Pegasus Issue No. 34

G. A. | Robb Soslow | Charlie Baker T.J. Malone | Grant Sterman | Michael Schlarbaum Intel Chen | Gaspard Vadot | Tyler Campbell W.D. Ehrhart | Troy Gibbs-Brown | Patrick Farley Satch Baker | Grady Nance | Winslow Wanglee

James Leitz | Luqman Kolade | Xavi Segel Nachikethan Srinivasan | Ben Gerber | Andrew Kichline | Thomas Stambaugh | Nelson Liu Benji Bacharach | Jesse Goldman | Parker Gravina Pegasus | Fall 2018

The Haverford School

Troy Barnes Jr. | Michael King | Sage Garito

Issue 34

Will Baltrus | Robert Esgro | Joshua Wada

Fall 2018

James Ives | Jack Denious | Eusha Hasan

Pegasus

Abuobaida Elamin | Myles Scott | Robert Manganaro

P E G A S U S The Haverford School Issue No. 34

“As if an angel dropped down from the clouds, To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus And witch the world with noble horsemanship.�

- William Shakespeare

The Haverford School 450 Lancaster Ave., Haverford, PA, 19041 610-642-3020 || www.haverford.org Upper School Population: 438 || Issues Printed: 150

P

Letter from the Editors Time for change. Once again, we editors have decided to move away from our previous design philosophy. In this fall edition of Pegasus, we sought to express emotion and character through our design, just as our literary works do. The power of the magazine, as always, lies in the deeply personal works and narratives of our students. We wanted to mirror the same bravery that every contributor possesses: the bravery to share, deeply and genuinely. We sought to make ourselves vulnerable.

For us, that meant organic and daring design: inkblots, oil slicks, a pastel color palate.

Inkblots require interpretation. As the magazine progresses, our colors and designs grow more transparent as the reader makes our world their own. Simultaneously, we wanted to mirror the tragic and comic themes of our personal narratives.

Thus, our photos move from the light into the darkness.

We would like to take this chance to thank everybody who took the time to read this edition, including you, along with everyone who submitted their work to us. Above all, we would like to thank Mr. Keefe, Ms. Smith-Kan, and Ms. Hitchcock, without them this magazine would not have been possible.

Regards, Satch, Mike, Gee, and Robb

Table of Contents Poetry

BACK WARDS by

G.A.

Fuku by

Robb Soslow

Once Loved, Now Forgotten by

T.J. Malone

Picturesque Falsehoods by

Grant Sterman

On Party Guys by

Michael Schlarbaum

by

G. A.

Ritual

Hold Me Here by

Tyler Campbell

How History Gets Written by

P. 10 P. 11

P. 14 P. 15 P. 18

P. 19

Gaspard Vadot

Rules of Philadelphia by

P. 7

Robb Soslow

Observation One by

P. 6

P. 22 P. 23

W.D. Ehrhart

Dear Father

P. 27

by Tyler Campbell

Bees

P. 40

Please Break Bread With Me

P. 41

by Abuobiada Khujali Elamin by

Robb Soslow

Prose Treading Water

P. 30

Patrick Farley

by

Life in the Customs Line

P. 32

Satch Baker

by

Youthanasia— and How to Avoid It by

Grady Nance

The Great North Philadelphian Lights Winslow Wanglee

by

Modern “Mozarts” by

P. 46

Michael Schlarbaum

Muffins From Heaven by

P. 50

James Ives

A Kid in an Old Man’s Body by

by

P. 56

Michael Schlarbaum

A Man’s Sweat

P. 58

Eusha Hasan

P. 62

A Knife in My Clothing by

Robb Soslow

P. 64

Beats, Rhymes, and Life by

P. 52

Jack Denious

Father and Son

by

P. 38

P. 44

Robert Manganaro

One by One, Out the Door by

P. 36

Tyler Campbell

Flash Fiction

P. 68

B A C K G. A.

sweating unpoetically until we are still, heaving love i am thinking about sweat until they are still until they are love we undo each other’s bodies still we love each other we love each other still

W A R D S

Fu

kĂş

Who who who who am I? Whose, whose, stickyhoney lips are those?

Watch, those, lips open, strands wobbling in that deep gap, the words bulging out.

It is a corpse in your mouth and a dead line in my ears.

When you, you lose an identity, this is how it will happen: You will feel a bolt slam.

It will travel to the hollow of your chest and shatter and shrapnel there.

Your new loneliness will slip in your clothes, it will slice everything it touches, you will clasp your forearms and try, so hard, to pull your stinging self close.

You will become a closed door.

You will be suďŹƒxed by an apology.

Robb

Soslo w

7

Giant’s Causeway Charlie Baker

Once loved, Now forgotten I am fascinated by skipping rocks Something so big and unmanageable Floats on the water and defies the clocks.

For a short career, they’re invincible; Until sadly, they disappear from sight Slowly sinking, fading towards darkness.

Soon enough, they are nothing more than a blight.

They settle into the nothingness.

They are forgotten, never visited.

If they are lucky enough to have green.

Fish will come, strip, eat, act interested, Promptly, the fish will find their next cuisine.

Sad, to once be wanted so heavily; Then be thrown away, indefinitely.

tj malone

PICTURESQUE FALSEHOODS You are hidden like shadows of the night Marching behind the colored, camouaged False prophecies bury your godly might To outline an image of the suffered Consumed by the horror of Charleston Lost in the old memories of Auschwitz Your voice bereft still sharp as a marksman Why must they smother your service in glitz Yet tzedakah is best done in the dark Their portrayal of trauma is backwards Silently you are forced upon the ark Lest you come forward as feigning actors No more shall you stand in idolized pain Rise beyond their wicked beguiling game.

Grant sterman 11

Stance Michael Schlarbuam

He walked in here like he owned the place.

Kind of guy a friend of mine might call “Beast,” but generally when I hear that I just think “douche.”

Two hours later, he’s swaying around, Shirtless—guys like that always end up shirtless— Like some drunken orangutan, Beating his chest, and if there was shit to throw, I’m sure he’d have thrown it.

I ask him to leave. He refused.

Occurred to me then that were I like him, I would have tried to force him out, But he would’ve won that fight.

Funny thing being in your own house, And still feeling powerless.

All because he’s bigger than me.

And wrestles.

On party guys Mike Schlarbaum

Ritual G. A.

My brother and I lit up two books and a pair of sneakers on an upturned trash can lid in the backyard.

The rubber of the shoes burned a chemical green.

We circled the fire to escape the smoke’s path, we must have been grotesque and magnetic.

We played classical music and were reminded Of Very Different Things.

I thought of a white church I had seen in Kansas, soft as a thunderhead and blessed with enough chicken wire for a garden in back.

My parents say loving is easy in Kansas.

It must feel close to God to love in a place so at.

They told us it is where they want to be scattered, my father explaining the pastures with his thumbs.

Then, I am back to the fire like sweeping hair, and the books inside, fraying and rasping like sparrows.

15

Spectrum Intel Chen

Hold me here

Who walks there?

A stranger, I think.

And there, by accident, someone has placed a street between us.

My wires are still taut.

You continue, obviously on your way.

I grow tighter, but then, as you turn the corner, I promise, I no longer wonder where you are.

Robb Soslow

Observation one I saw near a street with no name walking a man with no friends singing a song with no tune but he had on his face laughing eyes and a smile And I wondered if he was in love.

Gaspard Vadot

19

Cove and Crevice Primary Charles Baker Charlie Baker

Rules of Philadelphia Tyler Campbell Understand it is not always sunny and not everyone will do you kind.

When dealing with the inner city youth handshakes are vital, firm, always with the snap at the end.

Look every man, woman, and child dead in their eyes to show you are no coward.

Mean what you say, for words are as precious as pitbull puppies It is ok, to not be ok.

I bleed too.

Don’t expect maturity from those who never knew childhood.

If someone asks your shoe size, don’t answer--Unless you want to be barefoot in the street.

In which case you should watch out for rusty nails and dog poop.

Killers can be 13.

With red stained tongues from cherry water ice earlier that day.

If you want to get the bus, leave 20 minutes early.

Be prepared to wait.

Smile till it becomes genuine.

God is black and she cares, but cannot save you from the perils that live.

W.D. Ehrhart

How History Gets Written Say I discover a cure for cancer; say that it’s cheap and never fails.

Say I restore the Arctic ice pack.

Say I preserve the Amazon.

Say I eliminate fossil fuels and turn the babble of politicians into an endless supply of energy, non-polluting and free to all.

Maybe I guarantee every child parents and schools and shelter and love.

Maybe I make mean people suck on their thumbs. Maybe I save the whales.

What if I build a gun that doesn’t shoot, a bomb that doesn’t explode, a bright pink tank?

What if I find clean water for those in need?

What if I put an end to poverty?

Say that I learn the secret of harmony, teach the nations to live in peace.

Say I can tell you how many angels dance on the head of a pin.

What if I line up the stars like pearls and drape them across the Himalayas?

What would you think? What would you do?

