Rhapsody 2017

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RHAPSODY 2017 Upper Dublin High School | Volume XLII | Est. 1975

Editor’s Note t's not uncommon to feel overpowered. We contend to be the loudest, yet we are incredulous when our words are drowned out. Our thoughts dissipate as quickly as they are conceived. We are left powerless, as if we had never said anything at all.

Rhapsody has always defied this phenomenon. Time and again, literature and the arts have proven their capacity for conveying profound messages. We have seen that no one can ever truly be silenced, so long as these expressive platforms continue to exist.

This is a place where students embrace their individuality. Rhapsody embodies the creativity and ingenuity of the students, a passionate body of high schoolers with vastly diverse ideas and opinions. It is my hope that you not only read and view these works, but also take the time to listen to the impassioned voices of these outspoken individuals.

May your venture through this year’s edition of Rhapsody stimulate curiosity and prompt introspection. May you discover new truths with every perusal.

Best Regards,

Eryn Cohen 2

Editors and Staff Senior Editor

Eryn Cohen

Junior Editor

Alina Miao

Writing Editor

Kyra Lisse

Art Editor

Connie Liu

Faculty Advisor

Mrs. Stern

Cover Artist

Connie Liu

General Staff Aaron Fitzgerald, Abigail Holbrook, Adina Rom, Allen Cai, Amanda Yang, Amneet Lidder, Amy Gong, Angelina Han, Anna Schwartz, Anne Liu, Annie Han, Ashleigh Wulf, Ashley Kunkel, Belinda Jin, Claire Blankemeyer, Elle Cagnoli, Ellie Mackey, Emily Rosen, Emma Campbell, Emma Yoon, Erin Hackett, Felix Li, Giorgio Cocchella, Hannah Xiao, Jason Won, Jefferey Fishman, Jonathan Li, Josh Doll, Julia Frazee, Julie Ostroff, Julija Paskvicius, Kira Ariyamitr, Leah Goldberg, Leah Stein, Leena Jang, Lysa Gilbert, Mack Confer, Madeleine Casey, Matt Breslin, Mayan Shahar, Megan O'Halloran, Nayeon Kwak, Nicole Huggins, Priya Kaneria, Rachel Krekstein, Rushmika Iyer, Samantha Chadrow, Stefan Obradovic 3

Table of Contents Art & Photography 6 • 21

Connie Liu

9 • 32

Claire Blankemeyer

10

Isabella Pennente

13

Amanda Theodorson

14 • 38 Priya Kaneria 16

Amanda Yang

4

18 • 41

Shane Gardner

23

Emma Campbell

25

Judy Zhong

27 • 35

Michelle Furmansky

29 • 36

Jonathan Li

31

Leah Simpson

Table of Contents Poetry & Prose 7 8 11 12 15 17 19 20 22 24 26 28 30 33 34 37 39 40

Justifying My Search History ∙ Kyra Lisse Shall We Dance? ∙ Belinda Jin Summer Blues ∙ Anne Liu For the Queens Disguised as Witches ∙ Nicole Huggins Recipe ∙ Robyn Geiger Gorgon ∙ Belinda Jin Children ∙ Kyra Lisse Tangent ∙ Anne Liu 42nd Street ∙ Belinda Jin Moored ∙ Eryn Cohen Art Is Silent but You Are Not ∙ Nicole Huggins I Could Feel the Sun ∙ Sarah Sheintoch An Interesting Thought ∙ Robert Frazier Shine ∙ Giorgio Cocchella Train Station ∙ Anne Liu Checkmates ∙ Rushmika Iyer I’m Afraid to Drown ∙ Connie Liu UD Tidbits (in order) ∙ Hannah Xiao ∙ Kira Ariyamitr ∙ Eryn Cohen ∙ Kyra Lisse ∙ Rushmika Iyer (x5) 5

Connie Liu 6

Justifying My Search History Kyra Lisse I google you from time to time to make sure there is no obituary I don’t know what I’d do then close the tab sign out or maybe shut down I don’t know but I do know that the screen would shine a lot less bright

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Shall We Dance?

