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magus<br />
Mabus
Milton Academy presents<br />
Magus Mabus<br />
Winter 2010<br />
Volume One
7<br />
8<br />
11<br />
12<br />
15<br />
19<br />
23<br />
25<br />
26<br />
29<br />
33<br />
38<br />
40<br />
45<br />
48<br />
50<br />
52<br />
53<br />
58<br />
59<br />
61<br />
words<br />
Savannah Heat<br />
Cripple<br />
Stalker<br />
Scarecrow<br />
Th e Art of Drowning<br />
I Know Why We No Longer Speak<br />
Absent Without Leave<br />
Cambio<br />
Flimsy<br />
Gorillas and Much More<br />
In Budapest<br />
Th e Hanging Tree<br />
Buoys<br />
Mulholland Drive<br />
Absolution<br />
Words Always Fail Me<br />
Rust Belt<br />
Romulus and Remus<br />
Ars Poetica<br />
War<br />
<strong>Acupuncture</strong><br />
magus ~ 1 ~ mabus<br />
Rebecca Deng (I)<br />
Mallika Iyer (III)<br />
Jack Mitchell (I)<br />
E.J. Bennett (II)<br />
Jaclyn Porfi lio (I)<br />
Jessica Blau (III)<br />
Sam Shleifer (I)<br />
<strong>Charlotte</strong> <strong>Reed</strong> (I)<br />
Nicole Acheampong (III)<br />
Tina Cho (II)<br />
Elias Dahger (I)<br />
Catherine Parker (III)<br />
Tina Cho (II)<br />
<strong>Charlotte</strong> <strong>Reed</strong> (I)<br />
Robin Chakrabarti (II)<br />
Jaclyn Porfi lio (I)<br />
Sam Shleifer (I)<br />
Charlie Malone (I)<br />
Jaclyn Porfi lio (I)<br />
Xiaoyin Qiao (I)<br />
<strong>Charlotte</strong> <strong>Reed</strong> (I)
65<br />
68<br />
70<br />
71<br />
72<br />
73<br />
75<br />
78<br />
79<br />
80<br />
82<br />
words<br />
Untying<br />
Eve’s Children<br />
Craniotomy<br />
High Tides<br />
Samskyeti<br />
Fift y Years<br />
Th e Metro<br />
I Don’t Have Nine Lives (Runaway)<br />
Dissatisfi ed<br />
Bang<br />
Blueberry Picking<br />
magus ~ 2 ~ mabus<br />
Jaclyn Porfi lio (I)<br />
Osaremen Okolo (III)<br />
Hannah Grace (II)<br />
Rebecca Deng (I)<br />
Robin Chakrabarti (II)<br />
Osaremen Okolo (III)<br />
Tina Cho (II)<br />
Mallika Iyer (III)<br />
Jay Sharma (II)<br />
Oliver Bok (III)<br />
Elias Dahger (I)
Cover<br />
5<br />
6<br />
9<br />
10<br />
13<br />
14<br />
17<br />
18<br />
20<br />
21<br />
22<br />
24<br />
27<br />
28<br />
31<br />
32<br />
35<br />
36<br />
37<br />
39<br />
images<br />
Stephanie Ng (II)<br />
Max Bennett (II)<br />
Carson Gaff ney (II)<br />
Kate Couturier (II)<br />
Erin Yang (II)<br />
Ashley Bae (II)<br />
McKean Tompkins (II)<br />
Jay Sharma (II)<br />
Jay Sharma (II)<br />
Ashley Bae (II)<br />
Ariana Lee (I)<br />
Nicole Acheampong (III)<br />
Genna deGroot (I)<br />
Sage Warner (III)<br />
Arielle Ticho (II)<br />
Sage Warner (III)<br />
Sara Pearce-Probst (III)<br />
Ndea Hallett (I)<br />
Shauna Yuan (II)<br />
Michael Berke (I)<br />
Danielle Cahoon (III)<br />
magus ~ 3 ~ mabus
43<br />
44<br />
47<br />
49<br />
51<br />
57<br />
60<br />
67<br />
69<br />
76<br />
77<br />
81<br />
images<br />
Kirby Feagan (III)<br />
Shannon Peters (III)<br />
Isabella Frontado (I)<br />
Rachel Black (I)<br />
Tina Cho (II)<br />
Sophie Janeway (II)<br />
Andy Zhang (II)<br />
Ndea Hallett (I)<br />
Stephanie Ng (II)<br />
Michaela Carey (II)<br />
Ashley Bae (II)<br />
Arielle Ticho (II)<br />
magus ~ 4 ~ mabus
magus ~ 5 ~ mabus<br />
Max Bennett
magus ~ 6 ~ mabus<br />
Carson Gaff ney
Savannah Heat<br />
<strong>By</strong> Rebecca Deng<br />
we sit in mondays rain<br />
the drops chase one another<br />
to the ground fl y through<br />
the porch screen soak my<br />
eyelashes into clumps<br />
georgia peaches fall and split<br />
the aroma embedded in his skin<br />
magus ~ 7 ~ mabus
Cripple<br />
<strong>By</strong> Mallika Iyer<br />
When<br />
he drags himself to us across petal-littered gravel,<br />
hardened yellow bits of milk crumbling in his mustache and<br />
ash-fl ecked, fl y-feasted skin tinged a watery saff ron<br />
from that morning’s prayer powders skimming down the gutters<br />
ee calls home;<br />
while he looks at me with eyes squinted over<br />
from the fl ailing dust of passing cars, I look, too<br />
at the city dirt collaged on his shirt,<br />
his withering fl esh cushioned by a puddle of sewage,<br />
before I lower my eyes to save him any<br />
dignity and the coin drops in his palm.<br />
as the auto horns bellow, wet laundry landing with<br />
a thud when it slaps the cement by the river,<br />
he crawls his way down the lane, a man<br />
on all soot-painted fours with<br />
a coin-clenching fi st and a pathway of<br />
stately banyans twisting to the sky,<br />
beckoning him forward.<br />
Th en I wonder:<br />
how many rupees, pennies<br />
in a collection box at the Y,<br />
can put the skip in your step, the jolt in your<br />
walk?<br />
magus ~ 8 ~ mabus
magus ~ 9 ~ mabus<br />
Kate Couturier
magus ~ 10 ~ mabus<br />
Erin Yang
Stalker<br />
<strong>By</strong> Jack Mitchell<br />
Her slender legs shaped like the smooth<br />
wooden curve of a canoe paddle dappled<br />
in sun.<br />
Her breaths sounds the silent swoosh of an<br />
owl as she sleeps, sleeps, unsuspecting<br />
of me.<br />
Shivering, disturbed by dreams, she pulls<br />
sheet over body like the robe of a<br />
goddess.<br />
I rely on distance because I cannot bear the<br />
ugly scar, the wart, the wrinkle on the brow<br />
the anti-Michelangelo, the scratch on her<br />
cool marble translucent skin—so pale.<br />
Without warning she wakes and jerks,<br />
rising to shut Venetian shades and block the<br />
