The Marque | Vol. 56 (2018)

THE MARQUE

THE MARQUE LITERARY MAGAZINE 56TH EDITION DELUXE WITH THE SPINNING RIMS AND ALL OF THE LIGHTS ST. MARK'S SCHOOL OF TEXAS 10600 PRESTON ROAD DALLAS, TEXAS 75230 WWW.SMTEXAS.ORG 214-346-8000

CONCEPT

DELUXE BECAUSE IT HAS ALWAYS TAKEN STARK BOLDNESS TO OVERCOME THE FEAR THAT STIFLES CREATION. The type of fear that doesn’t face you head on but lurks over your shoulder. It’s the fear that trembles in your fingers as you hold the brush. The fear that your vision may not be realized.

Even at the threshold of creation you fear letting go of comfort like you will one day in college fear the absence of your family’s wisdom to guide you. In the future you will lose your job; you will lose loved ones; you will fear that the common crowd will compel you even to lose yourself.

You will hear the jeers and the fleeting judgments of others and mistake an insignificant function to be your cosmic purpose. Sometimes you will forget that you are here to change the world.

When everything around you conspires to corrupt your steady path, remember that you walk

02 03 The Marque Concept

as the Path to Manhood statue walks. With courage and Honor.

This trait alone forever makes you an iconoclast. You are one who tears down false icons, one who attacks the worldly institutions that seek to debase and cheapen your importance.

Iconoclasts bombard tradition and defy establishment, and from that pressure form the brilliant diamond of new ideas that inspire more to come. These are the ideas inviting challenge. The images sparking controversy. The words uncovering truth. Time and time again history has spun the cycle of iconoclasm that continues to condition our world today. Every institution made and destroyed, every belief spread and opposed—those make up a fraction of the push and pull that creativity performs to guide the tide of progress.

This tide is the telos of St. Mark’s, but while studying at 10600 Preston Road, a Marksmen may feel invisibly caged by a cautious restriction, a quaking warning holding him from celebrating his craft. The fevered dreams of a rap album, awardwinning film, or eloquent poem collection aren’t

enticing enough prospects to keep him from his daily regime.

But every Marksmen who creates has stood at that edge. The dangerous winds of his compulsions sway him toward the thrilling free fall, but the whispers of regiment promising a tangible reward are right at his ear.

Under limitations, however, Marksmen always find ways to exercise that same hungry, flaming passion within the structure, and Marksmen will always succeed in doing so. Impassioned, his ambition is an unstoppable force, only gaining momentum as the years pass, and a new call to break the barrier grows harder and harder to resist.

The subtle compromise between this wild and controlled creation is iconoclasm, and sandwiched between the fear and passion exists the iconoclast.

A Marksmen takes his passion to heart, jumps from the precipice with abandon, and delves deep into the recesses of his creativity.

Marksmen—iconoclasts—are impassioned to create, change, and challenge the systems that preside over them and their peers.

This magazine celebrates iconoclasts for their devotion to innovation and progress.

DEDICATION

MAX WOOD

04 05 The Marque Dedication

MAX WOOD ECDYSIS, (1983) OIL AND CHARCOAL ON CANVAS, 150 X 150 CM St. Mark’s is full of extremely intelligent people.

On any given day there are troops of students storming through lecture after lecture, still hungry for more concepts to internalize despite being already overburdened with unwieldy class loads, and the ceaselessly wandering Marksman who cannot quench his thirst for the truth feels that there must exist within the campus some haven of higher learning. He imagines an enlightened classroom, one set apart from the tried-and-true knowledge boxes that can be more easily found from the main entrance.

On any given day Ms. Wood serves up that very truth. Often

teaching multiple classes simultaneously while individually esteeming each student’s education with vigor, it is as if she carries down the divine skill of art from Mt. Olympus so that every denizen of her classroom—student or not—may grasp for himself the richness of her craft.

She must know, too, that her tireless exertion touches the hearts and minds of 10600 Preston Rd. every day by casting an immeasurably powerful aura of artful energy onto a sometimes stifled community. Her impact on the community of the school as well as the higher education of its students is felt by all even at the far reaches of the campus.

TO HONOR AND THANK MS. WOOD FOR HER PROFOUND SUPPORT OF MARKSMEN LIKE US, WE DEDICATE THE 56TH VOLUME OF THE MARQUE TO MS. MAX WOOD.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Outspoken

Pyrotechnic

Section 1 “BILLBOARDS” ALPHELUS 2 THE VALEDICTORIAN PARROTS IN INDIA UNREQUITED VENGEANCE SPEECHLESS RELATION ARGUMENT THE CLOUD SNEZ THE SPONTANEOUS MARTYR “CHANGE” ADVERTORIAL BACKPACK A RED CARD SB COHESIVE 3 A COLLECTION OF HAIKUS CANDID A LEAVE OF ABSINTHE SONANCE IS GOLDEN GIFT GIVING HAPPY BIRTHDAY THE CAREER NOT TAKEN GOLDEN GATE DRAWING AND PAINTING EXHIBITION

06 07 The Marque Contents

8

Section 2

Kyle Smith ‘19 Jonathan Taylor ’19 Kyle Smith ’19 Adnan Khan ‘19 Josh Daniels ‘18

8 11 10 12 12

William Hall ‘18 Will Hunt ‘19 Kyle Smith ‘19 Kabeer Singh ‘18 Riley Sanders ‘18

14 14 15 16 16

Kyle Smith ‘19 Adnan Khan ‘19

19 20

Duncan Kirstein ‘19 Kevin Feng ‘18 Mujin Kwun ‘19

21 22 22

Kabeer Singh ‘18 Jonah Simon ‘19 Han Zhang ‘21 Kyle Smith ‘19 Kyle Smith ‘19 Ruoming Fan ‘19

23 23 24 24 25 26

POWER LINE MONK IN THE LAKE SOMETHING TO COME BACK TO DINER NINE LINES GIRL WITH EGG ON HEAD THE WIZARD’S DREAM MACHINE TIGER’S NEST TIGER’S NEST PAPER KINGDOM SQUARE HOUSE A SATIRE OF “THE ROAD NOT TAKEN” BY ROBERT FROST GOOD MORNING BHUTAN THE SOLUTION DUDLEY MY FATHER’S PLAYLIST YEARBOOK 1956 CRACKED VITA EST LUX INDUSTRIAL ARTS EXHIBITION

Parker Davis ‘19

27 28

34 Kevin Feng ‘18 Adnan Khan ‘19 Michael Liang ‘18

34 36 37

Lee Schlosser ‘20 Ruoming Fan ‘19 Tyler Nussbaumer ‘20

38 39 40

Perry Naseck ‘18

41

Kabeer Singh ‘18 Adnan Khan ‘19 Austin Montgomery ‘18 Adnan Khan ‘19 Riley Sanders ‘18

42 43 43 44 44

William Hall ‘18 Tucker RIbman ‘18 William Hall ‘18 Liam Sohn ‘17 William Hall ‘18 Kabeer Singh ‘18 Cole Arnett ‘19

46 46 47 48 49 50 50 52

KINETIC Section 3 RUST GLASS DIAMONDS MAGNIFICENT MORNING MOTIVATION PLAYTIME LET THE LIGHT SHINE “MINORITY” TWENTY-FIVE YARDS DION RIVER THE RETURN OF REYYNORE PRAYER FLAGS THE SINK VIOLENT SHORE BOY IN THE BUBBLE THIS IS TIME, THE TWOFACED PHENOMENON KAO SAHN WE’RE JUST BROWN JARS OF SAND DUBAI

60 Kabeer Singh ‘18 Kevin Feng ‘18 Antonio Ivarra ‘19 Christian Duessel ‘20

60 62 63 64

Seth Weprin ‘19 Colin Campbell ‘20 Kyle Smith ‘19 Edward Ro ‘18 Kyle Smith ‘19 Kevin Feng ‘18 Davis Bailey ‘18

65 66 67 68 69 70 71

Kevin Feng ‘18 Crawford Helbing ‘21 William Hall ‘18 Adnan Khan ‘19 Shiv Yajnik ‘21

73 74 75 76 77

Seth Weprin ‘19 Zach Gilstrap ‘18 Seun Omonije ‘18 Kabeer Singh

78 79 80 81

Section 4 FEATHER PERRY NASECK FEATURE STORY THE YOUNG ARTIST ALPHELUS 1 NEW TERROR SKIZZORS APPLE? EIGHTEEN YEARS SEVILLA BRIDGE PATH TO THE TIGER’S NEST LA MEZQUITA LADIES PRAYING WITH PILLARS WRINKLES RUDY DOCK LIGHTNING EKANSH TAMBE FEATURE STORY ON THE BORDER CERAMICS EXHIBITION

82 Kabeer Singh ‘18

Jonathan Taylor ‘19 CJ Crawford ‘19 Davis Bailey ‘18 Kabeer Singh ‘18 Austin Montgomery ‘18 Adnan Khan ‘19 Seth Weprin ‘18 Adnan Khan ‘19 Adnan Khan ‘19 Davis Bailey ‘18 William Hall ‘18 Tucker Ribman Matthew Coleman ‘19

82 84 84 89 89 90 91 92 93 95 97 98 99 99 100 101 102 106

KYLE SMITH ’19 “BILLBOARDS”

OUTSPOKEN TO FEAR NO PUNISHMENT AND SPEAK ONE’S MIND REGARDLESS OF THE CONSEQUENCES. SPEAK UP. The outspoken are fearless to create personas that can champion movements and change the world. Within the spirit of iconoclasm, the outspoken take on for themselves the deafening cry of downtrodden voices.

Weaving words into the fabric of our time is an artful practice found at the very core of the human condition, and those who refuse to remain silent hold in their hands the common fate of the people.

08 09 The Marque Outspoken

The Va 10 11

A+ JONATHAN TAYLOR ’19 ALPHELUS 2

The Marque Outspoken

ledictorian JIMMY RODRIGUEZ ’18

W

ell…he thought as he closed the driver’s side door of his 2001 Volkswagen Passat and began to drive…What to do, what to

+

do…

It was a drive the seventeen-year-old had completed hundreds of times before in his seemingly endless high-school career: from his school, St. Thomas Preparatory Academy, and back to his mom’s apartment — a modest, medium-sized, three room apartment on the third floor of the complex.

As he drove, he began thinking, as he always did during the hourlong commute to and from school.

He began thinking about his time at St. Thomas. About how he was proud of himself for what he had accomplished during his time there. He was the leading scorer on the quiz bowl team for three years running (and he wasn’t about to stop this year); he had never received a B on any assessment whether on homework, quizzes, tests, or exams; he had a perfect SAT and ACT score; and he had two school records: most books checked out of the library and most books overdue to the library (no one else needs them, anyway). Sure, he hadn’t made time to have many friends during this time, but he’ll make friends at Harvard.

I’ve done well. I deserve it. He doesn’t deserve it. I’ve done well. He doesn’t deserve it.

As he thought of his classmate Matthew, the student body president and another straight A student — also known as his competition for valedictorian of the St. Thomas class of 2029 — he felt his hands tighten around the steering wheel. He doesn’t deserve it. God, he doesn’t deserve it. I deserve it. I deserve it. Jesus Christ, if anyone deserves it, it’s me.

He thought back to his elementary school days — back before his father had the accident. Before he had to watch his dad, his eyes rolled up so that only the whites were visible, moaning, groaning, crying, receiving the last rites at 2:28 in the morning on a Tuesday night — a school night. Back to when, every morning, Dad would say, “Have a great day, Jude. I love you. And remember, other kids will try to win, but it’s the attention to detail that will set you apart,” followed by a hug and a kiss.

Attention to detail. Of all the wisdom that his father imparted to him, this one phrase resonated more than anything else. Attention to detail. He had lived his life by this phrase, never letting a night go by when he had not completed every problem on every math

Attention to detail.

Ofthat all histhefather wisdom imparted on him, this one phrase resonated more than anything else.

assignment, read every line of his English homework, translated every word for Latin, and done all his research for science. It was his attention to detail that did set him apart.

And it was attention to detail that Matthew lacked. Matthew cut corners. Matthew didn’t care as much about school as Jude. Matthew was the definition of a faker. And yet, the teachers loved him. And the students. And the parents. And everyone else in the world, ever. But not Jude.

He thought back to the various encounters he had with Matthew at school. When Matthew would say hi, he would respond with a glare that pierced right through Matthew’s false sincerity. He doesn’t care about me. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself. And those colorful socks. Those neon green and bright blue socks that screamed, “I’m a playful kind of guy.” Those socks that everyone associated with Matthew. Even if you didn’t know him personally, you knew the guy with the socks. God, those socks are annoying. No student who actually cares about his reputation would wear socks that stupid.

He thought about a recent conversation they had. “What did you get on that on that calculus test?” Matthew asked in the same smug way he did everything in his life.

“Ninety-eight,” Jude replied curtly.

“Oh, nice! I got a ninety-five,” Matthew replied to the question he wasn’t asked.

Sure you did. I see right through you. You’re not fooling me.

Everyone knows you probably wrote the key. Ninety-five. Pshh. I don’t believe that for a second. What a kiss up.

And Jude continued to justify why he would be valedictorian. No B’s. Never sick. Never late. Always prepared. Attention to detail. I deserve it. I deserve it. I deserve it.

As he pulled into his apartment complex, he parked in his usual spot under the awning near the front door. As he readied himself to exit his car, he noticed that his grip had not loosened on the steering wheel since the beginning of the drive; now each hand was a pale white and extremely sore from clenching for so long.

He opened the door and walked slowly around to the trunk. As he opened it, the neon green and bright blue socks, now stained dark red, caught his attention. Must’ve come off during the drive, he thought as he grabbed the corner of the eight foot by ten foot blanket wrapping the rest of the body and pulled it back over the socks so that only the blanket was visible. As he grabbed his backpacks from the car, closed the trunk, and began to walk toward the apartment, he thought of what might have happened if someone had seen those socks underneath the blanket, and he thanked God for his father’s wise words, thanked God for his attention to detail.

Unrequited Vengeance JOSH DANIELS ’18

T

distance between the cowboy’s pain and fear.

As the early rays of the sun exposed the empty plains spanning in each direction, the cowboy urged the exhausted beast toward the tree line as it noisily panted, crying for surrender. Without the shelter of darkness, escape was futile. The horse’s hoof prints could be followed in the daylight for miles by even the most incompetent tracker. Grasping his fate, the cowboy reached into his saddlebag. From it, he removed two guns, twelve bullets, and a leatherbound book before releasing the exhausted animal into the wild.

Plopping down on the cool moss of a nearby log, he nervously loaded his rifle as the sun’s rays playfully danced off the cartridges’ bronze casings.

After doing the same with his pistol, he set the guns at his feet. Reaching for salvation, he picked up the Bible and began to flip through the wrinkled pages ’til he came upon his favorite verse. His voice broke the eerie silence as he spoke into the wind, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and staff, they comfort me.” A new-found courage began to surge through his veins like wildfire. The weary traveler’s trepidation vanished as a peaceful assurance took its place. The cowboy

he weathered hand shakily cupped the match as the flame kissed the tobacco, igniting the darkness of the ominous trail.

The rider took two heavy drags from his cob pipe and wearily blew the smoke into the cool air, temporarily losing sight of the well-beaten path and forgetting his unease. The swaying of the saddle from the rocky movement of the horse and the rhythmic-metallic clanking of the harness were all that separated the cowboy from the deep slumber that his body yearned for. As he recollected the horror he had seen earlier that afternoon, sleep danced from his eyelids. Nearly losing his hat, he quickly looked over both shoulders to see if one of the savages was following him. As terror overtook the sense of calm he’d struggled to maintain, he dug both spurs into his horse’s sides. He was the only one who’d made it out alive.

