No. 26

E c h o

the final draft

Editors-in-Chief

Helen Anderson, Michelle Doughty

Design Coordinator Leslie Reynolds

Designers

Katy Doughty, Holly Heinrich, Lauren Nelson

Editorial Board

Matt Brailas, Katy Doughty, Holly Heinrich, Pat Herlin, Ruth Hook, Zelda Mayer, Lauren Nelson, Leslie Reynolds, Bandi Van Kooij

Staff

Alice Alexander, Hetty Borinstein, Emily Cohen, Kathryn Heimsath, Caitlin Holland, Laurie Hursting, Alina LaPotin, Molly Moore, Clara Navarro, Jennifer Woo

Advisor

Moira H. Longino

Special Thanks To

The Westlake High School English Department Linda Rawlings, principal

cover art by Caroline Hunt

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The Final Draft echo echo

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We all know what an echo is, but its origins are both less familiar

and more interesting. In Greek mythology, Echo was a beautiful young nymph who loved her own voice and was unfortunate enough to fall in love with Narcissus, a beautiful youth who loved his own beauty. She pined away in unrequited love until nothing but her voice was left.

The point here is not narcissism or the stereotype of teenage self-absorption, but that an echo is analogous to art. Every artist is a performer, and all artists have to be narcissistic enough to believe they have something worth sharing, but in the end only the performance—the voice—remains, which either justifies itself or not. Young artists have nothing to apologize for unless all artists have something to apologize for, and they do not.

The history of art is the history of creative acts that strive to embody and share what makes us human. This is what the photographs, art pieces, poems, and short stories in this journal are about. Photographs can be snapshots of life and art can be manipulations of it, but if successful, they both communicate a point of view or a story. Similarly, poems often represent snippets of life’s experiences and a sharing of emotions or realizations. Short stories do the same but are more like videos with action and dialogue. There is not necessarily a theme or lesson to be learned from these works. They are often about felt rather than intellectualized experience.

As we worked throughout the year, we were able to see ideas “echo” in our drafted and finished works. For all of us, this edition of Westlake High School’s creative arts magazine is a window on our lives, and the lives of all Westlake students.

Sincerely, The Final Draft staff

Table of Contents

8 9 10 12 13 14 16 17 18 21 22

A Night in Prague; July, 2005 Leslie Reynolds Art Hannah Kunz Pavement Kid Samantha MacQueen Art Kathryn Heimsath Work in Progress Helen Anderson Art Hannah Kunz Velvet Abyss Anna MacDonald The Giving Tree Ilana Baron Art Justine Chen Dadu Bhai Shivani Morrison Art Melissa Osborne New Orleans Holly Heinrich

Typical Thoughts of an Atypical Mind Art Shannon Soule Last Laugh Eric Spoor Art Katie Zodikoff Ode to my Freckles Anonymous Art Hannah Kunz Vignettes Michelle Doughty Art Katie Pipkin

Lauren Nelson

5 t h e f i n a l d r a f t

23 24 28 29 30 31 32

Sudden Anonymous Art Colleen Troxell The Strange and Most Disconcerting Disappearance of Aaron and Erin Gompers Katy Doughty Art Katy Doughty A Simple Request Leslie Reynolds

Art

Nadia Waheed Caroline Hunt

Art

Shannon Soule Sam Womack Paige Malloy Adrienne Arredondo

Art

Art

Kathryn Heimsath May Sembera

33 34 35 36 37 38 40 41

Urban Fingerprint Art Melissa Osborne

Leslie Reynolds

Going Out, Think In

Joey Rousseau

Seasons Shiphrah Meditz Art Sam Womack Miniature Epic Samantha McQueen Untitled Laurie Hursting Stood Up Dylan Kittleman Art May Sembera

Crossing the Boundary Art Shannon Soule Art

Lily Patterson

My Friends

Andrew Waks

Stacy Liu

42 43 44 45 46 48 49 50

Clowns Bandi van Kooij Art Barret Wilson Why Calculus Is Not Poetic

A Score and Four Laments Art Kathryn Heimsath Colors Pat Herlin Art James Lambrecht Inked Samantha McQueen Art Katy Doughty

7 Joseph Lubars

Anonymous

Baby Girl Hetty Borinstein Art Alyssa Creagh The Writing Desk Leslie Reynolds Untitled Laurie Hursting Camera Ursula Barker Pacific Tides Holly Heinrich Art Leah Sacks Ian’s Idea Michelle Doughty Art Hannah Kunz Silent Hetty Borinstein Art Shannon Soule My Grandmother’s Earrings Alex Bishop Art Alex Kelly Magnify Julia Judge Art Kathryn Heimsath Vulnerability Helen Anderson

51 52 55 56 57 58

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A Night in Prague; July, 2005

T

Leslie Reynolds

There is nothing quite so unnerving As a night spent in perfect, undisputed wakefulness While roommates slumber peacefully, Coiled gently around their bed sheets, Breathing, slowly and deeply.

Hannah Kunz Photography

The sounds of a foreign city are very much like an

unfamiliar language.

Pointed, peculiar, and seemingly out of place.

The shouts of men leaving bars reverberate Against the baroque façades of ancient buildings.

Sleepless and transient, I sit wide-eyed in the dark.

Maybe I just think too much.

Laughter wafts up from the sidewalk And mingles with the other noises of the street.

Or perhaps, I don’t really think much at all.

My mind wanders to the man I saw today on the Charles Bridge.

He had rested his forehead on the ground And stretched his cupped hands before him like the

humblest of penitents Wayward and discursive At least we have that much in common, was my thought

at the time.

Old sedans kick up wind in their wake And shatter it against the window panes.

A dog barks in frantic outbursts, anxious.

Heralding some message of dire importance.

Today I had dropped a 10 koruna coin into the man’s

deep palms Like a wishing well And although he must have felt its weight in his hands, He was too dejected Or maybe too honest To play off of my sympathy And let me see his face.

Tires screech a few blocks north of us.

The slowly revolving city drags asymmetrical sheets of light Up and down the walls Veiled by the deep purple of early morning.

9 t h e f i n a l Kathryn Heimsath Photography

Pavement Kid

H

He sat on the sidewalk, the cold concrete chilling his bare thighs. He watched the broken metal frame, willing it to miraculously regenerate its torn parts and shredded aluminum. The bicycle had been destroyed two weeks earlier, when he had been hit by the van. His arm had broken in two places and was dislocated from his shoulder. The day of the accident, Teddy stood in the November fall, in his shorty shorts. He waited on the sidewalk for the van to turn the corner. There she was.

Mrs. Marshal. She’d been at the house last week to talk to Pop. He said she was a solicitor, but he knows better. She is just one of Pop’s hussies. She was speeding down the block too, even better. Teddy waited for the headlights to stream down the suburban street, then he bicycled out right in front of the car and CRASH.

Samantha MacQueen

The world slowed down. Teddy felt his heart beat in his throat and the blood pooling in the shattered arm. His head ached, but this was what he wanted. Now maybe she’ll leave us alone. Teddy could hear Mrs. Marshal swing the car door open and tumble out. She stumbled toward him. Teddy closed his eyes and held his breath for half a minute, just to scare her. She toppled to her knees and Teddy could hear her breath catching with almost sobs. Teddy hated her, with her too-short haircut and her slummy sweats. She was disgusting. Teddy tried to keep from smiling. Mrs. Marshal never came back after that.

Teddy sat still on the pavement and plucked the Pokémon card from the spoke of the bent wheel. Pop said he couldn’t fix the bike.

There’s always a sacrifice.

d r a f t

Work in Progress Helen Anderson

H

Here’s the thing: the smell of drywall always makes me nostalgic. But the truth about nostalgia, real nostalgia, is that I never see it coming until it’s already knocked me down. I smell the plaster mingled with sawdust, or hear the crunch of the plastic tarp under my feet, stuck weakly to the bare cement by blue painter’s tape, and suddenly, I remember. I’m trampled by that deluge of longing for the way things used to be.

Construction creates the schism of in-between. In between the old bathroom and the new one. In between grieving and moving on. The floor’s just not right, honey; I think we need hardwood. Maple, perhaps. What’s there to do but pull out the blueprints and start swinging a sledge hammer at everything in sight?

I must have been in third grade when the remodeling itch hit my parents. They started tearing out the linoleum in the kitchen and taking field trips to quarries to pick out the perfect countertop granite, one that would coordinate beautifully with the new stained cherry cabinetry and stainless steel refrigerator, the kind you couldn’t put magnets on. Strange men in hard hats became a regular fixture at our house, with their three-liter water bottles and their tendency to make jokes at the timid nine-year-old who walked by with her head down, laughing nervously.

