2012 Lantern

2012

The Lantern

The Lantern 2012

Volume CIII

L

anterns are a symbol of Westover. Every spring faculty and students participate in one of the oldest and most beautiful of the Westover traditions: the Lantern Ceremony. At dusk students used to join a procession that led through the countryside to Miss Hillard’s farm. If a student did indeed “belong” to Westover, her lantern was lit. If not, she was sent to the infirmary (so it was said by the old girls). Today it is through this mystical ceremony that the new students and faculty become true members of Westover. Their lanterns are lit during the ceremony as a symbol of their integration into the community.

Every spring after the Lantern Ceremony, the Lantern magically appears in everyone’s mailbox. This magazine is a collection of the best student poems and the best pieces of student artwork of the year.

It is essential that school customs be handed down from year to year and be full of significance. What is embodied in school tradition and incorporated in the ordered life of the school from season to season will communicate to the student body a continued experience from which that custom sprang. When that sentiment is sincere and true, the custom will be a channel through which the emotion will renew itself, deepening and enriching both the individual and the school.

–Mary Robbins Hillard Head of School 1909-1932

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The Lantern Volume CIII

Editors in Chief Keelin Sweeney ’12 Jillian Verzino ’12

Poetry Editors Katherine Lawlor ’12 Bethany Simmonds ’12 Riley Boeth ’13 Emily Johnson ’13 Ailsa Slater ’13

Art Editors Anna Eggert ’12 Clara Keane ’12 Hannah Meduna ’12 Sierra Blazer ’13 Emily Morris ’13 Liv Burns ’14 Andie Dahl ’14 Hannah Hudson ’14

Advisors Rich Beebe Bruce Coffin Sara Poskas

Photography Consultant Michael Gallagher

May 2012 Westover School Middlebury, Connecticut Cover Image by Clara Keane ’12 Title Page and End Page Images by Andie Dahl ’14 Page 2 Lantern Image by Ji Won Park ’11

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Poetry Slash and Burn Tightrope Walker Marilyn Monroe Fatality Stops By Daylight Fading Wind Horses The Viewer Sarah The Seawife’s Curtains Gingko Tree This September Daybreak Kazakhstan Sunday A Last Apology Road Trip Last Orders Cavi Mother Love Is a Dream Christina’s World My Grandmother Are You Still Smoking?

Rainy Afternoon in Saigon Chum Memoirs of a Cliché Violin Letters to a Plebe To The Great River Squalls A Blown Muse Funeral Deer

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Riley Boeth ’13 Alexandra Pape ’12 Emily Johnson ’13 Charlotte Forcht ’12 Bethany Simmonds ’12 Tenzin Lama ’12 Anna Eggert ’12 Bethany Simmonds ’12 Ailsa Slater ’13 Tam Nguyen ’12 Jillian Verzino ’12 Nadia Gribkova ’14 Kira Hunter ’14 Alexandra Pape ’12 Riley Boeth ’13 Emily Johnson ’13 Anna Eggert ’12 Alexandra Pape ’12 Sunah Hong ’13 Katherine Lawlor ’12 Jillian Verzino ’12 Myrna Cox ’14 Anna Chahuneau ’14 Tam Nguyen ’12 Yike Wang ’14 Marianna Mead ’13 Chae Uhm ’13 Cristina Pretto ’12 Yi Xuan Chi ’13 Jillian Verzino ’12 Anna Eggert ’12 Lizzy MacDougall ’14 Alexandra Pape ’12

8 11 12 15 16 19 20 23 24 27 28 31 32 35 36 39 40 43 44 47 48 51 52 55 56 59 60 63 64 67 68 71 72

Artwork Drawings

Photographs Alexandra Pape ’12 Hannah Webster ’12 Hannah Meduna ’12 Anna Eggert ’12 Qing Wang ’13 Addis Fouche-Channer ’13 Emily Morris ’12 Alisa Tiong ’13 Hannah Meduna ’12 Yi Xuan Chi ’13 Olivia Spadola ’13 Yi Xuan Chi ’13 Ianna Wechter ’12 Ginelle van Tartwijk ’12

