Mandala 2006

Mandala

2006

Mandala: An Art and Literary Magazine

May, 2006 Northfield Mount Hermon School Northfield, MA 01360

Table of Contents Cover....................................................................................Galen Anderson Dedication......................................................................................................................v 8 Spiders in Your Lifetime.....................................................Amanda Kusek................... 1 Bird . ....................................................................................Jon Verney.......................... 2 Evelyn Hall Sleeps Alone.......................................................Peter Weis........................... 3 Ground Zero . ......................................................................Liz Wyman........................ 4 Homage to Kurosawa: Forward Stance, a Still Life................John Adams........................ 5 Drawing................................................................................Dilys Poon......................... 6 In Cold Rooms: A Sonnet for Old Crossley, 1900.................Anonymous........................ 7 Layaway................................................................................Amanda Kusek................... 8 Lenin, tsunami......................................................................Menghan Wang.................. 9 Landscape.............................................................................Amanda Clark ................ 11 "Oh, Deliah..."......................................................................Anonymous...................... 12 Portrait of a girl.....................................................................Liz Wyman...................... 13 On a Coarse Mound Below the Ridge...................................Noah Kumin.................... 14 November ............................................................................William Roberts Jr............ 15 Fog........................................................................................Mark Yates....................... 16 Portrait of Richard................................................................William Roberts Jr............ 17 Spectre..................................................................................E. Edwards...................... 18 Sneakers................................................................................Dilys Poon....................... 19 Lino-cut Print ......................................................................Yvonne Chang.................. 20 Still Life................................................................................Tae Hyung Kim................ 21 The Artist and the Soldier.....................................................John Adams...................... 22 Portrait..................................................................................Deborah Alfond................ 23 Sunset...................................................................................Liz Wyman...................... 24 The Puzzle.............................................................................David V. Rowland............ 25 Thursday...............................................................................Julia Mix Barrington........ 26 Waking up Cold....................................................................Anonymous...................... 31 Weather Theatrics.................................................................Anonymous...................... 32 Acknowledgement........................................................................................................ 33 Editorial Staff............................................................................................................... 34

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Dedication In memory of our classmates Lauren Filipiak ‘04 and Blake Lewis ‘07

8 Spiders in Your Lifetime I watched a spider in our yellow tinted sink he kept trying to get out kept reaching his front arms up, they seemed to grow to abnormal lengths, but he couldn’t get there.

Once those arms grew he would tumble backwards.

I watched him for quite awhile.

He explored and got stuck in water.

I finally stuck in some magazine, to help him out, he had trouble clinging to that.

I set him on the bathroom floor.

Now, I just hope he doesn’t crawl in my mouth tonight and lay eggs.

Amanda Kusek

Evelyn Hall Sleeps Alone Sage bells tolling

White dresses weeping

Tears trail over rough granite stone

Evelyn Hall you sleep not alone.

Red orange gold leaves

Dryads drift among fall trees

Then swirling back to campus home

Evelyn Hall you sleep not alone.

Vesper choirs

Through the still air

Raise their voices in dulcet tones

Evelyn Hall you sleep not alone.

Warm spring evenings

Passions whispering

Soft caresses at your lofty throne

Evelyn Hall you sleep not alone.

First crisp fall morning

Leaves still a-greening

Waiting in vain at your empty home

Evelyn Hall at last sleeps alone.

Peter Weis

Note: Evelyn Hall was Principal at Northfield Seminary from 1883-1911.

Homage to Kurosawa: Forward Stance, a Still Life The setting is ordinary, a forest scene, parcel of poets immemorial, but caught this time by the man’s form in it: he assumes a martial stance, left foot forward knee bent, right foot back knee straight, known in parlance as forward stance, primitive by itself, the first position a novice learns.

The back rises tenseless, erect from the trunk, from which extends the head, alert because aligned, eyes unfocused so as to be conduit to all the forest contains.

The right arm drapes gracefully across the plexus, hands gripping, egg-like, the handle and scabbard of a kitana, single-edged, the blade dependent in rest position, in geometric complement to the lines of the trunk and legs.

The forest leaks rain, the form unmoving in the drops.

The moment this master of still life has chosen is the night before the first day of the big battle.

