Daedalus15

daedalus

daedalus greenwich academy 2015

volume xxvi i

my external being unscathed by new touch but it seems former scars are permanent and midnight is no magic eraser we are said to be malleable beings our minds changing as much as the framework that contains them – and I suppose it is comforting to know the lack of finality in this life that I am not indebted to the skin I am in now on the eve of my second rebirth day five thousand one hundred nine I can only wonder whom I will be when I wake for I sense my impending metamorphosis, and my eyes are desperate for sleep

Allegra Milani

Photography

Dӕdalus, the ancient Athenian, created the Minotaur's famed labyrinth and invented wings so that he and his son could escape from King Minos.

Dӕdalus reminds us that we are all creators and all inventors.

Editors-in-Chief Lulu Hedstrom and Allie Primak Art Editor Laura Guo Assistant Editors Jubilee Johnson, Hannah Karlan, Clare Ryan Assistant Art Editors Emma Morrison and Claire Robins Isabel Banta* Sarah Better* Phoebe Bloom** Ainsley Buck Lucy Burnett** Paloma Corrigan** Jo DeWaal Katherine Du Caroline Dunn** Elizabeth Dunn Jordan Fischetti Eastlyn Frankel Ellie Garland** Erinn Goldman

Staff Sophie Hadjipateras Phoebe Jacoby Nola Jenkins* Sammy Kallman Christina Li Devon Mifflin Winter Murray Francesca Narea** Elisha Osemobor Alina Pannone Serena Profaci** Olivia Quinton** Sloane Ruffa* Lizzie Sands**

Sarah Sheer Jordan Smith Jane Watson Rachel Windreich Elizabeth Winkler Olivia Winn Hannah Wolfson Jessica Yacobucci** Jane Zachar Caroline Zhao* Grace Zhao Gallant Zhuangli** *Senior Board **Junior Editor

Five times a year, Dӕdalus sponsors a Writer-of-the-Month contest. All submissions are sent by email and read anonymously by the entire staff.

In March, editors narrow the selections and begin production, which continues through April with art, layout, and page design. Through May the editors collaborate with our printer through weekly stages until our final assembly, where we read from the issue, show slides of all art, and celebrate!

Faculty Advisor Jeffrey Schwartz

Visual Arts Advisor Sherry Tamalonis

Printer Advanced Printing Services, Inc., Bristol CT Section entitled "...but the air and the sky are free..." from Edith Hamilton's description of Icarus' escape in Mythology.

Colophon 750 copies of Dӕdalus have been printed on 80 pound Euro Gloss stock with 120 pound Euro Gloss for the cover. The text is set in Palatino, a typeface designed by Herman Zapf and originally released in 1948.

CONTENTS

Front and Back Cover: Photography Inside Front Cover: Papercuts Section Pages: Marker Drawings

Jared Boothe Emma Morrison Sophie Hadjipateras

Wings For them edges Watercolor Painting Letter from Ellie in Rye to Katie in Durham Pen and Ink Drawing Lino Block Print McIntosh Unsung How to Shop for Souveniers Like a Local Photography A Commuter Pen and Ink Drawing Scratchboard The Art of Wearing Rings Pencil Drawing The Photograph Cut Paper Collage Photography Sculpture Broken Glass Black Feather on a Dove Papercuts

Jubilee Johnson Laura Guo Ellie Garland Phoebe Morris Paloma Corrigan Jo DeWaal Katherine Du Jo DeWaal Claire Robins Phoebe Bloom Graiden Berger Daniel Osemobor Jane Watson Elizabeth Jones Allie Primak Juliann Whitman Olivia Quinton Amelia Riegel Ainsley Buck Kennedy Woods Emma Morrison

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 14 16 18 21 22 22 24 24 27 28 29 30 31

Labyrinth Narcissisters Photography How To Take A Shower Photography Ceramics The Bowl Petit Mal Photography and Digital Design Pen and Ink Drawing Seed Data Night as Seen from Twenty Floors Up Monoprint The Words of a Liar Scratchboard Ballet Charcoal Drawing Strange Infection Monoprint Photography and Digital Design To Grand Central White Pencil Drawing Hookah Bar

Allie Primak Camila O'Brien Emma Osman Tasha Recoder Gallant Zhuangli Grace Zhao Sophie Hadjipateras Caroline Sorensen Camila O'Brien Francesca Narea Emma Duty Jo DeWaal Caroline Dunn Borden Wahl Erinn Goldman Reid Guerriero Allie Primak Jo DeWaal Lizzie Sands Lucy Burnett Laura Guo Ellie Garland

34 35 36 36 38 39 44 45 46 47 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 58 61 62 64 66

Photography and Digital Design Narrative of Javier Negrรณn Photography and Collage Pen and Ink Drawing Marker Drawing

Laura Guo Jubilee Johnson Jourdan Delerme Annie Harris Paloma Corrigan

Mortals and Immortals The Star of My Family is Dead Ellie Garland Marker Drawing Annie Klein The Suitcase Lulu Hedstrom Photography and Digital Design Kelsey Kranz The Day Henry Left Olivia Hartwell Papercuts Emma Morrison You Make Me Feel So Young Erinn Goldman Woodcuts Ellie Otton & Charlotte Warne Let Light In Jo DeWaal Ceramics Rachel Connolly Photography Gabriella Giammalva Paper Cutout Kate DeFrino Delta Heist Isabella Crawford Frances Befriends Suzy Lucy Burnett Her Irises Are Empty Ellie Garland & Olivia Quinton Cars, Trucks, and Things That Go Charlotte Warne Pen and Ink Drawing Phoebe Morris Can You Hear Me? Taylor McDonald In The Alley Jordan Smith Photography and Digital Design Tasha Recoder My Grandmother is a Philosopher Isabel Banta Photography and Digital Design Lizzie Sands Saying Goodbye Serena Profaci "...but the air and the sky are free..."

Coconut Milk Clare Ryan Cut Paper Collage Olivia Weiser Post-Impressions Gallant Zhuangli Pen and Ink Drawing Caroline Keller Pen and Ink Drawings Camila O'Brien How Far We've Come Hannah Hu Photography Sarah Sheer Gombey Boy Lulu Hedstrom Lino Block Print Lulu Hedstrom Paper Skin Winter Murray Photographs Charlotte Galef Photography and Digital Design Kayley Leonard Seoul Natalie Lee Photography and Digital Design Hannah Wolfson Mind The Gap Lulu Hedstrom Paper Sculpture and Pen and Ink Claire Robins Amara Jubilee Johnson Septennial Hannah Karlan Photography Allegra Milani

67 68 69 71 71 74 74 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 86 89 90 90 90 91 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 102 103 104 109 110 112 112 114 115 116 117 121 122 122 124 125 126 128 128

WINGS 5

For them edges Jubilee Johnson in memory of the baby hairs that grew on the circumference of your scalp Tears for them edges, though The ones you cut like hedges so The ones you said you would let grow And then we see the Afro go Black beauty stunted, put to sleep Naps rest in peace for you I weep Soft hairs get laid, dry gel deluxe Processed, bleached, and laxed, roll up For weaves and tracks, you won’t turn back The time it took to get relaxed Baby genocide all over your head, No more peas, but hair like thread No more dense, but thin as autumn Hair so straight, forget she bought them Grow up so you can look Caucasian Never guess she bought Malaysian Hair so bad, we see the damage Burnt so bad, she need a bandage Pray to God this will get better Send it in a four page letter Say it fast, but say it so Tears for them edges, though

Laura Guo

6

Watercolor Painting

7

Letter from Ellie in Rye to Katie in Durham Ellie Garland Dear Katie, Today I was pressed against the unfamiliar bodies of visitors and natives, toddlers riding in strollers and elderly hobbling with hooked wooden canes. My hand grasped the cold metal pole because I’m not a professional surfer or maybe there is something askew with my semicircular canals. Either way, I don’t stand well on a lurching subway unless my fingers curl around the metal pole, coated in germs by the millions that make me want to teleport to the nearest sink and scrub my hands with lemongrass soap for exactly nine minutes.

Sandwiched between a Russian tourist and my little cousin Claire, I was trying to come up with an answer to the question Brandon Stanton from the blog Humans of New York would ask me if I looked intriguing enough to pull aside for a picture. What was the happiest moment of your life? he might ask. I would explain that there have been so many, it is hard to pick. No particular moment stands out; no medal, no certificate, no photograph quite embodies this bliss he assumes we have all experienced. I imagine your moment, Katie, might be in the small snowy village in the south of France when you were lost (as I was today, at 72nd St instead of 91st). The tips of your fingers were frozen, French street signs blurred into an indecipherable code and then you discovered a small edible disc that shed light and unparalleled happiness on your afternoon.

When the sweet and airy macaron dissolved in your mouth, taste buds ignited in ecstasy and you forgot about losing your group in a petite ville whose name was choppy off your foreign (now elated) tongue. I share this adulation for the macaron— la pistache, la rose, la vanille— but I cannot pin the moment when these cookies touched my lips for the first time so this wouldn’t be my response to Brandon’s question. I 8

promise I have had happy moments a plenty, so don’t you worry about me, but if you are ever in New York and we run into dear old Brandon, I will let you do the talking. Much love and macarons, Ellie

Phoebe Morris

Pen and Ink Drawing

9

Paloma Corrigan 10

10

Lino Block Print

McIntosh Jo DeWaal A ripe offering, red daubed dimple in peridot, toothpick stem, a nosh pulled from your pocket.

Your sharp knife, mahogany handle cradled, scores glossy skin, expertly curling flesh, nudges my eager heart.

The sticky-sweet peel cast over your warm shoulder stamps the initial of my name on damp grass, broadcasting my craving for the curved slice, the cinnamon tang of your kiss.

11 11

Unsung Katherine Du My cousin Yijiang wanted to be Christian and a Marine, the first hot pot my grandfather ever refused to swallow.

“Your ancestors blinded themselves from reading the scrolls so many times,” Yeye spat, his eyes soaring to a faraway place I could never reach. “That’s what this ‘God’ gives you when you believe.”

A younger me nodded, transfixed. It never occurred to me that Yeye’s words weren’t etched in some Chinese gospel iced with conviction.

The day Yeye led me down a winding forest path, he spilled the lifeblood of his story for hours on end, the smoky bags plastered under his aging eyes ablaze with vitality.

With his palms crinkled as shadowed snow, he handed me his memories: the Japanese and their gun-licked fingers and salt-smoked lips. His mother’s collapsed life, one moment a family and the next, she and her children, all eight of them, under the rock. His father, whom Yeye wouldn’t see until he became a stranger, gone.

“What kind of God would starve a woman of hope and two of her children of life, haizi?”

At the time, my ten-year-old self felt blistered. My mother, a part-time Christian, had trained me from a young age to respect religious affiliations of any nature; to me, Yijiang, my fresh-faced cousin cruising along at a swinging twenty, could pray to his great whatever.

“Why is that God’s fault, Yeye?” I mumbled, my words tumbling over the sometimes burgundy, sometimes melon-yellow forest floor.

“Because doing nothing is doing something.”

I now interpret my silence that day as being just that, doing nothing, making no move to have my own voice heard.

My inaction remains a scar, my lethargic, yet aggressively forward decision to meet Yeye’s one-sided truth with the absence of my own.

But that day, as Yeye weaved his superstition in the forest 12

canopy, the silver sunlight dripped and bled over the cloth he’d long spun about death. To search for such a thing was inviting it into your home and smiling, just as Yeye had done when he stretched his arms and shattered faith and remembered all that he’d lost, all that he was afraid Yijiang would lose.

Hours later, after I’d finished explaining what had happened in the forest, Yijiang would whisper, “It’s okay.”

The words, I was shocked to realize, were probably the same ones his father had used before he’d left. They shivered from Yijiang’s mouth, yet as he kneeled on the dust-filmed floor of his mother’s house, he brought a careful finger up to my face to brush away tears I didn’t know were there.

“Why—” But I choked on the word. I melted into sky-bowls of tears, because I knew the next day he would be prey to the world of Marine training, at the mercy of whatever lies beyond God. “This is His path for me.”

I shuddered, ashamed for suddenly being so afraid about what my own path was. Yijiang, as always, saw through my silence, and he curled my hand in his, his mouth tight when he swore that no one could ever take my voice away from me.

Looking back, Yijiang’s words were what drove me to see my own light and how things like the great whatever were my own to dictate. This newfound wormhole of infinity, terrifying as it was, was also liberating; I no longer had to squeeze into my ancestral mold.

Weeks later, when Yijiang graduated from the Marine Corps Recruit Camp as a second lieutenant, I looked over to my motionless family, their hands frozen on steel laps. Then, breathing in the soft-sweet Virginia air, I rose. My cheers took flight.

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How to Shop for Souvenirs Like a Local Jo DeWaal Pink keychain, fake wood paperweight plastic crafted not where I am standing, sniffed at, set back on the shelf.

Show me the baskets woven by women with sun-bleached hands plaiting smooth strips, the sandy rub of the place etched on rough handles.

Let me roll around my mouth coconut slivers baked in warm lemon sun wrapped tight in spun sugar, glassy hard, like the diamond flash off blue water.

Leave me to rummage through strands of puka shell necklaces, pearly cool around my neck, tiny castanets tinkling island music in the curl of my ear.

Claire Robins

14

Photography

15

A Commuter Phoebe Bloom Small beads of sweat emerged under Jill’s long-sleeved dress, each droplet providing her with renewed irritation in her unusual sprint to the train track. Typically, Jill would have been more comfortable matching the pace of other commuters heading home for the evening, and typically, Jill would have been wearing a pantsuit. She had ten different pantsuits in slightly different colors and cuts, and she felt ten was the perfect number to have; there were few enough so that she could rotate through them in a consistent order, but not so few that people would remember the last time she had worn a certain one. These pantsuits were lifestyle economizers: they saved Jill time when choosing an outfit, they were simultaneously comfortable and appropriate for the workplace, and they saved money, as they always seemed to be on sale.

But this particular day fell out of the norm, as the prior weekend, Jill had found herself at Joie, Marissa’s newest favorite store. The two had spent hours at Joie, Marissa having lured her mother in under false pretenses of a storewide sale. Marissa perused shelf after shelf, squealing when coming across a color, design, or style which she found to be particularly thrilling. Meanwhile, Jill occupied herself by settling into the stiff white couch which corresponded with the monochromatic scheme of the store. She nodded or made faintly affirmative sounds without lifting her head from her BlackBerry when her daughter inquired what her mother thought of a certain article of clothing. Jill found shopping in general to be quite petty; an entire street dedicated to greedy consumerism seemed unnecessary when she was able to be a successful woman with ten straightforward pantsuits.

