The Folio Literary/Art Magazine 2015 Edition

The Folio AN A N ATO M Y O F T H E AR T S

The Folio AN A N AT O MY OF T HE ART S a literary magazine

Conestoga High School Berwyn, Pennsylvania 2014-15 / Volume II, Issue IV

Letter from the Editors Dear Reader,

We are overjoyed that you found your way to our Literary Magazine. After much deliberation and probably months more than necessary, we decided on the theme of anatomy. This theme not only continues what now seems to be a tradition of bringing together arts and sciences for our publication, but opens up new ways for readers and writers to look at the work. We decided to categorize our content into sections depending on the part of human anatomy we found best embodies the piece. This forced the staff to look at pieces in a less concrete and literal way. All art couldn’t simply be thrown willy nilly into the eyes category, so the sorting became much more about how the pieces impact the reader emotionally, rather than physically.

The science writer, Lewis Thomas, wrote in his The Lives of a Cell that “we are not made up, as we had always supposed, of successively enriched packets of our own parts. We are shared, rented, occupied.” This recyclable nature of humans informed our philosophy for this publication. Stories and themes are not new. The same archetypes and inspirations have been around for generations and will continue to cycle through the literary and artistic worlds long after we’re gone. The key to a memorable piece is its connection to the audience, its relatability. So this year we purposefully looked for those shared and rented parts.

We hope enjoy our Anatomy of the Arts.

The Folio Editorial Staff Julia Bevan, Fiona Copeland, April Huang & Wendy Tan

Special thanks to our advisors, Ben Smith & Tricia Ebarvia

Brain Ears

Eyes Nose

Heart Lungs

Humerus

Hands

Femur

Table of Contents

BRAIN 2

Coffee on the Brain

3

3:00 AM

4

comforting thoughts from a disquiet mind

5

Let’s Play House

6

A Story About You

10

Inbox

11

Irvington

11

Profile

Danica Merrill Charlie Brake Delphine Mossman Danica Merrill Delphine Mossman Fiona Copeland Hailey Heaton Wendy Tan

EYES 13

Spring Bridge

Maggie Chen

14

Whoos

15

Picture This

16

Zen

16

Haiku from Botanicals

17

Mountainscape

Claire Overby

18

Lighthouse

Maggie Chen

19

Reflection

20

Intermission

Hailey Heaton

22

Days of the Week

Anna Kovarick

23

Spontaneous Warfare

April Huang

24

The Traveler

April Huang

25

Versailles

April Huang

26

Translucent

Nik Delgado

27

Little Lily Pads

Amanda Woelfel Delphine Mossman Jennifer Zhuge Liz Shilling

Nik Delgado

Lily Cronin

EARS 29

Save Rock & Roll

Lily Cronin

30

Heartbeat in Resonance

33

Conversation

April Huang

34

Compromises

Adrian Gutierrez-Sanchez

Wendy Tan

NOSE 36

Catalogue of Scent

Danica Merrill

37

Jug Plant

Sophia Weng

38

Dog Print

Claire Overby

39

Elephant

Claire Overby

40

Starbucks

Claire Overby

HEART 42

Bleeding Heart

Amanda Woelfel

43

Each Time

44

Untitled

44

The Heart

45

Rogerson

Liz Shilling

46

Dear You

Julia Bevan

47

Midnight at Home

Lizzie McGaughan

48

In Leaves of Grass

Liz Shilling

49

Viking Funeral

50

Untitled

52

Red Forest

Lizzie McGaughan Jack D’Emilio Sophia Weng

Adrian Gutierrez-Sanchez Jack D’Emilio Adrian Gutierrez-Sanchez

LUNGS 54

OPEN

56

The Other Side

57

A Paladin’s Desideratum

58

Old Friend

59

Fuck Off, and Other Time Savers

Adrian Gutierrez-Sanchez Hailey Heaton Rhian Lowndes Nik Delgado Adrian Gutierrez-Sanchez

STOMACH 61

Honey Farm

63

Cuban Chocolates

64

On Peaches

Claire Overby Anna Kovarick Christian Mechem

HUMERUS 68

A Day in the Life of a Mustache

70

The Matriarch

Rhian Lowndes

71

This is Where the Title Goes

72

Thank You for the Lights

Wendy Tan

73

Glow

Julia Bevan

April Huang Adrian Gutierrez-Sanchez

74

Happy Dolphins

Maggie Chen

HANDS 74

Vernal Endings

Jason Vassiliou

76

Skeleton

April Huang

78

Triptych

Sophia Weng

79

Monoprint

80

Winter Haven

82

Texture of the Sea

April Huang Nik Delgado Delphine Mossman

FEMUR

84

4 in the a.m. p.m.

86

The Wheels of Time

87

Ballet Triptych

88

The Kicker

91

Crystals

92

A Stroll Through the Meadows

93

Greener Grass

94

On Creating a Free Market Economy at Seven

99

Shoes

Maggie Chen

100

Bikes and Bones

Maggie Chen

Cover design by Sophia Weng Layout by April Huang & Wendy Tan Additional illustrations by April Huang

Delphine Mossman Grey McAlaine Maggie Chen Anna Kovarick Amanda Woelfel Melissa Cui Lizzie McGaughan Grey McAlaine

B R A I N

1

Coffee on the Brain {Danica Merrill}

Too many cups in the morning too few hours at night and you can feel the snap-spark of thoughts electrified Skip-hop from synapse to synapse jitters zap all the way to fingertips taut strings quiver in your wrists and vibrations rattle up your spine Panic slamming against your sternum the screech muted but buzzing and toxic numb shots poking through skin anesthesia epicenters blossoming An impulsive drumbeat synchronized with the chaos in your twitching muscles maybe you shouldn’t drink so much coffee next time

3:00 A.M. {Charlie Brake} 3:00 AM. I’m sitting, staring.

The idea of closing my eyes, or laying my head to rest is gone.

The idea of shutting the open files in my head is gone.

The idea of peace is gone.

The idea of a mattress giving that peace is gone.

4:00 AM. The Screen is on, the keyboard is talking.

The tune all the keys make is something out of metal.

Constant typing.

The ideas are flowing from my head straight to the keys.

The document is saved.

The thoughts are saved, but I know I will delete them later.

5:00 AM. I’m pacing around the room.

Looking at the wall as if it will talk back.

I wish it could just talk back, give me answers.

Give me answers to the questions eroding away at my soul.

But it is just a wall.

A blue wall with a deep nail hole.

A hole I wish to be sucked in.

6:00 AM. My alarm goes off.

The water goes on.

Life begins for this town.

I want that life to end.

For all the life to be destroyed.

Sucked into the wall.

3

comforting thoughts from a disquiet mind {Delphine Mossman}

the sound of my blood rushing through my ears at night confirms i exist this fresh coat of snow underneath argon streetlamps only for my eyes the ocean is vast incomprehensibly so and yet full of life i have made good friends whose voices i haven’t heard save in printed words a dog’s love is wide a cat’s love is abyssal both deeply soothing no one cares about anythin.g embarrassing i’ve done except me some humans know me and they enjoy my presence in their daily lives a coat of lipstick and a long soak in the bath solve many problems

Let’s Play House {Danica Merrill}

5

A Story About You {Delphine Mossman}

(Inspired by episode 13 of Welcome to Night Vale, "A Story About You.")

This is a story about you.

Most days you wake up in your house, go downstairs, and have some breakfast. You glance at the headlines. Nothing of import as usual; a skirmish here, a revolution there, the economy still chugging along as it should. You carefully run a brush through your hair, arranging the keratin strands just so, just so. You brush your teeth - whitening toothpaste, electric toothbrush - for exactly two minutes, including swiping it across your tongue. You get dressed. Not always in that order, but always in that manner, and soon you are out the door.

Your company car reeks of that pleasant though elusive new-car smell as you pull out of your short, straight driveway onto the long, straight road to reach your 8-hour, straightforward job. You work for a company; it does not matter what the company does, and you can’t be bothered to remember anyway. Your domain is the mailroom, silently sorting billets and biddles. Twice within your time at the office you circle your floor, delivering missives with carefully weighted “Here you are, sir,”s and “You’re welcome, ma’am”s.

Between these rotations, you eat last night’s dinner, reincarnated as lunch. When you are not walking around or eating, you sort the mail into careful piles that line the edges of the room.

You have been doing this for as long as you can remember.

When your work is over, you drive home. You read the headlines again - unchanged, of course, since this morning and the morning before – cook all and eat half your dinner, sealing the rest away for tomorrow. You brush your teeth, read a little bit, and go to bed.

Occasionally, a dog will bark outside. Most nights it does not. Occasionally, the street outside your window when you sleep is empty. Most nights it is not.

