The Blue Pencil by Walnut Hill School for the Arts

THE BLUE PENCIL 2013

THE MAGAZINE OF THE CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM AT WALNUT HILL SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS

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Table of Contents FICTION/NONFICTION EMILY KESSLER ’14 24 The Art of Growing Up ADEA LENNOX ’13 30 Leonelle and Oliver 31 Jamison Polardy SAMANTHA MACKERTICH ’16 36 The Smile COURTNEY MCCAIN ’13 38 The Angel and the Fly ***

PLAYWRITING/SCREENWRITING ALLISON AVILA-OLIVARES ’13 4 The Doll CASEY MURTAGH ’13 46 Marie O’Connor, 42, South Boston, Massachusetts SHAWN VAZIN ’16 56 The Flames of Goat Hill

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POETRY/SONGWRITING FIORA ELBERS-TIBBITTS ’14 16 Six Wings 17 (a ripple) 18 Make Room 18 I. Unearth 19 II. Suspend 20 III. Retreat

ALEXANDRA LEWIS ’16 34 Untitled 35 Eris

SOFIA HAINES ’14 22 Candid Liquor of the 20s 23 Cardinal Symphony

SHELLY PIRES ’13 48 The Words 50 On Songwriting 52 How-to 52 I. Heaven Forbid 53 II. Hundred 54 Moving In 54 I. Misread 55 II. New Kid

EMILY KESSLER ’14 29 the interstitial ADEA LENNOX ’13 32 Mother

WILLIAM MCGOVERN ’14 44 Heath/Brigham 45 Wonderland

*** 61 Index 63 About Creative Writing at Walnut Hill

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The Writers and Editors of the Creative Writing Program Walnut Hill School for the Arts 2012–2013 Allison Avila-Olivares ’13 Fiora Elbers-Tibbitts ’14 Sofia Haines ’14 Emily Kessler ’14 Adea Lennox ’13 Alexandra Lewis ’16 Samantha Mackertich ’16 Courtney McCain ’13 William McGovern ’14 Casey Murtagh ’13 Shelly Pires ’13 Shawn Vazin ’16

Faculty Margaret Funkhouser Director, Creative Writing, Poetry Ronan Noone Playwriting, Screenwriting Allan Reeder Fiction, Nonfiction Betsy Blazar Design and Layout

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ADEA LENNOX ’13 2

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WALNUT HILL COMMUNITY

Departure Rolling turbines sweep the air over anxious grass. The pavement pulls at her suitcase. She is a polka-dotted imp in the dull terminal. Her ponytail meets the airfield— Ghosts disturb her hair like the drag of a plane. Runaway legs pull the girl— Suitcase’s shadow dragging like taffy— Fleeing terminal youth. Somewhere in the sky, A plane scatters, Its larynx collapsing Due to molted aerofoil. Shadows scurry across arid earth, Grains growing into clouds: Signs of distant disturbulence. Her knees are patched with grasses From some hillside polka-dotted with shadow. Her innocence is oxidized. With her fist thrust forward, The complacent vibration of her suitcase Is woven with the drowning engine. Grasses scurry, frantic to escape. Written for the occasion of Black on White, March 2013 by students in the Creative Writing Program with the assistance of the Walnut Hill Community

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ALLISON AVILA-OLIVARES

The Doll FADE IN: EXT-HOUSE-AFTERNOON Close up on a flower-print backpack on LYDIA’s (17) back. A porcelain doll’s head and arms stick out from the first pocket. The doll’s little brunette curls bounce with every step Lydia takes. The doll is dirty, grimy, worn out. PAN OUT: Lydia walks up to her doorstep. She wears these baggy overalls, a tee-shirt, and the backpack. She’s coming home from school. CUT TO: INT-FOYER-CONTINUOUS Lydia shuts the door behind her. She turns around. We see her face. She stands there for a moment. Shot of the hallway from her P.O.V.: silence. Montage of: an empty office space, an empty bathroom, and two turned over coffee mugs in the sink. CUT TO: Close up as Lydia untwists the curly pink shoe laces from her converse sneakers. She neatly puts them next to a classy pair of leather loafers and a pair of black heels. CUT TO:

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INT-LIVING ROOM-CONTINUOUS Lydia puts the backpack on the floor, takes the doll out, and sits her on a little blue high-chair. She puts the high chair on the couch, facing the television. Lydia grabs the clicker. She presses a button. Channel 5 News turns on. Lydia puts the clicker down on the coffee table. She leaves the room. We are left watching the doll and her little creepy smile. CUT TO: INT-KITCHEN-CONTINUOUS A montage: close up as Lydia places a jar of Smuckers Goober on the kitchen counter. She slaps four pieces of white bread on the kitchen counter. She opens the Jar of Goober and scoops up a knife-full of peanut butter and grape jelly. She wipes the knife on a piece of bread. CUT TO: INT-HALLWAY-CONTINUOUS Lydia walks through the hallway holding two plates. CUT TO: INT-LIVING ROOM-CONTINUOUS Lydia walks in holding the plates. She puts one on the high chair. She sits down, and puts one in front of her. ECU of the sandwiches. One is normal-sized for Lydia. The other is tiny, doll-sized. Both are cut into fourths and crust-less. PAN OUT: The T.V. is still on, mumbling quietly.

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Lydia picks up a slice and brings it to her mouth. The doorbell rings. She stops and puts the sandwich back on the plate. CUT TO: EXT-HOUSE-CONTINUOUS Lydia opens the door. Close up on a girl wearing a girl scout vest. A canteen hangs from her neck, binoculars, and a satchel. The girl is holding a box of thin mints. Her name is NADINE (15). NADINE

Thin mints?

LYDIA

How much?

NADINE

2 bucks.

Nadine steps inside the doorway. Lydia steps back. NADINE (CONTâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;D)

Can I come in?

LYDIA (hesitates) Sure. CUT TO: INT-FOYER-CONTINUOUS Nadine closes the door behind her. She looks down. We see the three pairs of shoes.

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Nadine cautiously looks behind Lydia’s shoulder and into the hallway. Then she nudges at the loafers and heels with head. Lydia shakes her head “no.” Close up as Nadine begins to unlace her black leather boots. Nadine puts her boots next to Lydia’s sneakers. CUT TO: INT-LIVING ROOM-CONTINUOUS Close up as Lydia dumps a jar of quarters, nickels, and dimes on the coffee table. Lydia puts the jar on the table. It says: Disneyland. PAN OUT: Lydia and Nadine sit on the couch with the doll in between them. It’s still in the highchair. Close up of Nadine as she turns her head and looks at the doll. She raises an eyebrow. NADINE

How old are you?

LYDIA 17. NADINE

And you still play with dolls?

Lydia stops counting the coins. She looks up from the table and turns to Nadine. LYDIA

Aren’t you supposed to be nice?