Eventually, Marissa had come across a dress which some part of her mind associated with her mother. She brought the dress over to where Jill sat, unaware of anything beyond the contents of her inbox on her phone. Marissa dropped the dress into her mother’s lap, suggesting she try it on. Jill 16

blinked, shocked by the unexpected weight in her lap as well as by her daughter's sudden appreciation of Jill's presence.

She held the dress out in front of her. It was dark blue, fitted on the top with a wide skirt on the bottom, and the fabric was comfortably nondescript. Had the dress been anything but a familiarly drab color and a harmless shape, Jill would have refocused her attention onto her emails. But Marissa saw her mother look at the garment for a full three seconds, and, sensing some sort of interest, pulled her mother into a dressing room, where both she and the saleswoman showered Jill with complimentary looks of amazement. They had then directed Jill to the cash register, where Jill saw her credit card swiping through the machine and the dress being situated in pastel tissue paper and a white reusable shopping bag.

Pulling at the increasingly dampened fabric, again irritated by her own unwarranted sweat, Jill’s feet slapped the ground while she noticed the time and picked up her pace, certain that neither her daughter nor the saleswoman would have approved of the age-beaten tennis sneakers she wore. At lunchtime, she had caught the skirt of her dress in the elevator door on her way out to get her usual 12:30 chopped salad.

Jill had to maneuver her way out of the minor crisis, setting behind her lunch schedule, and therefore, of course, her day’s work schedule as well. Therefore she had felt it necessary to spend a few extra minutes at the office that evening to make up for time lost to the inconvenience of her new outfit, forcing her to take off the beige dress shoes she wore each day (their non-color matched seamlessly with each pantsuit), and shove her feet into her sneakers to jog to make her train.

From what she could conclude from the combination of Barney’s, Bergdorf’s, and Saks Fifth Avenue windows which she passed every day, as well as her daughter’s subscription to Seventeen, such a dress ought to be paired with heels or boots, as it was on the mannequin at the store she went to with her daughter. But heels were impractical for a commuter, and boots were too casual for the office setting. Neither the stores nor the magazines provided tips on how to dress for 17

Graiden Berger

18

Pen and Ink Drawing

the office; the advice only seemed to apply to the types of women who either bake lemon cakes and gingerbread, or women who drive their Land Rover to this month’s trendiest fitness provider every day. There were rules for sundresses and sandals, leather jackets and big sunglasses, or fashionable fitness gear, but Jill could not seem to find the rules for how to make office wear interesting, nor this new dress practical.

Jill squeezed through a pack of teenagers passing around cigarettes, skirted a babysitter pushing a stroller, and nearly tripped over two different dog walkers before collapsing into the seat of her 7:13 train, cursing her obstacles’ sense of leisure. Although the weight of her eyelids tempted her to sleep, she clicked on her phone to see what messages she had.

She found three from her boss, four from various colleagues, and one from her daughter. The subjects of the emails ranged from “Report due tonight” to “Meeting tomorrow afternoon” to “Soccer ends at 6:15 today.” Jill first clicked the email from her boss, and, abandoning all hopes of rest, began to plan how she would finish the report which was, apparently, due in a few hours. It was only as she approached the end of her planning when she realized that 6:15 was an hour ago and today was the nanny’s day off, leaving Marissa no possible way of returning home from soccer practice. Jill blamed her wardrobe crisis for throwing off her awareness throughout the day, and sighed with frustration of how to clean up the situation with her daughter.

Jill, however, figured there was nothing she could do from the train, and rather than bother fellow commuters with a phone conversation with her daughter, Jill would finish sorting through her emails and deal with her daughter when she got off the train.

Jill exited the train, shuffled quickly off the platform, and headed to her car, trying to dodge the raindrops which had begun to fall during her commute. She found her banged up Honda Pilot sandwiched between a Suburban and a Porsche Cayenne, neither of which seemed to confine themselves to their own parking space. The beads of sweat returned under 19

the dark blue dress which Jill cursed as she held her breath to maneuver her vehicle out of the lot. As she pulled onto the street, she clicked the voice dial button on the steering wheel.

“Call Marissa Jones.”

“Calling Mary Sedgeway,” an automated voice replied.

“Cancel call. Call Marissa Jones,” Jill ordered, with increased enunciation.

“Calling Mary Sedgeway.”

Jill groaned and pulled over to the side of the road, where she pulled out her cell phone and dialed her daughter’s cell phone by hand. She quickly maneuvered back onto the road as the phone rang.

“Hi Mom.” “Hi Marissa. Sorry I’m late,” Jill replied, narrowly missing a squirrel darting across the road. “That damn dress got stuck in the elevator and people needed me at the office. Where was practice today? I can head over now and get you.”

“Mom, I wasn’t going to just stand in the rain waiting for you to never show up. Lexi’s mom took me back to her house after practice. They already gave me dinner and offered to drive me home. Should they take me, or will you be able to make it?”

Jill sensed a tinge of agitation in her daughter’s tone, which sent a streak of anger down Jill’s spine. How dare her daughter be frustrated when it was Jill whose entire day was thrown off by a trivial piece of clothing her daughter so adored. Jill ordered her daughter to stay at Lexi’s house where Jill would pick her up. After hanging up, Jill texted her daughter, realizing she had never heard of a Lexi in her daughter’s life, and asked for the girl’s last name. Jill quickly pulled out the travel-sized school directory from the glove compartment, where she kept it for times when she had to look up the names of her daughter’s classmates and their parents so she could cover her ignorance at back-to-school night. She found Lexi’s address and adjusted her route accordingly.

When Jill rang the doorbell to retrieve her daughter, she 20

stepped inside to find Marissa at a table with three other children and their two parents, laughing loudly and surrounding a meal Jill immediately judged as suitable only for weekends or special occasions. Jill was deeply puzzled by such a festive occurrence on an ordinary Wednesday night, and, impulsively deciding not to thank Lexi’s family for taking care of her daughter, she led her daughter into the car where she slammed her door shut.

The two drove home to the sole tune of raindrops stabbing the windshield. Jill silently fumed at the confirmed ridiculousness of her new dress and felt further repulsed by the way her daughter stormed up the stairs of their dark home, slamming her door and leaving Jill to heat up leftovers for a dinner alone. She microwaved a plate of lukewarm chicken and wilted broccoli, and dined while scrawling her "to do" list for the weekend. For a moment, Jill felt a twinge of envy until thinking about how Lexi’s mom was one of those mothers who spent her days baking lemon cakes and gingerbread.

Jill washed her dishes and went upstairs, getting ready for bed and laying out tomorrow’s pantsuit.

Daniel Osemobor

Scratchboard 21

The Art of Wearing Rings Jane Watson It is not an obsession, the fact that I always wear them.

It is not a statement either.

I just don’t like the feeling of naked fingers.

Many members of my collection are antiques, ancient vestiges from empires past.

Colonial Morocco, the tribes of Afghanistan, 18th century Ireland, 20th century Connecticut.

Others have simply been swept up, added as passengers on my journey to the completion of a crowning assortment.

Their subtle weight on my digits is as important to my identity as the color of my eyes or the curve of my face.

22

Elizabeth Jones

Pencil Drawing 23

The Photograph Allie Primak It doesn’t come across well in the photo, but she always had crooked eyelashes. Blame it on the grain. My grandfather’s done practically everything he could to restore the photo, remove the ivory ice flecks off her face, warm her up and bring her back to life, but no darkroom remedy could make her look like less of a snow queen. Just cold glare and frosted eyelashes.

My grandfather loved her crooked eyelashes. Wouldn’t let her buy a curler. “Please keep them the way they are; they’re feathers on my cheeks.” She wrote this in her diary after their seven-month anniversary, remembering it verbatim after he said it to her outside a dollar store in the silver dust October snow. Neither was the kind of person to like to celebrate anniversaries, but she allowed herself an extra-sentimental diary entry at the mark of each month.

But on the surface, she really was a snow queen.

The grain photo, before all the restoration attempts, even made it to the paper. Shelly looking like Grace Kelly, taken from above, looking away like a classic retro beauty. “So beautiful she won’t even look at you.” Flash reflecting off her dewy skin. Crooked eyelashes. Face covered in flecks, salt on a gorgeous wound.

MISSING LAST MONDAY: HAVE YOU SEEN SHELLEY My grandfather always regretted the Advocate misspelling her name. “Would’ve found her faster if it wasn’t for the damn E,” he said. Still angry. Because when she was gone, he wanted her back so badly. He loved her so much. Believed she was fire sprung from a wet match, a miracle. Said that as soon as he ran out of the house and secured her in his arms he’d forget it all and forgive her and just let the feather lashes swipe across his skin while his tears congealed into slush.

He’d hold her barefoot in the snow; he just wanted her back.

24

It was hard. He spun it down and down, further into spirals, thinking of every horrible thing that could’ve happened to her, and then always thinking of something worse.

Most of all, he was nervous about using the photo for the ad in the paper because, if she’d really been kidnapped, maybe the criminal would be re-reminded of her beauty and want to keep her for himself just that much more. “But it’s what she would’ve wanted,” he sighed, head drooping. “She’d never forgive me if I gave those idiots at the Advocate any other one.

She adored that photo of herself. She thought it trumped all the others—"every other one’s bad, I ought to burn them," she said to me. But I thought all the photos I took of her were beautiful. I mean, I’ll admit though, she was right, this was the best one.” His hand pulsed over the edges, the photo dissolving into the wrinkles of his palm.

This was the next anomalous snowy October. When she went missing, I mean. So it was a year and seven months.

Except she didn’t get to write in her diary on their one-yearand-seven-month anniversary because her diary was at home and she wasn’t. Oh, also, her home was his home and they lived together and were also married. Sorry. Forgot to add.

During this time he kept her diary under his pillow.

They were married pretty young; she was twenty. But it was love. You could read all about it in the diary, like I said.

Even if in the kitchen she wouldn’t let him hug her every morning like he wanted and even if sometimes she didn’t know what to say and even if she’d start fights with him on the first sunny morning after three weeks of overcast, you could read it in her diary; she loved him.

A week and three days after “MISSING LAST MONDAY: HAVE YOU SEEN SHELLEY," she walked in as a cloud, behind billows of bags. The scarf around her face drooping a little, the knot at her chin a little bit loose. New sunglasses.

Lacquer shoes. That’s right, Shelly went shopping. The photo still has creases from when he suffocated it in his hand on his way to the police department. A ruined photograph, all for a bunch of bags.

Juliann Whitman

Cut Paper Collage 25

But hadn’t it been ruined already?

When Shelly was in elementary school she’d skip all her classes and sit in her backyard instead. When she’d gotten in that fight with my grandfather all she thought about was her backyard, which led her to say some pretty harsh things that she probably wouldn’t have said to him otherwise. Led her to leave, out of hurt, without saying a word.

In the backyard her cheeks were freckled with dark. Like the photo, but a negative. Face all patched in black grain.

She hated school because the other children would spit on her shoes. Her dad was the bus driver so he knew what those kids were like. Told her it was okay if she didn’t want to go to school, he would’ve felt the same way. Stay home.

In the winters the kids compressed stones into snowballs, aimed them at her face with the crooked eyelashes. She’d have bruises all over which made her look dirtier.

Her mother was a gymnast who was always beautiful and always clean and always given things for free. Her mother brought home deluxe perfumes and imported gum. But besides the free things, they couldn’t afford much else.

Shelly always wanted things, things, things. She wanted to be as beautiful and clean as her mother. She wanted to stand up out of the grass and walk over to school with all of her things, things, things and have everyone love her more, spit less on her shoes. She wanted her parents to tell her that yes! they had enough money to give her anything she wanted.

And she wanted my grandfather to say yes! the same thing.

So maybe that’s why she left, to feel like she could have cleaner shoes. To feel like the world was telling her yes! yes! over and over.

And as his hand relaxed from the handle of the mug, sitting at the kitchen table and watching the door swing open and white bag after white bag thud on the floor, my grandfather realized that maybe he had lied to himself. He wasn’t ready to forget it all and forgive her and just let the feather lashes swipe against his skin. He felt like the chair at 26

the kitchen table was now his bed from two months ago, and now at that moment watching it all, he felt the way he had felt two months ago, just plain couldn’t get out of bed. Didn’t want to. He did not want to speak to her or look at anything except the diluted darkness of his own eyelids, the occasional dusty grain when he’d rub his eyes with his knuckles. He wanted to stay in one place and revert to something small and ignorant and happy.

She didn’t say a word. She stood there, while he sat there, while they both just stared at each other. Eventually she moved to the counter, her hair luxuriously bouncing over her shoulder, to start making herself a pot of coffee. She was slow to utter an apology. It might not have come until a week after. When he tried to hold her hand that night her fingers went limp. Didn’t try to meet him halfway.

“I love him, I really feel like I’ve been finding out that before him I’ve never really loved anyone,” she wrote in her diary the next morning. “I just needed to prove something for myself, that’s all. I just needed some time to feel like somebody.

Out of everything I bought last week I love this tiny porcelain heart the most; I’ve been turning it over in my hands ever since the lady passed it over the counter. I think I’ll give it to him, maybe leave it under his pillow. In a week.”