10 13 14 21 25 29 33 41 42 45 46 61 70 73

Paintings Clara Keane ’12 Sunah Hong ’13

7 22

Needle Arts Keelin Sweeney ’12

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Jessica You ’15 Jillian Verzino ’12 Hannah Hudson ’14 Jillian Verzino ’12 Eunice Oh ’14 Tam Nguyen ’12 Jessica You ’15 Laura-Delight van Tartwijk ’14 Addie Pates ’15 Hannah Hudson ’14 Clara Keane ’12

9 17 37 38 49 53 54 54 57 62 69

Ceramics Kira Hunter ’14 Hannah Clark ’12 Sierra Blazer ’13 Yike Wang ’14 Katie Solley ’13 Hayley Choi ’13 Melissa Hall ’12

18 26 30 34 50 58 65

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Clara Keane ’12 Oil Painting

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SLASH AND BURN (For Justin Quinn) Before you left, I could have sworn You snapped your calloused fingers And burst to flame and ember That rose through the thick air together To bring on darkness once the ash turned cold.

Instead of falling into rabbit holes With no thought of consequence, I should have painted the apartments Where I’d lived alone the same shade of yellow And spent years watching sunflowers gaze eastward And apple trees grow heavy in October’s chill Outside my long French windows.

But had I wasted all that time in caution, I would have never seen you coming forth In your state of disarray To hand me a half-smoked cigarette And kiss my lips to stain them dark And murmur your breathy promises Into the hollow of my collarbone.

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—Riley Boeth ’13

Jessica You ’15 Pencil Drawing

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Alexandra Pape ’12 Digital Composite Print

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TIGHTROPE WALKER In the nameless towns along this valley, we pitch our red and gold tents, drinking the shouts and the applause.

The ringleader has grown fat, and the old lion naps in his cage.

Brutus, the fire eater, and I sit by the open door of the train car, watching house lights stream below us like tumbling meteors.

Hearing the snores of the clowns piled in the corner, having nursed their gins goodnight, I imagine that now the tiger is lounging, swinging her tail like a pendulum, remembering the hot jungle haze.

A sliver of a moon flashes between trees, and it’s as if my rope is right before me.

It’s like walking the cliff’s edge in Colorado, desert winds running up the mountains — I have had a taste of flying up there, I can do no wrong.

—Alexandra Pape ’12

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MARILYN MONROE You’re the fragile shadow entering the room behind the bubbly blonde signing autographs for a mass of people declaring their love to a woman they really don’t know.

Again, a new man has sold you his lies in his Waldorf-Astoria suite, and you’re sucked in— like the tornado that hit your old town you hadn’t even heard about.

You blame the past few years and the day you said, “Let’s leave this place” and then drowned in a bottle before shattering it to toast the end of another night. Tell me, how does it feel to keep walking on broken glass?

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—Emily Johnson ’13

Hannah Webster ’12 Digital Composite Print

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Hannah Meduna ’12 Silver Gelatin Print

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FATALITY STOPS BY

(For Dorianne Laux)

Fatality comes to me again, a girl In a flowing, ocean-blue gown.

It’s not so bleak, she whispers,

Not like you were told, all gloom And solitude. There are bells And the salty smell of the sea, and each evening The foaming waves tumble onto the shore, But they always draw back before morning When I climb into a small white hammock To lie above a field of violets and listen To the whispers of mortals and sense their spirit, She declares, breathing a fragile sigh,

Especially when they weep and when they begin to sing About heartache and loss To the frost-coated apple blossoms.

—Charlotte Forcht ’12

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DAYLIGHT FADING Your pupil dilates and shrinks like a rock Bullied by a swelling current.

I swam there.

The water smacks the gray stone, The spray floats like mosquitos above a puddle Before it falls and sticks to my face.

I lick the dried salt from my lips, Inhale the stench of seaweed and snails.

The night smells like cold marble, And I remember knocking on your front door: Harriet Conley used to sunbathe nude In back of your house on Baker Street, And I quit baseball to sit gawking out your window, Hidden under dinosaur covers, thinking of pickup lines: “Did it hurt... when you fell from heaven?”

I remember you dodging grandparents On your way up the escalator, Your father, “The Doctor,” chasing after you, cursing, Naming all of the toys that you would never see again And Harriet cheering you on.

We googled “lunatic dad at the mall” that night To hear him yell cotton-headed ninny muggins, And to see the crooked-toothed smile Of glee that bewildered our imaginations.

