Visions Magazine 2018-2019

Saint Francis University’s High School Writing Magazine 2018-19

Bright New Insights from Bright Young Minds

VISIONS Bright New Insights from Bright Young Minds

Faculty Editor Brennan Thomas

Cover image courtesy of Hope Elizabeth Winger

Copyright Š 2019 by Saint Francis University

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SFU High School Writing Contest Results Saint Francis University’s Literature & Languages Department sponsored its third annual writing contest for ninth- through twelfth-grade students attending schools in the counties of Bedford, Blair, Cambria, Clearfield, Indiana, Somerset, and Westmoreland. Students from various high schools in these seven counties and beyond submitted their short fiction, poetry, essays, and personal narratives for the contest.

Each submission was judged and scored by English faculty according to these five criteria: (1) creativity, (2) structure, (3) content, (4) style and expression, and (5) grammar, mechanics, and formatting. Scores were then tabulated to determine the contest winners and honorable mention recipients.

The first-place winner for this year’s contest is Ashley Barletta, for her poem “Thanksgiving.”

Ashley is an 11th-grade student at Venango Catholic High School.

The second-place winner is Sarah Jean Hines, for her short fantasy story “The Cardinal King.”

Sarah Jean attends Penn Cambria High School and is currently in the 11th grade.

The third-place winner is Kevin Rowland, for his found poem “Great White Wings.” Kevin is a 12th-grade student at Gateway High School.

Six honorable mentions were also selected by the faculty judges: • Sophia Cafeo, for her poem “Honesty” (Grade 11, Richland High School) • Emerson Ekis, for his poem “inside my mind there is a bomb” (Grade 11, Venango Catholic High School) • Mackenzie Metz, for her poem “Worn” (Grade 11, Venango Catholic High School) • Janaki Patel, for her poem “A Rose’s Lament” (Grade 11, John P. Stevens High School) • Hope Elizabeth Winger, for her poem “Ownership” (Venango Catholic High School) • Anna-Lise Zimoski, for her poem “257 Spruce Street” (Grade 11, Venango Catholic High School)

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Each winner and honorable mention recipient will receive a monetary prize for his or her selected entry.

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First prize: $75 Second prize: $50 Third prize: $35 Honorable mention: $20

All winning and honorable mention entries have been published in Visions, the university’s magazine for high school writing.

For more information regarding the contest’s rules, deadlines, and prizes, please contact: Dr. Brennan Thomas Department of Literature & Languages Saint Francis University 117 Evergreen Drive P.O. Box 600 Loretto, Pennsylvania 15940 E-mail: bthomas@francis.edu Phone: (814) 471-1111

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Special Thanks This writing contest and subsequent publication of Visions would not be possible without the work and dedication of these individuals:

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Ms. Colleen Krug, who prepared the checks for our winners and honorable mention recipients;

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Ms. Marie Young, Ms. Jen Merry, and the SFU Marketing Team, who published Visions online;

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Ms. Beth Bellock, Mr. Michael Kutchman, and the SFU Print Shop staff, who published Visions in print form;

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Ms. Kelly Aharrah and other staff members of the Office of Admissions, who promoted the contest to local high schools;

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Dr. Pete Skoner and Dr. Irene Wolf, Interim Dean and Associate Dean of the School of STEAM;

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Dr. Robin Cadwallader, Chair of the Department of Literature & Languages, and all department faculty for their continued support of this contest;

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And finally, all high school students who participated in this year’s contest and whose writing our judges immensely enjoyed reading.

We thank you for sharing your creativity and your unique artistic visions and expressive styles.

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Table of Contents Mackenzie Metz

Worn

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Sophia Cafeo

Honesty

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Janaki Patel

A Rose’s Lament

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Hope Elizabeth Winger

Ownership

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Emerson Ekis

inside my mind there is a bomb

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Kevin Rowland

Great White Wings (3rd Place Winner)

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Sarah Jean Hines

The Cardinal King (2nd Place Winner)

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Anna-Lise Zimoski

257 Spruce Street

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Ashley Barletta

Thanksgiving (1st Place Winner)

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Image courtesy of Mackenzie Metz

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Mackenzie Metz

Worn

Worn every day all day, through the mud, dirt, and grass, holes on your soles, leather creased and scuffed, the teal string designs, slowly unthreading.

The pulls, gnawed off, by that mangy mutt, piping, once the color of a Pennsylvania summer sky, now faded, as seasons do.

