2013 Lantern

The

Lantern 2013 Volume CIV

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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 CIV

Editors in Chief Sierra Blazer ’13 Riley Boeth ’13 Emily Morris ’13 Liv Burns ’14

Poetry Editors Emily Johnson ’13 Ailsa Slater ’13 Anna Chahuneau ’14 Nadia Gribkova ’14 Kira Hunter ’14

Art Editors Andie Dahl ’14 Hannah Hudson ’14 Laura-Delight van Tartwijk ’14 Leigh Kulpa ’15 Joscie Norris ’16

Advisors Bruce Coffin Sara Poskas Rich Beebe

Photography Consultant Michael Gallagher

May 2013 Westover School Middlebury, Connecticut

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We dedicate The Lantern to Michael Gallagher with gratitude and appreciation for his inspired teaching and his service to this publication.

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Poetry Last Weekend of Summer Mother’s Flowers March The Chrysanthemum The Little Things The Soldier’s Wife Blackbeard’s Daughter Atonement My Mother’s Dressing Room Dana Water Tower Streetlight Young Rehoboth Evasions White Clover In the Pool Truth is a Gas Station A Memory of the Well Departure Seen From Above Shelf Life Angel Highways Berry Picking Peaches in December Ice Rink Insomniac’s Wife Dragonflies Voyeur

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Emily Johnson ’13 Sierra Blazer ’13 Olivia Pesce ’15 Leigh Kulpa ’15 Emily Johnson ’13 Myrna Cox ’14 Ailsa Slater ’13 Eunice Oh ’14 Afua Nsiah ’15 Katherine Solley ’13 Hannah Hudson ’14 Nadia Gribkova ’14 Kira Hunter ’14 Liv Burns ’14 Anna Chahuneau ’14 Chae Uhm ’13 Julia Davis ’13 Kira Hunter ’14 Irene Chung ’15 Riley Boeth ’13 Cailee Tallon ’14 Joscie Norris ’16 Charlotte Iwasaki ’14 Emily Johnson ’13 Riley Boeth ’13 Lauren Danielowski ’14 Atia Curtiss ’13 Liv Burns ’14 Soo Jin Chi ’14 Anna Chahuneau ’14

9 10 13 14 17 18 21 22 25 26 29 30 33 34 37 38 41 42 45 46 49 50 53 54 57 58 61 62 65 66

Artwork Photographs

Drawings

Catherine Bates ’13 Emily Morris ’13 Liv Burns ’14 Olivia Spadola ’13 Stephanie Crudele ’14 Alisa Tiong ’13 Addis Fouché-Channer ’13 Catherine Caroe ’14 Catherine Bates ’13 Emily Morris ’13 Julia Friedman ’13 Evie Summermatter ’14 Addis Fouché-Channer ’13 Liv Burns ’14 Paintings Eunice Oh ’14 Sculpture Joscie Norris ’16

8 11 19 23 31 35 43 44 48 52 55 56 60 67

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Kathy Lee ’14 Nadia Gribkova ’14 Myrna Cox ’14 Hannah Hudson ’14 Addie Pates ’15 Joscie Norris ’16 Soo Jin Chi ’14 Sophia Lee ’15 Eunice Oh ’14 Sophia Lee ’15 Alexia Byusa ’13 Brittany Brown ’16 Joscie Norris ’16 Leigh Kulpa ’15 Ceramics Grace Uhl ’15 Marisa Littmann ’14 Kate Scott ’13 Katherine Solley ’13

12 20 27 32 36 39 47 51 59 63 64 69 69 70

16 28 28 40

Cover art by Leigh Kulpa ’15 Page 1 Lantern drawing by Hannah Hudson ’14 Page 2 Lantern drawing by Ji Won Park ’11 Page 5 photo by Nikki Tourigny ’05 Page 72 Lantern drawing by Andie Dahl ’14

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Catherine Bates ’13 Photograph

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LAST WEEKEND OF SUMMER Someday when we’ve traded our bare feet for pairs of shoes we still haven’t broken in yet, we’ll try to remember the sweet taste found in bitterness when you’re seventeen and you’ll say anything tastes good, you just want to end the summer perfectly.

