2020 Marginal Digital

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2 Volume 5 – 2020

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Hopkinton High School’s Literary Magazine
Volume 5
Spring 2020
Hopkinton High School
c/o Marginal
90 Hayden Rowe Street, Hopkinton, Massachusetts, 01748
508.497.9830
marginal@hopkinton.k12.ma.us
https://hhsmarginal.wordpress.com
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FICTION
35. Great Wave Kate Lagassé
48. The Ghosts of Morgraig Castle Mary Billeter*
65. LOVEDRUNK Jack Micallef
POETRY
6. Graphomania Matvey Ortyashov*
14. From Spam to Mars Olivia Gladu*
18. Desolation Within Annalise Curl
20. Love, Savannah Victoria Kray
22. Still Bleeding Marley Sensenderfer
27. Water Jessica Franchock*
28. Paper Buildings Kevin Gu
32. Red Mia Carboni
41. Grey Rabbit Nicholas Brown*
44. A Portrait Joel du Plessis*
46. The Art of War Linnea Pappas-Byers*
56. A Simple Response Would Have Sufficed Angela O’Leary*
59. I Used to Be… Sofia Dunne*
62. Words Like Music Mantra Rajkumar
63. The Ups and Downs of Confidence Simran Kaur*
70. Permanence Salma Bryan*
77. Storm Alisa Stolyar
78. Wasp’s Nest Kate Lagassé
79. Blizzards of Monochrome Kevin Gu
ESSAYS
8. We Called them Rehaals Cam Highwater*
24. The Little Things Sara Weissinger
42. My Name Drew Rancatore*
60. Spite Maximillian J. Valentine*
71. Conformity and Roles in American Society Sara Weissinger
* indicates student’s first appearance in Marginal
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ARTWORK
Cover. Windy City
Linnea Pappas-Byers*
12. Mirror Jack Micallef
19. Life From Death Sara Weissinger
23. 20 th Century Model Nia Alvarado Rodriguez
26. Magenta Everglades Jack Micallef
31. Lens of Time Linnea Pappas-Byers
53. Blood Red Jack Micallef
54. Scanner Art Deeksha Vaidyanathan*
64. Venetian Sunshowers Kevin Gu
69. Space is the Place Linnea Pappas-Byers
76. A Perception of Makeup Kate Lagassé
83. Walk Jack Micallef
COMMENTS
5. From the Advisor
13. Editor’s Choice - Writing
34. Senior-Write-Is Contest
55. Hopkinton Middle School Writing Contest
84. How to Submit, How to Join, and How We Work
* indicates student’s first appearance in Marginal
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MARGINAL 2020 Volume 5
Head Editor
Mia Carboni
Editors
Isabelle O’Rourke
Ambrose Rajendran
Alisa Stolyar
Assistant Editors
Ruben Noroian
Sreya Ravi
Faculty Advisor
Mr. Lally
Marginal is the annual literary magazine created by the students of Hopkinton High
School. Volume 5 was created using Microsoft Word and a run of 60 copies was
printed by Instant Publisher, Memphis, Tennessee. The text is set in Garamond
(text) and Marion Regular (titles), and the cover and header font is Verb. The
magazine was printed on 80# white high gloss enamel stock, with a perfect-bound
cover with UV coating gloss. The cover artwork is by Linnea Pappas-Byers and was
created using cut paper, pens, and acrylic paint. The magazine costs $10 and the
proceeds fund our printing of the subsequent edition and our contest prizes. One
copy of this year’s edition will be given to all students whose work is included.
Profits help pay for the prizes for our annual contests.
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From the Advisor
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We did it.
The departure of our editing staff last year hit harder than I’d
expected, leaving us with a skeleton crew this year. We completely
restructured how our afterschool meetings ran. Getting submissions
to our contests took a lot more coaxing than usual. The one café that
offered to promote our magazine had to shut down and relocate.
And then the catastrophe.
I cannot begin to thank my editing staff enough for the work
that they put in to get us to the finish line this year (Was that a
marathon metaphor? Apologies.) It’s been an odd year, but you made
it feel like it was all running smoothly (Another marathon metaphor?
Oh dear.) To Mia especially, who was an unbelievable help from start
to finish – thank you so much. I honestly didn’t think we’d get this
done. You made this magazine happen.
I would like to thank the Hopkinton PTA for again providing
the funds required to allow us to publish our magazine. Without a
selling season this year, your support is doubly appreciated.
Thank you to Ambrose, our lone senior editor, for your
dedication to our publication over the past two years. We’ll miss you!
Thank you to the NCTE REALM contest, who awarded our
2019 magazine with an Excellent rating, and to the ASPA
competition, which gave us a First Place designation. More
importantly, thank you to both organizations for encouraging
publications like this one.
Finally, I would like to dedicate this year’s magazine to the
Class of 2020, who deserved better than what they got.
Mr. Lally
Marginal Advisor
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MATVEY ORTYASHOV
Graphomania
1.
Enticing lyrics. Form and substance. Words
forever tend to lose their precious essence
and fly away – a flock of silly birds –
their freedom lines the road to obsolescence.
Precision is the necessary trait
of any poem worthy of remaining
in literature, and every author’s fate
is to constraint, the sense and form maintaining.
No easy task, but any worthy bard
exhibits spirit, spunky perseverance
and disregard, no matter that it’s hard,
of influence or any interference.
Such paradox – it now, as well as then,
creates true poets, artists, simply men.
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2.
