Presentation High School’s Art & Literature Magazine
boundless The Inaugural Edition
Spring 2019. Volume #1
BOUNDLESS: THE INAUGURAL EDITION L i t e r at u r e Art Design Photography
Table of Contents
*Images, writing, and digital content are the property of respective artists and may not be reproduced or copied without explicit permission.
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Directors’ Note We would like to thank all the incredible artists, writers, and photographers who contributed their amazing work, without you this magazine would not have been possible. We are proud to showcase these amazing talents and hope you all continue to create outstanding pieces. Big thanks to the Boundless team for all your efforts and thank you Ms. Deak for giving us this opportunity.
- Gabriella Escobar & Lynnea Jeung Class of 2019
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Meet the Alumnae Jurors This year a team of alumnae, who are currently working in creative fields, were asked to select the most outstanding pieces of literature, artwork, design, and photography, from the pieces chosen by the student jury. *Alumnae selections are noted by an underline in the magazine.
Here are their favorites:
Sabrina Tian ‘18
Growing up, she has always been passionate about the arts and now is looking to pursue this through a Visual Studies degree. She is trying to explore different types of art by working digitally on Illustrator and doing Graphic Design.
Selected work Design: Look Above, Jasmine Wong ‘21 Art: Zipper Fish, Carla Pelino ‘19
Jean MacDougall ‘90 Jean has been working in museums since
she was 15. She is the Senior Registrar at the Anderson Collection at Stanford University, which is a museum of modern and contemporary American art.
Selected work Literature: Lovesick, Jasmine Wong ‘21 Art: Fenway, Lindsey Rose ‘20 Photo: Cracked, Ciara Ruiz-Earle ‘20
Ashley Guarino ‘12
Ashley was part of the Digital Media club on campus and served as a club officer. She received her bachelors with a focus on creating writing at Washington State University. She works for a tech company and does occasional blogs to help app developers find success.
Selected work Literature: leave me a violet to remember you by, Winter Jung ‘21
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Samantha Clark ‘09
Samantha is an associate photo editor at National Geographic, where she works on stories about the environment and climate change. She previously worked on NPR’s photo team and at Pier 24 Photography. Her writing about photography has been published by NPR, The Washington Post’s The Lily, Fast Company, and Broccoli magazine. She is also working on a podcast about photography and pop culture.
Selected work Photo: Eleutherophobia, Natalie Launder ‘19
Emily Luthra ‘95
Emily graduated with a BA in English Literature from Whitman College in 1999 and an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College in 2007. She has a post-baccalaureate in Visual Arts from UC Berkeley Extension, specializing in oil and acrylic painting.
Selected work Literature: leave me a violet to remember you by, Winter Jung ‘21 Art: The Brushes, Victoria Van Huystee ‘19
Alyssa Wigant ‘12
Alyssa is a graphic designer, illustrator, and hand-letterer currently working at a digital design agency in San Francisco. Her creative upbringing in the Silicon Valley drove her to pursue a degree in Graphic Communication and Studio Art, where she learned to solve problems with design and digitize her craft.
