Mandala
NORTHFIELD MOUNT HERMON’S ART AND LITERARY MAGAZINE 2022 - 2023
Table of Contents
1. Lucas Macedo ‘23 … Gift
2. Jessica (Yaxi) Zhang ‘25 … A Few Years
3. Alice Kim ‘23 … Untitled
4. Jacob Yang ‘24 … Sink
5. Linh Bui ‘23 … Untitled
6. Ester (YiXin) Zhou ‘24 … Untitled
7. Jay Merril … Element 06
8. Erika Jing ‘23 … apologia
9. Hazel Reeder ‘23 … River
10. Jay Merril … Element 05
11. Sailor Cohen ‘24 … Prince Edward Island
12. Jessica (Yaxi) Zhang ‘25 … Summer in the French Concession
13. Amy (Amida) Vongvasin ‘25 … Lemon 1
14. Amy (Amida) Vongvasin ‘25 … Lemon 2
15. Esther (YiXin) Zhou ‘24 … Sketchbook
16. Peter Weis … Reception
17. Erika Jing ‘23 … Everyday
18. Pearl Schatz-Allison ‘23 … Untitled
19. Jessica (Yaxi) Zhang ‘25 … Train to Lebanon
20. Pauline Cardonnel ‘24 … graphiti
21. Pauline Cardonnel ‘24 … face thing
22. Jessica (Yaxi) Zhang ‘25 … 22 Milimeter Lens
23. Jacob Yang ‘24 … 11:1
24. Alex Clayton ‘23 … The SandMan
25. Annabelle (JingYi) Zhang ‘23 … Cult
26. Christie Wang ‘25 … Mooncakes
27. Alex Tse ‘24 … Chinese Takeout Boxes
28. Alex Tse ‘24 … Distorted Imperfections
29. Claude (Wei) Zhang ‘24 … Ephemeral Eternity
30. Claire Takeuchi ‘25 … Untitled
31. Ashley Rakotoarivo ‘24 … Impending Doom
32. Cassandra Tung ‘23 … Oh, to be heard
33. Cassandra Tung ‘23 … When Life was Easy: Innocence at Birth
34. Oma Tasie-Amadi ‘23 … Untitled
35. Pauline Cardonnel ‘24 … Kash
36. Jessi (Jay) Shin ‘24 … Quarantine
37. Hisu Kang ‘26 … Mandala
38. Claude (Wei) Zhang ‘24 … Sunset
39. Xiaotong Shen ‘24 … Breathe
40. Hazel Reeder ‘23 … rest-stop town
41. Esther (YiXin) Zhou ‘24 … Untitled
42. Kitty Zhang ‘24 … Alone
43. Alexandra Hanson ‘23 … maybe my soulmate died
44. Marvin (Huiwen) Yang ‘23 … Untitled
45. Jessi (Jay) Shin ‘24 … Embracing Reality
46. Xiaotong Shen ‘24 … drift
47. Hazel Reeder ‘23 … August, oh August
48. Xiaotong Shen ‘24 … titan
49. Lucas Macedo ‘23 … Stain
50. Alex Tse ‘24 … Tortured Perception
51. Madigan Pillsbury ‘25 … Self-Portrait
52. Krystal Wang ‘24 … Untitled
53. Maya Baudrand ‘24 … The Strange Woman
54. Everett Liu ‘24 … Shattered Silence
55. Claude (Wei) Zhang ‘24 … AGHHHHHH
A Few Years
The first spring of a life is spent fishing for dreams and eating them raw. Turn back the page a bit, please. You threw walnuts into the air and I would catch them. How do we go back to that?
I hid from New Year’s firecrackers And threw myself into Beijing snow. I drank that pollution down like it was love, like it was water. I still remember.
I sat at the banks of the yellow river and let gravity pull me towards the stream. Are you still watching me? Lets sift through the sands of time for a spare second to hold each other with.
I will begin counting the days in between us. Fill up that bucket list as soon as you are steady. Lets dissolve ourselves into literature; watch cranes fly over high heaven;
sink our palms into the wet clay of the earth to be reborn again.
apologia* after Michael Frayn’s “Copenhagen”
what is a losing a country to a son but a reckoning made static by an empty god
wishing he had another pair of hands blind from creation to grasp the ashes forming a bed to sleep in despite the red open sky, a hundred tons barreling down mist
and they’re just fireworks
exploding too soon boom boom too slow almost a fingertip-away to see Florence a million bodies mid-blossom a million electrons held by supposition
curling into march if not forgiveness
a lifebuoy what is losing a son for a country
*instructions for contrapuntal poem: 1) read through the left column; 2) read through the right column; 3) read through the entire poem as a whole, combining both columns, read horizontally left-right.