Belinda Jin The night is dark and he wanders the streets aimlessly. Street lights flicker on and off. The moon hangs in the sky, an orb of iridescent white light.

He kicks at a pebble, tossing careless words into the nothingness. They echo to somewhere far, far away where nobody will ever stumble upon them. Half-drunken slurs, they wouldn’t have meant much to anyone who did hear.

He continues, oblivious to the coming and going of bright lights in the streets. The sound of rustling bushes startles him, and he jumps back as a rabbit runs out from the shadows and hops across the street, short legs pushing off of the ground furiously. He curses at it and starts walking forward again when he hears the charming, gentle wisps of music coming from his left.

Cautiously, he turns his attention to the street.

In front of him are not car headlights, but strung lanterns extending in both directions as far as he can see and probably further. He blinks. In front of him is a party, or he’d like to call it a party but it’s more of a ball, a masquerade. A woman in scarlet twirls by, hand in hand with a man in a striking black suit, face covered in an ornate mask. Waiters in black vests and crisp white shirts drift through the crowd, holding trays with tall glasses of champagne and small delicacies. He steps back as a lady in a midnight blue dress glides past him, leaving behind the scent of roses. A feathered lilac gown adorns a slender woman half hidden in the crowd, her face hidden behind a white mask.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” someone says from his left. He jumps. A girl, dressed modestly in a long black dress is perched on the curb, staring at the spectacle before them. A veil covers her face.

“Yeah… yeah,” he says. “It is.” There’s a silence.

“Why aren’t you with them?” He asks.

“Same reason as you, I suppose,” she says brushing herself up and standing. She smiles at him and tilts her head to the side slightly. “What are you doing here?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t seem to belong.”

“It’s the same with all of them,” she says. “Wonder what’s underneath those masks of theirs.

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“What’s under yours?” he asks.

“You wouldn’t want to know,” she says.

“Why not?” She looks down.

A cold wind blows past, lifting her veil to reveal a plain, pretty face. Dark eyes and long lashes, pale cheeks and thin red lips. He takes a step back.

“Why wouldn’t I want to know?” he asks again. “You’re beautiful.”

“Wouldn’t want to distract you from your vengeance, now would I?” Her lips curl up in an all-too-familiar smile. His eyes widen, and he turns to run.

“Wait—” she calls, but he is already gone. The music plays on, and he can still see a blur of dancing. He finds himself screaming and he doesn’t know why. The lights dull.

When he finally stops, the lanterns in the street are gone. The men and women have also vanished, save for one. She wears a plain, white dress, so pure that it sheds its own light in the darkness. She smiles at him, a knowing smile from under her mask. He can’t bring himself to look away.

“Shall we dance?” she asks him. He finds himself stepping out into the street to join her in all her beauty and grace.

She extends a white gloved hand and he takes it.

Claire Blankemeyer 9

Isabella Pennente 10

Summer Blues Anne Liu summer brings the sunken flowerbeds the hollow tunes the melted brain and in the months past, I remember the dusk enveloping my head damp hair sticking in tangles across my back the hum of a system that mutes the emptiness and keeps whirring to make me forget the taste of summer heat reminds me of the ache that’s found a place in my gut but above all the night proves to be a true companion when the day fails to shine.

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For the Queens Disguised as Witches Nicole Huggins What do you have in that back pocket of yours?

Gold. Spools and spools of golden hair, wrapped around the branch of a magnolia tree I found behind the weeping willows.

The streams ran red for four days after my sisters stepped foot in this kingdom.

We tore this paradise to the ground and uprooted the wilting flowers that smelled too sweet for our crooked noses.

Who said we would never amount to anything without beauty?

We split ourselves open like ripe apricots sweet and juicy on the inside, concealed by our bruised and rotting skin.

My sisters and I looked up at the sky when the rain began to fall, we collected it in our palms, drinking from the vastness of the universe which we tried to hold onto as it slipped through our slender fingers.

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Our dresses dragged on the ground, unsettling dust beneath our feet.

We hid rice and feathers and wishes in our skirts, tucked away in cloaks that sagged with the weight of our victories.