A worthy poet, understanding his
non-trivial goals and methods, if objective,
performs his test, his own analyses
of his perspective and his introspective,
in other words, his past and present work.
This said, I can so readily envision
a quiet person going quite berserk,
his self-esteem and poems in collision.
Such observation I can also make
of this creation, lovely and aesthetic,
well metered: its meaning is opaque
it’s strictly rhymes, but barely poetic.
A perfect illustration of a piece
of graphomania – pitiful decease…
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CAM HIGHWATER
We Called them Rehaals
We called them rehaals. We could have just as easily called them
“book stands” instead, but it simply didn’t feel right. We were learning
in an Arabic class, so we used the Arabic term. If you were to purchase
one today, you might find cheaply manufactured plastic toys that would
break if you accidentally leaned on them. But our rehaals were different.
They were comprised of two flat pieces of solid, heavy wood that were
interlocked together to create an ‘X.’ When it came time to read, we
would fold it open, pulling the legs apart to create a satisfying V shape
that would nicely complement the bindings of an open book, keeping it
at an angle that would make it easy to read sitting on the floor. They had
carvings in them – some of them depicting mosques, or flowers, or a
nighttime sky. All of the carvings were most intricately detailed, beautiful
work I had ever seen, and when I got bored, I would marvel at them
and run my fingers over the wood.
It was all I knew – since I was five years old, I had been
attending the class. Every single Saturday and Sunday, mixed in with an
occasional Friday night, I would get out of my dad’s car in his reserved
parking spot and walk through the glass door of the mas’ajid in
Framingham. My eyes would adjust to the bright fluorescent lights and
stark white walls that made the large rectangular room feel less like a
mosque, less like a place of worship, and more like a sterilized hospital
with bookshelves and colored rugs. I would see all of my friends – more
than friends, I would call them brothers, faces I had grown up with –
and give each of them a deliberate, earnest handshake and a deft
“salaam”. We would all sit on our knees, in a single file line with our
backs facing the wall, set our Qurans down on a rehaal, open them up
and practice.
“Practice.” The word was a part of our daily lives. “Practice”
was the term we used to describe what we did, and it was the command
that would be given to us time and time again. I used to wonder why we
called it that, considering it was undescriptive and broad, but thinking
about it now I can’t seem to come up with a word that better
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encompassed our class. We would all sit beside each other in a row and
“practice”; we would read, all of us reciting different parts of the Qur’an
but keeping our voices at the same volume, using the same tone,
swaying gently back and forth to the same rhythm. If one were to listen
from a distance, they would just hear a bunch of high-pitched jumbled
yelling, but each of us had our own distinct task. The younger kids
would just recite out loud straight from the book, reading page after
page after page until the day that they could proudly tell their parents
that they have read every word, every letter in the Qur’an at least once.
The older of us had a more difficult form of practicing: we would read
the same short section of a page, sometimes two, over and over and
over again until we had committed it to memory. But not just the
sequence of the words, of course – there is a word in the Arabic
language, tajweed, which is defined as a “set of rules governing exactly
which way a word in the Qur’an should be pronounced.” The delivery
of each letter, from the pressure applied when pronouncing a consonant
to the difference in stretching a vowel to three fingers versus five
fingers, was integral to the recitation. When we thought we had our
“lesson” (the passage that we had to memorize) down, we would stand
up, walk to the other side of the room and recite to the leader of the
mosque, the Imaam.
The Imaam had moved to Massachusetts from India before I
was born. He had no English-speaking skills whatsoever; but he had an
incredibly close group of friends, including my father. Together they
started the mosque in Framingham, electing themselves as the board of
directors, and slowly but surely built the Muslim community in the town
up to where it is today. The children of the rest of the board and I
became the Imaam’s first students in America. We all saw him as a weird
sort of religious father figure, not only because he had he known us
since we were babies, but he taught us about the Quran and how to read
it. He was eccentric, to say the least. As the number of students in the
class grew, he hired assistants, past students of his own, to help him on
the weekends and listen to the younger students. And while the
assistants ordered the kids to sit in a single file line and wait their turn,
Imaam Saab (which the students respectfully called him) had a different
method for listening to the older students. We would sit around him,
not in a circle but in a chaotic throng, and while the outside of the
bunch practiced their lesson, he would listen to the three or four of us
that were closest to him – at the same time. I could never understand
how he did it, where he got that uncanny ability to listen to more than
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one person at a time, let alone four. Sometimes he would keep our
books open in front of him, sometimes he wouldn’t, but it never
mattered. Whether he was looking or not, whether one of us was louder
than the other, whether the entire class was loud enough to drown us
out, it never mattered because he knew all 604 pages, all 9060 lines of
Arabic in the Quran like the back of his hand. And if any of us made
even the slightest mistake – if we failed to round our lips on a certain
consonant or didn’t use our throat when pronouncing a “ha” sound – he
would catch us, and he would react.