We were as innocent as burglars.

We walked over rapids, Argued with our pets, And bathed in hot chocolate.

Biff always ate all the marshmallows.

Yet night will bring the mouse’s squeal, The owls’ eerie hoot and the child’s sobs,

Me duele tanto, me duele tanto.

The walls wrap four arms around him, And the stuffed cow whispers bedtime stories Of a mother in a remote tower waiting For her son to sail across some dark river.

Oh, the child already departing Closes his eyes as the sea after a tempest Lulls, and waves fall yawning on the sand.

—Bethany Simmonds ’12 16 The Lantern 2012

Jill Verzino ’12 Ink Drawing

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Kira Hunter ’14 Coil Pots

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WIND HORSES The sheer flags dipped in runny dye and prayers for the wind whip like Marwari flying steeds from their Banyan tree branches as the wild green grasses miles below lie hushed, the thick mountains rise into the gradient blue, the silken clouds.

In white shirt and Khakis you stand near the bluff and gaze toward the valley with its humble farms and fresh corn husks sizzling outside every rounded hut.

If you had known then that the view would not go on like this forever, that the straw-roofed houses, sparse on the plateaus rippling with every gust, would one day disappear, would you, I wonder, have stared at the village wives as their sickles, sweep after swing, carved into the reeds of their rice fields, and their red saris gathered and their bangles glimmered, for just a second longer?

—Tenzin Lama ’12

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THE VIEWER Do I have to remove my clothing so that I can stand contoured like a sugar maple after a hurricane, cold and chafed from the lashing winds and now bare of my orange leafy coat?

Must my naked self gleam as if under a single ray of sunlight among other deciduous trees disrobed in autumn as scheduled, rather than by demand?

Keep staring at me, why don’t you, my slender girth, my calves so carefully etched long for your approval.

Give me the dignity to turn away from your appraising glare.

Beauty is to be presented, offered, not exposed to be seen by your cultured eyes, so eager to distort me, shape me to some classic measure and make me seem too slender, too tall for your harsh reflective glass hanging on my wall.

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—Anna Eggert ’12

Anna Eggert ’12 Digital Composite Print

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Sunah Hong ’13 Oil Painting

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SARAH I found your card of different colored sticky notes Signed “Your BFF” in a drawer in my closet, And we were once again in your family’s blue station wagon, Spilling out our lunch bags on the seat, Peeling back the skin of my grapes to make eyeballs, And telling your mother about our day Of playing bloody Mary in the girl’s bathroom And of the boys cheating during freeze tag.

We’d steal your brother’s sweatshirts, Fill the pockets with goldfish, Then skip outside to climb trees.

I’d watch the bottom of your sneakers flit Through branches and light Until, glancing back at me, You slipped behind the sun’s sheer curtain To wait out the years up there— Away from Spanish projects and first kisses, Where storms spark and explode, Sunsets ignite the horizon, Clouds parade the sky dropping silver confetti— And leave me still wondering Who we’d be now if I had followed you.

—Bethany Simmonds ’12

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The SeaWife’s Curtains Sweet, simple eyelet curtains, rolling in midnight’s bittersweet breeze and lit by the taunting moonlight until the coral dawn puts you to an uneasy rest, your scattered embroidered eyes shifting to the cracks in the floor caked with old sand and back out to the salted flowers, crimson and thirsty in the sun, and trembling at night like a widow’s hand when her old sea house buckles and bends beneath the gale’s shattering winds screaming between each shutter and tile, the shadows in the attic cowering among candle-waxed iron and wine-stained letters, bring me your simple courage to move with easy grace among the icy gusts and whitecapped waves beating the senseless shore, the sea-salt cold stealing all traces of spring.

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—Ailsa Slater ’13

Qing Wang ’13 Platinum Print

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Hannah Clark ’12 Coil Pot

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Gingko Tree That lone gingko tree in the middle of the meadow feels tired, lonely.

It splashes its gold against a pewter sky, its branches hung by a puppet’s strings like the effigy of a sinner with his arms outstretched, feet dug into the ground.

But the leaves with the sunlight tremble their surfaces like butterflies’ wings freed from all of that, numerous, heavenly, a tenuous link for a creature seeking salvation.