But isn’t it the future we always dream and talk about— when we’ll dangle our car keys, make our own dinners, need no excuses for our parents, and know for sure that the more you’re with him, whoever he is, the more you want to risk those years, the way the willow tree wrestles with the wind, the two of you not growing up, but growing in together— like the four of us, trailing our own path down the unnamed woods?

For now, all borders are just an excuse to go where the trees keep us company out beyond the sleepy town with its old neighbors and their curious flashlights who can tell stories we can’t.

Some morning I’ll wish I could remember how I said things I probably shouldn’t have and how we mixed drinks like the concoctions we made in your kitchen when we were seven and trying to create the world with a bowl and a whisk.

—Emily Johnson ’13

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Mother’s Flowers I have loved the smell of my mother’s curls when we seldom embrace: blonde honey, better than any valley of wild lavender hidden by the mountains around Missoula.

Before the surgery she thought would bring her death, in between lessons on why to never trust men (because they are awful, and even if they aren’t at first, they will change), she imparted parting words, just in case anesthesia were to take her hand in greed and lead her to the fields of black-eyed Susans that spring from the ashes we scatter.

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—Sierra Blazer ’13

Emily Morris ’13 Photograph

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Kathy Lee ’14 Drawing

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MARCH A temptress of a different sort, she pays no heed to our irritation, dangling summer before us as one would tease a tired old dog.

She previews a clear sky, tantalizing us with budding daffodils rising from the slushy ground, a flirtatious sun, a breezy afternoon.

We resent these hours, all unpredictable, lazy, and slow.

We can feel the pulse of longer days sending vibrations through the anxious wind, can almost taste the sticky air, the heavy heat settling over the meadow, the buzz of life trembling beneath the moist soil.

Then, without warning, we wake to frost cloaking our windows like blurred inscriptions of a love letter long-awaited, promising a season that will never come.

­—Olivia Pesce ’15

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THE CHRYSANTHEMUM The petals are now just A wrinkled dress With burgundy tiers of peau de soie, The skeleton and its leaves Stretch toward the barren Sides of the Waterford crystal, And just as hands fold Bright-colored figurines, Time creases and embellishes The chrysanthemum into wispy origami.

The flowers as they weep, The tapestry of inky red And olive green tickle the vision, Enthrall the eye with strange beauty While, at the lifeless vase Frozen in glory for all eternity, Not one second is relinquished.

How we cherish the time We have with the treasure That begs for cloaks and Wings lightly feathered To prolong its days!

How the glimmer of timelessness In the crystal deceives us!

But the real diamond, The modest fragility, Slips slowly across our fingertips To leave us grasping only air.

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—Leigh Kulpa ’15

Eunice Oh ’14 Painting

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Grace Uhl ’15 Ceramics

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THE LITTLE THINGS “Why do you sweat the small stuff?” my sister always asks me, while my brother urges me to “go with the flow.”

She wastes half her morning in front of the mirror doing her makeup that smudges within the first hour and overwhelming herself with perfume I can taste down the hallway.

He listens to what his friends say so as to fit in and stays out late at night, even though he wishes my parents weren’t waiting up worrying. He still comes home wanting to be somebody else.

On a sizzling July morning I once saw a pig-tailed girl run in distress to an ant another girl had stomped on and without words tell her someday soon enough she would see in a certain blinding light the pattern of her future along the fractures of the concrete road, like the marks across her palm.

And you tell me what the little things in life are.

—Emily Johnson ’13

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THE SOLDIER’S WIFE

My husband is a distant man, and so I wait for him— for an email from the Middle East, a letter, a call, for anything assuring me that when the plumes of smoke and the bursting of shells disperse into a brief, thin silence, he still thinks of me.