Selected Work Art: Woman with Fish, Victoria Kerslake ‘21 Design: Look Above, Jasmine Wong ‘21 Photo: Lines, Anonymous
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Blue Anonymous
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Eleutherophobia Natalie Launder ‘19
Looking Ahead Rachel Decker ‘19
8 leave me a violet to remember you by Winter Jung ‘21
A general childhood rule: Sleepovers are nights predestined for the sharing of secrets. They like to roost and hide beneath the thick cloying scent of nail polish and dissipate twice as fast. Another rule: Secrets, like a lot of things we keep in our youth, come in different shapes and sizes. Colors, even. When Sofie Evans asked me to keep a secret in the summer before eighth grade, I didn’t recognize it for what it was. It came in a shape I’d never seen before — the curious shape of her lips, painted red from our raid on her mother’s vanity, as she said, “I want you to kiss me.” I did, and here’s how I remember this secret: purple, the color of her notquite-dry nails in smudges where she touched my shoulder. I didn’t let my mother wash the shirt I wore to Sofie’s for weeks afterward. She eventually stopped asking when I wadded it up into a pink ball and hid it in my closet, not in the shameful way you’d ball up a clumsily written love poem but in the reverent way you keep something for your eyes only. This is what I told myself, anyway, every time I pushed my arm through racks of seasons and touched the soft fabric of the shirt, held it up to the light to make sure the purple smudges were still there. It became a tic that intensified when August came and brought school with it, brought Sofie into three of my classes where I could talk to her for the first time since July. She was leaning against a locker when I found her, talking to a classmate with a finger looping too casually through her hair. The boy left when I approached them and I studied the unfamiliar lines of his face with a burning, green-hued intensity. Sofie sighed, hand dropping away from her hair. Her lips were painted a soft pink this time, and I stared until she rubbed at her mouth, turning away. “Why haven’t you texted me?” I asked. I had always been terrible at lying, and in that moment I hated the tail end of my sentence for escaping me, for dipping too far into desperate truth. “I’ve been busy,” she said a little too quickly. “Besides, I’ve been with Josh—” “You’ve been with Josh?” I repeated, cutting her off. “Like, been with him?” Her silence was tight-lipped, telling, and I thought of my purple-stained shirt, clung to it as I added wildly, “But we—” “Kate!” Her voice was loud, too loud; everyone in the hall glanced at us curiously, eyes latching onto us with sudden, vicious interest. She winced and shrank until they turned away. When she spoke, her words came out soft, wounded, as if their stares had cut into her. “Don’t ever talk about it.” She slipped into the crowd, leaving me to face the it lingering in the air like a dirty word. That’s when I understood, uncrumpling the balled-up shirt later in my room, that there was now a secret hanging between us.
9 At one point — the point where our driveways met at the same sidewalk, where we both walked home at seven — Sofie seemed to realize she was avoiding the inevitable. “Kate!” she called before we could each retreat into our houses, into the prickling silence we’d kept fenced for days. “I know why you’re not talking to me—” “It has nothing to do with that,” I interrupted, but at that age I understood the meaning of the word denial. I knew Sofie was thinking of it too. “Come on, Kate,” she said. “It was practice; neither one of us had kissed before. It’s not unusual for friends to do that, but what is unusual—” She paused abruptly as I took a step towards her. “Finish that sentence,” I whispered. “I dare you.” The streetlight above her head flickered on, drenching her in orange light until she suddenly looked too small for her lace top, ill-fitting and probably reeking of cheap drugstore cologne where she’d been touched by clumsy hands. Unrecognizable. I wondered if there had really been a time when we shared secrets that were pink-hued and not bitter, the ones that tasted like cherry lollipops stolen from our second-grade teacher’s desk — the ones that were agreed upon with all the sincerity of two interlocking fingers. “What, it’s unusual for two people to be in love?” I asked, shouting now, and her mouth snapped into a thin line. “I don’t love you,” she said, taking a step back. “And you shouldn’t love me. Not like—” Her voice shook. “Just don’t talk to me about this anymore. Ever.” I closed my eyes as she walked away and there it was again, this, another form of it. The two words had circled for so long, dancing around our barbedwire secret, that I barely understood what they stood for anymore. I returned home, pushed my arm through racks of seasons, touched the soft fabric of the shirt, and dropped the haphazard lump of hope into the bottom of my wastebasket where it became another it. I could barely see the slight smudges of purple in the dark, and it was easy to pretend that they’d never been there at all. In the summer before ninth grade, Sofie’s house went up FOR SALE, bold and in red letters, blaring and more definite than any words she’d spoken to me in the past year. I watched as the house emptied itself into boxes, then the boxes into moving vans, then the moving vans into a distant echo on the street — and Sofie into a shadow of existence. The morning after she left, I walked into the kitchen to find a single violet resting on the table — I found it outside the front door, my mother said, isn’t it beautiful? — and took it into my hands, gingerly as if cradling a body. It was raining outside as I set the violet down in the grass bordering my yard and Sofie’s. Its petals bent and curled, the color of not-quite-dry nails then no specific color at all as I turned away, and I knew that come next morning, it’d be as if it’d never been there at all.
