2014 Lantern

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The Lantern Volume CV

Editors in Chief Andie Dahl ’14 Liv Burns ’14 Anna Chahuneau ’14 Kira Hunter ’14

Poetry Editors Nadia Gribkova ’14 Afua Nsiah ’15

Art Editors Hannah Hudson ’14 LeighAnn Kulpa ’15 Joscie Norris ’16 Erin Bottino ’16

Advisors Bruce Coffin Sara Poskas Rich Beebe

Photography Consultant Caleb Portfolio

May 2014 Westover School Middlebury, Connecticut

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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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Poetry Water Sign Lamp Killer Clowns A Countryside Anthology Sleeptalking Tough Love Boarding Passes Blue Lemonade Mustang Small Greatness Blind That Time of Day The Knives in This House Blind Tourists at the Musée Rodin High School Boys Captives Skyscrapers Emily’s Tale The Carnival My Grandmother’s Thoughts . . .

Muses Cape Henlopen Early Bedtimes in Summer Dried Flowers Atlantis Let’s Set Something on Fire Via dei Serpenti Icelandic Morning For Those of You Who Want To Pray For Me New Year’s Eve, London

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Rhian Lewis ’14 Anna Chahuneau ’14 Kira Hunter ’14 Lauren Danielowski ’14 Nadia Gribkova ’14 Afua Nsiah ’15 Liv Burns ’14 Eunice Oh ’14 Anna Chahuneau ’14 Joscie Norris ’16 Patricia Collins ’17 Nola Iwasaki ’16 Nadia Gribkova ’14 Kira Hunter ’14 Myrna Cox ’14 Charlotte Iwasaki ’14 Minh To ’15 Leah Nashel ’16 Lauren Benedetto ’14 Olivia Pesce ’15 Elizabeth Reed ’14 Hannah Hudson ’14 Cailee Tallon ’14 Farahnaz Afaq ’14 Rhian Lewis ’14 Myrna Cox ’14 Hannah Hudson ’14 Anna Chahuneau ’14 Nadia Gribkova ’14 Kira Hunter ’14

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Artwork Photographs Anna Chahuneau ’14 Catherine Caroe ’14 Chloe Anello ’14 Ellie Lewis ’15 Amy Tiong ’14 Stephanie Crudele ’14 Sandra Huang ’15 Stephanie Crudele ’14 Catherine Caroe ’14 Rhian Lewis ’14 Evelyn Summermatter ’14 Lexi Fielding ’14 Amy Tiong ’14 Liv Burns ’14 Julianne Brown ’16 Erin Bottino ’16

Drawings 6 9 10 18 26 29 37 38 42 46 53 54 57 58 61 65

Jessica You ’15 Joscie Norris ’16 Brianna Bergen ’17 Sophia Lee ’15 Joscie Norris ’16 Nola Iwasaki ’16 Lauren Benedetto ’14 Sophia Lee ’15 Jessica You ’15 Leah Nashel ’16 Nora Shapiro ’15 Alicia Belcher ’15

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Sculpture Kira Hunter ’14 Kira Hunter ’14

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Cover art by Andie Dahl ’14 Page 3 Lantern drawing by Joscie Norris ’16 Page 68 Lantern drawing by LeighAnn Kulpa ’15

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Anna Chahuneau ’14 Large Format Photograph

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WATER SIGN One night you turned to the keys and made the piano an ocean, told me to dive in, but even before you played me into the taut steel strings of your net, I knew I’d be lost in the undertow, tossed back and forth, and somehow, when the current swept my breath away, I’d still find myself thinking in pillow talk, mouthing: If I could, I would make these chords a bed and climb inside with you. We’d build a mast from the bones of skeletons lingering in drowned shipmen’s closets, sew sails from the ghosts of their oilskins, and maybe one day I’d find the right words to tell you that this four poster was never seaworthy, that no sweet verse will keep it afloat. But remember, drowning is a fine art— you’ve got to do it with grace, do it so the last trembling bubble leaves your lips like a love song and you sink into the sheets with limbs outstretched, turning a respectable shade of blue like the tablets we’d swallow to drift, my flotsam with your jetsam, on the neap tide, out to sea.

—Rhian Lewis ’14

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LAMP I’m tired of my hat and its softly ridiculous shape, its granny look stealing the daylight.