On weekends you pay your bills and listen to the news on the radio. Sometimes you walk around your neighborhood. You do not see anyone else, except silhouettes moving behind curtains, pantomiming a typical family’s weekend activities. You can see no evidence of a dog in any of the houses, but its high-pitched yelp sometimes interrupts your stroll. You are afraid of dogs, and if the dog barks, you head straight home.

One Wednesday - and it had to be Wednesday, the veritable camel’s hump of the week – you awaken as usual from your 8-hour sleep. You get up, have breakfast, and set about washing the dishes. The soapy warm water runs into the glasses and down the plates, sometimes getting onto your sleeves. You do not own a dishwasher; perhaps you should.

It would certainly– A memory, so violently intrusive you drop the plate you are scrubbing onto the floor. The vertigo of being tugged backwards in time makes you feel as though you will be sick. You,

7

or someone whose young hands look similar to your older ones, are playing on the beach.

The sun is setting. The tide is low, as low as possible, and the beach stretches nearly as far as you can see, save some white caps you can just make out on the horizon. You poke through leftover tide pools with a stick. Crabs and other animals, disturbed by your investigation, scuttle out from their hidey-holes. You are delighted.

As quickly as the memory comes, it leaves, and you finish the remaining dishes with barely a tremor in your hand. The plate lies forgotten on the hard tile floor, spider-spun cracks along its face. A dishwasher would certainly shave some time off your morning routine, and showing up consistently early to work would probably get you a raise. It has been a while since your last raise, and you certainly deserve one. You brush your hair, scrub your teeth, and head into your car for the straight-line drive to your straight-line job.

At work, you are sorting the miscellaneous epistles and parcels when you come across something different. Something sent to you. It has your name in the middle of the envelope, and “Mail Room Employee” underneath that in neat, cramped print, but no return address. Briefly, you consider shouting up the mail chute, okay, who’s the prankster, come on my birthday’s not for another three weeks, but you discard the idea. Everyone in the building has sent packages; this handwriting does not match any of them.

Later, during your dinner-now-lunch, you examine the item more carefully. It is a standard of the mail service, a rough rectangle in yellow-brown, held closed by a metal twistpin. There is a large bulge where whatever was sent to you pushes up the paper. When you lay your hand on the envelope, it is cool. Cooler than paper should be, and slightly damp at the bottom. And it seems to be moving, ever so slightly, when you look at it through the corner of your eye. A gentle sort of twitch, in equal intervals.

When you have polished off the last of your leftovers, you take the package in both hands.

It is still colder than cardstock should be; it is still damp. You try to remember the last time you got a personal letter, but all you’ve ever received are catalogues and bills. You’ve never seen the mail truck come up your street, come to think of it; the mail is just there when you go to check the mailbox. You’ve never seen any cars going up your street, actually.

You can’t remember when you started working for this company, and you can’t remember how long ago you bought your new car. Surely long enough ago for the smell to have dissipated? The twitching of the envelope in your hand, harder now, brings you back to the present. Outside, echoing the whump-whump-whump of the envelope’s contents, someone is pounding on the locked door of the mailroom, ordering you to let them in.

You ignore them in favor of the damp cardstock.

You untwist the metal pin holding the flap down and reach in, just as whoever was banging on the door breaks the poor dead tree down and tumbles in, upsetting several stacks of mail. It is your boss, accompanied by several men who are not small, holding dangerous weapons in their not-small hands. He tells you to put the envelope down, but you’ve come too far now. When you extract your hand, it is holding whatever was inside the package, and for a moment you are confused.

It is a jar, a simple jam jar, filled with swirling blue water. Some of it has leaked out of the tightly-screwed lid, and it is ice to the touch. The jar pulses in your hand, as if the water inside were beating on the glass. Your boss repeats the order - or is it a plea? - to just set the jar down slowly, you, it is very dangerous and we don’t know why you have it but just set it down for the love of God, please. You lift the jar to your eye, and you can smell brine and mud and seaweed. This morning’s odd memory of that odd beach hits you again, like waves against rock, but this time you are prepared, and you don’t get dizzy.

Regardless, the men who are not small are becoming increasingly not calm, so you move to set the jar down on the floor.

You drop it.

9

Inbox {Fiona Copeland} A special invitation for you We want to find out more about you Can you confirm for us?

We’re interested in you You’ve been noticed…

I want to see you You’ve been selected We’re impressed An opportunity for you Join us Come visit us I invite you We’re ready ...

Please confirm for us What will you do?

We’re trying to contact you You should be proud Is this you?

Reach the top Why you?

I’m interested in you You’ve been chosen An exciting life awaits you Save the date Freedom of your mind Live a good life An experience like no other Time is running out...

Apply today.

Irvington {Hailey Heaton}

Profile {Wendy Tan} Behind screens, I hide So that the world can see me, Voice in twelve point font

11

E Y E S

Spring Bridge {Maggie Chen}

13

Whoos {Amanda Woelfel}

Picture This {Delphine Mossman}

8:11 p.m.: a young woman perches at her computer, commanding the complex circuitry and data processing to translate her thoughts into words on the screen.

8:00 pm: an adolescent girl sits in front of a piece of machinery, watching black scribbles appear in a white box in front of her after she depresses deliberate combinations of keys.

2000 hrs: a female human hunches over a black rectangle, stabbing at it to elicit some response from the rectangle facing her.

Post-sunset: an example hominid stares at a bright light, trying to correlate its actions with the light’s reactions.

Time: adjective subject verb preposition adjective object, dependent clause for clarification.

15

Zen {Jennifer Zhuge}

Haiku from Botanicals {Liz Shilling} Every flower in the world longs to have the beauty that you possess.

Mountainscape {Claire Overby}

17

Lighthouse {Maggie Chen}

Reflection {Nik Delgado}

19

Intermission {Hailey Heaton}

21

Days of the Week {Anna Kovarick}

Hair as soft as Monday morning, Her flawless skin is Tuesday’s immaculate sky, A slender nose crinkles like Wednesday’s clouds, Rosy cheeks are a canvas for Thursday flurries, Her blinding smile is an alluring rainbow on Friday’s horizon, Those tender lips as gentle as a Saturday breeze, Though her mysterious grey eyes are a conflicted Sunday storm.

Spontaneous Warfare {April Huang}

23

The Traveler {April Huang}

Versailles {April Huang}

25

Translucent {Nik Delgado}

Little Lily Pads {Lily Cronin}

27

E a r S

Save Rock & Roll {Lily Cronin}

29

Heartbeat in Resonance {Wendy Tan} You taught me how to speak with my soul in the midst of silence. You showed me how to let unarticulated phrases tumble from my fingers, how to tuck insecurities under my chin and set my voice free with the stroke of a bow; the only alphabet I needed was E, A, D, G, and all the feelings in between, passion in crescendos. Hope in mezzo-piano.

And now, I would play for you in fortissimo, so that maybe you could hear all the things I’ll never say, as loudly as they pound inside my head. I don’t need you to open your eyes. I need you to open your ears.

Are you listening?

***

“Back again?” asks the nurse as she watches me from the doorway, with a smile that matches the walls, the curtains, the stark white bedsheets (with eyes not quite so clean of condolence).

Back again? she asks every day, but I only nod and forgive her because I know she just can’t find the right things to tell me, and not everybody has music the way I do.

I’m here, and I’ll be back, and back, and back again, and if practice makes perfect then when you wake up you’ll see that I won’t miss a single repeat, not the da capos, not like I used to, not anymore.

I’m here, but where are you?

I’m here at the edge of your bed, your blood pressure beeping in my ear in a bright B flat, so that’s where I start. Bow, lifted to the string. Breath, fluttering in my chest.

Emptiness, broken by the beep, beep, beep – One.

Two. Three.

I play.

Emptiness, shattered.

I play whatever I can remember: you and your fingers tugging, pressing, plucking at the strings, Watch me, your laugh whenever I stumbled over a song, because I was always a little flat on the high notes, wasn’t I? Just a little flat, but don’t you give up now, just keep to the beat, one. Two. Three, yes, like that, anything but flat just up and down and one two three listen to me and I wrote a song for you to the beat of your heart.

I wrote a song to the beat of your heart, the only thing in the world I knew would never change. It was my unwavering bass, my metronome, so why would you let me down now?

I’ll play my words for you tomorrow, if you promise you’ll listen. ***

There are things I only want to say once in a lifetime (“I love you”) and there are things I’ll never say at all, like “Goodbye.”

Today, what I want to tell you is I’m sorry in a minor key and Thank you in endless repeat. Da capo, dal segno, and back:

“Back again?”

Here I am, and just maybe you’re in there, maybe you’re listening.

