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magus
Mabus

Milton Academy presents
Magus Mabus
Winter 2010
Volume One

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words
Savannah Heat
Cripple
Stalker
Scarecrow
Th e Art of Drowning
I Know Why We No Longer Speak
Absent Without Leave
Cambio
Flimsy
Gorillas and Much More
In Budapest
Th e Hanging Tree
Buoys
Mulholland Drive
Absolution
Words Always Fail Me
Rust Belt
Romulus and Remus
Ars Poetica
War
Acupuncture
magus ~ 1 ~ mabus
Rebecca Deng (I)
Mallika Iyer (III)
Jack Mitchell (I)
E.J. Bennett (II)
Jaclyn Porfi lio (I)
Jessica Blau (III)
Sam Shleifer (I)
Charlotte Reed (I)
Nicole Acheampong (III)
Tina Cho (II)
Elias Dahger (I)
Catherine Parker (III)
Tina Cho (II)
Charlotte Reed (I)
Robin Chakrabarti (II)
Jaclyn Porfi lio (I)
Sam Shleifer (I)
Charlie Malone (I)
Jaclyn Porfi lio (I)
Xiaoyin Qiao (I)
Charlotte Reed (I)

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words
Untying
Eve’s Children
Craniotomy
High Tides
Samskyeti
Fift y Years
Th e Metro
I Don’t Have Nine Lives (Runaway)
Dissatisfi ed
Bang
Blueberry Picking
magus ~ 2 ~ mabus
Jaclyn Porfi lio (I)
Osaremen Okolo (III)
Hannah Grace (II)
Rebecca Deng (I)
Robin Chakrabarti (II)
Osaremen Okolo (III)
Tina Cho (II)
Mallika Iyer (III)
Jay Sharma (II)
Oliver Bok (III)
Elias Dahger (I)

Cover
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images
Stephanie Ng (II)
Max Bennett (II)
Carson Gaff ney (II)
Kate Couturier (II)
Erin Yang (II)
Ashley Bae (II)
McKean Tompkins (II)
Jay Sharma (II)
Jay Sharma (II)
Ashley Bae (II)
Ariana Lee (I)
Nicole Acheampong (III)
Genna deGroot (I)
Sage Warner (III)
Arielle Ticho (II)
Sage Warner (III)
Sara Pearce-Probst (III)
Ndea Hallett (I)
Shauna Yuan (II)
Michael Berke (I)
Danielle Cahoon (III)
magus ~ 3 ~ mabus

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images
Kirby Feagan (III)
Shannon Peters (III)
Isabella Frontado (I)
Rachel Black (I)
Tina Cho (II)
Sophie Janeway (II)
Andy Zhang (II)
Ndea Hallett (I)
Stephanie Ng (II)
Michaela Carey (II)
Ashley Bae (II)
Arielle Ticho (II)
magus ~ 4 ~ mabus

magus ~ 5 ~ mabus
Max Bennett

magus ~ 6 ~ mabus
Carson Gaff ney

Savannah Heat
By Rebecca Deng
we sit in mondays rain
the drops chase one another
to the ground fl y through
the porch screen soak my
eyelashes into clumps
georgia peaches fall and split
the aroma embedded in his skin
magus ~ 7 ~ mabus

Cripple
By Mallika Iyer
When
he drags himself to us across petal-littered gravel,
hardened yellow bits of milk crumbling in his mustache and
ash-fl ecked, fl y-feasted skin tinged a watery saff ron
from that morning’s prayer powders skimming down the gutters
ee calls home;
while he looks at me with eyes squinted over
from the fl ailing dust of passing cars, I look, too
at the city dirt collaged on his shirt,
his withering fl esh cushioned by a puddle of sewage,
before I lower my eyes to save him any
dignity and the coin drops in his palm.
as the auto horns bellow, wet laundry landing with
a thud when it slaps the cement by the river,
he crawls his way down the lane, a man
on all soot-painted fours with
a coin-clenching fi st and a pathway of
stately banyans twisting to the sky,
beckoning him forward.
Th en I wonder:
how many rupees, pennies
in a collection box at the Y,
can put the skip in your step, the jolt in your
walk?
magus ~ 8 ~ mabus

magus ~ 9 ~ mabus
Kate Couturier

magus ~ 10 ~ mabus
Erin Yang

Stalker
By Jack Mitchell
Her slender legs shaped like the smooth
wooden curve of a canoe paddle dappled
in sun.
Her breaths sounds the silent swoosh of an
owl as she sleeps, sleeps, unsuspecting
of me.
Shivering, disturbed by dreams, she pulls
sheet over body like the robe of a
goddess.
I rely on distance because I cannot bear the
ugly scar, the wart, the wrinkle on the brow
the anti-Michelangelo, the scratch on her
cool marble translucent skin—so pale.
Without warning she wakes and jerks,
rising to shut Venetian shades and block the
mean sun.
magus ~ 11 ~ mabus