He wouldn’t dare stop to rest or build a fire for fear of being found.

His family— his beautiful wife, his precious children— were all gone, unmercifully butchered under the blade of the tomahawk. The settlement he’d worked tirelessly to establish lay in ruin, and the crops were burned. The horse galloped on through the long night, putting

ADNAN KHAN ’19 PARROTS IN INDIA

12 13 The Marque Outspoken

removed his hat and bowed his head, requesting forgiveness for the vengeful sins he was about to commit.

With God on his side, trusty Winchester in his right hand and Colt Revolver in his left, the cowboy staged his final stand among the pines.

Palms sweating and heart racing, he crouched behind a tree and looked to the trail with a newly attained degree of resolve. He prepared for a clash with his mighty maker, the bearer of good and evil—the Wild West.

Their declaration of all-out war resonated in his ears as he recognized the dreaded highpitched whoops. He repeated the verse over and over again in an attempt to counter his rekindled fear. Riding with unmatched grace, four Comanche horsemen thundered across the plain. The cowboy made out the freshly painted black and red streaks of battle on the chief’s face.

In a series of indecipherable communications, the cowboy watched as the murderers slowed their steeds to a gradual halt. The Indians dismounted no more than fifty yards from his position. Knocking an arrow, a young brave captured the attention of his brothers as he pointed an accusing finger toward the path of freshly agitated dirt that led to the trees. With an unspoken understanding, each readied an arrow and drew back his bowstring. Arrows tore through the dense foliage, slicing into nearby trees, but the lone soldier held his ground, waiting for his window. Unable to weed out their enemy, the Indians crept closer, following each arrow they launched. The cowboy waited anxiously ’til they came within ten yards. Drunk with adrenaline and resolution, he made his move. As he

No God or Bible verse could mend his heartbreak or erase his wrongdoing.

Bearing his transgressions, he approached one of the Indian’s horses and ran his fingers through its mane, establishing a friendliness that was necessary if he was to become its new rider.

abandoned his wooden shield, the lone ranger squeezed the triggers simultaneously, releasing a storm of lead from his hips. The cowboy dove back into the underbrush as a disorienting cloud of gunpowder filled the morning air. Spitting dirt and leaves from his parched lips, he peeked his head above the entanglement, anticipating the end.

As the man’s eyes studied the corpses of the fallen warriors, he couldn’t accept the evil he’d just committed. The blood of the four Comanches began to pool as doubt crept into the cowboy’s head. Revenge wasn’t providing the closure that he expected and which he desperately needed.

The exchange of one life for another didn’t numb the loss of his family. No God or Bible verse could mend his heartbreak or erase his wrongdoing.

Bearing his transgressions, he approached one of the Indian’s horses and ran his fingers through its mane, establishing a friendliness that was necessary if he was to become its new rider. After fetching his saddle, he began to fit it to the horse.

As he hoisted himself up with one hand on the bridle and a foot in the stirrup, he looked down upon the scene in disgust. Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew the only sense of comfort he knew. Packing the pipe with coarse leaves, he struck a match and drew the tobacco vapor into his lungs. He urged the horse onward, continuing on the only path he knew: the path of God, the path of justice, the path of Satan, the path of evil— the Wild West.

tion

R ela

WILLIAM HALL ’18 SPEECHLESS

Relation WILL HUNT ’19

Production, and production, and production, Blurs together under a wooden rose, Until the drape closes on apple blush.

Though the Pit conducts life with underscore, We can create the Kingdom on the stage; The same as it was born inside the mind.

Now is the time to don the robes of friend, And lace meaning between one another.

The shadow can be painted like the light, And the actor portrayed just like the life.

14 15 The Marque Outspoken

KYLE SMITH ’19 ARGUMENT

KABEER SINGH ’18 THE CLOUD

snez the spontaneous Martyr RILEY SANDERS ’18

S 16 17

nez awoke as the reverse thrusters jolted the spacebus to a mechanical halt. He looked out the window to behold the dark purple expanses of the night forests, worlds below. His mind swimming with ideas of the evil creatures that dwelt on the dark side of planet Polis, Snez gathered his things, sealed his helmet, and awaited depressurization.

Drifting weightlessly toward the airlock, Snez took out his notes to look at the circuit schematics one last time. If he failed this exam, he would have

The Marque Outspoken

no choice but to work in the mines for his whole life. Floating across the cratered ground, he fell into a silent crowd of students just like him.

They knew that less than ten percent of them would pass the exam; a cloud of cut-throat competitivity and resentment enveloped them as they pulled themselves along the handrails to class. Asteroid Mine University had the lowest graduation rate in all of the dual planets.

The crowd descended down the tunnel, deep into the asteroid where the classes were. Around them, the rock shuddered with the explosions set off by miners, many of whom had once been students hoping to graduate from the university. Their hopes had been dashed by the unfeeling professors, pressured to send warm bodies to the mines that paid their salaries.

The students packed themselves into a steel elevator as it sealed behind them. The elevator quickly pressurized, followed by the clamour of the dozens of students taking off their space helmets. Other than the occasional cough or grunt, everyone stayed silent. The elevator door opened and the students filed into their auditorium classroom. Snez sat down at his desk and took out his pen, waiting nervously for the elevator to take down the 500 remaining students. Less than 50 of them would pass the exam and graduate. When all of the students had arrived and taken their seats, the scratched, smeared screens embedded in the desks activated. Snez looked down and saw the first question. The students had one hour. They began testing.

Looking out of the window of the bus on the way back, Snez wondered if he had passed the exam as he watched the asteroids in the belt whiz by. The bus stopped above one of the asteroids, and six students stepped out of the airlock and kicked off of the bus, propelling themselves towards their clan stronghold. Finally, the bus stopped above Snez’s rock. Knowing he would not be journeying to the university any time soon, Snez pulled an apple from a compartment in his pressure suit. Handling it like a gold piece, Snez gingerly passed the apple to the driver, who babbled his thanks. Drivers, miners, and other laborers survived off of menial wages and deserved something other than grain to eat. It was one of Snez’s last apples from the raid.

The raid. The one raid that he should not have gone on. The raid that preserved him while his family perished in a spectacular asteroid collision. The raid that he wished he had put off so that he could die with his family. The raid that left him with nothing and nobody, all alone on his own charred rock, damned to eternal loneliness, the last of his kind, the last Snez of a clan once more than 1000 strong.

Snez, in the comfort of his burrow, reached for his mother. He flipped the monitor on and there she was, waiting. He had scanned her brain and digitalized her consciousness before casting her body into space. She had died from a broken heart a year to the day after the rest of them. “Hey, Mom,” said Snez, “I find out in a couple hours whether I passed or not.”

“918,” she said, calling him by his number, “You have too much Suzillan in you to fail. You were always one of the smartest in the clan.”

“It’s so weird...” Snez coughed. “Other Half-Gorves just call me Snez now. They know I’m the last one.” Snez looked down at the cold, rusted metal floors. His friends, all two of them, still called him by his number. But they were different from the others at the university. They had formed rare friendships among a sea of competitivity, studying together and staying at one

another’s asteroids. “I’m going out for gaba with Akrin and Foze tonight,” Snez said after a long pause.

“Which bar?” she asked, adding maternally, “Don’t fly there; take the bus.”

“The one on the asteroid a few minutes away from the mining colony.”

After chatting a little longer and finally saying his goodbyes, Snez turned off the monitor.

He wondered if she was actually conscious, or if her real mind had died with her body. He waited expectantly for his scores to appear.

Later, working on the undercarriage of his spaceship in the hangar, Snez’s pressure suit gently vibrated with a notification. He pulled up his heads up display and looked at the message. It was from the university. Shaking, he clicked “view scores.” The window expanded into his vision.

Looking out of the window of the bus on the way back, Snez wondered if he had passed the exam as he watched the asteroids in the belt whiz by.

It said, “ERROR: SYSTEMS OFFLINE.” “Wha-,” a low noise cut Snez off as his air pumps failed.

His vision was blurred with black spots and his lungs burned, hungry for oxygen.

Desperately, Snez pulled himself across the handrails, speeding headfirst along the rocky ground towards the entrance to his habitation.

All of the electronics in his suit had failed. He frantically signalled the airlock to open, to no avail. He neared the door, but he was going too fast. As he grabbed at the rail to slow down, his head smashed into the metal with a violent thud followed by a soft rushing of air. His suit was leaking. Distraught, Snez pressed the button to open the airlock several times. The door would not open. Snez pulled himself to the mechanical override lever and yanked it up. As the doors opened, a rush of air burst from his habitation, throwing him violently away from the door. If not for his grip on the lever, he would have catapulted off of the asteroid and into the depths of space.

There was no gravity, no safety net to keep him rooted down in the unforgiving asteroid belt.

With a final pull of his arms, Snez launched himself into the habitation, the air now gushing from the hole in his helmet. He could feel his face swelling and freezing from the leak in his suit, and his tongue buzzed as his saliva started to boil.

His lungs now screaming for air, Snez closed the door and opened the valves on the emergency air tanks in his final conscious moment.

Snez woke up floating chaotically among all of his possessions. He heard a clang as a lamp gently floated into his helmet. Unclasping the helmet, he cast it aside. It was reduced to a mangled confusion of metal and glass. Snez’s face was bloodshot and swollen. A knock at his door startled him. He pulled himself across the ceiling, pushing away various pieces of furniture that the depressurization had ripped from their places. After struggling toward the control panel screen mounted on the wall, Snez discovered that it was working. He pulled up the door camera display and saw Akrin and Foze waiting outside. They looked up at the camera, seeming worried. Snez slammed the door open button, delighting in seeing his friends after such a traumatic episode. They floated into the airlock, waving to him from the window. As soon as the airlock pressurized, they pulled themselves into Snez’s burrow, embracing him. It had been a full month since they had last seen each other at the university.

“What happened to your face?” asked Foze.

“I smashed myself against the door getting back from the hangar. All the electronics in my suit failed while I was working on my ship.”

“Was it from the EMP?” asked Akrin.

“The what?”

“The electromagnetic pulse. The smarticles sent it out. It might mean war.”

The smarticles, an oppressive genius force, were a mysterious breed of Suzillan especially gifted in math and technology. Engineers of imperialism, they invented new ways to sustain the Suzillan subjugation of the Gorf planet Agris.

Suddenly, the lights flickered and died. Loud and authoritative, a knock sounded from outside the airlock. Foze walked over to the entrance tunnel camera and saw them, long, pale, and hairless, wrestling with the door. Suzillans, two of them. The ultimate space-faring species, with thick layer of dead skin to keep them insulated from space and a distended stomach meant for holding air. The first Suzillan produced an explosive charge, placing it carefully on the door, stepping back. Snez had only seconds to act. He kicked off of the floor, catapulting himself into the hallway above him. Still in his pressure suit but without a helmet, Snez found a spare in the closet. The explosion sounded, the air streaming away from him just as he clasped his helmet into place.

Extraordinary silence ensued. No sound travels in space; the violently spinning world was strangely serene in its noiselessness. Snez flailed his limbs until he hit his closet door. The room came into focus. Foze’s body floated by, a bloody gash on his pressure trousers. His strangled, purple face stared blankly from inside his helmet.

A long, metallic Suzillan blaster floated into Snez’s field of vision, He reached out and took hold of it in a blind rage. These bastards had killed Foze. They would pay. Emitting a gutteral whining sound audible only to himself, Snez flung himself into the main room. There was Akrin, pinned against the wall with a long, pale arm. Snez fired at the Suzillan, the laser from the gun tearing through its body. The Suzillan convulsed and floated lifelessly into the wall. The other one turned quickly to face Snez, drawing his blaster. Just then, Akrin sprung off of the wall, producing a sharp piece of broken glass.

He swung wildly at his adversary, mortally slicing through its thick skin several times. The Suzillan coughed a spray of blood, the aerosol spewing

Snez the spontaneous MArtyr several feet in front of it. Akrin motioned in a frenzy for Snez to follow, yanking himself out of the front door, through the collapsed airlock, and up the entrance tunnel. There, on the surface, was a red hot pile of mangled metal heaped where Snez’s hangar once had been. A bright light attracted Snez’s attention. A Suzillan space vessel was thrusting off the ground, a terrified-looking Suzillan in the cockpit. Akrin and Snez made eye contact just as Akrin kicked off of the asteroid and into the void.

Akrin sailed into the metal underbelly of the ship, taking hold of a bundle of wires, holding on as the ship accelerated faster and faster. Snez looked up, witnessing the bravery of his last companion. He bent his knees all the way down, closed his eyes, and propelled himself towards the vessel, now hundreds of meters above him.

The vessel grew from a speck to a behemoth as Snez flew uncontrollably towards it. Suddenly, the vessel’s acceleration shifted directions. Snez thought he might miss the ship and catapult right into planet Agris, but he stretched out his arms as far as he could and seized hold of a wing flap. Suddenly, the ship fired its sidethrusters, causing Snez to slip down the wing all the way to the tip. The pilot clearly knew of the Half-Gorf stowaways. Snez spotted Akrin a few hundred feet away hanging on to the same bundle of wires. Resisting the unrelenting jerks of the vessel, Akrin reached for a blaster. He must’ve taken it from the other Suzillan, thought Snez. Gritting his teeth, shooting with wild abandon, Akrin used the blaster to penetrate into the interior of the vessel.

The ship shuddered as the panic-stricken pilot red-lined the thrusters in an effort to shake the Half-Gorves. Snez was slipping. He couldn’t see Akrin. Had his friend lost his grip of the wires? A cable shot towards Snez from the area of the ship where Akrin was. The cable whizzed past Snez, snapping to a stop feet behind him. When he couldn’t hang on any longer, Snez let go of the wing and grabbed the cable, wrapping it around

his wrists.

A pull from the cable almost caused Snez to lose his grip. The cable was retracting. It pulled Snez all the way to its origin and then through a small hole in the underbelly of the ship. Snez found himself in a dark hallway, pulsing red emergency lights illuminating his friend Akrin, who held a grappling gun.

Upon exploring the hallway, Akrin and Snez found that they were sealed out of the rest of the ship. Snez, calling upon all the studying he had done for the exam, countless nights of poring over notes, gently detached the cover of the door control panel. He tore, reconnected, disconnected, rearranged; then he beheld his work, signalled for Akrin to grab hold of something, and pressed the key button on the control panel.

An explosion of air ripped past the HalfGorves as they clamoured to pull themselves into the rest of the ship. Snez made it in first, and Akrin followed, reaching to the other side of the airlock to the control panel. The airlock snapped shut just as Akrin pulled his hand inside. Snez checked his pressure gauge: one tenth of an atmosphere. That was breathable. The friends unclasped their helmets, rejoicing in the dull sound of each other’s voices traveling through the thin space air.

“Why did those Suzillans attack us?” asked Akrin.

“I don’t know...”

Snez was exasperated.

He steadied himself on a handrail.

Akrin pulled out the antenna on his wristradio. A staticky voice of alarm rang from the radio. “...countless reports of Suzillan raids... exterminate the Half-Gorves...ships coming from...spaceport...Polis...” The audio gave way to garbled static. No Half-Gorf had ever been to the Suzillan spaceport on the planet Polis; it was a grandiose legend inspiring rich tales. From what Snez knew about it, he could not separate truth from myth.

What Snez did know was that the spaceport was Suzillan territory; Half-Gorves were damned

Snez, calling upon all the studying he had done for the exam, countless nights of poring over notes, gently detached the cover of the door control panel.