The song I wrote to the beat of your heart comes out in a high-pitched scream of horsehair on steel, my bow grinding into the strings the same way my waiting saws through me.

It gives me a bit of satisfaction when the nurse outside clamps her hands over her ears. (But you never did that.) (You heard every piece of me, the soft, the lovely, the

31

pained.) (You corrected me.) (You fixed me.) (You made me right.) (You taught me everything I know.)

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know anymore.

The sting of steel, sharp on my wrist.

I grind out my last note, and my E string hangs limply over the wood, thickening, thinning, lines blurring together, silver against amber, silver on white. Rose-tinted to red.

The frog of the bow digs into my palm. Snaps. Vibrato, in both hands, I can’t stop it, I can’t hold still, the tremble in my fingers, knees, shoulders, chest.

I fling the instrument towards the wall and run before I can hear the clatter.

One, two, three days, four, five, six seven eight. When I am brave enough to return, the nurse is at the door, no smile. Just watching.

Watching as I drag my feet through the hallway, letting each step echo and fade before I take another. Something in the music tells me to hurry, to hold on.

The nurse steps aside so I can press my ear against the door. For a long moment – eight long measures, or maybe a thousand – I savor the hauntingly sweet notes drifting from inside, and marvel at how you’ve always been better, so much better, even after all these weeks.

I push into the room.

The bow freezes midair, hovering over three taut strings (and one slack and broken), an extension of your arm that I trace to your collarbone, neck, chin, lips, open eyes – for the first time in so long –

Yours close. Mine widen.

In another second, sound resumes, and the melody is as familiar as the aching emotion in my throat. I’m sorry in a minor key, and Thank you, over and over.

You heard me then. I can hear you now.

Conversation {April Huang}

33

Compromises {Adrian Gutierrez-Sanchez } You told me that I wasn’t what you were expecting, That when you hoped for a son, it wasn’t me you thought of.

And I sat at that table and you sat parallel, dissecting, Why I came out poet, instead of athlete, like I ought of.

You told me that I should have been the boys with box cutter tongues, that gave me bruises.

But that when you have a son, you live with the life that your son chooses.

But we all have to make compromises, son.

I tip toed through the doorway and I tucked my hands under the sleeves of my sweater and I smiled, I smiled like someone who had something to sell and someone who didn’t know better.

And you should know: That I’m sorry that I care too much.

And it it kills me that you care so little.

But my eyes are burning and my bones are brittle.

But this me, all verses spat and battle scars, Because I don’t chase trophies, I chase after stars, And I’m not sure if I should apologize for that.

N o S e

35

Catalogue of Scent {Danica Merrill} Aquafresh fluoride toothpaste before I can open my eyes all the way.

Too soon there is rumbling, and then thick gasoline trundling up my street.

Barrages of musky, sickening body odor, clumsily masked with falsely sweet Old Spice and overpowering Bath and Body Works.

Hand sanitizer burning up its predecessors.

Peanut butter and dirt, plain and simple.

Light bursts of woody pencil shavings.

Heavy, intensely wet Sharpie tips.

Wind, refreshing and cool, lilting pleasantly.

Warmth and homeliness and chicken soup wafting upstairs, past stiff ink and printer paper.

Stress-relief in steam, spray, and Head and Shoulders.

Jug Plant {Sophia Weng}

37

Dog Print {Claire Overby}

Elephant Print {Claire Overby}

39

Starbucks {Claire Overby}

h e A r t

41

Bleeding Heart {Amanda Woelfel}

Each Time {Lizzie McGaughan} They said that it was another Cinderella story.

The complete infatuation of new, cliché love, The heart pumping short breaths of primary attraction, The cluttered minds filled with nothing but poetry, beauty, adoration.

That’s what they said.

But they weren’t there on the nights of slammed doors.

They weren’t there for the bruises and the scars.

No one saw the tantalizing words, a package sealed with barbed wire.

And no one was there to see it burst.

No – not like a bomb.

Not like an explosion, because there was no spark.

They had run out of lighter fluid a long time ago.

So they all contemplated How a love that was meant to be, Could have collapsed Because when they weren’t thereWhen they didn’t dare intervene, When they looked away and pretended, That there was nothing wrong That’s when the cuts were the deepest.

43

Untitled {Jack D’Emlio} He always reflected his emotion in his writing.

Pieces based off of their love and happiness were common.

Thankfully, she made it so he would no longer write so predictably.

The Heart {Sophia Weng}

Rogerson {Liz Shilling} I am not a half drunken bottle of root beer that you found in the fridge on a late night all alone.

You can’t drink me for the hell of it. You can’t drink me because nobody else would.

I am not your five dollar cigarettes, that you bought at the gas station after work one day while it was cloudy and windy.

You can’t light me up, only to put me out.

You can’t love me for a split second, then crush me beneath the soles of your feet.

I am not your father’s records that you thank him for profusely while he holds them in his grasp, then make a face of disgust at, as you hold them in your own hands and turn around to walk out of the room.

You can’t pretend to be fascinated by me, then assume that what I have to say is not worth it, and walk away.

I want to be your brand new Gibson, with a voice that echoes, and I want to be like a present, like a gift.

I want to be loved from the moment you see me, and still loved days, weeks, months later.

I want to be your hand written songs, written delicately on white and crumpled college ruled paper.

I want to be protected and cherished; a work of art.

I want to be the smoke you blow from between your lips, a cloud so simple, yet so beautiful.

I want to be me, and I want you to love me for it.

45

Dear You {Julia Bevan} Dear you, I don’t know how to start this, and in a funny way that’s kind of the problem. I can go on for hours about almost anything, but you have an incredible ability to shut me up. An ability that no other person has ever been able to master. It took you three weeks. Three weeks to take everything that I’d built up inside of me since the age of five and tear it down. Three weeks to ruin my life in the best possible way. Three painfully beautiful weeks.

I was raised on a steady diet of repressed emotions and sayings like “don’t be a crybaby” and “you better grow a thicker skin,” so I did. I made daddy proud and shoved my feelings in a bottle that I put on the highest shelf behind boxes of loose string, half dried glue sticks, and anything else that we pretended wasn’t there. Every so often the bottle would get too full and I’d have to let some of it out. And every time I did I was reminded why the bottle was there in the first place. I can hardly remember the last time I cried in front of someone, but from what I can recall it resulted in my father briefly mocking the outburst and then pretending it never happened. So I did the same.

The odd thing about bottling everything up is that in the beginning I could choose what to lock away. I pushed all of the bad feelings deep down and I felt better. But gradually I shoved more and more into the bottle until it wasn’t just my worst feelings, but the best ones too. I justified it by saying that I was protecting myself from hurting because God forbid I show any emotion. I talked myself out of letting people in.

Anyone and everyone was kept at an arm’s length and if they tried to get too close I laughed and slapped on my oh-so-carefully constructed mask of indifference and functionality until they believed the lie and moved on. And this went on for years until the mask no longer became a choice. It was a tattoo of feigned contentedness that fooled even the most scrutinizing eyes.

But then I met you. I had been brought up to believe that feeling makes people crazy and weak, but not you. You’re something else. You crashed into my life bringing with you a whole host of unbridled emotions. Emotions that I don’t even fully understand, and I’m not sure you do either. But while I cower in fear you embrace them. And I am profoundly jealous of you. Jealous and furious and liberated. When you’re around I feel so much that I couldn’t possibly push it away, and I don’t want to.

All I can do is watch while you pour out sentiments so effortlessly and I say nothing. I try, I swear I try.

But it’s a physical fight for me. I so want to tell you how much you mean to me; to say that you make me happier than I’ve ever been, that I’ve never found myself genuinely smiling as much as I do when I’m with you, that waking up in the morning isn’t as terrible because I know I’m going to see you, and that just existing is easier with you in my life, but I can’t. I try and my heart beats so fast that I think I’m going to throw up, my lungs empty out, and I have to use every ounce of strength to keep my hands from shaking. I break. You break me. You and your stupid emotions ruin me, and I’m utterly terrified because I love you.

- Yours

Midnight at Home {Lizzie McGaughan}

47

In Leaves of Grass {Liz Shilling} You had found me alone, for the third time, and I was done, I was no longer alive. There was a heart beating, but I couldn’t hear it. I sat on the bed reading.

