hear only the gentle gurgling of the vortexes I create. I feel the water working against each ligament of my shoulders and legs.

Fleeting glimpses of lives onshore fly past. A weary train rushes over a bridge, deafening me momentarily. A church spire appears suddenly illuminated by headlights and upon it hangs an eďŹƒgy, grotesque and unnatural in the synthetic beams. Apart from such transitory spectacles, I cannot see what is ahead of me. I feel only the sway of the water and the force of my exertion upon it.

At this time last summer, the obstacles in my path were visible in the June light, but it is November now. November is a harsher teacher. The brash barges that sound their rattling horns will not stop for me; they know their way, and to them all seasons are the same. They plow through the water without discrimination, immutable creatures liberated from time and precision. Yet I want to survive, so I continue on into the fathomless night. There are those for whom the light of June has always shone, but my light is November.

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Daniel Dachille

Photography

57

Her Tears Run Like Rain from the Georgia Coast (A Villanelle) Jaclyn MulĂŠ Her tears run like rain from the Georgia coast and the boy with a molasses voice winks; summer fireflies flicker like a ghost.

The slow world simmers in their southernmost town as nighttime rolls to the starry brink; her tears run like rain from the Georgia coast.

He longs to run with her in the almostpenniless shadows, under the moon-blinks; summer fireflies flicker like a ghost and he knows that they have no coins to boast of and nowhere to go; he sadly thinks her tears run like rain from the Georgia coast.

He inhales the deep light of the lamppost as the dawn sky glimmers with moon-lit ink.

Summer fireflies flicker like a ghost, and she leaves with morning’s dying host of stars as he sits alone, buys two drinks.

Her tears run like rain from the Georgia coast; summer fireflies flicker like a ghost.

Erinn Goldman

Photography & Digital Design 59

The D Word (A Spoken Word Poem) Grace Zhao You never imagine that it would be you Once upon a time, it's filed away in drawers of the Internet Until the quicksand, the darkness, creeps into your reality Suddenly, you pause and find yourself choking On something that hurts... but what hurts?

You’re just a girl going through a rough time, they say You don’t have to go using the D-word now, they say And I can’t help but think, just tell me already Do I need meds? Am I gonna be okay? Is this my fault?

Are things ever going to be okay?

Cause I can’t stop crying; Cry me a river, some say. Build a bridge, get over it – And I see the bridge, oh believe me, I can see it all right, But I look down at my hands and they drop Like boulders in a stream, sinking deeper Anchoring my motivation to a dissolving bedrock My smile Tangling itself in a rushing current that surges forward – Too fast, and I can’t catch up; And then they ask me why – Why are you sad? Why aren’t you happy?

And if I knew, well... if only I knew; Because when it hurts, something hurts... But what hurts?

Maybe it’s the gaping hole in your chest Or the fact that suddenly you’re drowning And then the next second you’re on fire And you can’t breathe and you’re choking It’s like you’re dangling with one hand from a skyscraper Everything is so far below you; the earth starts to quake And all you can do is watch and shake with it; 60

Because if you Let Go – You can’t let go. But you can’t hold on, either It’s like a thistle caught on the hem of your pant leg Or a mosquito that buzzes in the crevice behind your ear That you itch and scratch and swat at and shoo away But it won’t be gone any time soon; Maybe you need help; all you know is that you hurt So your fingers reach out to type a message But would you really say: “Hey, I think I might be...”

Or if you dial a friend’s number, how do you explain that It hurts, it hurts, oh my God, it just hurts; And you’re even afraid to say it out loud Because you don’t want anyone to leave you behind – They say they won’t, but it just feels like you’re stuck Imprisoned beneath the confines of this word Caged in by the bubble of jet black ink in the letter D And you’re sinking and burning And dangling and choking And the world keeps on turning and turning, without you.

Jessie Freedman

Digital Design 61

Homer, Louisiana Elizabeth Dunn Sitting at the dinner table, I don’t know why it’s this story that makes my father cry – that turns the rims of his eyes red and glossy, That makes him furrow his brow and press his lips into a hard line so that the sadness doesn’t spill out.

He tells the four of us – sitting around him with our forks picking over burnt ham, blistering and dark where it should be soft and pink – he tells us, “Your grandfather wouldn’t stand for it. Maro was his family,” We nod, not sure who Maro is. Dad says, “So your Grandfather marched right up to the Homer sheriff, who was this big ruddy faced white man, and told him that Maro was one of his men.

Told him Maro had been working in the family since he was a boy.

He told the Sheriff that he’d let all the white guys go by and stopped Maro just cause he was black, and that Maro was not gonna pay this ticket.

‘You better rip it up,’ your Grandfather said, ‘You better rip it up right now.’”

His mouth has cracked open and is dipping down at the corners in a way that makes my stomach lurch and I have to lift my feet onto the edge of my chair so I can pull my knees to my chest.

“That’s Louisiana law for you!” Mama laughs to shove the tears back into Dad, to harden the line of lips once again. “Just rip it up and it’s gone!”

But my father has already risen from the table and left the room leaving his chair empty and his plate of ham untouched.

64

Jo DeWaal

Paper Cut

65

Elizabeth Dunn

66

Photography & Digital Design

Room in Brooklyn Rachel Ong The world sits in the corner of her bedroom.

A glistening new vase placed where the early sunlight hits, The old rocking chair, tired from years and years of use, Pale yellow and peeling paint on the windowsill.

Rows of windows lined the mahogany walls, Sharp corners and bright specks flicker near the horizon.

It is too far and unfamiliar, a world beyond her own.

The woman sits in the rocking chair, Waiting for a knock on the door.

She notices A gust of wind grazing the curtain.

The freshly-bought bouquet of flowers Lingers until the first signs of wilting.

67

Radio Waves (A Screenplay) Emmy Sammons FADE IN: SCENE 1 INT. CHURCH WITH FLOWERS FOR A FUNERAL PAN TO: ELLY’s mom, tears running down her face as her body shakes in sobs.