Back here at home, the lake sloshes upon our wooden docks, flops onto the roots of the tall pines, and pulls away dry needles and gray pebbles.

I could give up on the cloudless skies, I could even give up on the world sticking to us in these humid months but for the dew-soaked roses he planted years ago.

The wind blows down from Canada, ruffling the placid lake and spinning the pinwheels in our garden.

In the evening moths flutter around my flashlight so I can’t read War and Peace on the porch, almost as if they were his fingers covering my light to stop me from torturing myself by seeing him marched up to me in a white envelope, dead, and feeling that tug of the late summer breeze pulling me toward the city, as it always does, sigh after sigh, as if to remind me that it’s time to go.

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—Myrna Cox ’14

Liv Burns ’14 Photograph

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Nadia Gribkova ’14 after Edward Hopper Drawing

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BLACKBEARD’S DAUGHTER

My father is a broken man, two fingers strung along some rocky shore, one of his eyes lost beneath the mist of Tamarindo, so each time before he leaves, I wrap his shoulders in a sealskin to keep his heart from blowing into the sea.

At dawn I wake and comb out the strands of moonlight tangled in my hair, then count the wine-scented medallions and blood-spattered pearls, to feel the trace of his bare, cold hand on mine.

At night the sun turns a foolish gold, blotting my dreams with scents of sharp salt, and I see him chasing the horizon under full sail, the rum-drunk sea reeling beneath him.

Soon he will wake out there on a creaky starboard to sharpen his sword and rub his hands on a tarnished candelabra, while I wind the clock under a gray sky once again to call the seagulls around and bring him home on the next moon-burnt tide.

—Ailsa Slater ’13

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ATONEMENT The soothing hands of fall have finally covered the heavy eyes of summer, Weary with fervent nights that made good gentlemen suffer.

Lemonade and ice cream carts are gone, And nothing fills the heart of a leisurely stroller But the distant sound of swelling acorns And the faint aroma of foliage.

Preschool boys with snarled locks and glowing eyes, Laughing their breaths out into mid-September light, Tumble along with the rustling leaves on slopes As though there never was such a thing As asphalt roads in blinding August.

And I stand there under the azure autumn sky, So strongly overtaken by senses and without filter That I offer an exuberant prayer, Hands raised like a candle flame, Hoping someday I’d no longer be baffled between My aspirations to hurl and to grasp the world at the same time.

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—Eunice Oh ’14

Olivia Spadola ’13 Photograph

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Joscie Norris ’16 Sculpture

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MY MOTHER’S DRESSING ROOM Porcelain dolls stretch out their hands as if to reach for something they can’t quite grasp— grandfather clock, crystal decanter, the silver spoons from the tea set.

Purple light flickers, shadows brush the ceiling, and smells of musk, perfume, and dust lace the air.

My mother at her vanity, applying makeup to the barely visible bruises, stares into her eyes as if searching for something that isn’t there at all.

Fabric cascades from the shelves, the blue pigments melt together like a waterfall, or like tears.

Christmas gifts wrapped early and piled in the corner argue with her neat stack of suitcases under the purses hung up on the ceiling, dangling like a flock of birds flying south for the winter, determined to return only when things are better.

—Afua Nsiah ’15

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DANA We hurry across the camp to tease the boys And settle who has become cuter with age, Who is a jerk, and who likes whom.

You bewilder me when you say you’ve tried weed.

We talk about your father’s untimely death, About the new man’s button-downs In your mother’s recently excavated closet.

We killed our first swim tests but failed the second.

You have to be thirteen to venture past the last docks, So we stayed up that night lamenting our endless youth.

Joined at the hip, we pretend we’re cousins Separated only when camp ended. You said, “Goodbye,” And I said, “See you next year.”

In our Saturday phone calls I tell you How I fought with my friend, How I was plagued by a stomach bug at Christmas.

You were supposed to listen when I said, “Be safe in that big city of yours.”

Anthony should have left the methadone with his father, Your mother should have nudged you awake that Tuesday night From your deep sleep, filled with dreams Of thrown graduation caps, discarded wedding dresses, And the first laughter of your children.

