Winter 2011
Northland’s Literary and Visual Arts Magazine
Winter 2011
Winter 2011 3
Letter from the Editors Spring is upon us! Roots, sprouts, and leaves reach for smoggy skies, calloused hands are leaving their pockets, and the amphibious squadrons return to their vernal pools. At the beginning of this semester, with spring in mind, “cultivation” seemed an appropriate contest theme. The landscape this created, however, was scattered with monsters that whispered things like “too exclusive” and “cliché”. We charged ahead with the idea anyways: of course the monsters turned out to be windmills. Contest submitters, you cast our doubts down the Memorial elevator shaft, where they were incinerated by an irritable Balrog. We received everything from carefully cultivating the next generation to cultivating an appreciation for small wonders to cultivating individual identity. The deep aquifer of imagination was tapped, and the resulting interpretations were as diverse as there are ways to grow a proper tomato.
The Winter 2011 runner-up contest winners are Clara Smoniewski and Jake McGinnis, and their pieces hail from either end of the magnitude range. Clara’s photo, Hope and Hunger, shows the viewer a scene from across the Atlantic puddle in Bwabwata National Park, Namibia; the details are piercing and powerful. What’s being cultivated, and what kind of national context does that build? Jake’s meditative piece, Reality and the Shaping of Self, lets the readers take a seat by a trout stream and listen as the narrator thinks about how they themselves have been cultivated, and how they have cultivated themselves.
Congratulations to the first place contest winners, Mary Schaubschlager and Heaven Cook! Mary’s woodcut, Sprouts, can be seen as a multi-dimensional depiction of the generational cultivation of hope for the future. That’s kind of a mouthful, which is why this piece is so striking – it speaks much louder, and with more grace, than words. The Squash Witch, by Heaven Cook, is worthy of first place because our own imaginations are so easily and necessarily engaged; what the reader comes away with is the synthesis of two minds both full of creative potential.
As prevalent as cultivation is throughout this issue of the Quartile, you’d have to squint to see it in many of the pieces here. General topics range from drama on the bluestem prairie to children being children, or heroes; evidence of the broad creativity spectrum that the Northland community is fortunate enough to be a host of. The work presented in this magazine is worthy of the highest level of respect and we can only hope we’ve done everyone justice in putting this issue together.
Cozy up with your favorite Northland adventure buddies and check out the fruits of your classmates’ labor. Enjoy your Winter 2011 Quartile!
Very Proudly Yours,
Ross Bye and Emily Betzler 4 Winter 2011
Printed on 100% recycled paper
Table of Contents Front Cover Kick the Carbon Miguel Alvelo 6. 8. 9.
Untitled Miguel Alvelo Broken Pieces Clara Smoniewski Certificate Abby Lattanzio
10. Remember Emily Schlager 11. Said Lilith Robyn Eddy 12. Piedro Chara Bouma-Prediger 13. Neighbor Robyn Eddy 14. Promises Jessica Brown 15. Familia Miguel Alvelo 16. For Tecca, To Mom Allison Mills 17. Cerro de las Campanas Chara Bouma-Prediger Prayer Clara Smoniewski 18. Her Own Farmer Clara Smoniewski 19. A Wish for a Miss Heaven Cook 20. Hope and Hunger Clara Smoniewski 21. Justify It Now Adam Engel 22. Untitled Elizabeth Downey
24. Spirits From Beneath Laurel Smerch 25. Reality and the Shaping of Self Jake McGinnis 26. Untitled Matthew Knickelbine 27. Untitled Matthew Knickelbine 28. Tree on Boulder Louis Figueroa 29. Soil generation: off the broken ground Allie Polzin 30. Last Summer Robyn Eddy The Crow in Winter Laurel Smerch 31. Early Autumn Crabapples Katherine Boyk
41. Day Dream Peter Weber Pillow Talk Robyn Eddy 42. Hiroshima Laurel Smerch 43. Sprouts Mary Schaubschlager 44. Untitled Miguel Alvelo 45. Untitled Miguel Alvelo 46. Untitled Elizabeth Downey 47. Earth: Lost and Found Adam Engel 48. Bjorn Miguel Alvelo
32. Sanctuary Laurel Smerch 33. Of Those City Knights Allie Polzin 34. Just A Moment, Sans Magic Emily Schlager 35. Excalibur Adam Engel 36. Untitled Miguel Alvelo 38. Untitled Miguel Alvelo The Squash Witch Heaven Cook 40. Of That Birchwood Morn Allie Polzin