The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them. You came to me and sat beside me, the rip in your jeans touching my leg. Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves? That warmth of skin on skin could be felt all throughout my body. Talk about Body Electric. I would have given anything to make the dismembered threads just a millimeter thicker. That much more space between us. Damn you and damn those arms that wrapped around me as I cried, for nothing that has ever killed me so many times had made me feel this alive. The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself balks account. And with this embrace, the rocks were thrown, and the house began to crack. Shards of glass fell and slit open my skin and I bled, I bled, warmth and existence, and this proved to me finally that indeed I was alive. And this thought was alarming, because that meant I wasn’t done yet. I still had to handle those arms, and you, and betrayal, and you. As your words slipped out “I swear I’ll love you more”, I tasted the salt from my eyes and looked up at yours, the fire still there, but disguised by a smile. The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth. Damn me to hell because even after all of this I still believed you.

Viking Funeral {Adrian Gutierrez-Sanchez} I’ve never understood being lost in someone’s eyes, until yours made me throw away the map.

My toes lost grip on the sand, and I fell.

I understand that it’s contrived to compare your eyes to the ocean, but when ours meet I feel lost at sea.

Every glance unmakes me.

I want your siren song to take me, and the pressure to break me, I want a viking funeral.

Baptized in fire, and buried at sea.

And as I drift further out, I’ll burn a hole through the fog, I’ll cut through the night like a light house, and I’ll tell you that pretty is for flowers.

You’ve got depth.

That there are fathoms to you left uncharted, and I would be honored, to be buried at the bottom.

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Untitled {Jack D’Emlio}

Not having to say “I LOVE YOU” every second of everyday even though that’s all you think about.

Love is an obsession.

Getting butterflies in your stomach everytime you talk to them, even though you already hold each other’s hearts in your hands.

Love is an accomplishment.

Never wanting to let go of what you have even though that sliver of doubt in the back of your mind warning you of possible heartbreak yells in defiance.

Love is a risk.

Struggling to find the exact right things to say, worrying more and more until they say those words for you.

Love is harmony.

Seemingly unattainable, you have done it. You scaled the treacherous path to the greatest prize of all.

Remembering how it first happened.

There’s talking and laughing and they brush your shoulder laughing at something you had said.

Your heart flutters, and the butterflies in your stomach undergo their final stage of metamorphosis.

As they rage on, you come to terms with your fate.

You are falling

ever so slowly in love.

And you are delighted.

You begin to think of every form love takes on.

Obsessive.

Accomplished.

Risky.

Harmonious.

Not having to say “I LOVE YOU” every second of everyday even though that’s all

you.

51

Red Forest {Adrian Gutierrez-Sanchez}

In Chernobyl, the trees do not rot. The radiation killed even the bacteria. So the trees stay bronze, year after year.

I’m inclined to believe that you would thrive in this autumn eternal.

You drink in the season from a tall glass making sure no drop of auburn wind slips past your lips.

I’m inclined to believe that you live every day not like the last day you grace the breeze with your kiss, but instead, that you live each like the first of many.

My grandfather told me that every once in a while you meet someone legendary, someone whose feet crack concrete with every step, and whose voice can move mountains.

I’m inclined to believe you are this kind of person.

I called you in like an infantryman calls in an airstrike in enemy territory and you burned my inhibitions to the ground with napalm and dark red lipstick.

I’m inclined to believe that I’m in love with you.

I love you like a moth loves a flame, bright, warm, submissive, and with complete disregard for my own safety.

I’m inclined to believe, that in this autumn eternal, you will keep my skin from rot.

l u n g s

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OPEN {Adrian Gutierrez-Sanchez}

button up sweetheart keep your long legs covered because while by day they are a gift, they are envy incarnate, a parabola ending in thigh high crescendos by night, they are a beckoning index finger a neon sign leaking red, dripping with each step, that reads OPEN widen your stride because no one is who they seem wear paranoia like a suit of armor covered in razor blades, because you’re one wrong step from being on the backside of a milk carton because the truth is i can’t protect you i say be safe, i tell you to keep your keys between your knuckles and i hold your hands i hold them until my knuckles turn white because you breathed life into me, with the wet curve of your lips, but there are people out there who can take it from us both

because we’re all in danger because when i thought i was safe i was thrust against concrete, my lips ripped by the impact, i couldn’t bring myself to scream, i’m not sure if it was panic or hubris, i thought he was my friend because he told me this is what i wanted because he said this is what i was asking for and i don’t know if i can breath your same life back into you but you know i’ll try button up sweetheart keep your long legs covered because i need to pretend that you’re safe.

55

The Other Side {Hailey Heaton}

A Paladin’s Desideratum {Rhian Lowndes}

To keep you from harm Let me empty the turbulent oceans Let me lay green meadows over tined rocks Let me warm the cold that claws its way into your lungs

If there was a fire I would paint the ashy gray smoke So that it billows in white clouds And have you breathe free Knowing that I will keep you from harm

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Old Friend {Nik Delgado}

Death, old Friend why have You forsaken me? i crave for us to reunite, to embrace Your dark mystery.

Lonesome Savior, do You not recall our past? countless times we tried to meet, but strangely did not last.

Knight in Armor, rescue me from my demise! end my pain and suffering, take me from my disguise.

Gracious Reaper, my scars show where i long to be. cut away my strangling vines, so desperate to be free.

Fuck Off, and Other Time Savers {Adrian Gutierrez-Sanchez}

A response to being told that I only swear because of my narrow vocabulary.

My profanity is not for lack of better term.

It is for lack of time. For my desire to leave no word, no matter how foul, unsaid.

What if I can’t say this, or if I don't have time for that?

What if seconds from now I get a heart attack?

So I’ve gotta spit it out and make it count.

Because those seconds I shave off are worth people like you.

Swearing means, I’m dying here, let’s get a move on.

People haven’t the time to live without expletives.

I assure you, that as the hounds of night gnash silver teeth at our heels there is a heartfelt FUCK OFF dropped into an indigo sky, shattering silence, curling like smoke off of lips, and it rips through the night as the sun begins to devour the moon again.

Take your language for what it is: jagged, draped in barbed wire, and slice.

Tear the expectations, to shreds, vandalize that shit, and recognize that the only reason we talk at all is to get a point across, and you have to do your very best to leave nothing unsaid as your minute hand ticks towards your expiration date.

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s t o m a c h

Honey Farm {Claire Overby}

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Cuban Chocolates {Anna Kovarick}

(Based on a true story)

When my grandfather, Johnny, was a boy in Cuba, every Easter his family would congregate at the family sugar mill to celebrate the holiday together. Johnny and his fifteen cousins (plus their friends) would go horseback riding and play ping pong until the sun fell asleep. When the moon rose, the family would walk one and a half miles to the nearby town of Mata on a dirt path parallel to the railroad tracks. One Easter, while trotting down the earthen trail, Johnny and six of his cousins secretly devised a plan to target their female relatives. While in the town, the boys bought packs of Ex Lax for their scheme. Making their way under the cape of night, while travelling back to the sugar mill, the cousins’ plan went into effect.

“Who wants some chocolates?” the boys called. Johnny doled out two pieces of chocolate to each of his eager relatives. Because of the weak lighting, no one in the family could tell that the chocolates they had been given were actually laxatives. Tia Pura even stole a third piece! The chocolate was the highlight of the family’s thirty minute walk back to the mill. And finally, at ten o’ clock, most of the family fell asleep with a stomach full of Ex Lax, excluding Johnny and the other boys.

Johnny awoke to the sound of commotion in the house at one o’clock in the morning. He jumped from the bed to see what was happening. All of his Aunts, Uncles, and cousins who had eaten the Ex Lax were sprinting from their rooms and locking themselves in various bathrooms throughout the large house. All two hundred pounds of Tia Pura were crammed into the tub, her rectum so relaxed that she couldn’t even leave the bathroom without going on the floor. After the diarrhea subsided, the girls laid in their beds, too exhausted to move. Tia Rosario, one of the few relatives that didn’t eat the chocolate, watched with careful precision who in the family did not succumb to the laxative. She reined together the troublemakers and forced them to confess.

“Whose idea was it to give your relatives Ex Lax?” she questioned, staring down each of the boys in turn. No one confessed. “Dios mio niños! Do you know how dangerous this was? You could have killed someone!” Finally the boys confessed.

“We all planned it together,” Johnny said shamefully.

“Well, then all of you go apologize to your cousins,” Tia Rosario scolded. Each of the boys filed upstairs to the second floor and apologized to the girls before going back to sleep. Finally, the sugar mill house was quiet for the first time all night, with everyone in their respective beds, except for Tia Pura, who slept in the tub that night.

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On Peaches {Christian Mechem} In my room, sitting on top of a pale-blue, chopped-up, just ugly little dresser, one that I’ve probably had since the first grade, is: a sandwich bag, containing one, single, solitary little peach seed. The seed’s been there for almost six months. The bag is sticky; its content covered with a slightly moist, salival resonance, given by the last person who ate its original container.

That was me.