It will be forever until I see you.

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—Katherine Solley ’13

Myrna Cox ’14 Drawing

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Kate Scott ’13 Ceramics

Marisa Littmann ’14 Ceramics 28

WATER TOWER My coach insists a runner flows; steps are drops decisively placed, each a small indication of the larger, relentless downpour drummed into dry earth.

Me, I’ve endured the blistering of a strained chest, the seething of tired calves enough to know that the only torrent is that of cheers, a rush that tugs each singed survivor to the line.

When my lungs ignite, it’s like papers in a bonfire, smoldering, folding, curling in on themselves.

Was it last night’s fitful sleep with its dreams of the trails, narrow ribbons that spool between roots on the forest floor, or the misplaced trust in my mother’s creaky elbow that had predicted thunder showers?

My lines of sight are warped, distorted by a pane of dark smoke, the bubbled glass of an old window streaked with rain.

The water tower at the top of this hill holds for me a single concrete promise: the vigorous flags flanking the finish chute, a deluge of cheers from the feverish crowd, and the afternoon’s golden light retreating behind a woods draped in lengthening shadow at the long day’s end.

—Hannah Hudson ’14

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STREETLIGHT

And there again, The aster of the streetlight Now opens up above black buildings’ roofs, Releasing one by one sharp, shiny petals To poke the fat sides of the growing darkness, Admire its own reflection in the dirty puddle, Splashing light around, and in a second, Walls, trees and sleeping flowerbeds Are covered in its yellow pollen In its own time. It’s got the lead, As if it were tired of staying upstage Watching the show from there And giving away its part to distant things With its immodest brightness.

Now, from the top of its strong, tall stem It can witness the midnight kiss and robbery, The lady with a dog who lost her way And stopped before it bloomed in shadows To find out her directions and watch it Glance at the cold, distant stars And their faded glory.

—Nadia Gribkova ’14

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Stephanie Crudele ’14 Photograph

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Hannah Hudson ’14 Drawing

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YOUNG

I look too young for my age, so I have to argue my way onto the rides at Six Flags, and I have never been caught when ordering from the under-12 menu at IHOP. On the days when my appearance goes off on her own to buy the smaller size, the higher heels, and the pepper spray that she clutches to her chest when she travels alone by train, my age and I take our time, spending it writing poems and talking with strangers, eating foreign foods and learning long, dulcet words like chiaroscuro— leonine limbs swaying to the music of the fair two streets over.

I will never be her, though she wishes she were me, so at those times when the book she cannot reach lies just below her fingertips, I will gather up my things and leave her wondering whether it could possibly be that I know something she does not.

—Kira Hunter ’14

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REHOBOTH (After Mary Oliver) I walked, still doused in sleep, from the quiet of our house to the bay one August night in Rehoboth, balancing barefoot over the cracked skeletons of horseshoe crabs.

I thought you were the discarded shrapnel of soda cans and sand pails left behind as mementos of a child’s summer.

They call your kind living fossils; of all the causes of melancholy, what is more apparent than carrying on and not progressing? You watch the world with seven eyes, glossy and unseeing, your spiny legs stroking the sky in the dim light of pre-dawn.

Will it all soon be as foreign to me as it is to you?

Time hasn’t touched this bay, calm in the pale blue morning, and even if it rushed through as a river, you alone would witness, ankle-deep in the cold water, the blind wanderings of those who claim to see.

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—Liv Burns ’14

Alisa Tiong ’13 Photograph

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Addie Pates ’15 Drawing

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EVASIONS The lampposts, like two cats in the grey morning, Crouch to watch over the town with fog hats, City bells strike the hours of the ghosts, who come out To sweep the sidewalks with their robes, smell the rainy air, And crush the ashes of last night’s smoking chimneys.

Our embrace tastes of sweet caramel when the children Sleep, but at the breakfast table, between two jars Of jam I see you escaping the kiss goodbye, Ready to fling yourself at a pencil skirt artist Who still shakes when she walks in heels.