To say that the Imaam had a temper is like calling Queen
Elizabeth II “a famous old British lady.” Sometimes, when he would
hear a mistake, silence the entire class with one word and begin giving us
a lecture about the exact significance of the blunder, which would
snowball into an hour-long sermon. Other times, he would get angry,
mark an “X” in our book where we made the mistake and scream at us
to go and practice more. But other times, he would get really angry. Slaps
to the face, whippings with plastic coat hangers, and sometimes even a
whack with a rehaal – they weren’t pretty, but it would be lying to say
that they were much less than common. I was 13 years when I got my
worst. I had been on the same two-page-long lesson for a week, and I
was under pressure from both my dad and the Imaam to finish it and
move on. It was my second time reading to him that day, and by the
time I was done with the first page I had already made two mistakes. At
this point, I could tell he was angry – he had fully turned to face me,
staring me down and waiting for me to fumble one last time. It didn’t
take too long – three lines into the second page and I tripped, missing a
letter. He was a rather large man but moved at lightning speed and
didn’t give me any time to try and duck. He grabbed my right ear and
used it as a handle, yanking my face to an inch from his, and ordered me
to repeat myself. I was quaking with fear and could barely bring the
words to my lips. Two mistakes this time. His twisted my ear so hard I
thought he would rip it clean off and gave me one more chance to
redeem myself. All I had to do was say the right words and he would let
go. He’d give me a disgusted snort and tell me to continue. The class
that had fallen deathly silent, and with everyone was looking at me, I
made the same fatal mistake a third time. I was too terrified to pay any
mind to the foreign cuss words he screamed at me after that, but as
soon as I saw his free hand go for the hilt of my rehaal I knew exactly
what was coming. Even so, I barely had time to brace myself.
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SMACK. He hit me harder than I expected, square on the shoulder. I
tried to stay as still as possible. It didn’t seem fair to me – I was always
told by my parents that Islam is a purely peaceful religion. But this man
taught me all about Islam, dare I say more than they did. He embodied
Islam for me – so what was going on? Imaam Saab never mentioned
anything about peace. This wasn’t peaceful. Why was this happening?
SMACK. The rehaal was incredibly heavy, and my arm was already sore.
But I was determined not to cry. I could feel every single pair of eyes in
the room boring holes into me, adding to the humility. Rubbing salt into
the wound. He hadn’t stopped screaming. Maybe he was enjoying it?
Maybe, but I wouldn’t let him. This was cruelty, and I wouldn’t let him
win. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. I bit my lip and winced as he
winded up again.
SMACK. The wood made an audible knock against the edge of my=
shoulder blade, and the pain had grown exponentially. It was a war now
between the Imaam and me, to see how long it would take me to break.
My determination was wearing down fast. I could feel my eyes welling
up. No, I told myself. You’re stronger than this.
CRACK. One of the interlocked pieces of wood splintered. The Imaam
snapped at me to pick it up and roared at the rest of the class to stop
gawking and resume practicing. I began picking up pieces with one hand
and putting them in the other, and as I tried unsuccessfully to suppress
my heaving sobs, I realized two things: that the rehaal wasn’t made of
wood, it was actually just particle board; and I wasn’t as strong as I
thought.
We Called them Rehaals was the co-winner of our 2020 Senor-Write-Is Contest
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Mirror
by Jack Micallef
(photograph)
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2019-20 Editor’s Choice Award - Writing
Beginning this year, Marginal will give an annual Editor’s Choice Award,
where our head editor selects an exemplary writing submission and explains
what made it stand out.
With a deft control of humor and a tone that is both playful
and witty, Olivia Gladu’s From Spam to Mars was far and away the
most extraordinary piece of humorous poetry we saw this year. Each
word is skillfully chosen, each line crafted to deliver an impressive
amount of information about the author whilst maintaining the tone
that makes this poem so lovable. Reading the poem feels like having
an amicable conversation with Olivia herself, but the writing is
electric with both energy and talent. Nothing she writes is
“Unintentional…” but rather each stanza works to paint a picture of
the author in this especially charming poem. The incredible skill
Olivia demonstrates in From Spam to Mars made it a clear choice for
this year’s Editor’s Choice award. Incredible job, Olivia!
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OLIVIA GLADU
From Spam to Mars
I have a fear of my mother holding fruit.
She threw one at my forehead one time.
Accidentally, of course.
I think.
It was an apple.
It made that crunching sound.
We laughed hysterically.
It was pretty funny.
But I would never admit that.
I ridicule her for it.
Boogie boarding in frigid 60-degree water can be exciting.
I was trampled by a wave once.
The lifeguard had to swim out.
I was covered in scratches.
I jumped back in twenty minutes later.
My protective stepdad was not thrilled.
Halloween is my favorite holiday.
Our family hosted costume parties.
One time, a candle sat too close to a painting.
It caught on fire.
The portrait of a toddler burned.
I was that toddler.
I decided not to take offense.
I forgive…
but I don’t forget.
I broke my big toe playing soccer.
I played the next game before realizing it was a painful decision.
I still went to a Bat Mitzvah that night.
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When I was little, I choked on a munchkin,
at my sister’s birthday party.
A nearby parent performed the Heimlich.
I lived.
The attention helped relieve the trauma.
At the family Christmas party, I received a box of 1,000 gumballs in
the Yankee Swap.
As well as toothpaste.
That same year a golden toilet seat was up for grabs.
I was pulling for that one.
My friend once gave me a pink, heart-covered framed print of a
Cindy Sherman painting.
She also gave me Spam.
We watch horror movies together.
I was at a March in D.C. once.
We arrived at 5 am.
We stood until 12 pm.
I desperately needed to use the bathroom.
This became an issue.
I trampled five bystanders to reach the porta-potty.
My first time in NYC at the M&M store,
I was nine years old.
Lots of money saved up for the trip.
Most of it spent there.
An unnecessary amount.
I cried.
I despise wasting money.
I never paid for M&Ms again.
Except the peanut ones,
those are killer.
I am not a naturally aggressive player,
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unless provoked.