Olivia Quinton

Photography 27

Amelia Riegel

28

Sculpture

Broken Glass Ainsley Buck Until I was 13, I thought glass could only hurt me All I’d seen were shattered bottles with shards as sharp as his voice On my 13th birthday, I went to the beach with my mom The waves frothed like overfilled cappuccinos The sand shivered beneath me And a cool breeze made me pull my sweatshirt tighter I shifted my weight, sifting the sand through my toes Stopping when I felt a pulse Reaching down, there was soft glass buried in the sand Smooth on the edges like Mom's smile that I finally saw after so long

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Black Feather on A Dove Kennedy Woods Do you hear that jazz playin’ down the street Louis plays that trumpet so well, as Langston Writes a melody to the beat Of imperfect perfections that was Harlem The black spot in a white world The black feather on a dove There was laughter and joy emanating From those who had been silenced for way too long Oh how I love to laugh Our voices are being heard, but only by a dream A King with a dream But peaking out can cause you to be The black ink on a white page The black feather on a dove They stood out as I too stand out Every passing second, I am in the midst of white walls White faces and white lies The man wrote "nigger" in the book, she said that Word aloud in class and yet all eyes were on me Oh how I longed to blend in To mask what makes me different with the use of a White pen I am the buttons on your white tux The black feather on a dove If black is the color of mourning I have been in mourning since the day I was born I mourn for my brothers who die at the hands of injustice I mourn for my sisters whose bodies have been Damaged and broken by the Devil’s Advocate himself But as mourning follows, I see a glimpse of sunlight A glimpse of hope A glimpse of Harlem The dark pupils in your eyes The black feather on a dove 30

Emma Morrison Papercuts 31

LABYRINTH 32

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Narcissisters Allie Primak We should be classified as false alarms, liars, dust-specks Our seats should be pulled out right from underneath us but gravity would only offer us more After you the air will say for us with a big white blanket to put in our laps for when we vomit glass & carmine & don’t want to stain our knuckles Maybe we are so destructive we should be exiled from trenches, sent home to our mothers, overdosed, cult of domesticity Perhaps we should be mistaken for the noise of a passing garbage truck, not a real earthquake, of course not— no use hiding under desks for voids/ white noise/ false alarms Our orange marble hearts should be chiseled Sculpt us like those limbless statues, the ones in museums, the ones in ruins Cut us with your credit cards, so dust falling at our feet should dissolve into other earth dirt Dilute it into our mouths because scabbed cuticles won’t heal from being sucked on & air is unnecessary & the other day I went to the big glass store so they could show me how to make my auto-response: “I don’t know; leave us alone”

34

Camila O'Brien

Photography

35

How To Take A Shower Emma Osman Turn on the water. You’ll still hear his voice over the sound of the streaming faucet but ignore it. Turn on some music.

Full volume. Pretend you don’t notice the ringing in your ears. Don’t feel the floor shake as pots and pans are thrown in the kitchen. Lock the bathroom door. Begin to undress, don’t look in the mirror. The sight of your bruises will upset you. Double-check the lock on the door. Throw your clothes in the hamper, except for your shirt. The sleeve is bloody. Put it in the garbage.

Turn the water up full heat. Burn your skin and make it easier to ignore the pain that engulfs your throbbing arm.

Your head is pounding, right? The heat will help that, too.

Hop in the shower fast, you don’t want the cut to drip onto the ground. He’ll be mad if you get blood on the nice rug he bought for Christmas last year to sit under the sink.

You remember how angry he got after you told him it was too expensive. You had said he should return it; it was too much. The cheap one was fine. You were right; he couldn’t afford to visit his mother that year. The cheap one would’ve been fine.

As you get into the shower you’ll notice the steady stream of blood that goes swirling down the drain with the water.

Quickly look away, pretend you don’t notice it. Put some soap onto your loofa. Scrub your arm, especially the gash.

It’ll sting. But ignore it. If it keeps bleeding you’ll get dizzy like last time. Soon the soap won’t be an orangey-red color as it goes down the drain. The bleeding will stop. Take a deep breath. Thank God. Shampoo and condition your thin hair fully. Run your hands through your hair and massage your head, which is still throbbing with a headache, a dull numbness behind your eyes, as you rinse. The yelling makes your head pound every time. It’s okay, he’s shut up by now.

Your friends will ask you why bruises cover you; a large one encircles your lower right eye. “Just a fall down the stairs 36

the other day,” say. “I’m fine.” Convince them. Convince yourself. You’re okay. If they don’t believe you, cut them off.

Delete their numbers; avoid them in the halls of the office where you work. You don’t need them. You’re okay.

Stand in the shower for as long as possible. The water will begin to drip out cold now. It’s fine. You need a moment to think. Stand under the now freezing water. Tell yourself it’s not his fault; you just set him off. Tell yourself that was the last time, this time you’re leaving. You’ll be fine on your own.

You can make it. Don’t notice the tears as they drip down your cheeks. Keep breathing. Thank God that your arm has stopped bleeding.

Don’t panic when you hear the knock on the door. He’s calmed down. Turn the shower off. Grab the towel quickly.

Dry your hair and towel off your arm carefully, you’ll wrap it up later. Open the door. He’s standing there, like you knew he would be. He looks sorry. You’re sure he is. Let him wrap you in a hug, ignore the way your heart pounds with nerves as he does this. You’re safe. It’s okay. Listen as he tells you he’ll work on his temper. Believe him when he says that was the last time. Nod when he tells you he had a bad day, work has been tough. Hear him when he says he loves you, that he wants you to be safe. That he cares about you, and he would never hurt you intentionally. Believe this. Ask him if he can go grab a bandage. He’ll oblige. Of course he will. Let him wrap it around your arm; don’t flinch under his touch. He won’t hurt you. You’re okay.

Keep breathing. Tell yourself that was the last time. If it happens again, you’ll leave. Force yourself to believe this.

He’ll pretend it didn’t happen. Go along with it. When he asks you if you’re okay at dinner, tell him yes. Start to believe this. You’re okay. You’re okay.

Tasha Recoder

Photography 37

Gallant Zhuangli

38

Ceramics

The Bowl Grace Zhao “Grab the soup,” she said. “Go ahead and sit down, I’ll bring the rice over. Everything else is already set.”

“Okay. Thanks, Dawn,” he said, emerging from the small hallway leading to his tiny office portion of the apartment.

“What’ve we got today?”

“Um, some broccoli, scrambled eggs and tomatoes, the normal simple stuff.”

“Mm. Sounds good.”

“Think we can get a new table soon? This plastic one is getting pretty shaky; I think it’s missing a few screws.”

“I’ll fix it tomorrow. We don’t need to spend anything to fix it.”

“Kay,” she said, bowing her head with closed eyes and folded hands.

He picked up his chopsticks and began eating.

——— “How was school today? Did you have fun? How are your grades?”

“Hm?” “I asked how school was. Whether or not you like it. How you’re keeping up in class.”

She pursed her lips towards one side of her face. “All right, I guess. Doing well as usual, got a 94 on my physics test.”

He grunted between large chomps of broccoli. “What’s the date?”

“The twenty-third. November.”

“Right. How long ‘til you hear back from Yale?”

“Few weeks. I think it’s December 15. I was doing some final edits on some supplements, wasn’t sure if I should write more about church or not.”

He didn’t respond. He never did with this topic.

“Dad, wanna come to church with me? Just try it. Please.”

“Eat more veggies, Dawn. It’s good for you.”

——— 39

“I got an email today from your school.”

“Yeah? What’d it say?”

“Something about the Dahlia Luncheon, I didn’t really read it.”

“Oh.” She picked at the small bits of diced garlic in her plate.

“Well, are you gonna tell me?”

“It’s nothing really, Dad. It’s fine. Just. Don’t worry about it.”

“Dawn, for God’s sake just spit it out.”

“It’s a mother-daughter luncheon. Which is why I said don’t worry about it. Okay?”

“Fine,” he said, swirling the water around his glass.

“Look, Dad. I appreciate you being concerned. But both you and I know that this is pointless— Mom’s gone, and she’s not coming back, so screw the Dahlia Luncheon.”

He shot up in that instant, chair screeching in protest against the tile floor. The table shook, and some water escaped from the edge of his cup. His knuckles shook in their death grip on the plastic edge of the table.

“Don’t you dare tell me what I already know, Dawn. The Bible says something like obey your dad. So when I say fine, it’s fine.”

“Dad,” she croaked, voice weak and body shaking. “It can’t possibly be fine. Not if you reacted that way. You do this every time when we try and talk about Mom.” “How could you just bring her into the conversation like that? You don’t know a thing.”

She looked up. “I do know that Mom left the last time you did this, and she hasn’t come back. It’s been four years, four freaking years, Dad. I thought you were over this. I thought you’d be okay, that you wouldn’t start this again. That it’d never happen again.”

“You don’t know a thing. You’re wrong. I’m fine,” he hissed under his breath. He went quickly to the kitchen where she couldn’t see him. There was a clink of a glass, then the trickling of liquid. Gulp, gulp, gulp. More liquid. More gulps.

Again and again and again. Then exhale. He re-emerged 40

looking winded, and sat back down.

She popped a piece of egg that was slightly damper and saltier than it had been before into her mouth. He didn’t notice why.

——— She wasn’t sure if she wanted to talk more or not. At this point, it was all about breathing. She told herself to inhale.

Exhale. Do it like anyone else would. She kept the feeling of the onions that she had chopped an hour earlier at bay, ignoring the constant pricking at her eyes. She tried not to choke on the air that seemed packed with the stench of what she feared most.

“How’d you know that bit of the Bible, Dad, about honoring one’s mother and father?”

“Y’ mom used to say it to you and— to you and— Riley.

You know, when you were kids.”

“Hm.” She sucked in a shaky breath through her mouth.

“Yeah, I remember that. Riles used to say it to me when mom told me to do my homework.”

“She was a lovely lady,” he breathed, barely audible at all. “Rachel was a wonderful woman. A spectacular soul...”

Her white knuckles gripped her folding chair, not trusting herself enough to let go. She looked at his eyes, unfocused, glazed over. His hands were neatly folded next to his rice bowl that had not yet been touched. He muttered some more incoherent oddities under his breath.

“Dad,” she said.

No response.

“Dad,” she said again. This always happened.

So she said: “Hey Dad!” very loudly, and his irises shifted as if in slow motion to barely focus on her face.

She looked back down at her clenched hands. “Why did you let her go?”

He grunted. “I’int do anything.” His head plopped onto the cushion of his arm, now gently bent on the table. “She ran away when things got tough.”

She looked him in the eye, a penetrating stare boring into soulless pupils. “No. You ran. You went and bought some 41

alcohol when things got tough. And when she left, you kept running out to the store to get some more. And you stopped running after a while, and I thought we’d be okay. But look at you now, head in your hands, beard unshaven. No wonder why she left!” she yelled, anger spiraling out from every pore in her body. “Look who you’ve become again. After I thought you’d be okay,” she whispered, shamelessly letting her tears fall.

She turned her head to the side, gazing through the lamplight reflections on the window at the eerie blue backing to a metropolis skyline.

“What’ve I become, Dawnie?” he asked. “I’m no different than I used t’be.”

“You think I don’t know,” she said, her jaw tightening.

“You think I freaking don’t know! Dad, for goodness’ sake, you’ve been pouring yourself shots behind my back for weeks now! Weeks! You don’t think I notice? You don’t think I notice the drops of vodka on the counter that you miss? That I don’t smell your stupid breath?”

Silence. His hand cupped the bridge of his nose, eyes covered.

She breathed. That was the only audible noise as the neighboring apartment’s showerhead whirred to life. All else was silent in the city that never slept.

Stains of salt lining her face, she reached out with her chopsticks and promptly popped a piece of broccoli into her mouth. * * * “Come to church with me,” she said.

Silence.

“Dad, hey, Dad.” Silence. A grunt. More silence.

“Dad, hello, earth to Dad,” she said, desperation laced into the edges of her cracking voice. She whipped a hand out in front of him and snapped right between his eyes.

“Leave me ‘lone. Jus’ go ‘way.” He swatted at her clicking fingers.

“D-ad, please. It’s me, Dawn. I just—” 42

“Said go away!” he yelled, fist landing on the bowl full of rice that he hadn’t even touched, shattering the delicate porcelain designs into splinters beyond any hope of repair.

“Can’t,” she responded simply, more of a whisper to herself than a statement to him.

She rose and retrieved the trash bin from the corner, picking up the bigger chunks and tossing them in with audible “clink-clinks” as more pieces piled up. Saving the smaller shards for last, she used a paper towel to sweep them all into one small pile before letting them fall into the bin. And as she stood there, brushing off one hand on her jeans, cheeks coated in wet, translucent trails, the other hand clutching the little gold cross that hung around her neck, she watched her father reach out with his thumb and forefinger, take a clump of rice off of the table, and stick it into his mouth.

43 43

Petit Mal Sophie Hadjipateras 1.

My brother and I wake up before the sun We slowly pile on each layer Covering every inch of pale, bare skin ° 2.

We sit and cram our feet into hard-shelled boots Painfully we crank at the buckles Pushing our weight down on the metal Until we hear a crack ° Once they are both on tight, we walk outside The hard heels slide around on the icy cement We balance two long skis, clasped together Against our bony shoulders ° Struggling to keep our balance We look ahead into the muted gray sky °° 3.

We stand in line Waiting for the snow-dusted black leather chair To come and scoop us from behind And lift us up the mountain ° We sit together dangling above The vast white, speckled with people ° 4.

It starts in my hand, my wrist shakes The shake travels through each finger I watch as the shiny metal pole Falls from the grasp of my warm black mitten It hits the snow awkwardly Stabbing the ground for a quick second 44

And then tipping over Then my right leg, both legs Shake and jerk The weight of the skis pulls my legs I feel myself slide down the black chair Closer to the white snow below I feel my brother's grasp Through all my thick fleece layers Tight around my waist Pulling me back up 5.

He asks, “What was that?”

We both know But don’t say

Caroline Sorensen

Photography and Digital Design

45

46

Seed Data Francesca Narea D a t e : F e b r u a r y 1 2 , 2 0 2 4 , Ti m e : 8 : 5 1 : 3 4 This Google Document consists of excerpts from my journal as a young computer scientist ten years ago. I will slowly reveal these documents to the public, as they may be useful for emerging programmers or even those neophytes1 who have only just written their first program.

And, for those who have no knowledge of computer science as a creative interpretation of binary, this is Java2 for “Hello.” p u b l i c c l a s s H e l l o W o r l d { public static void main (String[] args) /*This is the main method client code, the method which will execute statements to print to the user and test how your code from other methods and classes compile and run in a test situation3.*/ { System.out.println (“Hello!”); /*This statement directly prints out a specific line of text. System.out.println references classes and a method from the java.lang.package.*/ } } /*As I had done in previous years of high school, I ro d e m y b i k e w i t h c r u s t y t i re s t o t h e l i b r a r y.

The wooden chairs were rough on the back and a feeble current of air-conditioning sputtered from the rusty vents above my head. It was hardly a suitable environment for writing code.

There was the usual group of cocky boys who sat programming amidst the shelves of books, hidden from plain sight — legs stretched straight and laptops with huge headphones.