The sharp scissors of loneliness slice into my skin Just as we learned in origami class: Cut, fold, fold again, as many times as you want, You will always see a bird with a golden gun, Until maybe one day the thief will steal the lives You arranged so neatly or you’ll forget to pick up the kids.

Just leave it to Nikky; she’s no joker with what has to be done, And she senses who is watching her—the monks Standing behind dark windows, knowing That all this late snow comes from the dead Who live in our stopped clocks. They sabotage The minutes to hold literary discussions in their boredom, Not knowing what to do with their heavy hands.

Tant de temps perdu qu’on s’en mord les dents, So much that night picks up her coat, fed up with our little concerns And day takes over the show, as he always does.

The husband and mistress drive away from the weed-choked Landings strips, swearing they never loved the ones they left behind.

—Anna Chahuneau ’14

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WHITE CLOVER Whenever you bloom, wildflower, Wherever you wither, You are still a remnant Of a cloud on the side of the road.

That your sparkling pearls shall be forgotten, That your name shall never be recalled, And that one day you shall slip away into the vast azure Does not, never did, plague you.

Year after year you tiptoed onto the edge of that same highway To adorn the May afternoons with your own delicate fragrance— A fleeting scent that drifted away into the hills And mingled with the willows beside slow-moving streams— Until you felt my gaze upon your flushed cheeks And faded away, just like that.

Only then did I realize how lovely you were.

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—Chae Uhm ’13

Joscie Norris ’16 Drawing

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Katherine Solley ’13 Ceramics

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IN THE POOL Water smothers the clamor of the deck, and I can hear laughter and shouting die as I dive to the bottom.

I like to be a myth, a mermaid or siren existing only for the short moments when I close my eyes and hold my breath.

Serenity filters through the water with the sun and the floating motes, and, reaching the concrete seabed, I find my seat and greet my host with impossibly long strings of bubbles and a wave.

I wait for them to clear, lift the invisible teacup from the table, gulp my tea down, and drown.

—Julia Davis ’13

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TRUTH IS A GAS STATION Truth is a gas station where hardly anyone stops for instructions, even when their maps are mislabeled and the road ahead is nothing but a dirt lane that loops back several times before disappearing into the distance.

Every morning the lonely attendant puts on the only radio station she can find, Classical Oboe on 88.3, and spends the day eating fudgesicles and watching the rumble of families in dark-blue vans rolling themselves to a country where their children can blossom into something akin to a Valentine’s bouquet, grand but altogether useless.

In the evening the vents sputter awake, and the defunct register creaks beneath the heavy arm of a sleeping woman who ran away last night and found the details of her life displayed on shelves— teeth she had lost in first grade, her white confirmation dress, and a framed photo of her mother in bed, as well as thirty-three calendars of desperate housewives posing at the bottom of an empty apple crate.

Outside, the oil tanks lean and groan on the back of an abandoned tow-truck that still has the keys in the ignition while blue buses filled with the dead come to soft stops and leave their passengers barefooted in front of the station’s one streetlight, where they never stay for long, just nod in acknowledgement and continue on their way, walking purposefully down a road steeped in dense trees that fold inward, hopefully towards someone they can love.

—Kira Hunter ’14 42

Addis Fouché-Channer ’13 Photograph

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Catherine Caroe ’14 Photograph

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A MEMORY OF THE WELL Turn right at the corner of my grandfather’s mansion, walk through the back yard of the house alone and lean over to look in the well.

Where clouds float between fallen leaves, the sky spreads out, and a blue wind whispers.

When the moon rises, Grandfather points out the North Star on the water, teaching me how to find the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia so I might never be lost, might find my way on a dark ocean.

In those deep waters, when stars fall down below where frogs’ songs draw ripples and when raindrops tap the silk surface, he tells me folk tales about graveyards washing away until, nameless but not lost, our ancestors’ voices sound from the depths, so I might never forget him, might never cry alone in the rain.

