The Lantern Volume CII
Editors in Chief Mary Margaret Meehan ’11 Liz Scirica ’11
Poetry Editors Elena Unschuld ’11 Hannah Acheson-Field ’11 Hannah Meduna ’12 Jillian Verzino ’12
Art Editors Ji Won Park ’11 Kate Pielmeier ’11 Anna Dydzuhn ’11 Alexandra Pape ’12 Keelin Sweeney ’12
Advisors Bruce Coffin Sara Poskas
Photography Consultant Michael Gallagher
May 2011 Westover School Middlebury, Connecticut Cover photograph by Hannah Meduna 1
“Still grows the vivacious lilac a generation after the door and lintel and the sill are gone, unfolding its sweet-scented flowers each spring, to be plucked by the musing traveller; planted and tended once by children’s hands, in front-yard plots---now standing by wall-sides in retired pastures, and giving place to new-rising forests;---the last of that strip, sole survivor of that family. Little did the dusky children think that the puny slip with its two eyes only, which they stuck in the ground in the shadow of the house and daily watered, would root itself so, and outlive them, and house itself in the rear that shaded it, and grown man’s garden and orchard, and tell their story faintly to the lone wanderer a half century after they had grown up and died---blossoming as fair, and smelling as sweet, as in that first spring. I mark its still tender, civil cheerful, lilac colors.” –Henry David Thoreau from Walden, Or Life in the Woods We dedicate the 2011 Lantern to Mr. Coffin who has a profound mark on Westover School (just as the flowering lilacs have a permanent influence on the place from which they first took root).
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L
anterns are a symbol of Westover. Every spring faculty and students participate in one of the oldest and most beautiful of the Westover traditions: the Lantern Ceremony. At dusk students used to join a procession that led through the countryside to Miss Hillard’s farm. If a student did indeed “belong” to Westover, her lantern was lit. If not, she was sent to the infirmary (so it was said by the old girls). Today it is through this mystical ceremony that the new students and faculty become true members of Westover. Their lanterns are lit during the ceremony as a symbol of their integration into the community. Every spring after the Lantern Ceremony, the Lantern magically appears in everyone’s mailbox. This magazine is a collection of the best student poems and the best pieces of student artwork of the year. It is essential that school customs be handed down from year to year and be full of significance. What is embodied in school tradition and incorporated in the ordered life of the school from season to season will communicate to the student body a continued experience from which that custom sprang. When that sentiment is sincere and true, the custom will be a channel through which the emotion will renew itself, deepening and enriching both the individual and the school. –Mary Robbins Hillard Head of School 1909-1932
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Poetry Forsythia Reach Family Gathering Beachcomber Late August Winter Morning Stare Miasto Postcard Sarah Driving Before Daybreak For Edda Westport River at Dusk Julie The Extension Nocturne Crying at a Funeral Sugar Snap Peas Sailor Tale of a Yuppie Thoughts of Falling Fires Autumn Kindling Peanuts and Crackerjacks Dark Terrace Chestnut Oak Leaves Andrea Postcard from Madison, Connecticut Frog Falling Chelsea Slowing Down Early June Nights