The Dark
Winter 2011 5 - Jordan Dekyser
I. 6 Winter 2011
Untitled
7 - Winter Miguel 2011 Alvelo
8 Winter 2011
Certificate | Abby Lattanzio She opened the certificate and read it yet again as she sat in the stiff-backed chair waiting for the photographer to set up his equipment. The parchment was yellowed with age and torn in the upper right corner where she had yanked it out of prying hands. There were stains where tears had once fallen but would not, could not, fall again. The official writing was beginning to fade due to constant folding and refolding -- so much so that she could hardly make out the doctor’s words in spots. Not that it mattered; the words held little meaning anymore. A small lock of hair that accompanied the certificate fell into her lap. She quickly hid it from sight before peering eyes could ask questions she had no desire to answer. It was better to say little in such a new place filled with strangers. Of course her adoptive family had been treating her well and was most accommodating, but she
Broken Pieces
- Clara Smoniewski
still noticed the looks they gave her. Looks of pity from the adults, looks of scorn from the children. She didn’t care; she would let them think what they liked. They would never know the grief that lingered over her like a dark cloud, nor the haunting memories of one particular night from her old life. “Almost ready girls,” the photographer said as he continued setting up his equipment. It hadn’t been that long ago, just the past year -- a couple months after her fifteenth birthday -- when everything in her life fell apart. She had still lived in the old country, the place she would never see again. It had been a wonderful celebration; her little brother, Aiden, turned five that night. The singing and dancing quickly turned to screams of fright and mad dashes to escape. The smell of smoke still lingered in her mind, as well as the blaze of orange as she saw her house collapse to the ground. And the most vivid of all, the fear that her little brother was still trapped
inside. She tried to go back for him, but someone, she couldn’t remember who, held her back. Even now she could still feel the grip that prevented her from saving her little brother from his untimely fate. She did what she could but in the end, though he managed to escape, she could not heal him. The doctors tried too, but they could do nothing. All they could give her was a death certificate and a moment to say good bye, though he would never hear his sister’s last words spoken through the tears. There was nothing left in the old country for her anymore. The orphanage sent her away to a new family and a new home. They had welcomed her with open arms but she would never be able to be a part of their family. She wouldn’t let herself. She refolded the certificate with the hair hidden inside and placed it back into her pocket. Turning, she faced the camera with dry eyes and tried to put the past behind her for at least another day.
“Smile girls.” Winter 2011 9
Remember
Woodcut
- Emily Schlager
10 Winter 2011
Said Lilith | Robyn Eddy You built me a house on the bluestem prairie while on open ground is where my heart felt free. You found me stubborn and bittersweet and unwilling to kneel before you on my knees.
While on open ground, where my heart felt free (a heart fit for wild and crooked beasts), I was unwilling to kneel before you on my knees. So you cast me from the bluestem prairie.
My heart’s fit for wild and crooked beasts, made from dry dirt and stones from the creek. Yet you cast me from the bluestem prairie. You would spare no rib for me.
Made from dry dirt and stones from the creek, you buried my heart under the old oak tree. You would spare no rib for me, For I may be a woman but I am no Eve.
You buried my heart under the old oak tree so I burned down that house in a fever dream. For I may be a woman but I am no Eve— I’ve got more serpent and claws to me.
I burned down that house in a fever dream (I could not keep what was not clean). I’ve got more serpent and claws to me. But my heart still lies buried under the old oak tree.
