THE MAGAZINE OF THE WRITING, FILM & MEDIA ARTS PROGRAM AT WALNUT HILL SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS
2016 THE BLUE PENCIL i
TABLE OF CONTENTS S. Makai Andrews 39 lemongrass Alexandra Ashe 12 Comet Beckett Azevedo 26 Raval Jordan Barrant 34 Winter Break Maeve Benz 44 Here’s What Happened Gabriel Braunstein 2 Spring Blues 3 Rising Blues Austin Cole 40 Date Night Odessa Ernst 38 Colorblind Helli Fang 23 Graduation 24 Swell Rachel Lynn 11
Mesonge
Samantha Mackertich 8 Dear Poseidon 10 Circe
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Tristan McKenzie 22 For Elizabeth: a blues song Grace Meredith 33 Bare Karen Morey 28
Still from “The Interrogation”
Lucia Mulligan 42 43
1930s Love Song Never Knew a Lullaby
Hannah Ortiz 13
Wolves
Izzy Rosas 9 Untitled Fiona Sullivan 30
Why Don’t Fathers Cry?
Brianna Zuñiga 4 Cuban Sub Index 50
Cover Art Still from the video “Sisterhood” by Chili Shi ’18
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Student Editors Beckett Azevedo ’17
Hannah Ortiz ’18
Maeve Benz ’17
Austin Cole ’17
Gabriel Braunstein ’16
Rachel Lynn ’19
Odessa Ernst ’17
Fiona Sullivan ’16
Samantha Mackertich ’16
Shawn Vazin ’16
Grace Meredith ’17
Brianna Zuñiga ’17
Lucia Mulligan ’18
Faculty Advisors Margaret Funkhouser, Director, Poetry Stephen Lacy, Film Ronan Noone, Playwriting, Screenwriting Allan Reeder, Fiction, Nonfiction Betsy Blazar, Design and Layout
Editorial Note This year, The Blue Pencil opened submissions to students in the Walnut Hill community and to students at other arts boarding schools across the country. Three writers were chosen by the Editors to appear alongside the work of the members of the Writing, Film and Media Arts Department. They are Alexandra Ashe, a senior Theater major at Walnut Hill; Helli Fang, a senior Music major at Walnut Hill; and S. Makai Andrews, a senior Creative Writing major at Interlochen Arts Academy. We welcome them into the mix!
Walnut Hill School for the Arts © The Blue Pencil 2016, Volume 81, No. 1 All rights reserved. No work is to be reprinted without written consent from the author and from Walnut Hill School for the Arts.
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THE BLUE PENCIL 2016
2016 THE BLUE PENCIL 1
Spring Blues She took my voice, left me pavement like I lost my feet and saw eyes float by: mine. What left stick-wide stems between my teeth was the kiss. Pined the space to sleep beside her cheek but found her tree quite bare. I waver in early afternoon. Leave the kitchen to name the lonely go.
GABRIEL BRAUNSTEIN 2 THE BLUE PENCIL 2016
Rising Blues I When morning is still black my balding father’s knees sing sweet as his knuckles on Sunday tenderloin. Work today will bleed until the sun swings low. II Apples picked where I learned a girl’s birthday song. She pulled the plug before she could vote. Sometimes I wonder if I didn’t find her would she. III Gone to New York New York City. Cloth weighs too much now. A garland strung on the wall, signed in night sweat. Ophelia is her very dirtiest. IV I moved to the sea and swam out. I thought I would float by ears. Burnt from exhaustion, ammonia-swabbed nose and waterlogged.
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Cuban Sub (An excerpt from the screenplay, Hola Mamá) INT. BAKERY – AFTERNOON Enter ALEJANDRO (a recently arrived Mexican immigrant) with BECK (both 16) to a warmly lit, overcrowded American bakery. A snake-like line of customers wraps the tightly packed restaurant. Alejandro halts before the entrance. His eyes widen. Beck proceeds to the end of the line, focused on the chalkboard menu atop the wall. Beck points at the clear pantry to endless sweet breads, savory pies, and pastries. Beck Chicken pot pie... Yummm! Beck looks at Alejandro for agreement. Alejandro What’s a… chicken… pot pie? Beck Only the best American dish ever! Beck grins, pats him on the back. Alejandro smirks unconvincingly, quickly breaking eye contact with Beck. His eyes dart back to the menu. A sea of lasagna, bacon, and pizza. Beck (Cont’d) Any idea what’cha ordering? Beck is next in line. Alejandro (Shaking his head) I do not have a clue. Alejandro (Cont’d) America has too many options. Give me a choice between ham or prosciutto on my sandwich, and I won’t complain. But this... Directs Beck towards the menu. Beck smiles. He steps up to the register in front of WORKER (22), a blond stringy-haired girl. Beck Good afternoon! How are you?
BRIANNA ZUÑIGA 4 THE BLUE PENCIL 2016
Worker Pretty good, and you? Beck Great! First time taking my buddy here. Beck leans over the register, covers his mouth with his hand to whisper in her ear. Beck (Cont’d) Make sure no one spits in his food! The worker and Beck laugh too hard for a joke that bad. Alejandro tries to understand the joke. Oh God, he’s being made fun of. Beck (Cont’d) Anyway, I think I’m gonna go with a slice of the pot pie, and a small iced tea. Worker You got it! That’ll be $7.95. Alejandro’s eyes widen. His lips tighten. $7.95 for two items? Beck hands the worker his debit card, walks to the other end of the bakery. Alejandro looks one last time at the menu. Worker (Cont’d) How are you today? Alejandro I’m doing fine. And you? Worker I’m good. Alejandro Could I order a Cubano? She squints her eyes, draws her brows together as she corrects him. Worker Uh, you mean... the Cuban sandwich? Alejandro Yes, that is what I said. The customer hospitality is gone from her voice. Worker Hm. Well that’s not what I heard. Here, it’s called a Cuban sandwich.
