Birch Howe, Open Up My Mouth, Graphite and Watercolor on Paper
Editors’ Statement
We have been here before. We have been here a decade ago. We have been here a century ago. Time marches on, but it marches in loops, sometimes giving the impression that we haven’t moved forward at all. Still, we are moving and the world creaks and groans around us with changes.
Every year The Pendulum considers themes, writing old ideas on the board that we came up with years ago. We reconsider them and see if we can put something fresh into it; every year, new people bring new understandings. For instance, in the past we have chosen a theme and subdivided it into topics. For “Time,” however, The Pendulum staff has decided that, like time itself, there will be no hard boundaries or boxes for the works, no clear pastpresent-future, no clear seasons or years. You may not know what will be a defining moment until long after it’s hap-pened, and you may only recognize it in the context of everything around it.
While the state of our world may feel hauntingly and disappointingly familiar – you may think to yourself, “we have been here before” – we have not been here before. This year’s publication seeks to acknowledge our current political climate while reminding readers that nothing is forever. “Time” is a snapshot of the arts and literature of our school
over the course of 2024-2025 and reflects our culture in the moment, and we’re glad to be able to preserve this culture for the future and add to the collections from the past.
St. Luke’s School is an independent day school located in New Canaan, Connecticut. Our student enrollment is drawn from the Fairfield, Connecticut and Westchester, New York counties and surrounding area. Our student body consists of 208 Middle School and 380 Upper School students at the time of publication.
The Pendulum is an Upper School extracurricular club that meets on a weekly basis. The staff of The Pendulum conceives of and votes for a theme each year, then requests submissions of art and literature from the Upper School students. Works are juried anonymously by the staff of The Pendulum as to whether or not they would be suitable for publication.
The Pendulum is printed in an edition of two hundred copies and distributed on campus and is also available online through the website Issuu.
-Birch Howe and Alex Sheinkin
Digital Illustration by Birch Howe
The Pendulum 2025
Georgia Bennett, Embrace, Acrylic on Canvas
Charlotte Mannix, Beacon of Light, Digital Photograph
Where Do Poems Hide?
I wake up and see
Rain hitting my window
Repelled by the trees
Wind blowing
Leaves quivering
Spiraling through the air
As though caught by an invisible whirlpool
The constant rap
Of thunder re-echoing
In the breeze
The white flash and Clap of lightning
The joy of splashing through Dense muddy puddles
The clouds releasing All their stored anger and beauty
-Jack Aronian
Ainsley Birmingham, Beneath the Surface, Acrylic on Canvas
Heaven in the Headlights
9:23 PM, scrape the roof, defrost the windshield; The late shift is always like this, mid-January. Fingers freeze on the wheel, heat never quite kicked in, Steer one-handed through the snowfall. Halfway home a blinding light, White as the flakes from the sky, something holy, Some sort of ascension. It passes still.
Blinded, I follow the edge of the road, covered in fresh snow And it’s just some middle-aged lady in an SUV With her damn brights on. There’s nothing good here. No salvation for minimum wage workers In slushy weather and worn uniforms.
For just a minute it was something good. Still just the night, still night, still. There’s something beyond here, right on the other side of that hill, Right there, right on the edge of here, gone, And then I’m shifting into park and walking inside. The snow falls and the lights are on but it is not so bright As those high beams were.
-Birch Howe
Birch Howe, Night with You, Graphite and Watercolor on Paper
Grace Grant, Tulips, Acrylic on Paper
Charlotte Mannix, Tidal Roll, Encaustic and Photograph on Wood
Maddie Winarsky, Through the Lens of Fashion, Digital Design
Maddie Winarsky, Sunset at Telluride, Digital Photograph
Quilt of My Life
When the time comes, Whether the sky swirls with streaks of sorbet, Like the velvety ice cream I scraped from the almost-empty carton on a midsummer night, Or shimmers brilliantly with speckles of stars, Scattered like the freckles on my moon-kissed face, My body and mind can decay with satisfaction.