Then, as my Papa liked to say, “fiery, redhead girl” emerges.
Many think I punched a player.
I did not.
It was my elbow.
Unintentional…
of course!
A technical was called.
In my defense,
she started it.
6th-grade basketball was…
eventful.
When I cat sit for a friend,
I write notes about Kevin, the cat, each time.
One day I believe he was seeing ghosts.
My friend thinks it was just a lamp.
I’m not so convinced.
My 16th birthday consisted of a flea market, Chic-fil-a, and an
abandoned insane asylum trip with my sister.
It was the best birthday I’ve ever had.
I can still recite every moon phase.
Mrs. Huestis dug a hole in my brain and placed this knowledge there
forever.
She also sparked my interest in the planets.
If the opportunity arises, I may move to Mars.
Although I’ve never embraced change,
I have learned to accept it.
I’ll revise my answer to an indefinite maybe.
Picture this:
2009,
winter hats,
all year ‘round,
and
sock monkeys.
I found the sock monkey hat of a lifetime,
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striped in bright, rainbow tones.
I was furious when my friend copied me.
Later, I understood the importance of this absolute betrayal.
I was the trendsetter.
All before the age of ten.
Sometimes, I amaze myself.
My older sister and I seldom fight.
We were on vacation.
We screamed at each other in the hotel room until she cried.
We apologized.
We forgave.
Then we bought gelato.
It was delicious.
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ANNALISE CURL
Desolation Within
Thou shall be stunned at how distant one seems.
Neither here nor there you find life amongst.
An abiding wreck is the Sheikh’s regime;
Thoughts decanting out from thy lack of trust.
Thou give imposing expressions of love,
Yet the locutions fall fictitiously.
Henceforth, morbidly I exist above,
Whilst everyone taunts maliciously.
A myriad of lies that rest egregious,
Assembled by the hidden malevolent.
Ye emit declarations of aegis,
Yet thou stride beyond the evident.
A soloist shall yearn for a duet,
However, she is too damaged to try.
The tape failed beneath the shattered cassette,
“Je suis là pour toi,” will not qualify.
If thee possess thou ow’st intuition,
Rid me of thy abyss of perdition.
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Life From Death
by Sara Weissinger
(watercolor, pen, cut paper)
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VICTORIA KRAY
Love, Savannah
The palm trees lined the beach,
Just like you line my heart,
The little wind brushing,
Mumbling, I couldn’t hear your talking,
Trinket of my honor,
Is you giving me your kiss,
Little wooden flower,
Made of all your fits,
Joyous morning arising,
Like a box of fox leopard kits,
See your little laughs,
Blooming over the horizon,
Like that of Laomedeia over
Neptune.
Take it or leave it,
But one is never left,
The door barricaded by my envy,
And the drinks You’ve never left.
Toying with my little heart,
That doll from barren lands,
Warm is his little chest I gather,
The distant playing of bands.
Summertime rolls around
Like a restless pretty lady,
Things are hot and still,
Except you,
like object Hades,
Maybe I’m not your Luna,
And we’re more like Jupiter
Or Neptune,
But I’m a Martian on your Earth,
And I’ll spread peace and prosper
Making instruments out of phosphor,
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And saxophones from bones
And drums from real ones,
And love triangles with interest.
Flowering fields are new to me,
Because all I see was barren.
Now Vegas hills’ hummingbirds sing for me,
And I can smell the trees,
And see the fields more clearly now,
A snowflake in my Saharan air.
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MARLEY SENSENDERFER
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Still Bleeding
I’ll never understand why I trust you.
Your shining blue eyes seemed so innocent, so alluring.
I wanted to believe that you would never let me down,
and you didn’t.
You would never drop me when we
flew across the sky on broken wings.
I trust you so completely, so blindly.
You couldn’t deliver the final blow with the sword grasped
tightly in your hand.
Nothing could break our bond.
The feeling of the air as it rushed through my lips
never felt better than when you were there to hear it.
You would always be there.
I don’t have to worry about you showing up, because I trust you with
everything.
I knew, deep down, that you would never plunge your sword into
my
still-beating heart, bleeding me out slowly until I had nothing left.
My blind eyes had every reason to believe you with no evidence at
all.
Hearts intertwined like the thickest ropes, but I never knew that the
choking was yet to come.
I didn’t see the daggers behind your eyes.
You never spoke with lashing words that cut me too deep.
The biting sting of acidic tears never touched my skin,
and I was completely fine.
I am completely fine,
because I trust you.
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20 th Century Model by Nia Alvarado Rodriguez
(watercolor painting)
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SARA WEISSINGER
The Little Things
I love to capture the little things.
I fill my phone with thousands of beautiful, brief moments.
Golden buttercups smattering a walkway like spilled drops of honey,
radiating an air of peace that flits away as fast as it arrives. A decadent
meal of the finest instant ramen with eggs and cheese, which I made
myself for lunch, like the extraordinary chef I am. Water tinged green
in an empty yogurt cup with veins of feathery blue paint bleeding
through it as I mix the next color for my art project. A screenshot of
a meme about global warming, both for future sharing and also to
remind myself of how much the world still needs to change. Dozens
of slow-motion videos of skipping rocks with my mom at the lake,
the last one showing a whole seven skips before I decided not to
push my luck by trying again and possibly ending on a worse note. A
solitary deer eating leaves in my backyard, which I, sadly, proceeded
to scare away by accident while I tried to get a closer picture.
