Mandala 2024 by Northfield Mount Hermon

Northfield Mount Hermon

Cover: Maya Baudrand ’24

Title Page: Izzy (Isabelle) Young ’24

1.Kimberly (Yu-Chun) Chen ’26

2.Sasa (Alexie) Kolowrat ’24

3.Julie (Leyi) Su ’25

4.Izzy (Isabelle) Young ’24

5.Claire Takeuchi ’25

6.Karennahawi Barnes ’24

7.Jessica Zhang ’25

8.Michelle (Minxian) Tang ’26

9.Kimberly (Yu-Chun) Chen ’26

10. Mark Koyama

11. Bonnie He ’27

12. Alex Tse ’24

13. Jessica Zhang ’25

14. Esther (Xi) He ’25

15.Bonnie He ’27

16.Jessica Zhang ’25

17.Claude Zhang ’24

18.Kimberly (Yu-Chun) Chen ’26

19.Jessica Zhang ’25

20.Maya Baudrand ’24

21.Alex Tse ’24

22.Mark Koyama

23.Julie Su ’25

24.Claire Takeuchi ’25

25.Claude Zhang ’24

26.Taylana Pabon ’24

27.Kimberly (Yu-Chun) Chen ’26

28.Alex Tse ’24

29.Maya Baudrand ’24

When the Poppies Bloom

Tufted yellow heads swaying in the grass

Fog consumes him - a wet, hot, thick abyss, His lips tingling, their ultimate kiss, Waiting to shatter - thin and brittle glass; Permanent state of paradoxical sleep

Reflection of the same sinister hues, Birds chirp, bees buzz - nothing stops the ill ooze; The red petals emerge and they all weep.

Sticky dust on abandoned plate and bowl, Tourniquet on the Family and Soul, Alone but together in disrepair

Surviving trunks - sitting alone and bare; Their lengthy, severed limbs, lost - buried deep, The red petals emerge and they all weep.

Give us back what was once lost (1)

Give us back what was once lost. Let us reconcile the truth cope with the missing and no more.

(Give me back my life.)

Give us back our home. The adolescence abducted the riddance of their heritage.

(Give me back my life.)

As the chopped hair fell to the ground Our tongues cut out Forced to speak the words of god though he is not ours.

(I cannot speak to my brothers and sisters, Nor can I connect to my grandmothers and fathers.)

Ónhka ní:se? Yonnyà:ton kará:ken kanyatare’kó:wah ne rón:kwe. Wa’takerihwanón:tonhse’. Yonnyà:ton yethi’nihsténha onhwéntsya ne yakón:kwe. Tsi taonkwatonhwentsyoníhake nikatyérha. But you have not won— nor will you ever. We will grow our hair, mend the cuts you cast upon us, and build upon the lives you stole.

I will take back my life, the one that was once lost.

Who are you, a man made from the white foam of the sea, to tell me, a man made from the earth herself, that I need to change my ways?

I am the beaten and bruised. I am the whipped and hit. I am the assaulted and abused, used for their sexual pleasure.

I am the young man who lost my braid, the sweetgrass that once grew from my head being crushed by your foot.

I am the girl that lost my dress, the gown made by the grandmothers–has now been shed, taken off by your sinful hands.

Second Name

You know what’s funny? Your common name. Like the Ngyuens, Zhangs, Li’s. The stuff of us

That’s Americanized and cheap. Everywhere, I’ve been hearing your garbled name

& I’m sick of it. Be more original, please. Finish your poetry. Turn down the ivy.

I know you weren’t happy. I don’t think I was Happy either, all shut out from the world & capricious, splintering down the Achilles, Tearing through downtown in the freezing cold.

If we could have another go around, I’d give you everything you deserved.

I’d cling tighter to the shards of light Fracturing shadow branches on your hair.

Remember it better. How your name Was always more elegant in Chinese & how the verses we wrote each other Would always be ours, anyway.

If we could have another go around, I’d learn our mother tongue better.

I’d stuff all your names into my crowded heart And keep them there.

Linoleum

The swallows in the clearing fly

The seven-ten moves slowly by And on the shoulder of the road

The Queen Anne’s Lace is overgrown.

Mosquitos in the twilight

Spiders in the eaves

August days tremble and die

Under Maple leaves

The years have passed, the dog is old

The evening gradually unfolds

And when the lads go home to sup

The crickets take their fiddles up

The linoleum is worn

Where the storm door scrapes

August night is less forlorn

Where the light escapes.

The swallows in the clearing fly

The seven-ten moves slowly by And on the shoulder of the road

The Queen Anne’s Lace is overgrown.

My First Love Was The Other America

The uglier, other America, hidden out of view, Dwindling in the soot and soil of empire, her jagged Elbows wedged between the masses, head creeping Out from the underpass, heaving like a sick dog.

The world was disgusted by her. I loved her. She Was my unshakeable hope, the thing that endures

Even the rain of bullets, the pelt of police batons, The exhaustion and rootlessness of living

In this ragged America; lovely America; broken America. Before you were born, she was the warmth

Of soup kitchens across the Bowery, the smile Of children playing in the streets, the recitations

Of veiled women after the call to prayer. She was The jailbirds and the flight of doves,

The itinerant and the refugee, The tangle of limbs in a dark classroom,

Schoolchildren facing the barrel of a gun. Between us now there are a million Americas

Suffocated by the crush of this nation. Peer into the cracks and you’ll find them.

But who loves them? Who shelters them? You will. Your first love was the other America:

Your neighbors, the common people.

The girl down the road who spoke two languages.

Before the world handed you bullets, you loved

As children do; free of category, free of condition.

Your first love was the other America. Your memory of her makes her eternal.

The Birds

I cannot Tell them About my Sparrows. But between us, They nest here And sing all day, Because plumage Or dimorphism Teaches them how To love. Tomorrow They’ll learn to want. Tomorrow, these luggages And bottles will crack open At the TSA, and your critters And stray feathers will cause security Delays. Here, there are more foreign birds Than telephone lines, the whole slew of distance Flyers present at a graduation. Forgive them for their Exhaustion. Come August and they’ll depart for new lands. They’ll take their provisions and fly northward, as the Migrants do, as the vagabonds and stragglers All come and go; the species That always leaves.

Instructions for Trying Again

You’ll tear the roof off this house

Is what my mother says

Two nights ago when I’m found in a ditch

Trying to run until failure

But I could never be her:

Easy to sway and mellow out

Easy to hold until laughter comes about

Always, I am a forest fire

Holding anger in a clutch

And blow up mountains about it

All a wasteland viewing pleasure

But secretly I wait for an embrace

(you need to know)

(about my anger)

(the water up to my chest)

(enough to breathe in)

(pliant and violently perfect)

(but I am a perfect opposite)

(sweet things I devour)

(brandishing canines on it)

(grind my teeth on it)

(the soul of it)

(shredded to oblivion.)

(though it’s you with the knife) And it’s agony to stand here

(sharp edge pointed right at me)

When abandonment takes

(I’m still willing to let fester)

When your sharp nails graze

(the wound of an honest voice)

I admit to waiting for laughter

(and the sound is sweet when it’s not there)

And like my mother, yield to affection (plying me to release this matter)

So come back to me, come back; I, too, will yield.

It could be It could be the worn blue Upholstery

In the window booth at a somewhere diner — how it’s cracked With age and fixed with duct tape.

It could be how It feels to slide Into the booth

When it’s the middle of the day, it’s slow and the waitress is nowhere To be found Cause she’s out back Having a smoke. It could be Something like That.