The heavens, the forest, the village poise in the privacy of anticipation; death and its attendant, fear, skulk from post to sleepless post, unchallenged, so the moment is rife.

The samurai leaves his fellows, takes to the forest, practices his craft.

In his simplicity, the artist, by virtue of his having placed this man, this moment, and this stance in lighted relief, fuses three arts into one instant of perfection.

John Adams

In Cold Rooms A Sonnet for Old Crossley, 1900 With wool hat low over unkempt curls His rough hands dug in pockets tattered find no pearls; In the gas lamp’s glare weakened eyes grow strained While clear thoughts wander from his work-tired brain.

No sound disturbs the stillness of the study hour But the slow distant tolling from the phantom clock tower.

Long ago it seemed he heard the nine o’clock bell That it might be nearly ten was all the boy could tell.

Head bent so close to page it seemed he almost slept An electric moment later to his feet he leapt.

In that flash his muse drove the blindness away, As the sun will do to fog on a perfect fall day.

Then a sound so deafening but only he hears As the ringing voice of Cicero fills his ears.

Anonymous

Layaway Layaway with me Listen to the snow break on the hills.

Forget the rugged murmur of them cutting down trees metaphysically.

Come way with me.

Drift off from all the fouled mouth, brown snow.

To the white and lay and listen.

The icy snow freezes my hair to the ground.

You better watch out the avalanche is coming as you kiss me.

I melt with the heat of the sun.

Me and the snow are one, kiss.

Layaway against the backdrop of the winter breeze.

Amanda Kusek

Lenin, tsunami Daisy the dog saved a thousand lives, No firemen and they all survived, Two instant messages warned the staff, Too long, Too late; The World Trade Center split in half.

Brad over Jen, “Bennifer” no more.

Blink torn apart, Britney’s not sure.

Robin Williams making peace plans, The money, The fame; Just to please fans.

Strange sea creatures by the seaside, Photos of bystanders, hit by the tide.

Hippo becomes a tortoise’s soul mate, The girls, The boys; How long yet to wait?

The chubby girl, ever so shy, She has lesbian mothers, “Oh, that’s why.”

She’ll grow up and be the same way, .

So queer, So odd; And so cliché.

Nalgene bottles shouldn’t be sold,.

They give you diseases and make you look old.

Scientists have proof, that’s what they say, Who’s smart?.

Who’s smarter?

You’ll get cancer anyway.

South Beach Diet is the new fad, .

Pay two grand and you’ll never be sad.

Money and morals just wasted away, Too fat, .

Too ugly; “I lost ninety pounds in a day!”

To buy a cat is to keep it a cat, .

But society teaches us to turn it a rat.

They come in East, and go out West,.

Only you, Only me; Can put the world at final rest.

After all, that great man, The leader of the Bolshevik clan..

We’ll never forget when He came,.

And he saw, And he said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”

Menghan Wang .

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“Oh, Delilah...”

Strands of regret lay severed; split ends divorce scalp unnaturally...

“Oh, no, Delilah.”

I’m like her, you see we both cry over spilt milk we poured & placed on the edge of the counter ourselves knowing. always knowing. how it will end.

Our regrets could fill millions of empty closets meant for others’ skeletons... but instead, we mouth & swallow them whole. silently. choking. she’s like me, you see we talk too much & often and hate the words we always choose.

But when the time comes to mean what we say, we don’t say what we mean, and the lump in our throat grows.

You can’t blame us, really, we knew exactly what we were doing.

We just refuse to believe in it, in what we are, and always have been...

So that glass, we can’t help it, we reach out and push... just to see if it will break.

And it does. always. Of course.

What else did we expect?

Nothing. Gravity is constant.

Just like our luck, as bad as our judgement.

“Oh, Delilah.”

Anonymous

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On a Coarse Mound Below the Ridge Down here, there is quiet— reflections of mossy trees fallen, whose crystal faces stare back up, probing. Leaves from trees of an old season pile up in fragile clumps. Two wasps trapped in a web make their last pleas (to a jury that refuses to hear their case) and dangle.

Vines wrap up an acquiescent oak, but strange how it soaks in the rays of days past and points upward at an angle.