Camila O'Brien

Pen and Ink Drawing 47

By day, programs streamed through my head, developed on those trusty library computers with decade old operating systems.*/ Date: May 13, 2014, Time: 14:48:56 Today, through a program, I solved 2048, the seemingly simple iPhone app game. On the 4x4 board, numbers 2, 4, 8, 16, etc., appear as tiles, one number per grid square.

You are required to combine two tiles of 2 to create a 4 tile, two tiles of 4 into a single 8 tile, until you obtain the coveted 2048 tile. The catch is to not let the 16 squares fill with tiles before you reach your goal. Similar to the Rubik’s Cube, the player becomes agonizingly pained with the perfection of the 2048 tile. My algorithms calculate and execute the process of creating the final tile. /*By night, I put on my white hacker hat4. As the Jargon File5 has always said, a hacker is simply, “A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and stretching their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary.” So, my hacks were advantageous for programs and applications.

Sipping my Red Bull, I sat on the crinkled metal roof of my house, looking out into the sky of 2 a.m. darkness. The caffeine surged into my mind, illuminating it with ideas.*/ Date: A u g u s t 3 , 2 0 1 4 , Ti m e : 2:20:05 After downloading Snapchat’s source code, I discovered how to decrypt photos taken out of an iPhone’s cache, in a short 20 lines of Ruby6. Even with its newsworthy security faults, the app’s privacy has remained unimproved. I left a calling card for the system’s easy security breach but cannot think of any other way to successfully protect the millions of Snapchat pictures, which are essentially stored in flimsy, plastic safes. /*There is a certain satisfaction in finishing a program or finding a way to hack into one of the world’s most used social media apps. It brought me an excitement to think of 48

efficient programming methods. The languages were unlike any other I spoke – relying on logic and functionality. Script kiddies7, that’s what I called the boys at the library, miss the contentment following programming achievements.

Little did they know, being a girl didn’t hinder my skills.

The programs I wrote as a teenager were not considered revolutionary. Rather, they were my way of exploring the creative aspects of coding. Computer science gave me worlds of possibilities— within the reach of everyone who endeavors to grasp the languages.

At least, as a young neophyte, I did not breach or exploit programs as a black hat hacker, nor was I a security cracker.

I build, not break.*/

Hacker classification for newbie.

Java is an object-oriented programming language; its syntax is similar to C and C++ but it has more abstraction from the machine language.

3 Note the /*...*/ are comment lines within code, which are not part of a program’s functionality but rather a way for someone to convey, in English, the reasoning of the code. In the journal /*...*/ signify the respective beginning and ending of my personal comments. This is only the syntax for Java.

4 White hat hackers are hackers with pure intentions (do not manipulate the flaws they discover).

5 Glossary of hacker slang.

6 Ruby is a programming language used for computer and web applications and, because of its slower functionality, it cannot be used to code smartphones and tablets.

7 Hackers who use pre-made programs without understanding concepts of the language.

1 2

49

Night as Seen from Twenty Floors Up Three Days After a Hurricane Emma Duty You’ve always loved the night. The certainty of it and how it’s always changing. It’s lovely. Sky lit by a smattering of stars. Or maybe by knots of clouds. Perhaps brush strokes, like Van Gogh. Could be empty, clear: pitch and raven feathers. Or grey, like cigarette ash and water, coloured slate poststorm. Or blue, an inky blue, velvet, richer and thicker than the pale daytime skies.

Or the deepest violet.

Or tinged with the faintest orange: the city’s lights seeping into heavy air.

The brightness wraps around all the buildings. An airplane’s lights pockmark the horizon, blink red and white high up, high with the stars and for a second you imagine it is one. There’s the swift-moving blaze of headlights far off somewhere. And the shadows of rocking trees with their haphazard branches that meagerly attempt to hold their own in the hard, flat lines of the urban landscape.

There’s a cat’s shadow in the window a few floors up.

The glass is ice against your skin as you press in for a closer look. Your breath fogs the pane; you cannot see. You can hear sounds of life in the true middle of the night.

You fool yourself; there is dawn on the horizon.

No, suddenly the sky is ink. Black ink like the sort you’d dab at the end of your paintbrush and submerge in a glass just to see that pure, saturated darkness unfurl in the clear water.

A chill sinks beyond your thin t-shirt. Not an unpleasant one, though. Just a soft reminder that you’re awake and alone as your family sleeps a few feet away.

You wonder if the people on the street can see the glow of your laptop as your mother said. You wouldn’t mind.

Teeth chatter, and you’re brought back into the hotel room. With the caress of the transparent curtains against 50

you, another shield against the people waiting for you on the other side. They’re the kind of curtains you always wanted in your bedroom, the ones you never asked for.

The cat’s gone. There’s mist though, in its place, but you cannot tell if it’s the mist of breath or of the radiator beneath the windowsill. You know the radiator’s there because you sit on one now. The rooms are copies. One thousand rooms and families all hiding and sleeping and thinking and writing and doing whatever it is people do at 3:03 am.

One thousand people (or more) just taking shelter from the night and the storm. The one that passed days ago.

There’s a crick in your back and the bed glows pearly white in the artificial shine of your screen. You sit, roll back your shoulders, type. Fast. A little too fast, too hard. Bodies shift. Mumbles rise. You stop. For a. Second.

Don’t want to wake them.

Softer now, heat rises from the blankets.

You finish typing.

Don’t want to wake them.

It’s 3:07 am.

Jo DeWaal

Monoprint 51

The Words of a Liar Caroline Dunn words, slipping beneath the cement foundations blooming like weeds around the jagged edges of her thoughts yellowing grass and bow-headed dandelions that siphon all other expressions so that all she can think are these words words— truthful, painful words she yearns to scream them but will never utter they fester in the soft grey matter of her brain sometimes they’re simple like a hey to a cute guy in her class often they’re more complicated I disagree permanently burrows in her throat occasionally she can’t even fathom the words in her head only the unadulterated anger images flash in the choppy staccato of an errant roll of film her curls bouncing to agree all to prevent the screaming and arguments that lie behind cherry-red sneers they can’t see behind her lacquered lashes she laughs, they laugh and with every innocuous yes she just lies a little more

52

Borden Wahl

Scratchboard 53

Ballet Erinn Goldman They say the Russians temptingly retreated into their land’s heart, While the French pursued into the oozing cold.

They say the Russians burnt their city, Like burning their country’s finger so the French couldn’t suck any blood from it.

They say the Russians watched the French congeal into ice by the hundreds, As the French quaked like tails severed from chameleons.

They say the Russians erected frozen French bodies into ballet positions, Splattered standing across fields lit by moonlight and snow.

They say the corpses performed static ballet, Like curdling ambitions of this French Revolution.

54

Reid Guerriero

Charcoal Drawing 55

Strange Infection Allie Primak By now the bruise had spread like a line, a purple Nile, trickling down to my wrist. Two weeks ago the nurse was pinching my inner elbow with the needle in her other hand.

The rubber tie like a noose around my bicep, cutting off the blood. At the base, above the elbow, the bruise was the blackest.

It was getting hard to lift the trees at work. Hard to get tips when you’re a landscaper who can’t lift shrubs. And harder still when the guys would say to me, “güey, brazo morado, yo no entiendo, ¿de repente estás perezoso?” The pain pricked with every handshake, every pressing of a crumpled bill into my palm.

I walked back to the doctor after work and the nurse told me, “Señor, lo siento, you have a blood infection. When we were taking out the needle we must have done it, mm, errado.”

“No, señora, you’re kidding.”

“Señorita.”

“Señorita, dime por favor, what have I got this medical plan for? Pretty special thing for a landscaper out here to have insurance, and why am I getting infected by the doctors who tell me to come in for the check ups?”

She told me I could schedule another appointment for next week at the desk in the front. I walked out, all “médicos tontos” under my breath and then she said actually, she just remembered, it’s very booked so the appointment could be in two weeks, not one.

I walked back to the sheds with lavender wrists, pine needles under my skin.

——— Ricardo at work got his leg caught in one of the tractors, and I was there. “¡Ay, ay, dios! ¡Ayudame! ¡Ayudame! ¡AY!” At lunch breaks the guys would huddle in their rain jackets and shift their eyes at me, whisper “brazo morado… brazo 56

morado…” Clutching their styrofoam cups of coffee, “brazo morado… brazo morado…”

And they were right. I didn’t help him. I was on the other side of the field, at the bottom of the hill even, and Ricardo was all the way at the top. Heard him screaming but what was I going to do, climb up the hill and the tractor and pull him out? My purple arm was swelling from planting perennials that morning. Fucking perennials. I mean, plantas pequeñas were hurting me. How was I supposed to pull out a 250 pound gordo jammed in the gears of a tractor?

They called me back for the next week, but I couldn’t go. I told the nurse on the phone that she had told me two weeks, so that’s what I planned for, two weeks. I would see her in seven days, señorita. My arm was killing me but that week we had to pave a memorial garden for some abuelitas, and then on Wednesday night we were all bringing food to Ricardo’s house. If I didn’t go the guys would really start to spit on me. I had my wife make him an aluminum tin enorme, full of rice even with saffron. Sorry son of a bitch sitting on the couch with a white mummy leg shoveling it all into his gordo mouth with a plastic fork.

——— The dark purple shades of the hospital room were matching my arm now. The blood work couldn’t be done at the doctor’s office anymore; the infection had spread. The bruise was a thick stripe down my forearm, a cult marking.

“Wait two weeks y necesitas ir al hospital, pobrecito,” gibed the nurse.

Three minutes in that room and the bill was $900. They were the ones who gave me the infection, and fixing their mistake cost me an extra $900. Fucked up my blood and fucked up my schedule and gave me a two-week-old weird infection, and then topped it all off with a grand $900. I couldn’t believe it.

Three minutes in the room and they gave me another shot and I was on my way out. “Eso es todo?”

“Yes.” ——— 57

Jo DeWaal 58

Monoprint

With the shot they gave me and some meds, an extra $40, I was back at work fine, arm feeling better. Until one day I just straight collapsed onto the ground, actually into some bushes we were putting in for this grandmother. I bet you the guys just stood over me wringing their styrofoam cups like it wasn’t their business.

I was back in the same hospital room with the same purple shades and the same nurse. I opened my eyes and she had her tongue out at me. As soon as that happened I think she felt embarrassed and turned right around facing the curtains.

I asked, “What was that?” She pretended not to hear.

Later the guys and even Ricardo with his crutches visited me and brought me a bouquet of lavender flowers because they knew my wife liked them.

“Right? She’s into all those smells and spices.”

And I pretended I was too weak to talk to them.

——— "¿Me estás engañando? ¿Estás engañandome?" This is how my wife woke me up the next morning, right in the hospital bed, her damp palm thrusting my face into the pillow. Her screaming sounded muffled, my ear pressed too far into the downy.

"What? What? Stop. Stop. I can't see you. I'm not cheating!

Cheating? Are you kidding? What? STOP I said. STOP." When I started to choke she let me go. She said yesterday when the guys came over, she saw them, they told her all about my visits to the hospital each week. How at work I'm always talking about that nurse. The one that makes me call her señorita.

"That's a load of bull. Why would I do that when she gave me this fucking infection?" I showed her my arm.

"You got that ever since you started going to the hospital.

Seeing her. I don't believe you. This wouldn't be the first time."

"I'm not. Stop." And this time I meant it.

——— Three months and the nurse just had to break it to me.

“Señor, we just don’t know what it is. We don’t know why 59

it’s not getting better.” She avoided looking at me.

“Are you going to keep charging me? Doing anything else?”

“No.” “Is there anything I can do?”

“We don’t know, like I said, señor.”

“How’s it going to go away?”

“No sé,” she shrugged like she didn’t care what happened to me.

——— I felt so stupid around the guys. Ricardo was a lot better now and he even took over most of my responsibilities because I was too weak to carry them out. Now I was just a useless plant-fearing pobrecito. Everyone acted all careful around me in case I were to collapse again.

I knew if I did, they wouldn’t help me. Even if I called out and they didn’t have to climb a hill or nada.

——— And then one night, in my sleep, I felt something poking me right in the elbow. And then stabbing. Painful stabbing.

I woke up and my wife was lying next to me rubbing my arm. Why I felt so disoriented, I couldn’t figure it out. I didn’t know how to speak. I felt so drowsy. I started to roll over to go turn on the light, but she held onto my arm, still kneading it.

“Just go back to sleep,” she whispered. “How are you feeling?”

I felt so horrible I had to get up. I reached over to the lampshade with my good arm. Another tug.

“Ay mujer, just let me get up.”

The room turned white and then visible, and I turned back over to look at my arm. But I saw it covered in yellow oil, dripping down to my knuckles. I couldn’t feel a thing, like when you sleep on yourself for too long and then your body feels lifeless. My arm looked black, but then again it was so dim.

She got up to go to the bathroom. “Cariño, I’ll get you some Tylenol.”

60

But as she got up I watched her and saw a plastic fork in her hand. Red at the tips.

The poking. The stabbing.

I wrangled the sheets off of me to follow her and underneath them I saw more yellow oil. Everything smelling like saffron. And something else.

One-handedly pulling up the sheets like I was pulling out weeds, I found a small bottle of iodine tincture. She’d been rubbing químicas into my arm, getting her spices into my bloodstream.

I couldn’t pound on the door with my brazo morado but I knew that she locked herself in.

Lizzie Sands

Photography and Digital Design

61

To Grand Central Lucy Burnett It was 4:35, but, like me, the train was running late.

I boarded and found that plenty of seats were available.

I chose one of the empty pairs, distanced from the clusters of unknown personalities. A few minutes after I was seated, the ticket collector approached to punch my ticket, but lack of time had demanded I buy one on board. In a voice heavy with fatigue, not only from today, but from a thousand days identical to this one, the ticket collector recited the price: $12.99. He was tan, hairy, and slightly overweight. His hat was tilted forward so that he had to lean his head back to see.

I wondered if he did this on purpose to make himself look more intimidating. If he did, it was working. But then I also wondered if he realized the cure to his compromised field of vision and inevitable stiff neck was to simply push the hat back. I reached for the credit card conveniently stored in the back of my iPhone case, but his monotonous voice stopped me, “Cash only.”