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Alejandro Just so you know, it’s really called a Cubano. Worker Would you like anything to drink? Alejandro (Cold) No. Worker (Colder) Your total comes out to be $5.65. She turns behind her, picks up a pre-made sub in an aluminum wrapper. Worker (Cont’d) Here’s your Cubano. Alejandro hands her the exact change. Beck is seated with his slice of pie at a table by the window. Alejandro walks to the table, sits across from Beck. Beck What’s with the face? Alejandro Nothing. You wouldn’t understand. Beck Hey — Alejandro You Americans. Constantly thinking your way is always right. He signs quotations around the word “right” violently. Alejandro (Cont’d) When, in reality, all you do is take and take and take from the rest of us. Look at this stupid menu. Alejandro points to the menu. His voice escalating. A family eating at a table next to them glare. Alejandro (Cont’d) Italian sub this, Cuban sub that. Alejandro mimics an indistinguishable American accent. Alejandro (Cont’d) Does this look like a Cuban sub to you? Do you see this?
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Alejandro wiggles the soggy breaded sub in Beck’s face. A pickle flops out onto the center of the table. Alejandro (Cont’d) You Americans. Beck Dude, you should’ve just gotten the chicken pot pie. END
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Dear Poseidon, When I wake up choking saltwater, it isn’t you. It’s your hands, how they bit my skin blue. Your stale breath spreads on my cheek like mold. I think of my body — before touch. Your hands pop off doll heads like soda caps. How does it feel to be a god? I imagine it must ache, to pinch life’s shaking throat between your sea glass teeth. You had practice. I think of you when I think drown, but not often these days. The tile is unforgiving and the glue welds my shivering fingers. I re-capitate the bodies. Their plastic eyes loll. To look in the mirror stings of salt; I see your hands, tendons taut, press prints into my skin, and I can’t help but think of the world in warps of blue and gray, like blinking upward under the weight of an ocean. Without love, Medusa
SAMANTHA MACKERTICH 8 THE BLUE PENCIL 2016
Artwork by Izzy Rosas ’16
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Circe a cigarette-burned sweater smothers the lamp like a grenade, but light leaks out, washes moonlight from the laundry, deepens the creases of her palms. she misses barefoot laughter. everything’s too quiet with her back smoothed on the bed. the ceiling is soft gelled white, an eye rolled back. she runs her fingers along the hem of an age-pulled throw, feels instead the soft reverse of a pig’s ear. the tape, clouded like a swatch of sea glass, loosens its hold on the eviction notice. it sinks like a flake of fish-food. under her bed lie the shards of a civilization. wood shavings curled like streets. mints rolling like taxis, collecting swaying flecks of dust. the sand, wet and gummy, pulls at the peaks of her knees. she sweeps utopia into the dustpan. broom bristles pull rivers of tangled dental floss across the carpet. a thin beach catches beneath the lip of the pan. she swears she sees the freckles of windworn feet and sun-chapped skin adance around a spitted fire. she sweeps the line, dribbles it over the garbage.
SAMANTHA MACKERTICH 10 THE BLUE PENCIL 2016
Mensonge After Calvino
The valley of Mensonge and the city therein can be reached in two ways: by drowning or
by oxygen tank. The surface the city shows to the drowning man is vastly different from that it chooses to show to those who arrive by means of life.
When the drowning man, sinking into black waters, sees a light at the corner of his eyes,
crawling in to consume his mind and pull at the edges of his very soul, he allows himself surrender. He sees, first, the grand dome that protects this white light; he knows inside is a city, but he thinks of it as a savior to his fleeting life, an angel reaching out for him from the gates of heaven, her golden hair flowing in a calm, unsourced breeze that gently pulls at the fluffy white clouds cushioning the city’s sharper corners. He thinks of all the little driftwood houses just past the threshold of the enchanted city, and of silken streets paved with mother-of-pearl, and of windows with shutters of sea-smoothed planks held together with emerald kelp, mussels and clams adorning its surface like Christmas ornaments, and each open window framing a little family of sharp-toothed angels sitting down to a dinner of raw whole fish and sips of brown, salty water.
In the hazy half-light of the bioluminescent city, the diver sees the faint form of a gnarled,
collapsing glass shell, an upside-down, dented fishbowl entrapping a bubble of dirty air; he knows it is a city, but he sees it as a kingdom waiting for the hand of a king, undiscovered and untouched—waiting for the right man to come along and order it into perfection, the pearlescent streets awaiting his heavy metal boot steps, the sharp-toothed creatures tearing into open-gutted fish in the windows of shipwreck-plank houses, and the littered rotting seaweed and shells that conceal the footing of houses, muck and filth that tarnish the warped cradle of the city. Already he sees himself as king, striding into the dome with a long line of divers following behind him, spewing from the body of a blackened submarine, the heavy rope lines pulling him and his iron-bodied suit back to a reverie sure to await his return: open-armed women in tightly laced dresses, court rooms with gilded doors, where men sit and toil at desks too large for their frames, waving their arms about, faces half-hidden by powdered wigs and high, starch-stiffened white collars.
The city receives its form from the side of the veil the man who sees it is on; and so the
drowning man sees a heavenly promise, and the diver a new land to colonize and call his own. So they see Mensonge, a city of deceit on the border of filth and beauty.
RACHEL LYNN 2016 THE BLUE PENCIL 11
Comet Seventy six years doesn’t really come into existence when she’s been here since the beginning. Cracked skin, scars of kisses cratered on her skull. Love can be violent at the speed of light. I call out to the well of ink I spill as I pass. Her wrinkled face puckers, cheeks fill. I watch her tuck the earth into a warm water blanket. Sound is swept under the vacuum. Halley and her lover. Captivated by the curve of her age, her parallel loyalty to the world below. Newton was wrong. Inertia is an interruption, a set tempo that never lands, an ignored invitation. She keeps me coming back.