For a moment it seems right. Though the sun has descended, you get the feeling that the Old Cableworker will hoist up again that gleaming ball of wire, and that the trickling of the stream is there for your ears, alone.

The dark haze is lucid; you can’t help but wonder at the long oak, you can’t help but wrap your limbs around that slanted tree, inching your way up to the endless firmament.

O! How shaking and real—to touch the terror and the bliss!

To dig your cold fingers into the grubby soil and brave the steady slope ahead.

Noah Kumin

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Spectre Pegasus shaped clouds snow beyond the Guadalupes last sanctuary.

E. Edwards

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The Artist and the Soldier She had not found a calling so she moved with our parents to Bangkok, a country of a city that in its excesses fit her senses.

She was an artist, and looked upon the stinking boats and filthy klongs not as scratched-out livings and erstwhile toilets, but as grand taxis and Asian Venetian canals, and the grimy oarsmen as gay gondoliers.

Such a romantic cannot live long, of course, but before she passed, a stirring man on furlough from Vietnam, another lovely, grimy little place, on furlough, I say, from killing gondoliers, won her heart with stories of slant-eyed men with gold-plated teeth and black hair and bony arms-as bony as hers, he would say-who threw satchel charges into drab helicopters like his.

She would swoon to hear such tales and fell in love.

So the artist and the soldier held hands in a Thai klong boat, dangling their sick, warm, white fingers in the feculent water while the dark, bony-armed man with gold-plated teeth paddled them around until it was time to go home, get married, and die.

John Adams

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The Puzzle A child’s toy. I bend to touch September twenty-third, remembered rain in a forgotten year. And here are two old friends, come down from Maine to sit across from me, smiles stiff as chairs; my cares were songs they’d missed. I kissed this other one, cursed that, drove all those miles in cars long gone for junk (and now at night wet streets and neon make me dream).

It does seem strange to find no more of childhood than some summer haze, a voice, a turn of phrase; nor any more of marriage than a toy tool box still wrapped for mailing, marked “Moved – No Address.”

It should be child’s play, I guess, to take each day, fit one into the others until all come right: one soul’s true, tight cartography of time and place. Yet, lacking grace, I stand and turn away. The day sends birds against me, and I watch them rise through changing weather into strange, new skies.

David V. Rowland

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Thursday

Noah’s mother ordered Crab Rangoon, but Noah didn’t want to eat anything that sounded like a jungle sickness. “Rangoon”, he thought, would give him sores and maybe a distinctive rash. He had egg rolls. They came two to a plate, matched down to every bubble on their crispy skin. Noah had overcome his fear of duck sauce at least a year before, and he tipped almost the whole bowl into the insides of his egg roll. His parents hadn’t remembered to tell him not to make a mess.

He finished his dinner slowly because he enjoyed the oriental atmosphere. He thought up haikus about the Asian paintings on the pinkish walls, played hangman with his father on the pressed paper napkin, and slurped his lukewarm tea. Finally, the smiling waiter returned to whisk away their plates, leaving instead a plastic bowl with three orange sections and three wrapped fortune cookies.

Noah chose the fortune cookie farthest from him the way he always did. He prised open the crackly plastic and broke the cookie in half. At first he thought there was no paper inside it, but he saw it finally, bunched up at one end. With careful fingers he extracted the slip and unfolded it.

“You will die on a Thursday.”

Noah did what seemed sensible, which was to start crying. He didn’t want to think about his death, not now, not when he turned nine, not ever. His father took the paper and read it, looked puzzled, and read it again.

“Look, Deb,” he said over Noah’s head.

Noah’s mother skimmed the paper. “What a terrible fortune! Noah, honey, you can have mine, OK? Don’t worry about it, they don’t really predict anything. It’s just for fun. Stop crying, honey, it’s OK.”

The whole restaurant was looking at him wailing. His parents were embarrassed, he could tell, so he made an effort to stop being so noisy.

He thought about the fortune for the whole ride home. He thought about it as his mother read him a chapter of Harry Potter. As she kissed him on the forehead, he understood what the cookie had meant.

On any day but Thursday, he couldn’t be killed.

So the next morning, which was a Monday, he didn’t look both ways before he crossed the street. He didn’t wash his hands before he ate breakfast. He didn’t wear his helmet when he rode his bicycle to school.