Our guest room was converted into a makeshift kitchen-combined-withdining-room. The kitchen consisted of a microwave placed on the bathroom vanity beside the sink. Next to the mirror, it became two microwaves, back-to-back, but that didn’t make it any more capable of infusing our frozen dinners with love and goodwill. The dining room was our kitchen table, awkwardly oversized even with the extra leaves removed, situated clumsily between the pull-out sofa and the walk-in closet.

It certainly wasn’t the most idyllic period of my life. As if coughing on sheetrock dust and stepping on nails wasn’t punishment enough, I was then dragged to various appliance stores as my parents tried to figure out which light

11 fixture would best compliment the new Navajo White wall paint. We would then come home to eat a sullen meal of leftover pizza, for the sixth night in a row.

But somehow, construction is linked inexorably with my childhood.

People think that they can just pull out the photo album if they want to relive their kid’s first day of second grade or graduation 1989. But all they’re holding are scraps of paper. Real memories are made of jackhammers and two-by-fours.

I guess it’s just human nature. If our lives are works in progress, improvement seems necessary. Can’t afford a complete renovation? Maybe a fresh coat of paint is all you need to cover up those scars.

It’s not about the finished result. It’s about you, sitting there on the edge of your bathtub, a stack of new tiles by your feet, staring at the piece of floral wallpaper that you’ve just stripped off the wall and wondering if it’s worth it. It’s about the willingness to become a different—better?—person. It’s about looking at a ceiling and envisioning a skylight.

Maybe someday, you’ll smell drywall, and you’ll think about what you have become.

Hannah Kunz Photography

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Velvet Abyss Anna Macdonald

T

Tears from the stars wash over my face The dark and the quiet gladly embrace The sounds of silence, my troubles, erase Beauty in the Velvet Abyss

Lightning crashing, flashing bright Illuminating all in sight Such wonders hidden by the night!

Beauty in the Velvet Abyss

Shadows and mist veil my eyes Leaves and dewdrops are my disguise Wind in the trees, like angels’ sighs Beauty in the Velvet Abyss

Colors swirling, twirling ‘round Creatures scurry without sound Glory rising from the ground!

Beauty in the Velvet Abyss!

Diamonds glisten on the grey leaves As raindrops kiss the sleeping trees And silence sings in haunting keys Beauty in the Velvet Abyss

Teeming with life hidden by the dark Colors and shapes penetrate my heart Each little thing leaves its mark Beauty in the Velvet Abyss

Breezes caress with maternal care Grasses flow like silken hair And forbidden secrets, the raindrops share Beauty in the Velvet Abyss

Sadness pierces my dark soul The wondrous sight takes its toll The tears on my cheeks silently roll Beauty in the Velvet Abyss Quick, like a dream, it disappears Leaving me with memories and tears But gone now are my darkest fears Beauty in the Velvet Abyss

13 t h e f i n a l Justine Chen Pencil

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The Giving Tree Ilana Baron

I

It was the tallest thing I could imagine As a young child The giant oak tree stood proud In front of our tiny house, Its roots spreading out forever And spilling into our neighbors’ yard.

Climbing it was a perpetual goal of mine, An impossible one since the trunk alone Was at least two stories high Before the branches even began.

But Mr. and Mrs. Jones Were clearly not pleased By the enormity of the tree That engulfed their driveway, Casting shadows on their parked cars.

I watched sadly when workers regularly trimmed its leaves And eventually brutally chopped it to a stump What else could I do, But bring out my porcelain tea set And sit down at my brand-new oak table?

Dadu Bhai

I

Shivani Morrison

I should probably resent this man. This man, my great uncle, is a man who practices tough love in its truest sense. He yells at me, though good-naturedly, for missing the birdie in badminton, and when I finally do hit a great shot, his eighty-five-year-old knees bound, and with a flick of his eighty-fiveyear-old wrist the birdie lands just out of my reach. Now sounds his eighty-five-year-old voice in a cry of victory. I could be embarrassed, that I, child of a culture that worships youth as a deity of beauty, health and energy, just lost another point to top a myriad of points lost to my eighty-five-yearold great uncle. And for a moment I am—embarrassed that is. That’s when I realize that not only does this man practice badminton at home in his village in India with a host of fierce competitors every single day, with a net of laundry hung over a clothesline, but I also should not feel inferior to have lost to someone that I deeply respect in the sincerest sense of the word.

“Dadu Bhai” is what everyone calls him. To tell the absolute truth, I don’t know his real name.

I think it’s Rajnesh, or Mahesh, or something else that rhymes with my grandfather’s name, Yogesh. I just call him Dadu Bhai, like everyone else.

If I did not know Dadu Bhai personally, I might’ve mistaken his tendency to frequently talk to himself as a sign of an onset of dementia or some other euphemistic way to say the old-fashioned term “senility.” I might’ve thought such a thing because in America this is the culturally acceptable way to view the deterioration of the body with age, as a loss of worth or dignity. As I come to know Dadu Bhai better and better though, I am learning that he is just as much a genius as my grandfather, even if he isn’t working on finding the cure for cancer.

Upon arriving at our house, Dadu Bhai asked for a bit of light reading. My mother suggested some mystery novels, but Dadu Bhai declined, selecting instead All Quiet on the Western Front. After a bit of “light” reading in that area, he began a different book, a heavy tome on the history of the Roman Republic. To Dadu Bhai, this is the equivalent of what I might pick up to read in the middle of the summer, when I can no longer form coherent sentences. I might pick up Shopaholic. He might choose Shakespeare’s complete works.

This summer is when I began to love everything about Dadu Bhai, especially his eccentricities. People often say that old folks are set in their ways. I could not agree more. My uncle, at 6:15 a.m., will roam the house (as opposed to the courtyard at his home in India) singing the Hindi song “Ohm Jai Jagdish Hare,” only pausing to say, very quietly, in Hindi, “Everyone should get up now.” By the time he has awoken someone, it is teatime, about 6:45. He likes half a cup, made with boiled milk, a heaping tablespoon of tea, less than a pinch of sugar, no ginger, and no

15 t h e f i n a l d r a f t

Melissa Osborne Acrylics

cardamom. I can only imagine a Starbucks clerk trying to dodge his polite conversation, only to hear this complicated order, most likely uttered in Hindi. Once, my grandmother and mother were busy, so I offered to make Dadu Bhai his evening tea. I was worried to the point of breaking a nervous sweat that it would not be right. The suspense when he tasted it was like the final two in Miss America waiting those long seconds to hear who would win. He told me it was as if he’d made it himself. On the happiness scale of my entire life, I’d give that about an eight.

Dadu Bhai is also exceptionally sarcastic.

He will repeat the same joke over and over until everyone gets it. To cite the most recent example, this October he loved to say how much he hoped his candidate, John McCain, would win the election.

He does not actually like John McCain, but he will keep saying this until even our youngest cousin can hear his irony and sarcasm and finally say, “Dadu Bhai, you just like him because he’s old, like you.”

Then Dadu Bhai usually calls John McCain a “Tommy Tucker.” It rhymes with something. Figure it out.

Once my cousin and I were sitting upstairs in my aunt’s house, just painting our nails and listening to the radio. Underneath the sound of the Jonas Brothers (my cousin’s favorite) we can hear Dadu Bhai, roaming the house, chanting something—prayers? In the middle of his prayers he stops in our doorway, standing eager and straight up, like a meercat, and says in a thick Indian accent, “What are you doing?”

“We’re just painting our nails, Dadu Bhai.”

“Very good!” He gives us a hearty double thumbs-up and even before he starts away from the door, he resumes his chanting.

Dadu Bhai doesn’t scare me anymore: not his particular tastes, or his intimidating knowledge, or even his beastly badminton skills. Well, perhaps that’s not entirely true. After all, Dadu Bhai wants me to send him this essay, and it’s not the international postage to India that scares me.

New Orleans Holly Heinrich

P

Powdered sugar patterns dust the floor The clamor of voices and a mosaic of faces spill out of the small open-air café onto Decatur Street Above the din, the music of a violin and guitar rise serene, floating like perfume around the crowded tables With the sun shining down on the green and white awnings of Café du Monde, Hurricane Katrina seems almost like a tragic nightmare, a painful memory of something that never happened Almost But even now, two years later, the word Katrina hangs in the air unspoken It is invisibly scrawled on each For Sale sign, carved into every wrecked building It is etched into every New Orleanian’s face Katrina is impossible to forget in New Orleans Throughout the day, music floods the French Quarter like sunlight, bounces off the iron lace balconies Dances down the street as if New Orleans has never shed a tear But at night an old man sits on a street corner, clutching his guitar And sings with his eyes closed, a song that echoes all the sorrow of the city The buildings grow silent and listen As if they too remember all that they have lost And across the Quarter in Café du Monde The violin plays on, and the fans whirl overhead As they always have and always will in New Orleans America’s eternal city

Typical Thoughts of an Atypical Mind Lauren Nelson

C

Confinement — this prompt.