BACKGROUND We meet here today to honor and pay tribute to the life of (ELLY’s mom sobs and the name is inaudible) and to express our love and admiration for...

FADE OUT SCENE 2 16 hours earlier INT. GIRL’S ROOM Pan from AC/DC posters covering one wall to the rest of the tidy room(except for one chair that is covered in clothing) CUT TO: An alarm clock. It rings, waking up ELLY as she fumbles to turn it off before knocking it from the nightstand. She groans as she tries to grab the alarm clock and falls off the bed. (Camera angle does not change from on the dresser, but the focus shifts to a photo of her at age 6, and a 12-year-old boy – he has a scar on his forearm) The alarm stops. A hand with chipped black nail polish puts the alarm back on the dresser. (Camera focus shifts back to alarm) “Back in Black”

by AC/DC begins.

CUT TO: Shot behind ELLY standing in front of her closet, dressed in pink pajamas. Pan 68

from bunny slippers to the back of the head of this high-school-age girl, shoulder-length hair, messy, loose, poorly bleached blonde waves. She picks out an outfit- bomber jacket, t-shirt, and jean shorts.

CUT TO: ELLY putting on her shirt. A glimpse of a massive bruise on the back of her arms and back is revealed.

CUT TO: Picking up her bag, ELLY knocks a poster off the wall to reveal a break in the plaster where someone has punched it. (She quickly covers it up) CUT TO: ELLY leaving her apartment, putting on headphones as she glances at the apartment door across from hers. She stops at a bullet hole in the door frame.

FLASHBACK: ALL unclear shots. Shouts to get out, slamming doors, single gunshot.

MOM (Out of focus, in the background) What about breakfast?

ELLY (Out of it) I’ll get it at Ridge. (She puts in the other earbud) CUT TO: SCENE 3 SCENE 3 EXT. Ridge Bell twinkles as the camera follows behind ELLY entering a convenience store.

INT. Ridge Set up like an old fashion deli, ELLY goes straight for the coffee maker, fills up a cup of coffee, grabs a crumb cake, and heads to the cashier. The bell chimes, in walks SEAN, 69

shaggy brown hair, dressed in jeans and a gray hoodie. He is at least 5 years older than ELLY.(She takes out her earbuds and the music fades) FLASHBACK (triggered by chime of closing door): Wedding bells chime, shot from behind bride’s head, older male in focus: “And I now pronounce you husband and wife.” CUT TO: unclear darker shot, shouting: “We are done!”

Another shot from behind bride’s head, same older male in focus: “And I now pronounce you husband and wife.” CUT TO: another unclear darker shot, shouting: “I want a divorce!”

CUT TO: INT of Ridge SEAN Hey El, thought I would find you here.

ELLY (ELLY drops her head before she can make eye contact, dazed again from the flashback) Um. (Under her breath) Asshole. Hi SEAN. SEAN (He pauses, clearly unsure of what to say next) Uh- it’s been a while. So are you still doing that broadcasting thing? (No response) People should call you radio waves. Get it?

The hair, and your job... (He trails off when she still is not responding) (Camera cuts to ELLY’s profile, her expression is blank, she is still not looking at SEAN) So... first day of school, right?

ELLY Senior Year. (To cashier) Thanks. (Change jingles in her hand as she puts it in her pocket and turn towards SEAN). Oh my god SEAN, you look horrible. (She instantly regrets that choice of words) Sorry... I — 70

SEAN No, it’s fine. I know. (His eyes have purple bags underneath them, and he looks as if he hasn’t slept in days). So how’s your mom?

ELLY Fine (She shuts down the topic of her own mom quickly) Yours?

SEAN Usual. (He pauses) ELLY Oh. SEAN At least now I can use some of her stuff. (He chuckles nervously) ELLY Ha, ha, very funny. (Camera cuts back to SEAN’s face, he wasn’t kidding) Oh, shit.

(Tears well up in her eyes) I’m gonna be late for school. (She brushes past SEAN, the bell jingles again, SEAN turns, exposing a long scar on his forearm) CUT TO: SEAN’s face: Regret, confusion, and sadness SCENE 4 EXT. Overhead view of average-looking high school; bell rings.

INT. High school hallway ELLY is walking with her friend MARGARET down the hallway.

MARGARET Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask. How’s your mom?

ELLY She’s fine. (through gritted teeth) MAGARET (A pause) You? 71

ELLY (This causes her to break, tears well up in her eyes, she pulls up the side of her shirt to reveal the massive bruise on her back) This is from two days before the divorce was finalized.

MARGARET Oh - god. ELLY. (She pulls her into a hug) ELLY (She pushes her away) She should have known.

Craig married another woman before her. He hurt her too. At least my mom is lucky enough to not have gone crazy during the divorce.

This other woman is in rehab now for drug abuse. (She sighs) God, and to think they gave my step-dad custody of their son. (She sighs again) And then he acts like nothing happened, marries my mom, and pretends like I’m actually his kid. (She is crying and anger washes over her) And then my mom acts like nothing is happening when Craig has his outbursts.

And because his asshole of a son was 19, he moved to the apartment next to ours and didn’t even bother to help us. I hate him.

MARGARET Craig?

ELLY No. Well yes, but that’s not who I’m talking about.(She wipes her tears away) MARGARET I know it’s not much, but you know I’m here if you need someone to talk to.

ELLY I wish SEAN was someone I could talk to, and I have my diary. (She forces a smile)

72

MARGARET I know, but you two burned that bridge with him a while ago. (ELLY looks at MARGARET) Hey, so me and a few people are gonna go to the diner later. Wanna come? At least we could keep you out of the house for a while. We might also go to the cemetery after... look at the views. Johnny has a fake id and said he would bring some stuff?

ELLY Thanks Marg, but I think that’s probably the last thing I need right now. I just want to be alone... plus, remember I’m still interning at that radio station, and I am responsible for the broadcast from 8 to midnight tonight.

I’ll catch up with you guys another time.