What would you write in your history books?

23

Standoff Intel Chen

Dear Father i made my bed this morning, all pretty and shit with the ornamental throw pillows nobody ever lays on, just as you always yell at me to.

It’s ironic because, i loathe those unwieldy pillows.

Who gives a fuck if they “look nice” and “add character” to the room.

My bed is on the 3rd floor, crammed in the right corner it reeks of broken dreams and shea butter and somehow it manages to always be cold.

Tell me father, who is going to see these tacky ass pillows except the young ladies and the burglars that venture to my room on sleepless nights when nobody is home, they both come for different reasons.

You and I have been the same height since I was 14 And haven’t seen eye to eye in what feels like a lifetime.

When you say “Shut up” I only raise my voice louder and smile.

“Dress nicely” I only sag my sweatpants lower.

“I am not your friend. I am your father.”

Always claiming to have my best interests at heart but never taking the time to get to know me and at every opportunity rejecting who I was.

Yet, even now, though I have tried to erase you from my being, scrub myself clean of your existence, when i gaze into the mirror dripping wet, it is your face i see staring back at me.

Your, Beautiful black skin, the color of dark mahogany wood.

High cheekbones and cherry pit eyes that look closed whenever you smile.

Your thick caterpillar-like eyebrows that look as though they might crawl away at a moment’s notice.

Just the other day on the corner of Ogontz avenue, a middle-aged woman with salt and pepper hair stopped me. She said, “Why you must be Travis’s son. You both have the same unique walk and this aura about you i can't quite describe.” i spent years trying to reject all things that remind me of you, but with time, i grew to love me and the throw pillows are still neat.

Tyler Campbell

27

The Valley Below Troy Gibbs-Brown

Treading Water

I am drowning.

Stuck in a torrent with nothing to grab on to. Tick. My head submerged beneath the waves. I give up and surrender myself to the murky depths.

Tick. I lose myself to the river, my consciousness evaporating. Tock. Something slams into my back; I am jolted awake. I turn and see two hands forming a barrier behind me. They look like clock hands signaling the time, 3:15. I hear something in the distance. I turn around to discover there is water barreling forward. I climb up onto the hands and escape from my problems. As I do, a strand of hair falls from my head and is destroyed by the current.

I feel safe, but it won’t last long. Every day, I find myself here. Every day, I feel myself falling deeper into the great unknown. Every day, I escape, but I lose part of myself. I wonder if the me at the beginning is the current me.

Today was a day without breath. A day where I kept swimming without end. These are the days I sink the lowest. I watched the clock intently, hoping that I would be able to tread water long enough to stay afloat. The beginning was the worst. My experiences the years before had not taught me how to tread. I tried to swim, but I quickly tired and awoke upon the shore bloodied, battered, and out of breath. Along the shore were the bodies of men in blazers and ties: my classmates. They were as mangled as I was.

How had it come to this? We were supposed to be the best swimmers in the country. Given the best facilities, and equipment to hone our skills. So why were we dropped into a river that destroyed us?

The facilities and equipment were all phantasms -beautiful illusions that draw attention away from the nightmare. These breathtaking images took away the only air we had left.

But others around me learned to tread. They kept themselves above water and breathe whenever they desired. I grew jealous. How is it fair that they could breathe whenever they wanted, especially when their breaths took longer than mine? This new found weight drags me further down. Students glide by and instructors seem to float through the hallways. Everyone greets me, seemingly unaware of my encroaching demise.

My fellow classmates and I wait outside the main facility for cars to retrieve us. Ahead of me, a group of people walk together to the train station.

Others walk past me to see our football team play.

I gasp, drawing in as much air as possible. This is one of the few opportunities to breathe I have, and I abuse it.

I arrive home; dry off from the river. Phantom droplets still cling to my skin. My parents ask me how my experience was today. “Good,” I respond curtly.

I venture up the stairs and sit on my couch, pick up my controller.

Breathe.

A feeling of tranquility washes over me.

Thoughts of the river leave my mind. My mind surfaces from the depths, escaping certain death. This feeling is new. No, new is not the right word. Instead, an echo to a time long since past. How long had it been since I had time to breathe like this?

Surveying my game library, I inhale. There are many choices, but I have to find the one that feels right. I decide on a game called Bloodborne.

The game is difficult. Every mistake I make punishes, often with death. It’s empowering that every mistake is mine and mine alone. Never am I at fault for a mistake another person makes, nor am I tested on information I have not been taught. The game may be soul-crushingly hard, but it is fair. It balances intense action sections with safe locations, which allows me time to breathe. I am immersed in another world, blissfully ignorant to the world I left behind.

An alarm erupts beside me.

I am out of time.

I am dragged from my new world back into the old. I dig my nails into the floor, attempting to claw my way back. My nails break from underneath me.

My chest hits the ground; air is stolen from my lungs.

I am thrown into my bed. The door to my room slams shut.

Out of breath, I climb from my bed, walk to the door, and try to open it. The door doesn’t budge. I sit down in despair. I am a hostage in my room, held by an invisible force.

I don’t know when, but at some point sleep overtakes me. I dream of the river. Images of classrooms, teachers, and students flow through my mind.

I am drowning.

Patrick Farley

31

Life in the Customs Line As I stepped off the plane, I looked down, noticing the two inch gap between the airplane and the jetway. I’m not afraid of heights, yet this border between the plane and the airport always seems to draw my attention. When I reached the body of the building, I followed the masses - like a zebra lost in the dazzle - to where I assumed I needed to go. Apart from the odd “entrada” sign or the title of an international fast food chain, I understood nothing. I saw a sign that transcends all language: the bathroom. Surprisingly, given the busyness of the airport, I pooped in peace.

As I should have expected, my crowd vanished. I decided to pick a direction and go with it. Having spent much of my life in airports, I made an educated guess - reminiscent of doing homework without knowing the answers. I captured just enough uncertainty to make me uncomfortable.

I eventually made it to customs. I heard the commotion before I saw it - a certain melody achieved by thousands of impatient people waiting to cross a border. I looked down. As I walked the time-worn path, like millions of travellers before me, I felt at one with them but also alone. My only guides were a cumbersome English to Spanish dictionary and a serviceless cell phone. I knew I would be fine - right?

I have always been very independent. One of the things that stands out in my memory is my elementary school calling home to tell my mom I could no longer walk to kindergarten alone. Most parents would never allow their five-year-old walk to school, but my parents knew I could handle it, as they knew I could handle flying to Spain and navigating the Madrid Barajas International Airport by myself with limited Spanish knowledge.

Finding the right customs line proved no trouble at all. If the large signs saying “ciudadanos españoles” weren’t enough warning to go in the other line, the machine gun Spanish I heard emanating from the line proved enough of a signal.

I know the idea of Spanish people having dark hair and dark eyes oversimplifies things, but it applied

in this case. I deduced I shouldn’t be in their line. I couldn’t decide whether the time estimates stationed at regular intervals in the lines at the Madrid airport are a good thing; I guess it depends on whether you’d like to know the soul crushing inevitability of your hour in the customs line.

I had to take care of every aspect of my travel for the first time. I looked down at the customs form I had filled out. Every other trip, my parents would fill out the family form while the Baker brothers would watch movies on our seatback screens, play D.S., or read the latest Percy Jackson book. This time, instead of accepting the sheet from the stewardess and unceremoniously stuffing it into my seatback pocket, I accepted it and went to work.

I tempered my 15-year-old desire to make the sheet as funny as possible, boringly checking off vacation and not scribbling down the “sexual tourism.”

Once I reached the front of the line, the official - an olive skinned man with raven hair and piercing eyes - asked me a series of routine questions: where are you from, how old are you, explain your cause of visit, are you bringing any weapons or class A narcotics into the country. I gave a resounding no to each question. He scanned my passport and then stamped it, his hand coming down with a sense of finality.

It struck me as I walked over the border; I had just stepped into another country. Did I feel some monumental change in perspective as I crossed the border? Of course not. Life remains carbon based, humans need water to survive, and Manchester United football club remains an abomination wherever you go. As my trip wore on, I noticed the difference to be more subtle something embedded in centuries of culture and traditions. Even with drastically different cultures or places, I’ve found people are more alike than they are different. Whether it be a British airport security guard ribbing me - a complete stranger for my Manchester City jersey, or a Vietnamese child helping me to get to the proper street, there’s something to be said for a collective human identity.

Once I got through customs and baggage claim, I had three hours until I would be picked up at the airport. I’d like to think this experience prompted me to sit down for hours mulling over some mix of existential and philosophical questions, but it didn’t.

I was fifteen. I had one of my parents’ credit cards and a wad of euros. Life was easy.

My experience of walking through the Madrid airport hardly ever slips into my conscious thoughts, but I think it helped catalyze personal growth.

A freshman in high school, finally learning to make decisions for himself, reinforcing my belief that learning independence is far more related to formative experiences and being given the freedom to make your own decisions than merely a product of age.