For I know
The being I was at five years old, vibrant and carefree, Whose memory is threaded into a rainbow dyed piece of fabric in my mind, And the being I was at eleven years old, unreserved and infinite in my generosity, Kept alive in the fibers of a pink and purple piece of patterned cloth, And all the younger beings before, between, and after Would be proud of me; They would be proud of how I treat my friends
How I treat my family
How I’m working to treat myself better every day, Every new day
Presenting a chance to eclipse the previous How I’m working to remember that self discipline is love And how, much to my parents’ dismay, I might even get that tattooed The words etched into my skin: “I discipline myself because I love myself” With every added year of my existence, I sew another piece of fabric to the patchwork quilt of my soul
So far it’s the size of a not-quite-done baby blanket, Seventeen shapes backed by square fabric, sewn together with twinkling pearlescent thread
All these individual childhood versions of myself, Stitched in place, smiling up at me, Their wide eyes shimmering like the rainbow sprinkles I’d beg my mom to shake Onto my ice cream
Every Sunday, Swirled into every strand of each piece, Their presence ensures I will never forget who I’ve been, Will continue learning and growing, Making them all proud.
Margaret Lange, Fading, Acrylic on Canvas
Tessa Spitzer, Antler, Charcoal and Conte on Paper
Patrick Gunn, Masai Giraffe, Charcoal and Conte on Paper
Radio Cowboys
[microphone switches on]
Okay, um, let’s see. Or, hi, I guess actually I should uh…say hi first. Hi. Wait, what does that say? Should I say that? Okay, cool. Sorry, this is my first time. You’re listening to WSLX 91.9, story hour. The radio station is having its eightieth anniversary, so in honor of that we’re doing stories from the past. So uh, let’s see, what should mine be…cowboys? People like cowboys, right? Okay, cowboys. Here goes.
[muffled version of Johnny Cash’s Ghost Riders In The Sky]
In the west, there are two types of folks- those who believe in ghosts and those who find out. Jeremy Moore was of the second persuasion. The plains of Oklahoma weren’t a land for the faint-of-heart-
coyotes and rattlesnakes and roots that could kill you or make you see God. Jeremy’s mama raised him right and he could not lie; he was afraid of nothing. If you’ve done no wrong, you’ve got nothing to be afraid of. In his defense, he didn’t have much time to do anything worth being afraid of- he’d only been riding the plains for round about eight months, under the apprenticeship of Cool Clay Rogers. Clay Rogers’ mama also raised him right, (God rest her soul), and he could tell no lie; he knew better than to go around runnin’ his mouth that he was afraid of nothing. Jeremy was a clever kid but needed to get his feet on the ground- he already seemed to fancy himself the darndest cowboy around. But Clay didn’t pay too much mind to it- his wife reminded him that he was the same way as a kid, spitfire and thinking himself invincible. It was alright, that Moore kid would learn soon enough.
Billy Galvin, Untitled, Charcoal on Paper
One sunset, Jeremy was leading a herd of cattle across a new trail, one they’d not been on before. Clay was bringing up the rear.
“Moore!” He called. “Pull over.” Jeremy halted the herd and rode around back to meet Clay, hand already on his holster.
“Whaddya see, Clay?” he said, looking around with narrowed eyes. Clay laughed.
“Cool it, kiddo. Sun’s going down, I think it’s time we tie these cows up and get some rest, since I wanna make it all the way through to Tuckersberg tomorrow,” he explained. The younger man gestured to the horizon.
“But, sir, it ain’t even dark yet-” he started. Clay pulled down on the brim of Jeremy’s hat.
“And I don’t know about you, boy, but I’d rather not be trying to ride while there are coyotes on our tail. Tie ‘em up,” he directed, so Jeremy sighed and started tying a loop around an ankle for each cow to keep them together. Clay began starting a fire. Before long, they were set for the night, and both sitting in front of the fire. There was silence burning with the embers.