ALEXANDRA ASHE 12 THE BLUE PENCIL 2016
Wolves (Scene from a Full-Length Play) A slash signals overlapping dialogue. CHARACTERS Fawn, 17, female. Wears lavender overalls and a flowery blouse. Redheaded. A contrast to the scenery. David, 17, male. Wears a white T-shirt and blue jeans, ripped at the knees. Christopher, 16, male. Wears a blue polo and khakis. Never smiles. TIME: Present SETTING: The front steps of an apartment building. SCENE: It is the middle of the day and the sky is a plain white. The sounds of cars rushing down the street can be heard in the background. Fawn is smoking a cigarette and sitting on the steps. The end of the staircase meets the sidewalk, but the neighborhood seems deserted. Behind Fawn, the apartment building’s windows are dark and the brick of the building is greyed. A book with doodles in it is open in Fawn’s lap, and a pen is in her other hand. The door to the apartment building opens behind Fawn and David walks in. He looks up and down the sidewalk before sitting besides Fawn. David Hey. Fawn Hey. David Who sold you cigarettes? Fawn (Laughing) Why are you asking? David Because you’re seventeen, right? You’re seventeen. Fawn I am.
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David So tell me. Whatcha doing this summer, huh? Fawn puts her pen down on the step. Fawn It’s only April. How am I supposed to know? David Because now’s the time where people are planning shit. Like, people are planning to go to summer programs and stuff. Fawn takes a drag from her cigarette. Fawn I have an internship. David For what? Fawn A law firm. David That sounds/ Fawn In California. David Damn. Fawn It’s next to Stanford, so/ David Stanford. Fawn Yeah. David You wanna go to – Stanford? Fawn Yeah.
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David Well, that’s/ Fawn In fact, not only do I want to go to Stanford, but I am going to go. David Well, maybe you won’t. Fawn I will. I absolutely will. David How do you even know? Fawn Because/ David Why are you so sure? Fawn Listen to me. (Pause) Because I have a high GPA and I’m going to keep it up. Because I volunteer everywhere around this city and I have months of work experience. Because I’m one of the top players on our basketball team. Because I’m pretty, fucking, great. David Wow, how modest. Fawn You asked. David I don’t think I’m going to college. Fawn Why not? David My grades aren’t very good. Fawn Well, that isn’t very good for you. David Yeah. 2016 THE BLUE PENCIL 15
Fawn What are you going to do? David I think … I think I’m just gonna travel around the country. Fawn (Incredulously) With what money? David I have some. Fawn With what money? David I’ve just saved some. Over time. A lot of time. Fawn Alright. Where are you gonna go? David Texas. Minnesota. Montana. Fawn Sounds nice. Make sure you get some photos for my blog. David You still run that thing? Fawn Yes. David You’re still into art, right? Fawn …Yeah. David So why don’t you go to school for that? Fawn Because I want to study law.
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David But why? I never knew you liked law. Fawn We don’t talk that much anymore, so of course, you wouldn’t know. David Okay, but we still go to the same school and last year you were in the art room every day except for when you had basketball practice. Fawn And I still go sometimes. I still go to the art room. David But I never see you there. Fawn Aren’t you supposed to be at your own practice? David But sometimes I stop and go inside. To get a drink of water. Fawn But you could only see into the art room when your locker was across from it. David Yeah/ Fawn But now you shouldn’t be able to see into the room. Because your locker isn’t across from it. David Okay. Fawn So why can you still/ David I like you. Fawn spots Christopher walking down the sidewalk, towards her and David. Fawn Shit.
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Fawn throws the cigarette onto the step below her and stomps on it with the heel of her white sneaker. She puts her pen in one of the pockets of her overalls. Christopher stands at the bottom of the staircase, arms crossed. Christopher Fawn! You said you would meet me in the park. Fawn I forgot, sorry. It’s just such a lovely/ Christopher Try not to be late next time. Fawn I won’t, I promise. Christopher What are you doing? Christopher climbs up a few steps, glancing down at Fawn’s notebook. Fawn leans away from him as he comes closer. Christopher moves to where he was before. Christopher You’re drawing. Fawn Well/ Christopher You’re drawing the buildings on the other side of the street/ David Those are nice, Fawn/ Christopher But you shouldn’t be here. Yesterday, you promised me that we’d meet. Fawn Christopher … It’s just one … meeting … Christopher (Slowly) But you promised. David Is it really that important? Dude, it’s one meeting, like she already said.
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Christopher And where is your phone? Fawn It must be inside … Christopher Then go get it. We’re leaving. And you should have your phone. Fawn But I don’t need it. Christopher You don’t know that. Maybe if you had it, you might’ve remembered our meeting. Fawn I told you/ Christopher Listen to me. You should go get your phone, Fawn. Fawn stands up and goes into the apartment building. Christopher sits on the penultimate step, his back to David. David I think you should leave Fawn alone. Christopher ignores him. David Just leave her alone, let her do what she wants. She doesn’t need her phone ‘cause everyone in the neighborhood would let her use theirs. You should be glad that you don’t got one of those girls that’s always on her phone. Maybe she ignores you. Well maybe that’s for a reason. It’s like caging a bird or something … what you and all those other people say to her. I mean, how old are you? Sixteen. You’re not even a junior, so why can’t you just leave her alone. She’s not even/ Christopher Because I don’t want her to stay here. David What’s wrong with here?
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Christopher You live here. David Well, what the hell’s wrong with me? Christopher With you, she’ll stay here for the rest of her life. And I’ve already worked hard on giving her a little bit of a chance. David That’s not … wait, what? Christopher You know Fawn is different. I know Fawn is different. It makes things hard enough. David Dude. What are you/ Christopher She told me about how you guys were best friends when you were younger because your apartments are right across from each other. She wanted to go to that leadership camp when she was twelve and you kept crying until she promised she wouldn’t leave. David I was twelve! Christopher Exactly. Only a few years have passed. David It’s called growing up. Christopher She told me that you were scared of everyone without a reason. That’s why you wouldn’t speak for so long. David But/ Christopher People thought you were mute. You never spoke and thought she could do it for you. You needed her too much.
