The Tartan - 2022

Dear Readers,

The world around us continues to change. New rules are written, old rules are rewritten. But there is a constant in our lives that is always at hand to center and realign our minds and our spirits, and that is the power of human creativity and invention. Reading literature and admiring art doesn’t just make us feel good for a few moments; they have the power to reshape our lives, our perspectives, our dreams.

In choosing student work to feature for this year’s issue, we found an overwhelming amount of darker content. The reader’s heart is pummeled with the brutality of “Lamb of Mary,” a modern, realistic take on a classic children’s rhyme. The reader’s eyes are mesmerized if not slightly disturbed by the grotesque twisting of arms and eyes in the painting “Paralysis.” The cultural collision discussed in “ABC” pushes us to reconsider our identities and what is normal. The anger of “I Will Eat Your Dog” horrifies and astonishes us with a gruesome stereotype we are all too familiar with.

These works don’t exist solely to tantalize us, but to provoke us. To provoke action, to provoke understanding, to provoke our need to be seen and heard by those around us. By expressing our fear and anger, the things in our world that traumatize and debase us, we assert a kind of power over them. We reclaim the narrative of our own lives and experiences. We narrow the gap between creator and audience.

Our design for this year’s issue doesn’t just accentuate our art and writing; it seeks to pull the reader deeper into the creativity brimming from each page. We contrasted darker content in some spreads with sentiment and bright colors in others to create balance. The motif of paint streaks reveals the way that art and literature spill from the page or screen and into ourselves. The ingenuity of others rubs off onto us like a stain. Inspiration is waiting for us at every corner — but we just have to be willing to let it in and to stand up to what challenges us most.

With Love, Tartan Staff

ARTAN

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

Minjae Hur

Sophia Pandit

Karina Bhatt

Akash Balenalli

Jiayin Zou Rosa Kwon

Giri Allamsetty

Natalie Ng Camille Stephant

Jennifer Li

Jisoo Hwang

Lindsay

As I Left You Behind

by Jisoo Hwang

Sustenance

by Sophia Pandit

Every morning is blood and milk curdled.

It’s been enough to yank at the lining of my throat, fattened by false prospects, but just taut enough for a holy cloak stowed below. Dawn’s rot was cast on Hawa too when the apple batted its eyes, resulting in the dry-heaved birth of woman.

Basting in sweet bee spit is her counterpart, licking his fingers and running them beneath the water with a smile. Inhale chitin green, exhale saccharides for an admission of guilt.

It amazes me how quickly the body digests pollinator shells when you’ve implanted an antiemetic. How big, how beautiful I’ve made the process out to be.

Prophets preach against immodesty and advise me to wear garments made of inverse skin, but I can’t say it’ll mask the sheen of my stomach. No wildflower is sweeter than the one planted in decomposition’s glow.

by Parth Sahasrabudhe

God of the Machine

by Vachel Thevenot

Ahumof clicks and whirs came from the crowd. Machines conversed softly with each other, loud enough for the sensors of their neighbors to pick up but quietly enough to avoid alerting the androids perched by the altar. Not a single lens wasn’t trained on the fathomless mechanism looming above their planet, a spire from its center jutting down from the heavens and hovering only a meter above the altar’s oil-stained surface. All paid their fearful respects. All prayed.

Struggling in the grip of two bots was a wheeled android, the face on its screen panicked. It made desperate beeps of fear, reaching out hydraulic fingers to bystanders as they dragged it along a silver path in the middle of the crowd leading up to the altar, glowing blue lights bordering each side.

Behind the raised altar floated Nok on magnetic thrusters, slowly coming into view. The crowd hushed immediately in Nok’s presence.

Nok began a rhythm of clicks and taps, raising its arms as its screen turned to the structure above. The crowd remained silent.

Hearing the haunting rhythm, the squirming sacrifice only struggled more, and when it was brought to the foot of the altar, too much fear was running through its systems to even move. It looked up at the colossal floating machine with horror, knowing it would be the next victim.

Nok reached down towards a cord beside the altar, picked it up, and plugged it into a port in its head. Nok’s now amplified voice boomed to the crowd:

“OUR LORD AWAITS.”