It’s big enough to where you can stick your head through.

But then you realize the rest of your body can’t follow, and you try to get out.

Wait, did this shrink?

My head won’t budge at all.

Stuck Stuck Stuck in the suck of my writing.

I want to be free and break all barriers free my neck, my mind.

Today is beautiful everything about it.

That tree’s so real it looks fake.

Can someone so fake be real?

My mind is hawking spit balls of thought.

I’m smiling, but there are tears in my eyes.

I’m stuck.

Shannon Soule Photography

These walls define me, These walls confine me.

17 t h e f i n a l d r a f t

Last Laugh

T

Eric Spoor

Tuesday, the cell phone alarm catching my senses off guard. I feel the startling vibrations under my pillow, turning it off with a haphazard feel and instinctively collapsing back into the sheets, attempting to stretch the remaining moments of ignorance. Another underlying noise rises to the surface, no longer conquered by the incessant ringing, being punctuated by faint cymbal crashes and bass tones, creating a pause. In slow realization I groggily turn off my iPod. Eyes still closed, the room starkly illuminates as my fleshy-black view turns a splotchy pink, followed by a virgin blur as eyelashes crack from being stuck together and jerkily opened. Almost instantly afterwards the blue materializes the familiar room, as I left it in vivid renewed color. Tuesday.

My room. The “cool” red walls clash with the ambivalent wood furniture picked out by my mom when I was a kid, the fading white carpet sporting dues of unwashed clothing piles, freckles of teenage years. There’s a closed-off section, perhaps in existence out of laziness, of old toys and an assortment of baseball pictures and piano trophies, yearning back to a time when a boy looked up to his parents and gold plastic atop fake marble was bliss. Ignorance, I suppose. Looking upon my room, upright in my bed, I am the maestro of my own perfect symphony, me expressed in purest form. Subsequently, it is that the times had the whole ensemble as no more than a rectangle to crash on.

Rhythmically proceeding, I incongruently toss on the top layer of my clothes drawer, the drawers themselves a year ago broken off the rollers and now in a messy semi-aligned stack, mimicking the contents. Tan cargo shorts and a black Billabong shirt are the winners today. I exit to the downstairs, the tempo of the day starting to internalize as the mind settles down and time quickens from the exhausting, slow pace of the bedroom.

“Hey babe.”

“Hmm mm,” I half-grumble, half-hum syllabic undertones, a contemplated but under-executed response.

In defiance, my mom resumed her coffee and reading of The Statesman. My dad, years ago conceding of the possibility to talk to me this early, stands with another section of The Statesman next to the coffee machine in the kitchen, its unique bubbly gurgle inadvertently providing a pleasant zen soundtrack to the understood quiet of the morning, accompanied by periodic crinkles from the whipping adjustment of drooping paper from both ends of the room.

“Stephen, take a look at today’s ‘Zits,’” she moves her finger in a drawing motion towards my dad, pointing at the cartoon with a hopelessly self-convincing grin; “This is too funny.” Her attire consists of one of those odd oversized long t-shirts worn as a dress intended to sleep in, the peculiarity of it adding to the careless ambience that is the early hour. Letting out a slight, insincere chuckle, he resigns to sitting. He always greeted humor with a “thanks for trying,” rather than appreciation, never laughing, as long as I’d known him.

The cartoon incident wasn’t of particular importance, but as with any moment of tearful appreciation, it stands stone-etched in my memory. But back to my father. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him turn his face towards me and he waited for a moment, which at the time both confused me and irritated me. Afterwards, I understood. After, I would’ve wanted to see the “Zits,” and grin at it, like him. After all, he is a purposeful man, and that was why the forced tone he masqueraded this time worried me.

19

Katie Zodikoff Photography

“Ahhhm, Stephen, do you have a minute?”

Oh shit. It was the feeling my body and mind unanimously voted on. The milk on my tongue turned lead as in rationalization I tried to analyze what he said, desperate, hoping to find a trace of innocent misreading on my part. I knew the comment wasn’t face value, though; it never is.

Soon, a few moments, the final nail into that oasis of hope is driven and I conclude. The conclusion, as I knew in the back of my conscious I would ultimately reach, was that this was serious. He was a literal man. But whether the serious aspect of the mysterious subject was of causation from me or something that had happened to me was yet unknown, either way I had screwed up and this would be a painfully long conversation, which could undoubtedly include some token comments from my mother. With a gulp of milk and a fake sigh of enjoyment, trying to compose myself by going through arbitrary motions, I reply.

“Sure whaddoyou need?”

“Well, ahhhm,” That was another quirk of his, he’d compensate his sporadic thought process due to the business manager syntax by filling in the oral gaps with “ahhhms,” like caulking poor insulation. He continued, the suspense causing me sympathy for any leftover poor food particle that was caught in between my intently-grinding teeth.

“I have cancer.”

His words were like waking up again but receiving a horribly skewed Picasso instead of familiarity, my mind trying to grasp onto the concepts floating around it but the image remaining dreadfully, inconceivably disfigured. A child lost in the supermarket, running past foreign aisles looking for mommy’s pant legs, but once found, a pull revealing the wrong face looking down at you.

“…” My instinctive reply.

t h e f i n a l d r a f t

I looked back at my mom in an uncharacteristically quick turn, looking for something to base my emotions off of, but I then saw why she hadn’t replied to me earlier. The ink on the cartoon was unrecognizably smeared.

“What do you mean, cancer?”

I looked into his eyes and the longed-for shield of formality dried and cracked and crumbled away, the blue spheres losing their atmosphere, exposed to the harsh rays of his perceived reality, not light but piercing darkness, broken through. He stood there, looking back at me, breathing, in his work clothes, but he was dead, and it killed me.

Having a surreal conversation is, well, surreal. As I progressively discovered, it’s not that I couldn’t believe this was happening to me, but that oddly, one talks as one imagines they should talk in such a situation, rather than what originally comes to their mind. What the truly surreal aspect of it all was that I changed—the person my dad was talking to effectively morphed, any cancerous disbelief being overridden by astonishing calamity. The bomb was dropped already, instantaneous, now was the following desolation of empty destroyed space. Though I was calm, that isn’t to be associated with disbelief.

Ironically, if I was in my right mind I imagine I would’ve lost it, though as far as I could tell, I already had. Later I thought that perhaps it wasn’t as, to put it oxymoronically, expectedly surreal, because truth be told nothing happened to me, after all.

“I didn’t get cancer; he did, eleven years ago, next June. The rest of our conversation I don’t exactly recall but it wasn’t important, what was wanting to be said had been said in his first words. I know this isn’t what you all were expecting to hear, perhaps maybe a fond eulogy of his achievements or his fine raising of me, but the damn preacher said say what you most remember.”

And with that note I looked up from the podium and onto the sea of black that resonated with tension. I could hear noses dryly sniff, an attempt of the owners to fill the awkward vacuum that was subsequently created. In a mourning mood I thought to say, “I like to think my dad would’ve laughed at that.”

21

Ode to my Freckles Anonymous

S

Hannah Kunz Photography

Scattered gently, My freckles tiptoe across my face.

Bounding over the twists and turns Of its sinuous structure, Always careful not to pause at any given spot for too long a moment.

They sprint at full force down the bridge of my nose, Then leap like they’re playing “The Floor is Lava.”

The inexperienced fall off the edge, Unsuspecting, To the plains of my cheeks.

Though some remain determined and cling to the edge of

the cliff, Dangling.

There are cocky ones too…

Some rebels that test the limit.

They hop that barbed wire fence and wander into the unknown, Leaving a spotted trail in their wake.

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Vignettes

Michelle Doughty

S

Sometimes I think in vignettes that don’t quite connect

Life is a series of half-rhymes that never last And I’m never quite sure what the rules are about punctuation and capitalisation (Half the time I even spell like I’m in the wrong country) My thoughts are usually fragments Webs of bursts of emotion and color But sometimes I read too much poetry and my thoughts take the form of short ambiguous lines With their weird breaks that create Inexplicable emphasis My life is less a poem, more a jumble of letters Which is good, you know, for me, Since I never really got poetry anyways

Katie Pipkin Digital Media

Sudden

D Dear,

23 t h e

Anonymous

If I write to you enough times, there will be truth in my words. It will fall off the pages and into the ears you don’t like people to touch. No one who reads this will know who you are except you and me—that little word— those little words—that I—that we—use so often in our lines of writing. In everything.