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David I didn’t have any other friends. Christopher You do now. So why do you still need to be there for her? David …Because/ Christopher You don’t need her anymore. David That isn’t even why/ Christopher And you’re going to be quiet. David You can’t just/ Fawn exits the apartment building and walks down the steps still looking at her phone. Christopher (As if speaking to a child) Fawn, are you ready to go? Fawn Yes. Christopher follows her as they exit. After they leave, David removes a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and stares straight ahead at the buildings across the street. END
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For Elizabeth: a blues song They call me Chester, son of the sin, swallowed whole like my midnight gin, swallowed whole like my midnight gin. Heart of stone, soul of ice, room is spinning in a silent night, oh, room is spinning in a silent night. Yes, I might, oh, sing a sad song with the one chord I know about what went wrong. The dread river flows from day-to-day long. The dread river flows from day-to-day long. The dread river flows down the cheeks into the tooth. The blues stopped blueing when we’re given the youth. The dread river flows down the cheeks into the tooth. The blues stopped blueing when we’re given the youth.
TRISTAN MCKENZIE 22 THE BLUE PENCIL 2016
Graduation When I spoke, my throat lanced an eyelash instead of a hatchet: the rooftops still bruised with robins ringed like a skeleton trying to make its fingers meet around a body; & when I wept, my pupils bloomed a lake full of leaflets, all which begged the nightsmoke to stop swallowing the things that once belonged to us, like our bones & rosaries; & when I prayed, my father taped a chord to my mouth, telling me how he suffered because he filled his pockets with broken clocks, emptied of the glasswork he kissed and taught to live; & when the sky gripped my body and opened it, I could let nothing go: not the bead of whiskey seared to my cheek, not the memory of my father licking salt off his pillow, not the bergamot-slick tongue of another man teaching me how to unfold a closed flower. To be brave means to be afraid and still fall. & when I first became hollow, my tongue suspended mid-pull, I turned this hunger into flesh—
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swell i filled my mother with cobblestone to keep her alive. in the orchard i find her half-built funeral, not made of crow-feathers like we always imagined, but of the blackened kneecaps of incense sticks, bowed in earth like they fell asleep during prayer. i cannot see her entire body unless it is empty, pouring lax from my palms. so quiet it could strangle into a clean corkscrew. i pray to find death in the chimney ashes, to wrap a eulogy with enough pressure to thin her hands into bee wings. as a child i could never understand the word taxidermy—how a blued corpse can come alive if you plant a seed in its throat, how crying is really just a valley storm for ghosts, how you can turn into a city fire if you scrape two dry bones against each other. i once killed a man and afterwards held him in my mouth until he could spin lightning. but it was my belly that touched all the smoke, the boxed kiss of a sickle on a collar, swelling with salt
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as if to say nothing goes down without a little agony. i pulled an umbrella over his pitted body and tied it to the birds, as if we are meant to keep these rivers moving.
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Raval
Raval
El barri no es ven.
El barri no es ven. Not for
Ni por coches, efectivo,
a car, not cash, leather
buena onda, sofás de
sofas; ¡Mirad! We consume
cuero, comemos
color, live under sweet
color; ¡mirad! Vivimos
powder, on “Justice for Benítez!”
bajo polvo dulce, encima
Justice, what
de “¡Justicia por Benítez!”
Justicia, ¿Qué significa
Supper’s sand, so spiced
eso?
is that?
it glimmers, so shiny it’d kill
El arena de cena, picante que
to snatch one delight, one
brilla, brillante que quiere
delicate finger. By necks
picar. Arrastráis el barrio
you drag us—a thorned
por el cuello—un amor
love—while we scream
espinado—mientras gritamos
out rose ink on splintered
tinta rosada sobre madera,
wood, broken buildings.
un edificio abandonado.
We pray under aching rain,
Rezamos bajo llovizna
make a toast to Christmas
resignada, brindamos por la
Eve’s “por fin” arrival.
llegada de la nochebuena.
El barri no es ven. Not for
El barri no es ven.
lost toys, the peculiar child
Ni por el llanto del
who robs iron bars. You provide
juguete perdido, niño
artificial history in fresh
peculiar que roba llamas
blueprints—
de hierro. Un disfraz de
historia artificial nos
We already flaunt
provenís—
paradise jewels,
no.
no.
a sandy brick
Ya lucimos joyas
home, makeshift
de paraíso, un hogar,
trash cans, justice.
basura casera, justicia.
BECKETT AZEVEDO 26 THE BLUE PENCIL 2016
Photo by Beckett Azevdo ’17
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Still from the video“The Interrogation” by Karen Morey ’18
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Why Don’t Fathers Cry? A dissection
He held me on the train, our bodies swaying to the mechanical rhythm and screech.