Heat rushed from my head while a chill rushed from my feet, eventually coalescing in my pitted stomach. For some reason, I had decided to travel to New York City with no cash. None. I remember wondering if my face reddened or paled—both equally possible. I somehow managed to stutter an explanation. Without saying a word, the ticket collector turned and vanished down the aisle. My mind immediately bought a ticket onto the What If Rollercoaster, which apparently was more lenient in accepting non-cash payment. What if he was getting the conductor’s approval to push me off the moving train? What if he went to get an officer to handcuff me? What if he made me get off at the next frighteningly random town?

But the rollercoaster came to an abrupt stop. Across the aisle, a few seats back, a Depressed Woman began to duet with her iPod. Her face possessed every characteristic a cartoonist would use to express sadness. Her lower lip hooked 62

over her chin. Her eyebrows impressively formed individual s’s. She hugged her designer rip-off bag close to her chest, as if she thought it would hug her back. She made me nervous.

Exasperated by this disturbance, the Man With The New York Times, seated in front of me, looked to his left, at the Two Well-Dressed Men. They had briefcases, so I assumed they were talking business. He then looked at me. We made direct eye contact.

The Man With The New York Times stood up and asked the Depressed Woman to “keep it down,” as if my empty stare fed him the confidence to do so. She quickly pulled her ear buds out and said, “Sorry, what?” in a surprisingly sweet voice. Her bottom lip unhooked from her chin and her s eyebrows arched back into their normal upside down c’s. She turned pretty. The Man With The New York Times repeated, “Can you please keep it down?” I could tell he felt awkward, because he whispered, “It’s just I’m trying to read,” and he sort of lifted his hand up to show off his New York Times. The prettiness left as quickly as it came. Her grip on the designer rip-off bag tightened. Ten minutes passed. She began singing again. I couldn’t tell if it was the same song.

At that moment, I felt more depressed than any cartoonist could ever illustrate. I could no longer deny the Greenwich in me. I was a seventeen-year-old girl who forgot to carry cash and who feared diversity. Instead of admiring the ticket collector’s generosity, I waited for his malice. I had always thought I was the kind of person who would talk to strangers— to make their day better, or just different. But here I was, witnessing the joy that human interaction brought to the Depressed Woman and staying seated. I felt like crying, but I was scared the Man With The New York Times would tell me to stop. So I didn’t.

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Laura Guo White Pencil Drawing

Hookah Bar Ellie Garland I sat solo on the train, my figure imprinted in the red seat like a fossil that the next paleontologist passenger would discover.

I felt both lonely and uncharacteristically sociable— four teenagers in the blue seats to my left talked about SNL and football and Tinder; their words meant little to me but I, too, wanted to talk about SNL and football and Tinder.

I asked how these four souls had spent their most recent hours and they told me they had gone to a Hookah Bar. Their parents believed it was an authentic Argentinian Restaurant with dulce de leche and empanadas.

They joked I mustn’t blow their cover.

I nodded like I knew what a hookah bar was as if I had inhaled the dizzying flavored fumes, but their black-hazed eyes sensed my ignorance and laughed at the little girl who had tried to talk to them.

I sunk deeper into my red seat 66

and imagined dialing the numbers to call up their parents.

Your children, mere children, have not absorbed Argentinian culture but toxic gases‌ — is what I might say but instead, curled up in my seat, I tried to make sense of the shapes that whirred by.

Laura Guo

Photography and Digital Design

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Narrative of Javier Negrón Jubilee Johnson And you could tell she was losing weight. Uh huh, you could see it even through her clothes. When you see a girl with emaciated arms and flaccid breasts you start to get nervous. You wonder why her teeth are starting to look too big for her face and get confused when her collarbone starts jutting out unlike it used to.

That’s what happened to Carmen. She had always been waify, but now that seemed ridiculous. In fact, she was haggard-scary. A few times she spooked me, and when I laid a hand on her shoulder to say a few words, I gripped barely nothing.

I mean she was still beautiful, in her own way, don’t get me wrong. Her hair didn’t thin, which was a good thing. It still remained voluptuous from the first time I seen it. I don’t know how she maintained the good condition, but Carmen made it happen.

But what I hate is how she wore her face. Carmen went in on that petroleum black makeup, laying it on thick as crayon. She wanted to imitate the eyes of Horus, but I just saw a whore. Excuse me.

So this one time I’m walking, right? And I see this figure out on the curb, pulling up the collar of a jacket and I say to myself oh shit, that’s Carmen! So I hadn’t seen her in a while, and at this point she was the worse. By accident, the wind blew her jacket open, and she was mad skinny. I’m talking thin like this.

And I go, Carmen, what you doing outside in the cold? You trying to kill yourself? That’s how serious it was. Yeah, man.

At this point it was anorexia. The worse kind. I never seen a girl so fragile. And here I am wearing this big-ass North Face thinking, I gotta get this girl some warmth. So I take off my coat, give it to Carmen, and she protesting like I’m doing something wrong.

And she’s shaking and coughing, and I don’t even ask her permission. I say look, you coming home with me.

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Jourdon Delerme

Photography and Collage 69

And Carmen’s fighting me on this, acting like she waiting for someone. That’s what she said. She give me lip talking bout I’m disturbing her.

So I don’t even listen, cuz you know how I feel about Carmen. The girl’s like my baby sister. We family. I’d never try anything on her, so it’s not even like that.

So I take Carmen in my arms, and I walk to my building carrying her like she was just born. And Carmen eventually stops fighting cuz she so weak and she put herself to sleep.

And you know my cheap-ass super hasn’t even fixed the elevator, so I gotta walk up fucking six flights to get upstairs.

Meanwhile Carmen’s moaning, and that gets me scared.

And by the time I get inside, I lay her on the bed. I put her in real clothes, because you know what? Underneath her coat, all she had on was a slip. Or what do you call them?

Those things women supposed to wear under dresses?

So while I undress her, I’m getting sick thinking Come on, Carmen. Goddamn, why you treat yourself so badly? And Carmen don’t know what’s going on cuz she half unconscious. But that’s okay, she just tired, that’s all. She just need to be fed and kept warm.

She just needed someone to take her in, cuz she didn’t know what she was doing.

She was just lost.

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Bella Crawford

Annie Harris

Paloma Corrigan

Pen and Ink Drawing

Marker Drawing Film 71

MORTALS AND IMMORTALS

72

73

The Star of My Family is Dead Ellie Garland I sat in the passenger seat with my socked feet resting on the windshield and my eyes counting the exit numbers.

A dry, raspy voice, reading the unabridged audio recording of The Beautiful and Damned, drifted into my ears no matter how hard I tried to block it out.

A shrill ring interrupted the voice and filled the station wagon— Rubia was on the line.

Mom was prepared to tell her the alarm code is 9851, Oscar gets two cups of kibble, and the new laundry detergent is in the plastic bag under the sink, but this was a call that should not have been answered on speaker phone.

Rubia was sobbing.

I imagined the droplets falling on her phone.

I wanted to reach out and wipe them but we were still 22 exits away.

Violent and angry and sad, we drowned in her words: La estrella de mi familia estĂĄ muerta.

My brother is dead, my youngest brother of twelve children 74

my only brother with a college education that took three years and eleven siblings to afford.

La estrella de mi familia está muerta.

My brother is dead, my one brother with a high-paying job who stops the wicked men behind drug cartels and sends money in brown paper envelopes to our whole family.

La estrella de mi familia está muerta.

My brother— stabbed by six men with twelve knives on the dusty Mexican streets drunken dirty men who sought vengeance by stealing a life.

She hung up and the hollow reading of Fitzgerald’s weepy words resumed seconds later: Life is so damned hard, so damned hard…

It just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can’t be hurt ever any more.

Annie Klein

Marker Drawing 75

The Suitcase Lulu Hedstrom The elderly couple tore open a crinkled paper bag. I watched from my seat on the train as the husband produced two smoked salmon sandwiches wrapped in cling film. He reached into his wife’s suitcase for a pair of napkins. The leather on her bag was creased and threadbare from years of use.

“Lovely sandwich.”

The woman smiled at her husband’s satisfaction.

“I can manage, thank you.”

A harsh American accent resonated from the seat two rows in front of me and I watched as the woman clutched her suitcase, as if to steady herself, clearly in pain from her patent leather stilettos. She seemed particularly out of place on this meandering train journey through the English countryside.

“Just let me get that, Tabitha.”

The husband was evidently exhausted, most likely due to hours in the office. He must have been a banker, or perhaps a lawyer.

“I said, I can—” “Yes, I heard what you said. But that’s a heavy suitcase.”

“So?” “It’s just easier if I handle it. Okay?”

Not convinced, she flicked a clump of ironed auburn hair behind her shoulder. The sun flashed against an extravagant diamond on the woman’s left hand. Judging by the couple’s lack of patience, they had been married for at least five years.

Meanwhile, the elderly couple had finished their sandwiches. They were seated between the Americans and myself.

Clearly amused by the suitcase ordeal, the man shook his head, smiling, as his wife flicked through a flower-arranging magazine. Though neither of them wore wedding rings, I knew that they were married.

“Just be careful, Angus. That was a wedding present.”

76

As the American husband swung his wife’s Louis Vuitton suitcase above his head, some plastic packaging slipped from a bottom zipper. I realized, evidently, that this case and the rings were recently-acquired possessions.

“What makes you think you can force something brand new like that? You’re just going to destroy it!”

Angus looked up at Tabitha. The newly-weds exchanged malevolent glares.

Now, sitting down, the American wife seemed to notice the elderly couple.

I could see in her eyes that she was fixated on the dilapidated suitcase rather than the couple’s content disposition.

Somehow, in that suitcase, Tabitha had seen the future.

And the tears came.

Kelsey Kranz

Photography and Digtial Design 77

The Day Henry Left Olivia Hartwell The day Henry left is burned in my mind, a scar that probably won’t ever really fade. “A new lease on life,” the shiny brochure from the rehabilitation center promised. I kept it under my mattress, on the left side halfway down.

I climbed the carpeted stairs to the second floor, turned left down the hallway, and twisted the doorknob of the room next to mine. It was dark inside but I could see two duffel bags next to each other on the bed, sitting parallel to the red and blue stripes on the comforter. Everything that used to make that room belong to him, that made it his own – the old comic books and soccer jerseys and the signed picture of Joe Montana. It didn’t seem real or right that they could disappear so easily into two meaningless khaki bags. It could have been anyone’s room now. But really it was nobody’s.

I ended up going back later that day and ransacking each bag until I found that signed picture of Joe Montana. I wanted to keep it with me, to remind myself of the person he used to be. I didn’t want to think about who he had become.

I’ve asked myself too many times to count if he’s still the same boy who picked me up after I fell off my bike and broke my arm and cried, the same boy who rode with me in the car on the way to the hospital while “Summer Breeze”

by Seals and Crofts played on low volume. It’s hard not to think so when you’re holding that framed picture and you see a chocolate smudged fingerprint from so many years ago. And you can’t help seeing him sitting up late in bed, sneaking candy to his room and admiring one of his heroes.

I’ve learned to remind myself of those little treasures in my memory because it’s so easy to focus only on the times you were hurt or the things that made you cry. I’ve become good at balancing the bad memories with the good; closing my eyes and picturing one tiny moment that might shine through and make me smile. I learned this because I had to and still have to, because whenever I pass the hospital I 78

see his arm with dark-stained fingernails and a laminated hospital bracelet and purplish green bruises and IVs stuck in the inside of his elbow.

Our minds are unsympathetic. They remember what happened without a silver lining or a filter to cushion the truth.

Our hearts have the potential to be broken and rebroken time and again because there is an image of something, something like a pair of generic khaki bags, that won’t leave us alone.

And so our hearts fight back. We fight because we know we can’t forget the bad things and so our only hope is to make sure we remember the good things too. I fight every day to remember that chocolate-stained Joe Montana, because I need to know that it’s as much a part of him as anything else.

And I fight every day to remember that “Summer Breeze”

by Seals and Crofts was playing in the background in the car on the way to the hospital. That was the day that I stopped trusting Henry, the day I learned that I couldn’t always keep up with everyone and how hard but essential it is to know and accept your own limits, but I remember that song more than the feeling of learning those lessons. It’s when I hear that song play on the radio that I know I’ve learned something worth knowing from something that might not seem worth remembering.

Emma Morrison

Papercuts

79

You Make Me Feel So Young Erinn Goldman Listening to Frank Sinatra’s sonorous voice from the blue-cased iPad next to Robby in her reclining chair as she taps her fingers to my heartbeat and the tune, Robby tells me, “You can’t imagine how many times I’ve danced to this at parties,” while her words come to life in my head as a younger Robby, not near grandmother-hood, twirling through the 1940s in Michigan, blue eyes seeing war in little ways like coasting cars down hills to save gasoline for the boys fighting.

Robby, ballet school, spinning to “Come fly with me. Let’s fly away,” as my father’s father, dark brown eyes, fled from Latvia cradling hidden jewels wrapped in salami, fear pulsing inside him as he never stopped running. Makes me, their granddaughter, seeing through blue or brown eyes?

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Ellie Otton & Charlotte Warne

Woodcuts

81

Let Light In Jo DeWaal The glint of rising sun off the front window on the red brick home flashed like flint scratched to stone. It was seven o’clock in the morning and the Dutch summer sun had lifted over the Ijsselmeer drenching the sky Delft blue. My dad and I paused on the sidewalk in a sleepy suburb of Amsterdam eyeing a squat home with a slanting tile roof surrounded by towering elms.

“This is it,” said my dad.

I reached for his hand but he stepped ahead of me onto the tidy lawn. Pressing his cane into damp fescue, he marched up the slope to the house intent on peeking in the windows of his childhood home. He hadn’t lived at the Meerweg Street address in over sixty-eight years, but he was determined to show me the pitched attic he had hid in during the Hunger Winter of 1944. I obediently followed him up the incline of the yard. Leaning against the boxwood hedge wrapping around the home, my dad cupped his right hand to the kitchen window. A trickle of sweat ran down my spine and it wasn’t because of the lemon drop sun rising in the sky. We were trespassing and my dad had no intention of leaving.

He stood firm as a time traveler with a mission to mine the past.

As a fifteen-year old daughter of a World War II Dutch Orange Brigade Resistance member from the Netherlands, I always feel different from my peers. Most of their dads wear their forties or fifties well and remain separated from the generation of the Second World War. My friends’ dads drive them to soccer practice on Saturdays or chauffeur them to basketball games. But my father is a ninety-two-year-old Nazi prison camp escapee who doesn’t touch car keys anymore.