My room, too, is peppered with these everyday souvenirs. I’m
constantly observing and learning, trying to preserve every memory I
can to the best of my ability. A carefully organized assortment of
delicately handled records with album cover edges worn down from
use, myriad pristine vinyls in well-loved sleeves, that was passed
down from my mom to me. Dried flowers from dance recitals and
holidays past, immortalizing not only their beauty but also the
memories and relationships they represent, held in “vases” of
recycled glass bottles from all of the exotic sodas I can find. A picture
of my shoe after a dusty hike with a smiley face wiped into it, as if on
a foggy car window, which I thought was just silly enough to pay for
a print of. Old notes and worksheets beneath my bed and at the
bottom of my closet “just in case I ever need them again,” despite the
judging looks from some friends who are more eager to purge. A
bookshelf that overflows into a stack on the floor next to my desk,
with books I’ve loved from fourth grade up through high school.
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Any stuffed animal, that I just couldn’t bear to pass down to my little
brother, sitting either on my bed or in a tub in the corner of my
room. Commemorative coins from historical sites in Paris, all except
Notre Dame, which I now sincerely regret. Every letter and note my
friends have written me tucked away in a drawer or tacked onto the
wall, every quip written on paper or in a text just to be sure it isn’t
forgotten. As I compile this collection, I try to preserve the things
that bring me joy, capturing little vignettes of myself and my life in
the process.
Each seemingly insignificant thing adds up to who I am. Each
memento is a snapshot of the moments that matter most to me or a
peek into someone else’s story. A pride flag pin bought in
Provincetown. A strip of caution tape brimming with doodles and
signatures from my art camp friends. I live vicariously through
glimpses of other people’s lives, captured moments inviting me to
challenge my worldview, influencing my tastes, values, and ambitions.
Vintage postcards from 1917, humanizing estranged eras while giving
light to the confusing passage of time. Above all else, however, as I
document the daily jokes and adventures I share with my friends, I
learn to both cherish each moment with them and to not take myself
too seriously. Prom selfies in glittery fedoras. Strings of Polaroid
photos hanging like holiday lights, filled with scenes of innocent
hijinks and whimsical tomfoolery.
Moments seized in time, beauty in the ordinary.
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Magenta Everglades
by Jack Micallef
(photograph)
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JESSICA FRANCHOCK
Water
What does it feel like to drown in beauty?
To look up to see lilies like clouds,
Some which have bloomed into furious pinks
And others who laze as buds until they spill open like ink.
What does it feel like to float in purity?
To flow from truth to lies like a tree’s false reflection.
Warped by the pool, not an exact copy, but something new.
A dark oaky green contrasting deep blue.
What does it feel like to swim in knowledge?
To drift away from the confined pool into open water.
Where lily pads are replaced by seaweed and plastic
And the waves and tides reduce noise to a dreary static.
What does it feel like to be pulled under a spell?
To fly and fall with each frog that hops from home to home,
As they croak out forgotten melodies, leaping to new heights.
With every jump they resemble birds and nearly take flight.
What does it feel like to sink?
To fall under the turquoise, indigos, baby blues.
To reach a ground veiled by large shadows,
Surrounded by rushing water then silent repose.
Water was the runner up of the 2019 Senior-Write-Is Contest.
It is inspired by Claude Monet’s Water Lilies (1906)
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KEVIN GU
Paper Buildings
stacks of inked papers pile high up
in my messy, wooden home,
wobbling from the weight
of its unstable foundation
paper houses and paper towns
loom over me,
engulfing the dusty, cracking
ground scattered in broken
pencil tips
and crumpled sticky notes
I try to race away from endless
paper buildings
that collapse and fall
and drown me in cuts
of blood
and ink
and stress
and a mess
of nothing
because
“quiz next Thursday”
“homework due tomorrow”
“test on Wednesday”
don’t mean anything
to me
when I can’t seem to
to see anything else
but the stacks of documents
that leer over
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my shaking shoulders
I punched a hole in my wall
the other day
all for an equation
that wouldn’t untangle
in my tired brain—
plaster fell through
cardboard walls
and my hand came out bleeding,
from paper cuts
all those paper buildings,
constructed high enough
to block out the stars—
for nothing but
a single letter
that determines
who I am now
and who I will
become
paper cities
suffocate me
until my lungs tighten
from the unknowns
of another day
and lights that
flicker in dark ink stains
are from candles
that try to make sense of
my velvety thoughts
and nothing seems to
wake me up again
from my sleep-deprived
mind as
paper sheets rain
down from the sky,
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blocking me from
dreaming
about the
sights I’ll
never
get to see.
Paper Buildings was the winner of our 2019 Poetry Contest
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Lens of Time
by Linnea Pappas-Byers
(cut paper & collage)
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MIA CARBONI
Red
My lips are red, and full
Of words held back against clenched teeth
Arguments
Relinquished with nervous breath.
My lips are soft
Except when coated in saltwater and laughter
Or in the syrup of birthday pancakes
And cheap cotton candy.
Smile Politely, sweet
Lips forgive quickly
A smooth exterior
inside worry sores grow bigger and the scars
Bleed
Metallic fear takes a sword to my tongue.
Red lips
Red with lies, and truth
Of beauty, warped
By piercing eyes and snickering friends.
Mother, you were right – they are a virtue.