mean sun.<br />
magus ~ 11 ~ mabus
Scarecrow<br />
<strong>By</strong> E.J. Bennett<br />
Today, the woman traveled<br />
the town, past homes pinned shut,<br />
lawnmowers still<br />
perched in the yards.<br />
Screens stapled over windows<br />
why-ing into the wind.<br />
Th e woman drove to the grocery, testing the weight of a can<br />
in her hand. Hearing the<br />
chigga-chigga-chigga<br />
as it spooled to the back of the cart.<br />
Th e woman surrendered to the car<br />
then the street, then the house.<br />
Hoisting paper bags upon her hips, she entered the kitchen<br />
where the man leaned into the table.<br />
(Aft er her wedding, a bride fl ung a fi stful of rice<br />
over her left shoulder, seed scattering<br />
in soil. Grandmother bowed<br />
collecting her luck grain by grain<br />
to boil for the family.)<br />
When the soup began to simmer,<br />
hiss behind microwave walls,<br />
the woman cupped the can like a candle<br />
then watched the broth tip and spill into bowls.<br />
magus ~ 12 ~ mabus
magus ~ 13 ~ mabus<br />
Ashley Bae
magus ~ 14 ~ mabus<br />
McKean Tompkins
Th e Art of Drowning<br />
<strong>By</strong> Jaclyn Porfi lio<br />
My cartoons swallow the heat,<br />
absorb a bit of the spills.<br />
I can conjure a laugh, secure a smile<br />
swing from the White Star Line,<br />
fi nd love at the bottom of the bottle.<br />
He used to fall through my drawings,<br />
lie crumpled in the waste bin.<br />
I wish I knew how to keep him<br />
inside my pen, removed from air,<br />
his neck within my fi ngers. Or<br />
I wish I knew how to draw him.<br />
Th e ship slides in, I’m told,<br />
and then it’s fl icked to full.<br />
I wish that’s how it worked<br />
with him, his outline black<br />
on white hid beneath the pages.<br />
magus ~ 15 ~ mabus
At some point he left me, the wreck,<br />
because women and children go fi rst.<br />
I let the clink of the ice, the rush<br />
of the Johnny Walker Blue<br />
ease me down, be my violins.<br />
I wanted a ship in a bottle.<br />
I can break apart,<br />
wait at Mistaken Point,<br />
sloshing in my drawings.<br />
Life looks good in boxes,<br />
when I form it without thinking.<br />
He twisted what I gave him,<br />
became a “mad man.”<br />
I live for the lines of the ship,<br />
tucked within their glass,<br />
the sail, the mast, the rush, the clink.<br />
My son was enough of a thrill.<br />
magus ~ 16 ~ mabus
Jay Sharma<br />
magus ~ 17 ~ mabus
magus ~ 18 ~ mabus<br />
Jay Sharma
I Remember Why We No Longer Speak<br />
<strong>By</strong> Jessica Blau<br />
On a Th ursday at dinner<br />
you told me I wasn’t quite good<br />
enough yet.<br />
I didn’t hate you then.<br />
But were you to be choking<br />
on a piece of my broccoli<br />
I would pretend<br />
not to know the Heimlich<br />
until the very last second.<br />
magus ~ 19 ~ mabus
magus ~ 20 ~ mabus<br />
Ashley Bae
magus ~ 21 ~ mabus<br />
Ariana Lee
magus ~ 22 ~ mabus<br />
Nicole Acheampong
Absent Without Leave<br />
<strong>By</strong> Sam Shleifer<br />
Before the blonde horseman rode into our village,<br />
Megan fi xed me scones<br />
London sent him North,<br />
to fi nd expired uniforms<br />
before business hours.<br />
Monday at 9, I gutted her husky.<br />
Th e pancreas popped methane,<br />
smelled wetter than licking<br />
or trading a trench at Verdon<br />
for a French jew’s tulip wagon.<br />
Th e third month of toast,<br />
I burlapped the vestiges,<br />
sulfur rottings prickling<br />
like nerve gas.<br />
Ever valiant master trailing,<br />
I tied my sack to his mount.<br />
Megan didn’t recognize the scent.<br />
magus ~ 23 ~ mabus
magus ~ 24 ~ mabus<br />
Genna deGroot
Cambio<br />
<strong>By</strong> <strong>Charlotte</strong> <strong>Reed</strong><br />
Who would have imagined<br />
that the Mexican girl on Pico,<br />
with the blue-black hair like crows’ feathers,<br />
and skin like cooked meat,<br />
would be selling fl ores<br />
on a Sunday aft ernoon?<br />
Who would have imagined<br />
that the Mexican girl on Pico,<br />
in the green and white dress,<br />
with the eyes like bent spoons,<br />
would be lying facedown in the street<br />
on a Sunday aft ernoon?<br />
magus ~ 25 ~ mabus
Flimsy<br />
<strong>By</strong> Nicole Acheampong<br />
Shift ing with the wind,<br />
thin stem precariously<br />
balanced within dirt—<br />
A fl ick to your stem<br />
would break you the same as one<br />
fi erce stamp to your head.<br />
magus ~ 26 ~ mabus
magus ~ 27 ~ mabus<br />
Sage Warner
magus ~ 28 ~ mabus<br />
Arielle Ticho
Gorillas and Much More<br />
<strong>By</strong> Tina Cho<br />
“Aft er this, are we going to the zoo?” she asks, her hand dipped in the pool as her brother cranks<br />
up the garden hose.<br />
“No, your friends are coming soon.” He points at the piñata. “You’re going to crack that thing<br />
open and all the candy’s going to fall out and your friends are going to scream their heads off .”<br />
“I don’t want them to scream at my party.”<br />
“It’s a scream of delight. You get to watch them drop to the ground and rake through the candy<br />
like they’re crazy.”<br />
Caddie takes her hand out of the water and walks toward the plastic table set with brownies,<br />
cream puff s, a pitcher of milk, and her favorite cake, red velvet with vanilla ruffl es. She looks down<br />
at her dress.<br />