Scarecrow
By E.J. Bennett
Today, the woman traveled
the town, past homes pinned shut,
lawnmowers still
perched in the yards.
Screens stapled over windows
why-ing into the wind.
Th e woman drove to the grocery, testing the weight of a can
in her hand. Hearing the
chigga-chigga-chigga
as it spooled to the back of the cart.
Th e woman surrendered to the car
then the street, then the house.
Hoisting paper bags upon her hips, she entered the kitchen
where the man leaned into the table.
(Aft er her wedding, a bride fl ung a fi stful of rice
over her left shoulder, seed scattering
in soil. Grandmother bowed
collecting her luck grain by grain
to boil for the family.)
When the soup began to simmer,
hiss behind microwave walls,
the woman cupped the can like a candle
then watched the broth tip and spill into bowls.
magus ~ 12 ~ mabus

magus ~ 13 ~ mabus
Ashley Bae

magus ~ 14 ~ mabus
McKean Tompkins

Th e Art of Drowning
By Jaclyn Porfi lio
My cartoons swallow the heat,
absorb a bit of the spills.
I can conjure a laugh, secure a smile
swing from the White Star Line,
fi nd love at the bottom of the bottle.
He used to fall through my drawings,
lie crumpled in the waste bin.
I wish I knew how to keep him
inside my pen, removed from air,
his neck within my fi ngers. Or
I wish I knew how to draw him.
Th e ship slides in, I’m told,
and then it’s fl icked to full.
I wish that’s how it worked
with him, his outline black
on white hid beneath the pages.
magus ~ 15 ~ mabus

At some point he left me, the wreck,
because women and children go fi rst.
I let the clink of the ice, the rush
of the Johnny Walker Blue
ease me down, be my violins.
I wanted a ship in a bottle.
I can break apart,
wait at Mistaken Point,
sloshing in my drawings.
Life looks good in boxes,
when I form it without thinking.
He twisted what I gave him,
became a “mad man.”
I live for the lines of the ship,
tucked within their glass,
the sail, the mast, the rush, the clink.
My son was enough of a thrill.
magus ~ 16 ~ mabus

Jay Sharma
magus ~ 17 ~ mabus

magus ~ 18 ~ mabus
Jay Sharma

I Remember Why We No Longer Speak
By Jessica Blau
On a Th ursday at dinner
you told me I wasn’t quite good
enough yet.
I didn’t hate you then.
But were you to be choking
on a piece of my broccoli
I would pretend
not to know the Heimlich
until the very last second.
magus ~ 19 ~ mabus

magus ~ 20 ~ mabus
Ashley Bae

magus ~ 21 ~ mabus
Ariana Lee

magus ~ 22 ~ mabus
Nicole Acheampong

Absent Without Leave
By Sam Shleifer
Before the blonde horseman rode into our village,
Megan fi xed me scones
London sent him North,
to fi nd expired uniforms
before business hours.
Monday at 9, I gutted her husky.
Th e pancreas popped methane,
smelled wetter than licking
or trading a trench at Verdon
for a French jew’s tulip wagon.
Th e third month of toast,
I burlapped the vestiges,
sulfur rottings prickling
like nerve gas.
Ever valiant master trailing,
I tied my sack to his mount.
Megan didn’t recognize the scent.
magus ~ 23 ~ mabus

magus ~ 24 ~ mabus
Genna deGroot

Cambio
By Charlotte Reed
Who would have imagined
that the Mexican girl on Pico,
with the blue-black hair like crows’ feathers,
and skin like cooked meat,
would be selling fl ores
on a Sunday aft ernoon?
Who would have imagined
that the Mexican girl on Pico,
in the green and white dress,
with the eyes like bent spoons,
would be lying facedown in the street
on a Sunday aft ernoon?
magus ~ 25 ~ mabus

Flimsy
By Nicole Acheampong
Shift ing with the wind,
thin stem precariously
balanced within dirt—
A fl ick to your stem
would break you the same as one
fi erce stamp to your head.
magus ~ 26 ~ mabus

