Transitions

The Sketchbook — Fall 2013

Editors’ NotEs

I believe that humans are hardwired to be social creatures. We were made to form bonds with one another, and these bonds are the result of communication and shared experiences. This job has been such a pleasure because not only have I been able to learn about the more subtle points of you, my dear friends, but because I also got to transmit these messages to others. The Sketchbook brings me such joy because the creation and consumption of it is an innately human experience. Thank you for the privilege of being a co-editor.

Enjoy what follows. Take delight in the expression of your fellow humans.

Warm regards,

Nick Anderson

What is beautiful about being human is that we all see the world in different ways. Take this as an opportunity to see a glimpse of another person’s world. Breathe the air that they breathe, if only for a fleeting moment. Come in, don’t be shy, take your time to ex-plore the universe that’s been created for you here. Let it become your own, or change your own. Take it in. We are here. Welcome to the start of the rest of your life.

I’ll be with you on this journey.Sara Overstreet

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Zen Tangle

Real

Two Zebras

The Olifants River

Kenny Damiano

Argos: The Man with Many Eyes City Overlay

The Sea is Large

Learn Me from the Inside Out

Maria

A Father’s Concern

Illuminated Night

Dust to Dust

The Frustration

Expressions

Doubt

Vomit

Artifice

Light of Day

Happy Meal

Three Kings

Tate

City at Sunrise

Hovering Under Archways

Crying: A Eulogy

Smoke and Breath

Corey Marsh

Seb Pihan

Celia Megdal

Celia Megdal

Sidney Curry

Corey Marsh

Ernesto Renda

Max Genecov

Maya Manning

Dylan Felt

Nick Anderson

Alexandra Urban

Benjamin Barsky

Corey Marsh

Jessica Terry

Tyler Oleander

Ian Garrity

Sara Overstreet

Max Ladow

Eleni Mentekidou

Nicholas Morley

Rachel Wolf

Tonya Riley

Alexandra Urban

Max Ladow

Dylan Felt

Cover

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RealSeb Pihan

I see the world in drawings. I used to draw in the sand a lot as a boy.The sand gave so easily that I could draw a myriad of things.I drew our farm. I drew our family, everyone that I knew.But I didn’t have any wood to build a fence.Do I blame myself? Maybe a little.I suppose that’sNatural.Because I built no fence, the water came forEverything.It was subtle at first, each wave only smudged my drawingsA little. But I was still scared. I put so much into those drawings. They were so RealThey were as real to me as the car we came to the beach in.As real as my mother’s loving kisses. As the sand I had drawn them with, the sand in my shoes.I guess that’s why it was so devastating when one of my best drawings was wiped clean.I cried a whole lot, louder than I ever had beforeThen I never cried again.My other chunks would break off, Even when I thought they were out of the water’s reach.But I didn’t cry.I just made new ones down the beach a little waysIn the coarser sand.Not even when my best drawings were washed awayDid I feel any pain.I’m very adaptable, because everything is a fantasy to me.

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Two Zebras

The Olifants River

Celia Megdal | K’12

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Kenny Damiano. Springing into me a wheel of rain, off of shelled weeds, a pulse of the cam-ouflaged colossi heeling in mountain rain-on-stone. Desperate at the lakeshore, but they’d only watch. They almost only ever only watched. The Podark Main R. was murk throughout an earthy brown, and flowing slow, but cut up with the rain interrupted into a brilliant million trian-gle-shapes of gray and you could imagine it was all gray. In Angelo’s sensibilities it would be imagined to be gray.

Angelo would imagine something fantastic; he’d have the nickel-tinted pour off a slashed-out Saskatoon Neo-Urbane, littered with novelesque post-nuclear paraphernalia and Hollywood post-Soviet ruined sheetsteel bomb-outs. It is re-ally tragic the violence which destroyed Angelo’s body and finished the imagination. The river is not a toxic flow out of a corpse of a city.

Mr. Kenny Damiano. The rain’s ringing combat pins across the leaves of trees, a cherry tree, a ficus religiosa and a protruded granite roof on a forbidden sacristy of a hollow. There is a forested, exultant green smell, the-god-within of enthusiasm, the leaves spinning like the Red Baron or soaked Satan’s angels or impact comets whose ice-fires die out. Angelo is too gruesome to detail. The Big Thing’s moving, crackling in approximately a thousand branches. Over-whelming forces at the helm of the rain. The hull cupping me secretly vibrates in a high tone because of moving, the small beached-up vessel sliding minutely across the blackened hill the nose jammed in. I will not drop to the sandy embankment. In the food web, I am Kenny Damiano.

Kenny DamianoSidney Curry| K’10

Argos: The Manwith Many EyesCorey Marsh

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City OverlayErnesto Renda |RISD

The Sea is LargeMax Genecov | K’12

Tyler looks out over the flecked horizon and knows he knows but one thing: the sea is large. It emerges from gingham vagueness into waves and troughs and foamy peaks before melding entirely and re-minding the viewer that the sea itself is a particulate whole, full of drops and full of nothing. And it is large. That is most important. Tyler is cutting out small, intricate paper dolls at his craftsman stall along the entrance to the beach. He’s ready to lay them out on the paper landscape he made before, creating a beach scene intended to emulate everyone’s favorite beach scene memories in the hope that people will buy them to remind them of their favorite beach scene memories. They contain things that resemble people raising their arms in enjoy-ment in front of a sunset. He enjoys making these little pieces of what some might call folk art and what others might call cheap. Tyler moves the paper around the scissors so that half of his body contorts itself to accommodate them and the other half just goes cut, cut, cut. The collages are the only things that truly are his own. He has not sold many today.