18 19

The Marque Outspoken

to the asteroids after their accidental conception (and subsequent population explosion) on the planet Agris. The Half-Gorves were a product of the imperialist Suzillans and the dull, short, hairy, enslaved Gorves from planet Agris. The Half-Gorves were a shunned Mestizo race, a constant nuisance to their Suzillan cousins.

Constantly raiding their supply ships, occupying mineral-rich asteroids, the Half-Gorves were like vermin to the Suzillans; an endemic mostly ignored, but better destroyed than alive. Snez and Akrin anticipated immediate extermination upon arrival at Polis.

“Look, a blueprint,” exclaimed Akrin, pulling a diagram of the ship from a metal closet.

According to the charts, the cockpit entrance was an elevator that lay down the hall and to the left.

The hijackers yanked themselves towards the end of the hall, hurtling towards the corner. In a spectacular show of acrobatics, the pair swung around the corner, taking a left. The elevator door was in sight. Grabbing onto a lever in the wall, Snez jerked himself to a halt in front of the elevator door. Akrin, careening down the passage behind Snez, grabbed another lever. The two ripped off the control panel and began to hack the elevator.

Sparks flew from the control panel as the elevator door opened. Snez and Akrin eagerly entered, ready to confront the pilot. Why would there be an elevator in space? thought Snez.

Perhaps this vessel was for planetary travel as well. The elevator stopped and the door began to open, but not before Snez and Akrin’s inertia carried them to the top of the elevator. As soon as the door opened wide enough, a salvo of laser beams blasted through the opening, scorching the wall below them. His courage building, Snez flung himself at his assailant, who was now shooting wildly through the fully open door.

He disarmed the Suzillan pilot in an awkward struggle, sending the pilot flying towards one end of the room.

His eyes following the gangly, writhing pilot, Snez beheld the cockpit. It was a giant glass sphere with a 360 degree view. Above them, the asteroids lazily circled the planets. He could see planet Agris to his left, and to his right, the immense planet Polis. The highways and patterns of lights surrounding the dark side of the planet were already coming into view. A giant, grey platform loomed beneath the ship, getting closer and closer. It was too late to turn back, and

KYLE SMITH ’19 “CHANGE”

nobody was at the controls.

But where were the controls? Akrin had the laser pistol and was pointing it at the Suzillan pilot, yelling at the pilot in a language indecipherable to Suzillans. The pilot was yelling things back in a tongue Snez had studied at the university. They were... commands. “Left... Right... Landing rockets...”

Snez was able to make out some words. The ship started to jolt in accordance to the commands. The pilot was controlling the ship by speaking to it!

Snez noticed that he was now at the bottom of the dome. He felt impossibly heavy. He tried to stand, but his spine creaked and groaned in protest. He collapsed. Next to him lay Akrin, straining against the gravity. The pilot towered above them, yielding the pistol. Trembling, the pilot called for reinforcements through his hand radio.

Snez forced his feet under him, rising unsteadily, his leg muscles straining and cramping. He felt his face go cold and gaunt as the blood rushed from his brain and into his legs. Black dots swam in his vision as reality slipped away.

Arms and legs shackled, Snez looked up at the asteroid belt above Polis.

He had finally reached the spaceport, the evil place shrouded in mystery

that dominated his nightmares as a child. He strained his neck to see his surroundings. He was still in the massive glass cockpit, on a runway on a platform in the sky. Three Suzillans surrounded him, occupied with their radios, their pale foreheads furrowed. Miles below Snez, a city shined its lights and buzzed with energy. On the runway, hangars were filled with spaceships. So many spaceships... maybe even all of them. Suddenly, an idea, dark, simple, and complete, formed in Snez’s brain.

“Engines on!” Snez’s voice rang in the cockpit. The ship sprang to life.

The Suzillans fell to the side as they tried to reach silencing hands over Snez’s mouth. “Left! Thrusters at three quarters to stabilize!” Snez would join his family, his clan. A deep, fulfilled feeling bubbled up and mixed with his terror.

He was meant to do this. The ship was now feet away from the tower that held the runway up, a tower miles tall.

“Engines off!” Snez’s fate was sealed. Nothing mattered anymore, not his family, not his asteroid, not even his exam. Nihilistically, Snez embraced the familiar feeling of weightlessness as he closed his eyes. The explosion swallowed him, its fury bringing the Suzillan empire to its knees.

A DD

R E CA R

ADNAN KHAN ’19 ADVERTORIAL BACKPACK

20 21 The Marque Outspoken

A Red Card DUNCAN KIRSTEIN ’19

S

ophomore year was essentially over. Exams were the only thing on my mind, so I would certainly say I was stressed. Luckily, one young, reliable man would save me from my anxiety.

FOR CHRISTMAS OF MY FRESHMAN YEAR, my brother and I were lucky enough to receive two $30 Chipotle gift cards, one for each of us, as a gift from a family friend. I did not have a car at the time, so my use of said gift card was dependent on the generosity of driving family members.

A few months passed, yet I did not end up being able to use my card at all.

One day, however, I overheard a senior Film Studies class talking about going to Chipotle with their teacher. Among these students was William Caldwell, my brother’s best friend and frequent visitor at our house. I scurried over to him, preparing to bargain.

“William, I have a deal that may entice you,” I began. “You see, I have this wonderful gift card, and you have a wonderful car. If you buy me a burrito with this gift card, you may also buy yourself a drink with it.”

My new business partner agreed to this trade, and he soon returned to school with my burrito in his hand.

I DID NOT HAVE ANOTHER CHANCE TO EAT AT CHIPOTLE until the end of the summer before sophomore year. It was then that I pulled out my gift card, handing it to the young college student behind the counter. She swiped the card, but what she said next, I will never forget.

“You still owe four seventy-five.”

I was taken aback, my lack of funds physically hurting me.

“That bastard,” I whispered.

There was only one way my card could have possibly not had enough to pay for my lunch; William Caldwell payed for his own burrito with my gift card.

William Caldwell screwed me—and I wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

The cashier looked confused as I handed her what little cash I had and grabbed my receipt and burrito. I walked away. Fumbling with my year-old iPhone 6, I texted my brother, Graham, asking for William’s phone number. A few minutes later, I was punching the numbers into my virtual keypad. +1 (469) 532-1057 “Hello?” The voice of the younger Caldwell offspring muttered.

“You owe me lunch,” I replied.

All the popped up on my screen was the letter “K.”

EIGHT MONTHS LATER, May 2nd, I received a text from a number I did not have saved in my phone. +1 (469) 532-1057 “What’s your lunch period?” the text read.

“Fourth period, Mr. Stranger,” I replied.

Thirty minutes and a short text conversation later, I was sitting in William Caldwell’s 2012 Jeep, on my way to Chipotle.

Over one year later, this now-college-freshman kept his word to me.

I’d like to be someone people can rely on someday, and being paid back by William Caldwell is what showed me I could become that.

AofCollection Haikus MUJIN KWUN ’19 FURY Unbridled, uncaged, Unreasonable… sometimes.

So so much anger.

ICE CREAM SCOOP The scoop skims the top Gliding through the ice cream like birds in the air.

SHERBET Not pure like sorbet, but not creamy like ice cream Abomination BANANA DOLPHINS Dolphins in water like blue-gray, wet bananas.

They smell like salt, yay.

KEVIN FENG ’18 SB COHESIVE 3

22 23 The Marque Outspoken

AAbsinthe leave of JONAH SIMON ’19 No more paper whoring for today.

The heavens don their colorful attire As sun resigns its lucent cabaret While luna, dragging meekly, trudges higher.

The pupils now have hid their books away Until voracious time their furlough ends.

But time, to me, delights in its decay And so, in proof, down stairs my soul descends.

What better way to break the aching mode Of teacher, in the evening’s sultry shade Than nurse a tankard’s fondness to erode A life of masks to simple masquerade.

And since, at last, the working man’s retired, I s’pose a leave of absinthe is required.

KABEER SINGH ’18 CANDID

Sonance is golden HAN ZHANG ’21

The rain fell in sheets on the house, soaking the ground in a deluge of water. No one in the house noticed. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled, but no one saw anything or heard anything. In his bedroom, the boy listened raptly to silence. His mother opened the door and saw him sitting cross-legged on the floor without his pods in. She paused for a moment, confused. He was listening. To what? He was listening, but he was hearing nothing. His eyes were closed. Evidently he had not heard her enter the room.

Good.

She left the room, shutting the door softly as she did. She spoke aloud, and her voice echoed against the walls of the house. She paused for a moment and listened at the door to see if the boy had noticed.

No sound of movement from within the room. A voice from nowhere and everywhere cooed gently in her ear as she exhaled: “Yes?” She walked a safe distance from the room before responding in a quiet tone: “Can you call the rehab crew? I’m afraid he’s suffering from some… abnormal behavior.”

The voice responded, as always, in a calm, restrained manner: “Of course. Is there anything else you may require?”

“No, not right now.

Thanks so much.”

“You’re very welcome.”

Every time the voice left, she felt as if a physical being had departed. It was silly to think

24 25 The Marque Outspoken

like that, she knew, but she couldn’t help it. It was just—this feeling.

The boy listened to his mother listening to him, breathing once she went to make the call. He berated himself for being so stupid. Of course she would check on him after he went to bed. It was what good mothers were supposed to do, after all. He wasn’t worried; it usually took a few hours for the rehab crew to process the request and get to the house. There were downsides to globalization, after all. He ran over to his closet and grabbed a raincoat, then sprinted out of his house through the back door. His mother saw him, but even if she wanted, she couldn’t follow him KYLE SMITH ’19 through the rain.

As he sped through GIFT GIVING the city made grey by black thunderheads, the boy pulled out his pods and inserted them into his ears. It had been a few years since their use had become commonplace, even necessary, but he still found them uncomfortable. No—not uncomfortable. Something else. Uncanny? No. Strange?

No. Disturbing—that was the word. It was disturbing how quickly and seamlessly they had integrated themselves into society. He shuddered and hurried on his way.

He saw a building, slowed, stopped. He found himself facing the double doors of a school. His school.

Or, what used to be his school.

Who needed physical schools when children could receive the best education possible courtesy of POD Corporation?

The city hadn’t gotten around

to demolishing the outdated building (God only knows why), but in the meantime, he could use it as a hideout. He grimaced when he saw the thick chains on the doors.

Just then, sirens sounded loudly in his pods. The perpetually calm, perpetually unsettling voice spoke: “A minor has gone missing. Please standby for information on the missing child. Please standby.”

The boy yanked his pods out from his ears. It didn’t matter if they saw him without them now. Everyone in the entire city would know exactly what he looked like in a matter of seconds. Besides, that voice was more than he could bear.

He paused, unsure of what to do next.

THE BOY WOKE UP IN A FEATURELESS GREY ROOM. He coughed and sat up. There was a dim light that seemed to emanate from the walls themselves. He blinked in confusion. The last thing he remembered was standing in front of the barred doors of his old school. His head pounded, and his mouth was dry. He swallowed hard.

The dreaded, calm voice spoke to him from hidden speakers placed around the room. “You have been placed in a rehabilitation cell. You will stay here until the problem has been satisfactorily resolved. You will receive nourishment twice a day. You will listen to this voice.

You will be calmed…” The voice kept talking, on and on and on, endlessly speaking, syllables

and sounds pouring from the unseen speakers, until the boy thought he would go insane. But the voice continued. It never stopped, never faltered, always saying something, anything, nothing, everything, words and words and words and words.

The boy eventually returned to his home, on a quiet street in a quiet neighborhood where nothing really ever happened. Of course he went back. Why wouldn’t he?

He was ill before, and now he had been cured. When he came back, his mother noticed he was a little different, but she couldn’t KYLE SMITH ’19 place it exactly. Quieter, HAPPY BIRTHDAY maybe? Of course, he hadn’t spoken much before, but he barely spoke now. She shrugged it off, attributing it to some side effect or another of the rehabilitation: at least he wore his pods all the time now.

In his bedroom, the boy listened raptly to noise. His mother opened the door and saw him lying down on his bed with his pods in. She smiled and closed the door.

As soon as she did, the thing that was most certainly not her son coughed up oil. He wiped it off with his hand and smiled. He wondered how long it would take for someone to notice that he wasn’t the same anymore.

Well, that wasn’t true.

He was the same, just a little different.

THe Career Not Taken

RUOMING FAN ’19

Two roads diverged for a high school boy, And sorry I could not travel both And be one graduate, long I toyed And fantasized as far I enjoyed To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as new as May, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was STEM and boasted pay; Though as for that the passing day Had sold them really about the same, And both that morning equally rife In major no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another life!

Yet knowing how life leads on to wife, I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two careers diverged for a boy, and I— I took the one more traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

26 27 The Marque Outspoken

PARKER DAVIS ’19 GOLDEN GATE

ADNAN KHAN ’19 2D ART ROOM

AFTER A GAME OF HANDBALL ON THE STEPS, FACE THE LIBRARY, SLIDE DOWN THE STAIRS AND THROUGH THE ECHOING TUNNEL, HOP OVER THE AMPITHEATER STEPS UNDER THE ROOF. THEY’LL SEE YOU BEFORE YOU SEE THEM.

PAINTING

THE PERSONA PROJECT: Each piece exhibited in this section is a work in progress reflecting about two months of painting. The assignment is to depict the face by first rendering a portrait and eventually including some animal characteristic or theme to symbolically encapsulate the artist’s persona.

Persona Study ANTONIO QUINONES ‘21

30 31 The Marque Drawing And Painting

Persona Study MARLON HENDERSON ’21

Persona Study DANIEL WU ’21

Persona Study CANYON KYLE ’18

Persona Study

PABLO ARROYO ’20

32 33 The Marque Drawing And Painting

Persona Study MATTHEW COLEMAN ’19

Persona Study NATHAN HAN ’19

Persona Study WILL CHANCE ’21

KEVIN FENG ’18 POWERLINE

P Y rotechnic

IN THE SILENCE BEFORE THE STORM, THE WORLD SEEMS TO HOLD ITS BREATH, AWAITING THE NEXT LIGHTNING STRIKE. DO YOU BRING THE THUNDER?

A movement’s actions ignite the fire that is the iconoclast’s passion. They build momentum with every demonstration until it grows to raze the status quo, and what is left behind will be soil for new ideas to grow.

These are the violent riots, the obstinate strikes—cogs in the machine that drives change. The iconoclast recognizes these as key components to succeed in his mission.

Fueled by his desire to change the world, he is urgent in his execution and powerful in his impact; the iconoclast remains sure of his actions and the potential they have against all odds.

34 35 The Marque Pyrotechnic

ADNAN KHAN ’19 MONK IN THE LAKE

36 37 The Marque Pyrotechnic

Something to come back to MICHAEL LIANG ’18

When I run out of time and have so much work to do things go unnoticed.

My father goes unnoticed.

I plug in my earphones and tune out everything except the sound of my mind and pen.

My father climbs up the stairs and walks into my room as if it is nothing at all.

With my back turned I ignore his presence until I enter my room again hours later in the night.

Somehow, someone has made the bed that I had forgotten to make that morning.

How could I know his simple act of love that welcomes me backhis silent embrace.

How could I know that I would have something so warm to come back to.

Nine Lines 38 39 The Marque Pyrotechnic

LEE SCHLOSSER ’20 DINER

RUOMING FAN ’19 Prone yet aware the salesmen all lie At the close of unbearable days, But under salacious suits there hide Nine full lines of regret and dismay.

Who are these men all tired and tied, Toting briefcase and pride in their hands?