Divinity is overrated.

We cursed the crown of a king and still sang his name in spells of success and sovereignty and sacrifice.

Maybe to be divine is to be human.

We walked two by two up the marble stairs, spilling soil and seeds from the holes in our pockets as if we could repopulate the earth with hope and just a little bit of magic.

Amanda Theodorson

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Priya Kaneria 14

Recipe Robyn Geiger It starts with a person You can add a few But make very certain They don’t hold the view That they’re better than others —that could lead to dispute So add some acceptance A cup of tolerance or two If you ignore this advice Your dough may fall Because people who hate Won't get along much at all So knead them together Make sure there's no separation Bake for an hour And you’ve got a nation A nation of grace Made with kindness and love One that isn’t so low One that rises above

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Amanda Yang

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Gorgon Belinda Jin They call me a monster, a mane of vipers hissing and writhing: the serpent’s bride.

I laughed at them— a monster, you say?

I am Medusa, proud, deceitful, hideous; lay your eyes upon mine if you dare.

Hardened by cruel judgements, target of jealousy—now hatred, a victim of lust upon Athena’s altar.

Gaze into my eyes, the dark voids covet revenge.

Feel my wrath: deadly as the snakes upon my head and cold as the marble you have become.

Feast upon my grisly face staked upon wisdom’s shield a reminder of vanity and vengeance and, as always, a repulsive Gorgon.

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Shane Gardner 18

Children Kyra Lisse I pity today’s children who are spoon-fed bouts of evil toxic and irradiated too soon and too fast and whose innocence is the shrapnel of every crash boom bang

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Tangent Anne Liu my father tells me that you are busy carving your place in the world finding your heart in your field I know you are busy, and I know time has ripped us apart but I had no needle to mend the seams that you so easily forgot

next summer, we will journey home I will again remember the games we played and the laughs we shared and you will stay and forget again how sad that we only cross roads when you have none left to follow 20

(brother, we grew flowers together. yours has wilted.)

Connie Liu

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42nd Street Belinda Jin It was a pleasant day for Mr. Thisby of 42nd St. The paper lay open to the fifth page on his lap. GANG WARS, the headlines screamed. MURDER. It was the type of news that belonged on the cover but was usually outshone by politicians. Damn liberals, damning everything. He didn’t much like politics.

A can of baked beans sat on the table next to a stack of dusty books. His cane, which really may as well have been just some stick, was leaning on the pile. He was busy mindlessly staring at an ugly portrait of his great grandfather in a pastel frame.

The old man had served as some colonel in some war, and boy, did he need a razor. The painting showed off his dirt-caked uniform and uppity sneer. What a looker.

The room reeked of fish. He couldn’t smell it anymore— it’d been like that for as long as he could remember, and probably even longer. The stench would stuff anyone’s nostrils after enough time. An old man like him who’d grown up in Boston, he had never thought about it, except for on the off-chance when someone would come in and immediately point it out. It was like clockwork— in comes the grandson, and with him, the complaints.

As these thoughts flickered by, two officers invited themselves into his dimly-lit house, and, what do you know: “This place smells awful.” The older one shook his head at his subordinate, cautiously stepping through the hallway.

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“Mr. Thisby!” he called as the floorboards creaked under his step. “Mr. Thisby!

Sir, we’ve—” He stopped abruptly when he caught sight of the man himself, sitting in his old armchair, a bloody paper lying open on his lap, a bullet through his head. DEATH ON 42ND STREET, the headlines would soon scream on the fifth page of the daily paper. *based on prompt of: paper, beans, frame, fish, dirt

Emma Campbell 23

Moored Eryn Cohen I’m anchored to a dilapidated ship with no way of setting sail.

What was once in search of material treasure is now just material.

Years spent navigating the seas from the shores of the Celtic to the Persian Gulf.

What once kept generations afloat, the faded memories are all that is left to buoy me.

The keel lies heavy on the ocean floor Still looking up at the ship's deck having returned to its nascent stage as driftwood.

The tattered sails sprawl across dry land, Lucky to have been granted mercy from capricious waters.