I lower the bucket to raise water from the well and drink the moon, clouds, sky, wind, and stars out of a dipper curved like my grandfather’s smile.

—Irene Chung ’15

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DEPARTURE Must you go?

Must you take all the ticket stubs From the red-eye flights we made across the Pacific, Those worthless coins we never exchanged At every border we crossed together, Shoeboxes of white satin ribbon You collected every Christmas, Or the old maps we marked with red markers On our way to visit my family in Louisiana’s crawfish heat, Staying at all the empty campgrounds we came across?

Must you pack away the birthday cards I decorated and wrote three words in every year?

We won’t be driving the PCH to visit your parents Once Thanksgiving comes around again, And you won’t be here to bring me clove cider In those chipped lilac mugs you made in art class.

But if you’re willing, we can go sell the sketches Of toucans and sassafras trees we bought On unnamed streets somewhere, For I’m sure we can figure out something That doesn’t include this self-imposed necessity, And you can stay here Among all our strange memorabilia In this apartment where the dust hides the mirrors And the wallpaper’s corners are beginning to coil, And love me for another year.

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—Riley Boeth ’13

Soo Jin Chi ’14 Drawing

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Catherine Bates ’13 Photograph

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SEEN FROM ABOVE Waking up from a dream hurts, tearing up the images, terminating the story that filled your mind’s eye with the scream of the alarm.

But life is alarming and puts you on the edge.

Sometimes, angels fall off cliffs, tumbling through the clouds, grasping at twigs as they crash through the trees.

Sometimes they go to heaven the same way, rushing upwards at a blinding speed, seeing the ground drop away from their sacred feet.

And I wonder, are they frightened?

I’ve learned that the only way to survive is to separate, to recoil from the gash inside and look at it from above because re-entering hurts more, rips open more cuts that haven’t yet healed, and takes longer than it would if we had just sat patiently and pieced the shards together.

Success, after all, can feel so harrowing, not perfect, just the absence of shattering.

—Cailee Tallon ’14

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SHELF LIFE He used to drive that sunburned pickup Through accumulated white drifts Like the layers of sawdust beneath his sawhorses— An antique clunker, Weathered from years of labor, Fenders welded, rust masked with paint, Gears and bolts replaced and reformed Like the scrap lumber he transforms into shelves and chairs.

On those frigid December mornings The old hound, Not tethered by any leash, Would sit beside him In the cab’s dark cave, Intently gazing forward.

As they pause before their travels, Snow flakes settle upon the hood And freeze their moment In the dead of winter Before the great thaw begins And a new dog succeeds his elder, Replaced like an old book With a crippled leather spine And frail, lifeless pages Left on the cracked vinyl seat Of a derelict truck Sold for scrap in 1998.

Everything has an expiration date, my father says: At some point it will all have to go.

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—Joscie Norris ’16

Sophia Lee ’15 Drawing

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Emily Morris ’13 Photograph

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ANGEL You always said you smoked to forget, And I thought that was stupid, But now I sing Queen lyrics to myself And smoke cheap blunts, puffing rings— Wisps of dreams, unanswered.

I can feel your coarse hands Tracing paths of ice along my spine As we lie, legs intertwined and spilling over The sides of the beige leather armchair We bought last autumn For half price at the neighbor’s tag sale.

Remember one night late in December When you were trembling and I broke That chipped, yellow teacup And doused you in tea?

Did I flinch when I saw your eyes, Two icy glints, boring into mine?

It’s probably naïve to believe in angels, But I was the kid who never stepped on cracks In the sidewalk and who spent hours Hunched over in the grass, searching For four-leaf clovers.

When I saw you with your frost-tipped hair, Shoulders slouching and thin lips drawn, I saw myself in your pained expression And remembered that broken mirrors Always bring bad luck, However much their shards Glint in the late November sun, Shattering the bare trees into flecks Of peeling bark smeared Across the whitewashed sky.