“Those are the men,” a soft voice replies, “Who come and gather in nines to dance.”

I turn my gaze to the soul behind Those peculiar words of debate; I am surprised to find it reside On shoulders of a much better fate.

He rolled up his sleeves with pain inscribed In nine barcoded lines of finance; Took one final glance as if a cry And thus leaves me in stupor and trance.

40 41

TYLER NUSSBAUMER ’20 GIRL WITH EGG ON HEAD The Marque Pyrotechnic

The Wizard’s Dream Machine

Searching, digging, and flipping, I look For the grooved disc that spins like my mood.

Flicking, looking, and skipping, the images And bold font flash before my eyes.

Pondering, criticizing, and cherishing, the titles Intrigue me.

Finally, a sleeve emerges gleaming.

As I move towards the Wizard’s dream machine To cue the sounded trip to be, My mind drifts to the origin of this jaunt.

Across the house, stashed away, A crate sat neglected.

Once the Wizard opened am, The apprentice was lost in its torrent.

Today I lie, eyes closed, Further lost in wonder, as the Dream machine spirals nearer, To the end of a fixation, a Meditation essential to the Wizard’s relaxation.

PERRY NASECK ’18

paper Kingdom AUSTIN MONTGOMERY ’18

KABEER SINGH ’18 TIGER’S NEST

42 43 The Marque Pyrotechnic

There are demons in the forests, they say Kindly spirits, ancient gods, fearsome beasts I greet them all the same each day When I make my quest to the furthest east There are those that seek bloody glories And those that chase power for their own I’ve set them there to tell their stories On their battlefield, imagination is free to roam A world of sheer impossibilities Sprung forth, like Athena, from my own mind An empire of powerful fragility Where monsters lurk, and heroes shine Ink and sweat drip down the page, and frenzied climax swells And so goes a shattered kingdom’s tale, at last mine to tell.

ADNAN KHAN ’19 TIGER’S NEST

A Satire of "The Road not Taken"

by Robert Frost RILEY SANDERS ’18 *It is the year 2500 and technology to recover thought patterns exists now. Scientists have frozen Robert Frost’s brain and have recovered Frost’s thoughts while he was writing the cultural masterpiece “The Road Not Taken.” Below is the transcript of Frost’s thoughts during a total elapsed time of five minutes.* Like all of my poems, this is a metaphor.

I’ll call the forest a “yellow wood” because assigning random colors to nature is sophisticated. Example: the “wine red” sea in the Odyssey. Damn, my literary knowledge knows no bounds.

Now I’ll talk about leaves and grass. Hell, I might as well even personify the morning. Personification. When did I learn about that? Oh yeah, freshman year of high school.

I know how to use fluffy language to dance around my point without ever actually saying it. Thank God for that, since this whole poem could be summed up by saying “try new things” or “explore the unknown/scary,” Well, that’s not deep enough, and not enough sad, bored, misguided people would read that.

I hope they don’t notice the irony that by writing a poem that will become insanely popular, I’m pretty much doing the most mainstream thing I could possibly do.

So much for tak ing the r oad less traveled on.

44 45 The Marque Pyrotechnic

ADNAN KHAN ’19 SQUARE HOUSE

Liam Hermes flipped the page of his homemade calendar and watched the first rays of sunlight spill over into the Denali Valley, chasing the darkness away.

Sipping black coffee, he knew it wouldn’t be long until the first freeze and, with it, the threat of another winter in complete isolation. As he sat in his cabin perched atop a mountain that towered ninety-two hundred feet above the town, he observed the valley resurrect itself to life. Through the eyepiece of his Leica spotting scope, he loved to study the Brownian motion of the small dots that interacted with one another below. He had not been part of the petri dish of humanity for quite some time. In fact, it had been nearly three years since Liam climbed the mountain and began his self-imposed exile.

Liam’s thoughts drifted to his childhood, before the start of his intellectual odyssey. From a young age, Liam had possessed keen problem-solving abilities and big ideas. Ideas that he sensed were destined to change the world. As a boy, Liam was fond of asking heady questions and approaching problems in unconventional ways. While his friends were hypnotized by the flashing lights of video games, Liam immersed himself in the writings of history’s greatest thinkers. Working as a teenager in his father’s aging and noisy bottling plant, Liam quickly developed processes to improve plant output and efficiency. His suggestions not only eliminated parts of the production line that led to greater productivity and profits but also reduced the need for fourteen people. He remembered, uncomfortably, the hurt looks he had received as his father told the employees that they were no longer needed.

After an academically unremarkable high school career, Liam found a passion for sociology during college.

It was during his second year TUCKER RIBMAN ’18 of Columbia graduate school that Liam became transfixed with finding the meaning of life, developing keys to living a life of quality, and discerning whether humanity was alone in an indifferent universe.

Throughout his academic career, he had challenged his professors with these difficult questions but was never satisfied with their answers or, even more disappointing, found that they themselves had not engaged in a rigorous scrutiny of the issues that have confounded mankind from the time people were painting

on cave walls. If he could answer any of these transcendent questions or, at least, significantly advance the dialogue, he knew he would make a lasting contribution to the world. In his mind, Liam felt the pressure of a ticking clock, a clock that seemed to dictate that the creative sweet spot for genius typically ended in a person’s mid-30s.

Tucked away in his cramped New York apartment, Liam began work on his manifesto. However, for the first time in his life, he struggled to compose his thoughts and put words on paper. The din of the city prevented clear thought, and Liam knew he had to move to someplace remote, someplace less oppressive. Liam gathered a few of his possessions and boarded a train for Talkeetna, a sleepy town in the shadow of Alaska’s Denali State Park.

Although at first Liam appeared to have recovered his ability to think and write, his progress soon slowed. His daily interaction with people, the bustle of the small town, and the technology that surrounded him, left Liam longing for something even more removed from the people he wanted to help. “The irony,” he thought, “is that it appears the only way to truly understand humanity is to disengage from it.” Liam’s search for his own Walden ended with his discovery

The Solution

46 47 The Marque Pyrotechnic

WILLIAM HALL ’18 GOOD MORNING BHUTAN

of a dilapidated mining cabin adjacent to the Park that clung precariously to the mountainside. It was there that Liam could hear the voice of nature, compose his masterpiece, and eventually descend from his perch to bring light into the world.

Life alone in the cabin was good for Liam. He quickly fell into the rhythm of the seasons and began to know the flora and fauna that encircled him.

In search of food and water, his daily walks along the craggy mountainside provided him with focus and clarity.

With the aid of a long walking stick he had fashioned from a limb of Black Spruce, he explored an environment seemingly forgotten by the world below. With thoughts uncluttered by the weight of everyday life, insight came quickly and words flowed onto the pages of his paper tablets effortlessly. And, in a matter of years, Liam had singlehandedly uncovered The Solution. With the completion of his manifesto, Liam celebrated alone by carefully extracting the cork from a bottle of 1986 Chateau Margaux (the sole luxury he had brought with him) and sipping the first alcohol he had had since leaving New York.

Liam was eager to end his solitude and rejoin society before the first freeze would delay his descent for several months. The evening before his descent, Liam could hardly sleep. Certainly, he looked forward to gifting The Solution, but he also craved both human interaction and the recognition that would inevitably be heaped upon him. Books would be written about Liam’s life and songs would be sung WILLIAM HALL ’18 heralding his accomplishment. Liam thought to himself that DUDLEY The Solution would be employed and discussed for the remainder of humanity’s time on this lonely planet.

In the dark of night, Liam began the treacherous trek down the mountain. His digital watch flashed 3:16 AM, and he knew that if he made good time, he could reach civilization by noon.

Carrying only his writing

His digi tal watch flashed 3:16 AM, and he k ne w that i f he made good t ime, he could r each civilizat ion by noon.

tablets and walking staff, Liam carefully navigated the unstable environment.

Given the terrain, his descent would be a controlled slide down sharp granite rubble. Peering toward the village, he could see smoldering flames and embers  remnants of the autumn wildfires. The acrid smell and haze of smoke permeated the air and became more noticeable with the drop in altitude.

Already breathing heavily, Liam’s lungs began to protest. He continued down.

At first light, and still at several thousand feet of elevation, Liam noticed the movement of police cars and ambulances. His ears were quickly irritated by the wail of their sirens, a vast divergence from the harmonious tranquility of his loft above. He descended.

By the time Liam reached the base of the mountain, he was exhausted. The swift feet that initially carried him down the mountain now felt battered and bruised. With his scratched arms and aching knees, he took a few steps and was on the edge of town. How quickly the dots he had viewed through his spotting scope became real people! Liam’s first appearance in years was met with glowering looks. He no longer felt the tight connection with humanity that he had felt three years prior. Having focused exclusively on The Solution, his hair had grown long and become matted, and his clothes were dirty and threadbare. “You smell like Hell, mountain man,” spewed a heavily-tattooed woman. Rather than receiving a chorus of praise, Liam found himself surrounded by a horde of people and the object of a volley of indiscriminate insults lobbed generally in his direction. A squad car slowly rolled by surveying the scene and an officer eyed Liam suspiciously. The car’s window rolled down. With a look of disdain, the officer craned his neck and uttered, “Damn vagrant, you need to keep moving on. There’s no place for you here,” before continuing through the intersection.

Liam was suddenly overcome with the realization that he had no destination. He felt like a ship on the ocean that had lost power. He sensed a deep divide between himself and the beings around him. Staring blankly at the large crowd that had now gathered, he thought for several minutes and then glanced up to where he imagined his cabin to be on the mountain.

Although he held The Solution, Liam now lacked the desire to share it. With a deep sigh, Liam reoriented himself in the direction of the mountain and began walking slowly. The sea of people parted as Liam began his ascent from the abyss.

my father’s playlist LIAM SOHN ’17

On rainy days, the sky sprays rain that drips down the window pane Like pained tears from a shattered heart, and I would hear my father’s playlist play.

Tunes that outdo the years. A monsoon of grief that harpoons the heart.

A melody of tragedy. A rhapsody of heavy departure of a loved one.

His playlist was a diamond mine.

From the eighties past the nineties.

From Rock and Roll to R&B and soul.

The masterpieces of musicians deceased.

His playlist is timeless and deathless.

Hearing his songs, I enter a palace that belongs in a dream.

It is a castle that dazzles in the melancholy of night.

A twilight of heartbreak dimly lights the trickling stream Of tears from black clouds, yet the moon shines through bright.

The music, like painters of the Renaissance grab a brush.

They paint pictures that flaunts his underlying pink blush.

They paint drawings so accurate that I can feel his prickly beard.

They paint images of lush green forests that accentuate His peculiar scent of plants on the damp brown earth.

Now, whenever it rains, I feel his absence and I miss his playlist.

When the sky cries, I raise the blinds and stare at the window pane.

In my mind I hear. In my ears it plays. In my heart it sings.

My father’s playlist.

48 49 The Marque Pyrotechnic

WILLIAM HALL ’18 YEARBOOK 1956

KABEER SINGH ’18 CRACKED

VITA EST LUX

COLE ARNETT ’19

4 April 2011

50 51

The humming of stagnant artificial light shot through my ears and resonated around my head, fully encompassing my mind like a fitted sheet. A warm blanket smelling of urine and bleach was neatly placed on my body, leaving only my toes exposed to the chilled, dead air. My eyes were closed.

The still darkness behind my eyelids matched the whirr of the lights overhead. I was moving, rather, I was being moved through the somber space of a narrow hallway. The hum was occasionally overrun by a short high pitched sound. Somewhere along the hall, the left rear wheel connected to my bed had developed an intermittent squeak interrupting the empty hum of the lights. I opened my eyes. The bright lights flooded my head, causing me to squint to adjust to the bombardment of piercing white.

The squeak continued as I began to look around.

I saw my baby blue hospital gown flapping with the movements of my rolling bed. A nurse wearing scrubs held the railing at the end of my bed and directed its movement down the hall. Directly above

The Marque Pyrotechnic

me was another nurse, with a white cap and mask on, holding the railing behind my head. She did not seem concerned with the squeak in the wheel on her left side and continued to roll me along, apathetically. To either side of me were my mom and dad, uncomfortably squeezed between the bed and the white walls of the hall. They looked straight ahead, walking in sync with the speed of the rolling of my bed. The squeaking stopped as I came to an abrupt halt. The nurse by my feet scanned her badge on a black box that beeped. A large set of stainless steel double doors swung open. I was rolled past the doors and pushed into the first room on the right, Anesthesiology. Once I was sufficiently parked, both nurses left the room quickly, turning back the way they came, leaving me with my parents, who were now both looking at me. I looked forward, beyond my feet to see a man in full scrubs approaching with a plastic mask hooked up to a machine that began to make loud whooshing noises. He smiled.

1 April 2011 “There is no easy way to put this.”

“Go ahead.”

“The results came back from the biopsy… he has lymphoma.”

“Oh my god.”

“Ultimately, we were lucky to catch it so early. He will need a surgery as soon as possible to take out the main tumor before it metastasizes any further and possibly chemotherapy after that.”

“Oh my god.”

“I’m sorry that I had to be the one to tell you this, but the quicker that you hear the news, the quicker we can get to work on getting him better.”

4 April 2011 The machine continued to whirr as the masked man injected a clear liquid through my IV connector.

He droned to my parents about something or other while I began to feel a slight delay in my vision that became more exaggerated as time passed. The people around me became caricatures, slowly moving in a world that itself had lost stillness. The masked man descended upon me, saying a few words that I did not care to listen to, nodding anyway. My world had been flooded with information and statistics and empty smiles for the past four days. The bleak walls, the drab halls, and the bored nurses had all become my reality. A baby’s scream, beeping of strange machines, sullen parents: they had all become part of the status quo, noticed no more than the slightly increasing pressure of the plastic mask on my face as the masked man said “I am now going to count backwards from 10.”

“10.” Though I had been stripped of many things, I still found some semblance of hope. I could only afford to have hope in the little things. I hoped my vitals were normal as they were checked every hour.

I hoped this surgery would go well. But I could not simply hope to survive, for I had lost all hope in fate.

“9.” The experience had shaped my thoughts on people. I found out who truly cared for me and who visited me just to give themselves some internal validation, as if seeing a sick, skinny ten-year-old might be their “good thing they did that day.” I had learned to easily discern between the two.

“8.” This wasn’t fair. But then again, what ever is? I looked around and saw my parents staring at me, my mother crying.

Out of everyone, this was the least fair for them. The mask began to take effect. My eyelids began to close themselves and then shuddered open again.

“7.” I had taken solace in the fact that if something went wrong in the next ten hours, I would not have to be there to experience it. My forced slumber would be a respite from my reality. It would be all over.

Blackness.

“7.” I had taken s olace in the fac t that i f s omething w ent w r ong in the nex t t en hou r s, I w ould not have to be ther e to exper ience i t.

COME THROUGH THE MAIN GATE, STOP AT THE BUILDING WITH THE MASSIVE GLASS OVERHANG AND TURN LEFT, HOLD THE DOUBLE DOORS OPEN FOR A STRANGER, DOUBLE-STEP THE TWO FLIGHTS OF STAIRS, AND WALK ALL THE WAY BACK THROUGH THE LONG HALLWAY WHERE YOU WILL FIND A STURDY METAL DOOR...