“You done alright today, son,” the older man said. “Got about as much patience as a horsefly, but
you done alright.” It wasn’t in Clay’s nature to say kind words without cause so Jeremy looked up, surprised.
“Why do you say that, sir?” he asked. Clay shook his head.
“Shoot, boy, can’t you just say ‘thank you’?”
“ Thank you, sir,” Jeremy grinned. Suddenly, a bird fell out of the sky and by the boy’s feet. He looked down at the small thing.
“Dead?” Clay asked. Jeremy nodded and kicked the tiny pile of feathers into the firepit. Clay looked up, the crow’s feet around his eyes thrown into sharp relief by the flames.
“Best say your quickest prayer, son,” he said in his gravelly voice.
“What for?” Jeremy scoffed.
“Birds are souls who’ve moved on, and prairie ghosts don’t look kindly on the disrespectin’ of their kind,” Clay explained. Jeremy searched his face for some hint of a joke, but there wasn’t nothing to be found.
“Clayyy, stop pullin’ my leg,” he laughed. The older cowboy stood up.
Lachlan MacLean, Pink Blues, Digital Photograph
“Ain’t jokin’, son,” he said, and threw a handful of soil onto the fire. Jeremy watched him walk away as the embers died. Jeremy released the breath he’d been holding and laid his head down on his pack on the ground. He shut his eyes and tried to settle in, but had some strange feeling. After a minute or two, he realized that feeling was called being watched. He leapt up and both hands went for his hip, but he hadn’t hardly unclipped his holster when he saw the young lady sitting on the log he’d been on just earlier. She was who’d been watching him. He laughed and wiped the sweat from his brow.
“Apologies, ma’am, I thought you might’ve been an outlaw. Can I help you?” he asked. She stood up and smiled at him. She had a plain blouse and skirt on, and her dark hair was twisted in an updo. Her lips were shaped like cupid’s bow and her eyes were dark.
“I’m sorry, I think I lost my family,” she said, a concerned, distant look on her face. Suddenly filled with a rush of confidence, Jeremy stood up a little straighter and put a hand on his hat.
“We-ellll, I’m sure I could help ya with that. Where’d you last see ‘em?” he asked.
“We were riding the Stallion Rail Line, but I fell off. Do you know where they stop next?” she asked. He frowned.
“You must be mistaken, there ain’t no Stallion Rail anymore. Closed round thirty years ago after some awful accident- shucks, I shouldn’t be saying things like that in front of a lady. What’s your name?” Jeremy asked, inviting her to sit on the log next to him.
“Moira Daley,” she answered.
“Jeremy Moore,” the boy offered his hand to her. Moira just blushed and put her hands behind her back. Jeremy felt his cheeks get red too.
“Well, that’s a real pretty name, Moira,” he said.
“ Thank you, Jeremy. Are you a real cowboy?” she asked.
“Real’s they come,” he grinned, and tipped his hat again. Moira just smiled.
“Have you ever killed anyone?” she asked. Jeremy nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Shoot, miss, ‘course I haven’t. Ain’t proper for a lady to be askin’ things like that,” he shook his head. She looked down sadly.
“I’m sorry. I just heard that’s what cowboys do,” she explained. Jeremy shook his head again.
Sheridan Whitacre, Untitled, Charcoal and Conte on Paper
“Must’ve heard wrong. Not this kinda cowboy, least of all,” he jabbed a thumb at his chest. Moira nodded.
“Birds count too, you know,” she said. Jeremy looked over.
“Huh?” he asked. Before he could ask again. Moira turned towards him.
“I’d like to kiss you,” she said. Jeremy grabbed his hat.
“Shucks, Miss Daley, I couldn’t-” he started, but the girl next to him started crying.
“It’s because I’m ugly, isn’t it?” she asked, sniffling and wiping away tears. “That’s what everyone tells me. ‘Moira, a cowboy’ll never kiss you because you’re just not pretty.’” Jeremy felt his cheeks get red again.