MARGARET Hey, try and sneak in an AC/DC song for us?

ELLY (She chuckles. This is the first real smile she gives so far) Alright, see you later.

(They embrace) SCENE 5 INT. Ridge Bell chimes as ELLY heads straight for the coffee machine.

CASHIER Back already? (A pause) And a large? (He points to the cup of coffee) ELLY Yeah, long day... and I have the late shift tonight. (She walks to the register to pay) CASHIER Ah. (He pauses) It’s on me. (He motions towards the coffee) ELLY (She smiles) Thanks Big-John.

73

CASHIER (Big-John) I expect to hear some AC/DC? (ELLY smiles again) Bell Chimes CUT TO: SCENE 6 SCENE 6 INT. Piedmont Radio Station ELLY is sitting at the desk of a radio broadcasting room, her cup of coffee in hand, homework sprawled all over.

ELLY Welcome to Piedmont’s one and only radio station. Today we will be playing some of my personal favorites... by AC/DC, and later we will be having a contest for two tickets to the next movie showing at Grand Lake Theater!

Alright, Highway to Hell by AC/DC... (This song begins to play. ELLY takes a sip of her coffee.) She begins to do her homework, but can't help but dance. She dances and then begins to cry. (Editing note: stop song at 1:10.

The song ends, she wipes her tears away) Now we will be having our open caller contest.

Each caller will be given 45 seconds to explain why they should have the tickets for the movie and which date they will be taking.

Call us at PIE-DMON-TRAD, with the extension 510. Messaging and data rates may apply. You may begin now. (The phone rings) Hello to our first contestant...

FADE OUT

Sara Ganshaw 74

Digital Design

Pickles and Braids Izzy Kalb Pickles My name is Pickle. Well, technically that’s my nickname, but I’d really prefer it if that was my name, so I guess it is kind of my name. My real name is Elizabeth Marie Dannel, but that’s just so long and fancy that it makes you expect something else out of me than what you really get. That’s why I’m Pickle. Just plain old Pickle.

The only person who still calls me Elizabeth is my mother.

You see, sometimes she doesn’t understand why I would prefer Pickle. I’m sure she tries, but she’s just not the kind of person who would ever understand.

My dad is the reason I’m Pickle. You see, when I was a little kid I was always getting into scrapes. I would come to him with a real specific look on my face – nose all scrunched, eyebrows drawn in, cheeks still pink from laughing, but with just a touch of guilt – and tell him everything. Every time, he would wait for me to tell him my story, let a little woosh of air slip out from between his lips in a sort of sigh, and then say, “Well, isn’t this a pretty pickle.” He always knew exactly what to do. Also, I could just tell somehow that he wasn’t really mad about all that silly stuff I did. He would act all stern but every time, just while I was telling him the worst part, a little glimmer of laughter would peek out at me from deep inside his eyes.

Soon, he started to be able tell the second I walked through his study door when I had done something wrong, just from my expression. He started calling it my “Pickle Face.” It got to happening so often that he started calling me Pickle around the house. “Good morning, Pickle.” “Do me a favor and pass the butter please, Pickle.” Every time he said it, we would share this kind of secret smile, and inside of me this happy balloon would just inflate. I guess from there it kind of caught on. Now my mother is the only one who doesn’t call me Pickle. I wish she would.

76

Braids My best friend is Rosa Billet. Rosa has brown eyes and pale skin and absolutely no freckles. She has this really thick blond hair that her mom braids for her into two plaits every day before she comes to school.

For a long time, I didn’t get to have plaited hair, and I used to be sure those plaits were the reason Rosa always won everything. One day, I finally confronted her. She beat me in a race, and she was walking around looking just so smug, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I just came right out and told her that the reason she beat me had nothing to do with speed. It was all because her hair was in braids and mine wasn’t.

She came right back and said, “Well, if you want braids so badly, why don’t you just get your mom to braid your hair? Huh?” That made me feel sort of funny – like a turtle that tries to crawl back into its shell only to find it doesn’t have one. My mother isn’t the kind to braid hair. I guess Rosa realized that, because her face kind of fell, but not in a sad or guilty kind of way, just in this real specific Rosa kind of way.

All the lines on her face got kind of pensive and deeper than they were before.

All of a sudden the sun came up behind her eyes and she just walked right around me and started to braid my hair. It took her a ridiculously long time, but I didn’t mind. Every day since then, Rosa has braided my hair into two braids for me the minute we both get to school. They’re always kind of crooked, but I never say anything. My mother says it isn’t polite to point out other people’s mistakes. One time she said that to me, and I just looked right up at her and said, “Then how come you always point out mine?” She said she had a headache. She gets a lot of headaches these days.

Anna Khoury

Watercolor 77

Koroipata, Fiji Elizabeth Dunn Freddy’s van sputters along Judas’ Way – as Freddy calls it – Judas, because it’ll betray you.

We ask Freddy how a road could betray you and he chuckles that we’ll understand by tomorrow.

“You better beware,” he says.

We laugh because Freddy’s also the man who swore to us that in Fiji cannibals lurk in the Highlands and feast upon wandering Americans.

As the sun climbs slowly up the horizon, the van loafs along, its pale hue vanishing into the newborn sky.

Jagged rocks and deep crevasses muddle the road beneath our wheels – black, shiny asphalt lies miles behind.

Freddy narrows his lids over dark eyes, jolting the wheel side to side to avoid the biggest rocks.

But – BAM – the back left wheel bursts, and the van sags to its knees.

“Betrayal,” Freddy mutters. “Curse you Judas!”

He climbs out the driver’s window – the door hasn’t opened for years – and prods the hole with his finger.

The wheel crumples onto the dirt.

Calloused hands rake through dreadlocks – dyed orange at the tips and held together with a rubber band.

“Yep, we’re walking,” Freddy says.

Swallowing dry air and grime, we gulp, but say nothing.

“Don’t look so helpless, there’s a store a few miles away.”

We trudge behind Freddy beneath the scowling sun and towards the untarnished horizon – blue and empty.