Satch Baker

33

Busy Town Troy Gibbs-Brown

Youthanasia— And How To Avoid It

“Why don’t you read something real?”

And so the battle wages once again. I prepare for retaliation against my friend. The war has been fought for years now. Both sides have delivered vicious blows, but the fight endures with the same spirit of the first punch. The librarian throws a glare in our direction, miming a preemptive shush in anticipation of another shouting match.

“What do you mean real,’” I ask, almost rhetorically, already predicting his response.

“I mean, something that isn’t 90% pictures and onomatopoeias. Something with substance.”

I groan.

I’ve carefully lined an entire shelf with these masterpieces of color and word, and I plan to conquer another yet. But if they’re not real, then what mysterious body occupies my favorite bookcase?

Perhaps their existence remains as much a myth as the characters who soar, speed, and stealth through their pages. Lines must be drawn, I suppose, between Dr. Seuss and DC. For if there were none, at a glance someone might mistake one for the other, as their similarities are wildly abundant to the skeptic who believes he has something better to read. Imagination, after all, is a child’s game.

He insists Batman cannot be a superhero-war can blind one from even the clearest truths-but rather a lunatic written in a medium for children. We fanboys are foolish to worship him like a deity. I suppose he would prefer it if I acted my own age and read conventional fiction, like an adult might. A boy reads a comic and lives in a vibrant and colorful world; It is only when he is told to grow up that the world becomes dull.

“You don’t understand comics for the unique medium they are. Just because they have pictures doesn’t mean there’s not just as much going on, if not more. The meaning of comics has just been bastardized so much over the years that people mistake other media for comics. Comics are much more sophisticated in their storytelling abilities--” He cuts me off.

“Yeah, well maybe you’re just not mature enough to understand how childish they really are.”

I quickly realize that like the British entrenched in France in World War I, I wasn’t going gain any ground, no matter how much I fought. I lay down my weapons and retreated home.

I exit the library to the openness of the day; The wind bites my bare arms like teeth into a crisp apple. I stroll past the church, where hundreds flock weekly to

praise an all-knowing, never-seen deity. Funny, I think, how people don’t realize their mind’s creativity at work.

Sunlight shines through the stained glass windows, projecting the vibrant images onto the worn pews.

Praying eyes look to the paneled scenes for salvation.

I continue down the sidewalk and glance at the landscape around me. The yellow and white lines frame the lanes of the road, the horizon frames the trees, and the houses, and I frame my thoughts. The world exists as I perceive it; I half expect to spot a hooded figure leaping over the rooftops above me. I love my wandering mind; sometimes my destination feels nebulous, but the adventure is nonetheless thrilling.

Nothing in the mind becomes reality until you decide it does, and then immediately it becomes. A thought is as real as people, or money, or love.

This next panel has me traversing the roadside amid bushes and brambles. A steep hill looms above.

My vision continues forward; My mind drifts away. It flies towards the hill, scales it effortlessly, peers over the horizon, and it grasps the unbordered expanse of its world. Beyond the frames of my eyes, there exists a living, breathing, unbridled world. And I smile, for where the sun goes after the sunset is just as beautiful.

It is later, and I am home. My clock burns midnight in red glow, but another, blander light, almost an eggshell white, like the kind that fluoresces the halls of the DMV, emanates from the lamp above my desk illuminating the pages of my book, Da Chen’s emphatically uninteresting Colors of the Mountain. My attention wanes and my eyes glaze until the light only reflects black lines like a fuzzy TV screen. As I concede defeat, the book tumbles to the carpet, now buried under the scattering of dirty laundry my mom swears is the cause of her high blood pressure.

Turning off the lamp, I crawl into bed, worried my literacy died of old age while reading that dullest of books. I decide to test it. Swiping at my bedside table, I connect with Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, a legend in its medium. I fumble for the light, and suddenly the page explodes into crisp, white focus.

A landscape appears like a mythical realm, laden with succulent blues, ferocious reds, and blacks. A bloodied, gloved hand shatters the emboldened lines framing its reality, spilling into the ethereal openness of the page.

The hand remains, the child cheers, and for a moment, the legend of the Batman is real.

grady nance 37

The Great North Philadelphian Lights It was nearing nighttime as we drove through Fairmount park and deeper in the city. I noticed as I gazed out the window that the leaves were just starting to turn their bright oranges, reds, and golds of autumn. The van, driven by Señor Lluch, was heading east, driving towards north Philadelphia. The van was filled by me and some other classmates and friends from The Haverford School. As we left the park it became clear we were no longer in Ardmore: the roads were very narrow and crowded, leading into the endless abyss of row houses that lined every street.

“We should be there soon,” Eusha said. I had no clue where the apartment complex was, but I hoped it was in a better neighborhood than where we were driving. The yellow streetlights cast an ominous tone on the dilapidated buildings.

We stopped after a couple of minutes. We got out of the van and picked up the clothes and supplies that were donated to the families of Project Home. The building was large and bricked, yet it was nondescript and blended in well with the rest of the concrete jungle. The road where we stopped was dark and quiet.

Kenneth knocked on the door. “Rowan Homes tutoring!” he said. A young lady manager appeared at the door.

“Welcome,” she said, “Are you here to tutor the kids?” We nodded. “Come in, come in. You can drop the clothes by the door, and you can use the room over there.” She pointed down the hall.

The inside entrance of the building was actually quite clean, to my surprise, yet it felt distant in a different way. The polished white tiles reflected the bright white lights, creating sterile hospital environment. The tutoring room was much more comely. It housed a comfy, yet worn in sofa that stood over a shaggy brown rug. Chairs surrounded two wooden tables on the far side, and there were even books and games in the cabinet.

“Okay, it’s time to go get the kids,” Alex said.

“I’ll stay here and Winslow, Kenneth, and Nick can go knock on doors.”

Alex had explained to me that Rowan Homes tutoring had knocked on the doors of the residents in the apartment complex on the Friday night.

They asked the residents if their children needed help with homework, or even something as simple as taking time off the parents’ hands by reading to or playing with their kid for a couple hours. I was curious to see the apartments as well as the people living in them.

To my surprise, Nick led us outside through the back door, where the doors to the apartments awaited to the left, reminiscent of a motel.

Knock Knock.

“Tutoring!” said Nick when we got to the first door. A few seconds passed by. I grew uneasy, thinking about how out of place we all looked as Asian and White kids with long khaki pants and buttoned-up shirts in a place that felt so distant.

I lived only ten miles away, yet this was a part of America that was limited to television, the window of a car, and possibly a few nervous brisk walks.

“Yes?” a middle-aged black woman asked, opening her door.

“Hello ma’am, we’re from The Haverford School, do you have any kids with homework who need tutoring?

“Yes, in fact I do,” she said. “Annie! Come out here and get your homework done with these boys!”

“Thank you ma’am,” I said. “We’re inside just down the hall.”

We knocked on the rest of the doors. Some people had kids, some did not, some were glad we came, some indifferent. In the end, we had around six kids, a perfect amount for the six people we brought.

By chance, I happened to tutor the first woman’s daughter, Annie. She wore a sparkly purple jacket and clutched a workbook in her hand.

“Okay, I can help you with that,” I said. “I’m Winslow by the way. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” she said, shyly. She sat down and opened up her book on the table. It was clear she had worked hard on the book, as it had scribbles and writing on almost every page she flipped through. She opened it up to the twentieth page: multiplication.

“Has your teacher taught you multiplication?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Okay then,” I said. “Let’s start with the first one. Seven times five is . . .? She wrote down thirty.

“Hmm, very close, but that’s actually six times five, so seven times five needs to be a little bit bigger because it has another five.”

She paused for a moment, then wrote down forty. “You’re so close,” I said. “That’s eight times five, so seven times five needs to be right in between thirty and forty.”

“Oh, okay,” she said, “it has to be thirty five then, right?”

“You got it!” I exclaimed. “Very good, now we can move on.”

The next problem was eight times nine.

Definitely a hard one for third grade, I thought.

She told me that she was not sure of how to do this problem. “Well,” I said, “there’s actually a really cool trick you can do if you’re multiplying by nine. Say we’re multiplying three by nine. We can actually just multiply three by ten, which is thirty, easily enough, and then subtract by three to get twenty seven as the answer. This works for everything multiplied by nine, so in this case we just multiply eight by ten and then subtract by eight.”

Annie was consumed in thought. She said, “So eight times ten is eighty, and eighty minus eight is . . . seventy two!”

“Great!” I said. “You’re an awesome learner.”

I was profoundly surprised and impressed by how fast she caught onto my mathematical jargon. I remembered the first time I learned this trick in elementary school it took me days to understand it, but afterwards I found the ninth times table to be one of the easiest.

She started to smile and giggle and I did too.

When we finished her homework–pretty quickly

thereafter–she begged me to play Jenga with her for the rest of the time. I could not say no to her, so I brought out the game from the cabinet and played with her and a few other kids. She definitely schooled me, along with the other kids living in the apartments and my Haverford peers. When they grew tired of the game, I read them a book that was lying around the room until I realized it was time to leave.