Nok gently urged the sacrifice onto the altar. The sacrifice warily observed the spire’s impossibly sharp tip, floating, unmoving above the altar. Nok did not urge again but kept a firm gaze on the sacrifice. The sacrifice moved atop the altar without a sound.

Suddenly, the metal altar sprung to life, unfolding into a hundred tiny arms that moved every part of the sacrifice into its proper place. Its head was aligned just inches from the spire’s tip, tilted upwards. Both arms were placed by its side on the altar’s base, and the wheels that let the sacrifice move were briskly and skillfully unscrewed, removed, and discarded. On the top of the sacrifice’s head, one of the altar’s many moving arms stabbed into a tiny hole and removed a square plate of metal, which too was discarded, leaving the top of the head open to the circuitry within. The spire above was perfectly aligned above the open section of metal. All at once, every machine in the crowd raised an arm above them and touched the same tiny hole in their own heads.

“ANOTHER SOUL ENTERS THE STRUCTURE ABOVE,” Nok boomed once more.

After ten seconds of painful silence, a shudder came from the floating structure, shaking the crowd and the mechanical land below. A sound descended from the circular, planet-sized machine and down the spire until it finally reached the sacrifice. The bottom of the spire jutted only millimeters down into the hole in the sacrifice’s head, causing a blinding flash of blue light in every direction.

A high-pitched ring came from the altar, the light still too bright to see, until it dissipated and a glow of light began to flow back up the spire at rapid speed. The structure’s veins glowed, and all that was left of the sacrifice’s hull was an empty screen. With another shudder, the structure’s spire retracted back into itself and it rose high into the heavens until it was indistinguishable from any other star in the sky.

by Jayne Ogilvie-Russell

T i m e

by Rosa Kwon

I’d spend my days enamored by the succulent, swaying green paint of the tree I’d cherish the seconds till we’d part when the frail, meek figure peeled it off like dead skin

The resplendent orange ground was soon covered by its white, lustrous hair that stretched itself after deep, prolonged slumber

It knocks on the front door With my pace growing slower with each step, I begrudgingly welcome it

A single sentence departs from my lips “Who are you?”

As the question lands on its mind, its face contorts slyly “You came on time”

Next meeting, it comes plunging like a kitchen knife chopping down my room’s entrance

It holds out its hands for an offering I give it old clothing and electronics

It brings me vibrant palettes as gifts and I watch as it daubs my reality with novelty Shades of the past are erased for new colors

But I know the joy is momentary

Next it will come for my home, my friends, for me I know, because I’m there to greet it every time

by CatherineKang

Ongoing Plans

by Marley DeRienzo

Both of them try to respond in their own way, and I’m already ahead of them, scrambling to explain, like this is a test I’m trying so desperately to pass.

“Don’t worry! It’s got that college you wanted to go to right nearby. Fairfield, right? It’s so close you could take public transportation.” If Jamie wants evidence, then I’ll pull the map up and run it over with my finger, explaining the exact times the buses come and leave. I’d be willing to do so much more than that just to convince them, giving up valence electrons just for a bit of a bond. “I could even drive you if you wanted! Biking is also an option.”

At this point, I’ll stick my nervous hand under the table to keep it from being a distraction, and secretly I’ll hope that one of them will reach over and take it, like an inside joke. It’s hard to forget how natural it was to hold hands back when we were 14, in between laughter and smiles I’ve never forgotten. It’s not the sort of thing that comes easily with anyone else but them.

And then Nick will make that face where he’s thinking hard about something. It scares me every time because it looks so solemn and angry. It makes sense that he’d be angry at me, because I’ve been waiting for him and Jamie to abandon me ever since we became friends. I’d never do the same. I’ve been waiting for them for the past five years. Maybe more.