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Hannah Acheson-Field ’11 Jillian Verzino ’12 Jillian Verzino ’12 Mary Margaret Meehan ’11 Jillian Verzino ’12 Hayley Wolcott ’12 Hannah Meduna ’12 Hannah Acheson-Field ’11 Hannah Acheson-Field ’11 Elena Rose Unschuld ’11 Mary Margaret Meehan ’11 Allison Rogers ’12 Hannah Acheson-Field ’11 Katherine Lawlor ’12 Julianne Tournas ’12 Elena Rose Unschuld ’11 Mary Margaret Meehan ’11 Elena Rose Unschuld ’11 Annie Donovan ’11 Amy Whitehead ’11 Jillian Verzino ’12 Mary Margaret Meehan ’11 Katherine Lawlor ’12 Lillian Eden ’12 Mary Margaret Meehan ’11 Elena Rose Unschuld ’11 Alexandra Pape ’12 Bethany Simmonds ’12 Bethany Simmonds ’12 Hannah Meduna ’12 Jillian Verzino ’12 Hannah Meduna ’12
7 8 10 13 14 14 17 19 20 23 24 27 28 31 32 32 35 36 39 40 43 44 47 49 50 53 54 57 59 60 63 64
Artwork Drawings
Photographs Sol Ye ’11 Anna Davies ’11 Hannah Webster ’12 Dakota Corvalan ’12 Alexandra Pape ’12 Chesley McCarty ’12 Anna Davies ’11 Hannah Meduna ’12 Julie Grome ’11 Sam Araujo ’11 Anna Eggert ’12 Keelin Sweeney ’12 Genna DeSimone ’12 Hannah Meduna ’12 Jen Downes ’11
6 15 16 21 22 26 29 33 38 45 46 52 56 58 61
Ji Won Park ’11 Liz Scirica ’11 Kate Pielmeier ’11 Seung Won Han ’11 Alexis Zimmerman ’12 Jillian Verzino ’12 Andie Dahl ’14 Danny Smooke ’14 Hannah Hudson ’14
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All Lantern drawings by Ji Won Park ’11
9 11 30 34 41 42 48 51 65
Ceramics Emma Volovski ’12 Katie Solley ’13 Hannah Clark ’12 Sierra Blazer ’13
12 18 37 55
Paintings Michelle Park ’11 Liz Scirica ’11
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Sol Ye ’11 Digital Photograph
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FORSYTHIA And these forsythia, sullen, so weary When night starts to close their bright plumes That gather like snow geese, bending together To see their hearts, still somber from strength that drained When the petals grew old again and burst In yellow melting to pools of ruin. And it goes like this: had we waited in your garden, Ripening to twilight’s long breath, behind the dying elms For the moment before the sky flames, We would have seen the wisteria, threaded In trellis and vine and heavy with dew, Glisten as your sweet song reached The meadows where the willows Nod over riverbanks, slumbering downstream.
–Hannah Acheson-Field ’11
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REACH Have you ever met that child who knows nothing of the world but the chunk she’s standing on? The little girl who slips away because she would rather escape out your open back door and climb your warted oak to ride the swaying branches like the carousel in Watch Hill that you always loved as a kid? The one you would glide on atop a porcelain pony, one sweaty hand squeaking on the brass pole as you stretch to grab the teasing ring at every time around. And after you’d get off the ride, you’d wobble over to your mother’s leg and tug at her skirt, begging to return, in love with the wind whipping your knotted hair as you passed life around you and reached over and over again for what no one, not even your mother, could give you. —Jillian Verzino ’12
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Ji Won Park’11 Charcoal Drawing
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FAMILY GATHERING Grandpa leans to his left away from grandma. His wide-brimmed glasses scoot down and catch on the tip of his nose as he furrows his brow. Grandma folds her stiff arms, sharpens her elbows, and pouts across the table at Auntie Roe scowling back at her until she yelps and kicks Baker, our chocolate lab, under the table, who’s yearning to forget he’s tamed when Jacob lassos him, smacks his hind legs, and bobs like a jockey until his sister Chelsea jabs him in the ribs for the hell of it. That’s when my mother leans down to scream at her, hoping maybe to find a dropped spoon of sanity, and my father retreats out the back door to cool off, and I, three easily sneaked glasses of champagne later, am pointing to the coffee pot, laughing at myself reflected upside down.