I remember when it first came into my possession, when it was complete. It was a peach then, big and fruitful. There was an ageless, almost ever-lasting quality to this object. It was sturdy, yet delicate. Its orange-yellow surface glistened proudly underneath the faint, desperate glow of my kitchen lights. My mom was gracious enough to carry it with her on the flight back from her old home in Sacramento, California, protected within a tiny cardboard box. When I first removed it from its carry-on container, I was immediately aware of its flawlessness. A supple, succulent aesthetic, that overrode its blatant presence of surface fuzz (an aspect of this particular fruit that has notoriously echoed throughout the aeons of adolescent humour.) To me, this was the perfect peach.

Although, at the time I was also aware of what this meant; to me, my family, and the future. I remember just staring at it. From the moment the peach scathed the skin of my fingertips, I felt as if something had awakened within my body; as if there was some dusty, archaic light switch buried deep within the recesses of my mind that this peach found instantaneously, reaching inside with ease, determination.

Click.

And then there was ambivalence. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to eat it, even though I was hungry. I didn’t want to break it, even though it would inevitably rot away, someday, as all things do. So I kept staring, holding it, like an infant child. My child. My legacy.

I didn’t know what to do, so I sat up from my slump in my mom’s kitchen, and drove over to my dad’s house, peach in hand. My dad had another late shift at UPENN hospital that night, I think, and wasn’t coming home until midnight. Or was it one? Two or three? Some late hour, anyway. So I get out of the car, walk up to the porch, insert key, go inside, walk through the dark, narrow front hall, pass the stairs, then sit down. In his kitchen. Now me and the peach are alone, accompanied only by culture and a fading pedigree... A little bit shaken up, I decided to place the peach down on the kitchen table, take a step back. I started to cry. Not a lot, just a bit. It was the first time I had ever snapped, in any variation, as a result of the circumstances that accompanied this fruit. It was somewhat of a surprise to me. I thought I would’ve shown more grief, spewed out a couple more tears, indulged myself into a state of perpetual mourning. But there were only a few tears. That was all.

I stood there, stiff, immobile. My eyes moved away from the peach, momentarily, seeking some sort of alternative distraction to find refuge in. They decided to examine the strange assortment of tribal and oriental artifacts that interwove with the decor of my father’s home: a dragon mask, an elephant, a tall, thin wooden buddha. I sometimes gawked a bit at my dad’s cultural irony as he came from a very wealthy, white-protestant background. On many days he appeared visually and habitually as one of the most stereotypically “Waspy” people I’ve ever met. Yet here in his kitchen, alone, were more existentially oriental artifacts than my own, Asian mother had in her entire home. It all seemed funny. Funny how intentions are obscured by their own portrayals.

Ridden with uncertainty, I walked away from the kitchen and into my living room, heading to the glass sliding-door that exited out into my dad’s backyard. It seems that that’s where I always ended up at the wrinkled end of a bad day, or any day at my dad’s house: in his backyard. I stopped, after I took a few steps out the door, and looked up. To emptiness. To stars that studded vacuous space like rivets across a vast, and vacant sky.

More artifacts.

I looked down into my hand, and there was the peach again. It followed me. I was gripping it so gently, so carefully that, at first, I hardly even noticed it was there. Yet there was an adamance. My hand seemed to be clinging to it, fervently, desperate not to let go, abhoring the notion of leaving the tangible for the sentimental. But what else could it do? What was the point of holding on? My skin was brushed with a scarce, cold sweat.

My organs appeared to have dropped into my feet. My head was light; everything drooped under the weight of my own concrete realization:

I will never see her again.

Then I ate it, savoring every bite.

I ate it. It was done, and all I had left in the end was a single, chewed up seed.

This seed was the last thing my grandmother ever left me. My last piece of contact I had with her before she died. Four years prior, my mother’s mother (or “Popo,” as you would say in Cantonese) was diagnosed with lymphoma, and spent the next several years repressing her symptoms with chemotherapy and strength. But ultimately, during her last year she decided to cut the treatment, accepting her fate, trusting with reverence that she knew exactly where she was going.

My popo was an immigrant. A survivor of the Japanese occupation of China in the 1930’s. An individual who lived through the uprising of Mao Tse-Tung’s Chinese Communist Party, who was almost executed on several occasions, and lived most of her life in poverty. She was one of the last genetic links I had to my direct, cultural origins.

One of my last links to a Chinese zeitgeist that is so unfathomably foreign to the microcosmic world I live in.

A few months before she died, my mother had visited the home she grew up in with my grandmother, in Sacramento, California. Popo was clearly getting weaker, but

65

was externally cheerful and optimistic. Out of intuition, or some other intention, she decided that she wanted to send me a gift. This act was nothing new. In the past she was always sending gifts to me and my family, trying to bridge the physical and ideological distances that separated us. On my mom’s last day at Popo’s house, Popo still couldn’t make up her mind. She was pouting about the fact that she had nothing to send back, since the amount of snacks, treats, or other foods and knick-knacks in her house were circumstantially decreasing. My grandmother hobbled around her kitchen, making one of her soft, bilingual rants, that seemed to traverse from Cantonese to English freely with each sentence. I doubt she noticed. She turned a corner, passing a table that sat perpendicular to her glass-sliding back door. Then, something on the table grabbed her attention, and she turned to stare at it: a small ceramic bowl, complete with a few of her freshly-grown peaches. But there was one peach in particular that caught her eye. She gazed at it, and it gazed back. It rolled its way to the front of the bowl and whispered:

“What about me?”

Popo’s eyes lit up, and she beamed ecstatically. She turned back to my mother, who was watching her curiously from the corner of the kitchen.

“Pattey, Pattey! Give him this!”

My mother looked down at it, a little perplexed. The peach sat happily in my grandmother’s hands, leaning in an ear to await my mother’s verdict.

“Mom, are you sure?” my mother said.

Popo nodded, smiling. Below her, the peach also nodded.

Given the circumstances, my mother complied.

So on that dark, starry night in my dad’s backyard, I gazed at the peach’s remnants in my hands, the seed glowing in its reflection.

More artifacts.

“What now?” I thought. I knew this was something I needed to save, something that needed to last. I turned around, opened my father’s glass-sliding door, ran through the living room, into the kitchen, opened a drawer, grabbed a clean sandwich bag, ran through the dark, narrow hall, up the stairs, through the second-story hall, and went into my bedroom. I looked over to the pale-blue, chopped-up, just ugly little dresser, and placed the bag and peach seed on it. I stepped back, paused, then left, savoring the seed for another day.

I don’t really know why my Grandmother gave me a peach as her last, final gift.

But something about the peach, as a fruit, as a symbol, intrigues me. Some time later, I looked up the significance of peaches in Chinese culture. Apparently, the peach represents a variety of different ideals. Traditionally, for the Chinese, the peach represents: longevity, immortality, immense love, and, probably the most interesting, the divine fruit of gods.

Immortality. Immense Love. The divine fruit of gods. Because of this, I believe that out of all the gifts that could be given to pass on a lineage, a culture, a life... in this instance, a peach is exceptionally appropriate.

h u m e r u s

67

A Day in the Life of a Mustache {Rhian Lowndes} Mr. Adams’ face centered around a large, blonde, egotistic mustache. Not that the mustache was necessarily full of itself, but more like it seemed to demand attention. However, his mustache was helpful too. It collected the crumbs from his afternoon biscuit, tickled his nostrils in a pleasant sort of way, and best of all made him feel like Tom Selleck. Tom Selleck was sexy. But the most helpful thing that Mr. Adams’ mustache ever did for him was save his life.

Mr. Adams was carrying out his daily task of copying important documents. The copy machine bleeped at him a few times and spluttered out a few sheets of paper, which Mr. Adams promptly took to the mail room, as per usual routine.

“Hey Mark, could you take this to Accounting on your rounds?” Mr. Adams asked. He was careful to use his deep business voice, just to show all these mailroom clerks his superiority. Ever since he had moved up to the 3rd floor last spring, these guys (his old colleagues) seemed to resent him. They went as far as to call him ‘stuck up’ sometimes. He accepted their jealousy, and hoped that one day they could become as successful as him, maybe even taking his place as the Copy and Print Supervisor when he was gone.

“Sure, I’ll take it. Just after I finish this,” Mark murmured, grabbing the envelope of papers and placing them on an adjacent pile without looking up. Satisfied, Mr. Adams strutted back to the elevator, clicking his shoes on the tiled floor as he went. Stepping inside the lift he examined his reflection on the metal wall. His mustache bristled with enthusiasm as he noticed the significant improvement on his dermatitis. Straightening his lavender tie he exited the elevator, reflecting on the wonderful improvements in his life that had all taken place just recently. He was a lucky man.