Over unimposing green hills and streams that pirouette between their lulls.

“We’re a far way from Suva, huh?” Freddy laughs wholeheartedly.

We join him. “A far way from Suva,” I repeat.

We’ve never been this far from anything.

The shop emerges as the sun dips below the distant mountains – the only structure within range of the naked eye.

Its wood exterior white-washed and peeling, a sign – once a vibrant red – that reads Kakana/Groceries.

Once we're inside, a tall, lanky girl named Aaliyah with black, shiny eyelashes and an eager smile hands us two cocoa popsicles – no charge.

They taste bittersweet and unexpectedly creamy.

Aaliyah's father, Mac, offers us a ride to Freddy’s hometown and our final destination – Koroipita.

Listening to Freddy and Mac murmur in the front seat, we stumble along the rocky terrain in another pale blue van.

I feel my head slump in surrender to exhaustion, as the sky morphs into a deep piece of velvet speckled with millions of holes and stretched over a shimmering light.

Hailey Stern

Photography

Sirens Film & Music by Jane Watson Choreography by Katrina Hannett

Apple, Apple, Chocolate Milk India Stephenson amd Hailey Aube

80

Ink Micro Film Christina Normile

Little Caesar Danielle Kwait and Christina Normille

81

A Scheyer Son Devon Mifflin He didn’t look anything like she expected.

Earlier that morning, Jocelynn read in a letter from her mother that a Scheyer son had recently been admitted to the Renwick Smallpox Hospital on Roosevelt Island. Now hours later, the letter still lingered in her mind, leaving a feeling of disgust that was not from the bumps encasing her body or the curdling medicine in her stomach. Instead Jocelynn was disgusted by the notion that while on the verge of death, dressed in itchy pinstriped pajamas, locked on a quarantined island the size of New York’s pinky nail clipping, and smothered in red bumps, her mother was still fixated on “pairing her up with an eligible bachelor.”

According to Mrs. Holliday, Willard Scheyer was a gem.

He was the kind of 33-year-old lawyer who was so quickwitted, grossly charming, obnoxiously successful, and candidly wealthy that a spell of smallpox was nothing more than a small wrinkle in an otherwise flawless façade.

But Ruth Holliday didn’t know the first thing about being really sick. Her frame of reference was a lingering cough between March and October of 1863 and stomach pain after eating at the Gollbrey’s Christmas party of 1858. Mrs. Holliday knew somewhat of the severity and talk of “the smallpox epidemic.” But like mothers before and after her, Mrs. Ruth Gelfield Holliday was under no assumption that her dear Jocelynn would not recover. In fact, she was already planning Jocelynn’s second coming out event (the first being her actual debutante ball three summers prior). Ruth had fully committed herself to the idea that Jocelynn’s “post-survival” presentation would be at this year’s Gollbrey Christmas party. And Ruth could not help but dream about how perfect it would be if Jocelynn then had a suitor, perhaps Willard, to escort her to the Limon’s New Year’s Eve extravaganza.

Jocelynn was angry with her mother. Not only because she seemed to continually disregard her concerns and simply 82

respond with gossip, but also because her mother was under the impression that being trapped on a sliver of an island in a hospital in a stark white room under the care of individuals who looked at her as if she were a straggly piece of hair in their morning oatmeal was a natural matchmaking arena.

Truthfully, Jocelynn’s days were almost unbearably dull.

So she was a mix of agitated and happy to receive bits of information from the outside, as distortoted as her mother’s perspective was. The most newsworthy occurrence of the last two days was the death of the third Molbam sister. Everyone at this glum institution really loved those ladies; they were the perfect combinations of classy and audacious. God knew everyone at the Renwick Smallpox Hospital needed a little spunk. It was getting pretty morbid, even for a place where your loved ones sent you off to probably die.

So, in an attempt to catch a glimpse of her real world, though it was becoming more and more a fantasy, Jocelynn Holliday slid on her woolen socks, tied her hair into a loose, but maybe flattering low bun (her mother was not there to tell her otherwise), and prepared to find Willard Scheyer.

At eleven o’clock in the morning, nothing happens at the Renwick Hospital. Not that anything really happened there besides the wheeling off of dead people, but relatively speaking, nothing happened at that hour. Jocelynn seized the moment to wander out in the hallway after the nurses had administered the ten o’clock medications and before they began lunch service at quarter to twelve. She clutched the letter in her fist as she walked. Even though Jocelynn was flustered by its contents and was uninterested in aligning herself with her controlling mother, she felt the letter gave her a justification for seeking out Willard. So, letter in hand, back straight, and face spiffed up with a long overdue smile, Jocelynn approached Williard’s ward.

Ruth Holliday tended to exaggerate, so Jocelynn had prepared herself for a homely, scrawny, chunky, or balding man. But Willard was the spitting image of everything her mother had taught her to want in a partner, besides the fact that he was horribly sick. Jocelynn could see his glow even 83

through his pasty skin. By her estimations he probably had two weeks… maybe with a few days bonus. She had seen it all: sadly, four months was enough to see it all at the Renwick.

But in seconds he had shocked Jocelynn enough that she stumbled, stepped on a forgotten cloth, twisted her feeble legs, skidded into the air, and crashed onto the floor just in front of Willard’s cot. And when she looked up, she knew it.

His sickly face cracked a smile, a smile that darted through her, stealing her breath for just a second or maybe two.

Enough time passed that before she could apologize for her less than ladylike entrance, he reached out his hand without even glancing at her rashes and asked, “How are you?” Oddly, this was the first time someone had asked her this since she’d been at the hospital. In fact, it was the first time she had been asked this since she had gotten sick.

For the last year Jocelynn had drowned in “You look bad,” “You’re feeling better,” “You have six weeks,” “You have ten weeks,” and “You are failing.” But where was “How do you feel today?” or “Can I help you?" Even her mother’s letters were probably better classified as diary entries or Hopes That My Daughter Marries rather than empathetic inquiries and responses.