He always stared straight ahead, out the large plastic panes toward the oncoming blackened concrete of the tunnel. I was holding the plastic shark, dancing it between us. He looked down at me with his thin half-smile, shaking his head. I laughed. We got off at Park Street station. He bought The Financial Times at one of the dingy souvenir shops that lined the underground, and he held my hand as we walked from end to end of the fluorescent tunnel, my plastic shark swimming through the shadows. *
He could name every flower and recite my favorite poems—Bishop, Millay, Longfellow,
and Yeats, which he’d brought to Mass General the day I was born to read to me as I lay in the unnamed bassinet. Then the Millay he made me memorize at six: I will be the gladdest thing under the sun—touch a hundred flowers and not pick one. We would go to The Harvard Natural History Museum to see the glass flowers, because I could ask my father and he knew each by name and family, Eschscholtzia and Syringa and Helianthus. *
In fall we would walk down to the Neponset and dig through the wells and mounds
of muck and driftwood to find slivers of porcelain pots and tea dishes that the Hutchinsons—the old English family whose house stood at the top of the field, a museum—must have thrown down into the fields two hundred years ago. They were our treasures. They sit in a simple wooden box now—with bits of sea glass and old poems and a broken porcelain doll—under my bed. *
I don’t attempt to romanticize my father. He could be a cruel man, disappearing for
years of my childhood into his own head or cheap hotel rooms. I love him for the worlds he showed me more than I love the world he chose to leave behind. There is a photo of him in
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my grandmother’s collection of green leather-bound albums. He’s fourteen and his hair is pulled into a short ponytail. He’s wearing corduroys and a stained tie-dye t-shirt. A guitar is slung over his thin frame, a wide grin stretching his face. The photo is out of focus. *
My first eight years he is perpetual. I remember him in fragments. Standing at the
kitchen counter mixing milk into his cup of tea. Watering the poppies in the garden. Carrying oatmeal up the stairs. Yelling at the neighborhood boys. Reading Nancy Drew in my dimly lit bedroom. His face illuminated by the television set as he sits beside my mother in their bed. Walking the paved mile to my favorite park. *
In Japanese culture there is a practice known as kintsugi. It is an art in itself. To fix bro-
ken objects with gold inlays, the end result a spider web of precious metal holding the pieces together. It is part of a practice known as wabi-sabi, to embrace the flawed or imperfect. The philosophy argues for keeping an object around even after it is broken, to value its damage as a mark of life’s toils and tribulations. As the writer Christy Bartlett has explained, “The vicissitudes of existence over time, to which all humans are susceptible, could not be clearer than in the breaks, the knocks, and the shattering to which ceramic ware too is subject.” *
What is one’s take, then, on a broken heart? Golden as it may be. To mend a heart
is a delicate business. To please a broken one is an insurmountable task. Many years have passed; my heart has grown fleshy and blue. It’s December and my father is no longer here. The car window is frozen shut and we’re late. My mother’s coffee spills across my lap and I laugh. My brother is reciting his verses, stumbling over all the words he’s read but can’t hear. The Berkshires loom above us, casting shadows over the salted earth. We’re driving to the city to see my uncle, home from Iraq. He’s sober now. He has sent me two leatherbound, hand-pressed journals from a bazaar and a carved box that’s lost its key. I forget exactly what he looks like—sinewy muscles, blotchy red skin. He smells of Marlboro Reds,
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drain cleaner, and sweat. But that was when he was drunk, in moral contest with my father. I stare out the pane and back again at my notebook, where I draw the shadows and hills and mountain turrets of Shelburne. A family, broken apart, snaking its way together over mountains and holiday dinners. *
My father lives alone in my childhood home, on the slope of a hill right above Dorches-
ter. Most of my grandmother’s furniture has been handed down to second cousins, handed off to Goodwill. He sleeps on a spring mattress and eats off the counter. Every month when I visit we go to The Blackbird Bookshop and drink small-batch root beer at his favorite pub. We’ve lost touch over everything except obscure bands and seasonal produce; these are gold. *
Seven years later and I’m sitting on the carpet of the anthropoids exhibit. I’m a senti-
mental creature. I find this place a comfort—in front of the humpback whale skeleton, its long ridged calcium caught in the glass reflections. My pale face mirrored between the rib bones, thick and bare and worn. My hair is shorter, my jaw wider. It’s winter, late December, and the sky outside is a pastel blue, spun in wisps and flurries. It won’t snow for another eight days. My father is calling me on an unsaved number. I answer. He speaks softly, chuckling nervously as I recite my dues. He doesn’t know what to say. I’ll have lunch with him soon, maybe a drink or two, and then we’ll part ways. An artificial relationship seems to be our pleasing alternative. I don’t mind. We talk about music and elusive forms of Eschscholtzia.
Resentments are like landslides. Water and time will soon eat us away, and we will hold
gladly to our memories like golden coins or plastic sharks.
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Bare Peel off my skin shed it
I am as ready as blue blood
like a snake rest upon my arm
escapism through eyes of
push enough to break how you
business men who see a sea
yearn to burrow yourself
of opportunity in fresh blossoms
deep inside of my marrow.
as plucked pansies rot by the bedside.
Black and white photographs you hang on your refrigerator you claim you could create her spent a lifetime seeing bodies be manipulated swallow hard. Crowded pockets stuffed sardine packed bus stop tantalizing shouts ring in ears of the innocent I do not have the money to pay the price of rust stained sheets. In pennies and nickels and dimes I’ll spread it out on the counter like continents on a map pink bruising fans outward from a heated backhand slap. I am just meat and moans your run of the mill slaughter house quivering lips and wide hips are on sale the traveling hands graze ever so on the unidentified.
GRACE MEREDITH 2016 THE BLUE PENCIL 33
Winter Break (This is a short play.) Samantha Scott, 19, a hipster teen wearing a ratty t-shirt and jeans. Mrs. Scott: 52, wearing a white Sunday dress. Samantha’s mother is a stay-at-home mom even though her two kids are in college now. Mr. Scott: 50, Samantha’s father who works a 9-5 job. He thinks of church as a good naptime. Lily James: 19, wearing a long spring dress. Samantha’s childhood best friend who was left behind when Samantha went to college. SETTING: The play takes place in her parents’ church on Sunday at 9:00am; the play is separated into 3 rooms. SCENE Samantha and her parents, Mrs. and Mr. Scott enter the coatroom. We hear a gospel choir singing from one of the other rooms. Samantha I don’t understand why you had to drag me here. Mr. Scott Samantha, please don’t be difficult about this. When you’re home we go to church and we are already late so I really don’t have time to argue. Samantha grunts like a 5 year old. Mr. Scott walks into service ahead of Mrs. Scott and Samantha. Samantha I hate this place with literally my entire being. Mrs. Scott Just give me your coat and shut up. Samantha rolls her eyes and hands her mother her coat. They all walk into the ten-member congregation. Samantha This church is literally a cult. Mrs. Scott glares at Samantha. They take their seats in the front row beside her father. They are next to a skinny girl with short brown hair and an empty ear of piercings. Samantha looks over to her.