—Tam Nguyen ’12

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This September It’s not even October, and the temperature is already dropping, so much so I turned on the heat tonight.

No one’s home, again, just the crickets, the spitting of the radiator, and me wishing Baker were still around so I could sit with him on that itchy rug and pull clumps of shedding hair off his coat to leave on the floor in a pile to tick Mom off.

Come home because…I miss you, though I’ll deny it if you ever repeat that.

I’m wishing I’d taken advantage of those times you asked me to play video games, and I’d give anything for the laughs of a win, the suspense of competition, the anger of a loss, in which I’d throw the controller down to hit the floor as hard as it just hit me that this is it: no more autumn nights at home together, shutters banging in the quickening wind and leaves fluttering off the front yard oak to drop with sharp turns in their paths and touch the ground running, as though not realizing their time together was only as long as the fall, and when the season changed it was time to move on, to be its own, and decay.

—Jillian Verzino ’12

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Addis Fouche-Channer ’13 Digital Composite Print

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Sierra Blazer ’13 Coil Pot

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DAYBREAK Why did the sun come up today?

To burn all the shadows down, flicking the foggy blankets off the sleepy, wild fields and, moving rashly, ruthlessly as a legion of light, it spares the crowns of trees from its long beam so thoroughly edged in dark, then breaks into the house where it ransacks all the dreams that hide themselves in the gloom of neglected corners.

It shows up all the cracks in the walls and in the rough desk surface, as in our ideas about the future, evaporating all the midnight visions, all our naïve plans, and here you are, alone in empty rooms, with no illusions, as if you were naked at the moment of daybreak.

—Nadia Gribkova ’14

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KAZAKHSTAN The wrinkled faces of old women Shopping for vegetables In midwinter bob in and out of sight As I dangle a bag of tomatoes And slimy noodles From my right hand And pay the vendor with my left.

The snow falls for the fourth time This week to weaken The dull Soviet colors Shrouding everything in gray and white.

The naked trees shiver in the winds And divide the landscape, And I can almost taste the metallic tang Of the small hard apples That grow in the short summer When the sun is ripe and the ground Is soggy. But today the coal smog Sits heavier than the furs That drape the Kazakhs’ necks, And we eat slow-cooked pasta, Chicken that drips off the bone And mushy vegetables, Dishes easily made and easily held To our chests when the weather Is like a coma snuffing out our senses And leaving us stranded in a sea of forget.

It is here that we are fated to lose Our hope for a better life Somewhere under the sun.

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—Kira Hunter ’14

Emily Morris ’13 Digital Panoramic Print

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Yike Wang ’14 Coil Pot

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SUNDAY That morning was so cold I scraped frost off the windshield with a spatula and watched my moist breath rise in our silver Honda.

Too early to drive without lights, but you were reluctant to scare away the marsh wrens balancing on cattails rocking like frenzied pendulums and a night heron sweeping in from the east like a whisper, heralding the periwinkle light Alexander Lombardi, two summers ago, painted — a spring rain, a first kiss, and a sunrise contained in a dew drop.

Here, wrapped in a blue afghan on the hood of the car, will we have to wait long for the spider’s web on the low sycamore branch to fill with trembling flames and threaten to drop to the earth still rousing itself from sleep?

— Alexandra Pape ’12

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A LAST APOLOGY The moss that grows in the wake of this unwelcome night Could never blur the memories we have or the pictures we took.

Blame cold, blame wonder, blame curious footsteps in frozen air— But in the still frost of dark, we all know the war’s at fault.

The war stood tall to block the sun, commanding in its thorns, And broke our bones to shards. We could not have stopped it.

And in the years coming, we hope you will forgive us, or forget us If forgetting helps the gloom recede from your stained mind.

We did not mean for this to happen here.

All the lies we told took control, And the stark white of our clean night was inked with misery.

We have as much to do to heal, to breathe again.

Our polluted air is filled to the brim with scraps of bone And the salt of tears, as is yours.

But one day this night will pull its fingers from your matted hair.

We are sorry we were ever there.

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—Riley Boeth ’13

Hannah Hudson ’14 Mixed Media

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Jillian Verzino ’12 Colored Pencil Drawing

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ROAD TRIP I had always said my palms were carved

from the pattern of the roads I’d need to travel for the rest of my life — eighteen years old, down Route 128 with the maps and Bible I threw out four exits behind me,

chasing unfamiliar highways and picking up Dave, the bearded hitchhiker who wanted only to preach what war was really like.

