The Quarry 2020

THE QUARRY

THE QUARRY 1

THE QUARRY LITERARY AND FINE ARTS MAGAZINE VOLUME 97

Cover art by Sarah Swan-Kloos

The Quarry is an annual publication by the students of St. Olaf College.

All correspondence should be addressed to:

Executive Editor, The Quarry St. Olaf College 1500 St. Olaf Avenue Northfield, MN 55057

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Š 2020, The Authors and Artists. Some rights reserved.

Authors and artists retain the copyright to their works. Without otherwise limiting the rights reserved under copyright, the works published herein are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial - No Derivatives 4.0 International licenses.

For information on uses permitted under this license, visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Printed by Engage Print.

Northfield, MN.

FROM THE EDITORS What can be said of this eclectic collection? There’s shrewd observation in these pages. There’s honesty. There’s an abundance of talent and no small amount of wit. You’ll find people reckoning with the past, grasping at identity, reveling in mystery — people coming of age in a world that’s broken and beautiful and trying to cobble together some meaning.

We invite you to slow down for a few minutes and listen to these stories. Drive a wedge into your schedule and widen the space between now and whatever’s next.

Find a nice chair, kick off your shoes, and brew a pot of tea. Let yourself linger here a while.

The Quarry Editors

EDITORS Thomas Hardy Anna Barnard Alekz Thoms Isaiah Scharen Paddy Mittag-McNaught Amy Imdieke

Executive Editor Literary Editor Art Editor Layout Editor Interdisciplinary Editor Web Editor

CONTENTS Paper Renewed because i am a woman Walking with my Momma self-soothe Hlíf Terracotta Hide & Seek Lime Kiln I am buidling a moving house Reclaimed Memory No. 1 Things We Lose Shoshoni Jet Streams and Shooting Stars Flying Together The Epic Race Night Buenos Elegy to Bapa Interaction Dear Dinosaur Eclectica Remnants Shouldn’t Have Laughed

By Lamplight spiral pasta, with pumpkin sauce lp Ens paddleguys55 tips from a professional ghost hunter Where Have the Children Gone?

Rough Edges Things We Lose Chicago Untitled Sandwiches FYEA Features

Jamie Farley Senecca Norvell Shae Lime Evelyn Wakeley Claire Chenoweth Sophie Adams Allison Baxter Seng Lor Lissie Chin Caleb Mulenneaux Kate Helin-Burnette Miles Rowland Michael Brandt Naomi Brandt Devin Cuneen Eddie Bryson Sophia Davies Johnny Goodson Caleb Mulenneaux Drew Otterlei Hannah Gerdes Claire Duchschere Aaron Lorenz Sylvie Deters Kyra Nosow Anna Weimholt Tienna Brusett Wynn Martin Sylvie Deters Fiona Greathouse Pajai Vue Eddie Bryson Miles Rowland Brandon Lee Bronwynn Woodsworth

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 10 11 12 12 13 14 16 17 18 19 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 32 34 35 36 37 38 39

Margaret Lindahl, David Morrison, Peter McCrae-Hokenson 42

1

Renewed Seneca Norvell Sun and wind recharge and deplete Paradoxically and simultaneously I grew another 2 feet in height Looked down on my shadow and the fields Sprung up Bounced Photosynthesis Through my feet My body unfurled stretched and yawned Looked to face The sun and Soaked her in She told me some of her Secrets and wiped them From my memory So I would come back Tomorrow Hungry

Paper

Jamie Farley

2

because i am a woman Shae Lime to be a woman my god, how devastating it is to be a woman. bleed, but darling don’t plead, you say; I am a noise complaint to you while you give false concern, because I am a woman.

I do not deserve to cry over spilt milk when I should be yearning for water.

I do not deserve to mute my footsteps because my heel is too distracting to those who sneer at poise.

I do not deserve to be a “sometimes” when the peach paint on my cheeks is natural for you.

I do not deserve to leave myself for a man who doesn’t know lust from illusory. before all things, I am that woman who reaches until her bones are used to the ache. as the human versions of nausea curl their lips at my reach, I howl with my silky power. to be a woman is to be powerfully vulnerable, but to love yourself as a woman is vulnerably powerful.

Walking with my Momma 3

Evelyn Wakeley

4

self-soothe Claire Chenoweth I am ready for the laying of my own hands, straining to rub balm, salves to grind mint into my knotted shoulders I can’t tell if I’m sad or just waiting for rain but I know that my shirt is yellow and I know how to fill my pockets with plums

Hlíf

Sophie Adams

6

7

Hide & Seek Seng Lor I sit, In the shadows of the closet.