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After he finishes the father in his latest piece, Tyler looks out on the beach to see the sights. Beautiful women flock to this beach around this time of day, attached to significant others or bounding off on their own time. He walks out from his stall, trusting his fellow salesmen that his wares will not be tampered with, and makes his shoeless way along the hot sand. Though the sand hurts his feet for a while before he finally gets to the wet part (always too late to save his toesies), he finds it necessary to put on an air of nonchalance, a word he has heard but does not know the meaning of, though he would totally be on board with it if and when he heard the definition. Normally our beach artist would sit on the sand and watch the beautiful women walk along the beach, letting them pass in and out of his view in their fashionable bathing suits, but today he feels like he would rather walk along the shore and let the surf tickle his feet as it goes in and out. He looks inland and sees a truly bodacious lady in a black swimsuit baking in the sun. She glistens like marble, seeming too compelling to exist until she turns over to let the sun worship her other side. She must be real, but Tyler cannot believe it. Where before there had been passive, irredeem-able appreciation for women on the beach, now a more active feeling creeps in and tugs. He turns his head away and walks away. His feet dig into the wet sand. Tyler rethinks his position. Surely there must be a more proper way to appreciate these ladies’ bods. Perhaps he could see them as part of the natural landscape of the beach. He turns around and walks past the swimsuit woman. He sees the yellow, particulate sand scuttle up, then suddenly go smooth and turn golden before changing again into an unearthly and powerful black-ness. His vision turns to a multifarious and fantastical array supporting and spreading out further from the gold and the black before returning to the yellow sand sprinkle its way along the great expanse. After this fancy dissolves from image to feeling, Tyler begins to hate himself again, seeing that he has translated this woman from person to nature, however glorious the nature might be. It was a transformation nonetheless that made her not herself. He walks away again, muddling his old footprints. Tyler then realizes that he must see her holistically, as a person and as all the roles she might fill, and engage her as all of those. Smiling, he returns to the swimsuit woman. She sits up, having noticed the unknown man pass her and look at her multiple times, evidently weirded out. He says hi. She picks up her towel and leaves. Tyler returns to his stall, slowly. He tries to get back to his paper and scissors. He can’t relate to the happy beach scenes that are everyone’s favorite beach scenes. Even strips cut from his own floral boardshorts and pasted onto the scenes cannot make him smile or remember the times before the thought too hard about ladies. He keeps cutting his shorts and pasting them onto beach scenes until the legs get shorter and shorter, shorter and shorter, and with the clip of the elastic waistband disappear into nonex-istence. Tyler is naked with several colorful collages in front and when he looks down, he sees his bronzed skin suddenly turn pale yellow below his midriff and then meld with the dull brown of the table and the red tablecloth atop it. Tyler picks up his table and materials, seeing himself as the nude artist he is and isn’t. He walks out a few feet, and rotates all of his belongings so he faces the ocean, the water seeming too blue and too light at once. People stop and stare at Tyler and his trunks-less trunk but he looks ahead. The waves are nothing. He is nothing. Humanity is nothing. The sea is nothing. It dissolves him. Yet he revels in the expanse, ex-pants.

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Learn Me from the Inside Out Maya Manning | K’11

Moments with Maria were infinite, the way dust sinks through sharp beams of light. They were the music made by the furious rush of blood in the ears, the impa-tience of trembling fingers pulling at flesh and cotton, plucking and stroking strings, every note as impassioned as a crescendo played on an old viola. They were beautiful dissonance to the monotony that froze when it reached Maria’s windowpanes. Her room stood still, impervious to the relentless urges of time. Of its own accord, the light fell away. There was nothing to see or be seen beyond the play of shadows and skin. In the depth of each endless second, where the definition of bodies fades and light reaches the soul, there was a gentle melody that fell like kisses from Maria’s lips. Layla listened to each note with the grace of a dancer who keeps time without thought. It was the breathlessness of the act, the urgency of wakeful dreaming. It was the consummation of fears and joys, the understanding of infinity in restless mo-ments where everything is small and sacred.

Maria, an excerpt from “Santiago” Dylan Felt | K’13

I am growing into youThe new patch on your mind that you don’t recognizeIt is one of my branchesI’ve grown out of my body and into yours This part of me, I do not recognize itI do not understand itIt is yoursYou have grown into me tooI am changedI reach into my skull and find you Change frightens meSo I seek solace in your branchesAnd they hold me close and I breathe and they grow deeper still We outgrow our own bodiesAnd reach into each other Touch me hold me learn from the inside outI promise to do the sameIn learning you I discover me 9