You slip on, like a broken-in halter, sturdy.

My footprint molded into crĂŞpe soles, taking me to the barn, newly bedded with straw.

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Image courtesy of Anna-Lise Zimoski

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Sophia Cafeo

Honesty

A fulfilled and valuable characteristic to acquire. An overlooked and transparent word; underrated and used irrationally.

A way to be open; empower your ability to be better.

A way to gain trust and bondage; forming a successful lifestyle.

A way to control deception in your life; not letting yourself be known for what shouldn’t be.

Let someone be upset for the truth, rather than walk around, stand tall, and be happy over a lie.

Being honest puts growth on many traits a person can attain: confidence, loyalty, integrity, leadership, and perseverance.

Being true to yourself is one of the single most important things to endeavor.

Misleading people into question and judgement leads to untrusting and non-secure relationships.

The success a person can hold and the opportunities that can be given arise in reality and superficial facts amongst oneself subside.

What one can’t obtain, receive, or accomplish shouldn’t be coated with lies.

Stares of disdain will approach if truthfulness and consideration of others’ beliefs are proven wrong.

Self-worth and the control you have over your words and actions decrease.

You become more frantic of what can be said in order to live with inaccurate sayings and a mind of lies.

Even if the truth is unprepossessing, and disagreeable, the lie isn’t worth the risks.

Honesty is being treated as something special when it should just be a given.

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Image courtesy of Sophia Cafeo

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Image courtesy of Janaki Patel

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Janaki Patel

A Rose’s Lament

I believed I had met my beloved, Whose face freckled with beauty marks.

A smile that could stretch over the span of seasons, And eyelash moons that everlastingly captured mine.

So blind was I to his brutish ways, For he continued competing against me.

How had I been so naïve?

Though they say the truth sets you free, This would deepen my descent into a dismal tunnel, From which I could never come out of.

For he granted me a graceful gift, One which I could not fathom.

A rose, simplicity in its sophistication Whose crimson petals cried countless words, Each etched with eternal emotion.

This, it seemed, was to stitch my stone of thought, For the duration of damage, And mass destruction he delivered to me.

For the elegance that this rose enchanted, He believed, was the Solution to my sorrows.

How didn’t I realize its thorns throughout the stem?

For though he painted its petals, The spikes still stabbed my silky skin.

How didn’t I realize the wound river dripping down, The deep crevices he created on my arm.

How didn’t I realize, though shielded in a sweet syrup, Its lethal dragon’s bile diving deep into my blood tracks.

Through each particular perished petal, My deepest demons begin to drown.

Awoken by this adversity, 13

They surround me in this suffocation, With no escape evident.

Engulfing me, Swallowing me whole, This incessant swan-road imprisons my individuality.

The wind of troll wives, has left no air to linger.

“This marks her end” She wept as she bled, Surrounded by screaming, Yet blissful silence, Her eye rain turned a vengeful red.

“Hell hath no fury on a woman scorned,” For she mourned the loss of her beloved.

The bane of wood buried within her began to burn, Yet when gazing upon this rose, She perceives its poise again.

Here, lies a ruffled rose Whose petals lay lifeless in her calluses.

Though she sparingly sewed it together, The catastrophic damage has been done.

Here, lies a linen land Whose rose will no longer Feel whole again.

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Hope Elizabeth Winger

Ownership

Slow breaths are inhaled to compose myself as I watch my ticking heart put itself to rest on your splintered shelf.

I have willingly placed it there to be nurtured by the titian orb that paints your bedroom walls, stuck in the unbreakable plaster, yet never stopped.

You have another to obtain, you leave mine for the healing rays to soak up its pain of knowing you will never wear mine proud, and on your sleeve.

Nothing heals like passing time, The crimson orb of evening sets on the opposite side of your walls.

And as for my heart, it’s still beating on your unfurnished shelf.

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Emerson Ekis

inside my mind there is a bomb

my mind is a bomb planted inside of my skull dark and smokey and gunpowdery first self-love cushions the body you are

beautiful(so very)

you are

intelligent(everyone thinks so)

you are

loved(by all)

then self-consciousness prodpricks at the detonator ?enough good i am(you’re not) ?enough strong i am(you’re not) this do can’t i(you can’t) finally my mind turns to muck mishmashy feelings smeltering inside— and then the bomb. tick

Image courtesy of Emerson Ekis

tick tick BOOM!

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Kevin Rowland

Great White Wings

(Third Place Winner)

They broke every tradition.