“Shoot, Moira, I’ll- I guess I’ll kiss ya,” he replied, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. Moira smiled and leaned in. Jeremy was a breath away from her lips when he heard Clay.
“Kid! Need your help, get over here,” he yelled. Suddenly Jeremy felt cold air blowing against his face. When he opened his eyes, Moira’s pretty face was replaced by something that looked just like her, but gray and skeletal and with empty eyes and a rotting nose and stringy hair. She looked like a zombie. Jeremy yelled and scrambled away. In a gust of wind, Moira disappeared. Clay walked up next to him.
“Alright, kid? Look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Well, uh, I guess that’s it for today! Thanks for listening to WSLX, 91.9, and we’ll see you next time.
“Hey, how’d it go?”
I think pretty good. I guess we’ll see if we get any listener complaints.
“I’m sure you’re fine. Oh hey, I think you forgot to turn the microphone off,”
[microphone click]
-Audrey
Schermann
Cooper Lange, Ghostly Urn, Gelatin Silver Print
Birch Howe, Lucky, Graphite, Ink and Watercolor on Paper
Kate Edwards, Melted Memories, Acrylic on Canvas
Ben Carey, Dreams of Hygiene, Digital Design
Murphy Levesque, Sha’carri Richardson, Charcoal and Conte on Paper
Sarah Steele, Grønn Himmel (Green Sky), Digital Photograph
Sophia Roddy, The Fallen Angel, Marker on Whiteboard
Maddie Brown, Star Void/Can We Exist by Not Existing? Ceramic
Awake
The old haggard with his rum gently rests a hand upon the scar behind the left eye
“The devil got me there” he says, “the little man who runs through my maze”
The woman in the white dress was lovely till the good men stepped on her ruffles and spat on the hems
Her hand longs to reach into brains:
A child playing with building blocks
Pairing reds with yellows, oranges with blues, purples with greens, She speaks with desire but no true withdrawal
“Oh delusion, you intentional spirit
You make the victim see light, blinding light, binding darkness
And you, the conjurer,
I’d cut off your hands so you could not cover your eyes,
I’d take the steel sword in my heart and let it enter your head
Where somewhere in those passageways you wanted to hurt.
I’ll haunt them like an everlasting dream
But you’ll be awake my friend, you’ll be awake.”
-Isabel Loeffler-Kaplan
Grace Grant, Untitled Abstraction, Digital Photograph
Birch Howe, Dried Roses, Graphite, Ink and Watercolor on Paper
Tylie Kubick, Summer in Maine, Digital Photograph
Dream of Landscape and Cow’s Kind
I have only seen that cow through the murky plexiglass of yellow rat infested buses where the malignity of barn hay and indigo tractors blared like the burnt crucifix
on Salem Road. Some crucifix of burgundy train cars bound the cow’s brown hooves. Indigo ribboned girls chuffed by her murky shadow in search of a malignity not even the rats
knew to see. Rats burrowed holes in the crucifix and spun the concrete’s soft malignity, but the cherry crowded cow, vastly squat with murky pupils, did not need indigo
fur telling her how to bleed. Indigo light sweltered off the rat thumbing dwellers and murky starshine did not paint the crucifix applauders. The cow, however, flared nude arms at malignity and with a showgirl stride bit malignity’s shrewd thigh. She chewed indigo viscera beside her fellow cows and did not blink those rat hued eyes at the crucifix huffing city-sellers. Murky
vitriol died white on her murky backside, sliced by men’s malignity and the slow drawl of crucifix recitals. From my quasi-rural, indigo inner-skirts of suburbia, squashed rats and her did not differ. But the cow
is more woman than me. Crucifix lovers drive by indigo bent barn bays, spewing a malignity the rats cannot see. She cries a murky white and I love that cow.
-Selia Sitzer
Selia Sitzer, Ethel Cain-Inspired Midwestern Gothic With La Sofia, Mixed Media on Paper
You are a moth on an LED lamp, wings beating against themselves in a frantic thrum.