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Release Annika Lang ‘19
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Implications Rachel Chang ‘19
Behind the Masc Amanda Page ‘20
13 convex memory Anonymous you’d think it was good. after all, you thought it was perfect. you were so much younger then, which could account for most of it. in your eyes the world was wide, in your eyes that focused on the tiny patch of grass instead of the endless expanse of dirt road. your eyes only ever saw the world tinted, not yellowed with age but warmed with honey-sweet youth. shouts and screams mean something, they mean something to everybody, but they don’t mean the same thing to you. you deserve to feel as light-hearted as you do now, you deserve to skip along a path through a secret almond forest, (it’s not so secret, but don’t tell her. don’t ruin the magic.) this is a place that’s yours, your own, yours and hers, no one else’s. (except his on certain occasions, but he was always welcome. he deserved it just as much as she did.) you walk to the end of the street, past that house with the asphalt, you turn that way and you look at the pretty mailboxes. you think about home depot every time you pass them. (you’re really not quite sure what home depot is even like, but you can imagine.) there’s the fire station, and you walk past that. there’s usually people in the park, but no one’s ever been on the secret trail and that’s just fine. (is any secret even really secret? is it only a secret because you make it so?) and you’re not even there yet, it’s still a little ways away, sometimes you go farther, to the other secret place, the one with the trees and that beautiful earth smell and that sunshine through the leaves, you found fish there once, you caught them in a jar, he named them all, but felt sorry for them. you went back the next day to set them free. they were bright days and happy days and it was just a bright and happy thing for you, and that’s how it can stay. it’s for us, and it’s saving me and it’s saving you and hopefully it will save him and hopefully I can save you both. for now it’s just the almond trees and the dusty paths and the rope in the trees and the rocks in the creek and the sound of the frogs and the darting of the lizards through the grass. I’m sure it’s all still there, but I don’t know if I would want to go back.
14 lovesick Jasmine Wong ‘21
the language of lies lay on lovely lips, my lady & yet your lavender lipstick is left to linger lonely on my own landscape lines My Name Citlalli Bejarano ‘21
My name is my past, my history, my culture My name is proud and strong My name carries weight and tradition My name is a long pause before a teacher reads the attendance sheet It is the squiggly red line in a word doc It is being mispronounced for semesters at a time My name is ashamed to correct itself My name is being spelled aloud for orders at restaurants or coffee places It has contemplated changing itself because it’s “too hard to say” My name is being corrected by others who say it wrong But my name is not hard, it is uncommon And it leaps with joy As it hears a girl who shares the name be excited and proud to hear it My name may be different But my name is me
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Pouring Outwards Sarah Ungerer ‘20
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Phenomenal Woman Dan-Tam Pham ‘21
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A Song Gabriella Escobar ‘19
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“Propoganda” Regina Ta ‘19
Shoes Composition Gabriella Escobar ‘19
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Woman With Fish* Victoria Kerslake ‘21
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I died the other night. Ceaseless souls knocked at the door but I was at capacity. There was no more room in my heart, all space was inhabited, occupied by you. I watched as it hung on the doorknob, a Neverland just as fanatical as what was inside, kids too dreamy as they drifted off to other worlds. Peter flew past reality, around a room whose hue became opaque. A maze of petals in a sparkling rose, that Wendy could never pick. There was only room for thinking, wishing, hoping, feeling, Loving. So I died, It was you.