Why should I try to shine when the bulb gets all the attention with its smart-ass flickers every night after faking an early death for them to caress his bald head and gently twist and twist him back into his warm nest?

I never get to play. No one ever sees me, not even the forgotten stuffed bear on the shelf, swearing at his mistress’ boyfriend.

Why bother trying to make friends with the living lamp above my head when he always leaves me for places I’m not invited to, some dim corner where I could witness the furniture fading out of fashion and wait for the hands that turn me off when light has left me unemployed for the day?

—Anna Chahuneau ’14

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Catherine Caroe ’14 Digital Photograph

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Chloe Anello ’14 Large Format Photograph

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KILLER CLOWNS Last summer you took me to see some movie about killer clowns from outer space that invaded midwestern farms and chewed apart teenagers, pretty girls with long blonde hair too busy disobeying their parents to remember any self-defense maneuvers.

I cried, partly out of fear and partly because your hand was clamped so tightly on top of mine that I thought I might lose it. You never handed me the bulky tub of popcorn you had spent too much on in pursuit of the perfect third date as the girl on the screen, who had lost half of her leg, was tearfully proclaiming her love for her dying boyfriend.

I hoped that she would leave him for dead and give up any last shred of dignity to get out of the gritty pasture alive and then scrape up enough savings to leave for a good school in a city bigger than this sad, grey town with its ancient diners and unneutered strays.

When I told you how unfair it was that her head was torn off just as she reached the car, you answered that she had it coming, that she was with a boy too bigheaded to tell an alien from a hitchhiker, someone who would use her for her youth and then as a human shield when things got real.

Then you drove me home, a lit cigarette dangling from your mouth, and told me to shut up when your friends called asking what you were up to, and to meet you after school behind the gas station on Bleecker Street where the shade was just dark enough to hide your car. I didn’t say a thing, and the velvet dusk that dimmed the air almost cloaked you into the person that you were, a square-jawed fugitive that ran stoplights and would call at 3 a.m. as though afraid I had been kidnapped, or drawn into one of those black holes that absorb all light and take hostage the bottomless night sky. —Kira Hunter ’14

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A COUNTRYSIDE ANTHOLOGY Autumn fills the darkening skyline with the color of fine oak mead.

The weather turns like the cogs of a well-timed clock, ticking forward even though it is time to fall back.

We fight to cling to the tender holds of our green seasons. Afraid to watch asters shy away from their vibrant blues, you turn from summer’s triumphant light, and fall into quickly fleeting days, so worried about who you will be without such fond and temperate air that changed pace and departed without so much as a farewell to her followers.

Let November run its pallid, ghostly finger up and down your spine, every shiver a word from a sacred text that binds us to earth.

You forget that these sweet bites of frosted apples and these warm embraces of moth-eaten sweaters are the beginnings of well-remembered parables brought to life, continually rewritten with every first snow.

—Lauren Danielowski ’14

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Jessica You ’15 Charcoal Drawing

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Joscie Norris ’16 Pencil Drawing 14

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SLEEPTALKING How deep would the oceans be if there were no sponges?

They just hang in there, don’t they, quietly absorbing the blue of the sea like the factory workers who fill their pockets with candies from the assembly line, looking around, being afraid of someone noticing them.

Starfish are always happy; they spread their little arms as if trying to hug you, but if you let them do so, there would be massive flooding, and St. Petersburg with Venice would go under, and all the tourists’ high expectations would rise in big bubbles under the bridges and be spit out like pieces of apple skin finally picked from the teeth.

Hiding never does anyone any harm; it’s a game, in a way, like playing hide and seek with my blind dog, Layka: I get up on a chair, barking, she starts barking back and running into walls, like a dying fly just before it hits the window for the last time.

I couldn’t stop her. I don’t think anyone could.

—Nadia Gribkova ’14

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TOUGH LOVE I thank you for punching me Whenever a Volkswagen Beetle passed by Just in case I had missed it, For “punching” the real beetles When they threatened To fly around my face.

Thank you for throwing dirt in my hair, Because I needed a bath anyway, For marking my age and height on the closet door Even though I was never tall enough to mark yours, For telling Mom and Dad that it was you Who broke the purple vase from Grandma Even though your apology was ten days late And I had already been beaten for the crime; For tripping me on my first day of school Because I helped you get a laugh.