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–Jillian Verzino ’12
Liz Scirica ’11 Pencil Drawing
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Emma Volovski ’12 Ceramic Mask
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BEACHCOMBER The anti-bacterial soap a nurse Requires for me to cross into your hospital room Foams on my hands like sea spume Ribboning across the beach, The bubbles marking the passage of a wave. In these sandy runnels, I see how the crest of each swell First strokes the pebbles, then flattens And races towards the sentinel dunes Until the sucking tide drags it back, But I can find no such timeless chronicle In your face’s furrows, Only rivulets and pools of shadow. Your chemo monitor bleats, And I hear a seagull shrilling, Plunging to the flotsam, Rising with a stubborn clam, And dropping the armored pith To shatter on crags like broken teeth above the surf. I wonder if I squeeze your cold hand hard enough, Will it be like the rock we watched at twilight Turn into a turtle and scuttle into the darkening sea? —Mary Margaret Meehan ’11
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LATE AUGUST Observe the quick night’s shadow on the sidewalk. Listen to late August’s crickets like organ grinders on a bridge over a brown river, their hats empty of coins, their monkeys chattering and screeching. Tattered maples tug and quiver as though to rein in the galloping winds and not give up all that they have left. Behind the gate, vagabonds refresh themselves on sweetened wine and warm their hands by a trash can’s flame, and the orphan deeply inhales wood smoke as she leans out her window to watch the man across the way standing on his balcony, wearing only a wool blanket as a cape while a bundled crowd huddles beneath and calls to him, telling him he’s not worth it.
–Jillian Verzino ’12
WINTER MORNING With each boreal gust, the window drums against the sill, its faint rhythm pulsing through the quiet house to wake the old man and make him lift his face from depths of pillow, reminding him once more that he ought to fix that faulty casement. For the thousandth time he rises, curses old age, and shuffles away to start the morning tea, listening, as he goes, to the soft thumping of the glazed pane, beyond which fog masks the morning sky that blazes but cannot break through, and he makes out a weary tree tottering under its wintry load, watches its shaky movements stir the plain horizon, its branches scrape against the grey. –Hayley Wolcott ’12 14
Anna Davies ’11 Silver Gelatin Print
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Hannah Webster ’12 Silver Gelatin Print
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STARE MIASTO POSTCARD You used to own this city. You’d read your simple British books on the overused benches, maybe glance up, examine the gurgling mermaid fountain and those pastel apartments— the ones where I said I would live and look out the third story windows at the hot jazz festivals that pepper August, ignoring the cockroaches and faulty plumbing and too thin walls you said I was sure to find. You’d sing—although I can’t imagine how— hoping to earn some extra change with your friends in the cobblestone streets, home of tourists and gypsy children and street vendors who sell cheese and wooden boxes from the mountains, then sit and smoke your Parliaments in the shadow of towering Zygmunt, his cross aloft, and envision a future beyond these brick walls. Now, late afternoon shadows sink across the square as I watch over a menu boasting “A Blikle” and order in my best Polish accent, thinking I fooled them, but you would know. I turn to all the things you’ve taught me: give American tourists my scornful attention when no one else “speak Eeeng-lish,” ignore the four-piece folk band on the corner of Chmielna and Nowy Swiat, even though yesterday I gave a two zloty piece to the cellist who kept me company under the Lody sign. Waiting on the bus bench, three clumsy girls flick their Bic lighters over and over, blaming an imaginary wind, just as you blame an imaginary past for all that you did not do. –Hannah Meduna ’12 17
Katie Solley ’13 Ceramics
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SARAH You told me that you really hate To be dressed like a baby doll. You do not look as if you’re eight, But you still say “come on y’all.” You hacked your bangs unevenly, But you could speak full sentences Surprisingly coherently. Before we gave you necklaces With pastel rings that you would gnaw, Big rolls of fat upon your arms Just like your cheeks squashed to your jaw, You’d moo when we passed Murphy’s Farms. I’ve heard that we were just alike: We never wanted to obey. You always were a little tyke, So don’t grow up too fast, okay? –Hannah Acheson-Field ’11