magus ~ 27 ~ mabus
Sage Warner

magus ~ 28 ~ mabus
Arielle Ticho

Gorillas and Much More
By Tina Cho
“Aft er this, are we going to the zoo?” she asks, her hand dipped in the pool as her brother cranks
up the garden hose.
“No, your friends are coming soon.” He points at the piñata. “You’re going to crack that thing
open and all the candy’s going to fall out and your friends are going to scream their heads off .”
“I don’t want them to scream at my party.”
“It’s a scream of delight. You get to watch them drop to the ground and rake through the candy
like they’re crazy.”
Caddie takes her hand out of the water and walks toward the plastic table set with brownies,
cream puff s, a pitcher of milk, and her favorite cake, red velvet with vanilla ruffl es. She looks down
at her dress.
“Do you have your new swimsuit on under that, Caddie?” he asks.
She answers no.
“Why not?”
“I like my old one better.”
“What?” He sounds harsher than he has intended. “Do you have any idea how long I had to
walk around the mall by myself to fi nd that bikini? Do you think a junior in high school likes buying
training bras? If it wasn’t for Mom, I would’ve tied that eye mask around you and shoved your face
down the pool half an hour ago. Besides, I bet all your friends have passed that one-piece stage.”
“Why don’t you go put it on?” She plops onto one of the chairs.
“Caddie, why are you shitting on your own party?”
“I don’t want a party. I don’t like my friends.” She pauses. “But don’t tell me that I should pretend
to like them, because I know your scheme. You just want to leave me and go off with Anna.”
“Anna moved to fucking Texas,” he says, squinting at the sun, “you know that. But I guess your
only friend is that girl from church, the fat, metal-teethed virg—”
Caddie picks up a cream puff and crushes it in her palm. Th e white cream oozes down her
wrist. “You think this is not a big deal. You think this is funny. But I know your secret. You actually
like taping ‘Caddie’s ninth birthday’ kind of crap. Mom asked you to order my cake but you couldn’t
resist, you had to bake it.” She looks at the brownies, the piñata, her brother. “You like doing this,
don’t you?” He searches for a good comeback but fi nds none. She walks toward him and washes her
magus ~ 29 ~ mabus

hand from the tip of the rubber hose. Th e cream puff from her wrist drops by his feet and clings to
the grass. She reaches over and turns the tap until the water droops from the hose and shuts off . “Are
you looking for an excuse? I have one. Just say you like watching my nine-year-old friends splash
around in their bikinis. Admit it.”
He loses it. He chucks the hose at the ground. He walks to the table and grabs the baseball bat
from under one of the chairs. He runs to the piñata. He whacks the frilly animal.
“You know what, Caddie? I hope you heard yourself just now because you talk just like me.
And you know what I’m doing now? I’m resolving this situation, baby. I’m gonna beat the shit out of
this fucking rainbow horse, and you’re going to cry and run into the house. But guess what, I’m going
back in there, too.” Th e horse’s cardboard throat cracks open. “You aren’t going anywhere. I can
chase you down as long as we both live in that house. And oh wait, you want to go to the zoo? We
are at the zoo. I am the fucking gorilla.”
Caddie breaks into tears and runs into the house. Her brother fi nishes the horse. Its body rests
on the freshly watered grass like a pile of skinned bunnies with metallic slivers of wrapped candy.
He puts the baseball bat down, puts his hands on his waist, and looks around. In front of the fences
a zebra by the tree rubs the side of its grimy face against the rough bark. He sighs and returns to the
house.
magus ~ 30 ~ mabus

magus ~ 31 ~ mabus
Sage Warner

magus ~ 32 ~ mabus
Sara Pearce-Probst

In Budapest
By Elias Dahger
Hungary: Toxic red sludge has reached the Danube
-Headline for an Associated Press article by Pablo Garondi, October 7th, 2010
For the one who knows this is hers.
In Budapest, that River
runs with the blood
of lovers and haters,
of war-wagers and the desperate
lights, castles, cathedrals,
and the thorny shadows of long-abandoned barracks.
Th ese watery phantom-choirs
scintillate there,
in grotesque symphony
Once, we anointed her undulating skin
with foaming champagne
and sweet kisses
and the fi erce sweat,
the wax of those undying candles
shimmering like stars
among the crumbling statues
magus ~ 33 ~ mabus

Th ey stood sentinel
on the hills
watching us and yearning
yearning for death,
for fl esh
But now, my priestess,
my champagne-pourer,
my blushing serpent,
your scales have hardened.
even statues weep wax for you,
you unfeeling, you stony—
from your cold skin tears rebound
they fl ow acidic, staining
our once pure ablution
Oh champagne! Oh kisses!—
my double Eucharist:
you smolder in those icy waters,
you burn up and freeze in
deathly prison
And gypsy light-prisms shatter
under the thick weight
of medieval blood
magus ~ 34 ~ mabus