INDUSTRIAL

ARTS

ADNAN KHAN ’19 INDUSTRIAL ARTS ROOM

HATE

CRAWFORD HELBING ’18

54 55 The Marque Industrial Arts

A New Foundation JACK PAROLISI ’18

The Matrix BLAKE ROGERS ’19

Swirly Stool ROMIL MATHUR ’20

Hanging On DANIEL MIROCHNA ’19

Table Lamp CHARLIE HUBBARD ’19

Lamp With Lichtenberg Figures ROBERT NEWMAN ’19

56 57 The Marque Industrial Arts

Tree Pot

BLAKE DESANTIS ’18

Ascension

CRAWFORD HELBING ’18

90%

JOHN HARBISON ’19

Repose

RYAN WARNER ’19

58 59 The Marque Industrial Arts

Bench With Pillow ROBERT NEWMAN ’19

Suspension DAVIS MALOUF ’19

KABEER SINGH ’18 RUST

KINETIC THE TIDE OF NORMALCY CONSTANTLY FLOWS. THE ICONOCLAST, HOWEVER, WADES AGAINST IT. During his mission, the iconoclast embraces creativity to serve his valiant cause. He acknowledges not only the power creativity holds but also the dangers it brings. Creativity is enigmatic in this way: it can lead the iconoclast to visionary paradise or static limbo, yet he disregards that uncertainty.

He is steadfast in his destiny to change the world, and to even consider the dangers of glorified writer’s block is to fail in his eyes.

Staying the course, the iconoclast boldly employs creativity to escape the sedated reality of uniformity.

60 61 The Marque Kinetic

DIAMONDS

ARE 62 63 The Marque Kinetic

FOREVER FOREVER FOREVER FOREVER FOREVER

KEVIN FENG ’18 GLASS

DIAMONDS! ANTONIO IVARRA ’19

I wanted to see the stars.

I wanted to somehow rise above the harsh, beaming Chicago nightlights And find myself face to face with dozens of shining, crystalline stars Whose light echoed from lightyears away To my tiny corner of the universe.

Every morning in the rural Illinois suburbs, I could Wake up and see the morning glory sunrise.

The radiant streaks of violet and mandarin-orange Were almost as impressive as when my mom Would point out the cream-colored moonrise On a rare occasion when I was out past my bedtime.

And on some nights, Lying on the green-felt sofa, covered by a thin blanket, I could see the tiniest specks of white light beyond the windows, Like when my dad would take me to Kohl’s And while he haggled over a new watch, I would look deep into the diamond rings on display, Enamored by the way their light would scatter off the display case.

I would wonder if the stars were just as divine.

Seven years later, I was stuck in the heart of the New Mexico wilderness.

Fatigued by the dreary, arduous hikes That sliced and diced and split off into every which way Until we reached a campsite.

We’re going star-gazing said my pack leader one night, as I was forced to crawl out from the palliative comfort of my sleeping bag And out of the tent altogether.

We reached the flat, rocky earth around a lake and looked up on command.

For miles I all saw were beacons of holy, clear light That had propelled through time and space just to reach my eyes.

I swerved my head upwards and took in the scene With a kiddish wonder, trying to remember every detail.

I didn’t want to leave soon; I wanted to keep gawking at the stars, And absorb every last particle of their glorious light.

I forgot how much I had wanted to see the stars.

MAGNIFICENT MORNING MOTIVATION CHRISTIAN DUESSEL ’20 Bring on the dawn of the day the temptations of the snooze button, the struggles of the call to work.

Find the strength within me The will to push myself in all of my pursuits The motivation to quit quitting Remember the reasons I am here The creation of meaning The values I hold high Embrace the work we have to come The perpetual pursuit of knowledge The enduring of the grind Conquer the mid-afternoon fatigue The temptation to cut corners The first nature inside of me Pause, let us recover from the day.

Let us come back stronger The next day.

64 65 The Marque Kinetic

SETH WEPRIN ’18 PLAYTIME

LET THE LIGHT SHINE COLIN CAMPBELL ’20

Let the darkness, our concealing protector, dwindle as branches and leaves and roofs become defined against the backdrop of the endless sky.

Let the dog lick, jump and scratch the sleeping boy, as the mother sits in the doorway, smugly watching as the canine does her job. Let the light shine.

Let the pieces of the uniform be assembled, one by one.

Let the yawns disappear as the shower water runs, the car engine revs, and the awareness and focus on the challenges ahead set in.

Let the red lights turn green.

Let the potholes incite entropy. Let the white lines of the parking lot lie starkly. Let the light shine.

To the granola wrapper in the trash, to the construction vehicles bustling in the front, to the backpacks on the backs, let the light shine.

Let the light shine as it will, and let us not face it in fear. God has given us our work; so, yes, let the light shine.

66 67

KYLE SMITH ’19 “MINORITY” The Marque Kinetic

TWENTYFIVE YARDS EDWARD RO ’18

Every day, from four to six, I live in the pool, Swimming lap after lap in the cold, frothy water.

I struggle to breathe, and I feel slightly lightheaded. I surface just to see a large flood of water attack me. I break out into cold sweat, because I feel like I am drowning.

Ironically, swimming helps me from drowning in my duties as a high school senior. The pool has become my second home, where I don’t sweat about academics. I solely focus on the water, concentrating only on the dimly lit flood light at the bottom of the pool. A light

lunch can sustain my entire practice; I light up the water, leaving every one else drowning in my bubbles, like a massive flood of water has enveloped them. The pool churns violently and the once calm water overflows, whether that be because of my sweat or from my flailing limbs. I don’t worry, I don’t sweat because the pool is my home. I use the light at the bottom of the pool as my guide through the water.

I am not afraid of anything now—not even drowning.

I know I can even survive a shark attack in my pool.

Even when an earthquake strikes, and a flood envelops me, I won’t let my emotions flood my brain—without even breaking a sweat I will swim through the flood, as if I’m in my pool.

As I break the surface of the water and see the light, I will help anyone who is struggling or drowning.

I am a superhero when I am in the water.

Like Aquaman, I have special powers in the water and anyone who needs my help will receive a flood of aid. When I am around, no one will be drowning.

I will erase floods like they are sweat droplets on my forehead. Even tsunamis are light work for me. Everywhere I go, I look for a pool so I can be connected to water—I even pool in money if I am drowning in boredom and need to sweat out a flood. In times of darkness, swimming is my light.

68 69 The Marque Kinetic

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KYLE SMITH ’19 DION

DAVIS BAILEY ’18

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KEVIN FENG ’18 RIVER The Marque Kinetic

quick penny or stave off the cold sea breeze. The summers’ northward winds always whispered and rustled through the plains’ tall grass, pushing coastal wanderers towards the pastoral village of Incidale – a simple but proud town of nearly 200.

a thousand journeys across pastures, plains, and fields, as well as many games of Catch Me! played with his four younger brothers.

This Incidale shepherd, named Falrel for the snaking river that feeds the very neck of the forest he sat in, had already passed his flock off to his father for the day, deciding to retreat into the forest for the few hours leading up to the night’s ritual. Generations of tradition bound Falrel, like all Incidale men upon turning 23, to the shortest night of the year, starting at sundown on the summer solstice. “The Ceremony” (as the villagers called it) had unclear roots, for the village elders could never seem to agree on its origins. Some said the coming-of-age tradition mirrored that of the ancient ancestors who first settled the sprawling plains, while some said the ritual stretched even farther back, coming from the antisilva forest walkers from whom

These gentle winds served as a sort of compass for the Incidale villagers, whose mothers had always told them to follow the plains-winds back north to the humble circle of yurts of which the farming village was comprised.

Two miles north of the village, on the edge of a clearing barely inside the edge of Umbral Forest, glowing sunbeams illuminated a well-worn oak-wood shepherd’s crook propped up against the centenarian oak tree from which an Incidale villager had carved the tool’s hook-like body nearly 100 years earlier. With one calloused hand on the base of the nearly petrified crook’s shaft, a young man reclined on the gargantuan tree’s roots, tracing with his eyes a northward path into the forest’s layered shadows.

He had the sun-weathered, almost leathery skin Incidale’s shepherds were famous for—but his height, nearly 28 hands1, was anything but typical of the small, underfed farming population. His legs – nearly as strong, thick, and sturdy as the great oak tree he leaned against – carried the strength of

Incidale elders said the trees and the plains and the shepherds themselves descended.

For Falrel, the Ceremony stood as a longawaited testament of his manhood, manhood he felt he had already earned with his leathery skin, calloused hands, and ever-sore and ever-muscled legs. But the 23-year-old shepherd, although he walked with the confidence of a proud man, respected the tradition enough to remain a “boy” until sundown—after all, it was only a few more hours.

Falrel reached up and grabbed a knot in the tree he leaned against and hoisted himself up. Using the crook as a walking stick, he stepped over and around each of the tree’s sprawling roots as he navigated his way to the south of the clearing.

But before he could

In the second age, sheep speckled the southern plains of Insula Igneus (or “Ig” as the islanders called it), so much so that resourceful merchants and opportunistic adventurers would always pack shears with them – eager to make a

step onto the forest trail that led back to his familiar pastoral plains and penned in flocks, Falrel slowed down. He was being watched.

He grasped his crook defensively with both hands and whipped around on one foot. His green eyes peered across the illuminated clearing, into the dark shadows swaying on the northward path out of the clearing. And although he couldn’t pick out any discernable creature on the path, he knew, just knew, he was being watched.

The very trees around him seemed to whisper, urging him on back into the clearing. But Falrel knew better than to listen to old trees’ whisperings.

The shepherd calmly and cautiously backed out of the clearing and onto the path towards home.

Upon arriving at the village, Falrel noticed the preparations for the evening’s event had already begun. Incidale’s children – including Falrel’s four younger brothers – had already begun to line up the kindling and firewood they had collected, forming two parallel stretches of wood about 10 paces long each. Just as the village elders had taught them, the children left a narrow path in-between the two woodpiles, barely wide enough for an adult to stand in.

Falrel walked past the grassy village square, following the same dusty path he took every day to get home. He stopped to unlatch the wood-post gate in front of his family’s house—a humble dwelling made of animal hides lashed to logs, all under a plains-grass roof. Before he could open the door to the house, his father, Kolvore Mirarel, bounded out towards Falrel.

Falrel’s near-herculean physique and treetrunk height caused him to stand out from the average Incidale villager, but when juxtaposed with his father’s stoutness and shortness, he looked like a giant.

Kolvore’s enigmatic physique had always puzzled Falrel. How could a man devote so many years to walking the plains and yet still remain so round?

“My boy, my boy!” the old shepherd wheezed as he interrupted Falrel’s unkind wonderings, “So you’ve decided to come on home on time after all!”

“You know I wouldn’t miss it, Father,” the young man replied. “I think

AS FALREL HUGGED HIS MOTHER, A THOUGHT BEGAN TO NAG AT HIM THAT HE HAD IGNORED FOR THE MONTHS LEADING UP TO THE CEREMONY – WHAT IF HE FAILED?

THE RETURN OF REYYNORE it’s about time I become a Mirarel!”

Kolvore clapped his son on the back, filled with the paternal excitement and joy of knowing his son was about to join the village. The twosome walked inside to see Falrel’s sniffling mother, Alyse, sitting on their dining mat.

“Oh, Falrel, your father and I have waited so long for this day,” she said, smiling through proud tears that only a mother can cry. “Whatever happens tonight, we are so thankful for you.”

As Falrel hugged his mother, a thought began to nag at him that he had ignored for the months leading up to the Ceremony – what if he failed?

“My uncle failed his first time,” his mother had told him long ago. “Some men just aren’t ready for the shepherd’s name.”

But if he couldn’t bear the heat, buckled as the flames licked his legs, how would he ever return to his father? The thought of failure remained in the back of Falrel’s mind as he rested on a pile of wool inside the house, waiting for the call to the Ceremony.

72 73

FALREL WOKE UP TO THE SOUND OF THREE SHORT BURSTS FROM A RAM’S HORN. SUNDOWN. He looked around to see an empty house, his family already having left without him.

He grabbed his crook and started out the door slowly, eyes quickly adjusting to the darkness. As he neared the center of the village, he could hear the rhythmic, almost musical chanting and clapping of his family and friends.

Sooooom. Num, Clap!

Incidale spoke with one voice, repeating a name whose meaning had been lost to time, known only to the three elders that stood still as the rest of the village circled around them.

Sooooom. Num. When Falrel stepped within 10 paces of the chanting, pulsating mass, the villagers stopped in unison, kneeling to the elders. These three elders, the shepherds of a bygone age, each wore a monochromatic mask and cloak: purple, orange, and white, colors uncommon among the grassy plains.

Hours of rehearsal burned into his mind, Falrel slowly walked to the two long stretches of firewood his brothers and other children had placed earlier.

Falrel dropped his crook and stood with impeccable posture as the two elders cloaked in orange and purple took out two clay vases, each filled to the

The Marque Kinetic

brim with oil. The two old men walked down the two stretches of wood, soaking each with oil.

The final elder produced a wooden bowl bearing a red shiny liquid Falrel knew to be lamb’s blood. With his pointer finger, he delicately painted three red stripes on Falrel’s right cheek and one on his left cheek – the same pattern every man in Incidale proudly bore at his own Ceremony. The old man then walked down to the opposite end of the wood piles, dropped the wooden bowl, and pulled out a tightly wrapped scroll which he held in front of himself with an extended arm.

That scroll, Falrel knew, contained his name, his full name. Upon passing the Ceremony, Incidale men received their last name, joining the ranks of their fathers and their fathers before them.

The purple elder and orange elder, each having soaked his stretch of wood in oil, knelt down and produced two rocks each. With a scrape and a flurry of sparks, the two men lit the wood ablaze. Falrel eyed down the narrow grass path between the two columns of fire, and with decisive, deliberate steps, he began to march towards the flames.

10 paces. I only need 10 paces.

Slowly, with composure, he marched between the two paths of fire. Tendrils of flames licked his legs, while sparks danced up in the air, landing on Falrel’s tunic and burning a spattering of holes.

Shaking with each step, the young shepherd trudged onward. Sweat poured off his clenched shoulders while the stomach-stirring smell of his burning leg hair spiraled into his nose. Attempting to reswallow both vomit and cries of pain, Falrel held his breath has he made the last three steps.

8… 9… 10.

Stepping out of the flames, Falrel dropped to his knees in front of the white-robed elder.

The masked man spoke in a booming voice, addressing the assembled crowd just as much as Falrel.

“Young Falrel. Tonight marks your ascension into manhood, the beginning of your co-reign of these great southern plains, plains that have given us life, plains that we will return to. Now please rise.”

Falrel, cloaked in the blazing heat and light from the fires behind him, rose, shaking off the ashes of burnt clothes and hair.

“Incidale!” the man’s voice spoke with the vigor of the entire plains. “I bestow upon you your newest shepherd!”

The crowd stood in applause. Kolvore emerged from the crowd, his proud eyes clouded by flecks

of what he would never admit to be tears. He stood alongside his son, ready for the presentation of the scroll. Falrel turned to his father.

“I’m ready, ready to be a Mirarel.”

The village elder silenced the crowd with two raised arms, one of which held the weathered parchment upon which Falrel’s family name had been written.

“This scroll is as old as the Umbral Altar it came from,” the elder spoke as Kolvore nodded his head. “Just as with every scroll I have ever presented, I allowed the spirits to guide me.”

Falrel knew the infallibility of these forest scrolls. Eight years earlier, a scroll had out-ed the identity of the biological father of one of Falrel’s former neighbors. He would always remember the uproar and riots of that summer solstice.

The masked elder unfurled the brown scroll.

“Falrel, son of Kolvore, shepherd of the great plains, I bestow unto you the great family name of…” he paused, “Reyynore.”

The crowd erupted into gasps and outcries. A great wind swept through the crowd, extinguishing the still burning strips of fire. Falrel, his own breath stolen from him, stammered incomprehensible questions. Kolvore, however, showed no such surprise.