“Do you have your new swimsuit on under that, Caddie?” he asks.<br />
She answers no.<br />
“Why not?”<br />
“I like my old one better.”<br />
“What?” He sounds harsher than he has intended. “Do you have any idea how long I had to<br />
walk around the mall by myself to fi nd that bikini? Do you think a junior in high school likes buying<br />
training bras? If it wasn’t for Mom, I would’ve tied that eye mask around you and shoved your face<br />
down the pool half an hour ago. Besides, I bet all your friends have passed that one-piece stage.”<br />
“Why don’t you go put it on?” She plops onto one of the chairs.<br />
“Caddie, why are you shitting on your own party?”<br />
“I don’t want a party. I don’t like my friends.” She pauses. “But don’t tell me that I should pretend<br />
to like them, because I know your scheme. You just want to leave me and go off with Anna.”<br />
“Anna moved to fucking Texas,” he says, squinting at the sun, “you know that. But I guess your<br />
only friend is that girl from church, the fat, metal-teethed virg—”<br />
Caddie picks up a cream puff and crushes it in her palm. Th e white cream oozes down her<br />
wrist. “You think this is not a big deal. You think this is funny. But I know your secret. You actually<br />
like taping ‘Caddie’s ninth birthday’ kind of crap. Mom asked you to order my cake but you couldn’t<br />
resist, you had to bake it.” She looks at the brownies, the piñata, her brother. “You like doing this,<br />
don’t you?” He searches for a good comeback but fi nds none. She walks toward him and washes her<br />
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<br />
the grass. She reaches over and turns the tap until the water droops from the hose and shuts off . “Are<br />
you looking for an excuse? I have one. Just say you like watching my nine-year-old friends splash<br />
around in their bikinis. Admit it.”<br />
He loses it. He chucks the hose at the ground. He walks to the table and grabs the baseball bat<br />
from under one of the chairs. He runs to the piñata. He whacks the frilly animal.<br />
“You know what, Caddie? I hope you heard yourself just now because you talk just like me.<br />
And you know what I’m doing now? I’m resolving this situation, baby. I’m gonna beat the shit out of<br />
this fucking rainbow horse, and you’re going to cry and run into the house. But guess what, I’m going<br />
back in there, too.” Th e horse’s cardboard throat cracks open. “You aren’t going anywhere. I can<br />
chase you down as long as we both live in that house. And oh wait, you want to go to the zoo? We<br />
are at the zoo. I am the fucking gorilla.”<br />
Caddie breaks into tears and runs into the house. Her brother fi nishes the horse. Its body rests<br />
on the freshly watered grass like a pile of skinned bunnies with metallic slivers of wrapped candy.<br />
He puts the baseball bat down, puts his hands on his waist, and looks around. In front of the fences<br />
a zebra by the tree rubs the side of its grimy face against the rough bark. He sighs and returns to the<br />
house.<br />
magus ~ 30 ~ mabus
magus ~ 31 ~ mabus<br />
Sage Warner
magus ~ 32 ~ mabus<br />
Sara Pearce-Probst
In Budapest<br />
<strong>By</strong> Elias Dahger<br />
Hungary: Toxic red sludge has reached the Danube<br />
-Headline for an Associated Press article by Pablo Garondi, October 7th, 2010<br />
For the one who knows this is hers.<br />
In Budapest, that River<br />
runs with the blood<br />
of lovers and haters,<br />
of war-wagers and the desperate<br />
lights, castles, cathedrals,<br />
and the thorny shadows of long-abandoned barracks.<br />
Th ese watery phantom-choirs<br />
scintillate there,<br />
in grotesque symphony<br />
Once, we anointed her undulating skin<br />
with foaming champagne<br />
and sweet kisses<br />
and the fi erce sweat,<br />
the wax of those undying candles<br />
shimmering like stars<br />
among the crumbling statues<br />
magus ~ 33 ~ mabus
Th ey stood sentinel<br />
on the hills<br />
watching us and yearning<br />
yearning for death,<br />
for fl esh<br />
But now, my priestess,<br />
my champagne-pourer,<br />
my blushing serpent,<br />
your scales have hardened.<br />
even statues weep wax for you,<br />
you unfeeling, you stony—<br />
from your cold skin tears rebound<br />
they fl ow acidic, staining<br />
our once pure ablution<br />
Oh champagne! Oh kisses!—<br />
my double Eucharist:<br />
you smolder in those icy waters,<br />
you burn up and freeze in<br />
deathly prison<br />
And gypsy light-prisms shatter<br />
under the thick weight<br />
of medieval blood<br />
magus ~ 34 ~ mabus
magus ~ 35 ~ mabus<br />
Ndea Hallett
magus ~ 36 ~ mabus<br />
Shauna Yuan
magus ~ 37 ~ mabus<br />
Michael Berke
Th e Hanging Tree<br />
<strong>By</strong> Catherine Parker<br />
We hung a great wood swing<br />
from ancient oak outside<br />
Too small, you put me on your lap<br />
to take me for a ride<br />
You taught me as I grew<br />
to swing all by myself<br />
’til I could fl y up down up down<br />
up down without your help<br />
Th en you started sleeping late<br />
never smiled or played<br />
told me everything was great<br />
not to be afraid<br />
One day I went to swing<br />
but you had beat me there<br />
just swinging from that self-same oak<br />
neck broke beyond repair<br />
I tried to close my eyes<br />
but bloated face remained<br />