magus ~ 35 ~ mabus
Ndea Hallett

magus ~ 36 ~ mabus
Shauna Yuan

magus ~ 37 ~ mabus
Michael Berke

Th e Hanging Tree
By Catherine Parker
We hung a great wood swing
from ancient oak outside
Too small, you put me on your lap
to take me for a ride
You taught me as I grew
to swing all by myself
’til I could fl y up down up down
up down without your help
Th en you started sleeping late
never smiled or played
told me everything was great
not to be afraid
One day I went to swing
but you had beat me there
just swinging from that self-same oak
neck broke beyond repair
I tried to close my eyes
but bloated face remained
somehow it came as no surprise
to fi nd I’d gone insane
magus ~ 38 ~ mabus

magus ~ 39 ~ mabus
Danielle Cahoon

Buoys
By Tina Cho
Aaron was watching his father sleep when a bird swept in from the window. His father turned
in his bed, but the sound of the sheets was muffl ed by the twitching of the black feathers as the creature
settled onto the water pipe. Aaron was observing the neck of the bird turn when Mark muttered,
“You are a little late.”
Aaron apologized.
“Or early now, I guess. Th e sun woke me up,” Mark said. He motioned his son to prop up the
bed. Aaron arched his body over the old man and turned the handle counterclockwise until the bed
sat up at a right angle. “Was there an emergency?”
“Sort of.” A woman had fallen into a lake.
Mark smiled. “Well, you can tell me all about it while I take my bath.” Aaron closed the window
and fl icked on the television. He went to the bathroom, squat by the tap while his hand cut through
the column of hot water. From the sound of the water Aaron thought he heard his father hum to the
national anthem.
“Look,” Mark said, pointing at the screen. Aaron returned to his father’s bed. “It’s the lake. Th at
was years ago, wasn’t it? When we drove south for four hours for some lame water because your
mother got ideas in her head from some sailing magazine?”
“Th e boat was fun.”
“We shouldn’t have let you drive, you almost fl ipped us over. But you and your sister had a hard
time getting off in the end, didn’t you?” Aaron answered yes. “And your mother—where was she?”
“She was sitting next to you.”
“No, she was by the bank. I remember she was standing on that grass, waving her arms like
crazy. It was so windy, she was scared.” He paused. “When did she say that she’d visit?”
“Tomorrow,” Aaron answered. Mark turned back to the television. Th e weight seemed to be
leaving his body as his face dissolved into a blank stare. Aaron looked up to check on the bird. Th e
bat sat crumbled in the corner of the ceiling, fl inching.
“What are you looking at?” Mark asked. Mark never liked birds, detested their shrieks and redeyed
glares. Aaron hated being the only one to remember Mark explode then leak, so Aaron kept the
bird to himself. Instead, he swiveled his father’s legs around like a niece in a sundress and carried the
hairless body to the bathroom. Both men looked away as Aaron unbuttoned and slid the garment
magus ~ 40 ~ mabus

down his father’s back. Leg by leg he pulled down the sweat-stained bottoms. Neither of them spoke.
Holding his breath, Aaron stood still with Mark’s arms around his shoulders as Mark dipped his
knees into the water. For a moment, Aaron thought they were dancing.
“Look at me, I’m a peeled potato,” Mark chuckled, looking at his bare torso. “I thought it was
the disease, but I realized that there is no problem. It’s the age.”
“Th ere really is no problem.” Aaron answered quietly.
“Really? Ha, look at your hairline. I thought it was the recession, but you’re aging, too, just like
me.” Aaron watched Mark’s narrow feet swell in the water. “I remember you as a baby. Right aft er you
were born, though, I was pretty sure you weren’t my child. Your mother and I both had this thick,
black horsetail hair, and we thought you’d come out looking like Elvis.” He paused. “You know, that
day your mother and I fought so much I wished her dead. But we never fought, never again. I loved
her too much. Even when Cecilia came out with hair like yours, I said nothing.” He closed his eyes
and rubbed the balls of his hands down his cheeks, sunken and bruised as his dented buttocks. “We
should go back to the lake sometime.”
“When the water’s not too cold.”
“We can get that small boat again. Just you, me, your mother, and your sister. Soon it’ll be warm
enough so you can teach your mother how to swim.”
“Just you, me, and Cecilia.”
“I can steer the boat this time. I would let you, but remember the last time we went there, when
your mother was on the bank waving her arms like crazy, and you couldn’t stop—”
“You, me, and Cecilia is enough.” Aaron rested his head on the wall.
“Aaron,” Mark smiled, “it’s not embarrassing that you’re bad at driving.”
Aaron wrapped his hands around his face like a cornhusk. “Mom can’t be there.”
“I mean, look at you. You’re going to be a doctor. Th at’s enough.”
“I never drove that boat. You didn’t let me.”
“Why don’t you meet some of Cecilia’s friends?”
“You never let me drive. It was an accident, Dad. Mom didn’t know how to swim.”
Silence hit the water. Mark slowly lift ed his chin, letting his ears sink and his toes slit open the
surface. His fi ngers let go of the tub and he swelled along the green waves like a buoy.
Aaron left the bathroom and lied down on the crinkled sheets. He found the bird hunched over
on the water pipe. Aaron never liked birds, either. On the day when the wind knocked the ribcage
out of his father’s boat and his mother sank like an oilcloth, a fi eld of blackbirds had scattered into
magus ~ 41 ~ mabus