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The Art of Time Jen Parkinson ‘19
Darkness from Within Saahiti Vankayalapati ‘20
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Dangling from a Tree Nandita Jayanthi ‘21
23 Defeat Graciana Paxton ‘20
The dog’s wet drooling mouth snatches up the shirt the shoe the jacket the warm sandwich. He runs I chase tear, rip I am defeated every time
24 As They Fall AEF
Bullet casings cover the floor, And we all know there’ll be many more, Those who survive will not live in vain, But will always carry the hurt and pain, Seventeen lives taken in this past year, Yet not one politician has so much as shed a tear, Draft a bill that will protect us all, That’ll catch the bodies as they fall, How close am I to becoming one more? Another death to be ignored? Blame it on their mental health, All of you are safe, protected by your wealth, You won’t have to think about not coming home, Your body growing cold inside an ancient tomb, But for those of us not living in a fantasy, The chance of death is as real as you or me, What will it take for our voices to be heard? You’ve ignored the countless deaths around the world, But this is in your own backyard, Take responsibility, Listen to the stories that have been told, And see that the streets of America are covered in blood, not gold, All we ask is the chance to be heard, And a change that will stop these countless murders.
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The Brushes Victoria Van Huystee ‘19
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Yellow Juliet Kuhlmann ‘20
Zipper Fish Carla Pelino ‘19
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Centered Annika Lang ‘19
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Distorted by Oneself Dan-Tam Pham ‘21
29 your eyes light up when you talk H
I felt your heartbeat though our foreheads, pressed together at your will, with the strength of a blazing fire that shot, hot, down into my cheeks, rosy apples hidden in the flush of the steam around us. Unable to breathe, gasping, grasping at the words that had been carried off, twirling in our heat that lingered as your bright eyes spoke, my stolen tongue at your mercy. And when the fog clears, you have me.
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Lucky Strike Audrey James ‘19
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Dinosaur Mouth Carla Pelino ‘19
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Rights Annika Lang ‘19
Betta Splendes Lynnea Jeung ‘19
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Look Above Jasmine Wong ‘21
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Lines Anonymous
Cafe au Lait Kaelyn Belloni ‘19
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PALE WAVES 1 Emily Iburg ‘21
hi dad! Lynnea Jeung ‘19
36 The Bunker Anonymous I’ve propped myself up against my bed frame with my knees curled into my chest.The musky aroma in the air has finally stopped giving me a headache. With only the flickering of an orange and dim light, I quickly lost an estimate on how many days have passed. I take another look around the bunker, this time taking in every detail. We were so rushed, we grabbed everything we could fit into our dingy car and drove out here. We just threw everything inside, and we still haven’t reorganized. Nothing was moved ever since we got here. Maybe that’s due to our denial. she never was one to give up. I on the other hand, take more after our dad. I knew that the experts were wrong, that we’ll be in here for a long, long time. The metal walls of this place made the temperature cold. I remember during the first couple of weeks, I just could not adjust to the temperature change. On the crust, I was acclimated to the ravishing heat of the sun. With no clouds in the air, the sun hit everyone straight on the skin. However, I’m used to the cold now. I prop my elbows against the bunk beds and push myself to my feet. I realize that I never ate breakfast this morning. Or dinner last night. It’s hard to keep an appetite ever since she’s been missing. However, I know she’ll kick my ass if she finds out I didn’t eat while she was away, so I pour myself a lukewarm bowl of runny oatmeal and munch on a couple of stale crackers. I slip between the overfilled cabinets and the beds and make my way over to the rusty and old fire stove. I gaze into the browning mirror and I look myself over. “Jesus,” I say to myself. the bags under my eyes have darkened severely last time I checked. With no interaction with the sunlight, my skin looks pale and unhealthy. I rub my eyes with my cracked knuckles, and then decide to just crawl back into bed. As I bend down and move some of the books sprawled on the floor, I catch sight of my forearm. Against my will, I roll up my sleeve as gently as possible and observe how some of the scars have healed. I learned this trick from my mom back on the surface. Whenever we saw one of them, we were to take a fingernail and dig it into our skin. That way, once we turned to run, we wouldn’t forget. That’s what was so dangerous with the creatures. you could look at them for hours, but the second they were out of sight, they were out of mind. Only did we finally learn all this after my experiments. When I was younger, I wanted to grow up to be a scientist. That’s what gave me the idea. I would go out at dawn and look for them. Then, while keeping a far enough distance, I would write down and draw everything I could about them. But, once I started heading back home, I would forget what I was doing out. This helped me connect the two dots and finally realize why nobody could ever remember what these creatures were like. When we went foraging for food, we always had to keep in mind how many were spotted on our trips to make sure their numbers weren’t increasing. I remember once my sister and I came home with a trail of blood behind us. I think we saw at least 30 that day. That’s when we knew this problem wasn’t going away, it was only getting worse.