somehow it came as no surprise<br />
to fi nd I’d gone insane<br />
magus ~ 38 ~ mabus
magus ~ 39 ~ mabus<br />
Danielle Cahoon
Buoys<br />
<strong>By</strong> Tina Cho<br />
Aaron was watching his father sleep when a bird swept in from the window. His father turned<br />
in his bed, but the sound of the sheets was muffl ed by the twitching of the black feathers as the creature<br />
settled onto the water pipe. Aaron was observing the neck of the bird turn when Mark muttered,<br />
“You are a little late.”<br />
Aaron apologized.<br />
“Or early now, I guess. Th e sun woke me up,” Mark said. He motioned his son to prop up the<br />
bed. Aaron arched his body over the old man and turned the handle counterclockwise until the bed<br />
sat up at a right angle. “Was there an emergency?”<br />
“Sort of.” A woman had fallen into a lake.<br />
Mark smiled. “Well, you can tell me all about it while I take my bath.” Aaron closed the window<br />
and fl icked on the television. He went to the bathroom, squat by the tap while his hand cut through<br />
the column of hot water. From the sound of the water Aaron thought he heard his father hum to the<br />
national anthem.<br />
“Look,” Mark said, pointing at the screen. Aaron returned to his father’s bed. “It’s the lake. Th at<br />
was years ago, wasn’t it? When we drove south for four hours for some lame water because your<br />
mother got ideas in her head from some sailing magazine?”<br />
“Th e boat was fun.”<br />
“We shouldn’t have let you drive, you almost fl ipped us over. But you and your sister had a hard<br />
time getting off in the end, didn’t you?” Aaron answered yes. “And your mother—where was she?”<br />
“She was sitting next to you.”<br />
“No, she was by the bank. I remember she was standing on that grass, waving her arms like<br />
crazy. It was so windy, she was scared.” He paused. “When did she say that she’d visit?”<br />
“Tomorrow,” Aaron answered. Mark turned back to the television. Th e weight seemed to be<br />
leaving his body as his face dissolved into a blank stare. Aaron looked up to check on the bird. Th e<br />
bat sat crumbled in the corner of the ceiling, fl inching.<br />
“What are you looking at?” Mark asked. Mark never liked birds, detested their shrieks and redeyed<br />
glares. Aaron hated being the only one to remember Mark explode then leak, so Aaron kept the<br />
bird to himself. Instead, he swiveled his father’s legs around like a niece in a sundress and carried the<br />
hairless body to the bathroom. Both men looked away as Aaron unbuttoned and slid the garment<br />
magus ~ 40 ~ mabus
down his father’s back. Leg by leg he pulled down the sweat-stained bottoms. Neither of them spoke.<br />
Holding his breath, Aaron stood still with Mark’s arms around his shoulders as Mark dipped his<br />
knees into the water. For a moment, Aaron thought they were dancing.<br />
“Look at me, I’m a peeled potato,” Mark chuckled, looking at his bare torso. “I thought it was<br />
the disease, but I realized that there is no problem. It’s the age.”<br />
“Th ere really is no problem.” Aaron answered quietly.<br />
“Really? Ha, look at your hairline. I thought it was the recession, but you’re aging, too, just like<br />
me.” Aaron watched Mark’s narrow feet swell in the water. “I remember you as a baby. Right aft er you<br />
were born, though, I was pretty sure you weren’t my child. Your mother and I both had this thick,<br />
black horsetail hair, and we thought you’d come out looking like Elvis.” He paused. “You know, that<br />
day your mother and I fought so much I wished her dead. But we never fought, never again. I loved<br />
her too much. Even when Cecilia came out with hair like yours, I said nothing.” He closed his eyes<br />
and rubbed the balls of his hands down his cheeks, sunken and bruised as his dented buttocks. “We<br />
should go back to the lake sometime.”<br />
“When the water’s not too cold.”<br />
“We can get that small boat again. Just you, me, your mother, and your sister. Soon it’ll be warm<br />
enough so you can teach your mother how to swim.”<br />
“Just you, me, and Cecilia.”<br />
“I can steer the boat this time. I would let you, but remember the last time we went there, when<br />
your mother was on the bank waving her arms like crazy, and you couldn’t stop—”<br />
“You, me, and Cecilia is enough.” Aaron rested his head on the wall.<br />
“Aaron,” Mark smiled, “it’s not embarrassing that you’re bad at driving.”<br />
Aaron wrapped his hands around his face like a cornhusk. “Mom can’t be there.”<br />
“I mean, look at you. You’re going to be a doctor. Th at’s enough.”<br />
“I never drove that boat. You didn’t let me.”<br />
“Why don’t you meet some of Cecilia’s friends?”<br />
“You never let me drive. It was an accident, Dad. Mom didn’t know how to swim.”<br />
Silence hit the water. Mark slowly lift ed his chin, letting his ears sink and his toes slit open the<br />
surface. His fi ngers let go of the tub and he swelled along the green waves like a buoy.<br />
Aaron left the bathroom and lied down on the crinkled sheets. He found the bird hunched over<br />
on the water pipe. Aaron never liked birds, either. On the day when the wind knocked the ribcage<br />
out of his father’s boat and his mother sank like an oilcloth, a fi eld of blackbirds had scattered into<br />
magus ~ 41 ~ mabus
the sky like his mother’s hair when her body was returned home.<br />