At recess, he climbed hand-over-hand to the top of the swing set and jumped off. The principal called his parents, but Noah didn’t care.

On Wednesday night, Noah remembered the downside of his Fortune. He went to bed curled up in a little ball of fear, trying to make himself so small that Fate couldn’t find him. Thursday morning, he pushed aside his cereal in favor of chocolatechip cookies. He didn’t want cornflakes to be the last breakfast he ever ate. All day long, he wore his bike helmet. When the other kids went outside to play, Noah sat in

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the middle of the field, far away from any trees that could crush him. He read a magazine article about guard rails, and thought about car wrecks for the rest of the afternoon.

At dinner, he begged his mother not to make him eat his carbonade, because the beef was obviously infected with bacteria and disease. Couldn’t he just have a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich?

His mother saw that he was upset, and, for once, gave in. She didn’t even scold him when he pulled the crusts off and balled them up under his napkin. He stayed awake until midnight, the latest he’d ever been up. Who could spend their last hours sleeping?

When his truck alarm clock finally told 12.00, Noah felt his worry melt away and his exhaustion hit him like a brick. He’d be tired on Fridays, he supposed, for the rest of his life.

Noah started playing little-league baseball when he turned ten. His team won their first game handily, and their second, and their third, fourth, fifth. Noah took to wearing his baseball shirt to class. It was blue with white letters: “Dodgers” on the front and “Carroll” on the back. He was number thirteen, and he was lucky.

The sixth game rolled around. Early Saturday morning, the Dodgers took their positions, and Lucky Noah was first at bat. He adjusted his glasses and looked the pitcher up and down--a short fat kid with red hair striving to escape from under his cap. A little sweat was running down the kid’s nose and glazing his upper lip. The kid grinned at Noah’s forehead, wound up, and threw.

Noah saw the ball leave the fat kid’s hand, and he saw it hurtling through the air, and he knew it was going to hit him right smack in the head. He thought about ducking, but before he could, the ball had changed its course and crashed into the backstop. Noah, and all the parents, and all the other players, turned to look at it embedded in the chain-link fence.

That should have hit me, thought Noah. He’d seen it swerve away from his head, just change directions in midair. Noah wasn’t surprised, and no one else had noticed.

“Great curve ball, Jesse!”

“Keep him guessing, atta boy!” The fat kid’s father and coach cheered. Noah hadn’t ever seen a Curve Ball, but he knew this wasn’t one. It was his Fortune, coming true again, just like it had before. He’d jumped off the swing set at eight, swam for three minutes under water at eight-and-a-half, and, last year, had drunk detergent on a dare.

Now a baseball had refused to hit him in the head? Cool.

In middle school, Noah was famous for his bravado. He would climb anything, eat anything, stick his fingers in sockets, chase strange dogs, make pets of wasps, stab himself with pencils, and never ever seem to be hurt. He was a celebrity: Johnny Knoxville without all the pain.

Celebrities can’t help but be noticed, and of course he was no different. It wasn’t far into seventh grade that the girls started flocking to him. They liked his shaggy hair and his geek-chic glasses. They swooned after his athlete’s muscles and his devilmay-care attitude.

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Noah feared those girls almost as much as he feared Thursdays. He didn’t like the way they plotted for his favor, or how they hurt each other over stupid, pointless things. They’d follow him to his locker and spend their boring classes filling sheets of paper with his initials. Sometimes, they would threaten to punch him if he didn’t just ask out Julie or Anna or Shannon, but he never did.

Noah simply wasn’t interested in them. Why waste any time with those girls when there were cliffs to dive from and rockets to set off? They didn’t seem any more interesting than his friends and certainly not worth all the trouble they would cause.

On any given Friday afternoon in eighth grade, you’d find Noah and his followers up to something or other. Once, he got onto the roof of the school gym and skateboarded off.

His friend Jonas videotaped him flipping over and over five times before he landed on the sidewalk. Safe on the ground, Noah took his black plastic glasses back from Andy and sauntered over to the camera to grin and wave and look hardcore.

Noah wasn’t sure why Jonas was taping, but he knew he liked the eye of history on him. He’d relive his stunts when he was old and bald and couldn’t walk, and he’d show other people how fearless he had been.