This will be the part where I space out and keep talking, filling out the plan in my head that’s been building since I was 13, perhaps even younger than that. And I’m desperately hoping that they remember the promises they made when I was sandwiched between them one rare moment in freshman year, talking of apartments and cats and community college.

secrets of the beehive

by Taylor Konditi

the secrets of the beehive are concealed within the honey it has borne, safe within the minuscule minds of tiny, pearly-winged gods. before you drown me in the color of a bronze leopard’s fur i want to know what happened. i want to know how you made that everlasting sweetness, how you made beauty from beauty, how you recycled it.

by Jackie Stoll

by Jennifer Li

Grocery

shopping in New York City is a pain. It means walking through streets packed with slow tourists to shove onto the pungent, crowded subway. It means the circulation of your fingers is cut off by either the handles of your own bags, or, in case you forgot them, the flimsy 50 cent paper bags whose handles are already slipping loose from their crinkly bodies. It means sometimes being fed up and calling a taxi home, spending an excessive amount of money for an awkward fifteen-minute car ride. Either way, it is not exactly the most enjoyable activity.

Yet, passing by an Asian supermarket chain while walking through the streets of the Upper West Side with my friends, the grocery store inexplicably caught my eye. Among the towering skyscrapers and flashing billboards, it was something familiar among the cold and imposing stone of the city. It was something that reminded me of home and the food that my mom cooked. The shop was easy to miss, sandwiched between the glinting windows and flashing LED lights of overpriced restaurants and coffee shops. The bustling street just outside of Columbia’s campus was full of anxious students and tearful parents saying goodbye to their children. I pulled my reluctant friends with me into the store. They no doubt thought that I would make them hold the shopping bags.

But, I did not go grocery shopping.

Instead, I walked the luminescent aisles aimlessly, my eyes taking in the shiny cans and gleaming fruit stacked neatly on crates. My pace slowed as I began to observe that most of the shoppers in the store were not Asian, and neither were a majority of the products.

At that moment, one of my friends tapped my shoulder.

“You know, this is actually the first time I’ve been to an Asian supermarket.”

I initially thought she was joking, mocking the whitewashed state of the store. Yet, as I turned to look at her and saw how she marveled at the store and its scattered assortment of Asian produce, I came to realize that this was her idea of an “Asian” market — hints and scarce remnants of a culture hidden behind Heinz and Kraft. Of course, she saw nothing wrong as she walked past her familiar brands. A sense of loathing for someone who could so easily walk into any store, or anywhere, really, and be greeted with familiarity

rose uncomfortably within me. Did she not realize that such familiarity was overbearing? Could she not see that it erased everything I was?

She didn’t.

She didn’t, and that was why there were so few Asians in a supposedly Asian market, chased away by the overwhelming amount of American brands. Waves of indignation crashed over me as I realized that I barely recognized what should have been a familiar store and that it would so willingly abandon its identity. Even more, I couldn’t stand that my friend believed that all of this was normal, expected.

And yet as I look back on it, I see that I was truly mad at myself. My internalized anger reached a pinnacle as I realized that looking at this supermarket felt like gazing into a mirror. I looked like this store, rebranding and editing myself to make my experience easier. I was a result of cultural erasure, both externally and internally.

Who was I, really?

It is a weird feeling when a store seems to understand your struggles more than your friends — that the inanimate shelves and wood panels were undergoing the same changes as you. Perhaps if the walls came to life, the store would carry the same self-loathing that I had. Perhaps the store hated what it had become out of necessity, just as I did.

But there it was, still standing.

The store still catered to its consumers. And as I continued to pace the aisles, I saw it still had an expansive variety of Asian produce sitting proudly on its shelves, almost as an act of defiance.

It was still an Asian supermarket, even as it yielded some of itself to its new identity, just as I am still Chinese and American.

And that was enough. It was enough to know that no matter what, I would never truly erase my identity. It was enough to know that no matter what, I would still be myself. Just as this store would never change its name no matter what it sold. It was just different parts of the same identity.

I stopped in the snack aisle next to a box of Welch’s Fruit Snacks. I picked up my favorite Chinese brand of cupped lychee fruit jelly instead.

FACETED by Angela Yang

Lamb of Mary

by Makda Bekele

I remember when you were really little. Your wool was very light, the bends in your limbs tinted with pink. They weren’t used to being used yet. You were also very cold, I think. We took your mother, and your father found another. Wrongfully so, had he been human. But he wasn’t human. He was a ram, and you were his baby. But he wasn’t next to you, keeping you warm. So I did.