The lamp doesn’t even have the courtesy to burn you up, you know? It doesn’t have the mercy to punish you for chasing something worthless. What good do you think it does you to fly into the light? There’s no heaven here, just photons spat through semiconductors. Don’t worry, though. The longer you stay here, the closer you get.
Not all things do this, but most do. Seeking light, that is. You do not know this; you are a moth, and you know nothing. There are other places you could be: flying straight into a flame in a last second of absurd glory, or flapping disoriented up at a blood moon. You’d never reach the moon, because you are a moth, and fire would kill you just like anything else. Still, the LED lamp is artificial and cold and there is nothing to be found here. Nothing you do will change that, because you are nothing but a moth.
S o tonight, flap against the light until it clicks off on a manmade timer that you will never even know exists, and then fly off into the grass to survive through the daylight until you go off to fly into a fire or up to the moon. Tomorrow, if you catch sight of it, you’ll languish on the LED lamp again. It’s not your fault; you’re just a moth.
-Birch Howe
Moth
Birch Howe, Holy Imperfect, Graphite, Ink and Watercolor on Paper
Month of March
Quick, silent, it starts to feel like a bad pun. Get some rest, they tell me with their hands behind their back. They are the men in the dinner car, signing treaties In lavish glory while the muck of the fields is looked carefully away from. I stand on my aching knees, soldier’s call to attention, And I do not stop. I cannot stop, for I am the walking wounded. I have friends who need me still, people for whom I must stand On these damaged bones and hold their hands in my stiff fingers And stay between them and the world acting taller than I am, Speaking prouder than I know, glaring colder than I wish I was. I am a guard to the vandalized monument of a dying god, And my body is a temple but is abandoned and in ruins. I cannot join the generals in the dinner car; I am too nauseous. But by whatever army I stand for, I will still stand, and I will move along. There is the order: March.
-Birch Howe
Eric Millar, The Terrestrial Buoy, Digital Photograph
Isabella Kelley, Untitled, Acrylic on Canvas
Eric Millar, A Sandy Pair’s Sunny Spot, Digital Photograph
Mateo Soni, Hairy Thoughts, Charcoal and Conte on Paper
The Formidable Fallacies of a Previously Pretentious Middle School Girl
She stepped through the front door of her house imbued with a rare post-school glow. Everything had gone delightfully well. She’d had art class today, and finally finished a painting that Riverbrook School’s entire seventh-grade class had each been slaving away at for the past month. It was a dreary project, in which the students had to choose a famous painting and depict it in layers of cardboard. Cardboard. Certainly one of the poorer mediums she knew of. It was a pain to cut, ridiculously finicky, and wholly unforgiving. All her clumsy peers hacked away at cardboard with pairs of scissors, while she made expert incisions, blessed by her preferential art teacher with the only X-acto knife in the classroom. Beyond her gloriously productive art class, the school lunch had been delicious. Chicken fingers with just the right amount of breading served with refreshing green cucumbers and little gems of tomatoes. To top it all off, her math teacher had graded the previous week’s test, and she aced it!
As she shrugged off her backpack on the mudroom bench and began to untie her shoes, her dog, Daisy, charged into the room, enlivened by the sound of her arrival. It jumped on her, thrilled to see the young girl back just in time for a proper game
of tug of war, which the dog had never won, but still managed to remain hopeful for. The girl grinned in return and scooped up the small animal, affectionately stroking its back. When the dog tired of her constricting embrace, it wriggled about until the girl let it hop down to the tile floor, and scampered off to find a more active source of entertainment.
With her shoes off and away, the girl strode into the kitchen and headed straight for the pantry. The only correct snack after such a magnificent day was off-brand “healthy” Oreos, which her mom loved to gloat were preservative-free.