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DRIVING Whenever we travel together, The subtext of landscape and talk Is always the same—even years ago On that stretch of highway Just south of Boise: It was I counting mile markers And you changing those fuzzy Ramona tapes. At the 24-ft. buffalo, you held me up So I could be like the statue, But I only wanted to be as tall as you. And there it was—I always wondered If you were lonely, with just me And your twanged bluegrass music. Now it’s Thanksgiving, and you’re driving me home To Maine. After Augusta, we settle into NPR, And I put my feet on the dashboard To be warmed by the defrost During your story of that dog you shared With your old girlfriend When you lived in Chicago—before any of us. Then we both go quiet, And the wipers bat away a few snowflakes Gathering now, drifting across the lumber yard That’s closed down, so Turner is just Route 4 With a few blurred houses in distant light, And Round Pond, without its geese, flooding south now, Is muted again with its dead leaves and frozen muck Left over from autumn’s cold accumulation of days. Silence for us is the words we think together. —Hannah Acheson-Field ’11
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Dakota Corvalan ’12 Digital Photograph
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Alexandra Pape ’12 Silver Gelatin Print
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BEFORE DAYBREAK Out walking before daybreak, Before the wind shakes awake the slumbering trees And the morning stars pull their indigo dresses Over their bright bodies, Only the steam rises from storm drains, Like phantoms, and the headlights of cars Serve as small pools of frantic light Like the lanterns of a search party Out looking for someone Who wandered off in her sleep. She said she was seeking something She could never quite remember.
—Elena Rose Unschuld ’11
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FOR EDDA My son is drawing me a tulip, Coils of red waxen lines Like a bursting shell On a white page, And I’m in war-torn Holland With my Arnhem ballet teacher Trying to pinch what flesh was left on my arms And crying “Levez levez!” After the Nazis came, She ripped up her dead son’s uniform To cover the windows So from the barre I could no longer see The edelweiss, the snowy roses, Or the forget-me-nots We used to braid into our hair. She curled over the ivory piano keys And sent volleys of Mozart To strafe the dancers, And after the last potato had been unearthed, She gave us tulip bulbs So our arabesques would bloom like flowers. —Mary Margaret Meehan ’11
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Liz Scirica `11 Oil Painting
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Chesley McCarty ’12 Silver Gelatin Print
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WESTPORT RIVER AT DUSK Now that the din of the whirring motors has ceased, Steam rises from the smoky blue water, And when I close my eyes for a second or two, I imagine children splashing in that little pool with the pebbly bottom, Or the old man with his fishing pole Who has never missed a day on the river Or forgotten to accost me with that toothless grin. Two docks down from where I’m standing, A forlorn blue dinghy hovers in mist rising from the water As though trying to escape the clutches of this harbor Or hoping to venture out beyond these shoals Like a ghost of past voyages. My father calls after me to grab our oars When that cluster of dark clouds above us bursts, The rain finally freeing us for just a little while From the chains of the heat. As I look down the end of the pier And breathe in the smells Of rotting fish, salt water, and gasoline, I wonder what it would be like to float among these currents, Face turned up against the peach sky, arms outstretched With only the tide to keep me company, The long reaches winding themselves Into the grey, churning sea. Would they send me out into the Atlantic forever, Or would they wrap their grey arms around me, luring me back in To where I had stood a thousand times before, Waiting for the sun to rest her searing head Upon the waiting horizon? —Allison Rogers ’12
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JULIE Do you remember those dry nights in Jerusalem When we’d eat Nutella sandwiches On the steps with the green railing Where we’d spit bitter grape seeds And sing Simon and Garfunkel songs, Sprawled like starfish on sandy beach towels? Later, back in New York, We chuckled when the Mediterranean waiter Offered us the wine list at the little bistro Near that Turkish place you googled. With new, identical haircuts, We were more the same to each other than ever, And next to us, the lonely Italian grandmother with her bird-eyes Watched on through her half-empty wine glass As we talked about important trivialities: Soggy french fries, pink shirts, and the frozen yogurt man. And then you asked me if this is what life will be like: Escaping, only for a second, the fated pooling of days So we can spin moments into memories, Made tangible by those we love. —Hannah Acheson-Field ’11