Some colorized version.

Of a long, black career.

If you pile the children with reprimands, Some sour.

Black-and-white, How drab.

But Great White Wings will own the highest domain, Like friends of the final moment.

Dust.

Image courtesy of Kevin Rowland

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Sarah Jean Hines

The Cardinal King

(2nd Place Winner) My mother was strange, and that’s an understatement.

She drove an old station wagon, despite the ever-constant smoking engine and sagging tires, just because she liked the way it smelled. She kept trinkets on the dash because she thought each one had a story to tell. We even moved to a town just because of a folktale she had heard long ago.

We’ve been doomed in the town Snowbird ever since.

I walk the same sidewalks, the same tilled paths as my mother had before she died.

Sometimes, I wonder if I’ll suffer the same fate. It’s not hard looking in the mirror and seeing only her staring back.

My mother’s parents, despite barely scraping by, agreed to take me in. They were strange in their own right—their property riddled in birdhouses and feeders strung from limp sycamores. My grandfather had made each and every one and my grandmother sold them as a side business.

My eyes wouldn’t close the first night I slept there, stemming the thoughts racing in my head like a bandage over a bleeding cut. It felt like someone was watching me and the feeling was relentless.

“Can’t sleep?”

The lights come on and my grandparents file into the room, two white-haired sprites smiling at me.

My grandmother sits on the bed, smoothing out the quilt pressed under her. “Thinking about your mother?”

I nod and look to the bedside window. A redbird sits in the snow, watching.

“Have you ever seen a cardinal, Cerise?”

I sigh and recite what my mother used to croon. “When cardinals appear, angels are near…”

She pats my leg, humored. “How about the Cardinal King?”

I shake my head.

My grandmother sighs. “Some say he’s an angel, others say he’s a spirit…He guides the cardinals to and fro, coming to meet special little girls like you to remind them that they’re always loved. Even if the special people in their life aren’t here anymore.” My grandmother touches my chest, where my heart beats between my ribs.

My grandparents take turns bidding me goodnight, but their attempt at easing me to sleep just leaves me more awake. I stare out my window, at the birdhouses outside, and the forest beyond. * * *

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The snow hasn’t stopped falling since October. It lays thick everywhere in Snowbird—on the roads, in the trees, in the eaves of storefronts.

My grandfather sits at the kitchen table.

I sigh. “Where’s Gram?”

He points to the side door as my grandmother stumbles in. She looks flushed, towing in groceries.

“It’s getting bad out there,” she pants. “We might have your cousins in, Cer.” I roll my eyes. “Like they’d come anyways.”

A sound crashes out front and our heads snap up.

I head for the front porch and see a group of kids by the roadside, kicking at loose pieces of wood.

“Hey.” They race off and I trudge out to assess the birdfeeder—knocked to the ground, seeds and all.

I shake my head. That makes this the third one this month.

My grandmother breathes deep. “They wanna see him—” “Gram, stop.”

She blinks. “You don’t believe me?”

“No, its just—I’m not ten anymore. Mom’s dead. She’s not some bird, waiting to take me to the Cardinal King’s castle…” I laugh, but my grandmother doesn’t.

I shouldn’t have written her off like I did, but I’m sick of the fantasy she keeps promising me. * * * The lights twinkle on the Christmas tree as I rock in a chair. I’m used to staying up later than most, an old habit that lives on into near adulthood.

I face the window to the road. No cars or lights have breached the asphalt for hours. The snow hangs thick and placid on the ground.

Something knocks on the pane of glass and I squint.

A redbird sits on a nearby branch, its head tilted.

“What?”

It flaps its wings, flying around to the back of the house. I meet the visitor on the porch where it throws my attention to the distant forest.

The redbird zips off.

“Hey.” I sprint across the field, tripping over the stubble of leftover corn, and into the woods after the flying bundle of feathers. The trees get thicker and the path throughout is rendered to nothing but blind intuition. The redbird overhead keeps chirping and takes me up a hill to an unlocked gate, standing high and wide.

I slip inside and find the abandoned house on the other side. Courtyards and paths of crushed seed and stone solidify under my feet. The whole property seems to wrap itself around me, bringing me to the front doors of the estate.

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Image courtesy of Sarah Jean Hines

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I don’t even have to knock.

The doors give in, whistling on cast iron hinges. The entrance hall looks like it’s a mile long, framed in gold and red velvet. I stare long and hard at my new surroundings, scared that I’m intruding on a world I wasn’t welcomed into in the first place.