As she opened the box of cookies, she heard a murmuring one room over. Her parents were discussing something behind closed doors. She stuffed the cookies in her mouth and tiptoed over to the walnut door, behind which her parents were passionately discussing something, that it was only right for her to know.
She pressed her ear to the door and managed to catch a few fragments of sentences. “Disappointed in…” “We could….” “I just can’t believe she…”
Birch Howe, Bedroom, Graphite, Ink and Watercolor on Paper
“Ground her…” They were talking about her. Of course. Who else’s crimes could they be discussing but her own? Every misdeed she’d ever committed crashed through her mind like a tidal wave, unstoppable. Was it because she had forgotten to take the dog out, and blamed it on her brother? Or was it because she said she had eaten her brussels sprouts but had bundled them in a napkin and discretely disposed of them after dinner? Or the many times she’d run over to the neighbor’s house to play video games without permission? There were numerous occasions to choose from, and her mother knew at least one of her daughter’s misdeeds. How she knew of them, the girl did not know, but her mother was an omniscient, all-powerful being. The word of her mother was truth, was law. If her mother said it was so, then so it was.
She shivered and tore herself away from the door, her gaze falling upon the kitchen table chairs. Would she be sitting there momentarily, bound by years of household power dynamics and parental respect to sit and endure her parent’s agonizing retelling of her crimes, and be probed for all necessary, damning details? Listening to her parents describe her crimes was always immeasurably worse than the guilt of the crimes themselves, but that was a given. Being caught in the act would always be worse than committing it.
A sharp voice cut through her thoughts. “Goodness Evelyn, when did you come home? We didn’t even hear you come in.”
Evelyn’s mom stepped through the door, with her father close behind.
“Oh, just now! I haven’t been here long,” Evelyn sputtered, praying her parents were blissfully unaware of her nosy behavior.
“Have you had something to eat? You must be famished after a long day at school! I’ll cut you an apple,” Her father said. “ That’d be great! Thanks, Dad!” Evelyn smiled. Perfect. They had no idea.
As her father got to work cutting a Honeycrisp apple into eighths, Evelyn dove back into her thoughts, terrified of the foreboding nature of her parent’s hushed discussion.
They must have found out she’d gone over to the neighbor’s house to indulge in video games. It was her only misdeed with loose ends. The rest of her crimes were hers alone, and sneakily committed, with no evidence left to condemn her. The neighbor’s kids, on the other hand, were unpredictable. That made them dangerous. They could have blabbed to their mothers in a fit of passion about the survival game they’d advanced in with Evelyn’s aid, a detail that was surely passed on to her parents.
Either way, it didn’t matter. She was at the end of the line, and would rather run away to the neighbors for the night than lie in bed awaiting an inevitable grounding. She’d never been grounded, and wasn’t quite sure what it entailed, but imagined it involved some degree of imprisonment, and surely the employment of fear tactics, like in the old crime TV shows she watched with her brother.
As Evelyn slowly went up the stairs, burdened with the fear of future punishment, she heard the front door swing open and slam shut.
“I’m hoooome,” Her brother called joyously upon entry.
“Adam Wright, come in here right now!” Her Mom roared.
As her brother sauntered into the kitchen, just in view of the steps, her father growled “You’re grounded.”
Oh.
-Maddie Brown
Birch Howe, Auto Hymn, Graphite, Ink and Watercolor on Paper
Maddie Brown, Eager Eyes, Acrylic and Pen on Paper
Birch Howe, Meaning, Graphite, Ink and Watercolor on Paper
Speed Trap Town 1
I’m from pocket graveyards and colonial homes
And sidewalkless streets.
(Will they fix that downed power line that’s flirting with the roadside creek?)
I’m from coffee shops and churches
—Both of which I try to avoid.
I’m from half hour drives
Stalled by bikers going Nowhere
And Army Guy patrolling the streets
And Hat Lady picking up litter
And a sea of brake lights
Where the police set their speed traps.
I’m from a flickering porch light
That greets me when I finally arrive.
A tired mom who stayed up to ask “How was the drive?”
