PALM 2015-2016

PALM

PALM Staff 2016 Staff Sponsor: Brandon Newton `00 Editors-in-Chief: Emma Cullnan `16 Abby Jakus `17 Simone Wallk `17 STaff: Emory Brigden `16 Leo Pellegrini `16 Briana Rosado `16

Jack Mellske `16 Bobby Rone `16 Maia Taylor `16

Reid Anrod `17 Lily Blender `17 Lilly Hastings `17 Mia Tran `17

Stella Binion `17 Colette Gordon `17 Rose Jacobs `17 Olive Welsh `17

Annie Chan `18 Isaac Gershberg `18 Sarah Jester `18

Kalina Gac `18 Christina Hijiya `18

Hanna Goldberg `19

A: Mia Tran

Broken Glasses

Every pair of glasses has a compluvium Which leads down into its internal chambers The oldest of which containing a clock

Rain enters through the compluvium As does sun, cloud, and hail As do the essences of that which the married lenses are refracting

The digital clock counts down Unless an intruding vision pushes the number up Otherwise it approaches - at a rate sans consistency - zero

I am not aware of the ticking (This is because the ticking makes no noise) Until the critical moment or turning point or pinnacle or climax or apodosis

At which point a crunch is heard And it is felt as the bridge is mangled, and the nose pads hydroplane across blackheads

L: Emory Brigden A: Lily Blender

my mother bore a blank slate despite her finest efforts and meticulously broad brush strokes but she painted in water colors, and i blended. she took inspiration from galaxies above and earth below, but she dreamed of heavens and made suns that dripped on to canvas below and stained, the only thing dark she drew were the spots under the sun’s eyes that would persistegg yolk too runny but whites too hard. when god met my mama they asked if she had a man and she said she has an idea, but they do the same thing. nothings nobodies and nevers lined up against the mirror to spell backwards and find meaning, white bouncing off emptiness is black the absence of it? i fill boxes with words unspoken and lies unregretted i love you’s and i’m sorries will wallpaper my own tomb in the end we are our most human layered in dirt the sweetest lesson mama taught me was that dirt will be washed away, after all. my mama kept herself inside, swollen with fears and dreams, slipping silently, intertwined in ambitions and greatest fears to die after nine short monthsnine months i have known and will know second hand.

L: Bobby Rone when i tell my mother thank you, A: Kalina Gac it is code for i missed you. mama don’t missshe shoots to kill.

A: Isaac Gershberg

A: Olive Welsh L: Christina Hijiya

yellow is a hard color to love for those who have already learned to love the color of the sun but when it is painted on skin you do not seem to love it as much you cannot round up one hundred suns and expect our sons and daughters to not shine like their solar counterparts now we are dim streetlamps under which we are now the most comfortable

Classifying Cadaverous Oligarchs Kingdom: It is not the time to fall from grace.

Phylum: But one day our softnesses may collude in equal parts Class: of waxing and waning Order: I know better than to retrograde, you to stay forever in bloom.

Family: This is the humbling vernacular of a feelingman.

Genus: I wash behind my ears with sweet buttermilk and wait for someone to kiss them clean.

Species: Of course, this is just another attempt at siphoning dampened guilt cantyousee.

Of course, none of this is true.

L: Emma Cullnan A: Kenza Walthour

Future Tense

those kids

i. i took the wood grain with me, the accolades that ran rigid against the sides of dinner tables.

ii. they never had a left­handed desk for you, so we liked to press pencils into tracks, grounding tires lying above asphalt and letting spokes come unattached.

ladybugs climb on little hands, fresh dreams, and new thoughts rumbling in the little heads, one by one they move on leaving each other for the dead

when air poured out we pressed rubber between fork tines, nurturing tepid bites in corrugated teeth.

iii. he doesn’t want to treat diction the same way as dorm room posters. they talk of gunshots on the moon’s surface, and hanging off stars in zip­line harnesses.

iv. i will sit on the edges of ceiling fan blades. i will hold emptiness in vinyl gloves. i will treat linoleum with scented marker and place names in patchwork circuitry. our abdomens were not built to breath inside poached land but above ground, everything belongs to us.

L: Rose Jacobs

A: Miguel Limon L: Hanna Goldberg