Seventy-seven years stretch between our birthdays but I did not fully comprehend the depths of his past until I visited his childhood home.

“Not this window,” he said.

He marched ahead on the curve of grass leading to the 82

far side of the house. A row of bay windows projected into a sloping yard bordered by apple trees. Red fruit hung like rubber balls among the soft, green leaves. No one stirred inside the house, but I guessed someone would appear soon, asking us to leave. My blonde shoulder length curls stuck to my sticky, salty neck. My dad scanned the house, searching.

“There,” he said.

Blue hydrangeas as big as dinner plates lifted their heads skyward in front of the middle bay window. My dad stepped closer to the glass, brushing the blossoms attached to woody stems aside with his free hand. With the rubber-tipped end of his cane, he tapped a rhythmic beat against the clear window shimmering like cool still water, rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat. I cringed.

“This is the one,” he said.

He swung his cane up like a conductor’s baton and jabbed it higher.

Morning sunlight streamed through the clear wide window. Brilliant rays illuminated the rose pastel-colored panel—the size of a small desk—crowning the transparent window from above. Etched in curling script the radiant panel broadcast a sentence written in Old Dutch.

“The writing is a moral story by the sixteenth century Dutch poet Jacob Cats,” said my dad. “I read it many times as a child sitting at a small table in the living room behind this glass.” He tapped the window again.

Standing in the dew-soaked hydrangea hedge, my dad shifted his weight to find balance and then he used his cane as a pointer to read the text aloud. Bright sunlight sparked the script and sprinkles of yellow and pink light peppered the hedge below.

His chapped lips curled around his crooked teeth as he spoke in Old Dutch, its cadence unfamiliar to my twenty-first century ears.

“Geen nutter ding voor gramme zinnen is stilt te zijn en tijd te winnen,” he said.

“I’ll translate roughly into English,” he said. “There is no better thing for angry minds than to be quiet and gain time.”

83

He stepped out of the bushes, the hem of his trousers soaked with dew.

Our matching blue eyes met. Flecks of aquamarine in his irises sparkled in the sun. We stood a few feet apart as a cool breeze stirred the heart-shaped leaves on the hydrangea bushes behind us.

“Life sometimes seems unfair because it is,” he said. “But when you’re angry, it’s better to be patient and find balance like the saying by Cats so you can think clearly later.”

I stood immobile. I was often impatient and wanted immediate change. Sometimes I became angry and wanted easy, fast solutions.

The sun crept higher and hit a crescendo over the scrim of alders bordering the garden. A woodsy aroma of cedar mixed with soft rich earth chased through the clean air. My shoulders tightened and I was ready to leave. I secretly did not want to hear the rest of his story. This was the home my dad was captured in at gunpoint during the Second World War. He had committed no crime but was taken as a prisoner to a Nazi controlled concentration camp for his Dutch ethnicity. Being here made me queasy for trespassing in the present but also made me want to wretch for trespassing on the past.

“Right here,” he said, pointing his cane at the same bay window, “in this room we jumped into the window benches when the German guards burst in.”

I bit down on my lip. I knew it had been an early Tuesday morning in September of 1944 when my dad’s older sister Hendrieka spotted armed German guards surrounding the house creeping behind the apple trees. I shivered in spite of the warm sun. I was standing within Frisbee throwing distance to the same trees.

On that fateful morning Nazi guards had stormed the home to round up my twenty-one year-old dad, his twenty-year-old brother Wim and his eighteen-year-old brother Bert. About a dozen other young men, including my dad’s field hockey teammates and neighbors— Hans, Piet, Dirk, Frits— were held at gunpoint in the middle of the Meerweg 84

Street in front of my dad’s house. I wanted my dad to stop his story, as if holding back the words would make the horror of what happened disappear.

“Bert ran upstairs but my brother Wim and I scrambled into the window bench to hide,” he said. “Piled inside the bench, it was completely dark and all I heard was the ‘ticktack, tick-tack’ of the guard’s steel toed boots on the wood floor.”

Even though I knew the story, standing here caused my pulse to pound. My ears started ringing. Sweat ran down my spine as my stomach churned fetid bile.

“Then the footsteps stopped. In the same instant, my brother poked his finger up and lifted the top of the window bench an inch to take a peek. The next thing I knew the end of the Russian issued AK47 Karabiner rifle jammed into my ribs,” he said.

At gunpoint my dad and his brother were forced out of their family home into the unknown.

Standing in the sticky grass, I heard my dad’s words but struggled for footing. How could I understand the terror of being captured at gunpoint in front of his mother and sister? How could I understand the twenty-six mile march to the German military controlled Polizeiliches Durchgangslager Amersfoort concentration camp in Leusden, the Netherlands during the last stretch of the war when prisoners were all but forgotten chattel? How could I understand the starvation, the torture, the fear inflicted by the cruel sadist SS UnterSchutzhaftlagerfuhrer Josef “the kicker” Kotalla camp leader and his henchmen?

A soft, warm tear slipped from the edge of my eye and rolled down my cheek. I brushed it away with the back of my hand. My dad stepped toward the slate patio edged on one side by a trellis covered in a blanket of white climbing roses at the back of the house. No one from inside had yet to appear but I tiptoed on the grass as spongy as a wet woolen sweater to follow my dad. Just before the patio, my dad stopped. Orange and red zinnia petals brushed our ankles.

My dad poked his cane skyward, toward the steep pitch of 85

Rachel Connolly

86

Ceramics

the roof.

“There,” he said. “My brother Bert and I hid there.”

He jabbed his cane upward to the attic. My dad had intentionally fast-forwarded the story. That was his way of dealing with the past he didn’t want to talk about. He left out the part of his days in the prison camp. He didn’t embellish his escape from the gruesome Nazi camp when he was only six years older than I am. By risking point-blank execution, he took a chance during work detail along the Lower Rhine River and slipped into the abandoned Dutch city of Arnhem in his torn prison rags. With the help of strangers he foraged in the forest. Weeks later with the help of the Red Cross he dressed as a girl and walked fifty miles with a group of women back home. As a fugitive when he returned, he was forced to hide in the frigid attic. The triangle space looming above us held him during one of the coldest winters on record in Holland during November of 1944.

“Words do nothing to explain the cold,” he said.

I squinted against the bright sun. The shiny copper downspouts on the house reached up to the roofline and led to the edge of a chimney that ran as high as the elms bordering the yard. A black and white magpie drifted into view then landed on the orange tiled roof.

“There was no heat,” he said. “Once a week when my dad built a fire in the hearth below, the smoke of green wood seeped through the chimney bricks into the attic.”

He spit a flat glob of phlegm the size of a Dutch guilder on a grassy patch of ground as if he remembered the sting of wood smoke in the back of his throat. Embarrassed, I glanced at the house. Still no one appeared from inside the well kept home.

Before I visited his home, I didn’t fully understand my dad’s stories about unjust imprisonment. Each day, my dad made the day matter. As German occupation tightened military grip in Holland during December of 1944 and into the new year of 1945, food, fuel and electricity lines remained severed. Subsisting on one cup of thin dried pea soup a day, my dad and his brother stayed sequestered in the dark, sub87

zero attic and his family gathered around the kitchen table in cold, waning light. In spite of deprivation, the family fostered an ample supply of hope.

“We did calisthenics up there to keep warm,” said my dad. “And we read history books as best we could in dim light.”

He stepped onto the patio and leaned on his cane.

My armpits were sticky and sweat beaded on my forehead. The back door was only an arm’s length away.

“I also slipped out during daylight hours four times a week to my Orange Brigade resistance meetings. Orange is the name of the Dutch government named for the Order of the House of Orange-Nassau. Our group got our instructions from the Dutch government in exile.”

He switched his cane to his other hand and shifted his weight. He raised his free hand to shield his eyes against the bright sun. He stared at the roof.

“After liberation we led the Canadians in by bike, because we knew the neighborhood like the back of our hands,” he said, still gazing at the roof.

“I wanted to be part of something bigger than myself. It made me feel useful, like I mattered,” he said. “Like we all mattered.”

Seeing his childhood home opened my eyes. Its simple structure and unassuming facade served as a lens to focus on the courage ordinary people possessed. By seeing his home up close, I began to unravel my complicated preconceptions about war and move toward understanding my father’s experience. By seeing his home, I began to embrace rather than question his wartime ordeal.

My dad’s determined visit to his childhood home with me in tow made his home approachable, a forgiving and hopeful place. I moved intellectually closer to understanding his spirit and the spirit of people facing freedom taken away.

As a result, I have gained an understanding not only of his life but an awareness of individual will to triumph in the face of adversity.

In the warm summer sun, my dad and I inched across the 88

slate patio. In spite of my worry, the family inside the home never appeared.

“Look up there,” he said.

I turned and looked.

“See the space, the space between the roof line and the house?” he said.

The dark rectangle of space the size of a shoebox turned on its side ran around the perimeter of the attic.

“Yes, I see it.”

“During that winter, we stuffed old kitchen rags in there.

To keep the wind out.”

Balancing on his cane my dad watched a magpie take flight from the roof. The serrated white wings edged in black cut elegant circles above the pitched attic before flying higher into the clear sky.

“Why didn’t you board up the space to keep the cold out?” I asked.

“To let light in,” he said.

Gabriella Giammalva

Photography

89

Isabella Crawford Delta Heist

Lucy Burnett Frances Befriends Suzy

90

Ellie Garland and Olivia Quinton Her Irises Are Empty

Charlotte Warne Cars, Trucks, and Things That Go

Kate DeFrino

Paper Cutout

91

Phoebe Morris 92

Pen and Ink Drawing

Can You Hear Me? Taylor McDonald He finally told me today I was waiting for it, but it still felt wrong when he said it Those yellow splotches on his upper arms and back, Purple veins coursing through them When I thought it must be a skin condition and checked WebMD They told me it's jaundice I could live with him having jaundice Then he showed up to school with red, runny eyes He doesn’t cry so it must be pink eye There’s medication for that But it’s when the blue and the green and the purple mesh Together and swell That I have to face the truth That those scratches probably aren’t from his cat, His cat died 2 years ago Just hearing him utter “I need help” Leaves me feeling an overwhelming sense of terror I want to say, "It will all be better soon" but my jaw is paralyzed I want to scream, "I'm here" Instead I look down at his shoe rubbing dirt in circles on the floor

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In the Alley Jordan Smith The door flew open and the shouts reached into the night like bony fingers. He limped out and slammed his hat on the crate and the wall rested against him.

“Shit!” the words pierced the dark.

He rubbed his knee and cursed the no good, goddamn, son-of-a-bitch bull that made the metal rod in his knee creak (the metal rod put there by a different no good, goddamn, son of a bitch bull). His blue cotton shirt was stained with sweat and hand-shaped dirt stains. On the other side of the door the shouts still echoed, keeping him outside.

“Hey mister, you need an ambulance or something?”

A young girl masquerading as a woman walked out of the shadows like some cheesy spy movie. Her boots reached her knees but her cheaply bedazzled jean skirt didn’t start for another mile.

“Not unless you’ll pay the bill, kid.” He leaned back from his knee and pressed his battered back into the worn wall.

“I’m as much of a kid as you are.” She ran her long red fingernails through her brown roots and platinum yellow ends.

She reached into her plastic purse and fished out a cigarette and then raised it to her lips and left it there, dangling like a fish.

“You sure you don’t need anything, cowboy?” She walked towards him, stopping just at the start of the dusty light’s reach on the cracked pavement, unable to take another step.

She reached into her purse again, pulled out a lighter and traced her fingers absentmindedly over the cool metal inscribed with flowers.

“Not tonight, kid,” he muttered. He gave his knee one last rub, fully aware of her eyes on him. Knowing his knee wouldn’t get any better, he reached down and grabbed his hat, slapping it against his chaps to remove the entrenched dirt.

“Well, you tell someone I’m out here, will you?”

He turned around and stared at her. Her greased hair 94

hanging against her too tight camisole and shallow eyes framed by sparkly blue eye shadow that reminded him of Christmas and trailer parks.

He turned around and opened the door without a word.

The shouts and jeers escaped again and circled the alleyway, drawing him in.

The door closed and the girl sank back into the shadows.

Tasha Recoder

Photography and Digital Design

95

My Grandmother is a Philosopher Isabel Banta My grandmother has become wise in the last year or so.

She tells this to her children and her grandchildren as though a substantial epiphany has occurred: it hasn’t. She has decided, in her spare time, to discover the meaning of life.

Einstein and Edison and Darwin knew what they were talking about, she reluctantly admits, but they were missing one fundamental aspect of human character: some humans aren’t so scientific. There is chemistry and anatomy and yes, humans are made up of cells and go through respiration and all that. My grandmother has been plagued by cancer for long enough to understand cells. Cells have never been allies.

What my grandmother does not understand is the technology, the noise, the rapid displacement of human emotional capacity. She wants to feel again, to experience a story that makes her want to weep or laugh. Whichever.

Everyone comes from somewhere. That is true enough.

She tells me stories of long lost relatives… the scientists, the engineers, the computer programmers. She speaks of relations to a dictator and Puerto Rican refugees. She speaks to me in Spanish, as if these words are softer or more vulnerable than English.

“Dimelo.” Say it to me. Tell me about your life. Who are you?

So, she speaks as if her words are a river of thought. In her soft voice she tells of the difficulties of raising three boys on her own. “It’s not that boys are more difficult,” she says.

“The problem is that they perceive themselves to be more difficult, as if boys put bugs in their shoes because they feel pressure to do so.”

“My dad put bugs in his shoes?” I ask inquisitively.

She smiles and brushes my hair behind my ear. “No, no, no. He was a good boy. He liked books. It was your uncles, though. They were the ones I had to look out for.”

She tells me stories of her girlhood, the days of the market crash and the dreaming. She dreamt of a better life, for 96

something else entirely. She had never been sure what that something was but it had remained constant in the back of her brain like a tumor of doubt. “The worst thing about life,” she always murmurs, “is regretting.”

Everyone comes from somewhere. They regret leaving, they regret going, they regret change. My grandmother has found that people return to memories in moments of loss but also out of habit; memories are, though they may be eventually pushed aside, the glory days of wanderlust and youth.

Now, I sit in her hospital bed and am startled by the serenity of her expression. She wears that signature hospital gown, the one that is supposed to be some minimalist fashion statement. She wears bright red lipstick.