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Anna Davies ’11 Silver Gelatin Print
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Katherine Pielmeier ’11 Mixed Media
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THE EXTENSION April, and the daffodils are swimming Across the fields again, the petals On their stamen, splashing in the puddles Beside raspberry bushes dipped in mist. At least something about their multiplying daily Reminds me of skipping school children With plastic jump ropes and lighter laughter, Scribbling with sidewalk chalk, Which is one of spring’s ways of doing its chores, Whatever those might be—plucking clouds from the sky And sending for budding tulips, the grass Tickling my ankle as I’m prancing through the courtyard, The raindrops that one by one begin to clean the window panes… All that is pushing blue jays out over the meadow Before the sunlight sweeps away the fog And under the rainbow the daffodils are swaying. —Katherine Lawlor ’12
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NOCTURNE On the beach that night We let the waves, crashing And drifting, trap our thoughts Into long memory, Then looked up out of this world And found two bright paths Beginning to grow apart As they made their own trails Towards the undiscovered, The lights navigating the blackness As though in hopes of finding their homes Among the constellations That triumph over nightfall.
—Julianne Tournas ’12
CRYING AT A FUNERAL Crying at a funeral is sometimes as hard as falling asleep on the floor of a tent under a withering elm, after trekking an untrodden slope all day with your injured friend leaning on your shoulders, while somewhere among the matted barberry bushes the single barn owl who has fled his roost in the church’s vaulted shadows screams at the invasive sun. —Elena Rose Unschuld ’11
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Hannah Meduna ’12 Digital Photograph
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Seung Won Han ’11 Mixed Media
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SUGAR SNAP PEAS I trust the sugar snap peas, Unlike the heirloom tomatoes, Those imposters too lowly for an orchard, Or the red onions hiding In the dirt, their leaves flaccid, Splayed like buried gnomes’ heads, Only their green hair springing Towards the apple tree’s boughs Laden with rain-slicked leaves. Or the zucchini, yellow belly Swelling over the ground Like some bulbous snake Creeping beneath wide furry leaves. No, the peas are dependable, Matronly almost, in this jungly mess, Stretching tendrils to comfort The pest-ridden pumpkin Or twining round the boisterous corn Who never hushes as the sun sets, Always whispering, with starch chafing Long into the night. Soil has settled under your fingernails And in the wrinkles of your fingers Darting in and out of the lavender Like swallows swooping in the twilight, And I wonder how many more Nights we will have like this, The August sunlight coating us Like sheets of honey And throwing the depths of your face Into chasms I cannot reach.
—Mary Margaret Meehan ’11
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SAILOR Still friend, your longing flourished When in autumn the stevedores made room In the gold of the fine ship’s stern, where you sang Your last notes. That was in the gathering dusk Where the tern’s cry from the empty wharf Goes out to all the wanderers but one. What is the secret you lent to the bitter winds That swarm around the quarterdeck And rip the billowing sails? Soon it will find its way through waking dreams And into prayers not yet begun, But only when the unleashed waters Twist over bleached coral Rationed to the wildest currents.
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–Elena Rose Unschuld ’11
Hannah Clark ’12 Ceramics
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Julie Grome ’12 Silver Gelatin Print
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TALE OF A YUPPIE That time of day arrives when in formation Commuters crowd the road and jackets are Tossed on the seat of every passenger car That brings breadwinners home. An affirmation Of the same old, same old humdrum life: Your wife has microwaved the store-bought chicken, Outside on bikes, your bratty children quicken Their pace to race you home, whereas the wife Next door is where you’re coming from – the norm On Tuesday evenings after business meetings, When you’ve both lain in sin. She dodges greetings From her husband, a man she’ll misinform When need be. All is fine in your routine: Two wives, two children, and a fowl cuisine.