A Father’s ConcernNick Anderson| K’13

“He’s…from Ohio.” Donna looked down sheepishly, unable to meet her father’s flinty glare. Thomas Charles Teebagy, Sr., known by his friends as Tom Tee, glowered at his daughter, smoke coiling from the pipe that only came out during times of dire paternal deliberation. The clouds drifted up and framed Tom’s forbidding face, making him look like the Wizard of Oz’s great floating head. On an average day, Tom Tee was as unassuming and generous as the Wizard himself, but he wasn’t showing it today. After taking in a mouthful of smoke and letting it escape through his nostrils, he leaned forward and smacked his palm on the table, making Donna jump. “Young lady, what did I tell you about dating boys from Ohio? Did I not expressly forbid it? Your mother and I are not sacrificing so much to send you to that school so you could run off with some boy from Ohio!” Tom said the word Ohio like the way you or I might say “raccoon carcass.” “No, you didn’t, Dad!” Donna shot back, her voice equal parts frustration and pleading. “Why would you have said that? Besides, I’m keeping straight A’s as well as juggling three jobs! I’m pretty sure I can handle it!” “Young lady, I am the father and I have the final say!” It was very unlike Tom to play a parental trump card like that. He stared at his daughter for a few sparking moments, then Donna turned on her heel and stormed out of the kitchen. Jean Zahka-Teebagy, who had been standing behind her husband the entire time, slowly approached him and placed a hand on his shoulder. She felt his muscles tense momentarily, then relax under her gentle touch. “Tommy, why do you have to be so hard on her? Donna’s an articulate and patient girl. Something must be wrong if she runs away like that. What’s the matter with a boy from Ohio, anyway? Don’t you remember how we ended up married? Your family wanted you to marry Glad-ys Kazarian down the street. She was so pretty, Gladys was. Do you remember? The dimples, her bouncy ringlets, the perfectly straight teeth? She fancied you Tommy, even among all the other boys knocking down her door morning, noon, and night. And the money. You remember how rich Mr. Kazarian was. You could have had all that. But for whatever reason, you chose me, despite all the heckling my brothers gave you.” A melancholy smile overtook Jean’s face as her mind drifted back over thirty years. Thomas Charles Teebagy, Sr. set down his pipe, took his wife’s hand, leaned forward, and planted a kiss on her forehead. Upstairs, Donna buried her face in her pillow and fought back tears. She loved her father, and he had never made her cry. She didn’t want that to end today. But why did he have to be so stubborn and narrow-minded? What did he know about Ohio? The way Donna figured, she was staying on top of her life. Her grades were good, her bosses applauded her work ethic, and she had made a more diverse friend group that she’d ever had growing up in the suburbs of Boston. There was Iver, the charming surfer from Hawaii who planned to join the Marines after graduating. There was Angelos, the wealthy yet humble young man from Greece who hoped to inherit his father’s shipping business. There was Jen, a fast-talking, sarcastic-yet-lovable girl from Philly. And then there was Tim. When Donna had first met Tim, he was tossing a football to himself while waiting for his laundry to finish. She’d written him off immediately as a beefhead jock. However, as she spent more and more time with him, she realized he was more person than gorilla. He talked with his sisters on the phone for hours, laughing and swapping stories, never growing tired of their com-pany. He threw himself into his studies with impressive results, even managing to score better than

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Donna on the first Psych 101 midterm. He went to church on Sundays. Slowly but surely, Donna felt herself falling for Tim. He noticed and reciprocated. But now, her father was willing to ruin all that without even meeting him. It just didn’t seem fair. Donna heard a knock on the door. Without waiting for a response, the intruder entered. It was a young man with sloppy long hair, a black leather jacket, torn jeans stained with motor oil, and ancient, once-white sneakers. It was Thomas Charles Teebagy, Jr. He sat down next to his sister and put his arm around her. “What’s wrong, brat?” He asked, the old nickname causing Donna to smirk in spite of her-self. “Your first time home from college and your blubbering alone by yourself? Wicked lame, sis.”Donna explained to her older brother all that was going through her mind, outlining the struggle between the two important men in her life. Tommy listened intently all the way through, never interrupting. When Donna had finished, Tommy nodded knowingly. “Brat, this isn’t about Tim, or even about Ohio. This is about Dad. He’d hate Tim no matter where he came from, as long as it isn’t Arlington, Mass. Trust me, I know. You share a name with your old man long enough, you start gettin’ in his head a lil bit, I guess. You going off to college has been tough on him, ya know? His baby, leavin’ the nest an all. I guess he’s feeling old. He loves you, Don. Just like he loves Gail, and Glenn, and me. What makes you different is that you’re dating a boy from out of state. Dad’s worried you might end up marryin’ this guy and living in the middle of a cornfield, or wherever folks live in Ohio. You won’t be close, and that kills him. We’re his life’s work, and he wants to grow old with us near him. It’s a little smothery sometimes, I know, but his heart’s in the right place. I think you know that. Take it easy on him, will ya?” Donna nodded, sniffling. Her brother gave her a quick peck, then walked out of the room with his usual confident swagger. Tommy was right, of course. Donna had never seen her father act so stubbornly and without reason. She should have known better. Donna walked to the bathroom, splashed some cold water on her face, then walked downstairs to face her father again.