“Okay, everyone it’s 8:30, it’s time for us to go,” I said.

We began to say our goodbyes and the kids started leaving to go back to their homes when Annie asked me, “Will you come back next week?”

I smiled. “Yes, I’ll come back next week. I’ll see you then,” I said.

“Good,” she said, turning to leave the room.

She walked back to her home with her sparkly purple jacket and hair beads that clinked as she went. Soon all of the children left, and it was just me, my classmates, and Señor Lluch in the room. I already felt lonely. I knew I could not wait to come back next week.

When we left the building, it was cold and dark outside. The city lights led us back to the van.

After we got back in, I sat down in the back seat, yawned, and looked out the window. We drove through North Philly where the orange-yellow colored street lights lulled me near sleep. The warm lights shone through the windows of the endless row homes too, saturating the insides with their brilliance. I saw it in the living rooms, bedrooms, through the curtains and in the garages: where American families slept, ate, and lived. The lights were in the corner shops and bakeries and the cars of the people driving by. Everything was so warm and felt like home. The city was made of lights, my house in Radnor was made of lights, the whole country was made of lights.

I regretted judging this neighborhood so harshly. Yes, I can imagine living here, I thought to myself, this is America. Soon after I fell asleep. even times five needs to be right in between thirty and forty.”

“Oh, okay,” she said, “it has to be thirty five then, right?”

“You got it!” I exclaimed. “Very good, now we can move on.”

Winslow Wanglee

39

Bees

A young man of only 24 years. Stern, but also grim.

With pride, he puts on his headscarf -The sun emblazoned in red.

Knowing it would be his last, he carries his pistol and a charm -a lock of his mother’s hair.

Finally donning his flight cap and gloves, He starts toward his craft.

The air reeks of fumes and powder.

Turning to face his comrades, he gives one final salute.

The engine roars to life, and he is shot off the carrier into the air again.

Heavy and sluggish with fuel-They form up, climb, and head towards their destination, his grave.

The seconds crawl by; the minutes, hours, the hours, day.

Spotting the ship in the distance Puffs of black smoke litter the sky, static.

As they approach, the sound of anti-aircraft guns grows.

He pushes the flight stick, his plane leans forward.

The low pops of gunfire grow into booms that rattle the canopy, covering the window with soot.

The pale deck of the ship bright against the black sea Growing closer, ever closer he prepares.

To sting.

Abuobiada Khujali Elamin

Please Break Bread with me

Blue Moon Noah Rubien

A hand searches.

His arm unfolded like a tapestry.

I’ve read it before, but— oh, there’s a pang— there are tears and rips.

Where his arm is unfolded I see messy images crusty-stitched in sepia tones.

Oh, there’s that idyllic time, where there were no mistakes and I am not who I am.

His searching hand, it takes mine, he pulls me upright and I pat my pockets and there’s no needle and thread and so I will have to try with my ballpoint pen.

We are headed into the distance.

Soon we are puffs and pulp on the horizon.

Cheap Black Ink on the tapestry is marking the path behind us.

Robb Soslow 41

God’s Blessing Myles Scott

Modern “Mozarts” My parents educated me on rock and roll. My mother loved the singer song writer types and the California punk scene: Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, The Red Hot Chili Peppers. My dad preferred to rock out to more underground jams. The only artist I remember him listening to isn’t even underground– Stevie Ray Vaughan (it’s amazing how google can help you remember how to spell things). My early days were saturated with an artistic flare. At the age of six or seven, I rebelled; I “suffered” through their art. When the time came, I made my own decisions.

Unfortunately (for everybody including myself ), my sense of style wasn’t the biggest concern of mine when I started middle school. In sixth grade, you reach the age to where you obtain the freedom to choose: A) your haircut, and B) your music choice.

The opportunity to abandon my parents’ music arrived at my doorstep, so I welcomed it. Somewhere in my newfound freedom, I dug up a reason to let my hair grow out (just a bit too much). And I was gone.

I started deep dives into a music label called “MonsterCat,” an accumulation of various artists, and branded myself as someone who liked dubstep. Just writing that made me wince, so I hope you appreciate my candor.

I only wore black (to be fair that hasn’t changed much, but that’s a different discussion), had somewhat of a bowl cut (what the cool kids called flow), and had my John Lennon style wire glasses. It was a sight to be seen.

The artists my parents left me with were slowly being replaced by what I deemed to be modern Mozarts. I exchanged Johnny Cash for Skrillex, Bob Dylan for Benny Benassi, and Red Hot Chili Peppers for Flux Pavilion. It was a baby boomer’s worst nightmare. What could anybody do about it; I was my own man. I embodied the image of a rebellious preteen. Nobody wants to, or knows how to, deal with that. I was a genius at what I deemed “torturing old people” (i.e. my parents); I hijacked the AUX cord and played whatever the hell I wanted. On a good day, I would finesse the volume knob and get a second black brick on the car’s blue green “command

center,” indicating I had successfully snuck past my mom’s defences and stealthily raised the volume past the unbreachable barrier of “that’s too loud.”

Of course, the breach was temporary. She’d throw me out after a song or two. When she did shut me down, I would passive aggressively flip my luscious locks, stare forward, and stay silent for the rest of the car ride. Looking back at it, her reaction was understandable; who would want to listen to shrill squeaking for more than five seconds at a time (not my mom, that’s who). But something finally changed when high school hit me– I got my head out of my ass.

Some clarification - I eventually got my head out of my ass. Ninth grade me was still a disaster, just of a different kind. My hair got shorter but my angst grew thicker, and thus the screamo phase began. I

“What could anybody do about it; I was my own man. I embodied the image of a rebellious preteen.” toted my, now containable, hair in a striped beanie like I was an outcast. This fun little span of two years disgusted my mom just the same as my dubstep phase. Sadly, bad music taste can only be cured with a large dose of time. I was still under the impression that I had to be unique, but didn’t realize I had fallen into the ironic trap. It turns out that even if you listen to certain bands to feel unique, those bands have other fans like you, and yikes– similar fans equals not unique. Still, I championed my phonily faded shirts (never jeans with factory produced rips, those are the scum of the pant world). One day I put down my beanie: my band shirts as well (that’s right, I finally un-assed my head). It was time to move on, I thought to myself, and so I did just that. I hung up my beanie,

started listening to “normal” music, and was finally allowed to play music in the car.

These days I’ll end up listening to music from different countries, Japan, Korea, you name it, just because, somehow, I got hooked. Much like hair, the roots of my music taste didn’t change, but what followed did. I’m just now completely getting over my embarrassing screamo thing, but electronic music will stay with me for a while. After subjecting myself to this music vagabond lifestyle, I’ve come to learn some pretty valuable lessons. One being

Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and The Red Hot Chili Peppers are all kind of extremely influential and talented. The second, and debatably more important, if you look hard enough, you’ll find something you enjoy. Looking hard is my specialty now. Thinking back on it I feel really bad for my mom; she probably had nightmares about my phases, but that’s ok– I’m better now (and thank God for that).

Robert Manganaro

Lacoon Mike Schlarbaum

45

ONE BY ONE, OUT THE DOOR

I step up to the door and turn the lock. Baldwin. Shining gold in the sunlight. The air is crisp like the day. The sun shines as the last of fall birds sing, their flight long overdue. I turn the key to the right, grasp the handle, twist and push.

The stone greets me first. Empty now. Painfully empty. The way that something once filled hurts to be filled again. Its mouth ajar, waiting. The shoes have walked out in suitcases, or on feet. On their way one by one, left, right, or jumbled up, on their way out to something new. New jobs, new schools, new lives, new wives, new families. New, new, new. But they’re still old.

The size seven womens were the first to go. They came back, for a time anyway. The size thirteens were next- abruptly, almost running. There one moment, gone the next. Size nine women’s after that. Off to one school after another. They came back once in a while. Men’s nine and womens eight stayed the longest, but they too were gone in time. That stone floor sits empty now, just watching the dust gather.

Those four chairs and the kitchen are too. I wait to hear the sound of the TV snapping to life upstairs, that sharp static hiss- mom. I wait to hear for the click, click, click, of my father at work. I wait for the screaming and hair pulling, the wild laughter of my sisters. Gone now, all gone.

The couch is next. That big couch- the one that once held the whole family together. Empty now too. I sit in it. It still feels as soft as childhood - warm too. Almost as if it’s happy that I am here. But even as I sit here with the only friend left in this house, I look at the doors every now and then. I am waiting for the dogs that I know will never come, but I look anyway- out of habit, or some delusional hope. I don’t know. Those white little fur balls moved on with everything else.

Someday soon, this couch will move on too. That pair of leather chairs will leave. All the lamps, the vases, the pillows, that pile of magazines no one will read, the plastic apples, the tables, the carpet, the drapes- all will march themselves right out of the front door, carried by the inevitability of time. This room will go next. The kitchen after that. Maybe my bedroom will fly off on its own, and my sisters’ rooms will leave, one chasing the other. Before you know it, the whole house will be gone.