If you come home, I’m going to create memories. It will be like you are coming home from a war. A war against those people who weave fate on sky looms. I hate them. I wish I knew how to weave my own freedom. All I am capable of is knitting scarves.

But I have fallen from the topic. When you—if you— come home, there will be laughter and a ribbon of memories for me to knit in my mind. Then you’ll leave again, but that’s okay. I’ll miss you. But that’s okay.

Colleen Troxell Oils

What are you to me and do they know? Can they read the sideways thoughts between my letter lines?

Mother, father, friend, lover, sibling? You know. I know.

That knowledge is tart and snug in my heart/mind/ hands. Eventually they will know, but, in the spirit of a Jackson Pollock painting, I will keep my meaning hidden for now.

f i n a l d r a f t

Now is what I have and what I love. In the sudden present, I am best. You look toward my future as I wait for yours. My parents (oh, a clue of sorts) look back, cherishing my past. But I love my present.

It twirls along me, vivid, blushing and incorrigible, waiting for the end of our war.

For the time when you come home as proud and melancholy as a soldier. Singing your way back.

I will know you by your voice. I will recognize the eclectic songs you love so much, spanning generations of music. We will share stories and voices and remember that we can have implausible dreams.

You already knew that.

No words Sufficient or Necessary, Girl

The Strange and Most Disconcerting Disappearance of Aaron and Erin Gompers

T

Katy Doughty

There are some people who might think that making two teenagers clean out the basement is a rather lenient punishment for completely trashing the house. These people have not seen The Basement. Which is quite understandable, seeing as light didn’t have the guts to venture near the place. The size of The Basement was unknown, and everyone was perfectly happy for it to remain that way, because no one dared to go find out. It made noises at night. Not the noises of houses settling, or of wood creaking, but strange, alive noises. It growled and sighed and gurgled. It hummed to itself, sometimes. It could no more be cleaned up than could a jungle or a volcano.

The two people who were condemned to clean out The Basement were twins named Aaron and Erin Gompers. (Their parents had had great fun naming them.) When their parents had gone out of town for the weekend, the twins had planned a little get together with some friends; and one thing had led to another, and mistakes had been made, and while we’re not saying that the house had been trashed, it certainly had not not been trashed. That was why they currently found themselves venturing into The Basement with nothing more than a flashlight, a broom and a vague sense of purpose. It was rather like invading Normandy Beach armed with a spork. Aaron was on the third stair down, and Erin was on the first, when the door slammed shut.

There was complete darkness. There was absolute silence. Then there was an obscene word, followed shortly by a desperate rattling sound, and another obscene word.

“It won’t open,” said Erin. “’Sokay,” said Aaron. “Let’s just clean some and then knock on the door for Mom to let us in. Not much light comes in from the door anyway.” This was due to the fact that as far as The Basement was concerned, light did not come in. Darkness came out.

“Yeah,” squeaked Erin. She was not afraid of the dark; it was the things that might be in the dark that she found terrifying.

They reached the bottom of the stairs, which creaked and complained the whole way down. Erin, the Bearer of the Flashlight, shined it around the place. It looked like the Amazon rainforest. Even Aaron was momentarily taken aback by its dense, mysterious vastness.

“Welp!” he finally said, after a silence that can only be described as “…”. “Let’s start over here.”

He pointed vaguely to his right, where something resembling a disgruntled armoire lurked in a shadow, surrounded by miscellaneous sports paraphernalia and old bed frames. They stumbled on several chairs, an old lamp, and a chest on their way there. Aaron was propping up hockey sticks in a bucket and Erin was stuffing some football equipment in a bag when a something made a shuffling sound.

Erin froze. “Did you hear that?” she whispered.

“It’s nothing,” said her brother. But he was whispering too.

A pause, then—shf shf shf shf.

“Must be the hot water heater. Or something,” he said.

He made his way toward the general direction of the sound. Something hissed. He looked back at his sister to ask for better light, but found that she had set down the flashlight and was now crouched, catlike, holding a broom in her hand like a weapon.

“You’re ridiculous,” he said. “It’s prob’ly just—A RAT!”

(Now is as good a time as ever to point out that Aaron was the type of person who often danced around the fine line between bravery and idiocy. He had nerves of steel and no sense of danger. Nothing frightened him, except for rats. They were the snakes to his Indy.)

“GET IT!” he yelled. We could call it a shriek, but let’s leave him some dignity. He’ll need it. “There are rats! KillitkillitKILLIT!” He did a goofy sort of foot-juggle to try to keep his feet off the ground as much as possible. In one fell swoop, Erin’s broom came down on the rat, which barely had time to squeal in terror before it met its bristly demise.

“Calm down,” hissed Erin over Aaron’s frantic tap dance. “I got it.” She sounded a little proud.

“There’s rats living in The Basement!”

“I said, I got it. It’s dead.”

“There’s dead rats living in The Basement!”

Erin hit him over the head with the broom. There was silence.

“Okay,” said Aaron, once he had sufficiently recovered. “Let’s, uh, over here. Right. Then. Okay.”

Erin went back to get the flashlight. She picked up a football helmet too, just in case. Then, huddled close together, she and Aaron made their way to a conglomeration of strange wooden sticks and shapes that were either many pieces of furniture stacked around each other, or a very elaborate medieval torture device. Her eyes should have been used to the dark by now, but she couldn’t see a thing without the flashlight. She shined it around. Had that birdcage always been here? No, she could have sworn it was over there, by that strange cot-looking thing. She sidled over to her brother as nonchalantly as possible, gripping the flashlight tighter. And that armoire had been closed, hadn’t it? Because she would have remembered the way that strange striped waistcoat that was hanging out.

Its sleeve seemed to wave at her. She was trying to make out a strange shape Katy Doughty on top of the armoire when a very large number of events occurred within a very Pencil

25 t h e f i n a l d r a f t

short period of time.

First, something cold grabbed Erin’s ankle. She screamed like a banshee and jumped straight up into the air, which startled Aaron, who gave a little jump too. This caused him to fall into a large open trunk full of something hideously lacy, which in turn caused something small and furry to jump out of the trunk and knock the lid down, trapping Aaron inside. Erin saw the small furry thing, screamed again, and leaped on top of the trunk that held her brother. Aaron pounded on the inside of the trunk’s lid. Erin, feeling the trunk coming to life beneath her feet and not knowing that it was Aaron inside of it, jumped off of the trunk and prepared to battle whatever fiend lay within its hideously lacy depths. When Aaron opened the lid, his sister came at him in full fury, wearing the football helmet like a Gladiator’s armor and wielding the broom like a sword. She whacked him in the ribs, the face, the knee, the foot, and the face again before she realized who she was attacking.

Then she hit him in the shin.

After a while, Aaron, who had what looked like a large, angry doily draped over his shoulder, lowered his arms from his face and warily observed his sister. He had often seen her anxious and uptight, but now she made violin strings look positively relaxed. He watched her pick up the flashlight and shine it around, making the feeble beam dart across the floor and illuminate what little of the Basement it could. When she finally spoke, her voice sounded like a hinge in need of oiling.

“Something grabbed my foot.”

“It wasn’t me,” said Aaron quickly, raising his hands over his head again, just in case.

“Yes, I #!$*&?@ know it wasn’t you. That’s why I’m so *&!$ terrified!”

“Ah.” He paused. “Are you a hundred percent cert—never mind!” he said hastily, seeing the helmeted figure raise the broom threateningly. “You’re sure! Alright, then…well. Was it…I dunno… big? And, um, slimy?”

“No, it was…medium-sized, I guess. And dry. And cold. Like, like a jacket before you put it on.”

“How big is mediumsized? Was it smooth like fur or rough like sand? Did it have fingers?” A horrible thought struck him. “Was it a rat?”

Erin exploded into a low, fast fury of words that would have made the most foulmouthed sailor want to cover his ears. When she seemed more in control of herself, she took a deep breath and said, very quietly, very deliberately, “The size of your hand. Smooth, like fabric. I don’t think so. And no.”

There was a pause as she removed the football helmet Katy Doughty from her head and tossed it between her hands thoughtPencil

Katy Doughty Pencil

27 fully. Then she added, slowly, “It wasn’t trying to grab me, exactly. Like when you tap someone on the shoulder.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from Aaron. She looked at him briefly and then contin ued, “Like when—”

“—Like when someone comes up from behind you, and puts their hands over your eyes and says ‘Guess who?’ Or like when you have your eyes closed and they’re showing you where to go? And it smells kind of like musty wood, and cinnamon, and mothballs, but not too much of the last one.