—Anne Donovan ’11
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THOUGHTS ON FALLING (For T. R. Hummer) There is something to be said when he turns And smiles, looking as though it comes so easily But you understand that he is not seeing you, just Looking as he looks at everyone else, Not recognizing your eyes concentrated on him, but that is unimportant, You need only to be in his company while he faces the world, casually Pressing ahead with a subdued grin, one with a glow Of something unknown to you, something just Beyond your understanding so that it mystifies As it consumes, overwhelming you in its wake, And you are like that woman you read about whose car Collided with a tree so sharply that in an instant it crumpled, metal And bark chipping and spraying in a shower of glass, the woman, You picture, not seeing the twist in the road, looking instead To the pockmarked moon exposing the disappearing guardrails, And she forgets herself, lets her hands slip, blinks, and hovers, And when she touches back down, her body folds Like a child’s failed paper plane that flies and falls in an instant, Sinking into the shining grass, draped in the moon’s gauze, So when the ambulance pulls up, they find her, her eyes, Her body covered in the silver that transfixed her, not feeling The light but still marveling at its glow as it slips Behind the trees, leaving her there on her chase even as They prop her on a gurney and trundle her off, the medics Stunned into silence and pity—you look once again At his face and are lost to the world, even as He turns away to leave you to yourself, Riveted to the imprint left on your eyelids, ready to chase The company of one who will have you if you can keep up.
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—Amy Whitehead ’11
Alexis Zimmerman ’12 Mixed Media
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Jillian Verzino ’12 Mixed Media
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FIRES The night we met, you were higher than a kite, or so you tell me, and that must have worked to my advantage, adolescent as I was in my frayed denim shorts and that ratty middle school t-shirt my mother always tells me to throw out. I still wear it. You were so easy just to stare at that I wasn’t even embarrassed when you caught me and smiled, sinking me deep into the lawn chair, the light of the fire between us, the thick smoke quickening my breath and stinging my eyes when the wind changed directions. But that glow! My God, it was a sweet glaze over smoldering embers, popping, snapping, and floating onto my skin, sinking in over time like a concentrated ink, the ghost of you haunting my mansion mind.
–Jillian Verzino ’12
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AUTUMN KINDLING It’s only September second, And you insist on kindling a fire Although the birch’s crown Just now commences its return to gold, And the mallards in the Aspetuck Paddle among butter yellow lilies. Like the monarch flexing his warm mosaic wings Or the old black barn cat shaking off her sultry stupor, Blinking in the brightness of the flame-tipped aspen, Here we are at the start of another year, Another winter, Hovering in autumn’s lightening days While fields of asters bloom Among August’s seeding sunflowers, And only the heavy, humid maple leaves Sigh to drift on the quickening wind.
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—Mary Margaret Meehan ’11
Sam Araujo ’11 Silver Gelatin Print
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Anna Eggert ’12 Digital Photograph
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PEANUTS AND CRACKERJACKS Before the days of Saved by the Bell re-runs, I would stand, fingertips curled Around the chain link fence, Nose poked through to the other side, Where you would catch line drives And throw curveballs to your buddies Who buzzed about how nice it must be To get with Suzie Dolan because “Her tight body and nice rack” Make for a good time. But you were better than that. Every day when I spoke to Travis Or Sunny or Bill, I’d look at you In your polyester baseball pants, Number seven across your back, Your gaze hidden beneath your cap As you watched your hit sail over the bleachers. And there I’d wait, in my catholic school girl uniform, For the baseball to stop at my foot, So I could climb from the dugout Into your field of dreams Where the throw to first seemed almost too easy— A scoop, rise, hesitation, and it was gone. I wanted to collide with you at second base, Breathless, take your flip from shortstop in a double-play, And then, when the signal’s on, Steal home and score together, My stride in perfect line with yours, Before I even knew the rules of the game.