What will be left then? The less tangible things. The hopes and dreams will stay for a while, at least til 40. Memory might last longer, if you take care of yourself. But sooner or later, it will all go. Everything will go. Houses, dogs, family, friends, hopes, dreams, memories. They’ll leave, in time. And when my body fails and my lungs give out and the synapses in my brain give their last zap, and I look out at this world for the final time, what will remain then?

Does time leave us anything?

Michael Schlarbaum 47

Rustic Myles Scott

Muffins From Heaven Being a captain is nice, being a king is better, and being a god is best. Strictly speaking, I can only claim the captaincy, as I have no royal blood or divine powers to speak of. I have no interest in marrying royalty, and godhood has somehow eluded me. But when I open a fresh tin of aromatic muffins, my acolytes assemble and worship at the shrine of Jives. My mother, patron saint of the culinary arts, discovered that the path of apotheosis leads through the kitchen; and I, humble student, sought to follow her.

Nothing is better than homemade baked goods. This basic truth, learned at a young age, has been a constant in my life. Ever since I was a baby, my mom baked the best cookies, muffins, cupcakes, and pies. I would often awaken to the smell of an oven, crisping dough, and liquefying chocolate. The scent alone convinced me to roll out of bed and slouch my way down-stairs. There, on the counter, lay a cooling rack piled high with my mother’s special recipe: chocolate chip pumpkin muffins. One bite of batter, one chew of chocolate, one pinch of pumpkin was enough to drive my tastebuds insane. Jaw working, I turned to ask my mother when I could learn to make muffins like this. She laughed: “When you can wake up before 8:00.”

To my dismay, I could never wake up in time to learn mom’s divine baking secret. In those days, I either had school in the morning, or I couldn’t be bothered to rouse myself on the weekends. I tried everything; I set alarms; I went to bed early.

Nothing worked. I gave up on learning how to bake. But my path to godly cooking did not end there. To my lament, help came in the form of high school travails. As freshman year rolled around, I found myself lurching out of bed earlier and earlier to complete my homework. This ungodly habit haunted my weekends, and I frequently woke up at 6:00 in the morning. I finally woke up in time to learn how to bake. One fall Sunday, I stumbled downstairs into the kitchen, inhaling the smell of

warm flour and cinnamon. Mom stood over her mixing bowl, floured up like baking priestess. She beamed at me, and invited me over to the mound of magical ingredients. She walked me through the magic ritual slowly; add a pinch of cinnamon, beat 4 eggs, and mix in the pumpkin. As we toiled and troubled, something magical developed. We finally arrived at the last step: adding the chocolate chips. I seized a one-pound bag of dark Tollhouse semi-sweet chips, holding it above my head like a chocolatey sacrifice to the Aztec gods of baking.

A zealot intent on pleasing my culinary masters, I slashed open the belly of the bag with a pair of scissors. The delicious morsels spilled into the bowl, filled with a heavenly mixture of spices, egg, and pumpkin. From then, it was a small matter to fill the muffin pans with batter and chocolate and place it in the oven to cook. A few scant minutes later, my mother and I removed the delectable fruits of our labor. I reached to take one, but my mother slapped my hand. “Not until they’ve cooled,” she explained, and I stood vigil over the muffins until the steam stopped wafting off them. I finagled the warm bite out of the pan and popped it into my mouth. With one chew, I released 40 days and 40 nights of flavor.

Perfection.

Being rotund is hard, especially when you have no one to share it with. My newfound baking skills contributed a great deal to my waistline, but not much else. Mom had little interest in eating what she had made for years, and dad could only eat so much. Just coming off the crew season gave me an appetite, but there’s a limit to how much one can eat without bursting, and I wasn’t about to test my limit. By chance (and fear of another crew season), I joined the cross country team my sophomore year. I quickly found myself a part of the XC family, enjoying practice and races with the rest of the lads. But the food we post races were stale salted pretzels, utterly unappetizing and demoralizing in the cold damp of late fall. I saw my golden opportunity. Mom and I worked on a

massive batch of pumpkin muffins, greater than any we had made before. Our next race occurred on a hellishly cold Saturday at the Belmont Plateau, where a stomach churning, dank scent permeated the air. The team set up our decrepit tent and huddled together under the patchy roof for warmth. Sensing my opportunity had come, I rummaged through my bag and retrieved my tin of muffins. I caught one of our captain’s attention.

“Whatcha got there, Jives? Did ya bring drugs?” joked Scales, our fearless captain.

“No,” I replied, “but it’s the next best thing. Try one.” I fished out a muffin and handed it to him. Scales looked at the muffin, then at me, then the muffin again. He cocked an eyebrow at me, like if I’m trying this, you’re trying one too. I dug out a muffin of my own; I turned it over in my hand. Small, perhaps the size of a golf ball, soft to the touch, a dark orange in color, and giving off a spicy aroma, my muffin was a perfect specimen. Scales’s looked much the same. After an unspoken countdown, we both took a bite. We chewed in silence for a moment, and his eyes became as silver dollars. Pungent pumpkin flavor exploded in my mouth, with a smooth taste of chocolate to tame the powerful spice. The taste of comfy clothes, warm hearths, and homey scents. Scales chewed faster and faster, as though eating the muffin warranted a race all its own. He downed the second half of his muffin in another bite with a wolfish chomp, and looked at me as though I wasn’t some junior varsity reject -that’s not fair, Scales was always nice to me-, but a priest of some powerful new religion, come to spread the news of salvation.

“Oh my God!” he exclaimed. “Everyone! You gotta try one of these!” I don’t think gorging on muffins pre-race helped our scores any, but our repast eased the oppressive atmosphere. I had, at last, found a group of converts ready to embrace the muffin.

James Ives

51

A Little Kid In An Old Man’s Body

“Hey, Red. You don’t have to call me back. Tide’s high and we got a nice breeze out of the northeast. Saw some birds come through Elmington on a walk this morning. Hope your lacrosse game went well. Wish you were here.”

Click.

As a boy, I remember him as tall and warm. To me, he was the legend of a man, chest hair and all. In his sixties and into his seventies he could do the labor of a twenty year old man: cranking boat motors, hauling heavy bags of duck decoys, and even carrying me. He went to work until three days before he died. We called him a little kid in an old man’s body; this is the man he was. At his funeral, my mom pointed out something very profound, a sense of place. He was always talking about the river, or a property he was managing, or his latest plans for bird habitat. I believe this sense of place, a connection to one’s surroundings, to be the most valuable thing that my Grandfather taught me. There isn’t a second when I would not rather be out on the river, in a field, sitting on the dock in Virginia where my Grandfather lived.

There’s no sound more peaceful than wind through marsh grass. Wind bringing the smell of a saltwater river.

The sound of tide coming in and crashing on the beach and rocks - just as peaceful, the sight of a completely calm river, a complete reflection of the shore and sky. A dark, greenish river teeming with striped bass and blue crabs. The sound of hundreds of ruddy ducks, bufflehead ducks, and geese settling down in the river for the night.

A view from the porch of the place where the bay meets the sky, full view of sunrise and set. The warm sun baking you after a cold morning of duck hunting. These things will always be there. But time proves that he will not.

“You don’t have to call me back.” I think that line is funny. Of course I would call him back; his voice brought me to that place, where the wind carries the smell of the river through the towering pines and marsh grass. I saved that voicemail and about ten others, but I could have saved about a hundred. I started to save them even before he got sick. They give me peace. They remind me of how much he cares, about me and what I’m doing.

He was a man of few words, so I coveted the ones he left in these voicemails. Those few words remind me not only of the man he was, but the moments we spent together.

My relationship with Big Blair, as I called him, is defined by the moments we spend together in the place he embodied. I remember countless early mornings walking with him through marsh grass to the duck blind, this is where I learned to hear the wind whisper to me.

I remember the smell of his clothes, this taught me to savor the smell of the river and saltwater. I remember him teaching me how to start a boat motor on a glassy, summer day; this is what taught me to savor my time in the river. I remember hearing him talking about wildlife and its habitat with such passion, this is where I learned my own passion for wildlife. I remember shooting my first duck with him, this is what caused my lifelong passion for hunting and the outdoors.

A profound sadness comes with the thought of his death. The loss of a fantastic person possesses no bright side. When I was with him, it reassured me of the goodness and truth of the world. Spending time with him, doing the things we loved, gave me a sense of security and comfort that I could always think back to in times of stress or angst. This made losing him even harder. It makes me wonder where I will find the goodness and security he gave me.

The morning of his funeral, I sat staring at the river as I had so many times with him. I decided to come back to the place he lived for the rest of my life. I decided this because as I walked in places we walked together so many times, I felt him walking with me. Not only did I feel him walking with me, I heard him reminding me of the things that make life true: a connection with the outdoors, the sense of satisfaction accompanied with hard work, the authentic happiness derived from time spent with friends and family.