His hair — the color of dry hay, like Nugget, the dog we owned when I was six, before Dad sent him away to live with another family — shook when we bent our heads at every bridge, waving at the folks below

headed the opposite way, but still, in the wake of our silence, just heavy breathing, we spoke almost maturely, sensibly, with my hands on the wheel, his hands in his pockets.

And for once, maybe it will feel as though I actually know the way the roads curve past the gas station where I broke the cap, past the church where he threw out his cigarette, past the railroads and dead ends, past the years and childish dreams tossed out the back windows to route me someday back where I began:

at home, where all directions like lifelines come together.

—Emily Johnson ’13

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LAST ORDERS Maps leading to campsites And classified ads of airstreams Covered my grandfather’s intricate architectural drafts And unpaid tax statements withering on his desk.

A tattered L.L. Bean bag Embroidered “Stuff” in royal blue thread Sat by the door with three red polo shirts And a paper-clipped stack of hundred dollar bills.

Messages in response to his search for a woman Who could clean and cook a casserole Collected in his inbox among spam emails Headlined “You’re never too old to roam.”

The wired rotary phone above the kitchen sink Rang from widowed grandmothers He met at Westover’s School’s grandparents day Where he introduced himself as “Howie the Hot Commodity.”

And as I sorted his belongings into piles— The abandoned ambitions Left scattered through the house Like ghosts of an incomplete life— I wondered if this is what he wanted: His maps burned for fire starters, His taxes paid and shredded, His calls left unanswered.

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—Anna Eggert ’12

Alisa Tiong ’13 Cyanotype Print

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Hannah Meduna ’12 Digital Photograph

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CAVI Through the narrow streets of scarred stucco walls Little men balancing trays of fish on bicycles Tip their hats and salute with boisterous bon journos.

The sun like an eavesdropping child peeks Behind a veil of misted mountains; church bells Clang as fishermen rub their tired eyes And turn to greet the morning.

Oh Cavi, both new and familiar, In your musty harbors old men Linger to gossip and smoke Late into the afternoon.

I smell the perfume of warm bread Wafting around a corner I have never turned, Its street sign faded, dingy, foreign.

I am a stranger here, Embarrassed to be so full of wonder For the marble fountains And small cafes, smoke pouring From the beaded doorways.

I want to become lost, To drift inconspicuously like a dove Wandering between the jerking cart Of the village market, scattering feathers Like a trail of breadcrumbs across the square. —Alexandra Pape ’12

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MOTHER Where are you, Mother?

Your acacia scent is so peachy that I want to mist myself in your redolence and lie with you again, listening to your heartbeats saying “daugh-ter, daugh-ter” as if you only think about me.

I would take your hands and feel your palms calloused with some folds from all the years of gardening cherry trees, pruning them every Saturday and picking the most reddened and shiny fruits to bake the greatest pies for me to taste the warm abundance of your love.

From the other side of the world, I look out the window every night before sleep onto dark fields of grasses bent by wind, my heartbeats crying “Moth-er, Moth-er,” and one lonely cricket chirping that there is one place for us and it is very far away.

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—Sunah Hong ’13

Yi Xuan Chi ’13 Platinum Print

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Olivia Spadola ’13 Digital Panoramic Print

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LOVE IS A DREAM - the one when I’m sitting naked on the trapeze, cowering in the dancing spotlight, my feet numbed by heavy stares when music shushes the cell phones and fighting children, and the smell of popcorn is trapped in my nose.

Love tastes like the first day of school, patting you on the back one minute, shoving you against the lockers the next, and suddenly I’m back in Clarke County High School gym twiddling my thumbs, waiting for Tim Summerfield to walk over and ask for this dance because I just can’t resist his topaz eyes and boyish grin, except his eyes weren’t really topaz.

Boys like him play pickup basketball in the park until the hoop gets lost in the dark, and drunken girls hide liquor in their dresses before piling into cars that drive by diners with neon “open” signs flickering like indecisive streetlights.

And then on Monday he’d walk with such swag down the hallway because he’s six-two and owns a letterman jacket.