Illuminated NightAlexandra Urban | K’12

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I’ll let you in on a fantastic secret: the best method for preserving a dead person is to cover the body in dust before sending it away. Yes, really. No, it can’t actually preserve the physical body any-where near as well as modern chemicals…you’re thinking about this too much. Let me start over. Have you ever walked into an untouched room years after you and it have fallen out of love? You push the door open, reluctantly, as if to be polite to those residing within despite your knowledge of the room’s vacancy. Stepping within, surveying the scene without really seeing the props, an unmis-takable waft of acrid air will float into your nostrils as you attempt to take in oxygen. The elegant but unobtrusive light fixture will have been dead for at least 15 years, and you have no idea where the light switch is anyway. Pulling the window shade up, you can watch as the sun speeds through the glass then struggles to make its way to the floor, finding the fast route through the billions of particles of which the room’s haze is comprised. Now that there is an almost acceptable light level, you start to mill about the room, carefully tiptoeing between scattered artifacts to reach others which have caught your eye. An unopened Lego set awaits the day it will be used, the picture on its box emphasizing your failure to build it. Stacks of stuffed folders, once vividly colored but dulled by the passage of time, contain classwork you were either too proud or too lazy to trash. Disheveled book piles contain childhood favorites, classics you forced yourself to enjoy, wonky no-name authors you dove into on a whim, wonky no-name authors authors you received as gifts and promptly, permanently ignored, and many more types you could remember if you had the patience to continue. As you dig through your treasures, dust that you have wiped off instinctively, as less than an afterthought, has coated your palm, your fingertips, and your pants. This dust took care of your things while you were gone, piling itself on all surfaces as proof that they have not changed; this dust has preserved your room. Memories work in the same way as that old room. When someone smiles at you not with courtesy, but love; when you hear a note so beautiful its vibrations tease water from your eyes; when a toast is raised at a dinner party by one voice and thirty voices cry out in agreement and thirty arms fly upwards and the air is shimmering gold, you promise to yourself that you will remember that moment. And you do, but not the next day, not in a week, or a month; if you try too soon, at the wrong time, you’ll find yourself just barely failing to pull it off the tip of your brain. It’s when you brush off an old album, pull out an ancient party favor, unfold a forgotten letter, that you will pick up some of the dust, and as you stare at your palms the memories will flow as quickly as your tears, the sweet release of nos-talgia finally uncovered. So next time someone near and dear to you passes away, sprinkle a pinch of dust on them. It may seem disrespectful to others, but you will know that it’s a promise, not an insult. You likely won’t think of that person every day, or every week, or every month, but the memory of their life will be pre-served along with all of the other treasures in your room.

Dust to DustBenjamin Barsky | K’13

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A gleaming smile lit his face, lips pulled back like a cartoon character. “You’re coming tonight, aren’t you?” he asked Jonathan. I stood at the end of the hallway, my breath caught so firmly in my chest that the pressure of the air in my lungs was the only thing holding me upright. Any moment now I would deflate like a pricked balloon and collapse like a smashed cabin of Lincoln Logs. His jokes chorused down the hall, the echo of his voice lingering at each place it touched. His hand briefly brushed Jonathan’s arm, and my stomach sank into my toes and glued my feet to the ground with the heaviness of a stone statue. I remembered the first time we met. I was upset about something – I couldn’t even tell you what now – and he knew instantly. His eyes had that eerie effect of boring into your soul and gripping your emotions and your mind and all that was you. Nothing was a secret if you were subject to his eyes. Immediately he began his damage control routine. Everything was a joke, a pun, one more goofy adventure. His face was always warped into some caricature of an emotion, some ridiculous expression that found me giggling and spasming and turning a deep shade of beet red. He was always like that. He was so good at playing with my emotions as if they were Play-Doh. If he wanted me to be happy, my misery didn’t stand a chance. I adored him for it, and I wondered… It wasn’t long before I realized his exaggerated expressions were a cleverly deceptive mask. I had no art in re-vealing others’ hidden selves, but he was my project. My goal. My adventure. Day by day I chipped at his mask, at his goofy faces and ridiculous tongue. I peeled away his layers and found his heart and found something broken there, smoldering in ashes. I wanted to heal it, to fix it, to approach his inner self and give it the same smiles and jokes he gave others. I should have let it alone. He noticed me. His smile slid off his face and down into his boots, gone forever while his eyes were upon me. He moved toward me, his soles clanging against the floor in a way that jarred my heart’s sensibilities. Then he was next to me, his face locked in an expression I had never seen before. It was not goofy or silly. It was not a caricature. It said one simple thing. I do not love you anymore.

ExpressionsJessica Terry | K’11

The FrustrationCorey Marsh

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VomitIan Garrity | K’13

1 INT. LIVING ROOM A YOUNG WOMAN (mid-20s) sits on her couch eating Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food. It is rich, not good for her weight, and she is enjoying every sliver of it. Not in a way that shows she’s savoring the taste, but filling a hole in her stomach, her heart, her soul. She stares at the TV, watching The Bachelor. She is taking notes.

WE SEE the TV; it’s the final segment, where the girls are all lined up and the bachelor picks one to send home.

After he picks one and wishes her goodbye, she hears her doorbell ring violently.

She knows who it is, and goes to answer the door.

2 INT. DOORWAY She opens the door to find a YOUNG MAN (25, 26) leaning against the doorway. He is an absolute hot steaming mess. Dressed in casual club wear, it seems like every part where he could have something open is; four buttons down, pants buttoned open and barely staying on, his eyes dilated and red, his mouth gaping open. he is drunk, high, strung out, wired, tripping, rolling, everything. It’s been a long, rough night.

Is it not the ultimate tragedy,To be unsettled with one’s own soul?Gasping for air when there is none—As if caught in the vacu-um of space,Being constantly pulled towards nothingness.

With the striking of a torch, you illuminate the storiesWritten on the wall of your being. Acts void of substance written and rewritten, Clogging the space for which nothing can existBut substantial insignifi-cance.

Running fast, you retreat from the brightness. Plunging into an indiffer-ent crowd,You push yourself closer and closer to the middle.The escape feels safe but even more futile,And all is, again, thrust into the light of one’s own judgment.

DoubtTyler Olander | Phi

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YOUNG WOMAN What do you want? YOUNG MAN (slurred) I want. . . to come inside.

She glowers at him.