And thank you for yelling at the bullies who tried to laugh too Because the only one allowed to make fun of me was you.

—Afua Nsiah ’15

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Brianna Bergen ’17 Pencil Drawing

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Ellie Lewis ’15 Digital Photograph

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BOARDING PASSES I find boarding passes tucked into my grandfather’s paperback, momentary placeholders that now serve as magnificent mementos in the world of digital tickets and eReaders.

Each book holds the lingering scent of cigarettes as they waft smoke through the cabin and echoes the clink of ice melting into 11 a.m. bourbon.

Prague and Austria flutter to the floor, whispering of an age when my grandmother’s knuckles had yet to swell into round knots of brittle bone and she could still slide on her wedding band, and hinting of a time when my grandfather’s only slip was on the wet tile of infidelity. And so I leave Seoul and Singapore hidden in Dickens, dog-eared secrets locked away in a leather binding and yellowed jacket, history fading into the warmth of some stranger’s words.

—Liv Burns ’14

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BLUE LEMONADE Summer flies high in the cloudless depths above mid-August.

While everyone flocks to the beaches of the West Sea, Only the cold and high tide of the east coast can ease my fever.

I don’t mind the dog days, Don’t mind the evanescent breeze, Don’t believe in the special ties, Don’t believe in the glimmer of Vega’s light.

In the upside-down champagne glass of azure summer sky, Clots of nimbus unfurl, Bitter remnants of what has already drained from my hand, Slipped out of my clutched fingers like fine grains of sand.

—Eunice Oh ’14

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Sophia Lee ’15 Pencil Drawing

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Joscie Norris ’16 Paper

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MUSTANG (for John Q.)

Power is a ’98 Stang on display at the mall, drawing for two months the fathers who drool at its wheelbase.

The Hawaiian-shirt guy remembers stealing Ford Magazines from his doctor’s office and coming back with black eyes from using his sister’s concealer after thinking only of drag packs, V8 engines, and dual exhaust, and dreams of the office manager asking him out on beer night, hood raised, his thousand-dollar girlfriend bending over the gleaming, chrome-plaited F1 supercharger, and the college girls pulling up their shirts on Highway 69, 250 horses neighing: smoke them all, burn it out in the bucket seat, 120 from the rally pack and still no tickets —invincible— cat back loud mouth thundering like a low-flying fighter plane, the lacquered finish like a mirror, headlights’ two eyes igniting the darkened streets, piercing the shut windows of a startled town.

—Anna Chahuneau ’14

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SMALL GREATNESS (for Ken Bainbridge, scientist of the Manhattan project, who witnessed its powers first hand and later grew and distributed butterfly weed for endangered monarch butterflies)

5:29:45 July 16, 1945, New Mexico: After the “Gadget,” white in the blaze, Flared into a gaseous mushroom, The world shuddered beneath the assault, And light echoed endlessly.

Even before the countdown quaked, It was as though the sea had started to surge, “Now we’re all sons of bitches.”

Did you gaze at the calm, relentless stars that night And, looking out over another kind of knowledge In a world where paths cannot be retraced Nor atonement achieved, Kneel for a different purpose In the forgiving dirt of your garden plot To nurture your apologies From the delicate hearts of seeds In flowerets opening their palms for the monarchs?

Later, did you notice how fragilely they glide on light winds, Then skip through the lower heavens, These dwindling papery generations, Like so many wanderers painted in tiger cadmium Tracing the constellations on their journey In search of longer days to bask in?

They blossom the branches that shelter them, Each new butterfly weed that flowers, A quantum difference, Lest they too should cease to flourish As the sunset blooms that hold their nectar Droop and wither from each cluster, like falling stars.

—Joscie Norris ’16

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Nola Iwasaki ’16 Ink Drawing

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Amy Tiong ’14 Large Format Photograph

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BLIND The light seeping under the door Shines on almost nothing, But runs the shape of the room To tag the walls And touch the sticky note You wrote the last day I saw you.

Maybe I’d dream if wisps of you Stopped floating in from Longmeadow Pond, Where I still go in my mind To see you gleaming in summer.

When you went, sleep packed a bag And hid in a cargo ship headed east, Where he found dreary cafes With rusty chairs out front From forgotten rainstorms, And vineyards with intoxicating air.