Jocelynn was taken aback. But she quickly pulled herself up and responded, “I’m not okay, but I’m well. And how are you really doing?”

84

Alina Pannone

Pen & Ink

85

Things My Mother Gave Me Jaclyn MulĂŠ I. A jewelry box, burnished like stained glass, the marble threaded with hoops of gold.

Clean-cut, it clicks shut with an old lock, reflected broodingly in the light-wrought mirror.

II. A fair-haired doll in a blue dress and hat, fringed with lace, her curls and attire reminiscent of a more romantic time, assessing the room with blank eyes after so many years spent inside her porcelain shell. Her gaze is wide, begging as she addresses an unseen figure loitering in the doorway, slipping like starlight through the air-conditioned air, wary of her attempts to guard the room she occupies like a china ghost.

III. Beautiful and cold, the mirror stands from ceiling to floor, expands the space into violet paint, has the power to bend perceptions.

It seems to watch, gaze past the people, past the door.

In the shadows, beyond the rafters, light bows away softly, like a whisper; the mirror glints like salt crystals in the half-light.

Jo DeWaal

Photography

87

Recycling Elizabeth Winkler

When my sister’s scans came back clear, I could almost taste the drop that trembled on my upper lip sweetened by happily ever after.

We sold ourselves a fairytale: Senseless villainy of cells – vanquished.

But we had misread the ending, happily ever after hadn’t come.

I still watch our favorite shows and turn – a mascara-filled tear shaken loose from laughing lashes – to the imprint of her absence on the cushions.

The conscience in my eyes awakens for her scarred and aching body, for the platelet transfusions and stem cell transplants, for the Zofran and the other drugs whose names she’s memorized, for the girl always bored by sleep now conquered by magnetic eyelids, drawn to each other with an inexorable pull.

And perhaps one forced drop crawls down my face like tar – barely liquid but not quite solid either – clogging each pore as it slides under the skin back to my eyes: a single reused tear.

88

Grace Zhao

Watercolor

89

January Tan Devon Mifflin Last Saturday at 10 am, we met Darlene. We’d never met Darlene before, but we’d heard of Darlene. This isn’t to say that Darlene is a sort of celebrity, but that Darlene thinks she is a sort of celebrity.

After we checked in and before we met Darlene, we waited in the small, sterile waiting room of Darlene’s enterprise: Dazzling Tans. Darlene runs her business out of the first floor of a townhouse off of Main Street. We sat patiently on static-inducing plastic chairs, in a haze of spray tan exhaust fumes, and surrounded by oversized images of unnaturally tan women on the beach or by a pool. Darlene walked towards us and called our name, though she didn’t look in our direction. Darlene was dressed in a loose, black beanie with the Stamford Police Department seal on the front, worn-out black leggings, a tight long-sleeve black shirt, platform black sneakers, and an unusual (well, unusual for this grey, crackly time of winter) orange tan. Darlene surveyed the waiting room with a quick down-up look and pivoted back to her backroom salon where she uses all-natural, vegan concoctions to give her clients radiant tans, ones that may even outshine, literally, those that come from the sun.

Darlene called towards the backroom: “Turn around, Honey,” in a strong monotone, and then proceeded to say: “Can you believe three seniors came in here yesterday who have never been tanned.” When we informed Darlene that we’d also never been tanned, she gave us the down-up look, shifted from monotone to a valley twang, and stated: “But why?”

Darlene led us back into her backroom salon behind a series of black shower curtains and gave us the lowdown: “No jewelry, hair in bun, wear this cap, clothes in here, phone in here, shoes in here, peel here, put your feet on these things, stand there.”

“Flip those switches, Hun. Arms up.” Having only ever purposefully tanned a handful of times, and by tanned we 92

mean the kind with the sun and a ratty beach towel, getting tanned by Darlene was, well, unusual. As Darlene smothered our naked, raw-chicken-like bodies in sticky orange sap using something akin to a spray paint can, she asked us: “Where are you going to college?” and “What sport do you play?” Darlene was not just a tan artist, Darlene was a sort of celebrity. And Celebrity Darlene met our responses with rehearsed name-dropping. And when we flattered Celebrity Darlene with “Oh, you know a lot of people!” Celebrity Darlene simply smirked and nodded.

Darlene repositioned us several times during the tanning process, which is recommended by numerous skin care foundations and research centers, until we became a homemade flytrap. “Flip those switches, Hun. Stand here,” directed Darlene before she disappeared behind the black shower curtain.

Sixty-five seconds into the tan drying process, which consisted of standing in front of a silver fan and watching orange gunk harden on our skin, she called through the black shower curtain: “Turn around, Honey” in a strong monotone.

Darlene knows the high school social scene better than high schoolers know the high school social scene. Darlene tells high schoolers when dances and such are before they even know when dances and such are. Darlene also hasn’t ditched the High School Mean Girl in her. Last week Darlene asked a friend of ours, “Do you need a tan for both proms or will you probably only be invited to one?”

As we were leaving with a tan that only vaguely resembled those of the women in the pictures in the waiting room, we looked down and saw that the dog bite marks on our hands were getting quite red.

Inspired by Jamaica Kincaid’s "Talk Stories" in The New Yorker 93

requests from a poet, sent at 10pm sharp Mairead Kilgallon give me four walls – each painted a darker shade of black until the fourth one is so deep i fall into the void. give me one electric light – humming with clinical sterility that scorches the ears, white light that drains color from my eyes. give me two feet – attached to legs and torso and arms and so forth, the spine slumped against the wall and the face staring into the middle distance. but also give me one dahlia flower – cupped in the hands of the torso and feet and back and middle distance, a magenta that is not sucked dry by the walls or light or thirsty skin. and now give me several moments of silence – stop and look for a while at the scene you gave me, this one extraordinary flower, for nothing is quite as beautiful – or quite as sad – as a small life alone in the darkness.