—Charlotte Iwasaki ’14

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HIGHWAYS Among the roads we took to bring us back to school that January, the windy one curving around the cow farm with its smell of manure and dying weeds always raised the hairs on my arms and made my heart swell.

Perhaps we’ve passed this same barn a thousand times, but I have a weakness for taking the long route with you.

Something about being in the passenger seat makes me forget that all highways are just reflections of the sky— clouds passing one another to head east first and never touching, in a way almost like myself when I drive alone down 98 thinking of conversations I’ve never had with people I’ve never met in places I’ve never been.

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—Emily Johnson ’13

Julia Friedman ’13 Photograph

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Evie Summermatter ’14 Photograph

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Berry Picking “Rain’s been heavy lately,” the farmhand drawls.

We slosh through mud in wellies under the crooked orchard trees, their arms outstretched in snarls, to find the strawberries we’re picking today into our five-pint baskets we’ll have emptied halfway home and stained our Toyota pink.

I could be here alone, maybe, or any place where I wouldn’t have to smile and pretend to love all this togetherness my mother’s been forcing down our throats since Dad left.

She says we’re trying to be a family and families pick fruit and laugh together.

She laughs and says how much fun it is to get dirty, here where the trees will be apple-ridden soon.

But no one mentions that we could have spent our time saying empty goodbyes and leaving to pursue our separate lives.

My mother sinks her teeth into the seeded flesh and grins, her mouth covered in the pink blood she says she adores so much.

“See?” She says. “Wasn’t that lovely?”

—Riley Boeth ’13

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PEACHES IN DECEMBER Golden nectar dribbles down your clean-shaven face While playful fuzz tickles your barren cheeks.

A sudden awareness of their nakedness Makes you miss the overgrown bush land That was your casual bohemian beard.

Romanced by tart droplets of summers past, You break into a fit of perfect reminiscence And relish the juices That flood your grateful mouth with memories From a warmer time: Dancing in the park fountain, fishing for pennies, Picking ugly dandelion heads That we turned into boutonnières, And sleeping on porches During the thunderstorms of summer nights.

Like everything that was ever good, It becomes shadowed by gruesome finality, And the dark, sardonic pit mocks you As the biting reminder of blackened hearts From loves long gone like the August harvest.

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—Lauren Danielowski ’14

Eunice Oh ’14 Drawing

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Addis Fouché-Channer ’13 Photograph

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ICE RINK My sleek and slippery surface now is healed By watery varnish swiftly turned to glass, My mirroring visage, previously concealed, Will shine a short-lived moment that will pass To welcome cutting edges. Blades of steel Engrave their mark of prowess and of force.

I’m gouged, cut, bruised, and yet each day I feel The tale they tell leaves me without remorse.

And as I ponder blemishes inscribed On my translucent page, I realize Each line, each curve, each powdery drift is grained With passion and with grace. I now reprise My endless role with gladness, not with spite.

When I’m renewed, I wait for what they’ll write.

—Atia Curtiss ’13

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INSOMNIAC’S WIFE My husband once told me that he has counted the breaths I take between 3 and 4 a.m. Apparently the number of times I had flipped my pillow in the month of August averaged double digits, and I have a habit of telling him I love him just as the Monday paperboys begin their route.

He’ll never be able to estimate the times I’ve searched the sea of rumpled sheets in the blue-gray light of dawn and not found him.

He paces the cool marble of the kitchen floor, matching the pulse of the grandfather clock with each slippered footstep, the bell at the top of every hour with another crumpled bag of Doritos eaten, another infomercial memorized, another mug of chamomile slugged back as if it were a nightcap.

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—Liv Burns ’14

Sophia Lee ’15 Drawing

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Alexia Byusa ’13 after Georgia O’Keeffe Drawing

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DRAGONFLIES If, in the purple and white marbling Of the flowers, we see God’s artistry, The dragonfly would be the final flourish, The last brush strokes that flash and sparkle.