The sunken flag waves dejectedly at half-mast.

My thoughts are occupied: What can I do with the remnants?

Is anything salvageable?

What if this ship is irreparable?

Surely it is.

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But this dock won’t be my last.

The death of a ship is not the death of an explorer.

I am willing to carry the anchors if it means being able to cross the seven seas.

Maybe this treasure I've been looking for isn't so material.

After all, my spirit is in the sea not in the vessel.

For it will travel far and wide on many ships with many sailors and unlike my ship my spirit is eternal.

It's time that I let go and weather the storm that tested me.

Judy Zhong 25

Art Is Silent but You Are Not Nicole Huggins You come from a place where stained glass pupils distort the world as you choke out a prayer to a forgotten deity.

Your bruised knees serve to remind you of the lesson that everyone else has long forgotten: An angel without wings is just a man trying too desperately to touch a heaven he does not belong to.

You live in a world where collars on shirts crush windpipes more often than nooses do; where creation exists to be ignored, and love exists to be pitied.

Art is silent, made to be forgotten before it is seen like the children on the street corner who are reminded that youth fades into static on a vintage radio.

Here lies a world where you can scream until your lungs give out and still not make a sound.

The neon street signs howl unsolicited demands in your blind eyes, not that you notice.

How long will it take before cracks appear in the sidewalk to swallow you whole?

You cannot grow in a place where smiles salt the earth.

This is not enough.

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You are born again, from riddles and ash and all the other things people try to ignore.

Others have taken so much from you; it is time to take for yourself.

You claw your way from the mundanity that has buried us all amongst broken bones and neglected legacies too heavy for our shoulders to carry.

You emerge in a place where the saints are homeless and humans rule the streets.

The only miracle performed in these flickering porch lights are mellifluous promises quivering on lips slick with blood and kisses.

The sound of squealing tires and jovial shouts echoing off graffitied walls are the only music to your ears, and you can finally breathe for the first time since you were alive.

Strangers stop and stare, fixated by the moonlight in your eyes and the summer storm that falls heavy in your hair.

Do not recoil from their searching fingers; for they have forgotten that crying isn’t the only way to make eyes shine.

Never have they seen a creature quite like you, forged from pyrrhic victories and an abandoned dalliance.

It is a disquieting thing, to be your own savior.

You have outsmarted heaven, and it does not go unnoticed.

Michelle Furmansky 27

I Could Feel the Sun Sarah Sheintoch I had become painstakingly aware of how absolutely mad I was at age fifteen.

I recognized the severity of such a statement but could only come to this conclusion because I was spending my days fearing the weather. Day in and day out with the blinds drawn shut.

To go outside would knock me to my knees and make my lungs burst.

I would feel the sun rip holes in my skin, boil my blood, and char my bones.

The worst was always, always, always the rain. To melt away would alleviate the pain, but the rain only tortured me further by pulling me under.

Until one day.

One day he broke down my door and dragged me outside. I desperately grasped his hand and before I drowned in the rain, he opened his umbrella and also my heart.

He forced me to relish the sun and feel its warmth.

He forced me to lie in the grass and let the wind carry my legs.

We rode our bikes into tornadoes, we swam in the ocean during hurricanes.

I no longer cowered at lightning. I chased lightning. I was lightning.

Until another day.

Like a bolt, he came quickly and left quickly.

I had just learned to love the sun, and then my world eclipsed.

He stole it.

He stole the sun.

And now here I stand, writing in the rain. The water droplets run down the paper, making the ink words bleed blue.

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At least the fear does not live inside of me anymore.

Free of my dark burden.

Without its weight, I could simply evaporate with my new friend— The rain.