NADINE

We girl scouts learn survival skills, not social skills.

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Nadine reaches into her satchel and takes out a book. ECU of book: Girl Scout Handbook. PAN OUT: Nadine flips pages. She stops. She reads. NADINE (CONT’D) (reading)

Rule number 245: Always keep your nails tidy. God kills a puppy foe every

untidy nail.

Nadine snaps the book shut, then looks up. NADINE (CONT’D)

Do YOU know survival skills?

LYDIA (confident)

I know how to do my bed. CUT TO:

INT-LYDIA’S BEDROOM-CONTINUOUS Shot of Lydia and Nadine. They stand with their hands on their hips. Nadine, all cocky, smiles. Shot of the bed: riddled with stuffed animals, furry blankets, there are clothes on the bed. Pink. Lots of Pink. Nadine whips out a picture from her pocket. She holds it up to Lydia. NADINE

THIS is MY bed.

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ECU on the photo: a metal cot with a green camo blanket tightly tucked into the mattress. One pillow. No stuffed animals. The photo has covered Lydia’s bed in the background. TRANSITION TO: Nadine puts down the photograph. Lydia’s crappy bed is now tucked in and neat. Still the same furry blanket, but no extra pillows, no clothes on the bed, no stuffed animals. PAN OUT: Nadine and Lydia stand in front of the bed. NADINE (CONT’D)

I can fix a fridge.

LYDIA Um.. NADINE

Your fridge is broken. I can hear it. I can hear it runnin’ to hell and back. What’s your

name? LYDIA

Lydia.

NADINE

It’s saying, “Lydia, let Nadine fix your fridge.”

Nadine reaches into her satchel and takes out a wrench. NADINE (CONT’D)

Nadine really wants to fix your fridge.

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CUT TO: EXT-LIVING ROOM-CONTINUOUS Lydia and Nadine walk by the living room, heading to the kitchen. They glance down at the floor, and stop. ECU of a broken porcelain foot right in front of Lydiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s feet. CUT TO: INT-LIVING ROOM-CONTINUOUS Nadine and Lydia stand with their mouths hung open. On the floor, in pieces, is the doll. The high chair has fallen off the couch. Lydia drops to her knees, and picks up the dollâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s little hat. Lydia puts the hat on her index finger and holds it up to her face. We see her lip quivering. Nadine stands behind Lydia, dumbfounded and unsure of what to do. She scratches her head with the wrench in her hand. Nadine then opens her satchel, puts the wrench inside it, and takes out her Girl Scout Handbook. She flips through some pages. ECU on the page: it says What to do if someone has died. Step one: Find a box. Nadine opens her satchel again and pulls out a box of thin mints. She opens the box, takes out the package of cookies, kneels down in front of the broken doll, and begins to put the pieces into the box.

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Nadine stops, then looks towards Lydia, who is still kneeling. She cautiously pushes the dollâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s scalp towards Lydia then pokes her knee. Lydia looks up at Nadine. Nadine points to the scalp. Lydia picks it up by a curl. Nadine holds the box in front of Lydia. Lydia puts the scalp inside the box. CUT TO: EXT-BACKYARD-CONTINUOUS Lydia slowly walks towards a tree. She carries the box of girl scout cookies. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tied shut with a piece of orange yarn. Nadine and Lydia stand in front of a tree. Nadine holds her open handbook, reading. Then she fishes through her satchel. She pulls out a trowel. She hands it to Lydia. Lydia digs a hole in front of the tree. Lydia carefully places the box into the hole. She begins to cover it with dirt. CUT TO: EXT-BACKYARD-MOMENTS LATER Close up on the little grave: a little pile of dirt right next to a flowerpot and a bag of manure. PAN OUT: Nadine reads from her book. NADINE

Step 3.

Nadine then opens her satchel and takes out a black hat and a black boa. She hands the black hat to Lydia. She hesitates, then puts it on. Nadine wraps the black boa around her neck.

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She looks inside her book again. She shows the page to Lydia. NADINE (CONT’D)

Step 4. Flowers.

Lydia picks up some dandelions, twigs, and leaves. She puts them on the grave. Nadine looks into her book. NADINE (CONT’D) (quietly)

Step 5.

Nadine clears her throat. Camera begins to slowly pan away from behind them. We hear Nadine attempting to sing Amazing Grace. NADINE (CONT’D)

Amazing Grace, Amazing Grace, you

saved a wrench like me. I once was

in the lost and found, was blind

but now we see.

Nadine puts her hand on Lydia’s shoulder. Lydia pats Nadine’s hand. CUT TO: INT-FOYER-CONTINUOUS Nadine and Lydia stand in the Foyer.

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NADINE

I’m sorry your doll’s dead.

LYDIA Thanks. Nadine begins to rummage through her satchel. She pulls out the unopened box of cookies and shows them to Lydia. Lydia takes them. LYDIA (CONT’D)

Hey, so you wana come by tomorrow and fix that fridge?

NADINE

Only if I teach you how to make a shank outta tree bark.

LYDIA Deal. Nadine and Lydia shake hands. CUT TO: EXT-HOUSE-CONTINUOUS Shot of Nadine as she slowly closes the front door. She then picks up the compass around her neck and shakes it. While looking at it, she licks her finger and holds it up in the air, as if checking the wind pattern. She turns to her right and begins to walk away from the house.

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CUT TO: INT-LIVING ROOM-CONTINUOUS Lydia walks into the room and sees the highchair still tipped over on the floor. She walks towards it, picks it up by the tray and puts it behind the couch. She then sits down on the couch and turns on the TV. Channel 5 begins to mumble once again. Lydia opens the box of cookies and takes out the entire package of cookies. She picks one out and begins to nibble on it. She takes the box and gently tosses it onto the table. ECU as the box falls on top of the crust-less PB and J sandwich. CUT TO BLACK. END OF FILM

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SYLVIE MAYER ’14, VISUAL ART 2013

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FIORA ELBERS-TIBBITTS

Six Wings The first wing caught fire when the boy dreamed too close to the sun and left his radiation repellent in a notebook of inventions. This was before the second wing drowned in a flurry of naked squabbling; talons unsheathed against wax skin. A gale woven with rope shredded the third wing, suspending the feathers above gaping cannulae. Pockmarked quicksand slurped a broth of empty bones: the fourth wing erupted into dust. A mess of stripes trampled the fifth wing because of creative differences; its linear ego tussled curls of feathers. The final wing got lost in a tornado of eyes.