Th e creature’s eyes met Aaron’s, and the bird stretched, unfolding its limbs as if it had woken<br />
up from a dream. Aaron watched as the bird tiptoed along the concrete pipe and plopped onto the<br />
windowsill. He looked at his watch. It was time, and like the spark of a television fl icked on, Aaron<br />
sensed Mark’s eyelids reopen.<br />
“Aaron, is that you?” asked Mark.<br />
Aaron answered yes.<br />
“What time is it?”<br />
He told his father the time.<br />
“You’re late. An emergency?”<br />
“Yes. An old man drowned,” Aaron said, as he watched the bird spring from its feet and fl y out<br />
the window.<br />
magus ~ 42 ~ mabus
magus ~ 43 ~ mabus<br />
Kirby Feagan
magus ~ 44 ~ mabus<br />
Shannon Peters
Mulholland Drive<br />
<strong>By</strong> <strong>Charlotte</strong> <strong>Reed</strong><br />
“Th ere it is, take it.”<br />
—William Mulholland<br />
Marilyn Monroe is twenty miles long,<br />
lying naked on her side.<br />
She is the desert, golden earth<br />
melting into the Pacifi c.<br />
Her anklebones, stacked,<br />
are cut by the river,<br />
and those silvery shins<br />
become thighs, sliding west<br />
with sunsets till murky dawns.<br />
You drive up her hipbone, the 101,<br />
and boulevards below<br />
are strings of stolen jewels.<br />
Along her waistline, you’ll fi nd God<br />
and Warren Beatty—<br />
her breasts read Hollywood,<br />
and underneath is the reservoir,<br />
its sharkskin surface and barbed wire fences<br />
gleaming in the glare of a dusty sun.<br />
magus ~ 45 ~ mabus
At the nape of her neck,<br />
the hillsides burn black,<br />
and, in the distance,<br />
the glint of downtown<br />
is like knives sticking straight<br />
up from dirt.<br />
Her platinum locks are the sea,<br />
her ivory face regal ruins,<br />
her lips the slow curve that meets the bluff s:<br />
she is rotting into the swell,<br />
the swell of angels.<br />
magus ~ 46 ~ mabus
magus ~ 47 ~ mabus<br />
Isabella Frontado
Absolution<br />
<strong>By</strong> Robin Chakrabarti<br />
Lost in the current,<br />
gushing<br />
as the breath of a ghost.<br />
I’m a swallowing fl ower,<br />
sucking in the specks of black pollen.<br />
Th is road has lost us.<br />
Emotions have washed over the<br />
memories written in the sand.<br />
I will chase the words; I will follow the sounds;<br />
though it won’t be found.<br />
magus ~ 48 ~ mabus
magus ~ 49 ~ mabus<br />
Rachel Black
Words Always Fail Me<br />
<strong>By</strong> Jaclyn Porfi lio<br />
“It’s the words that are supposed to do the dancing,”<br />
he once told me.<br />
And I pictured my rhythmic gymnasts<br />
tangling themselves in ribbon as I talked,<br />
planting batons in all the wrong places.<br />
“You’re not the one who should be doing the work.”<br />
And I saw my little soldiers,<br />
holding tails and marching,<br />
caught in a dynamic form of attention.<br />
His army was stronger.<br />
Th ey had cannons in their back pockets<br />
and a battle cry I couldn’t pin down.<br />
“No one needs to know you if they know your words.”<br />
And I watched our executives crowd a conference room,<br />
point at charts they didn’t create,<br />
chuckle at jokes no one understood,<br />
and refuse handshakes I willed them to embrace.<br />
“Just write. Give yourself to the language.”<br />
And I witnessed his security guards<br />
knock mine into the hydrangeas,<br />
back him out of our house, my house,<br />
down to the street and the waiting car,<br />
aft er dripping black ink on my doorstep.<br />
magus ~ 50 ~ mabus
magus ~ 51 ~ mabus<br />
Tina Cho
Rust Belt<br />
<strong>By</strong> Sam Shleifer<br />
Grumbling of chest pain<br />
he sits at six thirty four,<br />
pretending to pray.<br />
Th ree bites deep<br />
“the sweetest girl in Cleveland,”<br />
Grandpa used to whisper,<br />
sips something amber<br />
and kisses the shoulder<br />
of the Tinkerbelle costume<br />
she pleaded to wear<br />
at dinner,<br />
eyes shining back like wet stones<br />
that see mom crumple<br />
Arbys’ wax paper, greasy<br />
white like pigeon shit.<br />
magus ~ 52 ~ mabus
Romulus and Remus<br />
<strong>By</strong> Charlie Malone<br />
Filthy with river water and vernix,<br />
brothers bobbed away from a trembling man<br />
of twenty-eight, for the fi rst time in his life<br />
ignoring orders, unable to send those<br />
plump round faces into the brown water<br />
to meet Hades before their skin ever felt the sun.<br />
Th eir mother, a doe-eyed virgin spoiled<br />
and left underground to suff ocate, would never<br />
know they had survived, and when she died<br />
she thought of seeing them again, and so it was<br />
willingly that she left that room where her fi ngernails<br />
were still stuck in the walls.<br />
But the boys lived.<br />
Naked and squalling, they washed onto<br />
a faraway shore where they lay, helpless and gasping,<br />
dying as surely as if they’d needed the water<br />
to breathe. A childless mother of a dirty<br />
dog untouched by the gods’ unending rape<br />
of mankind scooped them from the river bank,<br />
licking nature’s grime from their half-god<br />
bodies, and they grew with her, never knowing<br />
there were other pale and hairless wolves<br />
magus ~ 53 ~ mabus
just beyond the trees, never thinking themselves<br />
the children of heroes or gods. Th ey taught<br />
each other to talk, but never asked<br />