Suddenly, a voice rang out among the crowd, silencing the uproar. Slowly, methodically, the purple cloaked elder shuffled forward, parting the villagers. The orange cloaked elder followed close behind. The triad of masked-men staring into the silent, moonlit faces of the crowd began to sing the lullaby known by every Incidale villager. The villagers, transported back in time to their mothers’ arms, joined in the hymn, offering up their voices to the bewildered, newly named Falrel Reyynore.

BALLAD OF SONUM The shards of flaming sky rain’d down on the sea-peak’s city of sleep, bringing that unnatural beast.

From Mirror Lake, failing to drown, two glowing, throbbing bright white eyes, emerged from the pool, cloaked in smoke.

Great women, great men let loose cries.

‘Reyynore, Reyynore,’ the crowd bespoke, ‘king of the sea, command the waves, take your great sword to this evil!’

Leviathans – the king knew – crave blood, sacrifice, all primeval.

So King Reyynore the wise sailed west

where the antisilva high priests, lay their roots deep in the forest.

He knew how he would kill the beast.

Chanting a forbidden age’s spells, Reyynore dove down into the deeps, joined the beast for eternal sleep.

Fair Reyynore, Somnum rings its bells.

Before Falrel could even process the revelations contained in his old lullaby, the moon suddenly vanished from the sky, its light snuffed out by the onset of black clouds. A woman’s shriek that Falrel recognized as his mother’s pierced the pitch-black night. As the rolling sound of thunder drowned out the next three screams, Falrel crumpled to the ground after a flying stone clobbered him in the head.

A STRANGE CREATURE COVERED IN A RIPPLING GREEN CAPE LAY ON ITS STOMACH FIVE PACES AWAY FROM FALREL. As the confused shepherd groggily came to, he did not at first notice the tall, lanky, shadowy figure on the leaf-covered ground before him.

Falrel stood up and brushed dirt off his clothes, noticing the burnt holes had been mended with some sort of green thread.

But by whom? He slowly shifted around in a circle, taking in his surroundings – a forest clearing eerily similar to the one in which he had felt somebody, or something watching him.

His eyes snagged, however, on a small wooden structure – a white box with a shuttered front and a red, shingled roof-shaped. The peculiar structure had to be the Umbral Altar Falrel had spent so many youthful summer days looking for in the forest, that very same altar that had supplied the letter from the Ceremony. As he studied the altar’s white wooden sides, he noticed his familiar crook propped up against the wooden box. On the forest floor below his loyal shepherd staff sat the very same weathered scroll with which the village elder had presented him.

Falrel grabbed his crook and scroll and turned around, ready to make his way out of the forest and back home. He’d deal with the mystery of how he ended up in the forest later. With his back turned to the undetected strange creature, Falrel began to walk towards the southern edge of the clearing.

The green-caped figure lightly treaded behind the young shepherd.

With every step, the figure’s legs grew ever so slightly thicker, while its stature

grew to mirror Falrel’s. The creature, however, misstepped, its foot snapping a twig that, to most, would go unnoticed. But keen Falrel, hearing the snap, brandished his crook and spun around to come face to face with… himself.

Like looking in the mirror, the two Falrels stood eye to eye, both clutching a shepherd’s crook and both sporting the same green and beige shepherd’s outfit.

“Who the hell are you?” Falrel demanded of his doppelganger, spittle flying from his mouth.

The second Falrel immediately fell onto the forest floor in a fit of laughter.

With each wheeze in and out in-between bursts of childish laughter, the strange creature’s face seemed to melt and change, switching between Falrel’s and several others he didn’t recognize.

What Falrel did recognize, however was the strange creature’s species.

“Antisilva! You’re a shape shifter!”

“Ah, the young king’s got a brain in his head!” Falrel number two responded in-between cackles. “But yes, I’ve been watching you. Your own antisilva here, at your service.”

The creature bowed with a flourish.

“Take me home, now,” Falrel sternly cutoff the gesture.

“If you insist!”

With a crackle of the antisilva ancient magic Falrel had only heard of in nursery rhymes, the pair disappeared from the forest clearing.

KEVIN FENG ’18 PRAYER FLAGS

THE TWIN FALRELS STOOD IN THE TWO ASH HEAPS FROM THE PREVIOUS NIGHT’S CEREMONY. Falrel took off in a dead sprint towards his animal-hide house, frantically looking for any sign of his family. A lonely wind blew between the huts as he ran past his neighbors. He jumped the wood-post fence and barreled through the wooden door into the center of his family’s house.

Falrel’s eyes darted around the humble dwelling, looking for any sign of the wellbeing of his family. But instead, his eyes fell on the shredded wool blanket in the center of the house, that same blanket on which he had slept only hours before. Tracing the strips of wool with his eyes, Falrel looked to the far wall of the animal-hide house.

Painted sloppily in red, dripping ink, an image of a crown.

“Helluva way to welcome a king, huh?”

Falrel’s mirror image called from the doorway.

Falrel, feeding off his uncertainty and rage, slammed his shepherd’s crook into the house’s dirt floor.

“I’ll find my flock.”

THE

A vein of gas erupts into a fiery cloud of fury, creating an iridescent flower in the dark tunnel, a show that turns the heads of all those around, even the blind look up from their dominion, but they sink back into the never-ending void that is their cart.

The clamber and squawking of wheels on the cart Echoes off each partition and crevasse, acting as a cloud To all beings looking, searching, yearning for light, but this sink Is devoid of all things good, the dark seems to flower from every crack in the earth, a friend of the blind that patiently sits in wait after three more turns.

The track stretches on, over rocks it climbs, into turns It squeals, each time the sappers are thrown by the cart and its bolstered independence, but still the blinds hold their wits about them and pray that the cloud of darkness won’t get them too, as flumes of flames flower and rip through the silent abyss that is the sink.

The crystals hug to the wall, shimmers, dazzlers in the sink That was once as solid as a stone, but now turns And spirals and frays in wild directions like the flower Bursting from the crack in the floor, that the cart Will undoubtable crush in its path, excreting a cloud Of fuses’ wrath on the manmade monster run by the blind.

The journey has ended, the ground flattens out, the blind Sense the credits and enter the portal at the end of the sink That leads to the drain, or so it is known, that secretes a cloud Of unknown, of mystery, and because of this the tracks turns Around, only the blind have the courage to enter, the cart Stops on a penny and pushes the senseless out so they can flower.

They pass through the gateway, unwilling to flower They are comfortable in the past, they are happy as blind Sheep watching shadows on the wall, but the cart Has plans, they will stay in this crypt till they sink Their teeth into enlightenment or the cryptic turns They once took down here will be hidden by a cloud.

He looks upon a flower, then sees it in a bleached cloud that shades the cart, its doors ajar, the grinning sink That eagerly awaits the blind tributes, he uncomfortably turns.

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CRAWFORD HELBING ’21 The Marque Kinetic

WILLIAM HALL ’18 VIOLENT SHORE

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ADNAN KHAN ’19 BOY IN THE BUBBLE The Marque Kinetic

THIS IS

THE TWO-FACED

PHENOMENON

SHIV YAJNIK ’21

Time is infinite, a patient teacher, Yet you are also its devoted slave.

Time is the everlasting creator, Yet it is also such a fickle knave.

Time improvises all of the music, And it brings about innovation, But time also warps the lovely music, And it brings about dire destruction.

Time lives absolutely, eternally, But it constantly, and yet slowly, dies.

Time cycles and cycles quite endlessly Around its own destiny and demise.

Time is an interesting anomaly A dimension nobody can descry.

SETH WEPRIN ’18 KAO SAHN

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WE’RE JUST BROWN ZACH GILSTRAP ’18

Grandma’s brown knuckles crinkled As she gently peeled the heirloom Potatoes, discarding the brownSkinned strips into the garbage Bin. She was at home here, alive And aloud, tastes and scents mingling In the air like wispy fairies in Neverland, mingling With the mauve, sun-kissed raisins lying crinkled On slices of butter-brown toast. She is alive Here, sheltered by the pots of pans, heirlooms From her mother Wilma, who once was the garbage Lady, the help, for a white family uptown. Wilma’s brown Skin was the softest variety of brown, Likened to silky mocha-hued beads mingling With glints of the golden hour. Garbage, However, was her epithet. She was crinkled Black plastic to that white family. Her heirloom Was the oppressive garrote of Jimmy Crow — alive And well in the hearts of many, still alive Today in the gashes and slashes brown Men, women, and children still absorb, heirlooms From a past infected with rankling vehemence mingling With entitled gall. Wilma’s old hands were dry-crinkled, Just like her daughter’s, who now throws the skin in the garbage, Who marched hard to not be viewed as garbage, Who plans to keep Wilma’s soulful memory alive, Who cooks until her freckle-speckled hands are crinkled, Who is loud and proud to be her shade of brown, Who gets straight to business and forgoes the mingling, Who works so her progeny can have the proudest heirloom: Pride. Pride in those gently-knotted heirloom Locks, pride in the skin that was once garbage, Pride, pride, pride. Her ever-beating heart mingles With the cosmos — she is a celestial being, alive In the splendor of black joy. She also likes her toast brown And her sun-kissed raisins ever-so-crinkled.

And while her heirloom knuckles stay tightly crinkled, Her heart will mingle with stars and keep the love alive, Because she — we — will never be garbage again. We’re just brown.

I walk into his room and take the box Hidden under the wood-framed bed And see all the countries of the world Packed inside little glass jars.

Pictures of my father Some old, some new, are taped onto The old and worn jars of sand.

Each jar a story, a memory, A question. As a child I would sit And ask my father about these stories.

Stories of hope, stories of adventure, Stories of duty, stories of life.

SEUN OMONIJE ’18

I look at each glass and see My past with him at my side, Teaching me countries, cultures.

Sounds and words I had never Heard before, foreign letters and obscure phrases, Each day adding more and more To my young and curious mind.

As my own memories of his stories And my memories of hearing them Begin to blend together, My childhood starts to form and sculpt Like molding sand and building Intricate and inviting castles On the warm and sunny beach.

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KABEER SINGH ’18 DUBAI

KABEER SINGH ’18 FEATHER

THERE ARE ROUGHLY 7.442 BILLION PEOPLE ON EARTH. WHAT SETS YOU APART? The iconoclast is comfortable despite these numbers. Knowing that qualities intrinsic to him as a human will lay out a destiny worth fulfilling, he defies the norm in this way too: he does not allow external satisfaction to consume him.

He must be willing to see himself overcome insurmountable odds. When the question of his character arises, the iconoclast answers challenge with determination. He draws strength from his core as if to say, This is who I am.

Going out into the world for such a young man presents no threat; he is anchored to his own mission and persona such that no outside influence can lead him astray. No worldly torrent can buffet him from his course.

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THE YOUNG

PERRY NASECK

RILEY SANDERS ’18

84 85 The Marque Perry Naseck

THE YOUNG ARTIST. A YoungArts scholar and engineering enthusiast, senior Perry Naseck straddles the line of practical furniture and abstract concepts with his challenging work.

ARTIST A S Q U OT E D BY P E R RY N A S E C K ’ 1 8 W H E N I N T E R V I E W E D BY C J C R AW FO R D ’ 1 9

Someone criticizes that something is only furniture and it doesn’t have a message—someone says that something is too conceptual and doesn’t have a use, so that’s kind of ironic. I think that one thing people develop as they go through Mr. Frost’s class is not taste but purpose, because most people’s pieces, they start to become more aware of the conceptual stuff as they go further.

TRIANGLE TABLE (2015)

“I THINK THE MAIN GOAL OF MY ART IS TO MAKE SOMETHING INTERESTING, TO MAKE SOMETHING THAT MAKES SOMEONE FEEL CURIOUS” KERFED SHELF (2015)

THE MOST CONCEPTUAL PIECE I’VE MADE GOING INTO THIS YEAR IS MY “AXE.” The project was to take an old tool and do something to it. I wanted to make a unique handle, and so I also wanted to be a little comedic, so eventually I came up with making a chainsaw body for an axe. I titled it “Futile,” so it defeats the purpose of it.

It’s awkward and heavy, and it makes you look like a badass when you put it on your shoulder. I was really happy with that. That one is definitely more artsy than just furniture. Now, all the pieces I’m making are conceptual. I’m very invested in how people interact with the piece, both emotionally and visually.

FUTILE (2017) One of the things [YoungArts] really pushed me to do was to think conceptually and develop how I do that. So, I came in, and the first thing we did is we had to find an example of protesting en masse, so the idea is to find a use of design for how people march or protest or convey a message as a group.I found a guy named Antonio Reyes, where he would take the turned in guns from the cartel in Mexico and would make them into instruments. Next thing we had to do was make something work en masse as a tool. On a simple level, that’s like a sign you take to a protest.

COMPRESSED (2016) I originally came up with an idea that I wanted to protest on net neutrality. I eventually shifted the message to social media and how it sucks from you more than it returns. I made a vending machine of sorts. It was the first time I designed something exactly as I would on a computer, so that was similar to what I’ve done with robotics—it was very functional.

I actually struggled the most with the items—what is a social vending machine dispensing? I thought about how we throw up our photos and everything about us onto Facebook and what we get in return. So the person that operates the vending machine is another user on social media, they’re putting in a black coin and what they get out something very personal.

86 87 The Marque Perry Naseck

DURING YOUNGARTS WEEK 2018, the Design Arts Discipline was tasked to create a piece that could both be performed with and stand alone.

The panelists—Tommy Walton, Julietta Cheung, and Chat Travieso—pushed me to create an entirely conceptual piece. I had about two days to design the piece and about two and a half days to construct it with the help of the graduate assistants. The final piece is the evolution of three previous ideas. My piece is a commentary on the unfair exchange between social media and its users. We pour our entire selves into social media, but what we get in return is not the same as a human-to-human interaction. What is put in is not what comes out. The vending machine’s owner/wearer loads personally-connected, 3D objects inside the machine, and other social media users purchase the items with insignificant black coins.

As I moved down the aisle and stepped onstage with the machine, all four objects were robbed from me. As an object was taken, I lost a piece of my personality and drooped lower and lower.

The coin travels in between two sheets of clear plexiglass into the black reservoir at the rear of the box. The user pulls a tab at the front of the box that supports a tray holding an item. When the tab no longer supports the tray, the tray flips downward and jumps the item into the retrieval window.

TO CONSTRUCT THE PERSONALLY-CONNECTED FORMS, I experimented with various materials until the form evoked an image for feeling in me. The tangled blob of copper coils represents the stress and tension in my life. The two black pieces were modeled in sculpting clay (two right-most depicted) and then scanned and 3D printed. The artery-like form represents my energy. The egg-like shape with a section cut out represents my solidarity. The last form (second from left) was sculpted in high-density foam and represents me going off to college.

Other than the four forms, the box is made entirely of lasercut 1/8” plexiglass. With the assistance of the graduate assistant, I modeled every piece in Rhino CAD. Due to the time constraint, I jumped straight into 3D CAD after a few sketches.

There are no hinges or other hardware—every piece of plexiglass fits into each other.

I’ve noticed that a lot of my unconcious emotions start to come out. As you make conceptual pieces, emotions start to come out that didn’t before.

SOCIAL VENDING (2018)

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JT TAYLOR ’19 ALPHELUS 1 Terror, nothing like peace, is quiet until it strikes.

And there’s no such thing as peaceful peace.

Peace takes work and a bloody war to bring About the post-war parties and funerals To mourn and celebrate the valiant dead.