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FIORA ELBERS-TIBBITTS

(a ripple) To understand the jump one must first know the asymmetry of a clothespin heart and its helix doubled into two mucus knolls, nesting dolls that feel each other by the clot of their elbows and wax into orbit around an X in the ground that turns sideways on woolen knee Sundays. She traces her sisterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shoelace into a new constellation. Moss ladles her head like warm breath, air scolds the trees with dishtowel spanks, water feeds rock into cliff into open stars that entangle her threads until the only symmetry isâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;

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FIORA ELBERS-TIBBITTS

Make Room I. Unearth I cut an umbilical cord today. Plastic, raw, weakly bound to an animal found buried in my closet. Long ago in a den, a taxidermist foraged its seams for loot, wary of sewing attachment. Thievery turned to alchemy. I coddled the rabbit on a leash, buttons to gold. Its belly swelled with rainwater, bliss, later maggots.

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II. Suspend My bed’s canopy was a canvas. Violent foot paddles launched a thousand upside-down ships, tufting waves that fondled buckets of treasure. Calmer seas invite grief. Pebbles for a game of hopscotch. I catapult them through spilled milk; the sheet’s cerebral film engulfs my wishes in three jumps.

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III. Retreat I built a shrine to her garden trestle on my bureau. She harvests vines, I harvest dead flies. Our symbiosis feeds off of order in pairs. We share shut windows. Trapped pests and leaves clonk the glass: prison inmates surviving by the ebb of our dinner bell.

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MARIA BAQUERIZO ’15 2013

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SOFIA HAINES

Candid Liquor of the 20s Rivulets of champagne; sallow, forgiving, drunken lights, lights that leisurely coat a blossoming shoulder, flit over a jacket of amber ale, careen over a tablecloth of temporary faction. Gentlemen ease into familiar form, becoming men with steely moustaches, polished resolve. Ladies proudly display a crescendo of refined nails, genteel hips lined with velvet flirtation, breathing in denial of diffidence, razors of fashion, exhaling ivory kerchiefs soaked in gin.

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SOFIA HAINES

Cardinal Symphony Oh, gorgeous flesh. Trombones cracked his frozen mind, reds and golds that slid through narrow passageways— the trumpets that flamed silver out the slant of a window, and there, by the door, rolling through icy muscle and bone, comes clarinet. Oh, wonder of wonders. His fingers shatter, regrown as fine-spun song, and glass eyes are lit with iridescent chroma— wine turned to burning mercury. Soon comes the violin solo, coiling above all the other strings. and gravity, all nonsense now— he watches as they slide into a cage of silk round the room, and the harps burst into shreds of curled paper he flies into a lilting voice of thick toffee, samite, silver, bliss.

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EMILY KESSLER

Josiah McElheny, Island Universe, 2008. Handblown and press-molded glass, chrome-plated aluminum, electric lighting, rigging. Dimensions variable; largest element: approx. 12 feet in diameter; smallest element: approx. 7 feet in diameter.

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The Art of Growing Up The Sciences take their meals at a tilt. They all sit on the same side of the table, for balance: man, child, and wife (propping herself against the wall) in a precarious line, like dominoes mid-fall. After supper, Ernest, the son, finds he has a stomachache. Instead of going to the bathroom, he goes outdoors and up the fire escape. It’s raining. Like his forebears, he grew up on an axis. He walks on the edges of his feet, leaning a little left as if, in the womb, a wind had pushed him that way. He was askew going off the diving board; askew as a student, standing on a packed subway car around dawn in the city of his education; and later, young at heart, bounding through tall grass, hooting, firing off paintballs at other man-children. Now, when he comes home from the shop, he takes his meals askew, and his parents chew on either side of him. Everyone grows differently. Some people grow down; five-foot-five forever, they float until their full-grown feet finally touch the ground. Other people have hair that grows out of their mouths. Everyone ends up like Ernest, though, getting soaked under paunchy storm clouds, rubbing rain and sweat and spit between their lips and waiting to be added to the gallery. For most people, it’s a long, long time before they’re ready. Ernest’s great-grandfather isn’t art yet. He’s tiny with age (and, of course, tilted), smoking cigars all week, cross-legged inside a bole of a yew tree. He throws the butts on the ground. They pile up with the pinecones at the foot of the trunk. When Ernest visits, his great-grandfather grins the color of wheat and says: “I don’t think you’ll be coming here again—you’re too optimistic. You’re much too satisfied. It’s a good thing I’m such a cynic: that’s when you start to go, is when you stop being a cynic.” He starts to laugh, and chokes, and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. He looks at Ernest. “Boy, your eyes are like blue-blazing fireplaces! What’s got you so springy?” “It’s a nice day.”

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His great-grandfather is wistful then as he nods and blinks into the sun. He taps his latest cigar on the inside of his knee, and he watches the ash spill into his lap. “After all these years,” he says, “I don’t see why people always go when everything’s looking up.” Ernest waits for rain. “The rain is the reaper,” his great-grandfather has told him. “Rain means your arms get cold, and there’s mosquitoes and darkness, and wet socks. But think of the flowers! The grass! The thirsty mice!” Street-side runoff washes the old and the parched off the edge of the Earth, and their souls move into new bodies. So the cycle goes. “The rain’s gonna come,” Ernest’s great-grandfather says, “and slip you out of this life like it’s a wetsuit. You won’t be in this place, this time, this family, or this skin, but you’ll still be here, somewhere.” Up on the roof, seventy boxcar-sized orange lights go on in a wide halo around Ernest. The lights kill him, but first, time slows down. Ernest’s eyes tingle. They turn into glass discs. “They’re hand-blown,” says a voice, someone—a woman—as if the soggy victim would be interested to know the origin of the discs in his head because he might be a glassblower. Occupations, like elements, can be found in congruent avenues all across the universe. The thought comforts Ernest, though he is not a glassblower. He’s a dealer in chrome-plated, one-size-might-fit-all walking canes. He has not sold a cane in nine months, nor has he tried to; he is on indefinite hiatus. At the shop each morning, he locks the door, and polishes his wares. He polishes all day, because it’s what he’s good at. He has need for neither money nor keepsakes. He repaints his bedroom white every three years (the same bedroom that he was banished to when, as a child, he let the asparagus go cold on his plate). He likes his parents’ house. He rarely speaks but smiles well and often. He is happy in his little shop, his little life. On the roof, Ernest’s arms become chrome-plated aluminum tubes. In a moment, more tubes have sprouted from both his chest and back. They form a ring around him. He feels strangely warm. He can see the woman now. She has straight hair the color of redwood bark. She paces the roof in front of him, her face crowded with wrinkles from hard concentration as she recites the names of people and metals. She is training to be a tour guide at the museum.