why their mother never could.<br />
Th e boys lived.<br />
Th ey tumbled around the forest as their limbs<br />
grew and in time they found they would prefer<br />
to walk upright, their backs straight and their jaws<br />
set. Th ey played human war and never knew the diff erence.<br />
As all children do, they left their mother one day.<br />
Th ey found a human city and the nameless, matted<br />
she-wolf died above ground. She had no concept<br />
of an aft erlife, only a warm beam of unseasonable<br />
sun that buoyed her away from the only earth<br />
she’d ever known. Her children, twice motherless,<br />
became shepherds, discovered themselves heirs,<br />
royalty, and learned how human men play war.<br />
When he awoke to fi nd his brother missing,<br />
taken into the hands of rival shepherds<br />
he should never have been so cocky with,<br />
the slimmer and the scrawnier tore off into the dawn,<br />
shouting for his taller, handsomer brother,<br />
and when his head had stopped pounding<br />
he gathered every sympathetic man he saw<br />
and charged to Amulius. He could never remember<br />
magus ~ 54 ~ mabus
clearly how he came to free his brother,<br />
but Romulus remembered Remus’s roar<br />
of delighted shock, remembered their ragged<br />
grip on the other’s shoulders as they refused<br />
their grandfather’s crown and put an end<br />
to the war games. Remus had lived.<br />
A city was to be built.<br />
Each brother selected a hill and waited,<br />
unaware their gods were to make chess pieces<br />
of them yet again, and when Romulus counted<br />
double the vultures sent to circle Remus’s hilltop,<br />
something broke between the brothers.<br />
Th ey bickered, they brawled, and Romulus set<br />
to building his city, to appease the gods and leave<br />
behind the tense hours on the hilltops. Th e wolf<br />
in Remus came out then, and he snarled at his brother,<br />
growled at the workers, destroyed meaninglessly,<br />
and when his twin asked why they could not<br />
make a city together, Remus snapped his jaw<br />
as if to bite, and the smaller and skinnier man<br />
backed away. Th at night, Remus leapt over his brother’s<br />
wall, and Romulus forgot all but his city,<br />
and killed the traitor with whom he’d shared an<br />
embryo, a womb, a river, a wolf, a fl ock, a war.<br />
magus ~ 55 ~ mabus
Rome’s history had begun in blood,<br />
Romulus on his knees, his brother’s heavy head<br />
in his hands, trying to understand, to undo,<br />
all that his new city, his supreme tribute to the gods<br />
and to human glory, had seen. Rome had its fi rst<br />
funeral, and Remus was buried with honor,<br />
his brother’s back turned,<br />
while eighteen vultures—twelve for Romulus,<br />
six for Remus—watched from above,<br />
too hungry and pure to comprehend how the<br />
human boys lived.<br />
magus ~ 56 ~ mabus
magus ~ 57 ~ mabus<br />
Sophie Janeway
Ars Poetica<br />
<strong>By</strong> Jaclyn Porfi lio<br />
I have a silver carp in my back pocket,<br />
carried close from China,<br />
begging for a chance to craft its mark.<br />
I have Momma giving the same slap<br />
to the man with a name in the stars.<br />
I have alliteration soft ening the blow<br />
of the fi sh-shaped bruises<br />
and the parodied Volans.<br />
I have my potential predators,<br />
the boat and the darkness,<br />
the deep and the needle.<br />
I have the truth<br />
that top-feeding fi sh<br />
are the only ones who smile.<br />
I’m asking for your breath.<br />
magus ~ 58 ~ mabus
War<br />
<strong>By</strong> Xiaoyin Qiao<br />
red vista<br />
blue expanse<br />
faces upward gazed and dazed<br />
tangerine dirt<br />
invades distant stretches<br />
stains steel spirits<br />
snapshot of a rousing sun under midnight<br />
ascending shades to royal to cyan<br />
mint paste chances pastel mist<br />
fades lighter from midway up<br />
dark dust and bittersweet salmon<br />
meeting for the very fi rst time<br />
cantaloupe<br />
whiff s of musk<br />
of rust and dry<br />
hollows of terrain<br />
rise toward the white of day<br />
the frontier pushes high dunes low<br />
and buff ers parched lungs below<br />
with breaths of breadths of air above<br />
red and blue fall in love<br />
magus ~ 59 ~ mabus
magus ~ 60 ~ mabus<br />
Andy Zhang
<strong>Acupuncture</strong><br />
<strong>By</strong> <strong>Charlotte</strong> <strong>Reed</strong><br />
You told me about herbs.<br />
Ones made from honey, goji and ginseng,<br />
bitter ones, ones that stuck<br />
to the back of your throat even<br />
aft er a glass of water.<br />
I used to touch<br />
your splintery, calloused hands<br />
with the bumps on the tips of your fi ngers<br />
from years of pressing too hard<br />
on needles and guitar strings.<br />
We hid under the blankets<br />
of your bed, in the guest bedroom downstairs<br />
that you never shared with her.<br />
Underneath sheets, you held me<br />
like a child, shadows in the half-light<br />
catching gold in your green eyes,<br />
and your hands grasped my thin wrists, whole:<br />
I was the child.<br />
magus ~ 61 ~ mabus
You told me stories.<br />
We pretended, and you were the captain<br />
of submarines in your bed.<br />
We saw fi sh in the contours<br />
and colors of the quilt we propped<br />
up over our heads—drift ing,<br />
sapphires and rubies<br />
in our dark sea. Th ere,<br />