Night veils the back of my hand, The pictures on the wall, And the notes on my dresser, All but the ceiling’s face I look into for hours as I looked Into yours, memorizing its kinks And soot marks, which I can only see In the pale light and still recognize As though we both could have grown Old and blind, together.

—Patricia Collins ’17

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THAT TIME OF DAY The sun reaches down to touch the tiny houses sprinkled across the horizon and the men caught between my eyelashes, as I’ve often watched it do on those evenings when the time between one porch and another slows, clears the fog from my gaze, and shows me the rabbit crouched beneath the honeysuckle and the unkempt boy from across the street hidden from his brother behind a stack of logs.

In these moments when the crimson streaks above the trees seem as though I’ve painted them myself and the breeze that curls up from the dust to catch a ride on my breath leaves dirt in my mouth, I can feel my hair blowing with the branches and my blood pumping through the sparrows startled into flight off the telephone wires, and see the rooftops growing smaller for that instant when I forgot myself back down on the ground.

—Nola Iwasaki ’16

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Stephanie Crudele ’14 Large Format Photograph

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Lauren Benedetto ’14 Colored Pencil Drawing

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THE KNIVES IN THIS HOUSE The halls, stretching their necks, Hoping to peek into a room, Shrug and freeze when they find nothing, But the windows sigh with every wind And every sound, afraid to be unsealed And broken through.

Even if the sky retains its blue, It will never find its way into these places Where the air carries the strong smell Of cutting-board executions With the unsharpened blade.

The light bulb under the ceiling In the hallway has dropped its halo Sometime around a week ago and stayed There in the shadows ever since.

No one can reach that high into the darkness. —Nadia Gribkova ’14

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BLIND TOURISTS AT MUSÉE RODIN The milky-eyed men and women condense in a semicircle around a muted copper statuette, Camille, whose cautious gaze regards us as the intruders that we are.

One old man in dark glasses dons a pair of knitted black gloves and places both hands on her neck, then slides them upwards into the hollows of her stoic cheeks.

The others wait, listening to the hush of cotton on smooth metal, and I recall the times you distracted the security guards at the MoMA so I could run my hand over the folds in Athena’s marble cloak and the fingers of Hera’s outstretched palms.

You never cared much for preservation’s sake.

When we were kicked out of the Grecian Era, you bought me an overpriced watch from the gift shop and reassured me that all art was meant to be held, as these sightless hands memorizing the earlobes of John the Baptist and reading the domed forehead of Venus discover the thick, warm stone that stretches out from loneliness, begging to be believed.

—Kira Hunter ’14

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Kira Hunter ’14 Sculpture

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Sophia Lee ’15 Colored Pencil Drawing

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HIGH SCHOOL BOYS They joke around, making fun of your name until their perversions drive you insane.

They brag when they bench 300 or only 100.

They shout wrong answers and want straight As. They take your extra pencil from behind and smirk when you leave your English notes too far to one side.

They are your friends, your crushes, your own cute Justin Bieber or quirky Taylor Lautner, and they’re ignoring you now. One mentions at lunch a girl who sounds questionably like you is the special one who will be romantically asked out by his best friend soon. They’re single and let you know their last girl was “just crazy,” or they’ve been laid too many times and need lasting love, or their teachers hate them for no real reason.

They say they don’t watch much porn, but whisper between your thoughts, eyeing you from across lockers where they’re safe to dream about your new skirt.

One evening you find one scooping ice cream for you, leaning over the counter, giving you a long stare of reality that says I’m so different from other guys.

It’s the same gaze the guy down at Starbucks gave you one morning before he rattled his tin jar of tips for college far away from you, and you could hear the engine of his Camaro vibrating like his x-box controller, and his sigh of normality as he flipped through rap songs to blast at the edge of a parking lot that hides and hides, cradling their cars between jobs, school, comforting the crying stillness of their innocent desires.

—Myrna Cox ’14

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CAPTIVES Cold rain slashes lines like paper cuts across my face, carving your sharp words into my skin.

Trees bow at the raspy calls of the wind, their leaves breathing in droplets that taste of acid and sky, as clouds close their drapes over the sun.

The musky air hugs all the darkened streetlamps and the corner Starbucks on South Main Street where Aidan sipped black coffee and paid my bill, his soft voice painting sweet words, but I still said no.

On mornings when summer stars peek through warm windows, tasting curtains and chairs, you teach me to twerk in the kitchen because psychology majors know how to get down.