River
I like to think of you as a river rushing, rambling out a lullaby mostly to yourself, but you are so very kind to let us listen a river, soft and sweet ever beautiful, ever fleeting
I like to think of myself as sedimentary sentimental, a sap for a song buried a little too deep, trudging on a rock, armored yet prepared I act like I don’t care but you know you know me like water knows its ground through lives lived together drowned recognize drowned
I like to think you swept me off my feet swirled me in a whirlpool and carried me along where you flowed lifted me up so I could float
I like to think we just fell out of sync you moved too fast I started to sink a river doesn’t know how to stop and I may be a rock solid but I’m smart enough not to sprint and as you had loved me tenderly it came just as natural to leave me gingerly
I like to think I could make you miss me but you keep running, running away like a river and I stay right here, still as a boulder hoping that if I’m frozen in time, you’ll circle back to me yet I still run circles around you
Reception
The party was breaking up. Of course there was too much food. The mourners left to go back to what was left of their Saturday. Left behind, a family chained to tables of plenty and grief.
everyday another day another die bye
Train to Lebanon
On the eve before Ramadan
I walked like a lone beggar to Lebanon. Behind me, the desert was my shadow; sand dunes wan below the moon.
I had three coins for my journey, night sky my only direction. Oil lamps illuminated my passage and the dust of stars, my prophet.
The long road—Persian caravans reminded me of my mother in Beirut. She took locks of my hair and wove them into gold.
A warm breeze; the desert’s breath on my clothes. the softness of mother’s shawl beckoned me.
When I left the path from Damascus
I could hear the singers praying from their windows.
A clear sound guided me home; in the distance, a train to Lebanon.
28 Millimeter Lens
The night is so quiet and violent, yet I’m still listening for sound. New England August, its crickets. American tires on tired gravel.
These gardens were dying before you arrived. You watered the flowers and leaves, the spine of a magnolia tree. The kitchen is empty. In shadows I still see your figure on the wall; your handprints, their beautiful symmetry. Yet the morning still comes with its battering ram. I am familiar with it, with you. Goodbyes; a sound to drown in. These years have passed so quickly. The terraces and synagogues disappear from view. Yesterday I was at the Jewish Quarter in Kraków. I remember the smooth tiles of the plaza, as clear as water. The shopkeepers spun guns from chocolate, birds from almonds and every taste was sweet. Our palms were cupped to the spring, so drunk on the idea of us and we, students as careless as doves. You stood there with your books, your poetry. A voice so soft and unforgiving. I remember its sound, the cadence; the horizon flattening and falling away.
Mooncakes
Delicate designs dance across the surface, spelling out characters I can’t read. Mooncakes look delicious. They have a golden-brown exterior and are normally circle-shaped with soft ridges and a pattern on top. The delicacy is soft, with a crumbly outside layer, an interior made of lotus paste that wraps around the egg yolk, and a varnish of even more egg. My sister craves them. They are probably heavenly.
Eggs are something I am allergic to.
I imagine the exterior crumbles a bit when I bite, while the sweetened lotus paste has a thicker consistency than cookie dough. But, I cannot say. All I can go on are the long-forgotten whiffs that I remember—a scent similar to freshly baked goods with a hint of something savory—and a vague idea of how they should taste based on the internet. All I understand is that which I see, which I smell, none of the taste, none of the substance. The internet is no substitute for personal experience.
I was born in America and raised in Western culture; I live in Hong Kong yet speak English at school. I have very little exposure to Chinese culture, other than that which I am told at school and experience in New Year visits to Hebei. I only know the basics: the most accessible Lunar New Year customs, a few traditional foods, and the story of Nian the monster. I do not know how people choose the characters to write on the couplets for the Spring Festival, and I only recently learned how names are chosen.
Yet, I know so much more about the Western world. I know about Greek myths, the Fourth of July, the French Revolution and the Confederacy, fast food and diet culture and Easter celebrations in the spring. Yet, I can only recall the name of one Chinese dynasty. I only know of two Chinese politicians: Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping, while I can name at least four US presidents.
Ironically, my parents wanted us to move to Hong Kong so that I could learn more about Chinese culture, and yet, my Chinese improved once I came to America. I still only understand the surface of Chinese culture, with no grasp of the substance; the internet is no substitute for personal experience. I only know a few characters, and I am unable to even read a novel without struggling like a kindergartener. My Chinese reading comprehension is not nearly as effortless as my English, and I cannot venture out of the Anglophonic part of the internet without Google Translate. I am made of ‘almost’s: almost American, almost Chinese, almost belonging but still not quite.
Almost able to taste mooncakes.
Impending Doom
Calamitous circumstances occur coincidentally
By its nature, Flathead lake is a body of clear blue, captivating water
The absence of wildlife and the inviting coral reefs lure you in You step in and the water brushes against your knees...
Until it’s not just your knees anymore
you look down and the water levels start to rise Higher and Higher
It’s calamitous, isn’t it?