Big Blair grew up in the most spectacular place in the world, Ware Point. A “point”, as we call it, is where two rivers come together around a piece of land that looks out to the Chesapeake Bay and eventually, the ocean. Big Blair was always upset about the effect of erosion on Ware Point; the river was in a perpetual state of movement, taking pieces of land with it. Time is very much like the river, never stopping to let us appreciate the moments we spend with people we love. I will always have the memories of time spent with Big Blair, and I will always have the river to return to. But life itself is almost as delicate as Ware Point; we live and love and teach, but eventually a river runs through it.

Jack Denious

53

Mooonrise Intel Chen

Father and Son When I was little, I fancied myself an explorer. I’d head out in fall mornings with my gear: A compass that couldn’t tell north from south, a telescope that didn’t zoom, and a wood musket that despite the very convincing barrell did not shoot anything. Undeterred by the fantasy of my gear and my expedition, I would wade out into the vast sea of green that was my yard, and set to work about my mission which some imagined voice gave me. I’d run and hide behind bushes, conquering my enemies, and scaling the rocks that made up the mountains in my yard.

My imagination was epic. My favorite days for exploration were when the clouds rolled in and filled the air with water and haze.

Those grey clouds shrunk my world. That fog made it possible to pretend that the trees on the outskirts of my yard - those looming, hulking shapes were monsters and ghouls. In my mind, I became some sort of traveler lost in an expanse of grey; a grey so thick that the reality of the world I knew was hidden. That’s the thing about fog: It can descend softer than a child’s blanket, and wrap you in the most calming embrace. The fog fills you with a sense of security that remains until the grey leaves and the shapes sharpen. In the end, fog always lifts.

My dad took me to school every morning back then. I’d jump into his car, which was always changing: BMW, Lexus, Jeep, Range Rover, then a different Range Rover. His cars changed more than his clothes. He was one of those married men who gets so caught in their routines that their style seems to get frozen in time- black fleece, jeans, loafers. Summer you say? Black fleece, shorts, sneakers. It’s 800 degrees and you’re in Istanbul?

Black fleece, shorts, sneakers. It just snowed 10 inches? Well, you’ve probably got the idea by now.

I suppose that was the puzzle about my dad.

The world changed around him, but he always managed to remain, or at least appear, constant.

I can remember the time around when his first business failed (which I figured out in retrospect).

The only reason I knew something was wrong,

back then, was an exchange of cars, and that he no longer talked about his friends from work. He rarely ever let on how he was doing or feeling, but I found clues in little things.

The most constant indicator was music.

Rough times landed his radio in the 90s with Nirvana or Staind,or Disturbed, and when he was angry Metallica or Iron Maiden or Danzig blared through his speakers, and happy times seemed to push him toward the Doobie Brothers. He always said you can’t feel upset listening to the Doobie Brothers, but he would draw the oo from Doobie to give it an extra 8 syllables “Doooooooobbbie,” which always made me laugh.

I would climb into his car every morning, and we would speed off. Along the way, we would talk, and I would guess how he was feeling through the music that he played. I miss those car rides.

I remember one morning, I must have been 8 or 9, we were listening to “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd on a drive to school. We were passing a pasture where black cows grazed.

A fog had descended that morning. It made the whole world feel small and gray and simple. There was frost gripping the blades of grass as the cows munched, their breath white plumes of steam.

The fog was so thick, out there in the field, that when the cows breathed it looked almost as if their breath had been the source of it, like the way big rivers will shrink at certain places and little creeks will swell, and if you look just at the right spot you can’t quite tell which is feeding which.

I saw my dad look out the window towards the broken-down barn that the cows stayed in overnight. The wood of the barn had cracked and stricken with age. Moss and mold had taken root in the corners, their spores a pale green, and together the two gave the barn a sort of camouflage in the light so that it just looked like an overly condensed cloud. We passed that barn, and Roger Waters came through the radio: We’re just two lost souls swimming in the same fish bowl.

My father’s eyes teared up. I felt my chest constrict

with pain as I realized that we must have passed that barn thousands of time by now, and Waters finished with year after year, and my father, softly, said to me “I feel like that sometimes.”

Years later, he sat the family down to tell us he was leaving. We convened in the family office- my mother and father worked together for a short timethe rain tapped against the roof.

Amidst the tears, that memory came back clear as a crystal filled with fog and mist. And when it came to me, and the scene played through my head again, I felt the knots loosen in my chest,- just a little- and I felt the first hints of acceptance creep into my heart. He needs this, I had thought. I went home that night into the woods and howled the pain away. I yelled at the moon and the stars and the grass beneath my feet, and when my voice cracked and my throat ripped and the tears ceased their flow, I returned, empty and numb, but with peace. How naive I had been.

Because, of course, I learned that there was no job in California. There was just a woman, something I discovered while I was sitting behind him on a plane ride just a month or two after the divorce. But that one woman was not the end of it. Later, amidst my mom’s tearful heart-wrenching confessions, the women multiplied endlessly into a stream of infinite infidelity.

She told me of my father’s endless transgressions and of the frightening reality of their marriage. I felt that delicate lie she had so painstakingly created of my childhood crack in the same way her trust must have when she found out about the first time he cheated, and then it shattered.

My father got remarried six months after divorcing my mom. He didn’t tell me. He had disappeared into the fog.

Michael Schlarbaum

57

A Man’s Sweat I still remember the tears trickling down my face as my mother beat me until my rear-end protruded as if a nest of hornets stung me in unison. She threw me, squirming, on a sheetless mattress, paddle in hand. I was a bad, bad boy.

She wailed over and over, the diabolical screech of her voice lingering in my ears until I fell asleep that night. My crime: Not doing my math homework before 7:00pm. Every day, I wondered why Allah made my mother so angry, so full of hatred.

Ruling with an iron fist, she aggressively enforced two simple rules: no activities other than studying, no talking to girls. Simple, right?

That’s exactly what I thought until 8th grade.

Hulled inside my room on Friday nights, my mother hawking over me, I watched dances and ice parties and “darties” play out on Facebook. A wave of depression swept over me, desperately piecing together the night’s happenings from everyone’s profiles. I realized I had never talked to a single girl since elementary school; I was a total dweeb. A few seconds later my mother roared resoundingly, demanding me to quit wining: she was watching a Bollywood classic and did not want to be interrupted. I, the sad, little dork who listened to whatever his mommy said, complied. Head tilted, I slogged to the window and pull down the blinders to block the sunlight.

The sun was distracting; I needed to study.

When I entered 9th grade, the pressure to do well intensified. My mother sat me down after dinner, lecturing me to keep my grades up so Harvard University would admit me. My life, if it wasn’t monotonous enough, was reduced to eating, sleeping, defecating, doing homework.

I hated my life. I hated my mother. I hated just eating, sleeping, defecating, doing homework.

My mother tormented me for 14 years, and I succumbed to the torture like a poor dog abused by its rotten owner.

I would not listen to her anymore. From that day forward, I pulled my blinders up and soaked

in the sun’s rays, warming myself with Allah’s love.

Without my mother knowing, I experimented with every taboo in the book. One day, I hit a bong for the first time; the next day I skipped Latin class; on Saturday, I partied with friends and their girlfriends without announcing my whereabouts. I devoted every day to trying one new thing. As I scrolled through my Youtube feed one night, a toned Chinese man, carrying a monstrous weight above the ground, popped up and caught my eye. I clicked on the video out of blank curiosity. The Chinese man gripped the bar and lowered his glutes and bent his back and tipped his head forward. Suddenly he let out a monstrous roar, his biceps and quadriceps quivering vehemently, and the weight seemed to effortlessly rise. After straightening his back, the Chinese man shouted with joy and deliberately slammed the weight down, emitting a powerful sonic boom. The danger drew me in; the freedom with the weight enthralled me. I didn’t know it then, but powerlifting had me hooked for life.

For the rest of the week, I religiously studied the bench press, squat, and deadlift when my mother wasn’t watching. I neglected my homework. Teachers gave the evil eye, but I refused to comply. On Sunday, I drove to the Philadelphia Sports Club by myself without a license. The man at the counter, a tall, attractive Indian man with vessels bulging from his arms, signed me up for a membership with my father’s credit card. Right away I went to work.

I was the biggest wimp in the room. The first floor was flooded with girls in yoga pants and sports bras; I steered clear of the squat racks at all costs, fearing judgement from the opposite sex.

The deadlift, unappealing to the gym-heads and the aspiring Instagram models, gave me refuge.

After each set, I slogged to the bench by the window—sluggish, knees weak—and collapsed.

I panted for air, feeling my heart—a prisoner for far too long—break through my ribcage, a jail

cell. I opened the window and shuttered at the sun’s menacing rays; the shallow breeze cooled my face, desperately battling the sun’s heat. At least I’m finally where I belong, I whispered, tacitly thanking Allah for his charity. But my journey wasn’t over: I was far from being the best deadlifter at the gym. I wiped the sweat off my brow (for it resembled my tears following my mother’s tantrums) and kept on grinding.

