The Quarry 2021

THE QUARRY

THE QUARRY

LITERARY AND FINE ARTS MAGAZINE VOLUME 98

Cover Art by Ivy Shonka

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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Northfield, MN.

FROM THE EDITORS This past year has been one of tumult. And yet, despite disruption and distance, we continue to create. Within these pages, you will encounter raw reflections on what it means to love and exist in this moment, as well as hopes for what the future may bring. Each individual work carries its own story; together, they reveal the many intersections of our experiences, both noteworthy and mundane.

This edition of the The Quarry speaks of returning to places we once called home, of reckoning with fear and inequity, of coping with absurdity and uncertainty, of seeking joy and connection in unlikely places. Whether you find yourself relating to a particular feeling or gaining insight into a new perspective, we hope you discover a bit of clarity in the midst of these stories.

The Quarry Editors

EDITORS Anna Barnard Amy Imdieke Sylvie Deters Lena Dahl Devin Cuneen Leah Ramsey

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

CONTENTS Write what you know Quarantine Self-Portrait Ghostwriters spf 50+ zinc oxide formula Roof Feast untitled portrait Dear Diana: A letter to my grandmother Tribute to Ni Pollok For my Daughter who has yet to be Conceived sharp stick Dependent Killing the Man I Was Trying to Be Where Freedom Lies Waiting For Pops Light of the Moon Anthracite All Liquid Reflects the Sky Stone the Stoner Gondoliers The grasshopper Fortune muddy stone well Icy Cape Ooh, Babe isolation untitled Flowers in Bloom Slumber/Slobber

Eleanor Hinchcliffe Emma Long Solveig Gordon Isabel Wolf Rida Ali Lily Scott Tienna Brusett DeA Brown Natalia Granquist Jean Buehler Anna Muenning DeA Brown Blue N. Ana Freeberg Bronwynn Woodsworth Olivia Keske Rachel Ellis Natalia Granquist Linden Hoskins Jake Gately Jean Buehler Eleanor Hinchcliffe Aimi Dickel Aidan Sivers-Boyce Anna Von Duyke Kiara Jones Shae Lime Kate Helin-Burnette GH Wood Blue N.

1 2 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 29 30 31 32 33 35

Quarantine Self-Portrait Emma Long

Write what you know Eleanor Hinchcliffe

Tangerine bubble bath. Cat-eyes like sparks in the attic. Yellow walls frozen by blue night-light.

Dried marigolds bloom across a dusty dashboard while pink sugar bleeds into vanilla ice cream.

Writing feels like chasing minnows at Lake Nokomis, watching them dart past my hands, past the edges of knowing.

Here’s what I know for sure: last night I slept curled in the cold belly of an empty dream and I woke up in yellow walls.

And the air smelled like smoke, like sparks, like something just about to happen.

I close my eyes and wonder if dreaming is knowing or just another way to chase.

Awake, I can only know this faint taste of tangerines on my tongue. Or maybe it’s blood. Or ice cream, or dust.

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Ghostwriters Solveig Gordon

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spf 50+ zinc oxide formula Isabel Wolf

on the road through mesa verde chase the summer west and crack at the knuckles, at the kneecaps, at the lips in the bathroom of best western touch the weekend’s parting shots on your forearms, on your shoulders, on your hips and your phone is still on airplane and the airplane left without you and the HVAC seems to whisper (which is just the dehydration) drink some water— bottled water! chase the summer west and crack in the bathroom of best western, take a piss

Roof

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Rida Ali

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Feast

Lily Scott Slowly, let the words drip from your lips, your voice a tangy sweet sauce whose name I can’t remember.

Glut me with your tone which rests, satisfying and heavy, beneath my ribs.

And when you run dry, my own lips will serve you wordlessly.

untitled portrait

Tienna Brusett

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Dear Diana: A letter to my grandmother DeA Brown

Dear Diana, I have a question for you.

An inquiry of sorts.

Do you remember that day March 4th 2015...

The day 3 young brown bodies sat in front of you, Defeated, Silent, Broken, The day you found my friends and I surrounded by cops With their hands on their guns and their restraints wound tightly around our wrist.

Do you remember how the officer tries to explain why?

Rambling and mumbling spewing his lies We looked suspicious, he fit the description, I must be the accomplice.

It was a case of mistaken identity they said You smiled, Nodded in agreement Uttering 4 simple words, “Well Maybe they deserved it”

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Dear Diana, We haven’t spoken in awhile And I recently found out why.

You hate me, And it not because I’m stubborn, troublesome, smart ass, No you hate my father for making me too brown for your liking.

You hate my curls and coils, And the way they dance and bounce from my head with my every movement, You hate the way my sophistication, Rolls of my country grammar lips.

The way brown skin and dark brown eyes glow in the sun’s comforting blaze.

