stone-cutters Harvard-Westlake School Winter 2021-2022 Volume XXVIII
Boundless Bronwen Roosa ’22, oil on panel, 18” x 14”
male jargon Jamie Kim-Worthington ’22
men are languid and liquid at night. the sky is oily and men are not having a smiling psych-ward-free time. men scrape the insides of their wombs clean with swords like medea pledged to do and amputate grief out of their hearts. they cut it clean with a butcher’s knife, only stumps of misery remaining. the sky over men’s heads sounds like lambs suckling on disease. men pray to god for fewer bones. men have eleven ribs, one missing for the bone that was taken. nothing bad ever happened to men (maybe to women, but there is no space for women here). men are not missing any bones and never ache over what was stolen. men pray to a small god. overhead, angels stretch xir wings and beat xir breasts like camilla. men pray to a small god yet the god is too big to hear them. men spin and lash out like a car wreck. men don’t apologize for past crimes– men never did any! men don’t speak dead languages, they eat them. men eat aegri somnia vana for a midday snack– enough to tide you over until dinner when men will tackle ge’ez or coptic, some real sustenance. men are knives in the appendices of their loved ones. men cyber-stalk their victims until there is no other alternative than blocking. men monitor spotify activity like hawks. men don’t think like people– they’re animals! men have filthy minds and lecherous capabilities– they’re capable of filth, but men would never. men like their women immaculate and their men as sleazy as them. men are girls at heart and men will never break out of the mindset six-years-in-themaking, codified by a palace complex of papers and commas and testosterone. men are hollow and men are really girls, who are they fooling, men are pretty and pure and lacking in scar tissue. men’s chests, their hearts, are made of tissue and men tear through it with a canine bite. men might be aggressive, but men make up for it with their hand tremor and goat-voice. in truth, men aren’t shit.
sure, the shore Fiona Shaw ’23 We lie in oceans of our own tears, Wistful sorrow, empty anger, festering regret. It nearly drowns us— Even as we hope for the lady of darkness to slip her hands over our eyes— we struggle, in desperation, in painful rejection, in a defiance that defines the art of being alive, just to say “One day we will be okay. It doesn’t have to be now and it doesn’t have to be soon but even so we have the rest of our life To feel better or feel different or feel more. And maybe there is no cure, and even though that hurts it’s okay, to mend with hand made ice-packs of old ziplock and painter’s tape that we got from our parent’s craft bin. There is something to say when we have hell in our head and sun on our skin to the world: proudly, once we can be proud, that is soft and semisweet and resonates soundly. Young fools: we watch the world burn and try to put out the fires with our own weeping. Young children, should our minds turn Against the tumult of the sea Against the raging wildfires of land, just remember the shore is there for a reason, too.”
Double Ian Kim ’24, photography, 12” x 12”
Reflections Alex Su ‘22, oil on canvas, 18” x 24”
Businessman Returning to Lover Olivia Wang ‘23, acrylic on canvas, 10” x 8”
Quantitative Emotion Aiko Offner ’23 The rain fell lightly at first, between leaves of trees cracking a muddy sky. The leaves blew quietly too, through the ground and up the air, a soft rustle, nothing more. When the stars fell there wasn’t a heavy thump, nor a thick screech, just a faint ticking planted in my head. I saw a hand, a purple ring, too poking out from under the white sheet a soft th-thump grew louder until it pounded my brain shut. Dear god or whatever it is above the clouds how much pain can we inhale? It’s dishwasher soap, I tell you, it’s burning my throat dry. When the thunderstorm came, it was like an orchestra erupting, violas howled through the seams of arteries, music flowing like blood into a lake, heart strings broken. Ping. Cremate me with saline flames, keep me warm in the chamber, I’ll be ash, I’ll be dust so I never have to feel cold again, and no one ever has to see my limp hand.
Petrichor Kieran Chung ’23 Jonah, I went to the cabin last week for the funeral. Mom and Dad were both crying. You can imagine. Mom, with angry rivers running cracks down her cheeks; Dad, silent and red, with tears dripping softly from his chin. Drip. Drop. It sounded like the water that dripped from the treehouse after a rainstorm, when the air would warp and bend with lightness, and we’d tiptoe around puddles for fear of disturbing it. The droplets would ripple the quiet, one after another, and we’d stand there in our rubber boots, just listening. And then you’d say Plink, and the surface tension of the world would be broken, and you’d laugh and splash my face with puddle water. Petrichor, you’d say. Taste it. Jonah, I’m sorry about the reception. Mom wanted you to have a proper funeral, and you know how it is—when you’re not here, whatever Mom says goes. At least you would have liked the weather, though. You always liked the weather here. Mom said it was too cold to hold the funeral outside, but you would have stretched your fingertips toward the infant sun and called it warmcold. You would have breathed in the pastel sky and shown your teeth and said, Look at the petrichor. And Mom would have looked. She would have tried to hide it, but she always cracked for you. I wish you were here, Jonah. Petrichor used to taste sweet, like your eyes and your voice that never quite dropped and the sunlight patching through the deep yellow leaves. The trees are all willows now, and when it rains, they cry. I stood under them the other day and let the water drip onto my face. It cut rivers into my back and chest and cheeks.
Today, I’m older than I was yesterday, older than I was last week when you were still here. Mom and Dad got old when they had you, but not me. You kept my bark sanded down. You kept me new. When I stood under the trees, the rain dripped into my mouth and it just tasted bitter. Being without you tastes like petrichor. Like it rained all night and I missed it, and now all that’s left is runoff and air heavy with water. The treehouse is gone now, did you know that? Some termites got into the wood and they had to take it all down. Didn’t even leave the good slats. Now it’s just the tree, standing stoic and tall like it never felt our footprints on its bark. So anyway, I carved your name into the trunk. Then I did mine, too, because who was going to do it once I was gone? Mom? In the cabin, smothered by the HVAC warmth, all the aunts and uncles you never met are raining. I wish you were here to tell them to stop. You’d open the door and let the morning in, and the rivers would stop carving up our backs, and the tears would burst on the corners of our mouths, and it would taste bittersweet and sunnydark and warmcold, like you always told us it would. Petrichor, you’d say. Taste it.
Stone-Cutters is an arts collective supporting creativity and collaboration on the Harvard-Westlake campuses, and connecting, through the arts, with communities in Los Angeles and beyond.
Editors-In-Chief: Izzy Welsh ’22, Joie Zhang ’22 Managing Editors: Maddie Morrison ’22, Lily Lee ’23 Literary Editors: Anika Iyer ’23, Aiko Offner ’23 Visual Editors: Alexa Druyanoff ’22, Ofek Levy ’23, Chiara Umekubo ’23 Staff: Chloe Appel ’23, Madison Baffo ’24, Grace Belgradear ’23, Milla Ben-Ezra ’22, Clarissa Brown ’24, Ryann Castanon-Hill ’23, Izzy Daum ’23, Georgia Goldberg ’23, Asha Haley ’23, Keira Haley ’24, Ellie Koo ’24, Demi Lavapies ’24, Alex Lee ’24, Ari Ogden ’22, Chloe Park ’24, Carter Staggs ’23, Carina Villalona ’22 Faculty Advisors: Lucas Gonzalez and Brannon Rockwell-Charland Layout done by Lily Lee, Joie Zhang, Anika Iyer, Asha Haley, and Clarissa Brown with special thanks to Jen Bladen
Untitled Owen Carlson ’23, hopkins white clay, 4” x 6”
No. 4 Disconnected Chiara Umekubo ’23, acrylic on canvas, 34” x 23”