One, Two, Three, Ready or not here I come!

Sweat drips down my face, like 11:30am in Laos.

When the sun was high and I took a shower, in my own sweat. My white T-shirt, yellowed by the dirt. Except now I was wearing black.

Now I can blend in with the darkness.

And pretend as if another me didn’t exist.

As if Adonis, Ambrose, Laurent, weren’t my previous facebook names. As if I always was the perfect and flawless figure my parents molded.

The one that will carry on the family legacy and name.

The one that gets the random bullets of, “Do you like women?”

“Do you want to sleep with women?”

“Do you have a girlfriend yet?”

It is currently -4° F, but I feel like I’m in Laos.

My sweat dripping so much like all the tears that my people cried crossing the mekong river.

My sweat dripping like the iron droplets of bombshells and pellets that tainted the rivers and painted the land red with blood.

In 1975, my people, my family, sweated.

They were afraid of dying. They were afraid of being showered by bullets and bombs from the U.S., Red-Laotian, and Vietnamese army.

And I? I am sweating because I fear disappointment.

My parents, my family, they all have become the Vietnamese, Laotian, and U.S. soldiers, and I have become the one being persecuted, running into the safety and darkness of the jungle of clothes and hangers, where they won’t find me.

continued on next page

Terracotta

Allison Baxter

8

Where I won’t hear the sounds of guns firing at me.

Because to me, the bombardment of questions hurt me, more than the merciless bombs and bullets that killed my people many years ago. Because telling my parents, “No I don’t like women!” or, “No I want a husband!” or, “I don’t know if I like men or women!” or, “I don’t know what the fuck I am!” is like burying them alive, killing them.

Why would I kill them here? Why didn’t they just die?

Along with many of the hmong brothers and sisters at the border of Laos and Thailand? That’s not what a filial son does, and because telling them that I won’t have children made from my flesh and blood means that I won’t have a successor which means that I am not gonna uphold the family name which means that it really is the same as killing them.

I don’t want to kill my parents I don’t want to kill their hopes and dreams in me.

But, why do I feel like I’ll end up being the one with a bullet in my head in this game of hide and seek?

Lissie Chin

9

Lime Kiln

I hear footsteps getting louder, I hear them calling my name.

I hold my breath.

10

I am building a moving house Caleb Mullenneaux I am building a moving house to forget the one I left in a car, out on the violet plains a mile North of town, Where the field becomes my bedroom wall, stretching far enough to contain nothing, and the light creeps under an empty landscape that only holds the sky.

And I’m missing my own homecoming, where my mother has made my bed, to dance over speedometers and wait out another evening in the moving house I built to forget the one I left.

Because coming back is to feel my limbs weaken with the work of knowing every face and every motion I have ever worn.

Reclaimed Memory No. 1 11

Kate Helin-Burnette

12

13

Jet Streams and Shooting Stars Naomi Brandt

It’s December, and I’m driving with my dad. Hands on the steering wheel, I should be watching the road. Instead, I watch a plane and its jet stream, traveling across the sky.

Where I grew up, the sky was covered in lines. Sporadic.

Crossing. Curved and straight and running across the blue.

I remember lying in the grass, watching the clouds and these intermittent lines, not needing, not asking for labels. A Southwestern art. I remember sitting in our backyard, listening to my uncle complain about how abstract art looks like a kindergartener drew it. He’s dying now, and I don’t think much about these words most of the time. Instead, I think of his hands slowly moving dominos across the table as he joins a game of Mexican Train with us. Somehow, a scene still hopeful amongst all this dying.

Sometimes, I remember the moments from before. Writing is helpful in that sense: organizing words can bring back thoughts from our hearts that we forgot existed.

I remember: abstract art is childish scribbles. The lines in the sky are called jet streams.

I didn’t know that my uncle created charcoal drawings when he was in college. I did know that he was in the Marines, and I know that he taught me how to fly the flag properly—although I don’t remember his instructions. I’ve always been quite abstracted. continued on next page

Shoshoni

Michael Brandt

14

I drive my dad past the elementary school as he lectures me about Warren Buffett and the billionaires who can’t seem to figure out what to do with their money. I should mention that he likes Warren Buffett—and he doesn’t like these other billionaires. I should also mention that he’s talked to me about the same issues dozens of times.

I zone out, gazing upward.

The sky seems empty of lines, except a short one in the west.

Shooting star, I wish. I correct myself: The lines in the sky are called jet streams.