And the way I carry my power in the way I move my hips.

Diana you hate me.

For you My brown body is an abomination Unwanted Unclean And obviously for you Unexpected.

Dear Diana, I remember the story you told me about the day I was born, The day I refused to part from my mother’s womb, The day I refused to enter this world.

For a year you joke about my stubbornness and deviance that day But little did you know that even as an infant I knew that the safest place to be was the shell of a white body My mother’s body, a shield, mines the target.

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Tribute to Ni Pollok Natalia Granquist

For my Daughter who has yet to be Conceived Jean Buehler

When I take my organs out, they’ll be brown & poison. I can’t leave them to you. But I have a plan: I am going to raise hens. I’ll have a big yard that they can roam around in & have the best lives that hens could dream of. It’ll be full of beautiful bushes which they can admire & use to hide from hawks. I will eat their brown eggs & white eggs slowly, thanking the benevolent universe for each forkful, but I will be waiting patiently for when they come out freckled.

I won’t eat the freckled eggs. I’ll collect & store them in a wooden bowl until I have one for each wound I have ever received. The very moment that I have enough, I will saber some champagne & pour the celebration over them. Afterwards, I will saber my torso & empty myself out. I’ll pour the wine & eggs into the bowl of my ribs & they will transform into a new spleen, new womb, new esophagus, new heart. I’ll get stitched up & it’ll be perfect. My baby, I love you in the way that cuts me open & takes out all my poison innards. I love you right.

You get to be new, the first generation of eggy insides. You will know the hens whose material I borrowed to make you. When those old girls can’t hold themselves up anymore & their knees start to bend in under the weight of their bodies, we will reverently kill & eat them. Afterwards, meat shall never again pass through my lips. You will get to choose if it will pass through yours.

Your ancestors are our hens, not the line of mothers holding each other in a chain of bodies by death grips on wrists. Your wrists & ankles will be unburdened & wide like mine & I will try to teach you to be proud that you don’t have tapered ends. Your hold on the earth will be stronger than anyone who came before you. You are the descendent of work and repair. You are the chance I didn’t get to be me.

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sharp stick Anna Muenning

michael, a name “who is god” a warrior stabbing cockroaches on the bathroom floor you tell me to pour boiling hot water on them like they’re something unholy i need to make pure your patron is michael warrior of god can i be that for you sharpen a stick on the curb and fight for you

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Dependent

DeA Brown

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Killing the Man I Was Trying to Be Blue N.

I carve a poem on my chest with a pen Or a knife Anything to leave a mark On this world.

To be both black and writer Is to be doomed to posthumous success at best.

Blood leaks from my still body and flows like a red carpet As if heaven is a hall of fame open only to those that can Write their wrongs.

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Where Freedom Lies Ana Freeberg

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Waiting

Bronwynn Woodsworth It is Thursday evening, which means that I miss you more than usual in the kind of way that a gorgeous summer sun makes worse instead of better so I go and look for zucchinis to help Lately we have been apart, you and me, and it hurts so much more than I was prepared for so I will the pyramid of chilled vegetables to distract me and fill my basket with green, yellow, and yellow again wondering if the weight will make up for what seems to be missing You see, I knocked on the door to my heart at 6:00 tonight, waiting a few moments before I noticed the sign that read “Back in five” and I must admit that I was stymied because I thought it would always be there or, at the very least, let me know when it left but then I met you, and nothing quite seems to follow the rules anymore I can’t really blame my heart for searching for you so I’ll try to think of it as a vacation day and come back to knock again tomorrow, with my hand covering my ribcage where it aches and a note to put in the mail slot next to the door that says, “Let me know when you find her, please” and then I suppose I’ll listen to the zucchini crackle on the stovetop and wait

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For Pops Olivia Keske

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Light of the Moon Rachel Ellis

Gus, triumphant, captured the bright upside down grin arching over the

moraine fields, a monochrome beauty in the dark. I cradled his photograph of a lunar rainbow in my hands, missing the snow fields of Patagonia. I wanted to be back under the pastel arc, where Grey Glacier, embarrassed, flees the scene at meters a day, leaving boulders behind as if it had toppled over a supermarket display of potatoes. A red tent, defiant against the elements, nestles into the rocky slopes off to the left.

I took a sip of warm, bittersweet yerba mate, missing my circle of friends

with whom I used to share this drink. Closing my eyes and relaxing back into my couch, I guided my senses back to that fateful night. In the darkness, the pelting rain has softened to a mist; and in its midst, the eye of the storm beholds a moonbow.