the black played with your jaw,<br />
and your beard was only<br />
shadows. I knew you’d<br />
warn me about sharks<br />
in the distance.<br />
Inside your offi ce on Sunset<br />
that smelled like ginger<br />
and hardwood fl oors,<br />
there was the mannequin<br />
in the window, painted white<br />
with the blood-blue<br />
and red veins stretched, spreading nerves,<br />
like city streets, subway maps.<br />
With your fi nger,<br />
you traced the ones<br />
that lead to the heart.<br />
magus ~ 62 ~ mabus
Th en, I was too afraid<br />
to try the needles. I imagined<br />
safety pins, broken glass, thumbtacks.<br />
You shook your head and frowned.<br />
Th ey’re too thin to hurt you, you said.<br />
Th ey don’t go deep enough.<br />
I wondered how<br />
a prick near the right nerve<br />
could give a man the strength<br />
to walk again. Or could suck<br />
the cancer out of someone’s grandpa.<br />
Or could stir the belly<br />
of a tired woman, just enough<br />
for a baby to grow.<br />
I wondered how,<br />
aft er years of your telling me<br />
it would never happen,<br />
it would never come to divorce,<br />
the words still came, sinking out of her mouth,<br />
landing on the fl oor.<br />
I watched you bite<br />
your cheeks.<br />
magus ~ 63 ~ mabus
And, that day,<br />
the moving truck still came,<br />
fi lled with your guitars—<br />
Gibsons she never made<br />
room for, your rugs, your quilt,<br />
your journals and Chinese Medicine books,<br />
and your fragile, too-thin needles<br />
that never pricked<br />
deep enough.<br />
magus ~ 64 ~ mabus
Untying<br />
<strong>By</strong> Jaclyn Porfi lio<br />
He hugs me taut,<br />
wraps my pinky fi nger<br />
to swear he’ll let me crumble<br />
one misstep at a time<br />
into the crown molding.<br />
He kisses me pale,<br />
frays my sleeve<br />
to promise he’ll keep me whole<br />
each day he braids me<br />
into the threads.<br />
He lets the oil drip into the basin<br />
he’ll never fi ll with water<br />
or stain. He sees the glass<br />
ripple my face<br />
from across the porch.<br />
He cries himself<br />
to war. I can<br />
hum goodbye,<br />
magus ~ 65 ~ mabus
wiggle my fi nger away,<br />
swivel out my hair,<br />
twist water<br />
until it stacks in my palm.<br />
I can stop time.<br />
I can die.<br />
He can live.<br />
magus ~ 66 ~ mabus
magus ~ 67 ~ mabus<br />
Ndea Hallett
Eve’s Children<br />
<strong>By</strong> Osaremen Okolo<br />
Still, we are watched,<br />
from Occident to Orient,<br />
in feudal villages<br />
and bustling metropolises.<br />
A mirage from inside out,<br />
opaque has never been so clear.<br />
An Earth built on soft curves<br />
and delicate, intricate boundaries,<br />
forgets its strength and soul.<br />
World waiting for the glass ceiling to crack—<br />
we’re already shattered.<br />
See the shards sparkle mercilessly<br />
in the feminine sun.<br />
magus ~ 68 ~ mabus
magus ~ 69 ~ mabus<br />
Stephanie Ng
Craniotomy<br />
<strong>By</strong> Hannah Grace<br />
I see them—blue caps like sterility,<br />
needles wide as her pupils—holding razors<br />
that grind their teeth. Wisps of blonde,<br />
barely gravitational, kiss tile fl oor<br />
and I try to remember where<br />
I was when she was born, where<br />
else there was to be before a daughter.<br />
Th ick black lines draw in marker on her head<br />
swelling with blood and car exhaust—I feel<br />
my hands clenched over the steering wheel,<br />
invisible fi shhooks tugging my eyelids.<br />
Th ey push her past me and I imagine<br />
scalpels and ten blades; they say<br />
they’ll relieve the pressure building<br />
deep in her brain. Fix her and maybe<br />
part of me with titanium, or something<br />
else I won’t be able to see. I try to remember<br />
what they said, but her anesthesia<br />
numbs my mind as lights overhead<br />
expose brain the color of newborn skin.<br />
magus ~ 70 ~ mabus
High Tides<br />
<strong>By</strong> Rebecca Deng<br />
two deep seas<br />
rest in the belly of the basin<br />
divided by a noble mountain<br />
soft soil to dig toes in<br />
on a well sculpted plain<br />
he oft en times brings<br />
inclement weather<br />
upon us<br />
the tides rise<br />
my tears roll<br />
my salty lips<br />
dry quick and crack<br />
in the summer sun<br />
magus ~ 71 ~ mabus
Samskyeti<br />
<strong>By</strong> Robin Chakrabarti<br />
I’m out in the rain,<br />
drowning in the sky’s weight—<br />
awake in a relapse<br />
and afraid of self-correction.<br />
She has me locked in the twirl of her hair.<br />
Her fi ngers,<br />
gliding through brownsoaked rays of light,<br />
arrest me.<br />
In the dark, I have nothing left to do<br />
but swim in memories of her psychedelic eyes.<br />
magus ~ 72 ~ mabus
Fift y Years<br />
<strong>By</strong> Osaremen Okolo<br />
Okada motorbikes rumble down the path of red to black,<br />
carrying lives, minds salivating for change.<br />
Aft er arrival, out of fuel:<br />
Restock and fi nally return?<br />
Or crash a while, and burn?<br />
Th e December sun fi ercely burning brown to black.<br />
“Exotic, tropical locale” is just another Harmattan.<br />
Red, red, litters the forgotten roads,<br />
a haze of imperturbable dust enveloping, leaving its memory.<br />
Pure, white cotton stained by this dirtying, burnt orange,<br />
the blemish scrubbed away by knuckled fi sts over tired palms<br />