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He says: “I don’t want to die. Why did I do this to myself?” She turns to him. “Don’t give yourself so much credit. You didn’t do any of this. It was the artist. Would you like to see, before you go?” He doesn’t much want to see. He has heard that when you transform, you lose all sense of the world. He would rather do that, now, and be done with it, but he doesn’t want to seem a coward. His fingers are curling into filament wire, stinging. He grits his teeth and says: “All right.” His fingers begin to glow. People, like universes, collapse. Their burnings go out. Gravity shoves their limbs into their lungs and their teeth into their brains and coils up their small intestines like jib lines. Their light years— lifetimes of loneliness and love, swirled nightly into humanness like laundry, the whites and the colors together, by accident—surrender to compression. They all end up on the head of some allegorical pin, those many quadrillions of light years. Their parents wonder where they’ve gone. Then a wind blows—it pushes, just because it can—and the thing goes Bang. While time is passing slowly and the roof is still firm beneath his feet, Ernest recalls a very short dream that he has had every New Year’s Eve since his parents told him about the gallery. In the dream, he is acutely conscious of his breathing: the in-and-out, the full-to-empty of his chest, the air cool on his lips on the way in, hot on the way out. He’s in a room with a white wooden door. All the girls he’s ever kissed on a New Year’s Eve stand cheering by the door, dancing thrashingly, like apes, to the beat of his heart. He walks through the door. Now he is in a larger room. The ceiling is painted to look like the sky. The artist has short brown hair, and he wears glasses with rectangular frames. He hangs Ernest up by a thread. The world starts an easy spin—but it’s Ernest spinning, feet lifted off the roof of the high-rise apartment building. Puzzled and airborne to the point of nausea, he watches the artist take a couple of steps back and flip a switch up, and then down. The bulbs on the ends of Ernest’s many metal arms blink on, off. Like a petting-zoo fence, the circle of lights forms the outer boundary of Ernest’s new existence,

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and as an induction, they stop his heart. Dead, Ernest is an aluminum orb, plated in chrome, with the diameter of a beach ball and the mass of seven adult beagles. He has seventy arms, long and spindle-thin, which jut into space along a single plane, on a tilted axis. Each arm supports its own smaller orb. Each of those orbs has arms of its own, and on the ends of those are glass discs and light bulbs with glowing-filament fingers. Ernest Science sways in a wind.

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EMILY KESSLER

the interstitial he steps between square shadows of buildings in the early city so his bare feet feel light and so he can say, later, “I soaked in the last morning in _______,” and maybe the wife would be on tiptoes touching next-city restaurant tiles as she sat, wondering what he’d done, later, as she’d packed the artwork, though really she’d been standing in that light looking at her hands age because even still in a still kitchen in a blinking place she was in motion, and the husband would tap the white—rude jay—sitting on his head as if to scare it off because he was in motion and in a restaurant almost ignoring the delicacies of the city after the next one, remembering that he is stepping between square shadows of buildings so he won’t have to think about leaving, and his wife is cartwheeling through time, unmoving with her hands out, and maybe neither of them will say anything later.

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ADEA LENNOX

Leonelle and Oliver Leonelle (left) and Oliver (right) sit on a wall in Central Park after joking about burning the park down. Growing up, they were inseparable. The two boys are adopted brothers. “My friends call me Neo,” Leonelle says, “like in The Matrix.” He leans back, imitating the scene where Neo dodges the mass attack of silver bullets. “We’ve got each other’s back,” says Oliver. “If someone fucks with one of us, they’re fucking with the both of us, and people know that around school and stuff, so by sticking together, we get out of being screwed with. It’s cool.” He sounds comfortable in his newly dropped baritone voice. Between the serious expressions and boyish interactions, there is a genuine sweetness about the brothers. As the light is fading, I snap their portrait. Neo plans to engineer racecars, and Oliver plans to drive them.

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ADEA LENNOX

Jamison Polardy Nineteen-year-old Jamison Polardy resides in Ojai, California, with his mother. He enjoys shuffling cards, sketching skeletons for suburban homes, and taking long walks in the forest. He is fluent in German, but he rarely speaks. When he was thirteen, he bred Betta fish to feed his pet turtle; but one Sunday, when his mother was sick in bed, he stuck his turtle in the microwave just to see what would happen. “It was like watching bread rise in the oven.” With his strikingly handsome face, Jamison prompts passers-by to dream up a more lavish lifestyle for him than the sort he lives. After the death of his father—strangled with string, killer never caught—Jamison retreated into himself (taking out his suppressed anger on reptiles). His mother, who remains a sickly woman, faded from her parental role almost immediately following the murder of his father. Jamison hopes one day to become an architect or political figure, preferably a member of the Senate. Photos by Adea Lennox

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ADEA LENNOX

Mother The smell came from the loose stitching of the couch in the living room. Inside the peppercorn cloth was a key, a shoelace, and a pair of teeth. That night, the usual mass of black hair that clogged the shower drain had been replaced by the left ear. At the end of the crimson embroidered bed sheet, we found the eyes, not yet asleep. Our feet mistook them for two misplaced rubber balls, the kind dispensed from a gumball machine. The mouth, lips, tongue and tonsils were discovered at Thursday morningâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s breakfast. The milk had not gone bad after all. Numbers in the air had taken a smooth drive north, picking up hitchhiking icicles on their way.

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Gloves were still packed in the attic. The burberry coat pocket revealed the right ear, a natural hand warmer awaiting the familiar cold grip. The nose could not be found. We saw too far and listened too hard. Attention to the obscure scared the sniffer off somewhere into blatant sight. Soon the rose petals melted open again. Minds wandered with dolled up matters, taking them out to diners, holding their heavyweight purses, until too much time spent with them dissolved the romance and the mind moved onto others. Her face in our home was now a watermark from a too full coffee cup placed on stained wood by a friend we no longer knew.

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ALEXANDRA LEWIS

Untitled Fragile moments play in the purple light, crisp white buttons fold together. The sun hits callused hands; yesterday slips through the dusty lace, falls into the water. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not happy anymore because Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not happy anymore. The door hinges twirl outward and so do I. Deep eyes graze the curves of a preoccupied body and notice feels good against my skin. Foam folds into the sand, I curl with the sweep of the waves. Your black and blue scent lingers in the crest of auburn morning, departure rings the 5th chime of a church bell.

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ALEXANDRA LEWIS

Eris Soft strokes of water against sheets, white letters leak down the sides of the desk. Night after night, petals of the peonies fall, dry. Expectation sits in a paper cup of filled prescriptions, waiting to be taken with her “useless medication.” Pencil scrapes against paper—concerned with corners of a too busy mind. Black lace strung onto barely bones, faded pink skin sweeps the arms of the air. The bed holds me hostage, bound a member of her audience. She twirls, tornado feet spin against the hardwood. Thoughts rot on the roof of her mouth. She doesn’t like the stars because they’re dead already. Restless fingers beat worry into cracks of the desk. She thinks I’m not watching. Whispers slip in between her lips, tucking under folds of flowers. She winds herself around my stomach, churning. A desert of black ink coats her, words leak out of untrusted talent.