At seventeen, Noah bought his first car. It was old and cranky and a weird shade of green, but it ran well enough, and he liked to think of it as “vintage”. Plus, it had a rollback top and a gigantic trunk, which was most of what he wanted.

He was the only one of his crowd to have a car, so he ended up being their valet as well as their idol. He never drove himself on Thursdays, tried not to even get into his car if he could help it. On all the other days, he was a maniac, a speed demon who never ever got caught. It seemed to his friends that Noah was an excellent driver, he never so much as nudged the curb, but he himself knew it was only the Fortune which kept him from crashing and burning.

Noah drove them all around just for fun. He enjoyed hurtling around corners and racing through the downtown streets. One Sunday afternoon he was doing just that--speeding for the sake of speed--when he nearly rear-ended a seven-car-long traffic jam.

From the passenger seat, Andy started swearing. Then he glanced through the windshield and cried, “Whoa, man, look!”

Noah saw the column of black smoke at the same time as the rest of his friends. A house was burning sensationally, with red-hot coals raining down on the street in front. Noah leapt from the car, barely remembering to turn the engine off, and jogged towards the crowd of watcher. Andy and Jonas and Henry followed him the way they always did.

Noah heard someone screaming, made out that they were crying for “Hannah.” As he got closer, he saw a wailing mother being restrained by firemen, as he had half expected there to be. She was short and frail-looking, and her hair was frizzing nearly out of control.

When do babies actually get stuck in burning buildings? Noah wondered.

And why did it happen when I was right here?

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He went over to a bald policeman, chewing over in his head what he could say.

“Hi, um, I’m, uh, Noah Carroll,” he began, looking at the man’s nametag.

The nametag read “Jack Murphy,” so Noah said, “Jack Murphy, I’d, like to, uh, save that baby. I know it sounds absurd, but...”

Jack Murphy gawked at Noah for a second, then recognition cleared his face. “You’re that punk-ass kid skateboarded off the middle school gym? The one that runs into traffic all the time?” He didn’t wait for Noah to nod, but only said, “You might be lucky, but no one’s that lucky. Go home.”

Unfazed, Noah slipped past Jack Murphy and took off. A fireman at a caution-tape barrier 20 feet from the house put out an arm to stop him as he flew past.

“Jack! Murphy!” cried Noah, ducking under the plastic line.

He pushed the door of the house open, barely feeling the scalding air on his face. The stairs were ablaze, but Noah took them three steps at a time, and was at the landing in only seconds. He stopped to listen and among the crackling of flame and crunch of falling beams, he heard a faint coughing.

At the end of the hallway was a shut door. Noah didn’t wait to feel the wood with his hand; he barged right into the room, hoping his luck would transfer to the child he was looking for.

He didn’t have to look for long, because the focus of the room was a wrought-iron crib, antique and probably red-hot. Noah had no idea how to hold a baby, but when he picked her up, Hannah nestled into his chest and let out her pitiful cough again.

Hannah’s window had been shattered by the blaze, and it was a simple jump for Noah down onto the singeing grass. His eyes weren’t even burning as he trotted back to the waiting crowd. He handed Hannah gingerly to her tearful mother and stood there, feeling awkward, while Jack Murphy clapped him on the back.

Hannah’s mother turned to him and promised him the earth and sky for saving her little girl. Noah didn’t want Hannah’s mother to be indebted to him because he knew every single one of the firemen would have done the same thing if they had the information he did. He wasn’t any more heroic than they were.

Jack Murphy was shaking his head. “Merciful heaven. I’ve never seen the like of it” he repeated like a prayer. Noah interrupted his reverie.

“Please, can I leave? I don’t want to be part of a scene.”

Jack Murphy looked at Noah, suppressing a disbelieving smile. “You’re modest, too, eh? You’ll go far, son, if you keep the way you are.” He offered Noah his hand, and Noah shook it. Jack Murphy had a firm, cool grip; Noah’s hands were sweaty.

As he walked back to his car and his friends, Noah hunched his shoulders and tried not to be seen.

Noah chose to go to college in New York City, and he toned his exploits down a tad for those four years.