the sky like his mother’s hair when her body was returned home.
Th e creature’s eyes met Aaron’s, and the bird stretched, unfolding its limbs as if it had woken
up from a dream. Aaron watched as the bird tiptoed along the concrete pipe and plopped onto the
windowsill. He looked at his watch. It was time, and like the spark of a television fl icked on, Aaron
sensed Mark’s eyelids reopen.
“Aaron, is that you?” asked Mark.
Aaron answered yes.
“What time is it?”
He told his father the time.
“You’re late. An emergency?”
“Yes. An old man drowned,” Aaron said, as he watched the bird spring from its feet and fl y out
the window.
magus ~ 42 ~ mabus

magus ~ 43 ~ mabus
Kirby Feagan

magus ~ 44 ~ mabus
Shannon Peters

Mulholland Drive
By Charlotte Reed
“Th ere it is, take it.”
—William Mulholland
Marilyn Monroe is twenty miles long,
lying naked on her side.
She is the desert, golden earth
melting into the Pacifi c.
Her anklebones, stacked,
are cut by the river,
and those silvery shins
become thighs, sliding west
with sunsets till murky dawns.
You drive up her hipbone, the 101,
and boulevards below
are strings of stolen jewels.
Along her waistline, you’ll fi nd God
and Warren Beatty—
her breasts read Hollywood,
and underneath is the reservoir,
its sharkskin surface and barbed wire fences
gleaming in the glare of a dusty sun.
magus ~ 45 ~ mabus

At the nape of her neck,
the hillsides burn black,
and, in the distance,
the glint of downtown
is like knives sticking straight
up from dirt.
Her platinum locks are the sea,
her ivory face regal ruins,
her lips the slow curve that meets the bluff s:
she is rotting into the swell,
the swell of angels.
magus ~ 46 ~ mabus

magus ~ 47 ~ mabus
Isabella Frontado

Absolution
By Robin Chakrabarti
Lost in the current,
gushing
as the breath of a ghost.
I’m a swallowing fl ower,
sucking in the specks of black pollen.
Th is road has lost us.
Emotions have washed over the
memories written in the sand.
I will chase the words; I will follow the sounds;
though it won’t be found.
magus ~ 48 ~ mabus

magus ~ 49 ~ mabus
Rachel Black

Words Always Fail Me
By Jaclyn Porfi lio
“It’s the words that are supposed to do the dancing,”
he once told me.
And I pictured my rhythmic gymnasts
tangling themselves in ribbon as I talked,
planting batons in all the wrong places.
“You’re not the one who should be doing the work.”
And I saw my little soldiers,
holding tails and marching,
caught in a dynamic form of attention.
His army was stronger.
Th ey had cannons in their back pockets
and a battle cry I couldn’t pin down.
“No one needs to know you if they know your words.”
And I watched our executives crowd a conference room,
point at charts they didn’t create,
chuckle at jokes no one understood,
and refuse handshakes I willed them to embrace.
“Just write. Give yourself to the language.”
And I witnessed his security guards
knock mine into the hydrangeas,
back him out of our house, my house,
down to the street and the waiting car,
aft er dripping black ink on my doorstep.
magus ~ 50 ~ mabus

magus ~ 51 ~ mabus
Tina Cho

Rust Belt
By Sam Shleifer
Grumbling of chest pain
he sits at six thirty four,
pretending to pray.
Th ree bites deep
“the sweetest girl in Cleveland,”
Grandpa used to whisper,
sips something amber
and kisses the shoulder
of the Tinkerbelle costume
she pleaded to wear
at dinner,
eyes shining back like wet stones
that see mom crumple
Arbys’ wax paper, greasy
white like pigeon shit.
magus ~ 52 ~ mabus