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SAMANTHA MACKERTICH

The Smile The house is at the bottom of our street. It is one of the oldest houses in the area, and was at one time surrounded by acres of woods that are now my neighborhood. I pass it about four times a day, but I find myself looking at it every time. Leaning trees and a net of branches among scraggly bushes appear to choke it. The house has vinyl siding, once a vibrant red, now faded to the color of dried blood. A gray swayback roof is draped over the walls, its shingles mismatched and crooked. Just outside the garage, in the rotting leaves on the ground, sits a clunky, outdated computer monitor looking as blank and lifeless as a disembodied head. The garage, whose rusted door lies crumpled in a heap nearby, is filled with junk—cracked buckets, moldy cardboard—and spindly vines are creeping their way in. Where I suppose there was once a driveway a blue pick-up truck appears to be sinking in the high grass; it never leaves its spot, and no other vehicles ever join it. But the object that steals my attention every time I drive by is the stone fountain in the middle of the property. Weathered and crumbling, it supports a grinning cherub who tips a vase into the basin beneath it. No water ever comes out. The statue’s belly, arms, and shoulders are stained yellow, and patches of black moss hanging off the figure give the impression from a distance that the cherub is melting. In winter, snowflakes catch in the moss and make the cherub sparkle, returning to it some of its former glory. The cherub’s smile is unfaltering, as if, despite the fall from grace, it cannot see this oasis of neglect.

THE BLUE PENCIL

2013

HAYEN KIM ’16, VISUAL ART 2013

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COURTNEY MCCAIN

The Angel and the Fly It was one of those late-summer days where the heat sat heavy on our skin, pressured us. It was ninety-something degrees, but the humidity made it feel like one hundred and ten in a crowded steam room. The AC was broken in my friend Clara’s house, which only enhanced the nauseating potpourri smell. They had inspirational messages hanging in every hallway, like “A family that prays together stays together”; “I do all through Christ who gives me strength”; “Rejoice in the Lord for His love lasts forever!” There was a set of family photos in which they were huddled together, their heads stacked chin to cranium, holding stiff grins, and behind them was a crucifix surrounded by white light. It always made me uncomfortable. I never spent much time in the hallways, though; we usually went to the basement or to Clara’s room and watched PG-13 movies without her mom’s permission. Her mom was the type of woman who wore stilettos to church, chemises to sleep. She would microwave us Lean Cuisines for lunch. I tried not to talk to her too much. When she offered to watch a movie with us, we miraculously wanted to do something else. Today we went to the loft in the shed, perching ourselves above her father’s sports car, and all the toys Clara and her sister deemed themselves too old for. We were forbidden to go to the loft because her mom feared we’d fall from it, but nonetheless we went, and we spent hours devouring issues of J-14 magazine, ripping out pictures of the celebrities we liked, defacing pictures of the ones we didn’t. There was something thick and used about the air up there, like it was condensating in our lungs. It was unbearable, but I feigned being too polite to say so. I dramatically tugged on the chest of my tank-top to air it out and fanned my face with my hand. Clara was not so polite, and had no qualms making complaints. She cornered her mom and whined at her until she caved and was willing to take Clara, her little sister, and me to a water park. The AC in the car was heavenly. I shivered a little as the air blew on my sweat. Clara had called shotgun and left me sitting in the back with her little sister, behind the driver’s seat. I wasn’t sure how old her sister was, but she was too young for kindergarten and could recite only the first half

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of the alphabet with ease. She wore a floral dress: a starched, tarpy cotton that was way too stiff and formal for the occasion. I didn’t anticipate talking to her much, so I decided to get comfortable and put my knees up against the back of the seat. The ride was about an hour, which at our age was nearly unendurable. Clara’s mom tuned the radio to Kiss 108 to appease us—most young children love repetitive, risqué pop music. I preferred gangsta rap, but I wasn’t about to say that. I was being lulled into the ride and was nearly asleep when a buzzing started and grew closer. I felt something lightly brush against my collarbone. It was a green-backed horsefly with a wet shine that only enhanced the notion that flies spend their days rolling in sewage. I shooed it away. I didn’t mind bugs much, but Clara did. She started screeching and swatting at the air, and within a minute her mother was doing something similar. When her little sister joined in, I couldn’t help smirking at the spectacle. Clara was shouting, “Kill it, kill it!” like a lyncher at an execution. The fly landed on my windowsill and started to climb up the glass, looking for a way out. I could’ve killed it easily, but I didn’t want to. Clara shot me a sharp glance, so I swung at it, purposefully slow enough for it to anticipate the strike and escape. “Sorry,” I said. “Flies are so fast.” We got on the highway and the fly disappeared into the trunk through the opening in the backseat. Traffic became stop and go, and by that I mean mostly stop. “The heat makes people forget how to drive,” Clara’s mom said, and I wanted to say maybe they never knew how to begin with, but I kept my mouth shut. There must have been an accident or something ahead, because the traffic had to converge into only one lane to get past whatever was there. I heard the buzzing approaching again and prepared for their dramatics. The whole spectacle repeated, but at least the traffic was moving. They were all chanting murderously, and I saw, over the seat, Clara’s mom’s hands swatting the air. I wondered how, exactly, she was steering. When a ten-foot gap grew between us and the car in front of us, people behind us honked their horns in a chorus of heat-stroked frustration. We sped forward and caught up, but now traffic was back at a crawl. The fly ping-ponged from window to window, looking for its escape. They all slapped at it furiously. Clara was still chanting, “Kill it, kill it!” I knew none of them had the composure to aim and hit it. When it came my way, I let it fly past me and slip back into the trunk.

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We eased forward at a pace of about a couple feet per minute. Finally, we pulled up to the eye of the storm: a barrier of police cars in a semicircle around a gap of bare pavement. Clara’s sister started to say something about the lights on the cop cars when her mom choked on her breath. “Oh my god,” she said, “ohmygod,ohmygod,ohmygod.” Clara had told me once that I wasn’t allowed to say “Oh my god” in their house, as it “uses the Lord’s name in vain.” I’ve never been religious, so I wasn’t quite sure what that meant. (I assumed it had something to do with the frail metal chicken on my neighbor Mr. Dirkley’s roof. It rode a horizontal cross labeled with small letters, and he often went up on a ladder to turn it, cussing, and asking the sky why his goddamn weather vane refused to stay pointed north.) Not wanting to upset anyone, I resorted to “gosh” or “goodness” when Clara’s parents were around. I guess it was okay when her mom used the Lord’s name, though, or maybe the rules didn’t apply outside of their house. I wasn’t about to test that for myself. It sounded like her mom was crying. I couldn’t see what she was panicking about, but after her reaction to the fly, I assumed it wasn’t anything particularly traumatic. I looked over at Clara, who was silent for once, mouth agape. After a moment, the corners of her mouth began to twitch. She was struggling to breathe, but pushed out the words “Oh my god!” and started to cry too. She covered her face with her hands and shook her head back and forth, muttering, “No, no, no.” Then she looked up and began screaming—“Mom, take us home! Mom!” Her mom gripped the wheel hard and started shaking it, and since it was firmly fixed to the rest of the car, she was really shaking herself. “I’m trying!” she squealed and slammed her body back against the seat, which thrust my knees into my chest. She told Clara’s sister to look out her own window, not to look the other way for any reason. I didn’t imagine she was going to follow such directions, as even I knew better than to tell a four-year-old not to look at something at all costs unless I actually wanted her to look. Weirdly, she complied, throwing her dress over her head. She had polka-dotted Disney princess underwear, and that was more than I wanted to see. I turned away and looked out my window. All I could see were bumpers, boots, blue uniforms. I bobbed my head up and down, then shifted side to side, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was behind all the cop cars. Lifehouse’s “Hanging by a Moment” came on the radio, and I began tapping my fingers on my knee to a beat far faster than the song’s. Traffic started crawling again, and I was eager to see what had made them have such a