It was his lunch break, so he began his weekly trek to the pizzeria across the street and around the corner. The road was busy with taxis zipping by like hounds on a fresh scent.

The scent for them was of course commuters, but the scent that was calling Mr. Adams’s name was that of fresh pizza dough and spicy pepperoni. He didn’t know that the next moment of his life would be a vital one, which would allow him to live until the very old age of one hundred and two.

A taxi driver came around the corner at the end of the street.

A cyclist pedaled through traffic.

Mr. Adams’ mustache gleamed.

Mr. Adams stepped onto the black tarmac just as the taxi driver dropped his hotdog, smearing mustard down his new sweater. His mom was going to kill him. Looking down he used his sleeve to dab the mustard. Now he had mustard on his sleeve. The taxi driver wasn’t very smart, and that was probably why he wasn’t looking where he was going, which was in turn probably why he didn’t see Mr. Adams crossing the street. However one person pedaling by did see Mr. Adams and this one person had been trying to grow a mustache for a very long time. The cyclist was mesmerized by this gleaming shock of golden hair that sat under Mr. Adams’ bulbous nose. Pedaling too fast and far too entranced to see what was ahead of him, he swerved into oncoming traffic. A woman screamed. The taxi driver looked up and was blinded by the light reflecting off of Mr. Adams’ blonde mustache. He jerked the steering wheel, narrowly missing a severely shocked looking cyclist and a completely oblivious Mr. Adams.

Mr. Adams stepped onto the sidewalk across the street and carried on around the corner.

He entered the pizzeria, heaving a great breath through his nose to catch all the smells.

Mr. Adams enjoyed a delicious pepperoni pizza that day, the cyclist visited his local barber for tips on growing a mustache, and the taxi driver went home to explain to his mother just what happened to his new sweater. As for Mr. Adams’ mustache, it went on demanding attention and reminding people of Tom Selleck, after just another day’s work in the life of a mustache.

69

The Matriarch {April Huang}

This is Where the Title Goes {Adrian Gutierrez-Sanchez}

Here is our opening sentence. All it has to do is entrance the reader into reading the rest of the story without being terribly long. No pressure. In the rest of this paragraph, make sure you eloquently progress the storyline without boring the reader; again, an easy task. Throughout this paragraph you can write just about whatever comes to you regarding the story. Or you can be writing an “abstract” piece, so you can just kind of do whatever you feel like doing. Depending on how long you feel like making the first paragraph, just add some filler around this part, just make sure it flows alright into the next paragraph.

Now that you’ve gotten the reader this far, it’s doubtful they’ll stop reading.

It’s about time to wrap things up, or, if it’s an abstract piece, don’t. Just don’t resolve anything. Write some kind of sentence that seems like it’s kind of fitting to whatever it is you’ve just written. But we’re not at the end yet, so just go on ahead and remember that awesome sentence you just thought of for the ending. Maybe even write it down because it’s that good. Filler. Filler. Plot progression. Just kidding, more filler.

Ok now break out that sentence. Oh wait, you’ve forgotten it. Just write something that kinda sounds like the idea you had for it. Only you can’t, because all of that filler up there calls for more story to explain what’s even going on.

Here starts our third paragraph. Let’s just immediately try to get to that ending, however you can. Maybe your character (oh right make sure you have a character, they’re kind of vital to most available storylines) just had a sudden epiphany of some sort. Time for some sweet italics. Just look at those italics. You could’ve ended it there, really. You probably should have, because now you haven’t the slightest clue about what to write, and this piece is getting lengthy; also the story went in a weird direction. Concede defeat and try again.

71

Thank You for the Lights {Wendy Tan} Dear Neighbor in House 231:

There are a number of ways I could display my gratitude. I could offer to pay your sure-to-be-massive electric bill. I could bring over a ladder and help you take all the decorations down. I could let you know that you might be colorblind, because you can’t hang flashing green lights next to blinking purple bushes next to trees strung with red and blue and yellow, and not expect anyone to lose their sight or at least have a seizure.

The first time we saw this spectacle, driving by your house on some weekend evening, I said, “Woah.” (“Woah, our neighbor’s just adorned his roof, porch, fence, trees, and every other square inch of his front yard with millions of Christmas lights, and I barely have the time and energy to do my math homework.”)

My mom said, “Crazy.” (“This man let the holiday season barf on his lawn.”)

For once, my mom was right; you probably are crazy. I know this because you refused to buy my Girl Scout cookies seven years ago. You might remember me as that little girl with the braids who rang your doorbell three times, standing on your porch in the freezing cold, listening to your dogs throw a fit. I knew you were in there because I could hear you yelling at your dogs, and all your lights were on and so was your TV, so I already knew you were crazy enough to refuse a box of Thin Mints -- but your Christmas lights took it to a new level.

What you probably don’t know is that the same girl now comes home every day after seven hours of school, passes by your house, and blinks. She doesn’t smile but she sort of feels like a million hundred-watt Christmas lights are burning inside of her, and you probably don’t know how many times that girl sat down trying to write this letter but never could get the words out. And let it be known that she wants nothing to do with cookie-haters, but she’ll always remember those seizure-inducing lights, and she’ll remember the way they spread a warm clash of colors around your property -- seizure-inducing in a kind of warm, messy way, like love.

I can’t imagine what could have prompted this excessive display of Christmas cheer. Perhaps you have way too much free time. Perhaps you hold a spiteful grudge against old Mrs. Morgan from across the street and are actually trying to render her blind.

Whatever it is, I hope you realize that our neighborhood is now a little brighter and a little warmer for those of us who can still bear to look at your front yard, at least as bright and warm as it is obnoxious, and it’s all your fault.

But thank you for the lights.

Glow {Julia Bevan}

73

Happy Dolphins {Maggie Chen}

h a n d s

75

Vernal Endings {Jason Vassiliou} The leaves are wilting, the branches are dying, The air is getting colder.

The days are waning, the nights are waxing, The world is getting older.

I sigh as I walk home from my life, My face touched by the breeze, Reminding me that winter will come— Of life’s sinusoidal ease.

The flowers are vanishing, petal-by-petal, Falling to the ground.

The trees release their autumnal seed, Sprinkling life around.

Summer’s winds are coming to a halt, Reduced to a weary wheeze.

The trees are dark-brown skeletons, Tilted by a weakening breeze.

Animals prepare to leave or rest, As the world gets older.

I note the sadly sobering fact: The air is getting colder.

Skeleton {April Huang}

77 77

Triptych 2 {Sophia Weng}

Monoprint {April Huang}

79

Winter Haven {Nik Delgado}

81

Texture of the Sea {Delphine Mossman}

f e m u r

83

A car moves.

It moves like prey: (behavior: Oryctolagus cuniculus, common European rabbit) at times still, and at times wheels racing engine pumping gasoline flowing, heartbeat ninety miles an hour and rising fast to stay alive.

The woman who moves the car feels akin to prey.

4 in the a.m. p.m. {Delphine Mossman}

She looks forward; there is no reason to turn around.

If she turned, she would see the city behind her, the city she knew. (she does not know it anymore) If she glanced behind her, she would see the city’s splendid skyscrapers torn down by the orange and red tentacles of a displaced cephalopod, (appearance: Enteroctopus dofleini, giant Pacific octopus) hungry for dry plaster and meaningless records.

She would see desperate people run to their cars, not unlike her own, and break away like fireworks under the heat and smoke. (vaporized: Drosophila melanogaster, common fruit flies) She would observe a few make it into their cars, only to realize that all the roads are blocked.

She looks forward.

She grips the steering wheel tighter, (texture: Thamnophis brachystoma, shorthead gartersnake skin) slowing down as she skirts a huge hole spreading over the entire left lane.

As she stares blankly ahead, the abyss in her peripheral vision, her searing grip dislodges a thought.

She has been here before; same light gray front-wheel drive, same nervous wreck waiting to happen.

Her mind spins in circles, as do the wheels beneath. (it was early in the morning) She pulls over to the side of the lane. (too early for the sun to even think about coming out, and no one was on the roads) No one is on the roads now. (and her headlights illuminated three or four feet of the tarmac ahead of her) They can barely cut through the smoke today. (and she had gripped the steering wheel tightly, and glanced to her side, where everything she treasured was sitting) Her dragon hoard is minus one important item. (gone: Homo sapiens, juvenile modern human) She was fleeing then, at 4 a.m. (she is fleeing now, at 4 p.m.)

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The Wheels of Time {Grey McAlaine}

Ballet Triptych {Maggie Chen}

The Kicker {Anna Kovarick}

My first pair of shoes was an old set of misshapen cleats. Pa bought them at the Goodwill ten minutes into town. With these shoes, my father taught me how to play football.