YOUNG WOMAN You know I don’t want you here.

Pause, a CONCERNED, REGRETFUL LOOK from the young woman, and NO RESPONSE from the young man, just drunk wobbling. She closes the door and locks it.

3 INT. LIVING ROOM She walks back to the couch and falls into it. She picks up her Phish Food, and continues eating. She finds that the woman from The Bachelor is still crying in the man’s arms, and just won’t let go. She hears the door unlock, and soon enough the man falls into the couch next to her.

YOUNG WOMAN You’re getting the couch dirty.

No response.

YOUNG WOMAN (CONT’D) I thought you gave me your key.

YOUNG MAN I made a copy.

YOUNG WOMAN Oh.

No response.

YOUNG WOMAN (CONT’D) You do realize that we still haven’t reached the deadline, right?

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YOUNG MAN (cutting her off) I had sex with five women tonight.

The young woman sighs in exasperation.

YOUNG WOMAN Why the hell are you here? You just come in here and-

YOUNG MAN They said that they loved me.

YOUNG WOMAN What do I care what they said to you? I want you to get the hell-

YOUNG MAN Your ice cream is starting to melt.

A pause. The young woman looks down, and does indeed notice that her Phish Food is melting. She curses to herself, and tries to scoop out the last good bits from the carton, but not much is left. While she is finishing her ice cream:

YOUNG MAN (CONT’D) I remember how much you hate it when your ice cream melts.

YOUNG WOMAN Yeah, thanks.

A pause. Young woman slowly eats the ice cream, not really paying attention to the young man’s presence. But the young man ain’t doing so good; he’s starting to lose it, slowly but surely. He is seizing up a little bit, but desperately trying to keep it down. The young woman scoops into her carton, and pulls out one really good bit of ice cream, the last one left.

YOUNG WOMAN You want some-

MEDIUM: Young man VOMITS all over the ice cream, the spoon, and the couch.

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4 INT. BATHROOM Young man HUNCHES OVER toilet, spewing out his last bits of alcohol-ridden vomit. Young woman stands over him, aloofly tending to him. He wretches a bit, and she passes a paper towel over to him. He takes it from her hands, tilts his head to the side and mops up his mouth. We see the profile of the young woman. She looks on sternly, but it is an odd, more subtle expression than that. She looks at him with compassionate disdain, frustrated care, an ugly love. A short pause. Lingering wide shot from outside, watching the pair together. Young man tries to GET UP, but he can’t do it. Young woman takes a deep breath, bends down and lifts the young man from the floor, as if he were a feather. She is very strong, and it looks like this may have happened before. They walk out of the bathroom, and into the darkened hallway.

5 INT. BEDROOM Aerial view of the couple on a bed. Only orange light from the window shade fills the room. Cars rush by, filling the sound with mobile and intermittent white noises of “swoosh.”

They lie far across each other on opposite edges of the bed. An occasional rustle of sheets and pajamas interrupts the long silence.

MEDIUM: Young man on his side, mumbling quietly but violently. He is yelling at someone in his dreams, but we can only hear his dreams in mumbles. An arm slowly slides over his chest, and he slowly becomes quiet.

YOUNG WOMAN (barely audible whispering) Why did you come back to me?

A pause, and no response. Only silence.Aerial once more. The young woman stays close for a while,squeezes the young man, and then slides onto her back. Shelooks up, and slowly closes her eyes.MEDIUM: Shot from young woman’s side, orange lightbacklights her profile and we only see the side of her face.One last sigh, lingering on their simultaneous breath.

CUT TO BLACK. END CREDITS. 17

Happily ever after. But not really. He eats lunch. He is tired. Don’t be shy with the garlic, dears. Eyes drooping close. Now is time. Do it now. No sharp knives. Fuck, think quickly. The rolling pin. Moves behind him. Grabs it tightly. Aims with care. All her force. She hits him. He waggers, falls. Head on plate. But now what? Start cooking it at around 170 degrees. He deserves more. The pineapple peeler. But only for a few minutes, ok? Never used before. It is sharp. She pushes it. Into his skin. Drags it slowly. His skin obeys. You want it crispy on the outside. Comes right off. There is blood. Red exquisite blood. Press the neck. It starts raining. Even more blood. You don’t want it to dry. Now his face. His smirk erased. His cheeks bare. His eyelids gone. Scoop the eyes. Now lower the temperature to maybe 150 degrees. Now move downwards. Where it hurts! First, the balls. They are disgusting. One, two, gone. Now the foreskin. Remember that this meat is very tender. The rest too. It will remain juicy cooked this way. Small juicy pieces. Of his carcass. Cook for fifteen to twenty five minutes. The meat grinder. Put them in. Depends on how you like your meat. Time for dinner. Maybe meat pie. Enjoy it hot with some red wine. This is how you cook a unicorn! For centuries, women have enjoyed the pleasures of cooking for their husbands and no one should ever take said pleasure away from them.