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visceral reaction—perhaps it was a very large fly. Traffic stopped again, this time with my window lined up with a gap between two of the cop cars. That’s when I saw her. She was sprawled facedown on the pavement. Blood fanned out from either side of her head, spanning longer than her body, gradually growing wider and feathering at the tips, like elongated crimson wings, coagulating to burgundy at the edges. She wore a summer dress, probably cotton. A much lighter, more transparent cotton than Clara’s sister’s dress. It was pure white, aside from the dirt and spatter. I stared at her. Periodically I’d see a pop of green—glimpses of her underwear as her dress jumped up in the wind gusts. I wished someone would cover her. I could see why they didn’t, though: she was strawberry blonde and leggy; probably would’ve been beautiful if she wasn’t cracked, like an ornate piece of pottery lost to a miscalculation in the kiln. I cast my eyes upward, then back down to her. I don’t know what compelled me to do it, but I gripped the handle on the car door and drew out the words “Like an angel.” Clara’s sister turned excitedly. She looked out my window and cocked her head to the side as she studied the woman; then, upon realization of what she was looking at, she promptly threw up in her lap. Once traffic started moving again, we got past the blockade, and soon Clara’s mom was weaving in and out of the lanes. Clara’s sister was wailing, and it smelled sharply of bile and peanut butter and jelly. A radio ad came on, some jingle sung by an out-of-tune children’s chorus. Clara’s mom snapped, “Oh, shut the hell up!” and wiped wetness off her face and then slammed the button that turned the radio off. Clara tried to chastise her for swearing, but she told Clara to shut the hell up too. It had been a long day, I guess. When we were finally at speed, the fly appeared again with its distinctive taunting buzz. It was trying to land on Clara’s mom’s tears but she kept shooing it away. By now she was cursing every couple of seconds, wildly swinging a magazine she had taken from the center console. Clara flicked her eyes back and forth, watching her mother swat furiously with one hand while with the other she tried to keep the wheel steady. “Let it go,” Clara said. “Let it go, please, let it go.” Her mom sighed, and rolled down the driver’s window. After a moment of bouncing into the half of the

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window that was still up, the fly finally buzzed out. I was happy about this, and I think everyone else was too. But my relief was interrupted by a yellow-green stripe spreading across my window, fanning out from the flyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s crumpled carcass. The wind had thrown the fly into my window as soon as it had flown out. Clara was whimpering, and her sister gagged, staring into the puddle in her lap. Her dress sagged between her legs for the rest of the ride, like the roof of a flat-top tent after a rainstorm. I closed my eyes, letting the wind from the window and the hum of the AC act as lullaby. I imagined watching a drooping tarp loom over me while at the circus, and not watching the shows out of fear that the rainwater would come rushing down. Then, finally, the weight of the water tears the tarp; the water drops from the sky onto the crowd, drenching the lions down to shivering cats, and washing off the clownsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; makeup. I envisioned the chaos, the elephants stampeding in fear, crushing skulls like the watermelons they stomp in their shows. I had never been to a circus, so I needed to purely invent most of the scene, but I could see the aftermath: the trampled crowd as a sea of facedown angels, crimson blood wings being absorbed by discarded peanut shells and dropped popcorn. A wave of heat pulled me from the dream, and I realized the car was once again at a standstill, parked in my driveway, and the others were waiting for me to get out.

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2013

YAGE LI ’14, VISUAL ART

2013

THE BLUE PENCIL

WILLIAM MCGOVERN

Heath/Brigham She had fallen asleep, coaxed away By the major third droning On her windowpane. I am still awake, My second cup of coffee churning In my stomach, synchronized Rumbles beneath the tracks. I rode the momentum on the coupled lines Dipping up and down the underground Hopeful to stay, my nameless companion Never wavered, the conductor never slept, The engine spat exhaust into monochrome Clouds left in yesterdayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s horizon We coasted, our company automatic Doors and the amber evening sun clipped To the skyline. I had arrived, so I left You tied up to the edge of the glass, mouth closed.

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WILLIAM MCGOVERN

Wonderland The train slackens Unable to keep up With the pull of the moon. By the beach It is inadequate, Slower than the seaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; That old man slipping Into his seat at the bath House. He has ebbed Ad infinitum, sunk his feet deep into the steam, floating amongst the white caps. He soaks in the last stopâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; arms agape, mouth open wide an elliptical sigh, a gust enough to roll the stock around the bend.

2013

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CASEY MURTAGH

Marie O’Connor, 42, South Boston, Massachusetts It’s two o’clock already! Jeegus! I gotta get started on my errands, so that I can get back to my house by four, and I can get over to my mother’s by five. I got to set her freakin’ hair ’cause she’s singing the Ave Maria in the Hallelujah chorus tomorrow at church, but I swear to God if she thinks I’m coming to mass with her in the morning — she’s fuckin’ high. So at any rate, I still gotta head down to KiKi’s to get a rack of Natty’s for the boys. Before I leave though, I was meaning to talk to you about your mother; she’s quite the hot ticket. I got a funny story about her, but first I was wondering if she got that stint put in her heart yet? I remember the cougar trying to go scoopin’ at Bingo — all decked out in her 1920s pearls and church dress — must be going senile, huh? Anywhose, she was going scoopin’. Louise came over with my mother, to get ready with your mother. Of course I drove the three stooges, because God forbid they enlist the help of my brother Connor or sister Carolyn. At any rate, you know how they’ve been friends for seventy-one years now, so if anyone knows about pushing buttons it’s these ladies, you know? Too funny. I guess that’s where my little Mary Anne gets her dry sense of humor. She is such a punk, Arlene, I’ll tell ya. Nana asked her to bring the tea box from the kitchen to her room, and Mary Anne didn’t want any part of this charity, so she stomped on Nana’s oxygen tube and didn’t get off till I found her. I guess it’s in retaliation to my sharp attitude recently; I don’t know. I used to be at her beck and call until I quit my butts last year, and I up and became a maniac — no wonder she is acting out. I still fucking wake up with my fingers to my mouth — swear to God, right hang on the bible. I said to Frank, I said Jeegus, I’m always going to crave those blasted cancer sticks. Speaking of cancer, after I took Janie, Carly Bag’s mother, to her chemo, I headed back to make this anti-cancer soup I heard about in Home Cooking. As you know, I’ve been on a diet for twenty-eight years, and I found that kale and quinoa are a supermarket super food. So at any rate, I made the kale soup for Janie. But of course Janie called up Louise and both of our mothers, to come over for supper, so I ended up having to make some more soup for the bunch. It seemed alright, but the soup had two to four shots of Pearl Vodka for a kick