But tell me why
Girls use concealer
to mute the red
to roughen the soft
Their words are muted, my thoughts are rough
My force of habit has become my softest armor;
And yet
My Lips Are Still Soft
With song and kisses
My Lips Are Still Red
Red with rage
And My Lips Are Still Full
Of energy and excitement
They will no longer allow my words to hide behind
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These lips that give invitations to speak
To parties I’m not invited
Red was the runner-up in our 2019 Poetry Contest
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Class of 2020 Senior-Write-Is Contest
Editors’ Notes
We were once again very pleased with the interest in our annual
Senior-Write-Is Contest – our annual writing contest open only to
the graduating class of that year. Over one third of our writing
submissions to this year’s magazine came during this contest, and
very many of this year’s seniors stood out with their strong works.
This year’s runner up is Jessica Franchock’s Water, a poem based on
Claude Monet’s Water Lilies. Her poem introduces a series of
introspective rhetorical questions and impressed us with its variety of
rich images and its tightly controlled language. Good poetry “makes
it new,” and this poem adds some pleasantly unexpected descriptions
to some universal ideas.
This year, we awarded two First Place prizes. The first, We Called
Them Rehaals (which can be found on page 8) is a haunting memoir
about a young man who faces a grueling trial. The control of the
pacing and the ability to inject occasional moments of humor into
such a heavy piece made this one stand out. The range of emotions in
this piece is excellent, and the final moment stays in your mind well
after you have turned the page.
Our other co-winner is the story that follows, Kate Lagassé’s Great
Wave, a beautifully imagined short story about love and memory. The
story is loaded with terrific little moments – an unexpected turn of a
phrase, a detail that shows the depths of the protagonist, the clever
metaphors – all of it creates a story that really works on so many
levels. These pieces were an absolute pleasure to read. We hope you
enjoy them as much as we did.
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KATE LAGASSÉ
Great Wave
After nine years, nine years of loving and hating you, I am
only just learning that my head can remain above water. If I wish, I
can swim, or test just how long I can hold my breath by your side.
Large ocean waves grab at the shore like giants trying to pull
themselves onto land. In the dark, I cannot see them, but instead,
hear their groans as they attempt to grasp solid land in their reaching
fingers. My feet are burrowed beneath the sand, and my legs, coated
in a thin grainy layer, like powdered sugar. In the cool, damp earth,
my toes and fingers are paper-white. Yet, I feel untouched by the
cold. I feel unbothered by the sticking sand and its abrasive grasp.
Crashing like glass exploding upon impact, the waves prevent my
heavy eyelids from closing. My own personal symphony. I feel calm.
Pressure releases beneath my fingers as sand escapes my clenched
fist. I am calm.
Who was I before I met you?
I ask myself this question often these days. Even more
frequently as I lie awake, attentive to the colorful shadows passing on
my dusty yellow walls from streetlights flickering outside the window.
An animated painting of the night.
Was I always this malleable? Another gold medal that you bit just to
observe the marks left behind? I try to convince myself that I was
enchanted by your story from the start. Emiline would always laugh
as she explained the ways I’ve adopted little pieces of you without
knowing. At least, when she first told me, she was laughing. Now, it’s
Emmy’s first point of contention when I call her. She’s the friend I
can always rely on to be right, even in the moments it infuriates me.
It’s been a while since I’ve called her.
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Before I met you, I hated beer. I know that for sure; I hated
beer. It smells like a fraternity’s lingering ghost and tastes like the kiss
of each poor decision I made during high school. Not that we were an
exception. With time I became attracted to the musty smell, similar to
your cologne. Kissing the edge of a long-necked, glass bottle would
only bring me trouble, but God, how I loved feeling intoxicated by
you.
Before I met you, I used to sleep in the middle of the bed.
Now, it’s comical to me that rolling over is like facing the urge to
peek beneath the bedspread for monsters. Almost comical, but not
enough, Georgia. Some nights I even dream that upon lifting the duvet,
I’ll see your head at my knees with the same devilish, gleaming smile
unchanged in my mind. My heart pounds, but with what feeling?
Before I met you, rock and roll cd’s stayed on my shelves.
Too many car rides with my dad, his cheeks, always warm, and his
eyes, always twinkling. He’d be listening to Springsteen, the king of
Thunder Road himself, and my mind would be anywhere but in the
passenger seat of his beaten green truck. The guitars and drums, the
lead vocal and pounding beat, how it whispers to me now. The guilty
tune of my own conscience.
You could have been a better daughter.
He still loves you.
But will they allow you to come home?
I could silence the thoughts as my head rested on your bare
chest. You hummed Runaways like The Killers wrote lullabies. Our
anthem. Always the score to our memories together. I loved thinking
that I escaped the worst of reality by your side. I was that lucky girl.
The lucky girl you took along on the ride. The lucky girl that caught
your eye. How I loved when you started your stories of us with that
thought: I caught your eye. Now, you’ve taught me I was wrong,
haven’t you? I was never captivating; I was in captivity. Ensnared
from the start, I was just the prey you were waiting for to smell the
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trap. Your eyes, a double-barreled gun that all you had to do was
aim.
And darling, you were one hell of a shot.
I even loved the way you smelled of cigarettes even though I
hate them with every fiber in my being. That was the common theme
with you: contradiction. How could I love so much of the things that
bring me such disgust?
Exhaling deeply, my eyes search tirelessly for the drifting
twinkle of tanker ships. My fingers dance along the edge of the large
guard stand I rest my back against, gingerly prying away at the
splintered wood. I imagine I’m picking away at myself, trying to peel
the parts of me away that you have consumed.