Happy MealEleni Mentekidou

ArtificeSara Overstreet | K’13

you are under my skin.a ribcage of incandescenceburning fire through bonebleached calamity—summer smiles,kindled nuance;a candlelit mistake

absorb quilled satisfactionsing dreary heatof whispering islandsdeserted, mistakenfor something moreprosperous, findingonly sunburnt sandwithering ivy veins

tattoo an x upon my shoulderwith teeth or gratitude;tell me I conceal treasureif you mustbut I will play the sun:inside this chestyou will find not gold, butred, and I incineratefrom the inside out

Light of DayMax Ladow | K’12

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The guy was at least six and a half feet, no joke. He had a baby-blue pleather jacket that looked straight out of Back to the Future, worn, tall-ankle Converses, a Yankees cap and a stare like a rabid dog. He downed a Guinness extra stout, one of the 21 oz’ers, then passed the empty bottle lazily from hand to hand over the slick surface of the bar. He looked like a carnie who had been through ‘Nam, or Iraq, or at least a really nasty crowd at the state country fair. Probably late forties, early fifties. You can never really tell after thirty, though.

It was a slow night at Shallow Waters so I introduced myself. Hey there stranger, name’s Fultree, Con-necticut journalist, local paper, have a column, etc. He laughed a little at the last part and asked if I wanted a story out of him. His eyes stayed fixed on the drinks behind the bar the whole time.

He seemed just the right amount of drunk so I said sure. In my line of work storytelling is a win-win game. Interviewee gets a load off their back, and I get material. Win-win.

“So, what have you got for me?” I took the stool next to him and motioned for him to sit. He did not.

He laid his empty bottle flat. He closed his eyes and his wrinkling brow made the shadows of the shitty bar lighting curl into his crevices. His voice crackled like a gramophone.

“Just got off a job, haven’t had time to think about it so may as well spew it to you. I’m a bail enforce-ment agent, have been for four years now--”

“A bounty hunter?”

“That’s the colloquial, yeah.”

“Damn. What brought you to that?”

“Well, that’s a different story. I’m former Army. I went in to pay for college. Got to Sergeant lifting shit and filling out paperwork in Germany. Never saw combat, thankfully, but got the same treatment back here in the states as the ones that did.”

“Good? Bad?”

“It was oh-six, so bad. ”

“No family? Friends?”

His eyes dropped to my level. They were blue with twinges of orange at the edges of the pupils. “Do you want to hear the story I got or the one you want?”

I nodded and fixed my eyes on my Heine. “Sorry. Your story.”

There was clatter and shouting as the hockey-watching crowd in the corner celebrated a goal by the

Three KingsNicholas Morley| K’11

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Bruins. The bounty hunter turned to them with his eyebrows raised and sighed. He zipped up his jacket, stood up the empty Guinness bottle, and turned back to me.

“Mind if we go to church?”–He was driving me to some Congregationalist church outside of Hartford. He had an ‘86 Firebird, all angles and leather insides. I slunk low in the tall seats. His hands were tight and dry against the steering wheel as he talked at me, pausing only to kick the clutch and shift.

“So this woman, the defendant, she’d not been following any court orders. Her husband, the one with a GED, a job, and a car, got custody of their little boy, and she wasn’t having any of it. Started skulking around his apartment, threatening him over Facebook, taking shit from him at night, all sorts of stuff. And she said she’d get bail, insisted that none of these things were true to her attorneys, and kept on raid-ing her ex’s place. Thankfully he had the brains to buy a security camera and caught her in the act. So she says no, that ain’t me, swears up and down she’s not guilty and says she’ll get bail for the violation of the custody. But she doesn’t.

“That’s where I come in. They sent me to try and hunt her down. I staked out the ex’s place, waited for her to show up but she didn’t. Figured she was some kind of addict, so I talked to the undercovers around Hartford to try and find her. No one knew her around here. She must’ve been getting her stuff some-where else or someplace real janky, where even the undercovers wouldn’t go, so that was a no-go. Then I remembered she wouldn’t give an address, so I started talking to the homeless around town. They gave me a place.”

“Where was it?”

“Outskirts of Hartford, in the woods between some nice summer houses of rich kids that aren’t the type to play in the woods. She had a tent. I went in with a tazer and a pistol just in case.”

“Did you kill her?”

“Hell no. Rubber bullets.”

“Ah.”

“And she wasn’t there.” He was quiet for a moment. He let his neck slack. The headrest cupped the nape of his neck. “It was weird as shit, though. She had pictures of their wedding, all the pictures of their boy, maps and shit, taped up to the tentpole. The whole place smelt like piss and burnt spoons. She had been living there with a couple other women that didn’t like homeless life closer to the city center.” He shrugged. “I don’t blame them.”

“But where was she?”

“One girl wouldn’t talk. The other said she was waiting for the cops to go away from her ex’s place.”

As he said this, he shifted, and the leather of the steering wheel squealed under his clenching fist.–He didn’t talk again until we got to the church. It was a little place, but beautiful, and empty, lit only in

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the windows. Great, big, stained glass windows on each wall showing the story of Jesus – three kings, cruci-fixion, resurrection, then his – second coming, I guess? It looked like a PG version of the rapture where he just came back down and was chill with everyone and for some reason there were trumpets there, too. Nice and clean for the kids of the rich folks that lived in the little woodland mansions there.

The bounty hunter stared at the three kings side of the church. He said something about Christmas pag-eants but I didn’t quite catch it.

“So what happened?” I whispered the question, since he seemed pretty wrapped up in the windows.

He sniffed. “High-tailed it back to the apartment of the husband. He was dead, bled out. She tried to break his leg but cut the femoral artery and he bled out in the kitchen.”

“Christ. Why?”

“Something about insurance for injuries that he had got with his job. I don’t think she understood how that whole process worked.”

“But she was there?”

He nodded. “Sidled up between the fridge and the counter. She started swearing at me when I grabbed her arm. She started hitting me even before I could tell her her rights or who I was, so I tazed her.”