Emily Fiorentino

Photography 95

The Survivor Tree: A Memento of 9/11 (A Pantoum) Helene Leitcher As the sorrowed skies filled with smoking clouds, I watched my city in tumult and despair.

Families huddled in the tear-stained crowds Their delicate skin buried in the ash-filled air.

I watched my city in tumult and despair.

And yet, in this moment, there was some unfamiliar grace.

Even with their delicate skin buried in the ash-filled air, I saw strangers hugging strangers, melting into warm embrace.

Even in this moment, I found some unfamiliar grace Amongst the tangled and damaged community.

I saw strangers hugging strangers, melting into warm embrace.

My leaves curled, my roots ripped, and all I could see Was the tangled and damaged community.

I grasped for life, a dissolving photograph before my eyes As my leaves began to curl, my roots ripped, and all I could see Were fields of black and red blurred across the sky.

I grasped for life, a dissolving photograph before my eyes, Forcing branches of hope from my weakened wood.

As fields of black and red blurred across the afternoon sky I tried tirelessly to survive the best that I could.

Today I have found a new home, one far away Where my branches of hope and hollowed shell Lay still under a shield of glass to remind them of that day, The day that our glorious twin towers fell.

I was there, my roots laced into the shaken soil As the sorrowed skies filled with smoking clouds.

I saw the soul, strength, and unity of a city With its delicate skin buried in the ash-filled air.

96

Lindsey Pitts

Digital Design 97

The Shelves Between Us Erinn Goldman It smelled like disinfectant and unsavory oatmeal as we approached the dining hall of Nathaniel Witherell Nursing Home. Twenty pre-K girls in school uniforms trailed behind me. Each girl used two hands to carry an owl-shaped table decoration, which she had constructed with paper bags, toilet paper rolls, coffee filters, buttons, feathers, and my help.

“God bless them all! Each one of you is perfect!” a grayhaired resident called as the four-year-olds walked past him down the fluorescent-lit hallway.

When we entered the dining hall, the residents were eating breakfast. The children looked wide-eyed at them: the woman with an eye patch, the resident who could not speak but waved his hands at the children, the man in the wheelchair who smiled quietly, the woman who cooed, “Hello!

Aren’t they the cutest!” After placing their owl decorations on the tables, the children crowded together to sing.

As I watched, I thought about my own grandmother, Robby. “Your life is always a weekend,” I had said to her once.

She had been draped in her brown reclining chair, looking like a flimsy branch. Stopping by her house in between an exhausting day at school and a long night of homework, as I did most days, I had thought my grandmother’s life seemed filled with leisure.

Over time, however, I noticed how she never seemed to leave her brown chair, how she spent most of her solitary afternoons dozing next to a barely-eaten sandwich, how she forgot why she needed a watch.

One January day, as I sat down in my usual chair, my grandmother said suddenly, “I keep thinking, my God! No more shelves at 80 Sherman Road!” referring to her childhood house sold decades ago. “Whatever will we do! So many shelves. Are we happy with where we are in life right now?”

Her question had startled me, and I wondered why, in the confused corners of her mind, she had focused on the shelves that she no longer had. I smiled and tried to distract

her with details from school. I no longer believed her life was a weekend.

In the nursing home, the children seemed smaller than usual. I hoped the residents could feel how these children helped me feel. Every Tuesday afternoon when I make crafts with them, I am reminded how they do not know how to tie knots or roll tape-balls, how they ask so many questions, (“what does cemented mean?”), and how they are endlessly entertained by little things like soft cotton balls. They help me remember only the present. They have not left behind any shelves yet; they have their whole lives to fill those shelves.

I hoped I brought a little of this feeling to Robby.

A resident next to me recognized the girls’ uniforms and told me she and her daughter had both attended our school, too. She began telling me a story about a bracelet but could not remember the details, trailing off and looking disconcertedly up at me. I recognized Robby in her, and I realized I knew exactly how to respond. I smiled and reassured her, “That sounds great.” It had taken many afternoons, many different responses to Robby’s confusion, to decide that this was the best response. The woman smiled back through her confusion, like a mirror, looking less anxious. I felt like my understanding was worth something, and I hoped the children were watching and learning to care, understand and respect.

During those nursing home visits, I have realized the exceptional power of youth. The power of these children to make the rooms a little less stagnant, heavy and broken only with endings, a little more like a beginning. There is power in these visits for me, too, the power to remember my grandmother, to bring people together, and to gain perspective while I am between such extremes of age.

Devon Mifflin

Photography

Phoebe Jacoby

100

Pastel

Crisco Cookies That Don’t Crumble Olivia Coyle My grandmother suffered a fall last spring that left her motionless on the floor of her apartment for two days before anyone found her. I can’t imagine the stillness that must have hung in the air, perhaps only disrupted by the ring of her telephone or the sound of a car pulling into the driveway of her neighbor, Loretta, a 95-year-old woman who still swims laps at the YMCA everyday. My father had called on Thursday, letting the phone ring until he heard the recorded voice of his mother, trapped in the answering machine. On Friday he called again, and when he only heard her automated voice, he called again and again until he knew for certain.

My grandmother lost her husband to cigarettes over 20 years ago, and she lost her daughter, who doubled as her best friend and living companion, nearly two years ago to a confusing tangle of heart defects and complicated illnesses.

Despite the tragedies she confronted, she never showed us she was broken, reminding us that everything was okay with her signature Crisco-saturated sugar cookies.

Sitting in the stark buzzing room two weeks after her fall, her frail arms protruding from the flowered hospital gown, she complained of her loud roommates, groaned to my father about how she just wanted to get back to her home, and confided in me and my brothers of how she was trying to cheat the fitness tests they had her take so that she could get out of the hospital faster and back living alone.

Though she met her recovery period with resistance, she accepts now that regular isn’t possible. In her new home at an assisted living center, she invites us to meet her friends, shows us where two elderly women got into a fist fight over getting the best seat in the movie theater, and tells us all about her weekly water aerobics classes. I see a certain sadness in her eyes when my dad talks to her about selling her house, about what pieces of her life should be thrown out and what should remain. But when she sends us Crisco cookies in the mail and gibes us with cynical comments, I know she is still okay.