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Samantha Lily? Oh my gosh, I haven’t seen you in ages. Samantha slides over and hugs her. Samantha Last time I saw you, you had dreads and hundreds of piercings, and your dress was hella shorter. Lily Yeah, well things change. Lily moves farther away from Samantha. Samantha Did I do something? Lily I’m just trying to concentrate. Samantha They’re singing. Literally, no one cares. Lily I do. Samantha What happened to you? Lily I found God. Samantha Yeah, I can see that. Lily I’m happy. Samantha You don’t look it. Lily Well I am. Samantha We used to have such good times together.
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Lily Going to house parties and vomiting on the train? Samantha Um, okay my parents are right there. Lily You didn’t care in high school, why care now? Mr. Scott Samantha, keep it down. Samantha What happened? Lily You went to college and I stayed. Samantha You could’ve gone too. Lily With what money? Samantha You could’ve gone to community college for a little while. Lily Well I didn’t apply, so... Samantha slides over to Lily. Samantha (Whispering) I dropped out. Lily Are you crazy? Samantha I was failing all my classes; college isn’t like the movies you know. Lily My parents shipped me off to church camp the summer after you left when they found me in their front yard after I blacked out. So in other words, I’m still the bigger fuck-up.
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Samantha (Laughing) God’s listening! Lily I only go so my parents don’t kick me out. I have this trick where I stare at one thing for a long time and I totally leave this place like, literally, it feels like I’m not here. Mrs. Scott (Whispering) Samantha! Did you hear your father? A silence until... Samantha (Whispering) You should come over sometime so we can catch up. Lily (Whispering) I thought we just did. Samantha No seriously, I mean I’m gonna be around a lot more now. Lily We could get an apartment together. Samantha Except I’m broke and a college dropout. Lily I’m a manager at Marshalls and I probably will be until I die a violent death from all those years of smoking. We’re hiring. Samantha Maybe things won’t completely go to shit. Lily Crap, they’re taking contributions. Do you have any quarters? Samantha (Laughing) You’re supposed to give checks for contribution. I guess this is the lifestyle we’ll be living from here on out. END
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Colorblind He runs faster than his sins, they bite ankles like chew toys. Baseballs dip in color, his medals greying on the back seat of a greyhound. Stakes low and hurdles lower, they throw the dog a bone. Temperaments boil hot and runners are bothered. Gold burns bridges before binges burn kidneys. Mark the path with a legend’s ball quilted faint in ink. Thread throws fast across skylines and breaks records, breaks caps and gowns across the strewn finish line. He doesn’t run on cracked knees, winners reward themselves with sloshed liquor and Gatorade. Bleeding gums leave rusty red stains on his heart. Engraved by his country, dripping complexion, he is blind. Next Olympic games, he will watch from holy sidelines.
ODESSA ERNST 38 THE BLUE PENCIL 2016
lemongrass Drizzle your sorrys with lemon juice and dot them in pepper. Cayenne. Clear your sinuses and let the water spill from your eyes like tears. Fake tears, not real ones. Cut your hair with a dull knife you find under the mattress in your apartment. Don’t question how it got there. Chop it just below your earlobe. When you accidentally slice at the edge of your skin decide you want to pierce your ears too. Find a needle and thread and let the blood run down your neck after you make the hole. Stick a safety pin in it so it doesn’t close up. Dye your hair black with a package you bought at the drug store down the road. The dye looks like tar, or spilled ink. Soak your hair in it. The hair your mother used to twist into braids when you were young. The wispy red curls that used to tickle him when you made love on cool summer nights. Draw a bath, but don’t turn the cold water on. Only the hot. Climb into it with the dye still in your hair and watch the water turn to jet fuel around you. It’s so thick you can’t see your freckles. Sink your head underwater and open your eyes. It looks like the sky right before a heavy rain is dumped onto your car. Feel the dye seep over your pale skin, your shallow bones. Your empty skin. Raise your face just enough for your lips to reach the air. They’re a pink bow. The water is so hot it doesn’t hurt. It’s like it’s kissing you goodnight, wrapping you up in blankets and leaving you in your cradle. Your skin is red now and your hair is dark. Draw your lips back underwater. Decide when you’re ready to come back up. Wait.
S. MAKAI ANDREWS 2016 THE BLUE PENCIL 39
Date Night This two-scene script follows Kevin as he prepares for a date and the aftermath of that date. INT. KEVIN’S BEDROOM- EVENING Stacks of dirty laundry and old pornographic magazines are scattered across the floor. An expensive antique bookshelf, packed with various bottles of alcohol, hangs crooked above the doorframe. KEVIN, a 24-year old college student, stands in front of his mirror, dressed only in his name brand underwear. He inhales, puffing out his chest, then continues to flex his nonexistent muscles. He practices several poses before being interrupted by a buzz on his phone. Close up on text:
Honey where are you? Movie starts in 5! — SUSIE
KEVIN is late. Frantic, he quickly pulls a pastel colored V-neck from a pile of clothes next to his bed. He sniffs it before putting it on. He runs over to his closet to retrieve a pair of dark blue skinny jeans. Struggling, he pulls the jeans over his beer belly. Fully dressed, he dashes out the door, slamming it as he exits. The slam causes the shelf above the door to unhinge and fall to the ground with a crash. INT. KEVIN’S BEDROOM- LATE EVENING ON SCREEN: An hour later Kevin’s back. Door opens. He sees the shattered remains of his antique bookshelf scattered across the floor. Frustrated, he kicks the broken shelf against the wall, but slips tragically and falls into a puddle of alcohol and glass. He lies still as we pan up to the ceiling. Poor Kevin. How did he get here? He picks himself up, looks in the mirror, inhales again— this time without flexing.