I’m from white noise battling hollow nights And longing for a little light pollution
Take a left at the end of the dirt road
The scenic route to wherever I’m going.
-Alex Sheinkin 1
Named after the Jason Isbell song.
Birch Howe, Haunted House, Ink on Paper
Lachlan MacLean, Night in Montréal, Digital Photograph
Sarah Steele, Nordyls (Northern Lights), Digital Photograph
Sarah Steele, Tromsø, Digital Photograph
Emma Sherter, Trumpet Study, Charcoal and Conte on Paper
My blue rose unfolded along the bend; Its petals cling-clang through dim alleys.
I am trying to accept that things end.
I wanted a blue bouquet: a rueful blend With sapphire, azure, ocean-cut valleys, A blue rose. But it unfolded along the bend.
I sent dead sparrows to scavenge and mend. Only life crept out – the petals hung madly. I am trying to accept that things end.
It’s cold, and only December could lend Her thin, cobalt cloak to a finale Like that rose unfolding along the bend.
My finger beds are sallow, my palms tend To petals. The flower’s unfurled, gladly. I am trying to accept that things end,
But it’s unfurled and so have I, I’ve penned A rueful clip of you. And you, you smile sadly Because a blue rose unfolded along the bend. Why? We are trying to accept that things end.
-Selia Sitzer
The Blue Rose
Selia Sitzer, Untitled, Acrylic on Paper
Caroline Coniglio, Life is Grate, Encaustic and Photograph on Wood
Lachlan MacLean, Eclipse, Digital Photograph
Ainsley Birmingham, Moonlight, Charcoal and Conte on Paper
Moonlit Night
In solitude, once – if solitude exists – I knocked up my neck to the grisly branches which bent and hissed. Mother was on the street – sulking, searching, delivering voicemails and vague threats of the police.
Can’t you hear, she’d shriek, the slate gray mist is screaming outside. But I wanted to watch the moon spit out her barren light, turgid like the yellow flesh of that plum I flung to the dirt.
I wanted to flit my fingers through her pallid stream, feel its gauze-white droplets lick and sting.
The moon is not in solitude. The moon is alone. Even as the sable trees creep higher, closer. Even as the dogs bite by way of her glow. She is far off and alone.
I wanted to clutch the moon’s hand as she gave all that light. I wanted her to know I could see it. I wanted her to taste the plum I should have eaten.
The moon is a beautiful, waifish thing – if such a thing can be. (The astronauts are plotting a violent claim) But nobody holds the moon from behind. No fingertips patter at her frigid nape.
The moon is dying like her husband did. The moon is dying and so are the grisly trees.
So are the dogs.
Mother wouldn’t see, her gaze too fixed on the moonless road.
What is solitude to a woman so cold and bleak? Where does loneliness lean – to the edge of things?
The edge is nearing, and the edge is quite sharp, really, when she thumbs it in this swollen way.
-Selia Sitzer
Sophia Roddy, Tabby Road, Digital Painitng
Emma Sherter, Untitled, Colored Pencil on Paper
Birch Howe, I Know, Graphite, Ink and Watercolor on Paper
Emma Sherter, Fruitful, Acrylic on Canvas
Carlos’ House
A Golden Shovel
cold water almost to the top fennel allspice pepper pods of all colors -Giovanni, “Spices”
Splashing down, rain so cold
On this warm summer’s night, the midnight water.
It’s overpowering the pickup truck, almost At the top of the humid, paved road, leading up to
A charming cobble condo, nestled between the Blaze of two traffic lights, hanging on top.
Smell the yellow of fennel Green allspice
Red pepper
Blink, swing, and mingle onto cars shaped like pods.
My face pressed to the window, I see the glory of The comfort and contrast, the spectrum of all These fractured primaries, this chorus of colors.