One whirring its wings to lower Its long body toward the cosmos Vaunts its elegant figures, flutters And enchants at the same time, Descending like fallen angels set aflame By their sins. “Why are they here?”

I asked, but he did not answer then, Nor in the next fall when the flowers Bloomed again, not even when He had become one of them And I asked, “Why are you here?”

As if I were a theologian studying How the pink and orange tinges Spill into the wide expanse of sky And pondering heaven’s relationship to flies Only to have any question answered with silence And to watch their wings above the garden Reflecting all the light there was.

—Soo Jin Chi ’14

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VOYEUR I used to see him smirk at me in the reflection Of his TV playing a dreadful show about love And money. I saw him witness what My father refused to see: the bras hanging On the chair, blooming like wild flowers, And felt disgust at his pleasure while he watched Me undress. But I didn’t close the curtains.

I have to say I waited in the dark, too, but I thought I was subtler about it. When I heard his moaning blinds And the creasing of money from his moist Hand to her hustling stocking, I thought it was wrong To be a man. I should have known he had no one.

Now that a small family of Chinese has invaded His flat, I miss his timid stares at my naked parades— No one to approve my first cigarette and enjoy the ‘o’ Of my lips when I blow smoke off the rooftops— And I wait for someone to discover, as silently as he, The secrets I cannot even tell myself.

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—Anna Chahuneau ’14

Liv Burns ’14 Photograph

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

Finalist: Nadia Gribkova ’14, “Daybreak”

Semifinalists: Liv Burns ’14, “Rehoboth”

Kira Hunter ’14, “Young”

Connecticut Poetry Society Lynn DeCaro Poetry Contest

1st Prize: Afua Nsiah ’15, “My Mother’s Dressing Room”

3rd Prize: Ailsa Slater ’13, “Blackbeard’s Daughter”

Honorable Mentions: Liv Burns ’14, “Insomniac’s Wife”

Katherine Solley ’13, “Dana”

Connecticut Scholastic Poetry Awards

National Gold Key: Riley Boeth ’13, “A Last Apology,” “Berry Picking,” “Departure,”

“Slash and Burn”

Regional Silver Key: Emily Johnson ’13, “Last Weekend of Summer,” “The Little

Things,” “Marilyn Monroe,” “Must You Go?”

“Road Trip”

Regional Silver Key: Katie Kuenzle ’15, “The Pilgrimage of a Wooly”

After School Arts Program Celebration of Young Writers

Selected Young Writers: Liv Burns ’14, “Rehoboth”

Nadia Gribkova ’14, “Daybreak”

Hannah Hudson ’14, “Water Tower”

Afua Nsiah ’15, “My Mother’s Dressing Room”

Ailsa Slater ’13, “Blackbeard’s Daughter”

Connecticut Young Writers Trust Competition

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State Poetry Finalists: Riley Boeth ’13, “Berry Picking”

Kira Hunter ’14, “Young”

Charlotte Iwasaki ’14, “Angel”

Afua Nsiah ’15, “My Mother’s Dressing Room”

Ailsa Slater ’13, “Blackbeard’s Daughter”

Brittany Brown ’16

Drawing

Joscie Norris ’16 Drawing

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Leigh Kulpa ’15 Drawing

Art Awards Connecticut Scholastic Art Awards Painting and Drawing Leigh Kulpa ’15: Self Portrait Drawing, Honorable Mention Sophia Lee ’15: Self Portrait Drawing, Honorable Mention Sophia Lee ’15: Drawing, Honorable Mention Marie Shiraishi ’15: Self Portrait Drawing, Honorable Mention

Photography Addis Fouché-Channer ’13: Art Portfolio, Gold Key Hartford Art Scholarship Emily Morris ’13: Art Portfolio, Gold Key Award Stephanie Sorosiak ’13: Art Portfolio, Gold Key Award

Ceramics Grace Uhl ’15: Textured Coil Pot, Silver Key Award Hayley Choi ’13: Dragon Coil Pot, Silver Key Award

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