And feels like cloth, sort of, but with form to it.” Aaron’s voice was very fast, and his eyes were wide and bright.

“Yeah. Yes, exactly. How—?”

She trailed off. “Oh. It got you too, I guess.”

“Just tapped my arm. I saw it out of the corner of my eye. It looked…ah—anyway! Let’s, um.

Let’s go, then. Take a snack break. There’s cookies in the, in the kitchen.” Yes, he told himself firmly, the kitchen. In our house. It seemed so far away.

The twins made their way dazedly through the jungle of trunks, chairs, coat racks, dress forms.

Erin caught a glimpse of the armoire and was not surprised to see that it had closed again. Her eyes were used to the dark now… she could see almost perfectly…shadows were sliding out under re cesses, taking on shapes of their own, becoming almost solid; the air smelled of pine and old hardcover books and lace; there was a breeze coming from somewhere in the back; she could hear the faint mur murs of dozens, hundreds, thousands of voices somewhere deep in The Basement. Beside her, Aaron tried to recall the thing that had tapped his arm. He had caught a glimpse of it: a fold of a tapestry, like a magic carpet, reaching out timidly, and beckoning…

When the twins had reached the bottom of the stairwell, they both paused and looked at each other. Then they looked at The Basement. It seemed to look back, patiently, expectantly. It was waiting for them. Aaron and Erin turned and, with the strange sort of confidence that comes from not having the least idea what you are doing, they walked back into the depths of the Basement.

Needless to say, they never came out.

t h e f i n a l d r a f t

A Simple Request Leslie Reynolds

D

Do not kiss me, fierce and tart as wild berries from the vine, still greening at the edges.

Nor with all the gentleness of slow-moving water cresting softly in the shade.

Do not let me idle, even for a second, over the great trunks of your arms nor the vast plain of your chest.

Do not catch me, twirling and barefoot In the dark, And wrap me up in silken threads.

And please, never say my name again with all the promise of warm wind moving through storm-heavy air if rain will never come.

Because then it would be much worse, when you finally say that I, with my fingers buried deep in soil and my lips stained from pulp of wild berries, am still not enough for you.

29 t h e f i n a l d r a f t

Shannon Soule Photography

Sam Womack Photography

Caroline Hunt Colored Pencil

Nadia Waheed Watercolor

31 t h e f i n a l d r a f t

Adrienne Arredondo Colored Pencil

Paige Malloy Photography

May Sembera Oils

Kathryn Heimsath Photography

Urban Fingerprint Leslie Reynolds

E

33 t h e f i n a l

Embossed on peeling tabletops Or bleeding in spray paint streaks Or carved into twisted tree trunks They preach in silent discourse; CL + RN forever, Call Crystal for a good time, and Hip hop means never having to say I love you.

Inscribed for posterity to enjoy By a nimble hand And a hasty heart.

Fleeting thoughts Forever captured.

Some people are too afraid of being forgotten.

d r a f t

Melissa Osborne Acrylics

Going Out, Think In

T

Joey Rousseau

This place is a place where when life gives you lemons; you’re aggravated because you specifically asked for limes, but the dumb cashier did not speak good English and was colorblind, so he could not tell the distinct difference from dark green and pale yellow, but he could tell the difference between a twenty and a ten because you handed him a ten on accident when the cost was twenty and he made you come back and give the money back even though you had already checked out and left; but I digress.

This is a place where that one guy at the restaurant sits at the table with eight chairs, and you have a group of eight but you have to wait for forty-five minutes because this guy at your table can not make up his mind between getting an appetizer or an entrée when obviously he should get the entrée because he is a big guy and you have watched the servers bring appetizers to other tables and you saw how small they were; but the guy chooses to get the appetizer even though the waiter told him the appetizers were small, and when he gets his appetizer he eats it and then orders more food. Yet this time he orders too much food and asks for a to-go box which takes another ten minutes, and by the time you sit down an hour has passed and you are not hungry anymore because you have eaten all the mints from the bowl; but I digress.

This is the place where you sit for four hours taking a test that is not only a waste of time but an annoyance. I say an annoyance not because of the fact that tests are annoying, but the fact that the guy sitting next to you is sniffling away, probably sick, and he handed you your test packet, and picked up your pencil when you dropped it, and keep in mind he has been using his hand to wipe his nose and used that hand to pick your pencil up and you have been chewing on that pencil, so you get up and ask for a new pencil, but on your way back you try and be a nice person so you grab the sick kid a Kleenex, but when you offer it to him he nods his head “no” when obviously the kid needs a Kleenex; but I digress.

How many times must one person digress before this point is understood? If you plan on going out, think about staying in. It might not be much fun, but I promise you won’t get ripped off, you won’t have to wait an hour to eat, and you won’t get sick; but I digress.

35 t h e f i n a l d r a f t Sam Womack Photography

Seasons

Shiphrah Meditz

B

Butterfly, come flutter by I love for you to sing Though all the world lie awry Nature’s a blessed thing‌ With sun-slush days and changing sky And butterflies a-wing

Miniature Epic Samantha MacQueen

I

I wrote a poem in my head this morning, while I was brushing my teeth, but it’s slipped away from me like silk through my fingers, a miniature epic, fraught with jealousy, scorn, love and adventure. Broad white sails billowed in my mind and a tall pale woman waited with tear-stained cheeks. I yearned to recall the plights of her heart and what she’d left behind on the foreign docks. A child? A lover?

I wish it hadn’t been a story I heard in my sleep, but maybe a true one, buried through deep time and remembered by me.

Untitled

T

Laurie Hursting

There’s no such thing as reality,

only perception, he says, The symmetry of the world in happiness,

but everything is relative and Nothing is judged for what it really is.

I laugh and ask him,

“Are you sure?”

37

Stood Up

t h e

Dylan Kittleman

f i n a l

T

The waiter pulls out his notepad and Asks if I’m ready to order.

No, I reply, I’m waiting for someone.

He walks away.

The ice in my soda melts, Making it quite undrinkable.

The candle shrinks away from me As if it’s embarrassed for me.

The waiter returns a few times To refresh my drink, A disgusting, pitying smile on his face.

Couples come and go.

Sit, eat, and leave.

I sit and watch.

He’s not coming

d r a f t

May Sembera Oils

Crossing the Boundary Stacy Liu

I

I squeezed my eyes so tightly that tears began to form. The mat I lay on creaked at the slightest movement. I would rather the tears trickle down my cheeks than wipe them away and risk being beaten for being awake.

I listened to Mother’s sweet humming as she put Younger Brother to sleep. It was an old Chinese lullaby, about blooming lotuses and high mountains filled with gold. Soon, the humming faded and I was left alone in silence to wonder what a little gold would do for our family.

A thunderous roar broke the silence I was trying to preserve. A willful cry provoked the slaps that followed. The shadows the oil lamp cast started leaping in fear, before blurring into gloomy darkness and eventually, vanishing, as the flames were extinguished. My ears pricked up as I heard cotton rip, a struggle, and finally, submission.

Even without the shadow’s help, I could see Father tearing open Mother’s blouse and throwing her frail frame to the floor. I could see her struggling to free herself from the barbarian. As wails turned to soft whimpers, I allowed the heavy silence to swallow me.

I woke up as the sun made darkness a mere memory. I had expected to see Mother mending her blouse, but it was Elder Sister’s slender fingers that held the needle that morning.

“Sister?” I asked uncertainly.

Her lucid eyes filled with tears as she pulled me towards her. Elder Sister was painfully slow with the needle. She was still mending the blouse when Mother came back from the market place.

“Aiya! What are you doing! Throw that rag away! We are not that poor you know! I can get you a new blouse tomorrow!” Mother exclaimed, snatching the blouse from Elder Sister and throwing it away.

No one else breathed another word about the matter.

A woman is her husband’s shadow. She is dependent on him for everything. She has to follow him like a dog follows its master. A husband is a wife’s destiny and her fate lies in his hand. Therefore, it was important for Elder Sister to keep a clean slate.

Mother was too kind to Elder Sister. Our family could barely afford to have vegetables at the table, much less a new blouse. It was a luxury reserved only for the New Year.

I should have sensed that something was amiss at that moment. Unknown to me then, Elder Sister was to be married the following week. Over the next few days, many well-wishers visited our family. The groom’s family presented meat and wine to my parents. Although I was not to show myself when they visited, I could not help but take a peek. Elder Sister was a child compared to her groom. He looked many years her senior. In fact, I found out later that he was twenty years older than she was. He was old enough to be her father.

After the groom and his family left, Elder Sister told me that he smelled of pork. Mother heard Elder Sister and gave her a slap. She told Elder Sister she would not let her speak of her husband in that manner.