37 It’s been about 4 days since my sister left for the surface. Against all my protests, she left to find more water. The hard part is, I knew she was right. We’ve been running low on clear water for what feels like weeks, and If we didn’t find some soon, there were going to be problems. I tried to go with her, but my busted ankle wouldn’t let me climb out of the bunker, let alone have the capability to run from them. So I stayed. It’s been horrible. With nothing to do and no way to communicate with her, I’ve been extremely lonely. So lonely, in fact, that I’ve began talking to myself. Sometimes, It makes me feel better, like I get the inkling that someone else is with me and is talking back. I know it’s not true, but pretending that she’s pressed up against the wall on the top bed, sleeping away makes me feel better. It’s definitely been over 9 days now. It’s getting harder to ignore the fact that she may never be coming back. She only had enough oxygen for two weeks. I feel so empty inside all the time, so alone. I’m embarrassed by how independent I thought I was. I miss my family. It’s been 29 days I think. I’m losing my mind. I don’t think I can take the waiting anymore. I’m going out to follow her. With what felt like an hour, I slowly got dressed in my suit and pulled over the heavy oxygen mask. I know that I only have enough for 3 days, so if I don’t find her by two, I will start to head back. I climb up the rusty ladder 5 feet up, almost slipping with my weakened ankle. I turn the latch and I open the overhead door. My heart is pounding, and I feel it especially in my clenched hands. As I push myself onto my feet and look into the horizon, my heart sinks. Right in front of my feet, is Daisy. Her eyes have glazed over into a pale, icy blue that looks straight through me. She’s dried up like a prune in the sun, and all around her is her dried up, thick, gooey blood. All over her body were holes where she dug into her skin. she must have died from the loss of all that blood. The last thing I heard was me breathing out. My whole body felt very light all of a sudden. My brain went into autopilot and I lost all control. My vision began to tunnel, and a numbness swept my whole body. And then I looked up.
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Fenway Lindsey Rose ‘20
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Agelaius phoeniceus Fiona Donovan ‘20
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Neon Light Iz Bernhard ‘21
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orange cream soda Winter Jung ‘21
Cut Loose! Chloe Fehr ‘19
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Cracked Ciara Ruiz-Earle ‘20
Layering Reality Sarah Ungerer ‘20
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student TEAM Magazine Designers/Directors: Lynnea Jeung ‘19 Gabriella Escobar ‘19 Advertising Directors: Lead Writing Juror: Writing Jurors:
Chloe Fehr ‘19 Isabelle Handkammer ‘20 Angie Leung ‘20 Winter Jung ‘21 Jasmine Wong ‘21 Ash Chandar ‘19 Stella Yang ‘21
Lead Art Juror:
Fiona Donovan ‘20
Art Jurors:
Victoria Keslake ‘21 Chloe Wu ‘21 Sanya Shah ‘21 Ariana Santos ‘21 Juliet Kuhlmann ‘20
Lead Photo Juror: Photo Jurors:
Teacher Moderator:
Amanda Page ‘20 Rachel Chang ‘19 Sela Nequist ‘20 Alisha Shanawaz ‘22 Isabel Schweitzer ‘20 Ms .Deak