Romulus and Remus
By Charlie Malone
Filthy with river water and vernix,
brothers bobbed away from a trembling man
of twenty-eight, for the fi rst time in his life
ignoring orders, unable to send those
plump round faces into the brown water
to meet Hades before their skin ever felt the sun.
Th eir mother, a doe-eyed virgin spoiled
and left underground to suff ocate, would never
know they had survived, and when she died
she thought of seeing them again, and so it was
willingly that she left that room where her fi ngernails
were still stuck in the walls.
But the boys lived.
Naked and squalling, they washed onto
a faraway shore where they lay, helpless and gasping,
dying as surely as if they’d needed the water
to breathe. A childless mother of a dirty
dog untouched by the gods’ unending rape
of mankind scooped them from the river bank,
licking nature’s grime from their half-god
bodies, and they grew with her, never knowing
there were other pale and hairless wolves
magus ~ 53 ~ mabus

just beyond the trees, never thinking themselves
the children of heroes or gods. Th ey taught
each other to talk, but never asked
why their mother never could.
Th e boys lived.
Th ey tumbled around the forest as their limbs
grew and in time they found they would prefer
to walk upright, their backs straight and their jaws
set. Th ey played human war and never knew the diff erence.
As all children do, they left their mother one day.
Th ey found a human city and the nameless, matted
she-wolf died above ground. She had no concept
of an aft erlife, only a warm beam of unseasonable
sun that buoyed her away from the only earth
she’d ever known. Her children, twice motherless,
became shepherds, discovered themselves heirs,
royalty, and learned how human men play war.
When he awoke to fi nd his brother missing,
taken into the hands of rival shepherds
he should never have been so cocky with,
the slimmer and the scrawnier tore off into the dawn,
shouting for his taller, handsomer brother,
and when his head had stopped pounding
he gathered every sympathetic man he saw
and charged to Amulius. He could never remember
magus ~ 54 ~ mabus

clearly how he came to free his brother,
but Romulus remembered Remus’s roar
of delighted shock, remembered their ragged
grip on the other’s shoulders as they refused
their grandfather’s crown and put an end
to the war games. Remus had lived.
A city was to be built.
Each brother selected a hill and waited,
unaware their gods were to make chess pieces
of them yet again, and when Romulus counted
double the vultures sent to circle Remus’s hilltop,
something broke between the brothers.
Th ey bickered, they brawled, and Romulus set
to building his city, to appease the gods and leave
behind the tense hours on the hilltops. Th e wolf
in Remus came out then, and he snarled at his brother,
growled at the workers, destroyed meaninglessly,
and when his twin asked why they could not
make a city together, Remus snapped his jaw
as if to bite, and the smaller and skinnier man
backed away. Th at night, Remus leapt over his brother’s
wall, and Romulus forgot all but his city,
and killed the traitor with whom he’d shared an
embryo, a womb, a river, a wolf, a fl ock, a war.
magus ~ 55 ~ mabus

Rome’s history had begun in blood,
Romulus on his knees, his brother’s heavy head
in his hands, trying to understand, to undo,
all that his new city, his supreme tribute to the gods
and to human glory, had seen. Rome had its fi rst
funeral, and Remus was buried with honor,
his brother’s back turned,
while eighteen vultures—twelve for Romulus,
six for Remus—watched from above,
too hungry and pure to comprehend how the
human boys lived.
magus ~ 56 ~ mabus

magus ~ 57 ~ mabus
Sophie Janeway

Ars Poetica
By Jaclyn Porfi lio
I have a silver carp in my back pocket,
carried close from China,
begging for a chance to craft its mark.
I have Momma giving the same slap
to the man with a name in the stars.
I have alliteration soft ening the blow
of the fi sh-shaped bruises
and the parodied Volans.
I have my potential predators,
the boat and the darkness,
the deep and the needle.
I have the truth
that top-feeding fi sh
are the only ones who smile.
I’m asking for your breath.
magus ~ 58 ~ mabus

War
By Xiaoyin Qiao
red vista
blue expanse
faces upward gazed and dazed
tangerine dirt
invades distant stretches
stains steel spirits
snapshot of a rousing sun under midnight
ascending shades to royal to cyan
mint paste chances pastel mist
fades lighter from midway up
dark dust and bittersweet salmon
meeting for the very fi rst time
cantaloupe
whiff s of musk
of rust and dry
hollows of terrain
rise toward the white of day
the frontier pushes high dunes low
and buff ers parched lungs below
with breaths of breadths of air above
red and blue fall in love
magus ~ 59 ~ mabus

magus ~ 60 ~ mabus
Andy Zhang

Acupuncture
By Charlotte Reed
You told me about herbs.
Ones made from honey, goji and ginseng,
bitter ones, ones that stuck
to the back of your throat even
aft er a glass of water.
I used to touch
your splintery, calloused hands
with the bumps on the tips of your fi ngers
from years of pressing too hard
on needles and guitar strings.
We hid under the blankets
of your bed, in the guest bedroom downstairs
that you never shared with her.
Underneath sheets, you held me
like a child, shadows in the half-light
catching gold in your green eyes,
and your hands grasped my thin wrists, whole:
I was the child.
magus ~ 61 ~ mabus