—Katherine Lawlor ’12
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Andie Dahl ’14 Ink Drawing
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DARK TERRACE Still sitting, frightened of the fire, We, like the archer notching an arrow to his bow, Envision this greatness. The fine glass window Lacking reflected light is held tall by her hands. Wind in the stark trees hustles the leaves Along the terrace as the sun torches the western sky. Was some spirit leading us on, To drink our tankards of bitter liquid, to drown? See this dark moment as the undoing of the necromancers, And your craft will be to dine with the finest silver When the hours sent are beginning to sail. As you watch this veil descend upon us, You will hear her sing: now the fountain is running, And the water that she pours, it has been falling forever. —Lillian Eden ’12
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CHESTNUT OAK LEAVES (For Theodore Roethke) They trip across the path, Curled like old love letters, Rustling like taffeta skirts, Piling up, dead and fragrant, Crackling and overwhelming as an opera’s applause. Like drunken ballerinas Their stumbling pirouettes Sweep the husky grass To land on the lake’s glazed stage. And in November, The bare-toothed wind bays, Gnaws at branches, And wolfs down the lingering leaves. Driven down from its bastion of stone clouds The snow flees, wheeling and tumbling Like flocks of frantic ptarmigans. Such sprays of surging flakes! They shroud the fallen apples, And the bone white moonlight rushes from their crystals, Blinding. —Mary Margaret Meehan ’11
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Danny Smooke ’14 Pencil Drawing
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Keelin Sweeney ’12 Silver Gelatin Print
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ANDREA The time you rolled your pink striped shirt Up to your elbow and exposed Your arm lined red with all the hurt Of deep cuts not yet fully closed, I thought of just three years before, When we would make up plans of how To sneak into that vacant store Past crates placed there to disallow An entrance to our secret hold. With fingers locked we promised then That we would never grow as old As teens who only talk of men, Perfume, and shopping sprees ’til dawn, But would instead play in the pine And ice skate on the frozen lawn Until we turned one hundred nine. —Elena Rose Unshuld ’11
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POSTCARD FROM MADISON, CONNECTICUT Wish you were here, Maybe then some life would come Back into this empty house and onto the somber coast. The color of your mother’s homemade pink lemonade And the fanning petals of morning glories Have all been washed away From the blank white walls, no pictures to smile, No curtains to hide the dull sky, the grey sea. I remember dawn sleepily stretched over the cool sand Down to the barnacled rocks of the jetty Where in the blushing light crabs scattered into cracks As the heavy air tousled the breaking waves. I remember the time on this rotting porch When the neighbors hired a band to play. That funny little man, Bent his head to rest against the bout of a double bass And whispered to the guitarist After he looked our way. Smooth jazz, The tempo a drugged pulse beneath lulling notes As we rocked, eyes closed and cheeks pressed. Sometime during the night the fluttering checkered curtains Called us back out onto the porch where we leaned Into each other and watched the lighthouse Winking from across the sound. Tonight the moan of a foghorn keeps the patrol boats at bay, And the haze confuses the searching beacon; strange lights are out there on the water. Are they ships stranded on shoals, The lonely dock master of the abandoned boatyard, Or the lanterns of drifting fishermen, Waiting for a tug from the sighing sea?
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—Alexandra Pape ’12
Sierra Blazer ’13 Ceramics
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Genna DeSimone ’12 Digital Photograph
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FROG Your dull eyes blink, then your throat bubbles, The ripple of your plunge like a bull’s eye, And your deep vibrating croaks leading us Around the waving cattails and crowded pines Where my brother and I used to hunt you. We sank into the spongy grass, The cold water covering our feet With each step, and we scoured the lily pads and rocks, Legs splattered with mud and green nets held high, Filled with dead leaves from swooping at your burrowing. We plopped you into our cupped hands, Giggled at your slick body sliding, your legs kicking, Then went quiet as we felt your small heart beat.