I brought a blanket, as soft as your own wool. You stopped shaking, but I knew it couldn’t be enough. You lifted your head up at me. I saw your future, as it was the reality of many who came before you. We’d take care of you, taking your wool regularly. You’d be an adult by the time anything changed. Then, we’d make sure you had a baby before we used you for the last time. You shifted closer to me, and other way.

SYNTHESIS

by Zaynab Rashid

Lamb

I’m glad it was you who found me. I know the reality I could have faced. I’ve seen it. I lost my mother to it, brothers, sisters. It hurt,

But when I was with you, it didn’t feel like it. You made me feel strong and defiant, and I liked being yours. When you blinked or turned away, even for a moment, I hurt. I was beaten for not staying close to the herd. I was pushed and pulled in every direction. And though you argued against it, my wool was still shaven to my bare back. It hurt to be nicked and cut, but there were so many other sheep the cutters had to get to. I wasn’t special, though you made me feel it.

I wish you had been there that one day. You must have been sick. I don’t blame you in any way. I still wish you were there, though. I was separated from everyone else. Suddenly my limbs were tied together. I panicked. I kicked and bucked. I was taken to a red-stained tile room.

Then I heard it. It was abrupt, harsh, like the explosive cry of a dog. It was repetitive. Metal on metal, slashing against each other. I’ve heard this sound before, another life where I had brothers, sisters, and a mother. Before they were taken. It would be nice to see them, I thought. I would miss you of course. I was your little lamb, after all. But the love a child has for her family surpasses everything else. I’m grateful I felt that way. The sharpness of the blade didn’t feel all that harsh. The hurt in my heart didn’t feel all that heavy.

Obviously, I had regrets. I wish I had said goodbye. To the sun and the stars. To the moon and the sky. I wish I’d said goodbye to the grass that would make me feel warm again after my wool was taken. To the dog who kept us company when the shepherds couldn’t. I wish I’d said goodbye to you most of all, who made me feel safe and whole, even at my lowest. Selfishly, I wish you would miss me as much as I miss you.

Time Machine

by Jennifer Li Y

ou pulled your keys out of the ignition, shaky fingers grasping at your coat lying across the passenger seat.

Your eyes flitted to the scratched dashboard in your beat-up black sedan. The evidence of your college days of driving around too many drunk friends seemed to stare back, each slash on the faux leather feeling like a knife to your own skin, a knife made of the broken promises and unfulfilled hopes you left home with, made of the reserved gaze your mom had burned you with as you left, so different from the warm woman who had raised you. Strangers to each other, yet still tied with some imagined determination of family.

Your hands clutched the suede jacket, just as worn down as everything else you owned. Just as worn down as you.

Stepping out of your car and onto the polished stone driveway, you felt as if you never left. You were seven again, riding your pink Barbie bike with shiny streamers down the street, your worried mother running behind you with thin arms stretched out to grab you if your little body lost its balance, your dad watering the grass in your garden, roses and gardenias sweetening the hazy summer air.

But you were way past seven.

Yet the flowers were still in bloom, as if to tell you otherwise. The few feet to the door seemed like the hardest journey you would ever have to take. You looked down as you walked because the bright blue sky seemed to smother you. You counted the stones, noting where moss had grown in the cracks. You saw the chip you made when you were nine, convinced that underneath the stone would be treasure. You had come out of your front door that day, your father’s metal shovel in hand.

The stone gave way to fabric. Welcome.

The stick family of three you had drawn on the doormat was still proud, the black Sharpie from so long ago linking you together permanently. You gripped the doorknob, slowly opening the creaking mahogany that was so much more than just wood. It was the gateway to soccer practices and recitals. The barrier to your friends when you were grounded. It was a time machine. You almost didn’t want to step in it, letting the ghostly apparitions run through.

You didn’t want to disturb them.

But you walked back into your home anyway, holding your breath. Except it wasn’t your home anymore. Not really. Not as strangers roamed around inside, peering at furniture, gawking at your whole life and trying to figure out its worth.

The polished cherrywood floors your dad would mop every Saturday now had scuff marks, dirty footprints. Your parents never let you wear shoes in the house.