Like any other man from Alabama, my father’s life revolved around football. Every day for as long as I can remember, my father would come home from working at the factory, beckon me into the front seat of his dirty truck, and drive over to the high school field to help me practice kicking field goals, punts, and kickoffs until God pulled a black shade over the sun.

One night, before we left the stadium, my father motioned around us, scanning the vacant metal bleachers. “One day, son,” he started. “One day, this here stadium will be full o’ people comin’ to watch ya carry the team to victory. You gonna be the best damn kicker this town ev’r seen. That’ll be the day, my boy. And I’ll be mighty proud when that day comes.”

Our father-son relationship was strengthened through our passion for football. I practiced until my feet housed a rack of broken toes and rows of hardened calluses. My feet ate through mountains of medical tape while I pushed through copious injuries. My father was always there to take me to the field. He corrected my form, instructed me on technique, and pushed me to punt it farther and place the ball with delicate precision. As time went on, he made me better than I could have become on my own.

On my eleventh birthday, I eagerly anticipated the arrival of my father from the factory to take me to the field. I cradled a soft leather football in my arms; my mother had spent a small portion of our family’s meager income on my only birthday present. My father didn’t come home until one the next morning. He slammed the screen door with so much force I woke up on the couch that doubled as my bed by night.

“Hey Pa, where’ve you been?” I stammered, fighting off the infection of sleep. “Did you forget about football this afternoon? I waited for you an awful while.” My father staggered into the living room and collapsed beside me. His head lolled over to face me.

“None o’ your business, boy,” he slurred.

“Well, I was only wonderin’…”

“Shut the hell up or I’ll smack you across the face, you hear?” My father barked. I cringed at his harsh words as they oozed through my body like poison. My father got up and staggered across the hall to his bedroom.

After that night, my father occasionally skipped practicing football with me, choosing to spend time at the local bar with a beer in his hand rather than with his only son. To the practices he did make, he brought bottles of beer and cursed violently at me in between gulps.

If I made a mistake, my father slapped my face and spat, “Are you kiddin’ me Mikey?

What the hell was that? Y’all call yourself a kicker? No son o’ mine is gonna be kickin’ like crap on this here field!”

The worst night came when I was 15. My father slammed the screen shut, announcing his arrival which echoed through our small ranch house. I became accustomed to the din, so I tried to return to my sleep. My father staggered past me and into his bedroom calling out to my mother.

“Make me some coffee, Mary!” he demanded in a raspy but shallow voice. I listened to my mother scurry out of the room and pull out a kettle. “Can’t you go any faster, woman?” My father yelled. I picked my head up and walked quietly into the kitchen. My mother stood near the sink, hustling to pour hot water into the kettle and place it on the gas stove before my father laid a hand on her frail body. “Damn it, woman, I said faster!”

“I’m tryin’ honey, I really am!” My mother cried, turning towards my father. “Please understand I’m doin’ the best I can,” This was the first time my father lashed out and struck my mother.

“I didn’t ask for no excuses,” he sneered. My mother looked up, salty tears forming in her aged eyes. She saw me hiding in the doorway as her tears carved caverns through a fiery red welt on her cheekbone. I wanted to defend her and destroy the monster Pa had become. My father followed my mother’s gaze to the archway. He chuckled and shifted his body towards me. With a smirk he asked, “What are ya gonna do about it boy?”

I did what I had to do to keep my mother safe.

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…

A sea of purple and white roared in the stadium behind me. The icy metal stands thawed with heat from hundreds of bodies. It was third down with twenty seconds left in the fourth quarter, and our team was losing by two. Our high school had not won the State Cup since twenty years previous, and tonight we were seconds away from the biggest news our high school had in a long time.

The center snapped the ball on the quarterback’s count and the seconds ticked down as the quarterback looked for an open pass to a wide receiver. The quarterback lobbed the ball through the hands of an airborne receiver who came inches away from embracing the soft pigskin in his muscular arms. The air sagged from the mounting tension and pressure to win.

“Timeout!” Coach Brewer called. The players gathered together. Coach Brewer pointed a stubby finger at me as I stood on the outskirts of the huddle. “Crawley, you’re up!” He pushed through the team to grasp my face mask with a beefy hand and pulled my head into the center of the cluster.

“Make us proud son.” He said with a slap that sent my head rattling. “Be the best damn kicker this town has ever seen.” I trotted onto the field.

Standing in position, I readied myself to make the biggest kick of my life. That forty two yard field goal felt like the distance to the moon. The call was made and the ball snapped back like a bullet into the hands of the holder. I closed my eyes. Just another practice kick with Pa, I thought. My eyes flew open and I took three leaps forward before throwing my foot through the ball, sending it sprawling through the air and between the uprights, straight down the middle like Pa taught me.

An explosion rippled through the stands. My teammates hoisted me into the air chanting my name with enough gusto to let the whole state of Alabama hear about our first place victory. My tear-filled eyes scanned the thundering crowd, searching for my father, but he was not there. Pa always said that I would make him proud on this field one day.

But how could I make Pa proud after what I had done to him?

Crystals {Amanda Woelfel}

91

A Stroll Through the Meadows {Melissa Cui}

93 I wonder what it’s like, to rise before the sun. to never be sure, to never be safe.

I wonder what it’s like to worry about the small things. a meal, a house. to always want always need. but I guess I’ll always have to wonder It will always stay a mystery.

I wonder what it’s like, To wake up in a warm home The sun pouring in through the window.

I wonder what it’s like To have whatever Whenever Just because Just to Have But I guess I’ll always have to wonder

{Lizzie McGaughan}

Greener Grass

On Creating a Free Market Economy at Seven (And Other Weird Things) {Grey McAlaine}

Imagine a million summers. Imagine a million summers spent with your best friends living right next door, all of your gang living in a row like flowers in the neatest garden and the smell of late August rain dripping from your nose and onto your tongue.

Feel the burn in your limbs as you climb ever higher up the biggest pine tree on the block just because you think you can--and you are right. Its limbs stretch into the sky like it is reaching for bigger and better ideas; when you get to the top, your limbs are reaching into the sky like you are doing the same. The air vibrates with fantasies to make real and over the course of so many summers we created them all. We dove into dumpsters, we spent our nights outside, we laid in the grass for hours on end making shapes out of the white clouds scudding across the sky and we breathed life into the dim mysteriousness of twilight with dares and a penchant for danger. Our tightly bonded circle was a veritable gang comprised mostly of Main Line kids--like something ripped straight off of Tom Sawyer, yet instead of cleaning fences, ours were already whitewashed. It was the stuff of children’s books and (sub)urban myths.

We owned the block with the leaderly aid of Jack Lewis. He was the most charismatic kid in town and he had long, ratty, brown hair that would have made him look effeminate if it didn’t have the capability of eating every brush that dared to come at the knots in Jack’s mane. This was gross and he loved it. It was quickly made clear that Jack was in charge of us, his hair, and himself.

It really all started and ended with Jack Lewis. It was his idea to build a series of forts that dotted the neighborhood like freckles on grassy skin, each new stakeout created with a more ambitious blueprint than the last. Our very first freckle--more of a mole in its old age--was simply called Tiki.

We first claimed Tiki for our own when I was six or seven. Its foundation was not one of rock as plot-staking creeds dictated, but of mulch and roots. An island of grass-less soil was patched off in the corner of the Lewis property, tucked in between two large and paternal trees. It was dangerously close to the street, but we were shielded by a wall of thick shrubbery.

Tiki was a living, breathing fort whose government was constantly shifting. In the beginning, we appointed one large bush with spindly branches and glossy green leaves in the middle as a central banking system. We called it the money tree. Our first stab at government was closer to socialism: anyone could draw money from the tree and each one of us received the same amount of land.

After only a few short weeks, we found this method to be ineffective. Though socialism works brilliantly in Finland, it did not suit our ragtag team of founding rugrats.

The money tree still stood for borrowing, but no one ever used it. Anything taken now had to be repaid through eventual monetary compensation or manual labor, which was mostly just upkeep of our forts and not nearly as terrible as it sounded. The surrounding

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bushes were flexibly labeled as banks, trading posts, and gardens, painstakingly created from hollowing out the insides of the bush’s twiggy innards.

We created burrow-like living spaces for ourselves in the nooks and crannies of our surrounding properties, leaving Tiki as sacred ground for governing. We lived in our bush houses as much as we did in our real homes, furnishing hollow shrubs with welcome mats and damp candles that would look nice despite never being lit. I managed to snare a weird placard we unearthed one day in the woods behind Jack’s house. On it, a friendly cow created in relief gave a dopey smile to whomever laid their eyes on its unearthly mug with soulless ceramic eyes peering out into oblivion. It sat next to my welcome mat.