Elder Sister got married on a beautiful autumn day. While I prepared her bath, she sat in

silence. A solemn sadness surrounded her. It was the kind that made your eyes look dull and tired.

“You will have more rice for yourself, now that I am leaving.”

“I would rather you stay.”

“I would rather stay too.”

We started giggling like little girls. What a sight that would have been, two sisters, one naked and one fully clothed, giggling as though they had not lost their childlike innocence. I think neither of us could imagine how our paths in life would diverge, after that day.

Elder Sister’s marriage was a simple affair. However, Mother burdened me with many chores.

Before I knew it, Elder Sister no longer belonged to our family. I did not even have the opportunity to bid her farewell at the door.

After Elder Sister’s marriage, I became the object of Father’s abuse. He would drag me up in the dead of night and demand that I massage his back till the rooster crowed. I dared not stop even when he was fast asleep. I would rather endure swollen knuckles than suffer a swollen face.

A dark flower grew within me. I would have claimed it to be resentment then, but looking back; it was more likely to have been desperation.

As Mother’s ill health got the better of her, she often sent me to the marketplace in her place.

Although there was nothing much we could afford, I could often hear snippets of gossip here and there. Once, I even heard stories of how Elder Sister was beaten until her nose became crooked! These stories made me think that marriage meant jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

The last straw came when Father arrived home drunk one evening, armed with a broken beer bottle. He called for me to massage his back as usual. The oil lamp swayed ominously as I squeezed through the wooden partition to Father’s room. From the corner of my eye, I could see Mother curled up in a bundle of blankets. I stood beside Father, waiting for him to lie on the bed.

Instead, he squatted beside me and rolled up a side of my pants. He held up his broken beer bottle and pierced a sharp end of the bottle into my thigh.

I curled my fingers into a tight fist as he carved a single line from my thigh to the lower end of my calf. His eyes glistened with thrill as the slit in my skin Shannon Soule thickened with blood. I could Photography hear Mother coughing terribly in the background. Father’s hysterical laughter numbed any ounce of pain I might have felt.

39 t h e f i n a l d r a f t

The next morning, I made sure I took special notice of the sunrise. Mother believed that all beginnings were good. When I was younger, she used to point in the direction of the sunrise and tell me how Uncle’s padi and father’s fish all headed towards it. The sunrise was especially golden that morning. In fact, I was sure I caught the glimpse of a mountain, all clad in gold.

In my excitement, darkness descended before I was accustomed to light. Under the cover of night, I crept out of poverty and abuse and sought to embrace the sunrise.

I ran from a village governed by laws that restricted and oppressed women. I challenged the village myth that it was a chimera for a woman to control her fate.

On a recent visit to my hometown, I realized that nothing much had changed. China asters, all in full bloom, decorated my small village. Butterflies with their elaborately patterned wings danced around the flowers. However, beneath this picturesque façade of rebirth and freedom lay the bitter life of women enslaved by the patriarchy. When I looked into the faces of the girls who would grow up and submit themselves to domestic tyranny, I became aware of the bold step I had taken to break the mould that was meant for me.

Lily Patterson Colored Pencil

41

My Friends

m

Andrew Waks

my friends are painters, artists, exude fashionable creativity from their deepest essence. so i bought a paint brush and began to paint and splattered colors upon an untarnished canvas and ruined it, gave genesis to a worthless mess. my friends are musicians, lyricists, pluck and play out epics in sound waves through the night. so i bought a guitar and began to play and etched my notes into the solemn sulking night and my cacaphony shattered the pristine silence. if only i was an artist, a musician for how else does one paint their feelings on a canvas, echo their desires in the night?

t h e f i n a l d r a f t

Barret Wilson Photography

Clowns

Bandi van Kooij

I

I don’t like clowns.

They don’t scare me, Just piss me off.

Every day, they make a living, Just by pretending to be happy.

I’d paint on a smile too if I got paid for it.

I bet clowns are miserable.

In fact, I bet they go home every night, To a dingy apartment, And wipe the painted grin off their faces To reveal a drooping, melancholy frown.

They throw an Uncle Ben’s rice bowl Into a crusty, old microwave, And then shovel the lukewarm food into a tight-lipped, frowning mouth, Still rimmed with the red paint that once was a smile.

I don’t like clowns, Because they’re liars.

An unconvincing façade of happiness.

Why Calculus Is Not Poetic

A

Joseph Lubars

As I walked into math class one day, I noticed that something had gone astray.

Instead of equations and numerical form, Words ruled supreme. Poems were the norm.

“It’s calculus time,” our good teacher said.

These three little words filled the students with dread.

“Do not fear!” she exclaimed. “Don’t get yourself down!”

“This is as easy as finding a noun!”

“Relax and listen,” our teacher said now, And then gave a lecture aiming to wow.

“A derivative just measures instantaneous change, The speed of a ball dropped from a mountain range.

Just find the slope of a tangent line.

Don’t even mention the radical sign.

How might one do this, you may ask.

This is not an arduous task.

Pick a point on your function, and quickly mark it.

Now label it (x,y) lickety split.

Now choose another point. Put down a dot.

Draw a line between the two; a secant line we’ll plot.

The horizontal distance between them, ‘delta x’

we’ll call.

The distance vertically has a name; ‘delta y’ we scrawl.

43 t h e

f i n a We know that y=f of x, you see, So delta y=f of (x minus delta x) minus f of x. What l simplicity!

You learned change in y over change in x to be d

line’s slope, So then delta y over delta x is the new slope, we r hope. a As the points converge, degree by degree, The secant line approaches the tangent line, you f see. t Take the limit as delta x approaches zero And you shall be a great new hero.

For you have done calculus, a great branch of math, And now you can relax in a warm bubble bath!”

“What simplicity?” I shrieked in disgust.

“Your explanation falls short. This is unjust!

Perhaps translating math to English does not work.”

“You need equations and numbers,” she said

with a smirk.

So that is why, in math class today The lecture will not be a simple essay.

For when this was attempted, the results weren’t ideal.

In math it is best to use numbers, I feel.

Kathryn Heimsath Photography

A Score and Four Laments Anonymous

A

A blind man cries for the sky to come down

The stars explode in reds and blues Just as a candle catches fire Just as the doctor wheels his patient to the door Just as cows chew their cud and the trees set their Just as the earth leaks its blood Just as our flags dance, so did we. roots Just as I write, so do they.

An ocean howls its regrets to no avail Just as the paper poisoned by wasted time A finger twitches, and a body crumbles Just as a balloon bursts underfoot Just as a rotten stone should fall Just as a child cries for everything, so must it.

Just as ice shatters both fists and the pain Just as you shift in your seat, so does she.

An opaque wall of empty space is jerked away Just as sound is stolen from a speaker The floor drops away from you Just as legs are stolen from the soldier Just as the help desk light winks out Only to provide you with time to spare.

Just as the plastic decides to grow wings Just as he places an order, so will it.

45

Colors

t h e

Pat Herlin

B

f i n a l

Blue. The color of tranquil, listless seas, specked with the cresting waves of complacency.

Red. The color of passionate, fiery aggression.

Blue. An emotion, a feeling, an ambiguous uncertainty, a testament of sentiment.

Red. Action, motion, activity, motivation.

Blue. It couldn’t be.

Red. Oh shit, it is.

Blue. Pull over. Now. Red. License and registration, please.

Blue. My parents are going to kill me.

Red. Hands where I can see them.

Blue. Oh no oh no oh no.

Red. Sir, step out of the vehicle.

Blue. Wait, I can explain.

Red. Down on the ground!

Blue. But wait!

Red. Suspect is resisting arrest! Request permission to use deadly force!

d r a f t

James Lambrect Watercolor

Inked

Samantha MacQueen

W

“Where do you want it?” I reached my right arm around and touched my left shoulder blade. I always thought I would want it somewhere more private, but today, that seems like the only place to put it. I want people to see it. I want people to ask me about it. I want to talk about it.

“Here.” I tugged my tank top over my shoulders and sat, hands clasped, in only my bra.

“Okay, I’m going to do a stencil first and we’ll check it out.”

He was a grizzly man, all gauges, lip rings, and tattoos. My gut turned.

I kept repeating to myself, ‘I want to do this.’ “What do you think?” He handed me a mirror and showed me the outline. 09/27/06 was written in italics, in a smallish print across my left shoulder blade. A scarab beetle crawled beneath the 06.

“It’s great. Perfect.”

“Okay, sit and we’ll get started.” I straddled a chair and wrapped my small arms around the back of it. “Nervous?”

“A little.”

“You’ll be alright. It’s a little one and it probably won’t be as bad as people say.”

“Okay.” I heard the buzz of the needle start and felt it on my skin. I can’t really describe the sensation, because I didn’t really feel it.