“Are you afraid to die?” I ask quickly before I can hold my tongue, and the words seem different than anything I have ever said to her. The question hangs in the air like a sharp sword and I long to sheath it.

“I have had such fond memories. I would not have told you about my life if I regretted one second of it.” She strokes my hair and says, in her wisest voice: “If death is a question of the unknown, there is an answer somewhere. Everywhere, maybe.”

Lizzie Sands

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Saying Goodbye Serena Profaci “Life’s too short.” This was what my acting teacher in Los Angeles said when we asked her why she broke into her ex-boyfriend’s house, while the girl with whom he’d cheated was in the shower, just to steal back the snow globe she gave him. She was a sixties flower child, a white woman with blonde cornrows, older than my mother, and this story was one of the first things she told us about herself. That was the summer when my friend Jenna's grandmother passed.

For my first grade in the class we had to walk around an imaginary obstacle course, opening and closing doors, making sure the doorknob was the same size and in the same position on either side, even introducing ourselves to an imaginary panel of judges. She failed me because I introduced myself as Serena. She said, “You’re not Madonna, you’re not Cher. You’re not Jesus. Use your last name.” Little did she know, I did in fact consider myself a one-name kind of girl, but I kept my disagreement to myself and went home to practice.

One day she made us do these animal observations. We were supposed to take on the mannerisms, the physicalities and the personalities of animals of our choosing. Then, we were supposed to transform into a human with a similar physicality and personality. My best friend Bea chose a turtle that turned into a homeless man, a cardboard box serving as her shell and her heartbreaking human home. Our teacher, Louie, called it “meta-metaphysical” and gave her an A+. I chose a baby giraffe, and turned into a toddler who couldn’t reach a cookie. I watched hours—no joke—hours of Discovery Channel videos of giraffes chomping on leaves and running around savannas. When it was my turn, I slobbered all over my face with my long giraffe tongue and shimmied my hooves across a blue gymnastics mat so I could lean down and drink pretend water on a scorching African afternoon.

Strangely enough she liked that one. Jenna, she was a deer, as in deer-in-headlights. She had these giant eyes, with end98

lessly long lashes. Bulging is the wrong word. Her eyes were too sweet for that.

Anyways, when she heard the news about her grandma, her big, blue eyes looked exactly like a deer’s, except you could tell by the way she slumped against the stucco wall, her legs giving out and her phone dropping, that this was not “deer” as in deer-in-headlights. This deer had already been struck— hard.

When we were alone, she said, to no one in particular, something that I’ll never forget. In fact, I wrote it down, as any writer would. She said, “Has your body ever felt so heavy that you didn’t think you could carry it anymore? My head feels so heavy. I don’t think I can carry it anymore.”

I remember this moment with Jenna now, of all times, because I imagine that's how Callie, my dog, felt as she was dying, her limp, lifeless head snuggled tenderly in my mom's lap— because she picked it up and put it there.

I still see Callie every time I walk down the stairs and step over her perch on the landing. Jenna, she'll carry the memory of her grandmother for as long as she can bear to hold her heavy head.

As much as we celebrated life in that acting class, we could not escape death. Jenna's grandmother, my dog Callie, it all made me realize something I didn't get from watching death on TV or acting it out in a scene: death is not synonymous with goodbye. In fact, there's really no such thing as goodbye. Whether you get to say it or not, whoever leaves is never really gone.

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"...BUT THE AIR AND THE SKY ARE FREE..."

1100 10 00

LABYRINTH

TH

1101 10 01

Coconut Milk Clare Ryan If time is a man-made construct, why can’t I ration it like coconut milk— taking small sips of seconds, or a gulp of an hour?

What a luxury it would be to pause the sunrise like a song on my iPod, to stop time with a clear crystal, to seize a grain of sand as it drops through the neck of an hourglass and then in that stillness to take a nap, or finish my English essay.

We say that someone could have “all the time in the world.”

There is an infinity in that.

But still there is infinity between one and two, when one second becomes two and two turns into three.

All these seconds add up to our eternity.

Time marches on like a wind-up tin soldier who takes no prisoners of war.

The coconut milk dries up in the sun.

And my essay still isn’t done.

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Olivia Weiser

Cut Paper Collage

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Post-Impressions Gallant Zhuangli after Paul Gauguin's 1891 oil painting, Haire Mai, at the Guggenheim Museum in New York Day 1 HER: She stands just beneath the large, leafy banana treewatching as Matahi and Mana shuffle forward and sniff through the dirt for insects. It is quiet— just before dusk. The other women of the clan are back preparing for a big night feast, but she cannot bear to be with them. They sing and they dance and they chatter on about whose cassava harvests are the most plentiful this year, whose man will next be chosen for the Village Council, whose babies are the darkest brown.

Before, she did not mind so much their endless talk. She simply boiled potatoes in the corner and listened as Matri, ever esteemed by the others, made them all laugh with jokes about Ari’i and stories about the foolish gods. But, now Matri is gone, and she has no remaining tether linking her back to the clan.

The two warthogs spray a streak of muck onto her sheet dress as they wrestle with each other in the mud pool. She looks at them fondly and then thinks with sadness that they are all the real family she has left.

HIM: His easel set up, he leans his head back to take a whiff of the fresh-scented Tahitian field, and he slowly lets out the breath he’s been holding in for a decade. At last, amidst tall grasses and lush white flowers, he is free. No children whine or run through precious dyes. No busybody critics rush to tell him what is right and what is wrong. No marital obligations cling to his conscience while he sketches. Here, he may focus on art and art alone.

His eyes scan the landscape before him: the sky stretched out like a canvas already painted; the leaves of coconut trees 104

weighed down by their tropical bounty.

He is just beginning to layer a patch of dark yellow onto the paper when a slight figure steps out from behind a tree.

She is a young woman— fifteen years his junior. Her face is rounded; her eyes appear like darkened opals and wavy hair trails halfway down her back. All that covers her is a cream-colored cloth falling just below her knees. He laughs imagining how his wife Sophie would feel putting on such a rustic garment.

He continues to stare at her— wishing he could say something to catch her attention. Alas, she is deep in thought.

Her expression is one of solemnity, and it seems her focus is reserved for the two pigs that link tusks next to her. Besides, he does not speak Tahitian. He wouldn’t know what to say even if he could say anything.

Day 2 HER: She saw him looking at her yesterday. She sees him again today. The Frenchman. The artist. His angular beak of a nose points in her direction as he sketches something onto a board in front of him. Every now and then he strokes his mustache and tilts his head to one side as though examining her and the surrounding scenery. At one point, he looks directly at her.

Matahi snorts loudly and butts her shin with his head.

She pulls a cluster of berries from a pocket and scatters them on the ground. The hogs grunt appreciation, and they eagerly scoop the sweetened morsels into their mouths.

She glances at the man again— not daring to meet his eyes with hers. In general, all of the Haole frighten her. Their domineering airs put the clan on edge whenever they come to buy crops or trade weapons for pearls. The religious people, especially, do little to disguise obvious feelings of superiority.

They walk through the sacred marae center raising eyebrows and curling pale, European lips.

Matri always said to ignore the Haole. She said, “Let them take our land, let them preach about one God, but know that 105

they can never take our heritage, our beliefs, or our family.”

But, it was so much easier to pretend those gods were her gods and the clan was her clan when Matri was alive.

The sun is lowering now, and she watches as its light turns her skin from brown to golden. She twirls a coil of hair around one finger and feels its soft, slightly wavy texture— no other clan member’s hair is wavy. She is neither like a Tahitian, nor like the artist whose gaze still lingers.

Matahi and Mana are finished eating. She snaps her fingers once, and they follow staunchly behind her all the way back to the village.

HIM: He paints the houses and the field. He drags the colors one into the next. The greens of the grass move into the dark purples of the mud, and the deepened violet of the mountains roll beneath porcelain pinks of the sky.

The young woman returns today— beneath the same banana plant— this time with a handful of berries for the hogs. He pauses in his dabbing of a purple cloud to watch her once more. Her gate is willowy when she walks; her figure sways under the force of a light breeze.

He looks at her, and he envies her. On this untamed island she is free from society’s tight-roped bounds. As a primitive creature, she has no expectations to live up to and even fewer to uphold. She has no worries but the feeding of her pork, everlasting crops, and going inside when the sun is set. At the very least, she has no Sophie to nag her about faith and keeping faith.

She belongs to that village in one of those huts with thatched roofs. She will go home tonight to a whole clan of fellow beings who love her unconditionally. For her, he thinks, family is a given.

Nonetheless, she intrigues him. There is something about her countenance— a depth to her; she stands planted with a familiar air of sadness that surpasses her years— it is this sadness that he connects to. He wishes he could speak to her.

He wishes he knew her name. He wishes, most fervently, that 106

he could paint her up close.

Day 3 HER: She sits cross-legged on the ground and pats Mana on the back for comfort. Her face heats with humiliated remembrance as she replays the scene in her head. The six of them were weaving skirts for the upcoming ‘ote’a dance. She was quiet, as usual, but the others tittered about The Artist.

They talked about his narrow features, and they wondered about the dark shadows that seem to pass his face when he enters the village for food: he rarely smiles.

Most of all, they talked about what he is doing on their island. How long will he stay? Will he take a girl from the village? More often than not, the men who visit from outside always take a girl. Then, the women began to question aloud which girls would want to be taken.

Who would hope to be uprooted from the clan for an opportunity to escape into the Unknown World outside?

Naturally, they turn to her. Aata, one of the elder girls, nods in her direction with an expression that half-teases, half-sneers, “What about you, Vianu? You are always there— beneath the banana plants with The Artist. Like mother, like daughter?”

She remembers feeling her cheeks grow hot; the five of them all stopped their weaving to look at her expectantly.

She blustered something in reply, and then folded her skirt and fled out the door towards the fruit tree sanctuary.

When Matri was alive they would not dare ask such a question. She realizes now that it was Matri who made them forget her past and treat her as no different a child than anyone else’s. She remembers her mother’s sweaty hands. She remembers her father’s leather suitcase that he packed as soon as her mother took one last rasping breath. Matri told her after that he did not even stay for the Reguregu— the lead up to her mother’s burial.

Matri told her to forget all about him— to forget the Haole who took what he wanted, used her, and then left her and a 107

baby when she was all worn out.

Mana nudges her gently with a tusk. She offers him a piece of bark, which he gobbles up with gusto. She sighs resignedly, stands up, and then turns back to face the village.

HIM: He finally asked a local missionary how to say a phrase in Tahitian. He told the priest that it was for the title of one of his paintings. In fact, he does think it will make a good title.

The people in Paris will think it is exotic and imaginative.

The painting is done now anyway. He is happy with it.

The colors are mysterious and evocative. The houses, the animals and the girl are all solid and pure. He picks up a brush tipped with black paint, and he swipes the letters of his title onto the upper left corner of the canvas. “Haere Mai,” he whispers.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he sees the woman again. She is turned towards the huts in the distance, paused, obviously thinking. This is his chance. He says it again, louder this time, clear— the title of his painting that is for her: “Haere Mai,” he says. Come here.

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Caroline Keller

Pen and Ink Drawing

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Camila O'Brien Pen and Ink Drawings 110

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How Far We’ve Come Hannah Hu 1994 - J.F.K. International Airport, New York, U.S.A Jin was finally here.

He had finally taken his first steps on American soil after months of planning his immigration to New York City for school, his crimson-hued student visa a symbol of his success and of his parents’ pride. It represented how far he had gotten, and yet, it was also a painful reminder of just how far he was from anyone he knew and anything he felt mattered.

At the airport, Jin was surrounded by thousands of people, each and every one seemingly confident in where they were to go and when they had to get there. Fatigued from his thirteen-hour flight, his blurred vision allowed him to make out no more than a vast expanse of migration of which he was indeed a part. But still, he felt, in this dynamic wave, that he alone was fighting against the current.

That was just it. Jin was alone.

He spent much of his time his first week in America awake. He had school during the day, and at night, the jetlag would set in and he would lie in bed wistful, thinking about the fact that, due to the time difference, his little brother was probably just waking up. He yearned to see his loved ones again, and when he did sleep, he dreamt of China and of the Yellow River. The river flowed through his hometown of Zhengzhou, and if you followed it just a little further, you would see where it embraced the sea. He thought he was very much like the river, for they were both restless. He had followed its meandering path through Zhengzhou, and away, across oceans to the country that he would not long afterwards begin to call his home.

2015- J.F.K International Airport, New York, U.S.A Now it is more than two decades later. Jin speaks more 112 112

English than Mandarin. His red visa quickly became a green card, which was then, in 2007, exchanged for a navy U.S. passport, which he keeps by his bedside. He is officially an American, something his parents brag about all the time to their neighbors back in Zhengzhou. However, his three children, whose names he pronounces in a slightly accented tone, can see that he still has moments when he falters, when he will call nainai, their grandmother, at two in the morning, claiming it is because he worries about her health, although everyone knows it is because he misses her. When he returns to China in the summers, arriving each time feels like a celebration, and departing a funeral. His wife will wrap her arms around her own mother and sheds heavy tears full of longing and sorrow, while he, trying not to cry, will stand silently, staring downwards at his leather shoes.

To Jin, the flight back each August to JFK is filled with memories, some pleasant, some crushing, but most somewhere in between. Usually, he thinks about his parents, but on occasion, he will reminisce on his childhood, when New York was more than fifteen years away, and the nights of studying by moonlight that would ultimately lead to his academic success were still ongoing. America, in Chinese, is Meiguo, which translates literally into beautiful country.

Jin had always pined for that beauty. It was the place he had thought of while hunger striking at Tiananmen Square in 1989, it was the place he had circled on his faded, tattered map hanging on his bedroom wall, and it was the place where the American dream, a shiny little treasure trove of opportunity and stability and fast food, would manifest itself.

These days, it is hard to discern whether or not his expectations of America have been fulfilled, but that does not really concern him anymore. This is where he has ended up.

This is to where he has flown. He misses the Yellow River still, but the Long Island Sound keeps him company. He knows in the back of his mind that this is not true, but he likes to think that somewhere, somehow, the waters from both will meet, and more than that, he likes to hope that in Zhengzhou, someone is thinking this, too.

Sarah Sheer Photography 113 113

Gombey Boy Lulu Hedstrom The Gombeys are ethnic Bermudian dancers and a part of the island's history and tradition. Dressed from head to toe in flourescent tassels, sequins and peacock feathers, they jump and stomp to the beat of rhythmic steel drums.