Terror takes peace to let loose False securities to make them bark in The public’s face with fire in their breaths.

The dead are mourned but in fear.

And there’s no such thing as urgent terror.

Terror is always calculated And performed by the radicals Of obsolete, outdated creeds.

Terror was seen as a weapon to impose Ideas turned into broken truths, of which The shards spray at the victim with abandon Terror is now the new war.

A tinge gradient to see that fine line Between beauty in the fire and the First and last respondents to fight.

The poetic tragedy and horror in the Aftermath. The beauty in devotion to One’s belief beyond thought or blood.

The horror that belief or faith could be an engine Of death. But wars with blood caked in The words of history books had been driven With far less. New war with new tech That puts blame on old systems With ancient ways, perturbed and left Open to interpretation. That divine Inspiration is desperately needed To either prove or disappoint.

In the meantime terror takes war’s Place in the hearts of the world.

And the state of avoiding yet bathing in Ignorance replaces terror unbeknownst To many. And we turn a blind eye to The radicals in our backyard.

CJ CRAWFORD ’19

DAVIS BAILEY ’18 Barely balanced with both feet shifting on the creakiest stool in the physics lab, I – for my forty-seventh attempt – try to loop what seems like invisible twine into a tiny knot around a Try Physics Yourself at Home box-set pulley.

My lab partner, favorite exchange student and future Spanish soccer star, Juan Montabes, stares at my not-sonimble fingers as I try to tie the dainty string.

I’ll admit it, knots are not my strong suit, but when the string is barely a step up from a strand of spider web in both thickness and visibility, it’s like playing physics lab on hard mode.

But after 3 more tries of guessing when to pull on the string, I finally land the perfect loop – just the right size for our pulley. Ready to cut the extra thread off the short end of the loop, I call down to Juan, “Can you pass me the….”

They say that genius only strikes a man a few moments in his life. This was one of those moments. “… the skizzors? Pass me the skizzors.”

I bite my lip and hold in a chuckle as – unbeknownst to Juan – the two lab teams on either side of me start to laugh.

“The what now?”

“Come on Juan, those over there in the cardboard box,” I say as I point to the beaten-up box filled with all the “skizzors” at the end of our lab table.

Juan looks at me like I had just said Cristiano Ronaldo isn’t a decent soccer player.

“Do you mean the scissors?” Juan retorts, with the lack of pronunciation-confidence that any foreign language student learns to thrive on.

So begins our verbal ping-pong, a game of chicken between the nonchalant, completely and utterly wrong American (me) and the studied, yet under confident,

90 91 The Marque Familiar

exchange student.

“Scissors?,” I say back, moving my mouth slowly, as if just saying the word that way makes me uncomfortable. “I think that might be the British way to say it?”

“No. There is no way you pronounce it skizzors.”

Suddenly, Ben Clayman, from the next table over, keeps the dream alive. Not loud enough to be too blatant, but just within earshot, he calls to his partner, “Hey Fausto, can I get those skizzors from you?”

Within minutes, a subtle orchestra of wonderful mispronunciation begins to envelop the physics classroom. The room erupts in pure joy as a cacophony of that second syllable’s buzzing Z-sound becomes louder and louder.

With everyone in the whole class seeming to need to borrow the “skizzors” at the same time, I’m nearly convinced myself.

And Juan? Still skeptical, but just a bit quieter with his questioning as we finish the lab.

Like any masterpiece cooked up in my 6th period physics class, I forget about it within a week.

Forget – that is – until I walk into class early about a month later.

Juan stands up at the front of the classroom, about to turn in his lab report.

He looks at his lab book and his freshly-printed Force vs. Time graphs, then looks up at Mr. Carron.

“Can I borrow your skizzors?”

Hook, line and sinker, and wholeheartedly believing himself to be, as he says, just like a real American.

KABEER SINGH ’18 APPLE?

AUSTIN MONTGOMERY ’18

92 93

EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO The man would not live long. That much was obvious. Claret pooled at his feet, flowing across the granite floor in rivers, bones jutted out from his skin at odd angles, and what color remained in his gaunt face was rapidly slipping away. It was a wonder he’d managed to summon me, even if he hadn’t had half a dozen arrows sticking out of him.

“Glasya-Labolas.” He sunk down against the wall as I emerged from the circle. “Hear my request, I implore you.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do much for a dead man,” I replied. “Would you like something else? A quicker death, perhaps?”

The man shook his head, then gestured to a crate behind him. “Her. She…” A hacking cough forced itself from his throat, and blood spurted from his mouth. “She has power. You must protect her.”

Curious, I lifted the lid of the crate to find a tiny human no more than a few months old, dozing peacefully as if her father wasn’t bleeding out a stone’s throw away.

Humans summoned my kind for all sorts of reasons. Most transactions were simple enough— some fool demanded we bring them infinite wealth, that we make their unrequited love requited, that we take vengeance against their enemies, and in exchange, they offered their souls to us.

Earthly, transient wishes, relatively easy to grant.

The Marque Familiar

Unconventional as this request was, I was intrigued.

“Leaving your little lamb to a wolf? That certainly seems wise. Should I get Moloch to help protect her, too?”

The dying man snorted. “Better you than them.

Do you accept? I haven’t much time.”

“Your soul in exchange for taking your spawn somewhere safe? Fair enough. Let us—” “No.” Steel filled the man’s eyes. “You shall watch over her as she sleeps, comfort her when she cries, protect her from those who would do her harm. Love her as I would until she is grown, and my soul is yours. That is the deal. Do you accept?”

“Hm…” I glanced over at the writhing pink creature in the crate. Seemed easy enough.

“Very well,” I extended my spindly fingers down to the dying man. “Let us strike a contract.”

The man managed a weak smile, and his hand reached out to meet mine. “Her name…her name is…” His smile faded, and the light trickled out of his eyes.

“Fool…” I muttered as my client slumped against the wall. One of the humans’ few positive qualities was that they reproduced at an astonishing rate, spreading across the world like a particularly stubborn rash. Wondering what made this particular vermin so special, I plucked it from the box and gave it a shake, only for it to immediately begin screeching.

“I suppose he didn’t keep you around for

the conversation,” I noted. Placing the creature on the floor in front of me, I inhaled deeply and roared with all my might. That should shut it up.

Surprisingly, that only made it scream louder. Such an impertinent thing, I thought, dropping it into my mouth. Careful not to swallow, I took wing into the night. The contract was sealed, and I would have my soul.

“VASSAGO. COME TO ME.” My top lieutenant instantly materialized, kneeling before me as was his place. “What do you require, my liege?”

“A human summoned me yesterday. I’ll need your counsel.”

Vassago smiled. “Who do they want you to kill?” His tail swished behind him as he rose to his feet. “And how many legions will you need?”

“I don’t need any legions. I just need to know what small humans eat.” “…What they eat, my liege?”

I produced the squalling creature I had been saddled with, now safely secured in a small wooden cage. “A contractor asked me to protect this thing, and if it starves, the contract shall be broken, and I’ll lose the soul. You’ve spent time among the humans, so what should I feed it?”

Vassago raked his fingers through his fur.

“A child that young doesn’t have teeth. It would normally be suckling at its mother’s breast, my

18 ADNAN KHAN ’19 SEVILLA BRIDGE

liege.”

“Will any milk do? Or does it have to be the mother’s?”

“I don’t think it matters, my liege.”

“Then we just need a woman with breasts, correct? Find one, and bring her to me.”

“No disrespect intended, my liege, but your domain may not be the most amenable to a human woman.”

“And what, exactly, is wrong with my domain, Vassago?” My personal corner of Hell was a sublime, peaceful land of fog and ash, centered on a great stone palace with a fire blazing at the center.

Any human should have considered themselves fortunate to even lay eyes on it.

My lieutenant averted all eight of his eyes.

“There’s nothing wrong with it, I suppose—” “Then find me a woman that can give the child milk. If she will not feed the child, I will flay her alive, and feed her her own entrails.”

“Yes, my liege.”

Vassago nodded rapidly and disappeared into the fog, leaving me alone with the useless creature in the cage.

“You truly are pathetic, aren’t you?” I said, plucking it from the cage and gingerly setting it down on my throne’s armrest. At least it wasn’t screaming anymore. “Were I your father, I would have saved myself, and left you for the knights.”

Apparently not understanding just how worthless its life truly was, the creature giggled and placed its filthy hands on my horns. Was it mocking me? Were I a less forgiving demon, I would have

erased the vermin’s pathetic existence on the spot.

But, merciful as I was, I settled for hurling it across the room. It slammed against the back wall, then hit the floor with a thud. That should teach you.

Immediately, the child was sitting up again, clapping its hands together as it laughed even harder.

“Impertinent creature,” I muttered, going to pick it up. “No wonder the knights were trying to kill you…”

THE GIRL DID NOT BECOME ANY LESS BOTHERSOME AS SHE GREW. Her infuriatingly shrill laughter filled my palace, her infuriatingly light footsteps pattered down my halls, and her infuriatingly inane questions filled my ears.

“Can the mouths on your hands eat food?”

“Is it true that boy humans have different parts than girl humans?”

“Will I ever be able to leave Hell?”

“Whose idea was it to teach her to speak?” I asked Vassago after one particularly miserable day in which I’d had to save her from being eaten after she wandered into Moloch’s domain (I had thrown her into the wall no fewer than seven times for that one).

“It was your idea, my liege.

You said we should find a way to keep her occupied.”

“Labo!” That infuriating nickname echoed in my ears as the irksome human came flying down the hallway and began tugging at my wings. “You know those books you brought me? I just finished the last one, and—” “What did I tell you about calling me ‘Labo’?”

MY PERSONAL CORNER OF HELL WAS A SUBLIME, PEACEFUL LAND OF FOG AND ASH, CENTERED ON A GREAT STONE PALACE WITH A FIRE BLAZING AT THE CENTER. ANY HUMAN SHOULD HAVE CONSIDERED THEMSELVES FORTUNATE TO EVEN LAY EYES ON IT.

94 95 The Marque Familiar

The girl twirled a finger in her hair. “Um…that if I said it again, you would flay me alive and make me eat my own entrails?”

“That is correct. Would you like to try greeting me again?”

“Really? The whole thing?” The girl sighed.

“Fine. Glasya-Labolas, the Angelsbane, author of manslaughter and bloodshed, demon king of the mist, may I have some more books? And also, what are ‘entrails’?”

“I gave you quite a few books, if I remember correctly.”

“But can I have more?”

I glanced at Vassago, who shrugged. “Very well,” I finally said. “I’ll be back in a while. Vassago will watch you.”

“Well, I kind of…I mean…” The girl bit her lip and held her hands behind her back, the way she always did before making an unreasonable request.

“What do you want? Out with it.”

“I was kind of hoping I could come with you this time.”

“No.” “Why not? The last time the knights saw me I was a baby. There’s no way they’ll recognize me.”

“Because I made a contract with your father, and if you run off in the human world and someone stabs you, the contract will be broken, and I’ll lose the soul.”

“Nobody’s going to stab me!”

“You don’t know humans like I do.”

“Arianne was a human!”

“Arianne was a whiny brat to begin with, and I sent her back to the human world the moment your teeth grew in. Why do you want to see more humans?”

“I mean, you and Sago and everyone else are always really nice to me—well, except that thing you do where you throw me into the wall. That kinda hurts. But I’m just wondering what it would be like to have a friend. Lots of the humans in the books have human friends.”

“Seems I need to watch what you read a bit more closely.” I shook my head. “Very well then.

Vassago will procure a number of children your age, and you can choose which you’d like to keep.”

“Can’t I just come with you?” The impertinent creature stared up at me with those accursed grey eyes, her hands clasped together. I quickly averted

SETH WEPRIN ’19 PATH TO THE TIGER’S NEST

my gaze.

“No. You may not.”

I took off before she could respond. I had made a contract, and I would keep the girl safe.

“I’M SURPRISED SHE HASN’T GIVEN UP,” VASSAGO SAID, AS TICK ONCE AGAIN WENT HURTLING INTO THE AIR. For what she lacked in fighting skill, the girl made up for in tenacity and durability; I was surprised she could even remember her name with the number of times she’d hit her head against the rocks.

“Nice shot, Marax!” she called to her opponent, picking up her sword once more. “But this isn’t going to go like yesterday!” Strangely enough, it was her idea to try her hand in the fighting pits.

I thought it a poor idea. While, of course, I was not at all concerned for some mewling human’s well-being, one of my vassals knocking her head off would result in me losing her father’s soul.

But Tick, whom I had named for her parasitic demeanor and difficulty to get rid of, had insisted, declaring that she wanted to be like one of the heroes in her books. Her whining had begun to annoy me, and thus I relented, sending Vassago to the human world with orders to find the finest weapons and armor for my young charge. I’d then imbued the steel with a bit of my own power, to prevent her from getting hurt too badly—not because I cared, of course. I did not care. At all.

“This is fun!” Tick strolled up from the fighting pit and draped herself across my lap, the same way I regularly told her not to. Her hair had grown longer, her hands and feet larger, her voice even more grating. “Thanks, Labo.”

“I told you…ugh, never mind. And also, who gave you permission to touch me?”

“Friends don’t need permission to touch each other.”

“And do I look like your friend, Tick?” I bared my fangs at her.

Tick giggled. Giggled, as if I were some fairy out of her children’s tales. “Of course you do, Labo. And since we’re friends, I had an important question for you.”

96 97 The Marque Familiar

“No.” “You didn’t even know what I was going to ask for! I was reading this book, and—” “Vassago, take Tick back to her quarters.” I flung the girl from my lap and flew off into the mist.

Perhaps it was part of the ‘power’ her father had spoken of, but the girl had an uncanny ability to make me act against my better judgement. Already I’d given her a library’s worth of books, the most expensive armor the human world had to offer, and dozens of worthless trinkets she’d read about, then

I WOULD NOT BE DECEIVED INTO HANDING THE OVERFED, SPOILED LITTLE CREATURE ANYTHING ELSE. I HAD MADE A CONTRACT, BUT THAT DID NOT MEAN I CARED.

demanded for herself. I would not be deceived into handing the overfed, spoiled little creature anything else. I had made a contract, but that did not mean I cared.

“SHE’S REALLY LEAVING.” VASSAGO NOTES. I sigh. “We are well rid of her then.” I should have been pleased. No more stealing books from the mortal world every other day. No more bothersome questions. No more watching her sleep at night.

Tick marches down the center of my thirty legions in the armor I gifted her, waving each of my demons goodbye, hugging a few that she particularly likes. Her dark hair falls past her knees now, nearly dragging along the ground, and her pale arms ripple with strength. Should the men that killed her father come for her again, she will be ready—I’ve made sure of that, at least.

My contract is finished. There’s no reason for me to feel perturbed. There will be no more of her wandering into other, less friendly domains. No more demands that my palace of stone be warmed up. No more of her crying into my mane. No more of her laughter echoing through my palace of stone.

No more being called ‘Labo’.

Tick bows to Vassago as she reaches the end of my army, then turns to me.

“Labo?” She places her tiny hand on one of my claws. “Thank you. For everything.”

I try not to look at her. “Off with you. Leave.”

She leans into my shoulder, standing on her tiptoes to whisper into my ear. “I know you have to pretend to be tough in front of your army, so I won’t talk long. But you were always so kind to me. I love you.”

I gasp as she releases her grip, bows to the legions one last time, then approaches the portal back into the realm of those horrendous humans.

Well, mostly horrendous. “Will I see you again, Labo?”

I turn my back to her so she cannot see my expression. “I’ll be there when you need me.” Tick smiles as she disappears into the fog. I had made a contract. And even now, I intend to uphold it.