I could not keep what was not clean— you found me stubborn and bittersweet. But my heart still lies buried under the old oak tree, by the house you built on the bluestem prairie. Winter 2011 11
Piedro
- Chara Bouma-Prediger 12 Winter 2011
Neighbor | Robyn Eddy the man two houses away looks like charles bukowski he sits outsides his door in bathrobe & slippers running his hand through thinning hair throwing red meat to his dog which blinks its iceberg eyes
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Promises | Jessica Brown
I always thought Great-Grandma Louise deserved better. She deserved more than the hour my mother, sister, and I spent each week trying to cheer her up, asking for stories of her childhood
Her eyelids flutter open. “Oh. Is it your day?” I nod. “It’s Friday.” I’ve visited Vivian through a volunteer program all three years I’ve been in col-
and happier times when Grandpa Joe was alive and the children young. As an idealistic elevenyear-old, I vehemently opposed the decision to send Grandma to the nursing home. I held that the system—and society—had betrayed Grandma, just as it had the other listless figures I passed in the halls, slumped in their wheelchairs, spirits sagging under unseeing eyes. Their yellowednewspaper faces, and the smiles I couldn’t quite bring myself to give them, haunted me, and in those middle school years, I swore to take in my own parents when they got old. They wouldn’t wait for dignity until their dying days like Grandma did in the quiet of the third floor room to
lege. When she still lived in her home, we would spend upwards of two hours each week vacuuming, washing dishes, and visiting. Now, I spend an hour. Or so I claim. “What are you up to today?” Vivian asks, now alert. The clock reads 1:37. “I’m on my way home for the weekend,” I reply over my shoulder, already flinging cabinets open, matching socks and capping toothpaste tubes as the cedar-y scent of spilled shampoo sopped into the wood fills the air. “I’m going to see my baby cousin.”
which they finally moved her, so eerily quiet that I swear I could hear the languid pulse in her wrist ticking out her remaining time against my palm.
“Oh, that will be nice,” she says. I move to the closet, straightening stacks of button-up sweaters that Vivian never wears, strewn into disarray by her fumbling hands.
Years later, my footsteps pound through the dim halls of the Ashland Health and Rehabilitation Center on a warm March day as I head for Vivian’s door. When I slip into Room 38, the fan rotates slowly back and forth, soothing Vivian, asleep in her chair. 14 Winter 2011
“Have you seen my little grandson up there? She points to the bulletin board above her head. I peak at my watch—1:45. “Now tell me again whose son he is?” I ask absently, thinking of the car that waits for me, loaded
Familia
- Miguel Alvelo
with dirty laundry, ready for the trip home. Vivian searches for words until she forgets my question, her right slippered foot pulsing to a beat I can’t hear. I watch the clock push 1:51. Maybe Vivian follows my gaze. “Is it that time already? I should let you get on your way.” On another day, I might stay a bit longer, take her for a walk in the pale grass and warm breeze of an early spring. But today I have places to be. “Walk me down?” I ask. Vivian props herself shakily to her feet. When we stop in front of the commons, Vivian squeezes my arm. “Thank you so much for coming,” she says, drawing me to her chest. “You’re a honey.” She always says that, no matter how long I stay. The clock over Vivian’s shoulder reads 1:57. I have been here for just under twenty-one minutes— one for each of the almost-twenty-one years in which I have been eased from innocence into a reality I’d rather not accept. Just as two hours became one, I realize, someday twenty-one pathetic minutes may become fifteen, and fifteen become a mere five minutes for my own ailing parents, a hurried stop on my way out of town on a cabin-fevered Friday afternoon.
Maybe those promises I made as a child simply can’t be upheld. All the sincerity behind them, the idealism, will not be enough, and even as I made my vow, my parents must have known. Probably no one ever intended to hold me to those promises but me. And yet I can’t help but believe that my long-ago words sparked a dream deep in their souls, a hope to which they will never give voice, and even as all understand that the dream cannot be fulfilled, one day I will leave my mother and father in the throbbing quiet of an uncaring hall, disappointed. I release Vivian as my heart sinks. “I’ll see you next week, Vivian.” I force a little smile, pat her cold hand. With hardly a backward glance, I walk away.
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For Tecca, To Mom | Allison Mills I. If God is a ball, Then spirituality would go to the dogs. II. Please, Forgive the trashy lingo and My impatient attitude, they’re not your Sins, perhaps not my own. I wish you would reconsider, Promise to come back and To never leave again, but Due time, your time, is never your own. Better thought: give me a sign— Next in line to go and Time, time is not yours, certainly not mine. Around again then, if sin is the only sign. III. If God is a ball, Then spirituality would go to the dogs. If God is a ball, Then religion is a choking hazard. IV. Please God, Forgive this trespass, but My only regret is guilt. Sins itch like chigger bites. I could just forget God. Promise to Sulis or Anubis, but To abandon guilt? Do prayers infect like tick bites? Better gods, new and shiny, Next to Barbie in the toy aisle, but Time, wrapped in plastic and rubber, doesn’t bury guilt. Around guilt then, if only the dogs and gods don’t bite.