Summer lovin’ had me a blast, I’d imagine him singing on the top of the bleachers, the lithe cat of curiosity stomping on my heart, making me wonder why I’m standing in the middle of the hallway having fantasies of his kissing me in the rain.

I was about as foolish as a squirrel, thinking one day he’d pick me up in his Mustang, and we’d walk together along mud trails over wooded hills that once felt like mountains.

Boardwalks leave splinters in our bare feet and the one thing we’re certain of is that we are uncertain of everything.

Tu sei quello che stavo aspettando, he’ll whisper to me under the spring constellations as if we weren’t two separate shadows on opposites sides of the yard, waiting for some light to carry us to the center of the garden and let the voltage of our fingertips kindle a spark seen all across East Berryville.

—Katherine Lawlor ’12 The Lantern 2012 47

CHRISTINA’S WORLD Her skin stretches over bones like vagrant breezes over wilting wildflowers.

Slight and unnoticed, a wagon’s tracks trail past her, where a gray house blends with gray skies, and disappear just over the hill— there and gone, having missed her, like everyone else in the world.

It seems Wyeth had it right: we are most desolate when we lose a chance to be taken away from ourselves— when a rickety cart rambles past with no response but a gasp of wind to tuck a dress under a leg and stick a loose strand to a lip, or when an evening’s bright moon glows over winter skin until familiar clouds cover nighttime warmth.

Her world is the same as ours, but no one’s told her that.

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—Jillian Verzino ’12

Eunice Oh ’14 Pencil Drawing

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Katie Solley ’13 Coil Pot

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MY GRANDMOTHER From the wooden swing under the fat pine tree, I watch you in your county fair-winning garden, cutting black-eyed Susans for the table and for the skinny glass vase on my dresser.

When you stand up tall to ease your back, you seem grounded to me, like the old, rippling mountains behind you.

A gusty wind tickles our field of wildflowers, ruffling the lupin, milkweed, and evening primrose, and I wonder how you keep your white curls so neatly tucked away in your yellow bonnet when my own hair is blown into knots.

You slowly put each flower and your rusty scissors into your straw basket and gaze at your black cat raising its haunches and swishing its tail at some grasshopper, prompting you to laugh and murmur something I cannot hear.

I swing back and forth, thinking I will be happy for a long while.

—Myrna Cox ’14

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ARE YOU STILL SMOKING? Maybe you’re the liar, the impossible one, the adolescent hiding the Malibu behind his back or the mother covering the sweat of her nights.

Maybe it’s the smoke that slides into your lungs that you love, blackening them, coughing your death, putting on the funeral mask, rising up from your grave, kissing the earth and the worms, kissing my feet.

Oh yes, you are.

Surrender finally: maybe I’m the one who teaches and you’re the one to cheat.

I call on you as I call on the past.

Tomorrow I will stop, I promise.

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—Anna Chahuneau ’14

Tam Nguyen ’12 Charcoal and Chalk Drawing

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Jessica You ’15 Ink Drawing

Laura-Delight van Tartwijk ’14 Ink Drawing 54 The Lantern 2012

RAINY AFTERNOON IN SAIGON The first raindrops splatter Against the veranda In a fat crackle Hushing street chatters As if a volume knob Had been cranked counterclockwise.

By the alley’s corner The woman who sells toys Scrunches her eyes At a lilting cloud and grasps Her wandsticks and slap bracelets.

The moped scooters bellow, And rain beats on a man Piggybacking his daughter, Who chortles at the mud On her sandals.

Somewhere between shuttered Rows of windows And soaking pavements, Moments are up for grabs To place inside pockets When the afternoon brings a shower That turns a scrambled street Into a metronome thumping Eight-beat measures And drums on flustered lives An echo near that cadence Of so many hearts.

—Tam Nguyen ’12

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CHUM By accident, I found you in the very bottom of that redwood drawer: the fifth from the left in the second row, hair in bangs rezoned above sharp eyebrows.

Even at this distance in time, your dark hazel eyes draw mine, as do the sunbeams, melted in the curvature of your lips that flows into dimples like goblets of golden honey wine, sweet as you, my chum, the one who slyly snuck into every film I made.

Remember Algebra One, our sixth period of fourth grade when the teacher’s lectures lengthened the autumn afternoon but you and I sat alone, reserving two seats by the window, staring at the maple trees burned by reckless sunsets, or exchanging dreams in whispers?