It’s been 9 years.
When we left Michigan, you told me it was what we needed,
what I needed. Of course, we’d return, but not until we had
‘explored’ our youth, grasping the fleeting opportunities that
promised to escape us in our thirties. It was so appealing when you
described this fantasy. Every searching soul ends up in California. A
hajj for dreaming and distressed college graduates.
We made it there in a day, and just as fast, I wanted to leave.
You’d shush my pleas of concern, telling me to take a breath. Instead,
I’m sure I’ve been holding the same air in my lungs all this time. It
was easier than removing from your hand from over my mouth and
nose, just as I never stopped you from pulling me into your lap.
You’d whisper into my ear that I’d love it soon. You whispered those
words like someday I’d believe them.
I’ll love this at some point, won’t I?
I’ll come to love the bustle of eight-lane traffic trying to reach
unreachable places in impossible measures of time. I’ll come to love
the strip malls and fast-food chains. I’ll come to love the ‘perfect’
weather, so warm that I am not bothered when you leave the bed
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without a goodbye. I’ll come to love the way your film equipment
covers the floor in our already-too-small studio apartment and see
that it’s more than just the shit I step on trying to reach the
bathroom. We never cook. We never clean. “Let’s live without rules”,
you told me. No rules made by our parents or our bosses. Neither of
our paths would determine our lives. When I woke up this morning, I
didn’t want to love this because I was holding onto an image I once
loved of you.
After an hour, my eyes have begun to adjust to the dark
horizon.
I see the outline of a lighthouse that hasn’t worked in years
on the left-side coast and wonder if anyone will ever check up on it. I
guess we have to accept that some lights just burn out.
In the waves, I see a pale figure and watch its movements. In
my chest, there’s a growing tightness, a burning in my eyes, but I’m
anchored to the sand. The moonlight acts like a twisted spotlight on
the waves as they push and pull the body like large hands rocking its
delicate frame to sleep. I can see her hair, a silver mane in the water
that’s coursing in every which way like the smoke used to from your
lips. She’s on her back, arms outstretched with her eyes open to the
sky.
When I was a kid, I’d lay on my back the same way beneath
the stars. I’d imagine that if I stared hard enough at the twinkling
specks, I’d see the constellations begin to move. After all, some
wonders go unmissed when you don’t pay attention. Pale cheeks and
silver-blonde hair, my mom used to tell me I was her little ghost. It’s
been far too long since I was my mother’s anything.
Fumbling from my seat, the sand covers my long legs. I should
be asleep. Maybe I am. This would be the most normal dream I’ve had in quite
some time. I finger the collar of your crew-neck sweatshirt and pull it
over my head, catching my ears along the way. My skin immediately
contracts at the cold air’s touch and shivers at the thought that you’ve
ever seen me this way. I step out of my cotton shorts and breathe in.
Humming, I realize no one can hear me.
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My lips part and exhale lyrics as if I’m whispering a secret to
the ocean.
“In my darkness, I remember”
Each step feels like I am somewhere I shouldn’t be, doing
something I shouldn’t be doing, but I know it’s right.
“Momma’s words reoccur to me,”
The little ghost is caught on the surface of the waves.
“Surrender to the good lord,”
At the edge of the waterline, the sand turns frigid. My toes no
longer penetrate the surface but instead imprint the ground. My mark
on this state, soon to be washed away by the current. My exposed
skin shakes.
“And he’ll wipe your slate clean”
I wince at the first clutch of icy hands around my ankles. One
deep breath and I run. Charging into the water, my lungs fill
shallowly with short breaths. I grimace and wave my arms as I wade
past my knees, my hips, and the leap forward, throwing my body into
the frozen waves. The water bites at my snow-white skin, stinging as
it steals what remaining heat is left in my body. As my chest pulses
like the tick of a clock, I grow less and less bothered by the cold as
my lungs begin to burn and alight the air stuck in my lungs. I could stay
here. I could be the girl that got away. The girl that made her own escape. The girl
that doesn’t have to see you, or face you, in a world, we twisted and molded until it
suffocated us. I am not your girl. And I will not be someone that only lived to be
your girl. Your hand around my mouth and fingers pinching my nose,
release. Finally, the breath I’ve been holding for so long, the
Michigan air I last filled my lungs with, exhales.
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Gasping, my eyes are wide as I break the surface. The pound
of my heart, a hand slapping against my chest. “Surrender to the
good lord,”
My voice is shaky but louder.
“And he’ll wipe your slate clean”
As I outstretch my arms, my head speaking to the sky, I think
I see a pale arm reaching from the waves towards me. As I reach
back, my fingers break the water’s surface and I know, for once in a
long time, it’s just me. Cold water has never felt better.
Great Wave was the co-winner of the 2020 Senior-Write-Is Contest. It features lyrics
from River by Leon Bridges et. al.
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NICHOLAS BROWN
Grey Rabbit
The pavement shouts a curt reply
Sneakers slam a lullaby
As I push on up the hill
Pounding footwork, common drill
As I round the very top
I see the fateful final spot
There he scurried, there he played
Till his body then was flayed
Fur was grey, rich and bold
Now his only soul is sold
Poor chap, a sorry sight
Rubber murder, final fright
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DREW RANCATORE
My Name
The name’s Rancatore. Drew Rancatore. A five-syllable name.
Thirteen letters. It’s a name that substitute teachers stutter at, but
don’t butcher. I like my name, all the way from the first d to the last
e. My first name is not Andrew, which is a common misconception.