16 Winter 2011
V. If I let this god-ball fall, If I close my eyes, let earth recall Then maybe I can forget, maybe My hand will open and be empty.
Cerro de las Campanas - Chara Bouma-Prediger
Prayer
- Clara Smoniewski Winter 2011 17
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A Wish for A Miss | Heaven Cook There once lived a czar that had but one wish For a forward front and backward miss With twenty painted toes and four plush lips That always stands tall for a tallways kiss He searched in a cave for Tozaline Sparks Who granted his wish with a long lost art He ran when the miss tried to touch his heart And left her there to wish away the dark
Her Own Farmer - Clara Smoniewski
Winter 2011 19
Hope and Hunger
Runner-Up Visual Arts - Clara Smoniewski 20 Winter 2011
Justify It Now| Adam Engel In Africa, in Borneo, when fighting o’er their rights to roam the friends of Goodall have been known to torture and to maim. For concrete squares of barren space armies both black and red they race to make their queen’s insistent case promoting genocide. When jungle kings usurp a pride and have a bounty of young brides such winners, some say, will decide to eat the loser’s cubs. The many beasts of earth and sea may perpetrate atrocity but unlike people, you and me, they don’t do it for fun.
(Overleaf) Untitled Winter 2011 21
- Elizabeth Downey
22 Winter 2011
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Reality and the Shaping of Self | Jake McGinnis Runner-Up Literary Arts
At the end of summer, when the blackberries hung heavy on the trailside canes, a familiar path became strangely different. I had walked along it in snowshoes in March, dreaming of a distant season. In late spring, on a warm, sleepy evening alive with the sounds of birds, I had traipsed dreamily along, admiring the wildflowers. On a precious midsummer morning, before the brunt of the town was stirring in their beds, I had sat quietly on a convenient log, lost in reverie. It was a path I should have known, somehow turned against me. When the cool, promised winds of September became reality, and the leaves seemed ready in an instant to bedazzle the landscape, my most familiar of places was different.
quite simple; I was the only thing that had changed. The path wandered between two crumbling stone walls and down into a forest even older than the long vanished soul who tried to fence it off. There, beneath the shadowy cedars and hemlocks, was a teastained brook, chattering over stones pulled slowly from the breast of the earth. I knelt at the water’s edge as a cool breeze coursed down the length of the stream. It ruffled my hair and brushed seductively against my cheek, filled with promise. Even the creek though, such a cherished place, was dauntingly unfamiliar. I sat thoughtfully on the bank, my hand pressed into the cork of a well-worn fly rod. I couldn’t help but feel distinctly separate from the world around me. I was a rambling spirit inclined to leaving, by no Walking along, I examined my feet, means deeply rooted to the banks of that hidden brook. tanned to leather beneath the straps of my worn out sandals. They had not changed. The aspens Not bothering to stand up, I flicked my line rustling gently on either side of the trail, spruces softly forward, throwing a tight loop and neatly deand hazels standing as silent sentinels below positing a fluffy caddis on the slick pool before me. I them, were exactly the same. The lush grasses, lifted the line slightly from the water, letting the fly delicate ferns, and soft mosses were no different drift unimpeded, and easily caught a small brook trout. than how I left them. Although the landscape When I let it go I held my hand in the water, feeling had experienced its seasonal fluctuations, the the slippery little being escape my gentle grasp with a path was no different. What had changed was quick wiggle. Infinitely many fishermen had made and the spirit of the place, but not even that. It was would make simple casts and precisely timed drifts my construction of that spirit. Really, it was just as I had. They would likely catch fish that were
Spirits From Beneath - Laurel Smerch
Winter 2011 25
Untitled