Those secrets, once covered beneath your soft voice, perfume the air around, the fragrance of childhood preserved and distilled.

There I was, one of only two girls in the back row, my hair fringed, long enough to be clipped under the hairpin, forehead exposed to the sunshine, glaring bravely out at this early summer, season of departure, of starting point, of terminus, as if we were the mathematical definition of rays which suddenly turned practical: the same initial point but finally released, extended infinitely toward opposite directions and never, never to meet again.

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—Yike Wang ’14

Addie Pates ’15 Pencil Drawing

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Hayley Choi ’13 Coil Pot

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MEMOIRS OF A CLICHÉ Are we nothing more than overused expressions, discarded, a list of what not to write, what not to say, what not to do, our sandy tears in thought-balloons of comments dripping red, condemning the use of sunsets?

The sun is hackneyed when, beautiful, gorgeous, and awesome, clouds fluffing to join its ranks, it sets against an expanse of crimson ink.

And skies, melancholy and knowing, face a bloody demise while wisps of chimney smoke are swept along by gentle breezes, and through blossoming meadows brooks murmur in crisp, cool air.

Autumn leaves should rustle and crunch beneath heavy steps, stars twinkle, eyes sparkle, and fires crackle.

Yes — tears may fall, waves crash, noses smell, and chirping birds seek shelter from driving rain, but our hearts break because…because in poems blinking stars have ceased to be amazing.

We cannot babble, or flicker, or hug or crash or reach.

But clouds will continue to gather, the sun will set, and someone, somewhere, will be crying on a beach, there, in a poem, but not us.

We’ll just be outlawed on posters, sliced and crumpled, blooming like scarlet roses in trashcans.

—Marianna Mead ’13

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VIOLIN I never loved you, I guess, ever since you insinuated your sleek curves into my grade school classroom, your wooden elegance and shimmering strings so out of place, and you shrieked that day under the stage lights, calling attention to yourself, resenting my numb touch, refusing to sing Bach for me no matter how much I begged you.

And I tried to get beyond your smooth veneer to be your friend or lover.

Then I abandoned you at last and left you in that musty closet half a globe away from where I am and began to miss your lovely voice.

I asked you one last time, “Will you miss me?” and heard the silence when you couldn’t even answer.

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—Chae Uhm ’13

Yi Xuan Chi ’13 Platinum Print

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Hannah Hudson ’14 Charcoal and Chalk Drawing

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LETTERS TO A PLEBE She wrote as though she had no recollection of what warm skin felt like, only the cool, sweaty hands that pressed too firmly on her frail paper, her handwriting a sad attempt at elegance, like a child strutting in her mother’s Sunday dress.

She wrote as though each line kept them attached, as if the structure of the script could mask true brokenness.

She scratched away while the ink whimpered onto her canvas, muting the desperation heard when her words were spoken aloud.

She wrote as though the distraction of her nervous shiver would never find the silence necessary to fix her “M,” such an important letter: Midshipman, Maryland,

Miss you,

My sailor.

—Cristina Pretto ’12

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TO THE GREAT RIVER Washing the jagged shore, Rinsing sons after fathers, Eroding trophies, smoothing scars From the days when sunsets plated the earth with gold In the years when mountains braced the firmament With their spine.

Knee-deep in the slow current, The white-haired fisherman greets the years Of his growing age, Sloshing a jar of wine For the new passages coming, For the epic legends fading.

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—Yi Xuan Chi ’13

Melissa Hall ’12 Coil Pot and Thrown Mug

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Keelin Sweeney ’12 Hand-Knit Sweater

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SQUALLS The basketball pounding asphalt sounds spring before the robins do, and the wind hums in a pitch it can only reach when the sun splits dense clouds to warm its lips.

I abandon the flannel barn coat and head to the back yard, leaving the screen door ajar, and wait for a wet, black nose to nudge through the opening and lead the wiggling, shining Labrador out into gusts. They both encircle me, his short hairs tossing about in the swells.

Sometimes winter wisps from many years ago can be found, one scraggly end curled around a loose strip of bark, another glinting sparks of sun at me to catch my eye and wave back and forth in April’s squalls as it once did mounted on that coat I used to believe would always keep him warm.