Gus squints through his lens. For weeks, now, he has lugged his bulky

camera around our backpacking adventures. Boy and machine had summited gusty peaks together, hunched through ice storms, waded through cold mud, hid in glossy green coihue groves from feral cows, and catalogued it all. Sixteen young adults had set out for a six-month outdoor course. We told our family and friends it was to “discover the world” and “find ourselves.” But everyone here knows that putting your life on pause for six months is only for those who have no other choice (and can afford it). You know before you sign up—or realize three months in when you don’t miss normalcy. This desperate foray, for me at least, was only to buy more time, send out another line, to find reassurance that something back at home just isn’t right.

Tonight, only the most reckless assortment of our hiking crew stumbles

out of bed to don puffy jackets, camp shoe crocs, wool long underwear, and, of course, rain jackets. We four, who would sacrifice sleep and the warm embrace 17

of our sleeping bag all for a maybe glimpse of what makes life worth living, dim our headlamps to better observe what lies ahead. In the eye of the storm, the moonbow shines mostly white. Our eyes cannot grasp its faint colors that our hearts promise are there. No matter—Gus’ skill with long exposure photography has opened up the sky’s bodies, stars, clouds, galaxies. Where we see impenetrable dark, Gus trusts there is a deeper light.

High up and silhouetted on the ridgeline, Gus glides nimbly over the wet

and slippery rocks like a falcon on the hunt for prey. Have you ever glimpsed a lunar rainbow, let alone sought to capture it? This droplet phenomenon is shy to the human eye, fragile. Could wake up to the laws of physics, split screens and luck, and evaporate in an instant. Gus must be careful. Suddenly, he tenses up, kneels down, stoops through the lens.

We hold our breath, capturing him capturing this moment. The only

motion is Gus’ hands deftly adjusting the camera’s focus.

And then he stands up, trudges back without a word. The clouds relax

overhead and begin drifting again.

But we all know. In and for only a flash, the photographer and the pho-

tographed have become one, a union Saussure thought impossible. Is a moonbow rare, or do we never peer into the night? Do we call whoever forces our eye onto the details of dark an artist or a torturer most divine? Perhaps the wonders of the world open themselves for any brave soul. But now, years and miles away, all I retain of this spectacular union is its two-dimensional offspring of a photograph.

A member of our expedition cannot keep silent our communal joy and

erupts into a howl. Chris, to my left, scolds him. “What if someone were injured?

It’s like you’re crying wolf! What if you wake up the instructors?” But why complain? Anxiety and moisture saturate the air, and at any moment they must come crashing down. The wind will drown out everything.

We all (except Chris, of course, who is almost eternally sullen) laugh and continued on next page

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laugh and some tension dissipates, but we cannot deny the liquid pebbles dribbling faster from the endless ceiling. The moment is over. We pick our way over dim, uneven terrain sweating cold and scuttle back to shelter. The storm swallows the moonbow, our red tents swallow us.

I swallowed a gulp of tea. The temperature was perfect, just scalding

enough to comfort but not burn off the roof of my mouth. There are always two pictures to every story, so I carefully set down the first and turned over the second. As if peering inside a windsock, the crimson fabric belly of a tent stares back at me. No need for headlamps—the moon offers enough for adjusted eyes. Four sleeping bag-swaddled figures crammed together in tiny temporary protection from the elements. The air inside warmed by these fluffy human sardines; and the chilly outside winds commence again.

Chris and I return back to our tent, where we battle the Patagonian

windstorm while two others sleep soundly. This night already we have lost count of how many times the rising wind, building up a roar like a train, screams anew.

Each time it calls, we jolt upright in tandem, half asleep, but trusting fully in our twilight senses. Together, we share a glare at our lazy companions, and we brace our backs against the tent. Red, taut walls forced down rhythmically by the waves of rain. We straining towards the same end, pleading that our bodies pressed against the ribs of our home will be enough to keep us dry. The wind shouts against us, sending shivers of ice pellets along our spines. I thrust back against the tent and feel Chris’ power joining mine. The moon grants us enough light to make out each other’s shapes.

Seven hours earlier, the winds had begun to pick up when the sun went

down, warm air snaking out and the cold slithering in. With our bare hands, we lugged grey rocks at least twice the size of milk jugs, found scattered around the Martian-like landscape, to form a wall that reached up to my armpit. Even staking down our tent with three or four of these boulders at every point doesn’t

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stop the wind from jostling our tent nearly apart. During the squalls, we will need to go outside again every half hour, to re-tie all sixteen tent anchors with.

Quickly, before our wet hands go numb and won’t stop shaking.

Chris and I are left in the dark until the sun rises, battling the damage

of winds that rage against not only our tent but also our neighbor’s. Until then, we find comfort in the same solidarity against nature, same resentment for our friends who are saved by their dreams. In the tent, that catching of eyes. No words or smiles are needed to reassure the other. Time and time again, this night and the nights before and after, we will always have each other’s back. We will leave no one to battle the hardships of the world themselves.