And I wonder why this distinction matters. Maybe it’s because for the first time in my early adulthood, I think about what I’d wish for, besides socks and a pint of mint chip ice cream.

The horizon pulls the sun down; the jet stream lengthens.

I remember watching hundreds of beautiful lines in the sky, wondering where they disappear to. Needing to know that destination just as much as I need to know that my uncle won’t vanish entirely when he dies.

My dad is still discussing Warren Buffett with himself as we turn a corner.

I watch another jet stream emerge from the mountains and dissipate across the sky.

15

Flying Together Devin Cuneen

16

The Epic Race Eddie Bryson

I walk into pitch black darkness What do I see?

I see you crushing my dreams Making excuses not to leave You shrink too small as I plead Just the perspective as you leave I’m sorry if you can’t breathe Since you’re scared You’re the tortoise I’m the hare But we both wondering where This race wants to lead us Pressed myself to finish up You said hold up we’re second It was us who had beat us Think about it You take two pairs Of tortoises and hares Tell them to beat the other And they decide the other So two partner as lovers And the others, too stubborn Or nervous or scared Which one would you say is rare By their actions and their care

Night

17

Sophia Davies

18

19

Buenos

Johnny Goodson

Elegy to Bapa

Caleb Mullenneaux There was steel wool on your chin and I know nothing of you without it.

I know erected statues of filth of soda cans and cat food that stood as a monument to your disregard.

And I know towers of color of daffodils and lavender the gnarled veins of life unchecked, a monument to your ferocious care.

Interaction 21

Drew Otterlei

22

Dear Dinosaur Hannah Gerdes

Let me say once, for the record, that gravity promised you’d kiss me once I hit the ground. I wanted to smell the flowers. I asked to be anything but burning, but alien dust.

Lights calling like a moth; the ocean begging me to drink.

What happened after is a shroud.

Eons after impact, my splintering lay buried, impotent dirt.

Mourning an ever present thirst; your bones leaking black into the earth.

The first whisper of misdirection a millennium ago, just a suggestion in the void.

A caress and a tug of the collar hurtling desperately towards the yearning of earth at dawn.

I never knew any better.

There you were, laying open on the roof. Stargazing and waiting for survival to perish, ecology to hypnotize itself out of habit -spontaneous combustion.

Love: the only metaphor worth a damn.

Spectacular moment turned perpetual extinction.

New skin.

You lost the tail.

I am mostly crater now.

Love anyways,

Eclectica

23

Claire Duchschere

24

Shouldn’t Have Laughed 25

Sylvie Deters

Remnants

Aaron Lopez

27

spiral pasta, with pumpkin sauce Anna Weimholt

By Lamplight Kyra Nosow

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29

Ens

Wynn Anderson Walk Martin I feel a weight crushing down on me.

It comes only in chance moments, But I selfishly relish in them all the same.

And I feel all of my pasts, all of my selves, The broad-ness of time, looms over my heart; And I feel stilled.

It is like a great wave that swells within my breast.

It is a feeling that I was once something and am no more.

I am quieted in the disquieted feeling.

And just mere existence feels like a chore,

but a labor of love, as if to merely live is enough.

But stripped down to my core, I am nothing,

but a single leaf berated by cold winds and rain.

And as much as I feel pained by it, The chill thrills me and makes me feel More alive than I have ever been.

I have always lived, in part, on the edge of change, Never committing to anything wholly in my heart.

The only thing I know is that I am in love with these little moments of fleeting feeling, That scurry off like a moth before I grab them and know the words.

But oddly now they are stilled, And I can see them and myself wholly From without the flow of time, from without myself.

And in those moments, I feel enraptured, contented, that I could die; For I know that I mustn’t really go anywhere other than where I am now.

continued on next page

lp

Tienna Brusett

30

And now it has past like mist on the mountain, I have faded like dew in the hollow.

And I still practice looking in the mirror and saying, “I love you.”

But still that mirth withers, Each part left to reckon the absurdity, ugly in its absence.

I once heard that we stand in a hall, lit with golden light; That we are like an eagle that comes into its fold.

Out of the darkness we come across its blissful span And back into dark oblivion, through the other door.