—Jillian Verzino ’12

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A BLOWN MUSE I call on my muse only to hear the busy signal.

Behind the coffee shop counter Erin operates the computer, and over her lisp I can hear her speak of the last boy who dumped her.

Still I’m disconnected from the transformer box of images as if a fuse has blown.

Perhaps some disaster has brought the power line down, like an earthquake or the snap and thud of a falling oak tree.

She’s done preparing my caramel latte rich with whole milk and frothing through the sipping slot.

Maybe a short in the wires between an impulse and me has left me disengaged and all Erin can tell me is that they should turn the tables to face the counter — no strong current there to hit a breaker in the circuit and no rhyme or meter in the phone’s ringing or metaphor in the morning delivery of sugar packets and paper ware.

Muse, my electrician, hook me back up, get me out of the busy signal of this scribbling.

—Anna Eggert ’12

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Clara Keane ’12 Charcoal Drawing

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Ianna Wechter ’12 Digital Photograph

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FUNERAL They wrap themselves in thick black wool As if to drive away some bitter cold That plays along their spines.

They stand in rows, Watching the corpse, Which sings a song of freedom That only a few can hear: No more pills, No more bad days, No more forgotten children.

Out beyond this smoky incensed air Only the smell of day lilies That drifts in like the memory of a past summer, Subtle and alarming, And maybe when the petals wilt, The scent of new beginnings Might spread over the gravestones.

—Lizzy MacDougall ’14

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DEER I dreamt I was a doe waiting at the edge of a clearing, and dried leaves were wavering like flames on white birches.

It was as if the light of the world pooled within my strange eyes and I tensed, upon seeing you in the tall grass.

In that moment eastward shadows stretched across a field speckled with clover and mayweed. The frosty wind carried a thrush’s warbling, and I thought I would drown in that rippling sea before me.

Oh how I wanted to run back to my dark pines, sunlight blinking on the mumbling brook and morning mists curling around ancient ferns.

But my slender legs were frozen in the withering earth and I was struck by you, my heart trembling like the bow in your hands.

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—Alexandra Pape ’12

Ginelle van Tartwijk ’12 Panoramic Print

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Poetry Awards Smith College Poetry Prize for High School Girls in New England

Finalist: Riley Boeth ’13, “A Last Apology”

Connecticut Poetry Society Lynn DeCaro Poetry Contest

1st Prize: Chae Uhm ’13, “Violin”

2nd Prize: Anna Eggert ’12, “Last Orders”

Honorable Mentions: Riley Boeth ’13, “Slash and Burn” Lizzy MacDougall ’14, “Funeral”

Connecticut Scholastic Poetry Awards

Silver Key, Poetry: Alexandra Pape ’12, “Postcard from Madison, Connecticut”

“Cavi”

“Deer”

Bethany Simmonds ’12, “Canada Geese”

“Falling”

“Frog”

Honorable Mention, Poetry: Hannah Meduna ’12, “Early June Nights”

“Chelsea”

“Stare Miasto Postcard”

“Ravens” Connecticut Young Writers Trust Competition

State Poetry Finalists: Bethany Simmonds ’12, “Daylight Fading”

Ailsa Slater ’13, “Seawife’s Curtains”

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Art Awards Connecticut Scholastic Art Awards Gold Key

Anna Eggert ’12, Photography Portfolio

Addis Fouche-Channer ’13, Bunny, Digital Composite Photograph

Hannah Hudson ’14, Mr. Smee, Pencil Drawing

Clara Keane ’12, Drawing/Painting Portfolio

Alexandra Pape ’12, Photography Portfolio

Hannah Webster ’12, Photography Portfolio

Silver Key

Hannah Meduna ’12, Chanel Shoes with Toaster, Digital Photograph

Emily Morris ’13, Roxbury Airport, Panoramic Photograph

Dana Smooke ’14, Taz, Pencil Drawing

Honorable Mention

Sierra Blazer ’13, Multi-Colored Coil Pot, Ceramics

Sunnah Hong ’13, Taped Memories, Painting

Eunice Oh ’14, Boxes, Pencil Drawing

Olivia Spadola ’13, Marching Band, Panoramic Photograph

Yike Wang ’14, Double Dipped Coil Pot, Ceramics

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