It was like I was numb or maybe I can’t remember. I don’t recall feeling weird though.

“What does the date mean, if you don’t mind me asking?” I smiled.

“I don’t mind. It’s the day my brother died, of leukemia. It’s so people will remember him.” I think he nodded, but I couldn’t see him, so I’m not sure.

That was one of the differences between my brother and me. I was never quite sure. He always knew exactly where he was going and what he was doing but I drifted, never quite on task. He’d wanted to be

47 an Egyptologist since age eight, when our father had bought him the third Magic Tree House book, Mummies in the Morning. I, on the other hand, had changed my major in college seven times and then dropped out altogether to enter a small performing arts school and become a cellist. He had even known where he was going when he died. He said once to me, “God’s taking me out early. Maybe he’s got big plans for me in my next life and we’ve got to get started. ”I thought Christians didn’t believe in reincarnation. A little smirk touched my lips. I hadn’t argued with him though.

“You’re all done, take a look.”

t h e f i n a l d r a f t

Katy Doughty Markers

Alyssa Creagh Digital Media

Baby Girl Hetty Borinstein

W

Wake up, baby girl, please.

We can sponge away the pale ash death spread so thickly on your unfurling body.

Broken eyed, I know that if I could peel back my papyrus skin, unwrap my soft, white eggshell I would.

I want to find the glowing thing inside me— muttering, chanting softly to itself; ‘Life-life-life!’

And then, Oh then, I would have the gift that pulses, thrives!

The un-giveable gift.

I wish— I want, so badly to take it to cradle it in the safe dome-curve of my hands kiss it softly goodbye then mold your dead fingers about its warmth wake up, baby girl

The Writing Desk

49 t h e

Leslie Reynolds

T

The writing desk was of stained oak.

Its surface was marred By the inflections of pen From people who found it first.

A grocery list, A phone number, Or perhaps an epic poem.

I’ll probably never know, What strokes of inspiration Are engraved indecipherably In the soft wood.

It is small, and has one small lamp With a dim bulb In the incident that a late night muse should awaken me And beckon me to pour forth The inclinations of my troubled young soul.

There is just enough room for my papers And a cup of coffee, A rich, Italian roast With no sugar.

To its right, there is the glass door to the small balcony That overlooks a verdant woodland And maybe, when a lazy afternoon Thundercloud rolls in, I’ll leave the door ajar And let the smell of the rain Tickle my disposition And arouse my ingenuity.

But as I sit in the hard, wooden chair And soak in the charm of the little desk, I remember; That the bitterness of coffee Has never appealed to me.

And that it doesn’t rain much in this part of the country.

So alas, I’ll just have to wait, And get my inspiration the old-fashioned way.

f i n a l d r a f t

Untitled

Laurie Hursting

I

It floated away with the Moon A forgotten memory Evasive and transparent “Remember,” it whispers Pulling me deeper Eyes flutter, mind loosens its grip I wake up with a faraway smile

Pacific Tides

I

Holly Heinrich

It’s a four-hour journey Along steeply winding roads that hug the cliffs so tightly that you just might fall off Four hours, through burnt golden wine country, and then the stretching redwoods Those twisting roads hide it from the outside world Protect it, leave it untouched And then the Pacific views are everywhere And even looking inland, you always feel the ocean The cool, salty winds, you always feel the ocean The coldness, even in August The ocean is a living thing there Pulsing against the cliffs Cracking on the sand of an inlet beach Shifting from gray in the dim light of morning To glittering blue when the sun rises overhead And whether the view is open all the way to the horizon, to the cobalt edge of the sky Or a gauzy fog lies over the water, shrouding the nearby islands It is the ocean, undeniable and inexhaustible that sustains all life there You have to walk across the headlands Thick with golden weeds and dry wildflowers And clamber over the jagged black rocks Careful not to shred your jeans And then out to the very edge, where the waves explode It’s there that you’ll find them The tide pools nestle like secrets in the rocks at the ocean’s edge Pools of life, deep purple urchins, orange starfish, lime green sea anemones, and dark

scuttling crabs An existence fed by the same waves that wash over your shoes Set on the cliffs above the roaring Pacific That always smells like nasturtiums and the sea Where abalone shells wash up on the shore Four hours To a place where life flows With the rhythms of the tides and fog

51 t h e f i n a l Leah Sacks Colored Pencil

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Camera

Ursula Barker

T

The weight of the camera Is heavy on my shoulder; Its slim leather strap digging into my skin.

The weight of the lens Parallels its strength.

I carry my camera, Through salt marshes and wind storms, Vast fields and rolling hills.

Through the city—the subways and skyscrapers and sidewalks before storefronts capturing everything and anything that may come my way.

My camera Has seen more birthdays, Faces, highs and lows; More than I myself will ever see.

This camera, My camera, Has lived more lives than I ever will, As it is passed on from artist to artist Burning memories into its negative insides, Forever remaining an amazing image-capturing tool.

Ian’s Idea

Michelle Doughty

I

Ian knew he was going to be a writer. He knew it with the same certainty that he had once known he would be a firefighter, with the same certainty that his best friend Chase knew he would be a fighter pilot.

At 9½ years old, Ian already had his life figured out, but for one small problem.

“Mommy,” Ian asked his mother as they both ate peanut butter crackers leaning over the white countertop, except that only Ian was actually eating. “Where do writers get their ideas?”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, dear,” said Ian’s mother patiently—Ian’s mother was always patient.

Ian frantically gulped down a crumbly, sticky mouthful of cracker, the thick and clingy peanut butter fighting to stay cemented to his mouth.

“Mommy,” he repeated as soon as he could force open his mouth again. “Where do writers get their ideas?”

“You’re the writer, little man,” said Ian’s mother. “Where do you get your ideas?”

“I don’t!” Ian exclaimed with no shame (for this lack of inspiration was not his fault) but instead with a sense of righteous effrontery, of needing to punish whoever was actually responsible. “I don’t have enough ideas!

I haven’t written anything in almost a week!”

“A week?” said Ian’s mother, affecting a tone of earnest concern. “Well, young man, maybe you should get to work.”

But Ian could not get to work writing, because he had no ideas. And he had no ideas because he did not know the secret writer trick for plucking them out of the air and trapping them on paper like so many exotic butterflies.

Ian ran into his neighbor’s house with barely a knock and ran out with his friend Chase. Ian’s mother thought it was a very lucky thing that Ian got to live right next to his best friend, but Ian believed that someone just designed neighborhoods so that all the good, nice people lived next to each other and all the mean people lived far away (though some of them did go to his school).

Ian and Chase raced down to the wilderness behind their two houses, a vast and dangerous and mysterious expanse of forest that spanned two acres. When they reached their secret clearing, they focused on the next step of building their fort, a collection of bent trees (supplied by the obliging landscape in a perfect lean-to shape) and one wooden board that Chase had found in his parent’s basement. Worried about the cold and long winters they would have to spend camped out in their fort, Ian and Chase decided that it was high time to start building a more secure roof.

“Where do writers get their ideas?” Ian asked Chase as they both arranged some sticks that reached from the crook of the bent trees to balance precariously on the top of the wooden board.

“Mrs. Crocker says they just think about things, and about stuff that happened to them, and they just write about whatever they want.”

“I don’t think that’s right,” said Ian, surveying the roof and deciding that more twigs were necessary. “If it were that easy, then anyone could do it! And there aren’t that many writers. You know what I think happens?”

“Do you think they ask other people?” asked Chase.

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“No, think about it!” exclaimed Ian, getting worked up and beginning to forget about the fort. “They don’t just ask other people what to write, they take their ideas!”

“You can’t do that,” said Chase. “Ms. Crocker says that you can’t hold ideas; they’re intan… ingant…innag…ingantible! That means you can’t see them!”

“I know, but you can steal them!” Ian said, forgetting the fort entirely and beginning to march off with Chase in an exploration of the forest, with only his vehemence leading the way.

“That’s how writers do it. They take this big scary machine with a bunch of tubes, and they attach one of the tubes to your head, an’ another tube to their own head, and they suck out your ideas while you’re sleeping!”

“Ideas are this stuff that floats around in the air, they’re ignationable!” Ian instructed his parents over a delicious dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches.

“That would be ‘intangible,’” corrected Ian’s father.

“Yes, that,” said Ian, unperturbed. “And the way writers get ideas is, well, when you become a writer, they give you special glasses—have you noticed how writers always wear glasses?”

“Would you like seconds, little man?” Ian’s mother offered as Ian finished his last bite. (He hadn’t really been talking with his mouth full because he had only been taking the smallest of bites, but he still ran out of grilled cheese. Ian loved grilled cheese.)