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because, you know, the broth was basically just hot water, so I forgot these ladies are 82 and 87 or something and on top of their age they are all on Zoloft this and Prozac that, in addition to whatever blood thinners they got going on. So as you know, whatever medication they are on I’m sure all of it doesn’t mix well with vodka. So I’m sitting here trying to figure it out when all of a sudden the ladies are praising the anti-cancer soup and before they can ladle themselves another helping, my mother, your mother, and Janie are all gone. Boop boop boop, like dominos — out cold. The ride home I got the two stroke survivors and the chemo patient, in my back seat, two, three, four sheets to the wind, and they were singing Bo Diddley like they were in 1955 again. Oh yeah, so anyways, back to you — for Mary Anne and Emma’s First Holy Communion, what do you propose we do? A fancy dinner at Joe’s American Bar and Grille? Tell your Scott to bring his new iFace 5 phone so he can show the old girls how to work it, so they can see the grandchildren in Connecticut on their birthdays and what have you. Oh, that would be just great, she has been bothering me about that darn face chat for months now. I would help myself but I’m technologically illiterate. Scott is such a nice kid, Arlene, you did a really nice job on him. But his girlfriend, oh Jeegus, she looks like she is asking for it. I swear to God she is one array hemline away from turning back the old man and telling Jesus she’s got something to show him — Scotty should settle down with a nice girl. One of the Irish step dancer’s from down by Rita O’ Shea’s — they practice in the Gym-na-Church-atorium of Holy Name. I’ll take him down there — it’s fine. They have me over there after their shows to help convert the seats to pews, make the gym a chapel and then back to a gym again. Oh, shoot, this is my mother — I’ll see you later, Arlene. Hi Ma, I’m on my way. No, Ma! I’m doin’ cloth curlers, for the last time. Like I said, your hair is far too thin for the iron!

2013

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SHELLY PIRES

The Words She didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have the words when they taught her to speak All she had were the colors and faces and sounds But they fed her the letters on her tongue And gave her the words they found I before E, you before me In the middle, where could she be? In school, she learned how to write letters on paper They gave her the shapes and the pen in her hand But she covered the page with warm black ink And words they couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t understand I before E, you before me In the middle, where could she be? Then she went to the city and learned how to talk She spoke like the voices passing her by But her voice never reached their frostbitten ears So she closed her mouth and her mind

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Spring came and on her own she found her words again She played with the sounds like playing a game And they didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know what to make of her song But it filled their ears just the same I before E, you before me In the middle, where could she be? In the middle, there she could be.

2013

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SHELLY PIRES

On Songwriting What makes a good song is a different set of criteria from what makes a good poem. Poetry tends to focus on concrete imagery and finding fresh, new ways to say what’s been said before. Songs tend to have more abstractions in them, and the language tends to be simpler—but that doesn’t stop me from appreciating them as I would a good poem. Why should they be so different? After all, they both have lines and verses, and they both deal with the language of sound. One possible answer is that songs also use music to craft images. Music adds another layer that simply isn’t there when you’re reading a poem, and yet it’s just as powerful at conveying meaning as words. I’ve always been intrigued by the difference between these two art forms, so when I was offered the opportunity to do an independent project that incorporated another art medium, I chose to incorporate music. In the process of writing this piece, I grappled with the question of what is acceptable in a song. I made things slightly easier for myself by choosing to write with a narrative structure in mind. I also kept the language simple in a way that might not work in poetry, in lines such as “Then she went to the city and learned how to talk.” I also allowed myself to be more vague and abstract when it suited the music I had imagined for the song. An example that illustrates this is, “In the middle, where could she be?” Since I imagine this song sounding like a slightly more solemn version of a song you might play to a child on a guitar, I felt that the chorus had to contain something similar to a moral. Even though I was thinking of the piece within the framework of songwriting, I still tried to write some lines that preserved the imagistic language of poetry, like “But they fed her the letters on her tongue.”

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As for the musical aspect of this project, since I hope to someday perform this piece myself, I took voice lessons to learn more about my voice. I used what I learned when thinking about how the song would sound, and what would best suit both my voice and the mood of the song. Just as a play is only in its complete form when itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s performed onstage, this song can be considered incomplete, since the music hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been written yet.

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SHELLY PIRES

How-to I. Heaven Forbid Sew patches onto new clothes and call it irony. I won’t explain that you’re wrong. One of these days, you’ll bring me something more permanent than a punch line or a few grains of sand stuck to your skin once you left the beach. They say the waves wash away but you come ashore no matter how many times you set yourself afloat. Build a boat out of driftwood and let it sink. Ask me if that’s irony.

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II. Hundred There were things they couldn’t teach you to count, like how many leaves a tree is missing. You didn’t dwell on things like that. You took to counting wheels on Mack trucks, locks on doors, syllables in names. You measured days with a ruler and kept time by counting blinks per minute. When will you learn to measure what you can’t count? How many days in your life, how many cities you won’t know, how many numbers between one and zero.

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SHELLY PIRES

Moving In I. Misread I close my curtains when large groups of men gather at night on our street. Tonight they are a cult, gathered in black hoodies and carrying candles in jars. In a few days I’ll walk to the library, taking the path that winds through the back streets. I’ll stop at a spray-painted message in the sidewalk— two dates side-by-side, a makeshift memorial.

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II. New Kid Return to a time when you wore shoes with shoelaces just so you could tie them again and again, after they grazed pockmarked sidewalk. When all you knew came down to where your feet could take you, the ground wearing down your soles. These days you are somehow surprised when you see shoelaces tied together and thrown over telephone wires, white shoes hanging like a flag. As if their soles were confined to where your feet could go. As if laces were made to be tripped over and retied.