You told me stories.
We pretended, and you were the captain
of submarines in your bed.
We saw fi sh in the contours
and colors of the quilt we propped
up over our heads—drift ing,
sapphires and rubies
in our dark sea. Th ere,
the black played with your jaw,
and your beard was only
shadows. I knew you’d
warn me about sharks
in the distance.
Inside your offi ce on Sunset
that smelled like ginger
and hardwood fl oors,
there was the mannequin
in the window, painted white
with the blood-blue
and red veins stretched, spreading nerves,
like city streets, subway maps.
With your fi nger,
you traced the ones
that lead to the heart.
magus ~ 62 ~ mabus

Th en, I was too afraid
to try the needles. I imagined
safety pins, broken glass, thumbtacks.
You shook your head and frowned.
Th ey’re too thin to hurt you, you said.
Th ey don’t go deep enough.
I wondered how
a prick near the right nerve
could give a man the strength
to walk again. Or could suck
the cancer out of someone’s grandpa.
Or could stir the belly
of a tired woman, just enough
for a baby to grow.
I wondered how,
aft er years of your telling me
it would never happen,
it would never come to divorce,
the words still came, sinking out of her mouth,
landing on the fl oor.
I watched you bite
your cheeks.
magus ~ 63 ~ mabus

And, that day,
the moving truck still came,
fi lled with your guitars—
Gibsons she never made
room for, your rugs, your quilt,
your journals and Chinese Medicine books,
and your fragile, too-thin needles
that never pricked
deep enough.
magus ~ 64 ~ mabus

Untying
By Jaclyn Porfi lio
He hugs me taut,
wraps my pinky fi nger
to swear he’ll let me crumble
one misstep at a time
into the crown molding.
He kisses me pale,
frays my sleeve
to promise he’ll keep me whole
each day he braids me
into the threads.
He lets the oil drip into the basin
he’ll never fi ll with water
or stain. He sees the glass
ripple my face
from across the porch.
He cries himself
to war. I can
hum goodbye,
magus ~ 65 ~ mabus

wiggle my fi nger away,
swivel out my hair,
twist water
until it stacks in my palm.
I can stop time.
I can die.
He can live.
magus ~ 66 ~ mabus

magus ~ 67 ~ mabus
Ndea Hallett

Eve’s Children
By Osaremen Okolo
Still, we are watched,
from Occident to Orient,
in feudal villages
and bustling metropolises.
A mirage from inside out,
opaque has never been so clear.
An Earth built on soft curves
and delicate, intricate boundaries,
forgets its strength and soul.
World waiting for the glass ceiling to crack—
we’re already shattered.
See the shards sparkle mercilessly
in the feminine sun.
magus ~ 68 ~ mabus

magus ~ 69 ~ mabus
Stephanie Ng

Craniotomy
By Hannah Grace
I see them—blue caps like sterility,
needles wide as her pupils—holding razors
that grind their teeth. Wisps of blonde,
barely gravitational, kiss tile fl oor
and I try to remember where
I was when she was born, where
else there was to be before a daughter.
Th ick black lines draw in marker on her head
swelling with blood and car exhaust—I feel
my hands clenched over the steering wheel,
invisible fi shhooks tugging my eyelids.
Th ey push her past me and I imagine
scalpels and ten blades; they say
they’ll relieve the pressure building
deep in her brain. Fix her and maybe
part of me with titanium, or something
else I won’t be able to see. I try to remember
what they said, but her anesthesia
numbs my mind as lights overhead
expose brain the color of newborn skin.
magus ~ 70 ~ mabus

High Tides
By Rebecca Deng
two deep seas
rest in the belly of the basin
divided by a noble mountain
soft soil to dig toes in
on a well sculpted plain
he oft en times brings
inclement weather
upon us
the tides rise
my tears roll
my salty lips
dry quick and crack
in the summer sun
magus ~ 71 ~ mabus

Samskyeti
By Robin Chakrabarti
I’m out in the rain,
drowning in the sky’s weight—
awake in a relapse
and afraid of self-correction.
She has me locked in the twirl of her hair.
Her fi ngers,
gliding through brownsoaked rays of light,
arrest me.
In the dark, I have nothing left to do
but swim in memories of her psychedelic eyes.
magus ~ 72 ~ mabus

Fift y Years
By Osaremen Okolo
Okada motorbikes rumble down the path of red to black,
carrying lives, minds salivating for change.
Aft er arrival, out of fuel:
Restock and fi nally return?
Or crash a while, and burn?
Th e December sun fi ercely burning brown to black.
“Exotic, tropical locale” is just another Harmattan.
Red, red, litters the forgotten roads,
a haze of imperturbable dust enveloping, leaving its memory.
Pure, white cotton stained by this dirtying, burnt orange,
the blemish scrubbed away by knuckled fi sts over tired palms
until the garment fl ies against wavering, warping hemp – cleaned and baking.
Folktales heard under a sweet, warm moon,
enrapturing elders twisting tales from their prime;
the marvels of a night lit by candlelight.
magus ~ 73 ~ mabus