“Deddyyy!!!” Makai shouted from the limestone walls of the old Bermuda cottage. He had woken up earlier than normal, stumbling out from his tattered linen sheets. His father, cutting down cedar logs in the outdoor shed, smiled at the sound of his son’s pounding feet along the rust orange tiles.

“You forgot!! I know you did Deddy!! You forgot my birfday!” Makai furrowed his brow in anticipation of his father’s answer.

“Son, whatchu bin sayin. Today aint nobody’s birfday.”

Makai’s father’s voice had a teasing tone, as he looked earnestly into the eyes of his heartbroken son.

“Yes it iiiis, deddy. Today’s the tvenny-second of Febuary. It’s my birfday.”

“Don’t be so fullish. Today’s the tvenny- first. Tomorrow’s your birfday.” Makai’s father cracked a smiled, brushing his hand over the smooth surface of Makai’s mocha brown head.

“Aright, aright. Go find your present, den.” Makai’s mouth transformed into a smile that stretched from one ear to the other. With his feet pounding even faster down the narrow hallway, he ran to the kitchen table. There sat a long narrow box with no wrapping paper. The box, though once white, had yellowed into a hue resembling a dead palm frond. As Makai approached the box, a damp odor of mildew wafted into his face.

“What’s dis piece of junk, deddy? Couldn’t you have tied it all up pritty wif some ribbon or sumfin?”

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Makai’s father sucked his teeth, “you got some nerve, boy.

Jus open dee box!”

After inspecting the box with a sneer of disgust, Makai apprehensively lifted its damp, off-white lid. In a sudden flash, Makai’s eyes were met with neon pinks, yellows and shining sequins, and the look of disatisfaction on his face lifted into pure excitement.

“Deddy, I’m a Gombey nahw!”

As Makai pulled out the gombey mask, running his fingers through the crown of peacock feathers, he was determined to make his great grand-father proud, just as his father, leader of the Somerset Gombey tribe, had done since turning ten.

Lulu Hedstrom

Lino Block Print 115 115

Paper Skin Winter Murray Yours is not an uncommon story. It is heard often: from the news, by word of mouth, from the gossipy woman in apartment 2B. This story is headed in only one direction.

The process starts when you are young, too young to fend for yourself. Your parents fight constantly, their fury swelling to fill every corner of the tiny apartment. Do not speak, lest their attention turn to you. Conceal yourself with silence.

Hide in your room, in a closet, anything to get away from their loud voices and hard liquor. Hide until you yourself are not sure that you even exist.

When you are six, your mother vanishes along with the fat novels that lined otherwise bare shelves. The scent of cheap alcohol grows stronger, heavier, but just pretend not to notice.

Grow into a stone-faced child that wears long sleeved, high collared shirts to hide blooming purple marks. Tell yourself that your bruises are flowers, that you are a garden of tranquility that can weather any maelstrom. It is the only way to avoid breaking completely. Stuff all of your troubles into a sack that you carry with you everywhere, and leave it to fester.

Do not cry. Don’t ever cry. Tell yourself that you are strong, regal. In a fit of childish defiance, tell yourself you are the Queen of the Gutter, and that someday you will escape all this. Stare up at the star-speckled sky, and imagine that you can lift off the ground and soar away. Hide your tears for nine long years, and learn to survive.

At fifteen, find that your mouth seems to be filled with cement. Watch the world with luminous eyes that unsettle those who notice your eerie quiet. Your father rages, soaked in spirits, at the mother that who never really existed. In your head, build a dreamscape of mountains and spires and brightly colored wind that rips through your hair and carries you away.

All around you, see the person that you will never be.

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Charlotte Galef

Photography 117

Charlotte Galef 118

Photography

See girls that wear short skirts and link their arms together in unbreakable chains, bat their eyelashes and pout their lips.

At the cusp of womanhood, they are beginning to discover their own charms and softness. Stand out among them like a stork among doves, too skinny and too somber for their liveliness.

Forget to eat, lost as you are in your fantasy world of color and flight. Escape for hours into your mental refuge, and waste away. Pay no mind to your rock bottom grades. You were never going anywhere, anyway. Your sack of anguish weights down your every step, threatening to crush you into the ground. But somehow, impossibly, soldier on.

Continue to wear clothes that hang onto your everything.

Count every one of your ribs when you stand in front of your grimy mirror at night, you have no more curves and softness than you ever did. Your breasts are nonexistent, barely bumps that rest tentatively on your ribcage. Beneath your pale, translucent skin, your jutting hips are brittle bird bones, ready to snap under pressure.

Imagine that your bird bones are hollow. Imagine you are light, light enough to be picked up and carried away by the wind. This way, you do not mind your cold, stark sharpness against the world’s rounded edges. Silently, in the dead of night, give up on your childhood dreams of being a queen.

You were born in the gutter, and you will die here.

One day, fall in love. With a sunshine boy with copper hair, a boy that doesn’t seem to mind your sharp, hollow bones and paper skin, your bruised eyes and limpness. Halfheartedly resist his honey words and laughing voice. Give in, and soak in his compliments, his flirting; eagerly map out this new and unfamiliar territory. Make him your tether to Earth, the only thing keeping you from being spirited to your refuge dreamscape.

One night, give him everything. Become drunk on his sweet whispers, on the taste of his honey words on his lips.

Succumb to temptation, to his promises of the first and the last.

Then dash your heart into ceramic shards against the painful surface of reality. Feel yourself break when he turns 119

away from you in the hallways, laughing to his friends. Stop eating entirely and grow feather light as you curse your audacity to have hoped.

Then, when your paper skin is thinner than ever and your blue veins are ghoulishly apparent, lie on your hard mattress and struggle to keep it all contained. Try to submerge yourself into your dreamscape, but find your safe haven out of reach.

Your father staggers in, eyes bloodshot and face red. Once again, he screams at you, that you look just like that bitch, that bitch that left me here alone, and he raises one heavy fist.

Feel that concrete dam inside you crumble and spider web under too much pressure. Finally, finally, stop fighting and let yourself break. Leap off your thin cot with more strength than you thought your wasted muscles would allow. Untie your sack of anguish and let its contents spill out in a gust of reckless abandon. Shatter your silence with howls of fury, with the words that you were never able to find before. This time, it is you raining blows on your father; drive him into a corner with your fury. For the first time since your phantom mother left, let your tears fall. Let it all loose, fifteen years of pain and anger and hate.

Then, abruptly, stop. Stare at your sobbing, drunken father as he cowers. Raise one hand and touch the ribbons of salty tears running over your too-sharp cheekbones. Wonder, Will he even remember this? Will he even remember me? Let your silence return.

Leave. Walk out the door and leave the building. You are wearing nothing but a thin camisole and sweatpants, and the rough pavement scrapes the paper skin of your bare feet.

Don’t shiver in the wind that whips through your limp hair, tossing the strands in bitter promise. Wander through the streets and the darkness, feel the edges of yourself blurring.

Hours of stumbling exploration later, find your way to a bridge that stretches over a river. Stare at the roiling water, undulating in the moonlight.

The wind, unobstructed by high buildings that have surrounded you your entire life, pulls at you, murmuring wistful promises in your ears. Let it draw you to the railing, 120

and sling one leg over it. The other follows, a natural progression of events. Clasp the railing and lean out over the edge. The metal is so cold that it burns straight through your paper skin. Stare and stare and stare at the black water, far below. The lights of the city are unfettered to the skyline.

Close your eyes, and inhale deeply enough that you feel the frigid air burn your lungs. When you open your eyes again, a long moment later, a half-smile creases the corners of your lips. Your hair is teased into impossible knots and goosebumps prickle your skin, but you don’t think you’ve ever felt quite so alive.

And this is how you learned to fly.

Kayley Leonard

Photography

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Seoul Natalie Lee I. She remembers when she first found Seoul.

Not when she peeled back the curtain of the apartment window, Or even when she squinted through the cramped congested streets, But one hazy summer morning, Resting on the granite shoulder of Bugaksan* 342 meters above the city.

From here, She glimpsed for the first time The tops of its watercolor skyscrapers And realized they did not stretch all the way to heaven II. She finds Seoul the city of dichotomies.

This city, that screams to be seen, But won't look her in the eyes.

This city, that blazes with life and color, But fuels itself with rage of a thousand muted years.

This city, that sleeps but never dreams.

This city, that greets her like an old friend, That welcomes her like a vital, urgent embrace, That promises to root her to something, But will never be hers.

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III. She still finds Seoul Between the static-fillled stretches of strained conversation.

During those long moments of silence, she doesn't care to breathe Though her heart and lungs are close to bursting.

At times like these, She wishes she could sand down the edges of every English syllable So that the sharp corners of this right-angled language Might not cut her halmeoni** anymore.

At times like these, She would give anything to stop up the gaps in her broken, broken Korean That wobbled on the spindly legs of a child's vocabulary That could barely stumble a few steps without falling.

Instead, She presses the receiver closer to her ear, "So many things I want to say to you."

Seoul is the reason she never calls.

*a mountain **grandmother Hannah Wolfson

Photography and Digital Design

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Mind The Gap Lulu Hedstrom Clementine inched from the station platform to the train’s dauntingly precarious ledge. The haggard looks of hurried passers by increased her anxiety exponentially, as travelling had always presented Clementine with a great sense of worry.

In fact, on the evening before any voyage, she would lie awake contemplating the seemingly endless list of things that could go wrong: Would it rain? If so, would she slip on the dampened tarmac? Could her ticket become lost in her handbag? Would she miss her train? And how would she explain the delayed arrival to her precious grandchildren in London?

The repetitive reminder from a robotic-sounding voice to “mind the gap” concluded this morning riddled with anxiety.

Clementine dropped on the first seat she could find, breathing a sigh of relief.

Removing the ivory clip from her hair, Clementine combed her fingers through the thinning, gray strands. Just at the tips of her hair, Clementine noticed an auburn tint, her reminder of the forgotten salty, sun-bleached years.

It was a beach in Cornwall. Two people, hand in hand, walked its length. They wrote their initials in the sand with a branch from a bay willow tree. They were young and in love.

Was James, too, reminded of these years? Perhaps by the blotches of sun-stained skin on his aging hands? Picturing him now, Clementine envisioned the routine cracking in his arthritic fingers as he leafed through a legal pad. Most likely, she imagined, he had become a banker. Or, perhaps, he had pursued his passion for drawing.

The train lurched to a stop and Clementine gathered her belongings. Minding the gap, she anticipated the business of London’s streets. Soon, Clementine decided, she would make a trip to Cornwall. The salty air, perhaps, would be tonic for her drooping soul.

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Claire Robins

Paper Sculpture and Pen and Ink 125

Amara Jubilee Johnson Amara stands over me, her hands tender and as meticulous as the sensitive tongue of a lizard. She’s squeezing a cotton towel until extra solvent flushes from between her fingers and onto the ground. With the fastidious patience of a nurse, she presses the damp fabric to the skin beneath my eye. Aloe Vera juice, cool and piquant, stings the wound she’s tending to and extracts the dirt that has mixed with blood.

I’m sitting, flanked between two spider plants, watching and hardly breathing as Amara continues her careful examination of my face, scrutinizing the accuracy of her clerical work. Behind her is an azure horizon, so vibrant and dazzling that I question the authenticity of this day, wondering if all the events leading up to it had been nothing more than my kaleidoscopic imagination.

Amara wears a nearly diaphanous dress made of a material so celestially white that I’m reminded of the inside of coconut. Superimposed against her body, Amara’s complexion radiates an earthy copper and her hair a rich paprika flavor.

She hangs the cleaning towel over the frail banister and is prepared to go inside.

“You have a pretty voice,” I admit calmly.

“You think so?”

“Your accent. It almost makes everything you say lyrical.”

It’s hard to tell what type of reaction Amara has offered me. Her expression is a pause, before she says, “Thank you.”

“Where are you from?”

“Ethiopia.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” Amara slides the door open to return to the room. She tells me to wait. While still seated, I admire the scenery and can even taste a metallic tinge in the air. The atmosphere is arid and fluctuates from a cool breeze to radiating heat between the crevices of my teeth.

“I have to place a bandage under your eye.” She bends 126 126

toward my face and applies a swath of cotton and tape to the skin. Her body is angular. The most prominent thing I notice is her collarbone. “Are you okay now?”

“I’m fine, don’t worry about it.” I get up and stretch my arms, loose inside of the sleeves of a fresh linen guayabera.

Amara adjusts herself and moves toward the door. My hotel room is small, convenient enough for a one-night sojourn.

“You didn’t have to fight at my expense. But thank you.”

Briefly, I’m reminded of earlier. Seeing Amara, her face squeezed in between the hand of a stranger. His grip was so tight that it made her cheeks sink past her teeth. She was tough enough not to cry at the abuse, but she resisted, determinedly kicking and swiping at his forceful assault. I don’t remember anyone accosting her at first, but I was there to witness the violent nature of their encounter, and finally stop it.

Amara insisted she clean me up, and now that her assistance was over, I wasn’t sure if I wanted her to go. She had a gentle proclivity to her disposition. Her habits were seeded in intentions as good and pure as alabaster. Watching her gather her brown bag and scarf, I contemplated the idea that she was stalling. The way she made her way to the door seemed slow and intentional.

“Okay.”

“Okay,” I repeated.

I followed her steps down the outdoor concrete hallway.

127

Septennial Hannah Karlan

they say our cells are replaced every seven years skin drifting off bone like snow from a brittle tree branch these cells that comprise flesh, heart, blood shed after day two thousand five hundred fifty-five my breath carried them away as I blew the flame that swayed atop a wax “7� candle; I was unaware of my approaching regeneration I imagine that it happened overnight, my figure collapsing unto itself as my subconscious ascended to the surface all that I once knew, or so I had thought,

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my external being unscathed by new touch but it seems former scars are permanent and midnight is no magic eraser we are said to be malleable beings our minds changing as much as the framework that contains them – and I suppose it is comforting to know the lack of finality in this life that I am not indebted to the skin I am in now on the eve of my second rebirth day five thousand one hundred nine I can only wonder whom I will be when I wake for I sense my impending metamorphosis, and my eyes are desperate for sleep

Allegra Milani

Photography

daedalus

daedalus greenwich academy 2015

volume xxvi i