Here is where I took my last dry sip through my mate bombilla, taking in

more scented air than liquid tea. Both photographs returned to their envelope, whose corners are growing creased and dimpled with every use. The snapshots live among other memories. There are instants of triumph, surviving a river crossing; loss, a peak not reached; the mundane, a calafate berry hoard; and the perplexing, these two sides to the same coin, inside and outside of a tent in a storm. The perfect shot and the grit. One cannot live without the other.

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Anthracite

Natalia Granquist

All Liquid Reflects the Sky Linden Hoskins gristle tastes like codeine syrup and is So cold. my hands are made of oysters and i am made of oysters because i am my hands & i am my hands & i am my hands & i need to eat today. unfortunately i am made of money but i have none but i have nothing in my body but unmade money and this rotting ghoul with small hands shouting for things other than food. outside my body, i have a solution in my knife, it was my dad’s knife so it has been used this way before. his eyes were made of oysters and my hands are made of oysters right now. it is time to pry their shells apart for the gushing blood to spill out pearls & meat & the reflection of Andromeda in Me under the bathroom door.

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Stone the Stoner Jake Gately

I used to be addicted to sex, now it’s just weed.

Can you be addicted to weed? Medically? Ontologically?

And what’s addiction anyway.

Waking up to the same incessant thoughts, You ate t00 much last night You should WORK OUT today How many calories did this sleep burnburnburn?

Can you burn calories by sleeping?

I think I’m asking the wrong questions.

Sex burns calories, that’s for sure.

I used to be addicted (?) to sex for the mental pleasure.

Just to feel hands on my body meant that My body was Real!; My brain liked that.

I’ve gotten past that now.

Finding pleasure in other, healthier ways.

Like weed.

Like drinking a pot of coffee to drown the Morning thoughts and focus on

The day.

Gondoliers 23

Jean Buehler

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Fortune

Aimi Dickel

The grasshopper Eleanor Hinchcliffe

I watch the grasshopper leap from the sidewalk into an August sky thick with heat I think about the way she wears her guts on her back and I wonder if she knows sure as sunset and gravity that when she lands she is going to crash leaving pieces of her body behind on the concrete

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muddy stone well Aidan Sivers-Boyce

you asymetrical thing, you I love you! you muddy stone well with the green grass, off the path you mademoisell what water will the well give me today? what impurities will bless my mouth today?

I spit hawpewt. ... am I a well? well, no, I think. no one would want me to drink well... no, no, no I chortle like a piglet. what a silly goose I am I raise the bucket from your whole I take a drink. I take in the sun what fun it is to laugh and drink well water in. the night, I think, but its day, today now, I mean. I thought of the song from ago. and soon, too. thats why I was wrong take the sleigh away and it fits any time well better even. its a feeling, not some words a sleight feeling can change your hole world. winter was feeling cold this year. it got under my skin and left amark. i shudder at the the thought, like chilly wind. turbulence. why turbulence?

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how strange is it that i am cold now on this sunny day next to you it must be something in the water i laugh, off the path, in the golden-green grass i scratch my ass, on the crack and i don't have a mule, i think I Laugh I get it now, I sigh the bucket water taste metal on my lips I lean in like a dancer as I drop the bucket I borrowed you watch, ready to answer when I ask tomorrow and as the bucket falls I let you hold me there like a leaf holds the air aware I must admire your stones full of imperfectity it is your cracks and curves that define you I admire you, for your presentful nothingness I come to you day after day to say you taut me, you taught me the most beautiful things are never

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Icy Cape

Anna Von Duyke

Ooh, Babe Kiara Jones

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isolation Shae Lime

they say being alone is an art;

i guess i believe it because

i am left stroking my own breast

dotting i’s and crossing t’s on my hips

and biting my lip at my own indulgence.

my frigid skin, now a creme brûlée simmering into my sheets keeping me warm until we reconcile, whenever that may be.

untitled

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Kate Helin-Burnette

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Flowers in Bloom

GH Wood

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Slumber/Slobber Blue N.

Lips as soft as pillows A tongue as warm as blankets I slide in to bed And lay my head To rest.

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IVY SHONKA ELEANOR HINCHCLIFFE EMMA LONG SOLVEIG GORDON ISABEL WOLF RIDA ALI LILY SCOTT TIENNA BRUSETT DEA BROWN NATALIA GRANQUIST JEAN BUEHLER ANNA MUENNING BLUE N. ANA FREEBERG BRONWYNN WOODSWORTH OLIVIA KESKE RACHEL ELLIS LINDEN HOSKINS JAKE GATELY AIMI DICKEL AIDAN SIVERS-BOYCE ANNA VON DUYKE KIARA JONES SHAE LIME KATE HELIN-BURNETTE 37

GH WOOD