“You know, I think you’re onto something here,” said Ian’s father. “Writers do always wear glasses.”

“Yes!” said Ian, munching

Hannah Kunz Photography

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on his new triangle of grilled cheese held in his shiny, buttery fingertips, working his way in from the crusts. “But these special glasses that writers get, they make it so that you can see ideas in the air. And writers see the ideas, and they take them, and they cook them in with their food when they eat, and that is how writers get their ideas!”

“My father is a writer,” said Ian’s classmate Ashley, whose father worked for the local paper, the next day during recess. “And he goes all over, talking to people and looking stuff up, and that’s where he gets his ideas.”

Taking great care to avoid sounding nice while explaining to Ashley (who was, well, a girl), Ian said, “Well, they all say that. That’s what all the writers have to tell their families.”

“My father would never lie,” said Ashley, her hands on her tiny hips and her face revealing both nervousness and arrogance.

“No, it’s not a lie, it’s just what they tell people!” said Ian, frustrated. “But where writers really get their ideas is from a special place where all the ideas go, because ideas are shy and they hide from people, and only writers are brave enough to go exploring and to find them.”

“Where do they go?” asked Ashley, who was fighting to keep the interest out of her voice.

“I mean, that’s stupid. But where do you think all these ideas go?”

“The Grand Canyon!” said Ian proudly.

Writers write down the ideas. It is hard to write them, Ian wrote that afternoon in his special black writer’s notebook with his special writer’s pencil (which had been used so often that it was just a chewed-up nub, but it was the best pencil in the house nonetheless). Writers have special pencils and special paper. They get all the ideas from places and then the pencils help them to make the idea go on the paper.

As he wrote, Ian knew that the words were true. He had finally figured out how writers get their ideas. And with that out of the way, he turned a page in his notebook, and began his first story of the week.

Jon is a brave man, Ian wrote, his left hand curled protectively over the page. That is why the people ask him to kill the dragon. It breathes fire and has skin like the wall of a house, but Jon is a brave man and he is going to kill the dragon…

Silent

I

55 t h e

Hetty Borinstein

I would love for that smile to drip the hell off your face.

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Come for me with an honest, lost look and wonder; “Why haven’t we discussed the meaning of life?” together on a couch leaning close enough to laugh and trace the other’s features.

I would love for my reserve to fly, open-mouthed from my body,

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to then knock at your bedroom door and, when you open it to me, confused…

I want to be discovered on my toe-tips, eyes closed waiting to kiss you like you’ve never been kissed because neither of us has ever. been. kissed. so it would be the first sunrise to a molten earth; golden!

Shannon Soule Photography

Alex Kelly Colored Pencils

My Grandmother’s Earrings Alex Bishop

I

It’s not until January That we truly appreciate the water.

Cursory ante meridian glances Cast a fresh light on the bare stretch of land.

However bleak this foreign sod may seem, A curious foot laid upon the sand May find pearls it never expected; Previously shrouded by the water’s murky veil.

What was once an abundant basin Is now a destitute terrain, Devoid of the calming purity We so took for granted.

Upon the sea’s return we thank Poseidon For returning what was so dearly missed.

But secretly we count the nights Until January reclaims the water once again.

Magnify

O

Julia Judge

One city.

Anonymous high-rise buildings, with anonymous cars streaming between them.

Like mindless ants bustling through industrial blades of grass.

The night was meant to be dark, but the ants illuminate it with their feigned light.

One building has many rooms, looks like...thousands.

One room. One man sits.

He is wasting away as a systems analyst for a Bank, and had to stay late at the office today. He had toast

for breakfast, but he would rather have had a pop tart.

Forgot to buy some at the grocery store.

There’s a bump on his ear that’s always been there; he doesn’t know why.

He will live ___ years, Kathryn Heimsath take ___ breaths.

Photography Maybe he will visit Mount Rushmore one day (Why isn’t

Benjamin Franklin up there? he’ll think. They

could easily fit him right there, under George

Washington’s head.)

Maybe he’s reading The Call of the Wild, and not

particularly enjoying it.

Maybe once, in the sixth grade, he slipped in a mud

puddle, and was mortified by the stained seat of

his pants for the rest of the day, because it really

matters what the other kids think of him.

Someone thinks of him as a friend, so someone will be

sad when he dies. And someone will be sad when that person dies. And so on, until everyone dies.

The man in the room will never meet the woman four floors below him, but if they did meet, they would fall hopelessly in love and live Happily Ever After.

Too bad.

He likes eucalyptus trees, the way the bark peels.

One in Six Billion.

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Vulnerability Helen Anderson

I

1 I slam the car door with one hand and balance the uncooked vegetarian lasagna in the other, tracing my way around your house to the side door by the garden. You never answer the front one, and you have never given me a key. I never asked you for one. There are many things I’ve never asked you, though I’ve wanted to. Why do I hold back? Maybe because I’ve tied the shoelaces that hold your life together, just the essentials, no more, and I’m afraid of tugging on the string and risking it unraveling.

I wait at the door for you to come and let me in, because I know you’ll be there, a dignified sentinel sitting on the new floral print couch with the plaid pillows that you’re so proud of. I’ll put the lasagna in your oven, which always takes too long to cook anything because the door refuses to close all the way and the heat escapes. I know that you’ll make me taste it first, when it’s done, just in case. For your sixty-eighth birthday I thought about buying you a dog to taste all of your food for poison. You would have liked that, but animals were never really your thing.

And then, after dinner, we’ll embrace to avoid the words that would otherwise seem necessary.

2 Some words you never thought were necessary. You never let us call you Mom. You always insisted on Miriam. It wasn’t because you wanted to be one of those newfangled, unconventional parents. No, you looked uncomfortable whenever we used your name in front of our friends’ parents. It wasn’t even because you liked your name. Your relationship with your name was one part patient familiarity, one part disgust, and two parts indifference. Miriam. It was a pretty name, and you always held a soft spot for the high-school boyfriend who called you Miri. But in the end, it meant sea of bitterness. “Bitterness is for overcooked Brussels sprouts,” you said. “Not for people.”

3 People terrified you. Not strangers so much. You would sit down at the bus stop next to the homeless man who lived under Terrace Bridge and talk to him. You weren’t a good conversationalist, but he was, so it didn’t matter. And if he didn’t feel talkative, you would pull groceries out of your shopping bag and explain how happy you were that the peaches were finally ripe, because, for goodness sake, it was already the end of June. Or how you always thought that brown chickens should lay the brown eggs and white chickens should lay the white

59 ones, just to avoid the confusion. Sometimes you opened a bag of cashews and shared it with him, coating your hands and lips in a film of salt as you passed it back and forth. You seemed to trust the people you didn’t know more than the ones you did. I think you were scared of us, your children. You felt that we knew too much about you, and you too much about us. Your secrets made you safer. We asked, but you never told us.

4 What you never told us: You were seven at the time. Your auntie’s singsong crooning floated down from the upstairs bathroom, mingling with splashing. The bathwater choked out sporadic bubbles and slurps.

Your infant cousin howled at the hated touch of water on his skin. Tentatively, you climbed the stairs. More splashing, the violent clash of waves and tiny fingers, the futile coughs of miniature lungs. You stood next to the door, your spine bolted to the wall and your breath clutched inside of you. Then, silence. Sharp, smothered silence. Auntie emerged from the bathroom, gripping a towel-wrapped bundle, her head drooped against it. She didn’t see your unblinking, dinner plate eyes. A door slammed. As the house trembled, all the pieces inside you separated.

5 Separation became a part of our lives that we recognized but did not speak of. Some days we heard the garage door open and close without warning, and we knew you had gone. You always double-checked that all of the doors and windows were locked before you left, though. I usually watched TV when you were gone because you wouldn’t let us otherwise. But I liked real life, not fiction. On the news, I saw a story about a man who had strangled his wife and two children in their sleep. It triggered the latch to the room where I kept random information, and it struck me that 52 percent of car accidents happen within five miles of your house and you are vastly more likely to be abducted by someone close to you than by a random stranger. Suddenly, I see the shadows that haunt you. Locks don’t deter them. They slip in through the cracks under the windows.

6 Through the windows, I can’t see you. Your couch is there, but you are not installed on it as usual.

I am scared of broken patterns, the chasm where normality splits apart. The lasagna is leaden in my arms, so I set it on the rocking chair on your patio, having to brush all of the leaves off the seat that you never sit in. I pound on the door and yell your name, even though it feels juvenile.

I wonder where you are. I sit with my back against the door and watch sunset ooze into dusk. I wait for you to let me in.

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Westlake High School

Austin, TX

Spring 2009