2013

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SHAWN VAZIN

The Flames of Goat Hill Randall: The people of Goat Hill don’t have much to do. You could fish, or maybe hunt, if that’s your thing. There are a few people who ride through the trails in the woods. They’re around forty or so years old. Beth, my cousin, is one of them. She works the checkout at the market in town. Town’s got the bank, the market, the post office, the town hall, and some other places, too, but no houses. Houses are around the town. Most of them have a couple acres of clearing around them, separated by some woods. Most of Goat Hill is woods, now that I think of it. Really it’s just a lot of oaks, pines, a few cedars, and not much more. Afternoon you can hear the deer hunters’ shots from the woods. Most people have guns around here, be it for self-defense or for hunting. I think the Wilsons might be using their rifles for less wholesome reasons on account of their Confederate flag, but that’s just me. Who am I to talk, though? Anyways, there’s even more hunting than fishing. That may be due to the drought. I wouldn’t really know. The drought has been around longer than I have. Our pond’s dry. It looks like an overrated puddle. It’s a bit to the left of our house. Our house is a bit bigger than everybody else’s. My mom has a job as a college teacher out a few towns over. So we can afford a bit more acres, bit finer things, and, you know, so on. But we don’t care for wasting. My dad’s still mad about that fishing pole he bought me. I put it in the garage a few years ago and didn’t touch it since. I just don’t care for fishing — too dull for my taste. I’ve been told I don’t quite act like a thrill-seeker by a few people, but those people don’t know me that well. I think if they did get to know me they would see that I really do have a hungering for that feeling you get. That kind of feeling when you’re burning something, or when you punch somebody in the face, it’s just… I can’t explain it. It gets me breathing, you know? Like… really breathing.

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(Very Long Pause) My uncle’s trying to build a movie theater or something. He just got elected into office a few months or so ago, and ever since, whenever we talk he complains about the debt of the town. Then again, we don’t talk too much, maybe twice a month on a good month. He comes over to our house every now and again for dinner, bringing whatever fish he caught that day. He’s really good at fishing. He catches a fish from our puddle of a pond every day. Usually catfish, since that’s what the pond has most of. We serve it with coleslaw or okra, sometimes both. I don’t like catfish. I don’t really like coleslaw either, and I don’t care for my uncle’s okra either. It’s too… I don’t know… crunchy, maybe. Aunt Babe, his wife, made much better okra. It’s a shame she died… car crash — it was a car crash. Went to her funeral a year or so ago. Been to a good few funerals. Maybe seven, eight. We were supposed to go to my grandpa’s funeral, but it was in Mexico. None of us got passports. My dad’s scared if he leaves the country he can’t come back. He came here when he was twenty-some years old. A while ago. Never left, neither. Never even left Tennessee to go to his brother’s wedding. Only wedding I’ve ever been invited to. Shame we couldn’t go. I always wanted to go to a wedding. Goat Hill isn’t much a marrying place. We’re filled with kids, up to about twenty-some years old, if you count the college kids down a few towns over. I count them. We also got the old couples, from about forty years old, maybe fifty years old, to as old as people can get. Oldest couple around here is our neighbors, the Percys. Mrs. Percy is just about ninety now, but she isn’t near as old as her husband, Mr. Percy. Mom says he’s about a century old, probably a bit more. He probably has seen just about everything in this place. Not that there’s much to see here in Goat Hill. Sure, there’s something going on every now and again. Like I heard that around the ’50s Mayor Davis — same as my uncle is now — was a part of some sort of hanging… lynching. Well, the press got ahold of this, and Mayor Davis ended up having to give up being mayor and went to jail, some New York prison. Davis died the first day. Got hung.

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I don’t know if it’s true. I don’t really believe it all. I suppose the lynching could happen around here, but I just don’t see some black family moving in to get lynched. If it wasn’t for my mom, my dad wouldn’t even get to live here, and he’s only Mexican. I just think it’s some story somebody made up to make this town seem a bit more interesting, or it could be that Mr. Percy is just losing his old mind and spreading these stories around that are just some product from his senile mind… I can’t really think of any other event that happened here any earlier. Guess that means the newest event is about to happen. Buck and me are burning down the town hall. I got to go to meet Buck with the gas at the town hall. Then comes flipping a coin for who gets to light it. The only thing to do after that is to find out what the word is around town. Hope we get a rise out of everybody. I bet we make the paper, or maybe even the news.

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Index Aerofoil, molted, 3

Icicles, hitchhiking, 32

Belly, swelled with rainwater, 18; stained

Lights, drunken, 22; like a petting zoo

yellow, 36

fence, 27

Boat, built out of driftwood, 52

Light years, like laundry, 27

Cherub, melting, 36

Men, carrying candles in jars, 54

Clouds, grown from grain, 3; paunchy, 25;

Moss, ladling her head, 17; black, 36

monochrome, 44

Mothers, out cold like dominoes, 47

Disturbulence, distant, 3

Moustaches, steely, 22

Dress, as roof of flat-top tent, 42

Okra, crunchy, 57

Eyes, in a tornado, 16; lit with iridescent

Pockmarks, on quicksand, 16; on sidewalk, 55

chroma, 23; mistaken for rubber balls, 32;

Pond, as overrated puddle, 56

grazing a body, 34

Scent, black and blue, 34

Face, strikingly handsome, 31; as watermark,

Shoelaces, traced into new constellation, 17;

33; crowded with wrinkles, 26

thrown over telephone wires, 55

Fingers, shattered, 23; as glowing filament,

Shoulder, blossoming, 22

28; tapping on knees, 40

Sigh, elliptical, 45

Flirtation, velvet, 22

Song, fine-spun, 23; sounding solemn, 50

Fridge, running to hell and back, 9

Sun, clipped to skyline, 44

Girls heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s kissed, like apes, 27

Trumpets, flamed silver, 23

Grass, anxious, 3

Turtle, like bread rising in the oven, 31

Hair, disturbed by ghosts, 3; color of

Twirl, of door hinges, 34; of tornado feet, 35

redwood bark, 26; replaced by left ear, 32;

Voice, of thick toffee, 23; newly dropped, 30

too thin for the iron, 47

Wife, cartwheeling through time, 29;

Heart, as clothespin, 17

propping herself against the wall, 25

Hips, genteel, 22

Wine, as burning mercury, 23

I, before E, 48

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THE BLUE PENCIL

2013

About Creative Writing The Creative Writing Program at Walnut Hill brings together passionate young writers and supports their growth as artists. With emphasis placed on invention, craft, and practice, we ask them to invest deeply in the process of writing. In our studio setting, they meet one-on-one with distinguished faculty and choose from courses that explore specific ideas and techniques in fiction, poetry, playwriting, screenwriting, and non-fiction. We enhance their experience with hands-on training in editing and publishing, visits from notable authors, and collaborations with Walnut Hillâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s other arts disciplines. Immersed in a community of kindred spirits, our writers discover a sense of belonging, as well as their own individual style and voice.

Visit us onlineâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;or, even better, in person! Contact the Office of Admission at 508.650.5020 or admissions@walnuthillarts.org

2013

THE BLUE PENCIL

MIRANDA MORTENSEN ’13, VISUAL ART