- Matthew Knickelbine incredibly similar. Somehow this act, however standard in its application, had come to define me. I was, more than anything else, a fly fisher. My expression of self, though, was by no means original, perhaps even commonplace. Can one truly be an individual falling in the footsteps of another? I set my fishing rod aside and wandered up the brook. Fishing that day, I was at a strange crossroads, the conjunction of two separate worlds, as of two strikingly different streams flowing together in a swirling pool. I was a human, with manmade objects and distinctly human thoughts and feelings. At the same time though, with fly rod in hand, I was part of the natural world around me, interacting with the brook and the 26 Winter 2011
fish within, taking my guidance from the cedars and my solace from the ferns. I was not simply an observer of this idyllic world; I was a part of it. That day, AWOL in the late afternoon of a cool summer day, I shunned that oneness. Near a small, vocal riffle, singing its happiness for the entire world to hear, I settled down. Sprawled in the soft, bankside grass, I lost track of time, and soon the sun had sunk behind the distant hills. I looked up at the darkening sky and then turned to the soft-needled hemlock beside me. “What have I done? I’m not even myself anymore, jus the product of others, a strange entanglement
Untitled
- Matthew Knickelbine of failed expectations.� The hemlock, sensing my thoughts, left me in silence. I was as a garden managed by others. They tilled, fertilized, and planted, expecting the fruition of a great athlete, a remarkably stereotypical white youth in middle-class America. But I was a poor garden, difficult to maintain. I began to sprout other things, a rambling spirit and love for graceful casts and careful drifts, beautiful brook trout and lonely streams. No one had to prod me into becoming a solitary fly fisher. It was a wholly natural evolution, a mess. Sometimes though, even failed plantings can come to fruition, and
often wild scatterings of weeds are as beautiful as the most carefully tended beds. Nature, in due course, tends to be beautiful. I stretched in my bed of wild grasses, gazing up at the first twinkling stars. In the stream behind me, a small trout leapt at a moth dancing over the surface. Suddenly, I yearned for that primal, natural connection to the brook. I longed to be myself again, at ease with my own aspirations and one with what I am and where I come from. I wanted my fly rod in my hand once again.
Winter 2011 27
Tree on Boulder
- Louis Figueroa
28 Winter 2011
Soil generation: off the broken ground - Allie Polzin
Winter 2011 29
Last Summer | Robyn Eddy
The Crow in Winter - Laurel Smerch
30 Winter 2011
last summer grandfather grew too many peaches so he gave some to father to can and to grow; growing up; i mean really putting your head to it, putting that queer shoulder to the wheel. remember that night we watched the fireworks from the roof? danny choking on white air and cricket cocktails that your mother made, me choking on my first lungful of this world. and you know what they say, you can’t be sorry for what you don’t know. but i’m sorry anyway.
Early Autumn Crabapples
- Katherine Boyk
Winter 2011 31
Sanctuary
- Laurel Smerch
32 Winter 2011
Of Those City Knights - Allie Polzin
Winter 2011 33
Just A Moment, Sans Magic Woodcut - Emily Schlager
34 Winter 2011
Excalibur | Adam Engel Years and years had long since sunken into rings of time before the child came to try, when first he drew from fists of stone his right to claim the throne of England, cut away the vines and moss of mother’s cradleside stories to bare the silver steel of kings. Though rich, his bloodline mattered little: countless sons of lords long dead had tried before him. Each had failed: they knew too much to take the crown. Only children haven’t learned that they can’t be heroes.
(Overleaf) Untitled
Winter 2011 35 -Miguel Alvelo
36 Winter 2011
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The Squash Witch| Heaven Cook First Place Literary Arts
Nonny knew it wasn’t polite to stare, but when Ms. Gretki from down the street squeezed onto the little openfaced shelter beside her, she had trouble keeping her eyes elsewhere. Nonny glanced 38 Winter at her2011 watch and bit her lip;
the bus wasn’t due for another five minutes. Outside the shelter, the rain hammered against the pavement in sheets, reducing visibility, and limiting Nonny’s options for things to look at. Though she kept her head forward, her eyes angled towards her elderly neighbor.