I guess I did love you like a love song, baby, at least the way your lopsided smirk of sex softened against my lips and knelt before my mind.

We were as free as captives.

You slid through walls, skating on your pride, past Char’s slouched figure leaning against the door frame, black coffee mug slowly cooling in her grasp.

Tomorrow when dawn bruises your peaceful gaze, I won’t be here to warm your sad sheets or trace your sighs or paste your worn corners back together.

Me salvas a mí, te salvo a ti, as the day closes its doors, turns off the lights, and the sun slips a house key under the mat.

—Charlotte Iwasaki ’14

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Sandra Huang ’15 Large Format Photograph

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Stephanie Crudele ’14 Digital Photograph

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SKYSCRAPERS Awake, awake they burgeon from the earth, Rockets of glass bursting out To raise the ground as they reach for the sun.

Lidless, each morning they rise in a new exultation, Their fresh eyes peering down from dazzling windows And their ears opening up to our small music Of rushing feet, running machines, and little chatter While composing their own inhuman song Of the high breezes whispering, humming, wordless, And carried by the clouds.

They bathe in the flow of warm light particles While only their feet are dipped in shadow, As though evening still lingered, As though no storm’s darkness ever spread Itself overhead to bundle up the earth In an absence of light and make them Serve as watchers, soldiers forced to stand Under the emperor’s lowered rage And whipped by shrieking winds, Scraped with flashing hits out of the sky That they will never even touch.

—Minh To ’15

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EMILY’S TALE (after Chaucer)

From my spring garden, as I tuck a flower into the wreath that crowns my emptiness, four eyes consume my image from their tower, with chivalric desire merciless as that which spared my warrior sister’s life and brought us gently westward to be chained.

Safe from the Styx, she drowns, a fading wife who slashes herself red to ease the pain.

In empty halls, she bows her fallen head to Theseus, whom once she might have smote; far safer when her confidence is dead than when her sword bit at his thick-skinned throat.

Vanquished like her, my foe is chivalry, and selfish, glinting eyes that think they see.

—Leah Nashel ’16

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Jessica You ’15 Pencil Drawing

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Catherine Caroe ’14 Large Format Photograph

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THE CARNIVAL The carnival has come into town And transformed St. Rose’s back acres Into a miniature city.

The travelers have woken their beasts Again to stretch their aging limbs And bear the weight of our children’s bodies.

We once came hand in hand After sunset to lose ourselves Amidst the airy crowd.

Looking back, I can only see The darkest shadows of that Starless night; but now I am blinded When the flashing lights from our Whack-A-Mole fire up the sky With bursts of red and yellow and green Above this very station Where, unprecedentedly, I beat you.

Tonight, while strolling down That familiar gaming lane With its eager parents, greedy winners, And persistent losers claiming it will Take only one last chance, I find you for the first time In a long while, and follow you Out of old and dusty habit Past the concession booths, Peering around the corner Where your familiar shadow becomes Overlaid with many others, And I watch as the trampled grass On the pasture-turned-parking lot Works to stand straight again.

—Lauren Benedetto ’14

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MY GRANDMOTHER’S THOUGHTS ON IF I WERE TO MARRY MY BOYFRIEND

Well, it’d be a nightmare, for sure— All kinds of disastrous, don’t you think?

Can’t you imagine the porcelain crunch Beneath a stomp of the beast’s hoof, His feverish circling of the cozy shop Until there was nothing left for him to smash?

Only then, when the destruction was complete, Would he get bored and grunt away.

And the bewildered matador would stand alone Amongst shattered traditions and fractured china, Red cape dangling in her hand.

—Olivia Pesce ’15

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Leah Nashel ’16 Charcoal Drawing

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Rhian Lewis ’14 Large Format Photograph

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MUSES He told me once that each bubble in a champagne glass was his muse, and I believed him because the pages of his diary were empty bottles in a recycling bin— Stella for good days, Jack Daniels for bad ones.

In his journal, he played genealogist, keeping record of the good people he assured me he didn’t deserve to know.

He called his poems his sins and then burned them in the small wood-fire confessional that crouched on the hearth downstairs.

Some nights, he danced to reggae while sipping red wine and said it was the only way he could imagine a life full of flawless intentions and forget his transgressions while their remnants were whisked up the chimney and out the flue.