Billy Galvin, Untitled, Charcoal and Conte on Paper
Billy Galvin, Untitled, Charcoal and Conte on Paper
Peyton Roman, Ghost of the School, Gelatin Silver Print
Lara Kusche, Untitled, Gelatin Silver Print
Murphy Levesque, Ballet Dancer, Charcoal and Conte on Paper
Margaret Lange, American Classics, Gouache on Canvas
Editors: Birch Howe
Alex Sheinkin
Advisors: Ashley Gangi-Petit
Jeorge Yankura
The Pendulum Staff
Staff: Maddie Brown
Ephraim Gilrain-Lennon
Isabel Loeffler-Kaplan
Jaylen Myles
Sophia Roddy
Audrey Schermann
Birch Howe, Virtual Lobotomy, Graphite, Ink and Watercolor on Paper
Acknowledgements
Editors: Alex Sheinkin & Birch Howe
Alex Sheinkin ‘25 and Birch Howe ‘25 are both seniors serving as the 2025 Pendulum editors. They are the student heads of the publication and are responsible for organizing and leading meetings with the student staff and faculty advisors. They also control some of the final calls for the accepted works, formatting and design choices, and theme focus. The direction of the publication is chosen by the students, and the editors help guide and influence it to create a cohesive snapshot of student art and literature during that school year. The staff meet once a week to go over new submissions, and the editors help to sort and judge the works while taking in the opinions and guidance from the student staff.
Faculty Advisor for Art: Jeorge Yankura
The faculty advisor for art guides the staff on all visual matters. Ms. Yankura facilitates discussion on the theme, lending an essential knowledge of how to create and translate the theme visually into the finished product. As a teacher of photography and digital design, she encourages her students to submit work, helping fill holes in the magazine that might otherwise be left empty. She is also extremely involved in the ultimate layout of the magazine, supervising and enabling its final development. Ms. Yankura has been involved in The Pendulum for over twenty years. She has been with The Pendulum every step of the way. Her work and dedication has been invaluable, and The Pendulum could not exist as it does without her.
Faculty Advisor for Literature: Dr. Ashley Gangi-Petit
Dr. Gangi-Petit joined our team for our 2024 publication and has been serving to advise the staff since. She is responsible for helping to pick and understand literature submitted to The Pendulum, including identifying interesting poetic forms and explaining connections between poems and their inspiration. Her kindness and care when approaching student works and her engagement with The Pendulum has fostered a friendly and energetic environment that helps us to be excited for every work we see.
Digital Illustration by Birch Howe
Technical Notes
The fonts used in this volume of The Pendulum include Playfair Display Italic Bold and Playfair Display Italic for headers, titles and author names, Adobe Hebrew Regular for text bodies and page numbers, and Adobe Hebrew and Adobe Hebrew Italic for individual artwork attributions.
Playfair Display is a serif-style typeface from the Playfair Project, led by Claus Eggers Sørensen, and is inspired by both the Scotch Roman typefaces and similar designs of John Baskerville, from the Eighteenth Century. First released in 2011, this typeface features relatively consistent vertical height in both capital and lower case letters, making it ideal for printed material. The bold bodily shape and delicate hairlines make this typeface easy on the eyes and attractive to the reader.
Adobe Hebrew was created in 2004-2005 by John Hudson of Tiro Typeworks. This serif-style typeface was specifically created for contemporary Hebrew business communications. The Pendulum staff was attracted to the shape and crisp nature of the letters in this type family.
The Pendulum layout and design was created using Adobe InDesign from the 2025 version of the Adobe Creative Cloud. The Pendulum was printed with a Kodak NexPress ZX 3300 Digital Production Color Press at Impression Point Printing in Stamford, Connecticut by alumni parent Robert La Banca. It uses Enhanced Dry Ink that produces a consistently high image quality, providing vibrant colors, consistent spot color matching, a smooth flat field and gradients, and the unique ability to match the ink gloss level to the substrate being printed. The paper used is Accent Opaque 80# for cover and text.
Maddie Brown, Schrödinger’s Sky, Mixed Media on Paper