Although our primary fort was Tiki and we were dedicated to the upkeep of our homes, we had many forts besides those that were not strictly dedicated to housing nor governing.

There was the armory, where we stored all of our surprisingly lethal handmade weapons. It was equipped with a lookout spot, and multiple sturdy pine branches that made for brilliant shelves. We also had the Banana Fort, eponymously named for a bush we had dubbed the “banana plant,” despite the minor idiosyncrasy that it had never produced anything remotely resembling a banana.

We also made use of a bike path that we named The Boston Trail. Many of the things we did were nods to what we read in books or learned in class because we thought that they sounded the most official. The path was tucked into rows of trees and nearly swallowed by layers of ivy, particularly in the fall when the actual use of bikes became impossible as damp leaves lay thickly on the trail. It connected our winter fort (a gargantuan juniper bush) with Tiki’s sister fort, creatively dubbed “Tiki 2.” They were nearly identical save their locations.

The founders of our fort came from all around the neighborhood, but the main four of us lived all in a row on Highland Avenue. Though Jack Lewis was the leader of our gang, there were many positions to be acquired--the position of his right-wing was occupied by my older sister. We lived in between the Lewis’s place and the house of another boy, David Sillhart.

Even at our young age, we had large egos and fueled them by labeling ourselves with our special skill sets. I was prized on my predilection for climbing trees, reading well, and moving the most stealthily. David was regarded highly for his stoicism and his loyalty to Jack, but most of all, he was valued for his alarmingly precise aim with nerf guns and our hand-made spears. My older sister, Kaleigh, was the fastest, the strongest, and by far the tallest, though not the oldest. Jack was the second strongest, fastest, and tallest, but made up for his lack of athletic precedence with wiliness and authoritative skills.

He was completely okay with my sister beating him out, but this may have been because her physical proficiency was never something that we really could have questioned. We had seen proof of it on multiple occasions, my favorite being the time we were jazzing up a newly carved out property. A log we planned on transforming into a bench had totally refused to budge, seemingly attached to the ground. The combined efforts of the main four with the mighty addition of Jack’s younger sister, Grace, had done nothing but root the fat piece of wood more deeply into place.

As we were about to give up and move our attention to something more easily pushed, my older sister became overwhelmed with her loathing for the log’s stubborn attitude. A look of deeply terrifying calm came over her face, and she flicked her long blonde ponytail over her shoulder. This was not a gesture of vanity, but confidence. She seemed to settle into herself, eyeing up the log like prey. Big, grey eyes burned holes into wood, and suddenly she let out a godawful roar, charging at the immovable log. With one hand, she ripped it from the ground and we could see her muscles ripple. For a moment, Kaleigh seemed frozen into place, like a Greek god caught in a moment of vengeance: the log was caught in mid-air as her ponytail streamed behind her like a banner.--And then, with a resounding thud, she slammed the log in the exact spot we needed it to be.

She was nigh-immortalized that day as some urban deity. Sure, she ate cereal and brushed her teeth like the rest of us, but she clearly wasn’t bound by the limits of corporeal weakness.

Although we had someone as powerful as Kaleigh, we got into a lot of trouble with adults. We were troublemakers and messy ones at that. My younger sister was also the butt of cruel pranks. Though we never tied her to a stake or dangled her foot-first off of the roof, we did manage to convince her that toothpaste would make her grow faster and we teased her ruthlessly.

Despite all this, I don’t think we ever did anything explicitly illegal besides the time we lifted a fallen stop sign off of the street corner. (It was heavy and we put it back after a really brief period of time. Parents easily become suspicious of the mysterious appearance of traffic signs.) One of the most exciting things we did was maybe a little bit illegal and it involved a lot of sneaking over to the property across the street. We weren’t quite sure about the nature of it, but our parents did their best to convey that the unfortunate kids living there had some minor issues with emotional control and it was sort of like a school to help them get back on the right track.They were wary of it and expressly forbid us from entering the property. In doing so, they were complicit in convincing us that the school was dangerous and exciting.

Dangerous and Exciting were two very important factors in deciding what sort of trouble we invested ourselves in. The school, called Deveraux, was the perfect place for

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dares and enacting the illicit use of playground swings. There were probably a thousand summer nights where we dared each other to tiptoe across the road and through a dark parking lot in order to lick something oddly specific on the backlot of the school or to make three free-throws at half-court. We never trusted the victim to go by themselves, so usually more than one person had to be ballsy enough to go. I went a few times, but one of my biggest fears (and also something that the rest of the neighborhood gang took advantage of) was the dark, which kept me from enjoying the freedom of putting my tongue on a slide across the street.

I didn’t let this stop me from enjoying Dangerous and Exciting activities in the daytime, however. For several years after I moved in, my house was under construction.

The builders usually brought with them large dumpsters that they filled with all kinds of interesting gifts: plywood, boards, nails, gum, McDonald’s happy meal wrappers, and other potentially harmful collectables. I remember hoisting each other into this huge, rusty, fire-truck red dumpster one by one, breathing in the musky scent of sawdust and leaves, all gathered in shadows cast by planks of building material cast away by builders. I felt so big tromping around on top of nail-laden planks of wood in my dirty, no-longer-white keds. Everything we did made me feel so big.

Those people that made me feel like a giant around the clock were my family. I distinctly recall telling people I had siblings living in the houses next door to me, and three sets of parents living behind a few different doors.

I know I said at the beginning to imagine a million summers, but also, I entreat you to imagine a million winters, a million springs, a million autumns. Every season brought a fresh round of smells and adventures that still linger in my memory like friendly fingerprints waiting to be rediscovered by the softest whiff of foggy air. It is impossible to forget someone after spending so much time doing so many things and it didn’t matter what it was so long as it met the criteria of being wild fun. We rarely repeated anything and I’d like to think that in doing so, we covered a lot of ground. We had a (bad) band, we tracked an animal for a week, we stole a stop sign, we toilet papered said stop sign, we shoveled driveways, we built snow forts, we snuck over to the property across the street and got chased or ran off almost as often, we surfed on sleds down long hills and hit our heads, we developed an intricate form of government, and we got bruises that we cherished like trophies, each mark on our skin a different memory from the last. The one thing that stayed the same was that we had each other.

Shoes {Maggie Chen}

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Bikes and Bones {Maggie Chen}

101

Index If you’re looking for...

Abuse Assault Bikes Boardwalks Bullying Cats Christmas Coffee Comfort Computers Conversations Crystals Cuba Danger Death Depression Dissatisfaction Dogs Dolphins Drama Elephants Emotion Energy Expectations Father Figures Femininity Flowers Football Forest Freedom Friendship

43, 87 54 86 61 34 47 72 2, 40 4 11, 15 33 91 63 57 58, 59 58 93 48 74 23 39 42, 46, 74 2 34 97 91 16, 38, 39, 92 87 17, 27, 42 46 42, 94

Girls Honey Hospitals Individuality Insomnia Love Maps Meadows Men Mirrors Mortality Mountains Muscles Mustaches Nature Oceans Octopi Parenthood Protection Romance Seasons Secrets Skeletons Sleep Summer Sunsets Surrealism Time Versailles Violins Walt Whitman

20, 56 61 30 45 3 46, 49, 50 49 92 40 20 59 17 78 68 17, 38, 39, 80, 92 6, 74 84 34 47, 54 22 74 43 74, 86 3 94 73 6 59 25 30 48

103

Staff

Figure 1

Figure 10

Figure 9

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 7

Figure 8 Figure 11

Figure 4

Figure 6

Figure 12 Figure 5

Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6

Charlie Brake Lily Cronin Chelsea Tang Lizzie Mcgaughan Nik Delgado Morgan Alexander

Figure 7 Figure 8 Figure 9 Figure 10 Figure 11 Figure 12

Julia Bevan Breanne Canedo Delphine Mossman Vikas Chelur Adrian Gutierrez-Sanchez Jason Vassiliou

Figure 17

Figure 22

Figure 15 Figure 22

Figure 23

Figure 16

Figure 14

Figure 18

Figure 24 Figure 21

Figure 13 Figure 25 Figure 19

Figure 13 Figure 14 Figure 15 Figure 16 Figure 17 Figure 18

April Huang Danica Merrill Rhian Lowndes Ally Wynne Anna Kovarick Wendy Tan

Figure 20

Figure 19 Figure 20 Figure 21 Figure 22 Figure 23 Figure 24 Figure 25

David Campbell Caroline Davis Sarah McAlaine Jack D’Emilio Fiona Copeland Melissa Cui Elizabeth Shilling

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