Days became weeks, and weeks became months; everyone at the gym nicknamed me “the deadlift master,” although I preferred “Big E.” Girls flirted with me, and I flirted back, defying my mother’s second golden rule; however, remnants of her control persisted in the back of my head: Stay at home, do your work, go to bed! This tune drummed on a neverending loop, nagging me to obey my mother’s orders. I needed to break the gym’s deadlift record—the only way to validate my nickname and success; otherwise, my mother would be right that studying was the only option, the last thing I wanted. I lifted painstakingly for two hours each day; heavy weight, low reps was the key to winning. On April 2nd, 2016, a throng encircled me, a one-time wimp attempting to deadlift a massive 405 pounds at a 160-pound body weight.

The chanting blurred my memory: I girded the barbell, I leaned back, I locked out the weight.

My mother’s words crept back into my head, but before she could shriek, I rammed the weight into the ground; the crashing and grinding and after-clanking of the 45-pound plates drowned out her vexing voice.

After returning home that evening, I pulled the blinders up, and sunshine, shackled for three years outside the window, flooded my room. And I quietly thanked Allah for my mother.

Eusha Hasan 59

Warning Intel Chen

A Knife in my Clothing I woke up; I was cold. It was dark, I did not know where I was, and I could hear someone snoring faintly. My body told me it was the wee hours of the morning. I was fumbling for a light when I heard the soft creaking of someone walking on a wooden floor. I froze. With the nearly imperceptible click of a switch, I knew where I was.

There was a friend of mine, still sleeping through the noise, and there was his father, who permanently seemed to have an impatient look stamped on his face. He glared at the two of us and pointed at his wrist. I checked mine. 4:00am.

Waking up my friend, I went to double-check if I was properly packed. I opened my bag, a cross between a duffel and a backpack, easy to either check for the flight or carry on the plane. The clothes inside—longsleeves and t-shirts, sweaters and hoodies, shorts and long pants— neatly packed where they ought to be. Assured of our preparedness, we packed ourselves into his car, his father waiting inside of it.

We reversed out of his driveway. The car took its time warming up and I shivered, sinking low into the seat. I had forgotten a coat. I wasn’t going to bring it up now.

As we pulled on to the highway, the trees above cleared. The dawn sky was nearly dark, a pool of black with a quiet touch of blue that lightened as it approached its horizon line defined by the jagged crowns of New England trees. We arrived at the airport, my friend said his goodbyes, we joined the group, most faces muted with sleepiness, and boarded the plane. As we took off, I watched the dawn recede, quiet like the early morning steps on a wooden floor.

The first thing I noticed when I stepped outside of the Bozeman airport was the chill. I cursed myself for forgetting to pack a coat a second time. The ride in a coach bus came and went, most of the group comatose as I stared out into the unfamiliar Western landscape. Dirt rose and fell in giant hills without warning. The territory was

built from layers of plateaus, as if God had stacked plates. It felt like a lonely land and it was: more cows grazed here than humans.

When we arrived at a park for lunch, it felt even more so, the breeze tossing the newly fallen leaves around, tinting everything a dull orange. A group of us crested over a nearby hill, and there, where the dirt had been seemingly torn away from its roots, was a river of gray, round stones. We stepped onto that river, our steps grinding the river stones together like cogs.Wobbling on those untrustworthy stones, I had found myself more calm than I had been in months. After a time, we returned to the coach bus and went to our final destination. It was dark when we arrived, which I felt was apt, given that we left home in darkness as well. We bedded down on the floor, a deep rug for comfort, for the night.

The morning came with the Montana cold. The cold is sent down by the omnipresent mountains, which seemed to forever ring me while I was there, and rose out of the ground. I learned in that dawn, which spread out, glorious, celebratory, in the biggest sky I had ever seen, that the cold will slip into your clothing and stay there if you’re not careful. So I bundled up the following day, wearing all the clothing I had brought, but the cold was still there in some of the layers. I was in Montana to write, and the cold helped.

We would read our pieces to another and gauge the reactions of our teachers. I’m good with faces: I could see when a line landed in the right spot, I could read the wrinkles in them when it was wrong. I could even hear the creak of wooden chairs, or old bones, when they were hit with something uncomfortable. After feedback, they’d send us out into the world to write, to be inspired, and return.

On one such occasion, I looked out into the landscape, which stretched flat into eternity, picked a spot, and walked. I walked in a single direction for an hour. I sat looking out into my small infinity.

I realized that most people were not as cold as I was. That cold, sharp edge had long been slicing into me and spilling my blood on the page. And, in addition to forgetting a coat, I had neglected to bring a hat, gloves, or even a heavy fleece. I returned to my teachers and wrote.

The morning we left was spectacular.

We rattled and shook, children on a flatbed truck. Meanwhile, the sun burned. The dawn split the night in half. It seemed celebratory, pinks and violets and reds that gave us a much different goodbye than what had been our welcome. On the faces of our group, I saw the wistfulness I knew well, saw for the first time that the cold had slipped into their clothes as well, and that it was something they called loneliness. I didn’t sit at the window on the flight home. I said my goodbyes. When I got home, I opened my laptop and opened a blank document.

I waited for the cold.

Robb Soslow

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Beats, Rhymes, and Life Have you ever seen piranhas in the midst of a feeding frenzy? Walk into any black barbershop in America and shout the words, “Who is the greatest rapper ever?” Bloodshed within seconds.

In between the intense smacking of lips and the sucking of teeth, you’ll hear the clichéd Biggie and Tupac or an occasional Rakim for added flavor.

The truth is, Biggie only put out two albums, and Tupac benefited largely from his own infamy, rather than lyrical content. What you won’t hear in this debate, is any real evidence to support claims of who is the true number one. Anyone white will tell you Eminem, for obvious reasons, and anyone under 25 will tell you Kanye, ignoring the simple fact that he married a Kardashian, and a pair of his signature shoes cost more than first year tuition at Harvard. Preference in rap is very much regional; people from New Orleans will swear

by Lil Wayne and will laugh if you dare bring up 50 Cent. Me, I value all opinions when it comes to the greatest of all time, but what I really want to know is why. Why is this rapper better than another? We live in a world where everyone is so quick to voice their opinion, but nobody actually wants to listen.

As early as I could remember, music has always been central to my life. The sounds of Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions could be heard blaring through my home, shaking its walls like a melodic heartbeat every Saturday morning.

Instead of a polite knock on the door and a “breakfast is ready,” I would be woken by the vibrations of a double bass chord and lyrics about black empowerment. In 1996, when my parents moved into our current home in a small West Philadelphia suburb, one of the first things my father did was install a surround sound speaker system on every floor of the house. You see, my dad never just listened to music; he felt it, wore the lyrics on his skin, sang the high notes off key and would always bust out these crazy dance moves all the while yelling, “James Brown

ain’t got nothin’ on me, boy.” And this was my introduction to music. The classics: James Brown, Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, Aretha Franklin, Frank Sinatra, Marvin Gaye, Earth Wind and Fire, and Roy Ayers. The lyrics to Stevie Wonder’s “Living For The City,” became a part of my soul; it was one of the first songs I committed to memory.

My father always kept a copy of all his favorite Stevie Wonder CDs in his car.

On our rides to school each morning, me in the back, a seat belt loosely around my waist, feet nowhere near the floor, music loud, he and I would get into fierce singing competitions.

Granted, both of us were god-awful singers; it was never about the actual singing, more so I wanted to prove to my dad that I knew the lyrics, and I could match him word for word. Though he had a 30 year jump on me, that never stopped me from trying. I sang until I felt my face turn crimson and my lungs screamed for air. Back then, the lyrics to the song were just that, lyrics. But as I grew older, I started realize the song wasn’t about the beauty of the city but the systemic racism within the city.

The ending of the song made so much more sense to me, when I focused on the police sirens taking over the beat, and the cop telling Stevie, “get in that cell.” This basic epiphany rocked me all the way to the core. A song I had known for years, all of a sudden took on a whole new meaning. For the first time, I actually listened to it.

When I reached the 3rd grade, I started taking the cheese bus to school. It was sardined with black and brown high schoolers who, in comparison to me, looked like giants with their lanky tree trunk limbs and acne-laced skin that reminded me a lot of a Nestlé’s Crunch bar. I remember they were unnecessarily loud and extremely rude, a far cry from my peaceful car rides with the comfort of Stevie Wonder. I started begging my parents relentlessly for an iPod shuffle.

I craved the sanctuary of music.

Finally, on my birthday that year, I got an

older generation iPod my dad bought off this guy who already had 2,000 songs on it; mostly by artists I had never heard of. The soulful bass line and synchronized brass section were replaced with up-tempo bass drops with choppy and seemingly incoherent rhymes. Within my first minute of listening, I heard more curse words than were contained in my dad’s entire discography. I was captivated, hooked, enthralled, entranced. My ears had never heard sounds like this before: so raw, uncut, off -limits, gritty, yet relatable.

Headphones stayed in my ears, as I slowly deciphered the uncharted territory that was rap music. Whenever I put headphones in, everything else melted away. The sounds absorbed me, and I could just be. Now, every morning as I rode the cheese bus to school, I was no longer on the bus.