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His graduation was on Monday, and the next morning he started racing himself home with his car’s gigantic trunk full of things. As he was turning a corner in New Rochelle, he saw her. She was crossing the street, and she wasn’t wearing anything special, just corduroys and a t-shirt, but she glittered like she had on a ball gown. Noah took in her pale skin and her white teeth as she smiled at the world. A slight breeze blew her dark hair into her eyes, and she stumbled and fell on the pavement.

Noah didn’t worry as he swerved to avoid her, he was glad to do it, he’d do anything for her. Of course he wouldn’t be hurt because nothing could hurt him.

So it was a surprise to him when the U-Haul truck flattened his car.

He felt pain, real pain, for only a few seconds. Her face stuck in his mind as he lay crushed into his seat, her face and his thoughts. What happened? It’s only Tuesday. I can’t die on a Tuesday.

He wasn’t conscious for much longer than it took him to think this. Almost immediately, his eyesight faded and his brain gave up.

The paramedics had to use the Jaws of Life to pry Noah’s body from the car. They brought him in an ambulance to a hospital and set him up on an iron lung.

Noah lay in a coma for two days, enough time for his parents and friends to gather at his bedside and start hoping for his recovery. His mother and father sat with him constantly: they were sitting with him late on Wednesday night. As the hospital clock ticked past midnight, Noah’s heart-rate monitor slowed, until finally he was dead. It was 12.02 on Thursday.

Julia Mix Barrington

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Waking up cold Waking up cold A morning spell of twisting, twittering nausea Like a mother with shoulders bare,

Collarbones colliding.

But how could I, missing that essential detachment— A detanglement of limbs creating life—

Mine, yours, our own.

Waking up cold, composing morning poetry, Losing it to twisting toes, tinsel trees, And it’s storm weather, and it’s sun weather, And I can’t care, can’t draw comprehension, dawn understanding

Think real thoughts.

Oh? I’m nestled in a chain, netted to somewhere, Defined without principles.

Waking up cold, I’m already bound to curbside limitations, An opulent glint of wit—plays on puns on dreams— Where was that, anyway?

I think in addendum, I think in camera straps, car pools, cursive.

I think embedded thoughts, somewhere I find my subconscious.

Waking up cold, I think in bed, Fragmenting borders, I shut a window and forget.

Anonymous

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Weather Theatrics A sweat drenched summer with The grocer advertising trident and the CVS clerk with smoke rubbed into her Lips agreeing with the man who stands Outside the fish market, rubbing his shock Of hair, rubbing the pores and patches Where baldness bore down.

They all speak And predict the weather: humid into the Weekend, though the heat lax and loosening Its tight-clamped jaw through a haze Of rain. They all speak and compare The barometric pressures to those in Southern California, for it all compares, It’s all relative—and I could Tell them how my story, my plot, my Summary, my bones, my body (me, yes) All traces back, tracking broadminded Generations, to the Odyssey where I Crewed a boat, yelling noble curses, chewing Through philosophy, or sat slack-jawed Back in my home prairie town, the touching Trials and tribulations of summer vacation Settlements—do they see this comparison?

Believe me through the steam that Showers our, curtails each sentence?

In this dense sun weather the mind slips Up, stomachs sly thoughts, an aching urge to Break that freedom, mesh with their mundanities.

And in this summer slop I find my mind Slinks through curled, grey-smattered Wave-lengths, small-talking cashiers (one who gurgles while brushing Her teeth each morning) to merge My tale with theirs: a journey, An outline, I stopped here along The way, grabbing at goods, stomping At shelves. And here I’ve stayed— Slicked on smile a Homeric touch— Hands frayed to receive my change, Thoughts framed to cool, croon Out a soft response.

Anonymous

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Acknowledgment The staff of Mandala extends its heartfelt thanks & best wishes for the future to those faculty & staff members who will be leaving the School at the end of this year.

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Editorial Staff Ming-Juei Ray Chen - I Ryn (Katharyn) Flynn - III Caroline Henderson – I Sophia Jaffe - I Wan Yu Angela Lee - III Noah Kumin - III Amanda Kusek – III Anna Meyer - III Dilys Poon - II Gilmour Spears- III Benjamin Tetro - III Jonathan Verney – III Elizabeth Wyman – III Faculty Advisor – Philip J. Calabria Note: Roman numerals refer to the number of terms participated in.

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