—Elizabeth Reed ’14

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CAPE HENLOPEN The old bunker squats, A toad-like hulk among the matted weeds Where a lone sentry once scuffed into coarse sand The snaking lines of far-off German submarines Or the initials of his sweetheart.

I wonder if I’ll still be here astride the gun When the powdery shells of a trillion tiny sand crabs Finally abandon the razor grass for the beckoning sea And the mass exodus pours From the cracks between my toes.

Red sky in the morning, Sailors take warning— The tide lingers among ribbed rocks To whisper the old mariner’s rhyme to the dunes, But today the horizon only bleeds pink at frayed corners.

Ghosts wander with glazed eyes Through the bunker’s spiral staircase As the ocean draws back and flings The rose-gold bones high upon the bleached shore That waits as though yearning to be christened.

—Hannah Hudson ’14

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Nora Shapiro ’15 Print Overlay

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Alicia Belcher ’15 Pencil Drawing

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EARLY BEDTIMES IN SUMMER I thought that sin lived in the three monkeys that sat on my sister’s desk under the fluorescent flowers next to the lava lamp.

But the real thing is more like her sneaking out last night through the inky fields with that boy from the farm four miles down the rutted road.

When she has a boyfriend, we don’t meet him until the constellations have approved him once or twice and my parents’ dislike is overridden by Diana’s nod.

Then summer evenings, dusted in warm, late orange light, catch forbidden words that slip unheard from my father.

But when the moon is wrong, I hear my sister’s shouts drifting through my open window to be caught in the folds of my curtains, then flung off across my room and out the door as though to find some night wanderer, solitary as the distant planets, who will listen to the story of all that loneliness.

—Cailee Tallon ’14

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DRIED FLOWERS I wonder what to do in this world That makes me feel orphaned, Though my father is the lion of society.

Fear is my friend, tears are my drink, love is my secret, But I will not whisper it— The walls have mice and mice have ears.

The ground will pull me back if I walk outside, And he will abandon me.

Even oxygen runs away like a horse.

I am like a dried flower— Watered with tears every morning, My roots burned by their drops, My petals lopped and choked by his cutting words, My stem cinched by a silver feeta— To be hidden away in a man’s bedroom Between the pages of a diary.

I long to come out So as to hold it and connect the words Like pieces of broken puzzles, Silence his roar, make him hear So I can feel the sun on my face And open my blossoms, Then scatter my petals to the wind And speak words of beauty Into a broken world.

—Farahnaz Afaq ’14

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Evelyn Summermatter ’14 Large Format Photograph

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Lexi Fielding ’14 Digital Photograph

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ATLANTIS He asked if I’d stay, and my silence trapped him like a mosquito in amber while the seconds rumbled past on unhurried glaciers.

Two hurricanes, a drought, and a war came, and he was still rolling his joints, tapping on shoulders, asking soldiers for a light.

When the sea rose and flooded the town, brine seeped under the door of the Polka Dot, floating pancakes off plates in a breakfast diaspora that washed flapjack detritus into his living room, where he sat in his swollen armchair, exhaling smoke bubbles, watching the parrotfish gnaw at the carpet until the manatees swam past in their solemn triumph over the suburbs, and his eyes glazed with a tired sort of expectation, as if I might ride in on the back of a lumbering sea cow, my lips shaping, yes.

—Rhian Lewis ’14

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LET’S SET SOMETHING ON FIRE “Let’s set something on fire,” you say under the Milky Way that glows like a wrinkle in the darkness.

Let’s burn our teenage dreams into the familiar smell of smoke and let the light from flickering flames dance among the still pine trees.

We’ll shove our hands into warm coat pockets and tell ourselves just to forget about it, and I’ll imagine what you don’t say there behind your black Chevy, tasting the bitter laughter of those school nights which we’d have called wasted if we’d had a better place to go and better things to do than torch the unknown because you had a 50s-pinupdecorated lighter and I had secrets too dark to say no.

—Myrna Cox ’14

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Amy Tiong ’14 Digital Photograph

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Liv Burns ’14 Digital Photograph

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VIA DEI SERPENTI On the Via dei Serpenti in moonlight The statues under the arch of the Bersaglieri Will tell you more than any passing stranger.

They slouch in shadows to murmur The secrets of their old city: How puddles of moonlight sit stagnant Under iron street lamps, or how, at dawn, The pigeons flock to the navone To bathe in the holy water that bubbles From beneath the Piazza Calonna.