—Bethany Simmonds ’12
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Hannah Meduna ’12 Digital Photograph
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FALLING March, and the snow floats Down to the dark pond still half locked in ice, Onto dead leaves and driveways, To be caught on tongues and mittens. It must be spewing from overburdened clouds, Or at least that is what my science teacher said, Though at first all you see is the dark sky, Speckled, a kind of bleak static In the way the world offers up its changes: The hunched hemlocks sweat off their icy coats, Light reaches the basement through the poplars, And the air is moistened by wet wood. Now the watery embankments slosh, And the world begins its grandest preparation As the winter mask falls With the trickling of rain down the gutters.
—Bethany Simmonds ’12
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CHELSEA The gypsies found their guitar strings muted, like when night would rain over them and jerk the minute hand around the clock, and they would laugh. Then with their halos the stars on wires would hide up above the roofs of verandas for a while. Is this the way they lend themselves to our world? When the glare of street lights and neon signs shades the sky like the steam that skates from pavement after a summer storm and the midnight movie crowd ambles toward their regular late cafe, the boy with the glitter hair watches car lights sail through the bars outside his window. —Hannah Meduna ’12
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Jen Downes ’11 Silver Gelatin Print
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Michelle Park ’11 Oil Painting
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SLOWING DOWN I dot the brush on the thick paint and face the box canvas on my easel, then, body stiff, breath held, lean forward and prick the light into my mother’s eye. Outside my room, the floor grumbles as she sweeps through the hallway, the straw laundry basket crunching between her hip and arm when the chunky, outdated house phone pressed between her ear and shoulder begins to fall. She bites her lips. I close them around her uneven teeth with dabs of mauve. Now, just beneath the cheekbone white, yellow, and magenta gather where the light fades; then, with a twitch of my thumb, I flush her complexion, crease her eyes with time, and fill the laugh lines that trail away from me beyond the doorway where life is all fast forward, though my hands are heavy, striving to grasp the face of a life that moves too quickly. —Jillian Verzino ’12
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EARLY JUNE NIGHTS Early June nights are a lonesome crew with empty expressions and glazed eyes moving on to the next terminal, never stopping and loitering the way I pause and wait for the cats in gaunt side streets to spread their shadows in the lamplight, for the glowing stub of Mr. Eighth Floor’s third cigarette, for the disappearance of the purple gray hue settling at the bottom of the sky, for the moon to be uncovered and show his cratered half face. The sky is a running man shuttling the stars with indifference as I watch the seven sisters rise from their eastward home, each leaving her daytime parlor to visit these undecided hours. They shake out their tresses into the dust of the world and gather up their petticoats to climb the crescent hill that waits for them and whisper their fables to the emptied widows’ walks and fall when the morning wraps the plumed reeds in her honeyed light. —Hannah Meduna ’12
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Hannah Hudson ’14 Pencil Drawing
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Poetry Awards The Lynn DeCaro Poetry Contest Second Place: Elena Rose Unshculd, “Before Daybreak” Third Place: Jillian Verzino, “Reach” Honorable Mentions: Mary Margaret Meehan, “Beachcomber” Bethany Simmonds, “Frogs”
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Art Awards Connecticut Scholastic Art Awards
Painting and Drawing Ji Won Park: Art Portfolio, Gold Key Award Michelle Park: Art Portfolio, Gold Key Hartford Art Scholarship Elizabeth Scirica: Painting, Gold Key Award Clara Keane: Drawing, Gold Key Award
Photography Anna Davies: Photography Portfolio, Gold Key Award Julie Grome: Photography Portfolio, Gold Key Award Alexandra Pape: Photography, Gold Key Award Anna Eggert: Photography, Silver Key Award Chesley McCarty: Photography, Honorable Mention Hannah Webster: Photography, Honorable Mention
Sculpture Aidan Novo: Sculpture, Honorable Mention National Scholastic Art Awards Elizabeth Scirica: Painting, Silver Key Award
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