Your heart, thumping like a drum, as the blood rushing through each part of your body
Palms, doused in sweat
Arms and legs shake at the speed of light
Your head is fully submerged in the water and all you can do is frantically swim back up for air.
Your thoughts are indecipherable, distracted by the chaos in your mind and the only thought you are able to decipher is
It’s calamitous, isn’t it?
Frantically trying to escape fills you with an insurmountable, existential dread that almost coerces you to give up
But you continue to swim
Higher and Higher Until you break the surface. You take deep breaths
Yet none replenish the air in your lungs.
Exhausted, you stand up
The water was always just at your knees.
It’s calamitous, isn’t it?
rest-stop town
a wrinkled lady and her doting husband accused me of shoplifting an arizona tea if i really did, wouldn’t the mayor have noticed? he sits outside of the store, you know, right next to the closed down bistro next to the broken-down wishing fountain they must have missed him, its easy to do look for the calm man, stretched back on a bench he built look next to him, there’s our furry old mayor, ever post-surgery because rest stop towns don’t need mayors, they’ve got friendly-looking dogs outside friendly-looking shops attracting friendly-looking visitors
wouldn’t the police officers licking ice cream on Kimmy’s deck have noticed? (truthfully, they wouldn’t) all they have to worry about is the occasional speeding ticket and mishandling mental breakdowns in my sister’s room I waved at them, sipping that forbidden arizona tea, did you know? so it can’t be so wrong if the wrong ones are wrong, waving back at me with princess sprinkles on their collars they were too busy talking about Kimmy, anyways it’s not her store anymore, she sold it a few years back, but her name’s still on the sign and in the customers’ mouth
we don’t take too kindly to change around here the school closed twenty years ago, finally tired of us but we’re still tired of those rowdy rich kids the gas station closed down before I could remember the smell wafting down main street but the lot stays empty, like a dog waiting for his owner like we will somehow become better again we both know that hope is but a fickle dream what is our worth if not a stop to your summer home?
the couple tells me that the security camera will catch me that I should just fess up now but they don’t know that there was never one installed Adria told me as I washed my cough down with an unpaid water she said it didn’t matter that she got paid in minimum wage dollars and funyuns - water came with the territory she said it didn’t matter no need for cameras when customers come from across the country no way to catch a lifter from Kentucky
they didn’t know that our atm doesn’t run on locals it ran on minimum wage dollars from maximum wage people buying funyuns it ran on wrinkled ladies and their doting husbands I was a passerby in my own town
By the time August rolls around
The summer heat has lost its novelty
Gone are the days of sunbathing
When afternoons were easy, breezy, and free
Now, I sit in my still sweat, melting away in my melting bedroom
For the syrup dripping out of my wooden walls has grown bitter
I bite into peaches three weeks past their peak
I sympathize with them, so tender and meek
For I too remember hanging in trees
Soft and warm, content with content existence
If I had the energy to get down on my hands and knees
I would plead for any other day
Do you remember the crunch of leaves in October
And the threads of brown sweaters?
Or the hour-long calls on swing sets in June?
We jumped in lakes with fingers pruned
December is the end of the year
But August is the end of me
I am indistinguishable now
August, what have you done?
I am a shell of who I once was
And a seed of what I will become
Made up of nights blended together
Time does not matter, soon none of it does
I am destined to spend my days rebuilding what you broke
Achieving the shiny glow I imagined two months ago
And failing - just a little bit - miserably
Oh, dear August, you are the very worst version of me
The Strange Woman
Supposedly I know you. You’re the woman in my stomach. Who opens the curtains ajar Tickling my throat. Grazing my skin, Where blisters soon form, A lame excuse for your stubby fingers to dance on my wounds, Picking the scab that is you.
rot me
But not like how meat rots, Instead like a banana, where it can still be cooked. making a warm gooey bread that melts on your tongue, a kind only a mother can make.
My hatred for you is strong, like how a person on a diet dislikes ice cream Because it’s untrue. Hoping to rid the weight nagging at me, A girl I never even knew.
Mandala Editors *
• Oma Tasie-Amadi ‘23
• Linh Bui ‘23
• Pauline Cardonnel ‘24
• Emma Clark ‘23
• Ashley Clarkson ‘24
• Alex Clayton ‘23
• Carolyn Edwards ‘23
• Fontis Hsieh ‘23
• Ethan Lin ‘ 23
• Anya Malkin ‘23
• Lucas Macedo ‘23
• Sage Newman ‘23
• Chiara Pinci ‘24
• Cassandra Tung ‘23
• Brania Tzou ‘23
• Meredith Werblow ‘24
• Jaymee Yeung ’24
• Izzy Young ‘24
• Claude Zhang ‘24
Faculty Advisor | YeJin Han
Cover Art | Alice Kim ‘23