Along cobblestones worn smooth Like the glossy beryl of sea glass, I trace a pockmarked trail of pigeon claws To the foot of the fountain, Where the shape of my solitude is defined In the curve of the basin, or perhaps Upon the polished lip, where a single feather Shivers and bends, as if to kiss the water. —Hannah Hudson ’14

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ICELANDIC MORNING Reykjavik is crusted with silence again, And frost bites every fish left swimming In the ice-puddles. I don’t remember your Warning me it was that cold up north; You didn’t say my hair would freeze And break in small blond sparkles That could not be glued back. My blue Fingers don’t thank you.

Glaciers tell me more than you do.

I walked to the lake you whispered about The day before I left, and saw you In those ice floes tilting their faces Like pigeons on Sacré Coeur steps.

They drift, half revealed The way you, who slant at the border Of my memory, are built of feelings That sink while they sail on dark waters, And run to meet the sea.

—Anna Chahuneau ’14

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Julianne Brown ’16 Digital Photograph

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Kira Hunter ’14 Sculpture 62

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FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO WANT TO PRAY FOR ME I won’t say I don’t need your prayers, But when you wear your Sunday clothes to church, My crumpled dress will be slung across a chair In a stuffy room that yesterday my midnight guest Had rented for one night.

And then, at noon, I’ll wake for my day That’s short enough to make it only mine, I’ll tie my hair into a bun, I’ll go to buy some bread And try not to remember how I earned the dime.

When I leave, I never lock the door.

Those shambles don’t attract the thieves and vagabonds.

I’ll choose the most public way, And, feeling sweet, dissolving in the crowd, I’ll quietly admire your trivial round: Your looking after kids who run around with candies, Your smelling fruits you are about to buy, Your irritation at the sound of cars, And pleasure in every free move of the flower sellers. . .

Yes, I’m accustomed to your glances.

No, they don’t hurt me.

But none of you will ever see How the wrinkled hand of need undoes my hair And paints my lips bright red And pulls me out into the streets When nothing, not even the smell of fruit, Fills the city’s air, and babies Are all asleep in their soft beds And the taxis suddenly light up their yellow eyes.

—Nadia Gribkova ’14

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NEW YEAR’S EVE, LONDON The night sky readies itself to explode behind the ghostly spindles of the static Eye as the final moments of this dying year refract across the Thames at high tide: princely stars glowing from above and sluggish drunks leaning thoughtfully below, squinting into the streetlights and hollering solemn promises for the new year— a better job, a girlfriend with an appetite, an apartment without grey insects. Anna in her too-high heels and Vegas Volt-colored lips teeters at my side ticking off her own to-do list on fingers with nails bitten to the quick (the same length as last year), saying maybe she will grow whimsical gardens and read stained books and go on morning jogs; she leans backwards, camera in hand, and readies herself to record the far-off blasts of noise and fire that spiral up in clusters towards the heavens and bloom in glittery rashes across the river, explosions as big and loud and red as the cabbage roses we will plant this year in no specific plot of land, just somewhere misted with summer rain and packed with soil deep enough to hold us in balance while the world sways and rollicks towards nothing but expansive, white futurity.

—Kira Hunter ’14

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Erin Bottino ’16 Large Format Photograph

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Poetry Awards Alliance for Young Artists and Writers: Scholastic Art and Writing Awards National Silver Medal:

Kira Hunter ’14: “Killer Clowns,” “Blind Tourists at Musée Rodin,” “Aya Glady”

Charlotte Iwasaki ’14: “Angel” Regional Gold Key:

Hannah Hudson ’14: “Water Tower”

Kira Hunter ’14: “Killer Clowns,” “Blind Tourists at Musée Rodin,” “Aya Glady”

Charlotte Iwasaki ’14: “Angel”

Joscie Norris ’16: “Shelf Life” Regional Silver Key:

Anna Chahuneau ’14: “Lamp”

Nadia Gribkova ’14: “Daybreak,” “Streetlight” Honorable Mention:

Lauren Danielowski ’14: “A Countryside Anthology” (poetry entry)

Min Ju Shin’15: “Hope That Heals Sorrow” (essay/memoir entry) Thornton Wilder Writing Competition Second Prize Poetry:

Rhian Lewis ’14: “Atlantis” After School Arts Program Celebration of Young Writers Selected Young Writers:

Hannah Hudson ’14: “Via dei Serpenti”

Joscie Norris ’16: “Small Greatness”

Olivia Pesce ’15: “My Grandmother’s Thoughts On If I Were To Marry My Boyfriend” Smith College Poetry Prize for Girls in New England Semifinalists:

Irene Chung ’15: “A Memory of the Well”

LeighAnn Kulpa ’15: “Chrysanthemum”

Afua Nsiah ’15: “My Mother’s Dressing Room” Connecticut Poetry Society Lynn DeCaro Poetry Contest 1st Prize:

Joscie Norris ’16: “Small Greatness” 3rd Prize:

Rhian Lewis ’14: “Water Sign” Honorable Mentions:

Hannah Hudson ’14: “Via dei Serpenti”

Cailee Tallon ’14: “Early Bedtimes in Summer” Connecticut Young Writers Trust Competition State Poetry Finalists:

Hannah Hudson ’14, “Via dei Serpenti”

Rhian Lewis ’14, “Water Sign” 66

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Art Awards The 2014 Connecticut Scholastic Art Awards Program

The 25th annual Connecticut Regional Scholastic Art Awards is the largest juried student art exhibition in the state. It is a high level exhibition. As an affiliate of the National Scholastic Art Awards and The Alliance For Young Artists and Writers, the Connecticut region is proud to continue an annual tradition established in 1927. This national program was originated to honor the creative efforts of grade 7 to 12 students in public, private, and parochial schools. It is now the largest and most senior program of its type in the country. Following the close of the Connecticut Regional exhibit, the select Gold Key award winners from each national region have their art works reviewed by a blue ribbon panel of judges at the National level in March. The National Jury select Gold Medal National winners and call in their artwork to be exhibited in New York City during June. The national student awards ceremony is held at Carnegie Hall in mid June. Selected students receive an invitation to this national event. Our sponsors emphasize that the purpose of this program is not merely a competition of sorts, but a recognition and encouragement of talented visual art students from across the state. Many artists, university faculty, and professionals in the field have participated to review and select the finest student art works in many art media categories from over 1,500 Connecticut student entries. The 2014 Connecticut Regional Scholastic Art Awards exhibition featured select work from 130 participating Connecticut schools in grades 7-12. Selected from more than 1,500 total art entries, 623 works were accepted for exhibit at the University of Hartford. From that accepted number, there were 182 gold key awards (including 40 gold portfolios), 152 silver keys, and 289 honorable mention awards granted.

Gold Key Photography Portfolios: Catherine Caroe ’14 Anna Chahuneau ’14 Stephanie Crudele ’14 Amy Tiong ’14 Individual Art Award Winners: Joscie Norris ’16 – Found Object Sculpture Dress, Gold Key Award Hand drawing, Honorable Mention Kira Hunter ’14 – Ceramic figurative piece, woman leaning, Silver Key Award Ceramic figurative piece, woman with hands behind back, Honorable Mention Sharon Jeon ’16 – “Synchronize,” painting, Silver Key Award “Still Life Colorful Beads,” painting, Honorable Mention Rachael Shurberg ’15 – “Accepting,” photograph, Honorable Mention Jessica You ’15 – “Still Life With Skull and Flower,” drawing, Honorable Mention The Andy Award for Summer Study in the Arts

This award was founded by Beverly Heminway (P’74), wife of the late Andrew Heminway. Andrew was a Middlebury resident who “had a lifelong love of both the visual and the performing arts.” His daughter, Katherine, was a member of the Class of 1974, and his aunt, the late Annabel Hubbard Heminway, was a member of the Class of 1917. Mrs. Heminway said her husband attended Westover concerts and performances over the years and also enjoyed seeing the student artwork on display around the school. Several years after Mr. Heminway died in November 1997, Beverly decided that a fitting tribute would be to set up a Westover endowment fund in his memory in support of the arts. The fund would establish the Andy Award, which would provide summer scholarships in the arts to students who have shown a talent and interest in the visual and performing arts. The recipients of the Andy Award are selected by members of the Art Department faculty and the award is presented during the Orchard Awards Ceremony each spring before graduation. The first Andy Award was presented in June 2002.

The 2014 Andy Award will be presented to Amelia Bell ’16.

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