I was in the Queensbridge Projects running from the police with Nas or cruising down Crenshaw Boulevard with Eazy E or maybe I was in the midst of a stickup with Slick Rick, my gold teeth glistening. Music became my escape. The lyrics were so vivid. I was able to forget everything else going on around me and travel to a completely different world. I never left home without my headphones, always safely tucked in my right pocket; my iPod in the other.

Headphones became more than just an accessory. They were an extension of my body creating the soundtrack of my own life. I wore my headphones whenever I could. I began to relate to the people in my headphones more than the people I was forced to interact with in daily settings like school.

I wore headphones while I walked the dog, while I studied for tests, while I cut the grass, even while I fell asleep. It got to the point where I was listening to music for more hours in a day than I was talking to people. On car rides home from school, my mother told me, “Take those out of your ears and engage with us.” After school, my family car pooled with a girl named Asia-- who

lived a few blocks away. Asia was a rap junky; she knew all the hot songs. She put me onto a ton of new songs-- she knew about the Soulja Boy dance long before it blew up. But when I pushed Asia to tell me who she thought was the greatest ever, she didn’t have an answer. She believed it was truly impossible for there to exist a single number one, for every rapper is dynamic in his or her own way.

“I’m waving automatic guns at nuns” (Nas 1992). Lines like this are the reason I love rap. In no other genre will you find such a provocatively artful image. The beauty lies in the simplicity. The rapper, Nas is not literally “waving automatic guns,” more so, he is trying to evoke an extreme feeling in the listener. There exists no word or emotion to express how Nas feels in the specific moment, so he has to give an example. He is literally so crazy, so desperate, and fed up with society, that he has no words to express his anguish other than metaphorically, “waving automatic guns at nuns.”

The image is capped off with the universal symbol of the nun. Not only does it continue the rhyme scheme, but a nun traditionally represents things sacred, holy, and conservative. This, juxtaposed in one line is not only the mark of a good rapper but of a good writer. As to who’s my number one? It doesn’t matter. It is not enough just to hear rap.

Any fool with ears can hear it. But, to own it, you have to deeply listen.

tyler campbell

65

Waystone Charlie Baker

Flash

Fifty words.

Three supplied.

Will Baltrus

Forgiven youth so soon forget. Their trespasses are impertinent to the shepherding walls put before them. How it is so pacifying to break them down. Every kid wants to remain crucial to this great destruction, a little spice in their life; the foundation of this infrastructure is but a grain of salt.

Robert Esgro The boy stood, staring down at the wall at the end of the corridor. The wall was strange; it shouldn’t be there. There should be a door, but the hall ended abruptly. It smelled of the spiced scent of old wood. The youthful boy stood, stared and imagined.

Joshua Wada He dropped to his knees, eyes watering as his heart sank. He looked at a wall, spiced with the coppery smell of blood. His mind race for the innocence of youth had been stripped away.

Troy Barnes, Jr Colors on the wall add spice to the blank canvas Reds, greens, blacks, and browns There’s no color the canvas hadn’t found It has had a long and torturous life Ugly and tarnished, the wall lives on With many stories to tell This is the end of every white wall

Fiction Michael King Johnny “Spice” Nichols was the Rebel’s star basketball player. He was warming up for the biggest game of his career. He was playing the Jackrabbits in the championship of the youth cancer research tournament. He went up for a layup, hit the wall behind the hoop and never played again.

Sage Garito The potent smell of the dark room filled my nostrils with a sour aroma.

The walls leaked of the leisurely ooze. Vibrant spots spiced the barriers of the room. The child came in contact with the unknown substance. He felt it seep through his skin, coursing through his veins.

James Leitz I walked into the lunchroom. Food covered the walls. Boys and girls flinging lunch snacks and meals at each other. The youth were covered in chocolate milk, spicy mayo, and ketchup. When the kids looked at me, they all froze and put down their ammunition.

Luqman Kolade He looked up at the sky, his youthful face alive with a hope he should have lost long ago. When the wall fell, everything changed. Her disappearance should have surprised him then. It hadn’t. He picked up a handful of dirt, smelling the spice of it. He would find her.

Xavi Segel A spice of ardent youth, all it takes to level the walls of inequality.

69

Nachikethan Srinivasan As he stood still, closed his eyes and inhaled the lingering spice in the air surrounding him, joyous, euphoric memories of his youth rush back to him. Playing cricket within the narrow brick-wall alleys, walking through the marketplace, his brain bloomed with nostalgia. He could hear home calling to him.

Benjamin Gerber The old woman hated when the youth were wild in the apartment building. One time, they ran through her apartment wall and knocked her cabinet over with all of her spices that she has collected over the past 34 years.

Andrew Kichline A group of youthful kids reached the border wall. The red sand whipped around like spice in an Indian market. They began to climb one hand at a time and jumped to the other side.

A truck skidded to a stop. Two large men dragged the kids into the van.

Thomas Stambaugh Each morning, the sun’s spice splashes against the cloudwall — God’s paintbrush drizzling light.

While we fumble for the snooze button quietly dreading the day’s demands — unaware of the young glory unfolding itself outside, each day.

Nelson Liu For centuries, the river had stood as a barrier: a wall separating the innocence of youth and the terrors of war. Looking across that vast expanse of desolate water, shimmering with an eerie and spiceful beauty, I knew that the time had come. I turned my back, sword in hand.

Benjamin Bacharach SAD Inhaling the dismal spice of the autumn weather, I stand still as if my body is enclosed inside a brick wall.

With each cloudy exhale, a fragment of my soul escapes.

Dark, crispy leaves deteriorate like my youth.

Physically, I am here; mentally, I am far, far away.

Jesse Goldman He had hit a wall. He remembered the days of his youth in which he was motivated, hard-working, and determined. For some reason these features did not exist anymore in his character, as he was overtaken by the spice of laziness and lethargy.

Parker Gravina Amongst the chilly breeze, I felt distinct spice in the air. As I vacillated on whether this was the smell of food or fire, something struck my eye. There on the wall sat a bird. As a youth, it would never be so static, but in life everything grows old.

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COLOPHON Front cover text is Capitals (Regular) 78pt; spine text is Myriad Pro (Bold Condensed) 11pt; back cover text is Arno Pro (Regular and Bold) 22pt; table of contents text is Superclarendon (Regular) of various font sizes; All body text is Garamond Premier Pro (Regular) of various font sizes; all photo credit lines are Baskerville Pro (Regular) 12 pt; all poetry title text is FTY SKORZHEN NCV (Regular) of various font sizes; all prose title text is Capitals (Regular) of various sizes; the software used is Adobe InDesign CS6.

Awards: Columbia Scholastic Press Association Silver Medalist 2013 Silver Medalist 2014 Gold Medal Winner 2014 Gold Medalist with 2 All-Columbian Honors 2015 Gold Medalist with 2 All-Columbian Honors 2016 Gold Medal Winner 2017

Editors-in-Chief Satch Baker Mike Schlarbaum Gee Smith Robb Soslow

Advisors Mr. Dan Keefe Ms. Taylor Smith-Kan Ms. Emma Hitchcock

Staff Jonathan Hanson Charlie Baker Khalil Bland Jared Hoefner Sunny Yu Toby Ma Noah Rubien Kenneth Pham Chris Hyland

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Pegasus editorial board thanks the following: Dr. Nagl and Mr. Green for their support; The Haverford School English and Art Department faculty members for their encouragement; Dr. Ehrhart and the Poetry Club for their frequent contributions; The Haverford School Custodial Team for accommodating our late hours; Lulu Publishing for its press resources; Mr. Keefe, Ms. Smith-Kan, and Ms. Hitchcock for their extended patience while advising the meetings and all of our contributors for their hard work and limitless talent.

In an anonymous screening process, the Pegasus staff considers submissions and selects works for publication based on creativity, quality, maturity of style, and variety. Editors reserve the right to make technical corrections, although authors and artists reserve all rights to their individual works. The views expressed in this magazine’s published works are those of individual contributors.

G. A. | Robb Soslow | Charlie Baker T.J. Malone | Grant Sterman | Michael Schlarbaum Intel Chen | Gaspard Vadot | Tyler Campbell W.D. Ehrhart | Troy Gibbs-Brown | Patrick Farley Satch Baker | Grady Nance | Winslow Wanglee

James Leitz | Luqman Kolade | Xavi Segel Nachikethan Srinivasan | Ben Gerber | Andrew Kichline | Thomas Stambaugh | Nelson Liu Benji Bacharach | Jesse Goldman | Parker Gravina Pegasus | Fall 2018

The Haverford School

Troy Barnes Jr. | Michael King | Sage Garito

Issue 34

Will Baltrus | Robert Esgro | Joshua Wada

Fall 2018

James Ives | Jack Denious | Eusha Hasan

Pegasus

Abuobaida Elamin | Myles Scott | Robert Manganaro

P E G A S U S The Haverford School Issue No. 34