AUSTIN COLE 40 THE BLUE PENCIL 2016
His shirt is torn and his eye is blackened. Faking a smile, he takes his phone and snaps a quick mirror selfie. Close up: on phone
Crazy night lol (with a winky face emoji)
He sends it, then hrows his phone to the side and collapses into the bed. END
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1930s Love Song Hold my chin like a flower. Mouth open, a rose in bloom. We walk through fields of broken bells and kiss atop a steeple. Press flowers in textbook pages. Tell me I am well preserved. Read each word printed and lick my lips to dry. Your tongue and cheek taste like mothballs, I want each washed down with a shot of gin. The acid in my stomach growing weaker with each crease. Find me halfway through, rotting from the outside in was a skill acquired through years of practice. I will turn green before we see again. Skin slipped through fingertips without a proper burial. Pink and bruised, an exoskeleton lays in my corner. At least the dead can sleep in empty cabs home. You salted the body I steep tea in, made sure that nothing would grow. Shriveled in spaces between heavy pages, I will sit still.
LUCIA MULLIGAN 42 THE BLUE PENCIL 2016
Never Knew a Lullaby I sing you threadbare into the night, you sit in symphonies of silence, stare at withered trees and fallen flowers. In your aisles thorns are a more appropriate gift. You sell an old soul for a cracked teacup. Smother your ashes on your wrists. Draw a burning world through blood and blisters. We park in motel lots, press our skin to the glass. I sing you threadbare into the night, kiss your forehead, write you a lettered lullaby. Instructions to an older key. Rust sealed stains on fingertips, the last envelope for you. You sell an old soul through cracked teeth. Blow bubbles full of coddled secrets, brims spilling and mouths overflowing. Fill my palms with a glass of milk and send me to sleep without supper.
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Here’s What Happened Part One In some American town, there’s a house with a sagging, garage-sale mattress inside a bedroom. On the mattress there’s a girl drinking a milkshake she bought from a lousy diner down the street. It’s thick and strawberry-flavored, like some children’s toothpaste. The windows are painted shut and the AC broke and the girl feels like she could sweat off her body. There’s an electric fan in one of the unopened boxes in the hall, but the girl doesn’t know which box, so she doesn’t look. A colony of ladybugs emerges from a crack in the ceiling, seeking asylum from the heat. They won’t find it here. The girl holds the cold Styrofoam cup to her forehead. Only fifty-two more days of summer left. Across the road – now a sparkling, squishy mess of hot tar stripes – there’s a blue box house. Its yard looks more like a meadow. No one’s cut it for years. Dandelions and saplings and full beds of poison ivy spill over one another, vying for sunlight or relaxing into rigor mortis. A rabbit hole begins at the lamppost and runs under the lemongrass all the way to the drainpipe. There’s usually water at the base of the shoot; young rabbits often come up for a drink. But it hasn’t rained for two weeks. If there are young rabbits, they’ve probably died. The drainpipe is rusted-out anyhow. It climbs up the side of the blue box house and connects to the gutter that runs above the second floor’s street-facing windows, one of which is the boy’s. The boy has lived in the blue box house for a long time – seven years? Ten? Twelve? Time stopped mattering to the boy past a certain point. As miserable as the truth was, he understood that this is where he would grow up. The boy sits now at the window, scratching a bug bite on his arm; the welt is large and pink, and as the boy’s nails dig into the welt where the mosquito landed thirty minutes ago, a small point of blood appears. The boy squeezes the skin around the point of blood, trying to coax out a small burst, or definitive stream. Nothing happens. The heat thrums in his ears, viscous and apian. The boy wonders if this is what a rotting melon feels like. He stands up—slowly—and goes to make an ice-bath.
MAEVE BENZ 44 THE BLUE PENCIL 2016
As the girl sips the last of her strawberry milkshake and the boy runs cold water in the tub, a gust of wind sweeps through the neighborhood, turning street litter into confetti, kissing the sweaty foreheads of foremen, knocking over paper signs at lemonade stands, and mussing the wiry hair on Waffle’s back. Waffle is a Russell terrier, fourteen years old, twentyone pounds, brown-eyed, irreverent. The boy got Waffle six years ago from his fifth-grade science teacher, who said that whoever could completely fill in a blank chart of the periodic table could have his dog. He was moving to the city, and had discovered he was more of a cat-person. The boy hadn’t really wanted a dog. He had neither wanted a dog nor to be uncommonly good at science, but there he was, handing in his completed chart of the periodic table and receiving a scowling terrier in exchange. Waffle had been a remarkably unremarkable dog throughout her stay with the boy. She typically lay silent under the kitchen table for most of the day, occasionally getting up to nibble at fallen English-muffin crumbs or to look out the window. The boy walked her once before school and once after, the same route each time – down Smith to Willow, across the field and back, five to ten minutes allotted for sniffing diversions. The boy would carry Waffle during the cold months if the roads weren’t plowed. He had read once that terriers have sensitive paws, and considered himself to hold some sense of moral obligation. However, today the boy has been preoccupied with the heat and his swollen bug bite and the muggy, red, thuggish interminability of summer, and has forgotten to fill Waffle’s water bowl. Waffle paces back and forth, back and forth, from her bowl to the stairs, but no one comes. The boy’s parents won’t be home until six, four hours from now. Waffle lets out a whimper. She never barks. Ten minutes go by, then twenty, then thirty. The boy doesn’t come. Waffle begins to hyperventilate. The table blurs into the floor and the world seems diagonal. Fuzzy zigs start to zag across Waffle’s vision and turn the kitchen into a frantic modern art installation. This is it. Waffle ponders her anticlimactic demise, and whether or not the boy would be relieved to find her stiff and lifeless on the linoleum when he eventually came down. He would be surprised, that was certain. The real question is whether he would feign guilt or a convincing sort of sadness, or simply scoop her up as he did on those