And all that is left is the grey-shroud looming, But I won’t look up just yet.

paddleguys55 31

Sylvie Deters

32

33

tips from a professional ghost hunter Fiona Greathouse

if you want to make contact you get on your knees and you beg for the dead to show themselves, raise your hands into the air and bawl at the top of your lungs demanding a sign from the departed to prove that you haven’t been chasing after empty spaces your whole life. you could try folding your palms together and bowing your head in order to appeal to a fatherless god, but in my experience he hasn’t been any help. better to test your luck with the devil. invert the cross and speak in tongues to get the best reception— sorry, i can’t help but to poke fun though i should know better by now that everyone always thinks i’m serious, i suppose it comes with the profession. the reality is that there’s nothing to be done, the dead live inside of you. we could try opening you up and carving them out but you’re already bleeding all over the place and you wouldn’t survive the operation. instead try shoving your heart back in its cavity, do your best to align your ribs and pray that they don’t skewer anything important. you should sew your chest back up with the makeshift needles that your mom and her mom once used, be sure to hide it in a safe place, as one day your daughter will need it too.

34

Where Have the Children Gone?

Pajai Vue

The yellow street lights flickered on as the sun slept against the navy blue sky.

The street lights seemed inferior to the moon, only illuminating the play of the children’s neighborhood.

But the stars… the stars danced like glitter across the sky.

“Come inside,” a voice called, Drowned out by laughters and giggles of Knee-scraped and grass stained children.

If you pretend not to hear, you can do whatever you want.

And so their laughters got louder and their ears shut.

It was thought children would scatter the streets every night And fill the air with giggles and screams, But each child began to disappear…

One At A Time Until… the streets became silent.

Where have the children gone?

The navy blue sky turned black, The stars no longer danced or shimmered, The moon had no more purpose.

Where have the children gone, Leaving behind a silent street filled with childhood memories?

Rough Edges 35

Eddie Bryson

36

Things We Lose 37

Miles Rowland

Chicago Untitled Brandon Lee

Sandwiches

Bronwynn Woodsworth The other day I looked up and found myself on a bench with a turkey sandwich and a family pack of cough drops and how I got there wasn’t an interesting story at all There was something about being inside of a building with everyone bustling and working and learning and finding a quiet place to let myself exist If I could have shared the joy I felt in that moment rest assured I would have but there was only enough sandwich for me, and that was okay (preferable, really) And obviously multigrain gluten-free bread, with turkey and mustard and mayonnaise and banana peppers in between might not be everyone’s cup of tea But it is mine so I did it again with a twist And the next day I found myself in the same building on a different bench sitting alone and eating a sandwich And if I could have shared the joy I felt in that moment rest assured I would have but there was still only enough sandwich for me, and that was okay (preferable, really) And obviously multigrain gluten-free bread, with butter and bananas and cinnamon sugar in between might not be everyone’s cup of tea But it is mine so I did it again and I was happy

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FYEA FIFTH YEAR EMERGING ARTISTS FEATURE Margaret Lindahl David Morrison Peter McCrae-Hokenson

42

My work is a combination of plan, experimentation, and chance.

Printmaking is an especially processheavy art form, full of steps, parts, and mistakes. I decided to work with monotype and collage, because they both offer many possibilities for play.

They also provide ample opportunity to push my own boundaries, experiment with technique, and make a mess. Through making multiple gradients, taking them apart, and then reassembling the pieces, I create a new print.

These new works are the first part of my experimentation with the printmaking process, and how I can push the boundary of what is usually understood as a “print.�

Margaret Lindahl 43

Printmaker

Rough Edges Eddie Bryson

44

45

Growing up, my family had dinner together every night. Sharing these meals, around the table, brought us together. After studying ceramics, I realized the importance of functional pots and their role in the gathering of people around the dinner table. Through these dinner sets I am investigating the intimacy and shared connection by curating the space around the table. I intend my work to be used in a setting where meals are shared and people gather.

David Morrison Ceramic Artist

46

BY SARAH SWAN-KLOOS

Peter McCrae-Hokenson 47

Photographer

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JAMIE FARLEY SENECCA NORVELL SHAE LIME EVELYN WAKELEY CLAIRE CHENOWETH SOPHIE ADAMS ALLISON BAXTER SENG LOR LISSIE CHIN JESSICA MITCHELL CALEB MULLENNEAUX KATE HELIN-BURNETTE MILES ROWLAND NAOMI BRANDT MICHAEL BRANDT DEVIN CUNEEN EDDIE BRYSON SOPHIA DAVIES JOHNNY GOODSON DREW OTTERLEI HANNAH GERDES CLAIRE DUCHSCHERE AARON LOPEZ SYLVIE DETERS KYRA NOSOW ANNA WEIMHOLT WYNN WALK MARTIN TIENNA BRUSETT FIONA GREATHOUSE PAJAI VUE BRANDON LEE BRONWYNN WOODSWORTH 49 SARAH SWAN-KLOOS