101

A Woman at Dusk Laura Kapp A sky tinted soft yellow, almost green.

A single streetlight illuminated as the night descends.

Stairs leading up into the lush forest, becoming black and invisible under the growing shadows.

The woman in the window is not ready to slumber.

The sun may rest his head, but she remains alert.

There is still too much to take in and dusk is just another part of the day, not the end.

Her face in shadow glances to the left at what lies beyond the boundaries of the window frame.

A child slumbering peacefully?

A husband reading the paper?

A cat purring rhythmically?

Or nobody, just the woman in her armchair staring into the roaring silence of the room.

When she turns back toward her window, she will be staring out at us – just as we look in and ponder her.

Phoebe Jacoby 11002 102

Pen & Ink

Exploring Granada Sarah Packer I remember walking past the blooming coral roses that lay around a luxurious fountain as water seeped from its gilded mouth.

I remember stepping out onto the cracked pavement and seeing the street sign: Cobertizo de Santo Domingo.

I remember passing through salmon-colored buildings and lush gardens, finding sweet abandoned kittens, and trudging through clumps of perspiring locals and modest shops.

I remember the miniscule streets, taking unknown lefts and rights, and constantly facing dead ends.

I remember feeling my stomach flip, realizing my small iPhone map had betrayed me, leaving me to walk along this one-way street, surrounded by ivy-covered walls and untranslatable street signs which seemed so far from my Avda. del Hospicio.

But I explored elsewhere instead.

I found el Río Darro with its torrent of rushing water matching the teal sky.

I found ancient ashy cobblestones and Spanish graffiti.

I remember looking up from my phone and learning how to see for myself.

I remember trying to explore, and realizing I didn’t know my way home and I was late, and I just hate being late, but for some reason this time it didn’t matter.

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A Long Line of Strong Midwestern Women Olivia Ferraro I will never forget the worst day of my life. It was March 23, 2010 – a clear, sunny day. With no indication of what was occurring, my school’s guidance counselor pulled me out of my fifth grade class. A friend’s mother then rushed my younger brothers and me to the New York-Presbyterian Hospital with a mysterious aura of dread.

My mother stood waiting for us by the entrance. Her face was streaked with tears, and she looked exhausted. She quietly told us that matters had taken a turn for the worse. She took my hand in hers and led my brothers and me through the maze-like hallways until we reached the Intensive Care Unit. My mother then led us through a pair of huge doors to room 8A. Our father was lying in the bed before us, limp and ashen. The moment I saw him an enormous lump formed in my throat and I was overcome with nausea. He had a multitude of wires, tubes, and sensors connected to him. The smell of antiseptic permeated the room and I could hear the mechanical sound of his ventilator. His faint pulse beeped on a monitor next to his bed.

My mother, teary-eyed and anguished, pulled us close and conveyed an emotional strength I did not know she had.

She explained that what we previously thought was an ear infection had escalated into pneumococcal spinal meningitis.

She further explained that this virulent strain had rendered our father brain dead.

“It’s time to say good-bye,” my mother said.

Over the next few hours I did not leave my mother’s side. She told soothing anecdotes about my father’s life that caused me to sob while simultaneously comforting me. She reminded me of lazy banana pancake breakfasts on Sundays and family trips to Vermont. She told me about how they met, their wedding day, and the day I was born. Her stories helped me to understand that sometimes mourning is celebrating somebody’s life. We sat together by his bedside the entire 104

day. When the time came, we said our final goodbyes. My heart fell the moment the nurses turned off his life support.

As his monitors came to an abrupt stop, the unimaginable happened. Clutching his arm, I noticed he began to move. A wave of hope swelled within me. His whole body went into a massive involuntary muscle spasm. It seemed as if he were fighting to stay alive. As the nurses later explained, this was a rare occurrence that nobody had expected.

The moment my mother realized what was happening she rushed us out of the room. The nurses drew the curtains and profusely apologized for what we had just witnessed.

My soon-to-be-widowed mother bringing her three children to their father’s bedside to say their final goodbyes is a picture of strength that has remained with me to this day.

Despite the challenges she faced as an only parent, she has maintained grace, courage, resiliency, and honesty. Even at my father’s bedside, she consoled me with happy memories and reminded me of my father’s passion for life.

My father’s death in 2010 left me disoriented and apprehensive. Much of my identity revolved around my family.

When that family structure crumbled in room 8A, so did a part of me. The debilitating loss of my father left a gaping hole in my life. Recognizing this, my mother often reassured me.

“Always remember, Olivia, you come from a long line of strong Midwestern women,” she would say.

I heard this for the first time during the hazy weeks that followed my father’s death. Over time, it has become our shared mantra – occupying a special place between us. Our mutual understanding has, without fail, remained central in our relationship. In the aftermath of a tough loss in a hockey game, a battle to subdue the colicky infant I’m babysitting, or a rupture in a relationship with a close friend, I have come home each time to my mother’s steadying words: “Always remember, Olivia, you come from a long line of strong Midwestern women.”

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Flight Alex LaTrenta As bare branches dance to the rhythm of silence, they rustle a soft breeze – a forest wind – that whispers wild secrets.

The gusts whimper, beginning as a murmur, before hushing trunks with inaudible power.

The musty aroma of winter curls around knobby limbs.

Branches like spiny fingers sway in the breeze, casting ghostly shadows on the frigid earth, etching an echo of their thoughts.

Grounded in movement, but harmony with the wind sets them free.

As a bird soars through the sky, jealousy consumes the rooted dancers.

Gaunt branches grow, move, reach in a desperate dance.

Power streams through the whirling limbs.

Trees like dancers as dark as veins against a pristine white world solemnly attempt to reach the sky, straining toward freedom.

Yet their feathered rival reaches it first.