Ms. Gretki was trying to singlehandedly light a half smoked cigarette that wilted between her lips, drooping a little like the folds of skin that defined her jowls. In her other arm, she held a blanket wrapped bundle on her hip. After lighting the butt and turning the air
tender patience of a new mother.
inside the enclosure syrupy with rancid smoke, Nonny watched her pocket the lighter and circle her free arm around the bundle, lifting to cradle it against her chest. A flap of blanket came loose, and Nonny caught a peek of smooth, jaundiced skin. Ms. Gretki quickly pulled the flap back into place, tucking the folds of blanket together with the
starters on the window sill. He said the pot cracked open and there was She must have seen Nonny dirt everywhere, only it wasn’t just staring because she startled her a dirt, it was red, and there was somemoment later when she rasped, thing laying in it that looked like a baby so little it would fit in the “This one ain’t for you, palm of your hand.” Nonny wasn’t Nonny, this one’s meant for the supposed to tell, but she knew for a Wantanobi’s.” fact that Billy told his parents, and his parents told her parents, and she Nonny felt Ms. Gretki’s wanted to know if it was true or breath on her shoulder as she not. spoke, and tried to ignore the stale tobacco and sour milk stench that “Nonny, that is a filthy piece it carried. Quickly, Nonny looked of gossip that is not fit for the dindown to study her watch again and ner table,” her mother said. felt her cheeks burn. She watched the seconds twitch by and tried to “It was just a potato, anysee how many twitches she could way,” her father said. hold her breath for while she waited. “But Ms. Grekti only grows squashes, and Billy sa--” When Nonny saw the bus round the corner, she stepped “Enough, Nonny. Finish into the rain to wait the last few your dinner and excuse yourself. seconds on the curb. Out of the I’m sick of hearing you kids make corner of her eye, she watched up such awful stories about that Ms. Gretki stub out her cigarette poor woman.” on the bench where Nonny had been sitting. That witch, you mean, Nonny thought as she navigated That night at supper, peas around the rim of her plate Nonny mentioned to her parents with her fork. She thought about that she had seen Ms. Gretki at the Ms. Gretki’s bloated fingers fawnbus stop. ing over the folds of blanket around the squash. Whatever it was that “Well, isn’t that nice?” Ms. Gretki was cultivating, Nonny said Nonny’s mother. knew it wasn’t potatoes. “Billy says his parents sent (Picture) him to her house once, and he acUntitled Winter 2011 39 cidently knocked down one of the
-Miguel Alvelo
40 Winter 2011
Day Dream
- Peter Weber
Pillow Talk | Robyn Eddy
Of That Birchwood Morn - Allie Polzin
more and more often he talks about the desert, that realm of thorns and dust that i’ve never seen and can hardly imagine. i’ve never been out of the winter. my soul has been crafted from hemlocks heavy with snow and the serpentine fissuring of ice atop the lake.
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Hiroshima| Laurel Smerch Part 1- August 6th, 1945 A fire was started A fire like no other A fire hotter than any other A fire that consumes everything More than wood-steel and stone too It penetrates the skins of many Setting smaller fires inside them That consumes them over years A gluttonous, hungry fire Leaving only bare scraps behind
Part 2- The Present Day A barren landscape leaves plenty of room to grow To cultivate a future So let us leave behind the world that knows war Let a vibrant city grow on its ashes Let this city send a message We can rise above war
42 Winter 2011
Sprouts
First Place Visual Arts Woodcut - Mary Schaubschlager
Winter 2011 43
Untitled
- Miguel Alvelo
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Untitled
- Miguel Alvelo
(Overleaf) Untitled
Winter 2011 45 - Elizabeth Downey
46 Winter 2011
Earth: Lost and Found | Adam Engel Where are the fields unsalted? Where are the forests untouched? Where are the skies dark with wings? Where are the plains scarred with trails? Where is the earth beyond value? Where is the air unsullied? Where is the forest left whole? Where is the sea untainted? They are lost, and past our reach. They are lost, and may never be found. They are lost, though we may search. Though they are lost, they can be dreamed. Though they are dreams, they can be real. They can be real, if we can dream.
Winter 2011 47
Bjorn
- Miguel Alvelo
In memory of Bjorn Norgaard
48 Winter 2011
Northland College has a burgeoning artistic population and the Quartile provides a platform for the dissemination of students’, employees’, and professors’ literary and visual arts. Published twice during the school year, the Quartile allows the population at Northland College to be exposed to some of the campus’s best work free of charge. The magazine is designed and edited by two dedicated student editors. At the end of each academic year, the current editors interview and select two qualified students to be next year’s editors. In this way, the Quartile is an exciting and constantly evolving publication, reflecting the contemporary tastes of the student body.