He took his big, dry hands out of his pockets and cupped them together. The slap of his palms echoed through the half-dark. “She laid there in the kitchen, and then the kid came out. He was three or four now, I forget. He was wearing a striped t-shirt and nothing else, something brown like chocolate or pudding all over his face. And he just stood there and looked at his mom, then at his dad, then at me.”

He looked at me. I didn’t know what to say. He continued.

“I called the cops because that sort of situation was out of my hands. I can only hope the boy’s somewhere better.”

“Jesus,” I said. It was the scariest story I’d heard all week, though that wasn’t too hard to do. Two accidental forest fires and a local woman’s knit-a-thon were my latest highlights. “So what about the church?”

“Hm?”

“Are you a religious man?”

“Oh, no, no.” He took a step back from the pews and started to walk to the exit. “I ain’t religious. I just – you know, back at the bar? All those guys laughing and such?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, a bar’s a social space. It’s no place to talk life, death, the big things in life. Spirituality. Now, a church.” He nodded to the stained glass windows. “It gets you thinking. It’s a place set up to respect those things, and the conversation of those sorts of things. It’s a monument to these big things we try to talk about and

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don’t get any closure with in real life, in that rush and horror of my job. But here, there’s a chance to sort everything out. There’s a chance that you can get some closure, closed away from all the hootin’ and hol-lering of the broken-up world outside those doors.”

I gulped and nodded. I looked at the stained glass window of the three kings and thought about that child’s life moving from home to home, the years of therapy he’d probably have to endure, about addiction and madness and getting what you want no matter what stands in your way, about death and its perma-nence, about prison cells and how many billions of dollars went into them, about the mother’s shaking, vomit-soaked nights of withdrawal to come in her cell, about the fact that my tax money would be going to buying her subpar cafeteria food and giving her another chance at life in a steel box where she’d get ripped, maybe quit, maybe not, maybe waste away, maybe hunger-strike, maybe go on to lead a gang or stay out of the limelight or somewhere in between, about the apartment to be cordoned off and given to some other low-income family stuck in the wrong part of Hartford that would maybe hear rumors that another family had been wholly shattered, maybe repeat the mistakes of the past or rise slightly above them –

Then how I could not change any of that. How many worlds away that was from me. I looked at the three kings walking to the north star through the desert. I would never run this story, but I wanted to, some-how, somewhere, to someone. Otherwise, who would tell it? Who would put this in a paper to be thought about? What kind of man is the one that avoids the poor of his society, after all? A normal one, I thought.

What kind of society is one that avoids its poor? The one we have, I thought. A normal one.

I sat in one of the pews, let out a breath.

The bounty hunter beckoned to me from the door out of the church, into the cold Connecticut winter night, his outline gray-blue on black. He was smiling. “I’m feeling better. C’mon. Let’s head back. I’ll even buy you a beer.”

TateRachel Wolf | Xi

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We walk as pure snows falls in soft, scintillating layers over the rusting iron. It’s a familiar dichotomy. For as long as the winter lasts, you know the rust will still be there when the snow melts. You say:I do not know how for 3,000 years we have woken up again and again in this cold. So much space left between our bodies. – tell me how after 3,000 years, this city still does not know itself? Why the snow ceaselessly scrubs and nothing is cleansed? The hard concrete still scares me. It’s so quiet. It feels like,Your tongue feels for the word, but it’s not there like so many words never are. You try to explain. It’s like…It’s like – the way these things connect and…hopefully...slowly... you will find the precise point where they converge.. Compacting and compacting until there’s one word, we think, that will say everything. Until all the con-nections that gave the word meaning have vanished and we are left with one. Better one word than many, because doesn’t a single word imply depth, understanding? Better words than silence, because isn’t silence nothing? It’s just one word we keep grasping for, are consumed by.

Say everything.Tell me nothing.It’s nothing.It is night. Even by local standards. Streets absent of the young lovers we always scoffed at, lurching drunks or raucous travelers. Even the neon moons have, one by one, flickered out, leaving behind only a weary afterglow that haunts these wide streets always.They say there is nothing good in this part of town at this hour, not even God. They have said that of every city before sunrise and it is sunrise we set out to see.A silence and then you find the word.A funeral.I nod my head. The quiet from my lips, I am used to now. Knowing I don’t know the words. Or maybe they don’t exist. Or, they are not as important as the cold seeping in my empty hand and the warmth from yours in the other that will soon fade to cold like it always does. So many things words have never touched. A hot tear cuts the frost pinching my faceA funeral.. I know if I trace the sinuous, inextricable path back between you and your word, our funerals are the same. We both dance around goodbye and funeral is the way our tongues have learned to do it, thinking so pre-cise, so poetic, we don’t have to say what we mean.Goodbye is a word we learn quickly. Surely more readily than funeral. But it is not the word you wanted to reach so quickly.There is no shame in this. Goodbye is the most dissonant word in every language. No matter what form it takes, no matter how long it signifies, it stumbles off the tongue uncomfortably, like a promise you made despite better intentions. Goodbye might be the one word where the meaning, the connections never really fade.Goodbye might be the one word where I wish they would.

City at SunriseTonya Riley | K’12

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A tree of metal locks stands alone in the center of the bridge, its spiraling iron towering, growing heavy with promises for as long as there have been two to promise. Because what is a promise but a word for lock? Even the rusted promises hang on under the weight of the ice and soot, ominously towering over us, cast-ing their shadows long into the night.It’s the only tree that still grows. Is it the rusting locks that have held on to the promises the longest or are they nothing but words?