until the garment fl ies against wavering, warping hemp – cleaned and baking.<br />
Folktales heard under a sweet, warm moon,<br />
enrapturing elders twisting tales from their prime;<br />
the marvels of a night lit by candlelight.<br />
magus ~ 73 ~ mabus
Turn around<br />
to paved, tarred glory<br />
glistening under the same December sun,<br />
shadowed by a façade of manmade luster.<br />
Cheating men in power proudly pound their lizarded loafers,<br />
snatching Naira from the machete-wielding sugar cane farmer for<br />
the second wife at home, waiting to whiten her skin.<br />
Blood oil stains all this modernity, seeping,<br />
covering lies, deceit, all incapability<br />
in thick, black, grime.<br />
Half century.<br />
Perhaps it’s time to return, reconsider.<br />
Or maybe,<br />
we’ll wait for the next tomorrow.<br />
Dare to leave the old for new?<br />
magus ~ 74 ~ mabus
Th e Metro<br />
<strong>By</strong> Tina Cho<br />
Boy rips girl.<br />
White light combs through<br />
the gnarled roots of her heart<br />
as her leather face irons<br />
fl at like the patches of mice<br />
at the blackened heels of the train,<br />
sheets and sheets of red paper<br />
strewn over her blessed, hard skull.<br />
magus ~ 75 ~ mabus
magus ~ 76 ~ mabus<br />
Michaela Carey
magus ~ 77 ~ mabus<br />
Ashley Bae
I Don’t Have Nine Lives (Runaway)<br />
<strong>By</strong> Mallika Iyer<br />
One night I dreamt the world, whole world<br />
was at my window. It smelt like liberation;<br />
the puddles called to me like a teasing playmate,<br />
the leaves lift ed me to the sky and sang that<br />
they’d never know I was gone.<br />
Th e moon illuminated my mud-streaked face,<br />
Soft fi elds of dandelions awaited my fall.<br />
the air was cold, the night was young<br />
the brook and trees and bats above all knew<br />
I was not another rich child smile pinned to a billboard,<br />
waiting to be dragged home.<br />
Tonight, I am the dream, a hazy female fi gure<br />
disappearing behind buildings for an extra dollar,<br />
illuminated by the gaslights, immortalized by strangers;<br />
still thinking up excuses for my unfi nished homework<br />
and wet earth in my hair,<br />
exhaling snakes of smoke and the breath of each bait,<br />
I am a princess.<br />
magus ~ 78 ~ mabus
Dissatisfi ed<br />
<strong>By</strong> Jay Sharma<br />
Th e ground, yeah it goes deep.<br />
Layers and layers on top of me.<br />
It’s hard to remember, to know,<br />
we’re in the middle of it all.<br />
If everything’s so simple sided<br />
why’s my mind so mesmerized?<br />
Went to look out my window,<br />
saw nothing but colorful snow.<br />
In dead-dirt summer heat<br />
nothing sweeps me off my feet.<br />
It’s quite far from a dream.<br />
My skin’s not blue and my eyes aren’t green.<br />
Where’s all that goddamn land?<br />
I used to have it in my hand.<br />
But land’s nonexistent<br />
’cause they think it has no business<br />
hangin’ around.<br />
magus ~ 79 ~ mabus
Bang<br />
<strong>By</strong> Oliver Bok<br />
spaghetti western values<br />
raid my refugee mind<br />
looking for scalps.<br />
living on the Lamb, the fat of farmers<br />
high caliber lifestyle<br />
toddlers get pistol whipped<br />
draw trumps law.<br />
careening covered wagon trains<br />
others jump, I shoot<br />
axle unhinged<br />
spokes stab rubbernecks<br />
brown cloud caboose.<br />
dust this grimy never settles<br />
got into the yellowed iris of my eye<br />
made me blind.<br />
“yo dude what’s good”<br />
Bang.<br />
i won my duel at high noon<br />
no joke fl ag, no shadows<br />
just acrid smell<br />
and the friendly metallic click of a revolution.<br />
magus ~ 80 ~ mabus
magus ~ 81 ~ mabus<br />
Arielle Ticho
Blueberry Picking<br />
<strong>By</strong> Elias Dahger<br />
Th e August heat oppress’d us into sloth,<br />
We two, the only pickers in the grove<br />
of countless butterfl ies, those greater moths<br />
who fl utter in an out of fruity love<br />
A single bramble lent us shade to rest<br />
her leafy caverns pregnant with her fruit<br />
I laid my head upon your rip’ning breast,<br />
your skin far sweeter than our berry-loot<br />
But twice or thrice a sour pod I taste<br />
’Tis yet too young, that fruit, too immature<br />
’tis as a moth, whose spring is still incased—<br />
not yet a butterfl y of deep tincture<br />
From me you fl y, to foreign fl ow’rs you leave<br />
but I, in groves await you, slender Eve<br />
magus ~ 82 ~ mabus
art editor<br />
Caroline Owens<br />
literary editors<br />
<strong>Charlotte</strong> <strong>Reed</strong> & Jaclyn Porfi lio<br />
art staff<br />
Ashley Bae<br />
Michaela Carey<br />
Carson Gaffney<br />
Jasmine Gale<br />
Hannah Mason<br />
Stephanie Ng<br />
Alexandra Stratouly<br />
Erin Yang<br />
Shauna Yuan<br />
Caleb Warren<br />
Skyler Williams<br />
board<br />
editor-in-chief<br />
Isabella Frontado<br />
layout editor<br />
Mariko Azis<br />
staff<br />
copy editor<br />
Charlie Malone<br />
associate editors<br />
Vincent Kennedy & Stephanie Ng<br />
literary staff<br />
Elizabeth Bennett<br />
Nicolette Gendron<br />
Hannah Grace<br />
Mallika Iyer<br />
Vincent Kennedy<br />
Elisabeth Makishima<br />
<strong>Charlotte</strong> Malone<br />
Chloe Michaelidis<br />
Charles Perkins<br />
Sidartha Raju<br />
Nicole Rufus<br />
Madeline Thayer
milton academy<br />
winter 2010<br />
volume one