ADNAN KHAN ’19 LA MEZQUITA

ADNAN KHAN ’19 LADIES PRAYING WITH PILLARS

DAVIS BAILEY ’18

98 99 The Marque Familiar

WILLIAM HALL ’18 RUDY

Wrinkles DAVIS BAILEY ’18 The low hum and diesel stench of this jacked-up white pickup call out my idling presence in the December-morning cold.

Like the vehicular equivalent of a fog-horn needed any more attention.

Leaning over the steering wheel, I reach up to tweak the mirror that, for me, reflects not out the back window, but instead the well-worn leather of the frigid, empty backseat.

If it wasn’t for his height, a height that – he assures me – has three spare inches that aren’t going anywhere, this truck could feel like mine.

But before I tilt that mirror, my absent gaze freezes on the black and red checks of the flannel liner that’s nestled inside that old tan barn-jacket laying folded over the back seats.

Its broken-in wrinkles, like scars from the years of jabs and teasing I’ve thrown at that man over the years.

Every time I’ve told him that he must have lost his cattle or that he must have forgotten that he’s not in Weatherford anymore, just makes him love that old jacket – even more.

TUCKER RIBMAN ’18 DOCK

MATTHEW COLEMAN ’19

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Lightning MATTHEW COLEMAN ’19 The short and mysterious man with the ponytail beard stood to my left, speaking to my cousin Jack by the door of the snack bar. In his white t-shirt and shorts, he looked almost like an extra from Pirates of the Caribbean but with all the fastidious demeanor of a middle school teacher.

As I eavesdropped, I noticed that they conversed with cursory etiquette like you could imagine two people who have only known each other for a week-long camp would, each waiting anxiously for the other to shut up so he could get on his way.

“Yeah, no, don’t worry about it,” spat the ponytail man.

“—Sorry, I just can’t tonight. Yeah, see you later,” he stuttered as he headed back towards our table.

The short man turned quickly towards the door. From their conversation, I gathered two things: he owned a Lightning, a 19-foot sloop with two sails, and he was looking for someone to help him race it. I felt blood gush suddenly through my ears, my heartbeat quickened, and my face burned.

Somehow, I always managed to be embarrassed about things I hadn’t even done, and yet the excitement of racing a boat I had never raced with the strange man intrigued me to overcome that fear.

“Hey, are you looking for a crew for tonight?” I screeched, wincing at the sound and suddenness of my own voice.

“Yeah can you—" He spun and looked at me for a second before extending a clammy right hand. “Hey… What’s your name? I’m Andy.”

I told him and I was in. Looking at his face I could tell that Andy was a shrewd man. His black hair was slicked back behind his head, and he stood with confident swagger. His rough, suntanned skin was hairy and patched with tattoos under his sleeves.

The only instruction he gave me was to grab a life jacket and meet him in the parking lot. Already out the door, I slid my nearly-full chocolate milkshake to Brian, who didn’t even look up from his Snapchat conversation with the girl I often teased him about.

Still feeling light on my feet and fearless, I met Andy in the rocky parking lot underneath the boathouse. There were plenty of other eager sailors rigging their boats, so I ran laps barefoot until I spotted his.

The raw truth of my situation was that I had no idea how to crew a Lightning, so I lied to Andy instead of leaving the opportunity untaken, figuring that it couldn’t be too hard to learn on the spot. In that moment, I felt confidence in its true form, as the lofty and indescribable feeling that cannot be put into words by 16-year-olds. I was charged with a

THE RAW TRUTH OF MY SITUATION WAS THAT I HAD NO IDEA HOW TO CREW A LIGHTNING, SO I LIED TO ANDY INSTEAD OF LEAVING THE OPPORTUNITY UNTAKEN, FIGURING THAT IT COULDN’T BE TOO HARD TO LEARN ON THE SPOT. youthful spirit, and as long as I felt that way, I truly was free from worldly danger.

After Andy’s brother, T.J., arrived, we launched southwards on a whipping beam-reach towards the racing buoys.

T.J. was taller than Andy and rounder as well.

From his combed, blonde hair, ironed buttondown, and brotherly synergy with Andy, I could tell this was not the first time T.J. had escaped an office building to slay giant waves for a thrill.

In fact, he had been

driving in from Buffalo only minutes before we launched.

We did several laps around the course and prepared to start the race by oscillating between two buoys set up perpendicular to the wind.

Lying out over the side of the hefty boat to keep it upright, I scanned the waves, periodically calling out incoming puffs so T.J. could correct his angle on the rudder. Burgee radioed the start time: three minutes.

The start to any regatta is hectic, to say the least. As the three minutes dwindled into seconds, a team came careening across our port side and tacked over our bow, scraping the jib with a twangy clink. The timer screamed from Burgee almost simultaneously, and our boat shot out unfazed into the wind.

As we slid over the restless waves towards the first mark, I pulled from my core, clutching the hiking strap wrapped around my feet. Droplets pecked at my face as I hovered inches from the water’s surface rippling behind my head, and from my position I saw Lake Erie pooled above the clouds. Between the three of us, no words were spoken save for mechanical shouts and warnings; the Lightning had become a machine and we meshed perfectly as gears in its inner workings.

When we reached the windward mark, we came about immediately and started raising the bright blue spinnaker. My entire wingspan hoisting one pull after another, the gossamer sail crumpled at its apex and then inflated. Whoomph! I sat on the port gunnel and set about my work of maintaining its inflation with surgical adjustments to the sheets.

As we turned towards the fleet of boats heading downwind to the finish, an eerie silence crept up from behind us and hushed the wind’s whistling in our ears. We slipped into the flock from behind and stole into its ranks unnoticed. Startled chirping disturbed the crisp quiet.

Even now, I remember everything about the race like an illegally downloaded movie saved on my mind’s hard drive. It was me who stole the heavy puffs of wind, the sawtooth waves, and the relentless hiking to right the boat. But regardless of whether I lied at all about being able to sail like I did that night; these images alone were worth my integrity, and the sound of surf again had cleared my mind.

ON THE

EKANSH TAMBE

300 PHOTOS. With his lens, eighth grader Ekanshe Tambe takes you along the US-Mexico border as it cuts through water and grafts along the earth—from Brownsville, TX to San Diego, CA, this is the state of the border today.

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BORDER A S Q U OT E D BY E K A N S H TA M B E ’2 2 W H E N I N T E R V I E W E D BY C J C R AW FO R D ’ 1 9

I can split up my takeaways into four things: what the border actually looks like— how it passes through all these different terrains like the hills, lakes, rivers, deserts— that was a huge part of it.

“THE WALL AND THE CULTURE THERE...

...THEN THERE’S THE PEOPLE.” [Patrol agents] never know what to expect, the sensors go off, someone’s crossed, and [patrol agents] don’t know what to expect. It could be a pregnant lady, old men, hardworking men. [Patrol agents] are isolated for miles and miles from civilization, so that also takes a toll on them. There’s a humanitarian crisis going on down there, so there’s the coyotes, the smugglers, and there’s obviously the drug problem.

We got a lot of stories—some of them heartbreaking, some of them inspirational

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W H AT A R E S O M E T H I N G S YO U ’ V E TA K E N AWAY F R O M YO U R E X P E R I E N C E T H E R E ?

I talked to border patrol agents spanned every 3 or 4 miles along the fence. I was actually really surprised— the border patrol agents were actually super nice, super friendly and welcoming, and something I realized is that these border patrol agents have a really tough job, and it takes a psychological and mental toll on them for multiple reasons.

From what we talked to the people and the border patrol agents, we’ve got that the Mexican government should do more, and that these drug smugglers target vulnerable people—old people and small children.

One story we got was that there was a drug smuggler who was caught putting drugs in a child’s lunchbox, and these kids who live in Mexico cross the border every day to get to school in the US, so that’s how some of these drug smugglers get drugs across.

KOREA

I took a trip to South Korea as well, so we [were] going to India for a wedding right? We took a detour to South Korea before going to India, and I took photos of the DMZ there. Something that was striking to me was that these South Koreans are ready for war at all times. There’s anti-tank walls. There’s mines everywhere, and you can see alongside the road there’s this area fenced off with yellow tape that ahs the word “mines” on it.

Just this forest right off the road.

I want to continue on with this theme, so the Korean border, the Mexican border, and I want to do, over one or two weekends, the Israeli-Palestine Border.

FACE THE HUGE METAL STUDENTS FROM THE BRICK SIGN AND TURN RIGHT, AVOID BIRD DROPPINGS, JUMP AND SLAP THE WOODEN BEAMS AS YOU PASS, AND GAZE THROUGH THE GLASS WINDOW AT THE ARTISTS WORKING. DON’T TAP THE GLASS. IS YOUR SON EXPERIMENTING WITH ART?

ADNAN KHAN ’19 CERAMICS ROOM

Half and Half

AARON WEISER ’20

Autumn on Mars COLIN BAJEC ’20

Pendleton Bowls

JOHN DAVID MCCLAIN ’20

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Stump

LUKE EVANGELIST ’20

Pride

CAL RUSHTON ’18

Spilt

TOUSSAINT PEGUES ’18

STAFF

(Bottom to top, left to right): First row: Lynne Weber Schwartz Faculty Sponsor, Toby Nwafor ’20 Senior Literary Editor, Jonah Simon ’19 Staff, Austin Montgomery ’18 Senior Literary Editor, Rahul Vashi ’20 Staff, Kamal Mamdani ’19 Managing Editor, Matthew Coleman ’19 Editor-in-chief, CJ Crawford ’19 Editor-in-chief, Perry Naseck ’18 Media Director, Mujin Kwun ’19 Senior Copy Editor, Neal Reddy ’20 Managing Editor, GayMarie Vaughan Faculty Sponsor Second row: Jackson Singhal Staff, James Shiao Staff, Tamal Pilla Staff, Sai Thirunagari ’21 Staff, Siddhartha Sinha ’21 Staff, Beto Beveridge ’21 Staff, Will Hunt ’19 Staff, Sarbik Saha ’21 Staff Third row: Charlie Rubarth ’20 Staff, Zachary Gilstrap ’18 Staff, Henry Exall ’20 Staff, Matthew Raroque ’20 Staff, Jack Trahan ’20 Staff Not pictured: Andy Crowe ’19 Senior Design Editor, Adnan Khan ’19 Head Field Photographer, Nathan Han ’19 Creative Director, Jack McCabe ’19 Senior Design Editor, Kyle Smith ’19 Head Photographer

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EDITORS’ NOTES

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CJ CRAWFORD ’19

This magazine has gone through many vast changes, both visual and conceptual. From its bare conception during the end of my sophomore year, the magazine’s vision had the scope of the world’s history with a theme focused in revolution. This, while thematically multi-layered and opened many opportunities for design, proved to be a feat too limiting to the vision I had in mind for the magazine. We spent the summer debating the sections of our first theme to no avail, we found ourselves stuck in a creative limbo. By the time we began the meat of the magazine, we realized the problem was with the big picture, not the things we used to see it.

We realized the picture we envisioned was a lot more personal and smaller in scale. The iconoclast. Rather than try to categorize the concept of revolution itself, we decided to go deeper and explore the driving force of such an abstract. This venture created a magazine we’ve grown to bond with, both as our first and as a very personal expression. We started to see ourselves as the very thing we tried to define here. That revelation can either be extremely pretentious or delightfully enlightening; nevertheless, we’ve learned a lot about ourselves.

Through that process, I believe I can speak for both me and Matthew that we’ve talked and revised a lot about what it means to be an innovator, to really think outside the box, and I think we’ve become better leaders and designers because of it. Matthew—you’ve been an amazing designer and partner and have guided the staff well to notice the little things in spread design to make our magazine better. I know it can be hard to deal with my comparatively elementary design skill, but I appreciate your patience. I’ve learned a lot of things about color, format, and “being an alpha” from you, and I can’t wait to see what concepts we can develop over the summer. Zach—you’ve been a great help when you didn’t have to be. Rather than give in to the senioritis, you’ve stepped up to help with design and interviewing and we really appreciate it. I wish you well in your endeavors at Yale, my guy.

Marque staff—we’ve braved through the rough nights, the tough calls, and the last minutes to create this work.

Truthfully, we may never be satisfied with how it turns out, but all things must end someday. My only hope is that we can continue this run next year to craft an even better product.

MATTHEW COLEMAN ’19

Reader, I hope you have enjoyed reading through the pages of this magazine as much as I have enjoyed compiling them.

I hope that you will find your own creations and be amazed to see them published; in fact, I hope that each and every student who sees this edition finds some work they have stumbled upon whether on Nearburg’s showroom floor, through Decherd’s windowed enclosures, or in the bay of a graduate hall printer. In the same way that baseball fans gawk at Babe Ruth baseball cards, I hope that you will gape at your classmates’ genius creations and idolize the artist’s nuance like the sultan’s swat. Never forget: art at 10600 Preston Rd. is massively slept on, and missing out on that could be the biggest L of your life.

Above all, I hope that some student’s work truly excites you, breeding an indomitable energy that grows and grows from the sincerest depths of your heart.

Making this magazine has been a wild ride. I remember waking up from a dream sometime in August soaked in sweat and dead set on the theme for Volume 56. I didn’t quite have a name for it at that point, or even a good plan for carrying it out, but I knew in my heart what it had to be.

Come April and now the theme looks absolutely nothing like what I had expected it to look like. I thought that brush

font, monospaced text, and crazy glitch effects would define our Marque, but it turned out that look had nothing to do with the final product: one school year later and it turned out that the people had defined it.

It’s funny how life works.

CJ, I hope that you brush up on your design skills. All jokes aside, I would never want to undertake a publication like this without you by my side. I just wouldn’t do it, hands down. No way. They couldn’t pay me enough.

And even though we didn’t always get along, you were always there for me when my head cooled and we would be back to work in a heartbeat.

We make a great team.

Staff, What you’re holding in your hands right now is the final product. This doesn’t exist without each and every one of you, posting pictures of my face all over campus, persevering through design nights for pizza that would tragically never come, and drumming up submissions out of thin air. I thank you for your contributions this year, no matter how small, and I hope that you will come out again next year. In 2019, CJ and I plan to have things running like clockwork. In fact, we’re already there in spirit, just counting the days.

PHILOSOPHY The Marque, established in 1962, serves as the yearly collection of the literary and artistic pieces created by Upper School students to summarize the academic year’s artistic expression.

POLICY

The Marque is an after-school extracurricular activity that works independent from the St. Mark’s journalism program. All written and visual content is welcomed an considered blindly and equaly for publication. Throughout the year, literary works are submitted and selected for publication by our staff members. Artistic pieces are submitted both by students and faculty member within each respective discipline. This publication is submitted annually for evaluation to the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA).

COLOPHON

The Marque is printed by Digital 3 Printing. The cover is 120# Polar Bear Velvet Cover printed 4/4 in four color process inks plus overall soft touch aqueous. Foil stamped using brass dies in yellow pigment foil. Text is 100# Polar Bear Velvet Text printed 4/4 in four color process inks. Binding is PUR glue perfect binding.

The Staff used Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop CC 2018 on 27-inch Retina 5K Display iMacs to design the spreads.

A Wacom tablet and a Microsoft Surface laptop were used to collect handwritten signatures by the creators of literary works and photos. Typefaces include Crazy Marker, Times New Roman (Bold Italics), Have Heart Two, and handwritten text for headers, Neue Haas Grotesk (multiple weights and styles) for pagination, interview headers, credits, and assorted elements, and Arnhem Blonde for body text.

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THE MARQUE