Jonathan Li 29

An Interesting Thought Robert Frazier We all believe we see the world in about the same way. The grass is green, the sky is blue, the clouds are white (and sometimes gray), and the sun is white except at dawn and dusk. Now, you can say, “But wait, I’ve talked to people and they all say the same thing.” Well, that is where you’d be wrong. I may see the world that way, but someone else may see everything tinted pink. Perhaps every time I hear English, they hear it as Welsh and vice versa. Now, the simple solution would be to ask them what color that white car over there is and what language we’re speaking, but here’s the tricky part: What if I called a car “white” but they heard it as “pink,” and they called the car “pink” but I heard it as “white”? What if whenever I said “English” to them, they heard it as “Welsh,” and whenever I said “Welsh” to them they heard it as “English,” and that also was happening to me when I heard those words from them? We would never even know that our entire worldviews were completely different. But this is a pretty mundane example. So what if my entire world was made of elephant trunks and octopus tentacles put together and colored a shade of purple with yellow polka dots?

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And every time I saw a car, it was a pig with wings, and I called it a “Shnabberbap,” and whenever I told you about the “Shnabberbap,” and how it was a pig with wings, you heard me describing a white car. I suppose you can never know someone else’s perspective, and even if you ask, you may never truly understand it. We all live in our own worlds that may be completely different from everyone else’s. It’s an interesting thought, if you ask me.

Leah Simpson 31

Claire Blankemeyer

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Shine Giorgio Cocchella “Shine,” they tell me.

But what if I don’t want to “shine”?

“Shine,” they say.

What if I’m not meant to “shine”?

A star is designed to shine bright, brighter than the rest.

Then why is it that I’m completely complacent with being mediocre?

Ordinary, average, undistinguished, Forgettable.

“Shine,” I’m told once more.

I regrettably comply.

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Train Station Anne Liu I am still finding my way to you, scraping my knobby knees into gravel, ripping open my chest to feel genuine pounding my head to stay in line it is you with the sunshine in your eyes lambency lining your lips humanity etched in your heart

I am sorry I have spent so long wandering without meaning and leaving you further away but it’s all I’ve known and even if it means I’ll have to fight the demons and slash out their lungs and mine too even if it means I’ll have to draw the darkness out of my blood 34

tomorrow and the day after and the day after that and the rest of the days I will dig a subway map out of the drawer and find my way to you.

Michelle Furmansky 35

Jonathan Li

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Checkmates Rushmika Iyer I was convinced you loved me; I hoped that in some form you and I existed for each other. Fate is a wretched theory based on the human ability to trust. I trusted things would work out. I thought maybe time would play its game of chess and eventually we would become kings and queens. But we were only pawns who never reached the other side because your heart resigned before we got to checkmate. Never once did I think you would take your precious pieces and leave. I assumed I had time, something so priceless which I always seem to have so much of. But before I had the chance to make my first move, you left me with an empty board of black and white.

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Priya Kaneria 38

I’m Afraid to Drown Connie Liu I'm sorry.

I thought it was merely the tides of time and circumstance pushing you farther and farther away from me.

I think I've forgotten how to swim, and even if I remembered, I don't know if I would have followed.

I'm fine.

But every now and then, the air is mixed with ocean spray, and I think of you again.

The ocean waves entice me; they tease my feet, yet I remain at shore.

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UD Tidbits: A hodgepodge of passing thoughts If I ate two wild Atlantic salmon (bones, guts, and all), I'd be 47.2% fish.

Therefore, I'd be a mermaid.

I had nobody Until the day I met you, Kind and six foot two.

I think of my relationships in terms of Newton's third law of motion: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

But I have a C- in physics right now, And my boyfriend cheated on me, too.

Take down the mirror, And pick up a book; It will say truer things about you.

Every thought seems to get lost and wander back to you.

I wonder if I, too, will get lost and return to your arms.

So every morning I lie awake for hours, dreaming he’s right beside me.

I feel like you and I come straight out of a fairy-tale; I'm Aurora and you're the spindle.

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Old checkered floor, I spring from Tile to tile.

I am looking for a pot of gold, running bright-eyed toward every passing rainbow until I reach the other side.

Then the colors seem to fade and I forget the reason I'm still waiting in the storm.

Shane Gardner

The air around you is tainted with specks of gold and white. Whenever a room is blessed with your presence, it is as if we are only shadows and you are the sun. When I see you stand upon a world engulfed in dullness, it is like finding a diamond in a junkyard—and then I can't help but wonder how lonely it is to be up on your pedestal.

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