Devon Miin

Markers 107

Illinois Roots Jo DeWaal My grandpa told me to go home. In the basement of his parents’ home in Cicero, Illinois, eight miles from the heart of the Windy City, he sits across from me at a small wooden kitchen table. My great-grandparents, Czechoslovakians Bahumel and Ylena Jarosulski, ate meals down here not to “dirty” the upstairs kitchen table. My grandpa’s blue eyes narrow as he turns a cardboard matchbook over and over in his chapped hands, the red tips flashing. Mildew clings to gray walls and a single light bulb overhead casts stark shadows on the wrinkles etched into his weather-beaten face. He leans forward to speak.

He is six years old when he sees his grandpa lose a hand sawing hickory slats for whiskey barrels along the eastern edge of the Kankakee River in Momence, Illinois. My grandpa’s dedeček, or grandpa, arrived in Chicago from Moravia when he was nineteen, just two years older than I am, as a barrel-making apprentice. Carrying skill and ingenuity across the ocean in his back pocket, he didn’t speak a word of English, but communicated craftsmanship with his hands. My grandpa sees the severed veins bleed into the sandy banks where the water drops down close and clear to the green bottom, the same way it did when the Potawatomi tribe settled there. He hears groaning. Swearing. A kaleidoscope rush of other workingmen, kneeling, and then wiping furrowed brows with the backs of their calloused hands. Twenty hours later, the light dims from my great great-grandpa’s eyes.

It is December 7, 1941, a day scrubbed clean by time standing still. My grandpa sits on the Naugahyde backseat of his dad’s bottle green Nash car, made by American hands in an automobile plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin. With his dad at the wheel and Uncle Francis riding shotgun, my grandpa watches the car’s bulbous hood push the open air on Illinois Route 43 South toward Momence. The trio, headed to the cabin touching toes with the Kankakee River once occupied by the whiskey barrel maker, anticipates my grandpa’s rite of passage, a rabbit-hunting trip. But the voice on the radio 108

stopped the car cold. The whitewall tires spit gravel from the edge of the shoulder as my great grandpa stomped the brake with both feet. Fifty-three Japanese bombers and fighters had made a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The towering elms along the side of the road stood still. The world had stopped spinning.

In 1953, my grandpa is the first one in his family to graduate college. He goes on to earn a law degree and fight for workers' rights. His persistence lands him on the granite steps of the United States Supreme Court in Washington, D.C; a grainy black and white photograph proffers testament to his achievement to fight for employee compensation.

It is November 22, 1963, my four-year old mother and her one-year-old sister play quietly at their mother’s feet on the linoleum floor in the kitchen of the two-bedroom home in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, on the outskirts of Chicago. Chokecherry trees bend in cold wind, and clouds as big as cauliflowers scuttle across a darkening sky. My grandparents cleave to each other; my grandpa’s starched white collar ironed early that morning by my grandma’s hands, absorbs her flowing tears. President John F. Kennedy has been assassinated in Dallas, Texas. The world had stopped spinning again.

Two years after I was born, on a day with a sky saturated sapphire, my mother reached into a paper grocery bag perched on the kitchen counter and pulled out a carton of milk and a loaf of rye bread. I saw her eyes flash to the TV screen, when the carton fell to the polished wooden floor and her shaking hand covered her mouth before she could scream.

It was September 11, 2001, as Twin Towers in New York City lay flattened to the ground. She pressed me so close I could hardly breathe, her pant legs soaking up milk while her silence shouted horror. My grandpa and my grandma stopped by. I didn’t hear what they said but I think I know now.

At the worn wooden basement table, my grandpa leans forward on his elbows. A warm gush of air streams from his mouth. He looks up to the exposed pipes and wires above us as if searching for something just out of sight. Pressing both palms to the wood, he stares. Always go home. You will never know when the world will stop spinning.

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110

August Rachel Dong I can see the shimmering gray clouds, the dusty brick buildings, the late summer sun all in a sepia filter – and their backs as they walk away slowly growing faint into the distance.

I had thought we’d meet again.

Back then, I was convinced but now their figures wink, flicker, fade like a dream that can’t quite be remembered.

And when I realize that was the last time to tell them I love them, I can only stand frozen, helpless knowing that if I called them back, I wouldn’t be able to let go.

So they become simply a faded photograph taped onto my bedroom wall next to my shiny posters and gold-scripted certificates to look at on a particularly rainy day and watch as they slowly walk away.

Lucie Kane

Photography & Digital Design 111

No More Emily Thomas No more walking home alone. No more going near the unkempt ally off of Bedford Street next to the innovation center.

No more careless midnight walks on moonlit evenings or hikes in the Audubon without the bottle of mace my mom gave me that I am not sure even still works.

No more scary movies. No more screaming in red theater seats hoping the boy you like, who you're pretty sure likes you too, will wrap his arms around you and say, Don’t worry, it isn’t real.

No more catching fire flies in the summer with your brother and Clayton, the next-door neighbor, while your dad and his dad watch, drinking beer and joking about who will have to pay for the wedding.

No more first dates, waiting anxiously with rocks in your stomach. No more first anythings – at least not that feeling.

Nothing feels new when you’re numb.

No more hiding under forts of pillows and blankets afraid of the monster in the closet. No more mommy gently stroking your face and whispering, There isn’t a monster in the closet, Honey, I promise. She was right; monsters don’t live in closets.

No more love, if there ever even was any – you still haven’t decided. No more hearts with arrows through them with his name and your name carved into the trees. No more carving into trees without their consent.

No more dreams that float in and out of your head like wispy clouds. No more falling asleep the same way snowflakes do, a blank canvas.

No more protecting something you never truly had. No more giving away pieces of yourself.

No more sitting next to you on the bench at midnight miles away from home. No more hearing you say, You're safe here. I won’t let anyone hurt you. No more wondering if that was real or if it was a dream or some combination of both.

Inspired by Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven Renée Ong 112

Drawing & Collage

Daedalus

DAEDALUS DAEDALUS DAEDALUS DAEDALUS

Greenwich academy 2017