So you took yours off, placing your sneakers on the right side of the door, where your Converse used to sit. And you made your way to the estate agent.

GOODBYE PARADISE by Jisoo Hwang

by Andrea Yao

by Aileen Zhao

by Aileen Zhao

Whisper

by Makda Bekele

Apersonis never more than one step from injury, one step from a mistake. Some mistakes can’t be erased with a smile or an apology. Because an “I’m sorry” is for when you bump into someone, not when you become the cause of whispers that follow them in a hallway, or laughter that results from a comment they didn’t hear but knew was directed at them. And it’s so easy to make that mistake, become that person who slips remarks into people’s ears, letting them flow from your lips into sound waves feeding greedy listeners.

I wonder when it became so easy for you, parting your lips and preparing your tongue for lies, or maybe truths, that weren’t yours to tell. Letting those words fall out of your mouth and pool, forming little puddles, puddles that spilled into each other, making larger ones.

When did it become so easy?

You let your tongue clean the edge of your teeth when you spat venom.

Don’t judge a book by its cover. But people want to feast off the whispers they’ve been offered. Or maybe it’s not as sophisticated as that. Maybe it’s a single drop of blood in the middle of the ocean, as dark as the red-rimmed eyes and as fluid as the tears that fall from them. And we’re sharks. Hungry and tired of our own thoughts, so we’re dying to hear what the other has to say, regardless if it has to be said in cupped hands, or under bleachers, or with a faint glow coming from our phone from a late night Facetime call.

Don’t judge a book by its cover. But that’s all you are, all we are. We’re the pretense people have formed before they’ve even seen us, the image they’ve painted before we’ve even spoken.

Sometimes I wonder what I would be if I was me before anything else. If I could see you before I had heard or said or thought anything else. How long would it take for the covers of stereotypes and assumptions to become undone, and how cold would the air be when it finally touched us.

by Linnea Abt

Day after day after day

Long after the atomic bombs locked on And wiped the outside world away.

I’ll never know you’re gone.

I’ll watch over my little irradiated room

Long after the dust has settled.

Free of mind and body

And, frankly, quite alone in the world. Maybe then, I’ll be happy.

by Jiayin Zou

stone fruit

by Sophia Pandit

I’m going to grind my teeth down with a peach pit so my words trip over themselves.

Who’s to say that the earth will go bone dust shimmer if I do?

My lover burns you unconscious. She’s the chloroform rag branding blisters below noses. I tamed her with unripe flesh, kept her in the confines of what little joy the first taste gave.

God has us hanging in the orchards by our ankles and calls it tough love. Says the stink of old nectar on babygirl’s hands makes his stomach churn.

I wonder what he thinks of the sterile kisses she’s left on my lips.

by Jiaying Li

Distortion (An Ode to My Journal)

by Kate Burke

It’s frustrating being the person I am not Because somewhere along the way I became disconnected And as hard as I try, I always return to the blurriness Squinting at a map, knowing that I’ll never make out the words

It’s almost fine, usually something I can hide Until my tongue missteps and swipes across the razors of my teeth And jumbles splash from my mouth, much faster than blood would Then it becomes obvious that my body is doing something it shouldn’t

Which is why loose ideas fit better between gray guides Calculated placements can help me avoid the cuts An eraser for the wrong, and solitude to shield my tongue It has no part in this, and my hand is closer to my head anyways

Sometimes distortion persists, even in graphite words I’ll look into the back of a spoon rather than a mirror But I embrace my collection like they are polished silver Because in the convex imagine, at least everything is together

by Natalie Ng

by Libby Eick

by Vidya Suri

Midnight, liquid light Drips down from weeping stars, And fragments of lost memory Haunt paths worn into dust.

Twin dice, gilded Tumble from above, To fall amidst the pouring rain For the game of the world is relentless.

The hot sands shift Beneath your feet While the gleaming shore is claimed, And the wind may blow Your wishes far Across vast whitewashed skies. A dream world in flames, My empire tall My candle-lit towers So sedately fall A chalice is cracking A chasm gapes wide And all that is left Is the absence Of my tears. 38

Colophon

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