I don’t know. In over three thousand years I have never locked myself to anything.Promise is a goodbye too.It is not the word you want to reach so quickly.We don’t say it. There is no shame in this.

Goodbyes break like locks.Time languishes, but from this bridge all stretches out before us – the concrete ruins and glass towers, palaces and temples still glinting gold long past use... You wonder why this city still doesn’t know itself and maybe it’s because it’s scared of looking back at who it was, a reflection that will always haunt this river at night. I can see why they fear this part of town. I used to fear the reflection too.Our cold breath hangs between us, the type of silence words can never fill. It is nights as cold as this we joke about picking up smoking, but never do. You would think after 3,000 years I’d stop caring about such small poisons.Old habits are hard to breakOnce, this silence too would have scared me. There was a time when,I thought empty breath was smog, silence the most lethal poison. Words, even those I did not mean, were the antidote*.

After 3,000 years slowly you begin to see that it was never the words that meant much of anything. Words you searched so long for are lost so quickly. It paralyzes at first, but gradually nothing becomes the easiest thing to live with. You slowly realize how much your tongue never understood. That there has always been so much the words could never understand the way silence can, so many things they could not grasp the way our hands and hearts do.There never was one word.

We watch water ripple under the bridge. You pitch worthless coins into the world’s darkest wishing well. No sound but the water’s sighs. For the first time in so many centuries, I begin to feel the silence drown again. Why was it decided I would return to the words? I try to remember and it’s like... it’s like...the way all these things connect it’s like, it’s like. There’s a word. I will know it soon. All those words I have lost, I will find, but that is not what scares me. The words do not matter. It is why I ever needed them, the ghosts I will find in their shadows*Side effects: the century-spanning guilt of you never knowing that I simply didn’t. I try to remember and it’s like... it’s like...the way all these things connect.It is like that in spending this waking night with you I am spared from again waking to the fact it is not you I dream of, night after night, the gap between our bodies widening as we sleep. This, our one dream, that 3,000 more years from now I will use for flannel when the words can no longer shroud.Your flannel was warm in the cold theater and your breath smelled of barley and honey.The word dream makes the sunrise crack in my stomach. I remember it is a word I used to know well.

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Tell me everything.Say nothing.Even if it takes 3,000 years, slowly, we learn. Even if the sunrise looks the same, infinitesimally, we are changing. Maybe that is why we wake up again and again, never knowing if the spaces will still be there or why the city is so dirty. Because we know.

Even in this part in town, the sunrise breaks eventually.There was never one word.There is no shame in this.

Hovering Under ArchwaysAlexandra Urban | K’12

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I am crying years of joyInto an emptinessInto shells so fluidThey stream when I emote

Each side of the yearBottled in semi-hourglassContours of my tearsThese drops that smear that burnAre churned into aqua vitae

I see Peering through the lazy body of my yearsInfant soldier insectsCrawl crawl crawlWith watery eyesAll the way to the separated fingersOn the ceiling of the chapel, they begOn their thousand-kneesFor reason for valor for season for valueFor one more kiss on the cheek

Crying:A EulogyMax Ladow | K’12

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When the earthquake struck Santiago on February 27th, 2010, Layla was on the third floor balcony of María’s apartment building, smoking. Looking down through narrow streets, the round red tiled rooftops and bulging green dumpsters began to blur. In breath, there were echoes of María’s sweat. In smoke, the shapes of Miguel’s

calves; intertwined in the respiration of the cigarette as in the beats of Layla’s heart. Legs tensed, the last cigarette growing smaller, red ash winking, calling. A playful urgency. The bitter taste of the filter came, and the butt fell

from smoke-stained lips. Eyes closed to the world, Layla felt, for only a moment, the peace that came with simple existence.

It was enough.

A laugh escaped her curling lips, a single broken note. It was not alone. One by one each fell from Layla’s chest, building together like a symphony from her broken music box. As she watched, they opened, bleeding into the stories she once drew, alone in her room at night, each breath and movement she would carve into the sky as

constellations. They blazed against the darkness; every moment that had led her here. Here, to this balcony, this laughter, this city. Like a pattern in the stars, a story for the greatest canvas, tumbling like a beam of light through

the blackness between substance, the meaningless infinity of James’ smile, the flash of electricity and concrete that tore apart with her, the city, with Santiago crumbling.

Propelled by the echoes of María’s sweat, by the shapes of Miguel’s calves, by the music in the flesh that lips re-membered, through smoke and breath and into the arms of the open air, an instant before the earthquake struck,

Layla flew.

And the city fell to dust.

So I wake for every mourning so earlyTo pray in the static dawnCast in the shadow of my yearsThe sun and moon awakeBarren and wincingTheir grog drippingOut of space out of sight out of mind

My years follow the moonshineTo the sewers to breed to waitFor the rubber death ofThis, my now gut-spilled rodent road-killEmpties out

The entrails of black tear glandSquished past the spartan socket,Soak spinIn the gooey-white blood and tarred earthLost in the twilight of layerUpon layer of skid mark soil

My moist stareCarves an epithetIn the hydrolizedDNA

Smoke and Breath, an excerpt from “Santiago” Dylan Felt | K’13

The Sketchbook is the literary magazine affiliated with St. Anthony Hall, Brown’s literary fraternity. It is a semi-annual publication that welcomes submissions

from all Brown students as well as members of any chapter of the Hall.

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