Crystal fixtures adorning the high ceilings rattle. The symphony soars from the heart of the manor as dancers writhe like nerves on the marble floor. I’m swept away by the crowd in their finery.

“Excuse me.”

The couple I interrupted turns around. Their faces are striking against the bright red powder smearing their cheeks and lips, but they don’t resemble anything remotely human.

Their eyes follow me, yet it feels like they can’t fully register me there.

“Can I help you?” The man asks.

“Never mind, I—Is this the Cardinal King’s castle?”

“Chateau, dear,” his date butts in. “Very big difference…”

“Have you seen him?”

Another song starts, breathing life into the room. The couple sways, and the woman sees me still standing there.

“Who, dear?” she asks, more to get rid of me than to help.

“The Cardinal King.”

At that, a lineup of men circle me.

One seizes my hand and kisses it, gazing at me with full, blue eyes, “I’m the Cardinal King, sweetheart—” Another suitor appears at my side. “No, I’m the Cardinal King—” “No, I am—" The ordeal involves practically every eligible man in the room. Contesting screams dissolve the ambience. The trumpets fade, the flutes wane under the howls for my hand.

They keep coming, grabbing at my hair, at my clothes—slipping the boots off my feet and pulling at my arms. It feels like I’m being quartered, tugged in every direction by rope and horses.

I break from the hysteria and get to the marble stairs, to safety.

Pulling myself up, a polished boot falls beside me.

“What did I say?”

The voice booms. It rips everyone from the frenzy and to the stairs. Their eyes go beyond me to the authority at my side.

“One night on Earth and you’re back to being ungodly human,” the voice hisses. “Out.” Everyone stares, so incredibly still they could’ve been frozen in time.

“Out!” The women and men push at each other, filling the hall like scorned children sent to their rooms.

A gloved hand reaches down.

“I don’t remember inviting you.”

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I give him my hand, and he hoists me hard onto my feet.

“I was just leaving...”

“Would be rude of me to turn you out to the cold.”

His dark eyes have an authority of their own. Strokes of charcoal mask them, lustrous bits of amber glinting intelligence under heavy brows. He’s also decked out in red—the brightest red I’ve ever seen.

I stare, speechless and he leads me into his study where a fire teems in the fireplace and washes the woodwork in a dismal warmth. Glancing up, I’m struck by the study’s thatched ceiling of trees, barely scraping the dark sky.

I fall into the chair across from him and glance over.

He scowls.

“Why are you here?”

“To find you.”

An eyebrow raises.

“Don’t you recognize me?” I add.

He clears his throat, wary to press on with the subject. “How’d you get in?”

“What?”

“Only the lost end up here. We try to avoid that, considering what happened tonight.”

He sighs. “The dead are just as enamored by the living...”

I laugh. “Don’t sound so thrilled...You should be celebrating like the rest of them.”

“I’m not in the celebrating mood.”

I turn to the mirror above the fireplace, reflecting the scene. Despite the air of the earlier festivities, the man and I look stagnant. We’re both ghosts halted in our own grief.

I stand.

The Cardinal King notices.

Starting for the door, I hear him stand. He cups my shoulder and I face him.

“I have to go.”

The life in his eyes sinks and becomes cold.

“Stay.”

I shove past him and sprint down the marble stairs. Redbirds dive on command, chasing me to the doors. They loom near and I grab at them blindly, throwing myself out into the courtyard.

All I see is red then, funneling around me.

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Anna-Lise Zimoski

257 Spruce Street

Perfectly lined macaron picket fence, almond paint, boysenberry roof, friends chatting to friends.

Block parties Saturdays, light up the night with bonfires, hot dogs, s’mores.

Missing person on the news, bright smiles, until what happens behind the closed clean picket fence.

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Image courtesy of Ashley Barletta

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Ashley Barletta

Thanksgiving

(1st Place Winner) Sometimes blinkers don’t blink.

Narrow country roads balance between the cornfields that wobble in the wind.

Cold turkey sandwich, potato chips, and no dinner table.

The stuffed leather where she used to be, worn duck tape promised purpose.

Midnight hair and seafoam eyes, she always danced, even with her seatbelt on.

Volume cranked, Livin’ on a Prayer yeah right.

His hot temper burned away her merriment.

The air is still scented with gravy spilled in the back seat after she hit the curb last year.

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Visions Bright New Insights from Bright Young Minds 2018-2019

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