Turn around
to paved, tarred glory
glistening under the same December sun,
shadowed by a façade of manmade luster.
Cheating men in power proudly pound their lizarded loafers,
snatching Naira from the machete-wielding sugar cane farmer for
the second wife at home, waiting to whiten her skin.
Blood oil stains all this modernity, seeping,
covering lies, deceit, all incapability
in thick, black, grime.
Half century.
Perhaps it’s time to return, reconsider.
Or maybe,
we’ll wait for the next tomorrow.
Dare to leave the old for new?
magus ~ 74 ~ mabus

Th e Metro
By Tina Cho
Boy rips girl.
White light combs through
the gnarled roots of her heart
as her leather face irons
fl at like the patches of mice
at the blackened heels of the train,
sheets and sheets of red paper
strewn over her blessed, hard skull.
magus ~ 75 ~ mabus

magus ~ 76 ~ mabus
Michaela Carey

magus ~ 77 ~ mabus
Ashley Bae

I Don’t Have Nine Lives (Runaway)
By Mallika Iyer
One night I dreamt the world, whole world
was at my window. It smelt like liberation;
the puddles called to me like a teasing playmate,
the leaves lift ed me to the sky and sang that
they’d never know I was gone.
Th e moon illuminated my mud-streaked face,
Soft fi elds of dandelions awaited my fall.
the air was cold, the night was young
the brook and trees and bats above all knew
I was not another rich child smile pinned to a billboard,
waiting to be dragged home.
Tonight, I am the dream, a hazy female fi gure
disappearing behind buildings for an extra dollar,
illuminated by the gaslights, immortalized by strangers;
still thinking up excuses for my unfi nished homework
and wet earth in my hair,
exhaling snakes of smoke and the breath of each bait,
I am a princess.
magus ~ 78 ~ mabus

Dissatisfi ed
By Jay Sharma
Th e ground, yeah it goes deep.
Layers and layers on top of me.
It’s hard to remember, to know,
we’re in the middle of it all.
If everything’s so simple sided
why’s my mind so mesmerized?
Went to look out my window,
saw nothing but colorful snow.
In dead-dirt summer heat
nothing sweeps me off my feet.
It’s quite far from a dream.
My skin’s not blue and my eyes aren’t green.
Where’s all that goddamn land?
I used to have it in my hand.
But land’s nonexistent
’cause they think it has no business
hangin’ around.
magus ~ 79 ~ mabus

Bang
By Oliver Bok
spaghetti western values
raid my refugee mind
looking for scalps.
living on the Lamb, the fat of farmers
high caliber lifestyle
toddlers get pistol whipped
draw trumps law.
careening covered wagon trains
others jump, I shoot
axle unhinged
spokes stab rubbernecks
brown cloud caboose.
dust this grimy never settles
got into the yellowed iris of my eye
made me blind.
“yo dude what’s good”
Bang.
i won my duel at high noon
no joke fl ag, no shadows
just acrid smell
and the friendly metallic click of a revolution.
magus ~ 80 ~ mabus

magus ~ 81 ~ mabus
Arielle Ticho

Blueberry Picking
By Elias Dahger
Th e August heat oppress’d us into sloth,
We two, the only pickers in the grove
of countless butterfl ies, those greater moths
who fl utter in an out of fruity love
A single bramble lent us shade to rest
her leafy caverns pregnant with her fruit
I laid my head upon your rip’ning breast,
your skin far sweeter than our berry-loot
But twice or thrice a sour pod I taste
’Tis yet too young, that fruit, too immature
’tis as a moth, whose spring is still incased—
not yet a butterfl y of deep tincture
From me you fl y, to foreign fl ow’rs you leave
but I, in groves await you, slender Eve
magus ~ 82 ~ mabus

art editor
Caroline Owens
literary editors
Charlotte Reed & Jaclyn Porfi lio
art staff
Ashley Bae
Michaela Carey
Carson Gaffney
Jasmine Gale
Hannah Mason
Stephanie Ng
Alexandra Stratouly
Erin Yang
Shauna Yuan
Caleb Warren
Skyler Williams
board
editor-in-chief
Isabella Frontado
layout editor
Mariko Azis
staff
copy editor
Charlie Malone
associate editors
Vincent Kennedy & Stephanie Ng
literary staff
Elizabeth Bennett
Nicolette Gendron
Hannah Grace
Mallika Iyer
Vincent Kennedy
Elisabeth Makishima
Charlotte Malone
Chloe Michaelidis
Charles Perkins
Sidartha Raju
Nicole Rufus
Madeline Thayer

milton academy
winter 2010
volume one