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winter mornings and carry her to the field, this time – of course – to be buried. Buried? Was she indulging herself in that? She would be put in a plastic bag like the leftover fish bones from Haddock Thursday and tossed – gently – into the trash bin. Was the afterlife better than this? One would hope. Then there is not a gust but a breeze—the sort of breeze that could pass as the universe sweeping through you, an invitation to The Great Beyond. It comes through the screen door, past the newspapers and TV, knocking over the empty Chinese cartons on the coffee table, finally reaching the drowsy black nostrils of Waffle’s pointed snout. Her eyes widen. The breeze calls to her like a mother or a messenger or the raison d’être, if there is such a thing – Waffle intends to find out. The screen door needs only a soft nudge. Waffle makes her way out and across the yard, through the lemongrass and the saplings and the dandelions where the rabbits sometimes gather, to the road. The breeze—that calling to The Great Beyond—has somehow dissipated or slid into the next neighborhood. Which neighborhood, exactly, Waffle is unsure. She pads slowly onto the blacktop and winces as sticky bits of tar burn her paws. The sky looks sickeningly blue and garish. Waffle can hear the shrill tune of the ice-cream truck song. The metallic melody is distant at first, but grows louder, and louder. Soon enough, the song is deafening. The kid driving the truck somehow hasn’t made a cent today, and he’s already been out three hours. His sandals are sopping with sweat. The zit on his nose is throbbing. He could have been lifeguarding this summer, but he forgot to attend the lifeguard recertification seminar, and shortly thereafter lost his chair at the community pool to some pudgy kid who at this very moment is probably wiping his greasy, swine-like fingers on the ice-cream-truckkid’s rightful armrests. In envisioning this atrocity, the ice-cream-truck-kid is barely paying any attention to where he’s going. The blaring jingle has become hypnotic. He can see himself striding across the chlorine-stained concrete, past the plastic deck chairs and bin of floaties, past the squawking moms and squealing children, to the chair – the throne. Ready to take back his perch, the ice-cream-truck-kid can feel his toes curling around the rungs
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like a condor’s talons. Then a bark punctures this nearly victorious moment and the reverie deflates. The truck rolls forward several yards before the kid hits the brake. He looks at his rearview mirror. The dog lies in a heap on the road, slack-jawed, tongue out. A moment passes. The song finishes. The ice-cream-truck-kid considers parking the truck and getting out and finding the owner and apologizing profusely and going to the community pool and tearing the pudgy kid out of his chair and reclaiming what should have been his summer job. But he doesn’t. He does none of things. Instead, he puts the truck back into drive and continues down the road. The song recommences. In the kitchen, the boy is emptying cubes from the ice tray into a plastic bowl when he hears a knock at the door. He places the ice tray down on the counter and starts to make his way across the kitchen. Then he notices Waffle’s empty water dish; he’ll fill it in a minute. The boy realizes he hasn’t eaten since he last fed her – three, maybe five hours ago – so he opens the fridge and grabs a slice of last night’s pizza and closes the fridge and saunters through the living room, past the empty take-out cartons and strewn newspapers, to the door and he opens the door, and there – standing on his porch – is a girl. She has nimble, green eyes. Her hair hangs by her collarbones in two unraveling braids. She is holding a bundle of checkered flannel sheets in her arms. She taps her foot. “The lady next door told me that you had a Russell terrier.” Her voice slips swift as sunshine through his ears and down into his chest. His heartbeat quickens. “Yeah.” He pauses. “Her name’s Waffle.” The girl hands the bundle of sheets to the boy. The boy takes the bundle. He doesn’t unwrap it. He looks up, and her cheeks are flushed, her eyes apologetic. There is no good place to put down the pizza, so he balances the slice on top of the bundle.
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The boy’s eyes are now watery and he wonders if the girl notices. The girl has no idea what to say, but saying anything would be better than standing silent. “I found her on the road.” “Oh.” The boy wishes he had something better to say to the girl. “Are you going to bury her?” The boy shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess I hadn’t really thought about it.” He wonders what he’s supposed to do next. The girl is still standing there, and his dog is dead and his parents won’t be home for another three hours and there’s nothing good on cable on Friday afternoons. “Do you like pizza?” The girl’s foot stops tapping. “Yes.” “I have some more in the fridge.” “Ok.” “To repay you, you know, for…” The boy gestures to the bundle. The girl nods. She hasn’t found a reason to leave, and her grandpa is out at the casino again and won’t be home until tomorrow morning, and it’s hot and harrowing, and she might as well find something to do other than lie on her mattress, soul draining and sweat soaking into the musty fibers. She follows the boy in.
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Index Angels, sharp-toothed, 11 Blouse, flowery, 13 Breath, like mold, 8 Bus stop, sardine-packed, 33 Ceiling, an eye rolled back, 10 Church, as cult, 34 Concrete, blackened, 30; chlorine-stained, 46 Customers, wrapping like snakes, 4 Doll Heads, like soda caps, 8 Ear, empty of piercings, 34 Eye(s), floating by, 2; darting, 4; squinting, 5; lolling, 8; with light at the corner of, 11;
of businessmen, 33; rolled, 34; blackened, 41; widening, 46; apologetic, 47
Face, mirrored between rib bones, 32 Hands, thinned into bee wings, 24 Heart, grown fleshy and blue, 31; stained rusty red, 38 Ink, screamed out, 26 Kitchen, as a frantic art-installation, 45 Ladybugs, as colony emerging, 44 Lamp, like a grenade, 10 Lips, tightening, 5; quivering, 33; drawn back underwater, 39; licked to dry, 42 Men, half-hidden by wigs, 11 Mints, rolling like taxis, 10
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Moonlight, washed from laundry, 10 Nose, ammonia-swabbed, 3 Palms, filled with a glass of milk, 43; deepened with creases, 10 Pockets, filled with broken clocks, 23; crowded, 33 Rooftops, bruised with robins, 23 Room, spinning, 22 Sea, of opportunity, 33; of lasagna, 4 Secrets, coddled, 43 Shark, plastic, 30 Sidelines, holy, 38 Skull, cratered with kisses, 12 Teeth, cracked, 43; as sea glass, 8 Tile, unforgiving, 8 Toes, curling like a condor’s talons, 46/47 Tongue, bergamot-slicked, 23; tasting like mothballs, 42 Trash cans, makeshift, 26 Voice, taken, 3; escalating, 6; slipping swift as sunshine, 47 Water, turning to jet fuel, 39 World, diagonal seeming, 45; in warps of blue and gray, 8
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