It’s simply Drew. In reality, my name is a past tense verb that means:
“to produce by making lines and marks, especially with a pen or
pencil, on paper,” as in “I drew a picture.” If my name was Andrew, I
wouldn’t be able to claim that you can associate it with art class. As
for my last name, its dictionary search produces no results. It would
sound odd to say, “I Rancatore a picture.” Whenever someone asks
how I spell my last name, I tell them I break it up into three words.
“Ran,” “Cat,” and “Ore.” Often times others pronounce it this way.
It is actually said as “Ran-Cat-Or-E” This is just a minor issue. I
would be more alarmed if someone pronounced my name “Drew
Jones.”
The name Drew is of English origin. Its non-dictionary
meaning is “manly,” which is fitting when you think about it,
considering I am a male. But my name can also be a girl’s name,
which makes me wonder what my reaction would be if I were a girl
and my name meant the literal opposite of my gender. I am the first
(and greatest) Drew in my family, dating back several generations. My
parents had several names planned out for me when I was born but
decided on Drew for a very special reason: they liked it. When you
think of a Drew, the actress Drew Barrymore might come to mind.
Or perhaps New Orleans Saints QB Drew Brees. Or maybe after
reading this paper to this point, the first one you think of is Drew
Rancatore. Although I may not be on the same level of fame as the
aforementioned Drews, I’m on their level when it comes to
alphabetical orders by first name.
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My name is like a rock. Drew. It’s hard and compact, almost
as if you can feel the “An” trying to burst out its left side. You can
stumble over scattered forms of it in your backyard and try with all
your might to crack it in half, but you simply can’t. “Dr” and “Ew”
are not names. Rancatore seems to have a flowing aspect to it, like a
river. After all, people do skip rocks across rivers. According to the
internet, there is only one person in the United States with the name
of Drew Rancatore. I happen to be that person. So now that you’ve
met the one and only, you could make a picture of what you think I
look like. You know, put a face to the name. I could even talk you
through it.
Or perhaps you already Drew it.
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JOEL du PLESSIS
A Portrait
Fluttering leaves, skin-bare trees
A reflection of a man shows not what he sees
A mirror of his form shows him as much as it would velvet’s touch.
His feelings hidden, his opinion not enough
To bring him confidence nor companion’s touch.
He’d shed tear after tear and still none would hear him
His heart’s rhetoric would become his mind’s and grant him burdens
and burdens.
But he cannot put word and thought into action,
He cannot roll his tape when they say action
He feels as if there is still a leash that he is on
And his righted wrongs, will remain forever wrong.
A spark lights a fire in him, a new curiosity
His focus lies on something new, but not in its entirety
His life suddenly has meaning, but in reality, it has renewed its
meaning
His life will reach towering new heights, but also fall to great new
depths
Because with all the life in the world, there is still death.
As this life falls to death, death gives way to more life,
Those fluttering leaves will fall and become crackling leaves
The trees will be barer, and seemingly barer of life
But leaves that fall in the autumn are replaced by flowers in the
spring
The dry trees are refreshed and filled with birds full of life that will
continuously sing.
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With all those seasons that change, becoming years
The watering eyes drying from the past tears,
He must decide
On how to find life;
Shall he spend subsequent seasons wallowing in, and lamenting his
pain,
Or shall he open his mouth and ask for help?
All that we know is that he stands alone in the rain,
His tears hidden by his surrounding sadness,
His struggles merely camouflaged by the world’s sadness.
He stands without protection from the elements.
Without a jacket, nor under a canopy.
He stands like a skin-bare tree,
His feelings his fluttering leaves in the wind.
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LINNEA PAPPAS-BYERS
The Art of War
They will give you the helmet
And the camouflage pants
They will drill you and kill you and send back a star
But they will not give the food
Or the college
Or the shelter
Or the hospital bed
Or even the wages to pay for it
Unless you kill for it
Die for it
Give up your peace of mind for it
But there is plenty of food to go around
Plenty of empty homes
Plenty of space in schools and hospitals
But that food, that, space is not for us
It sits on the tall shelf of wealth and power,
Held in the hands of the same men
Who throw it away and leave it empty
With excuses of supply and demand and exponential growth
Whose factories make the guns and the bombs and the tanks
Whose pockets fill with hundred-dollar bills
Every time one of us is starved into the boots and the helmet
And sent off to shoot
At people like us who were chained to their guns
By poverty and draft
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And the cities and forests burn all around us
And the innocent’s homes are bombed
While the pigs will sit by in their fancy silk sheets
With their false diagnoses costing a pretty penny
Saying “How noble it is, the art of war,
How glorious it will be for our nation,
How proud we are of our little toy soldiers
God bless
God bless
God bless.”
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MARY BILLETER
The Ghosts of Morgraig Castle
The young woman stared into the castle ruins, not quite
believing what she was hearing. True, she had heard the stories,
rumors, and legends of the old stone castle on the grassy highlands,
but she had never imagined it could be real. She had never believed it
could be real.
Wind blew through her hair, pushing her towards the low
stone wall.
She knew she should be worried, as a young woman alone
where no one would think to look for her should she encounter
trouble, but she only felt a strange sense of curiosity and calm.
Something about the ruins felt right, like a rope was pulling her
forwards into what had once been a beautiful castle.
The tranquil melody came again, floating on the wind to her
ears. It was hauntingly beautiful, but she couldn’t see where it was
coming from. No one was on the moor but her and the wind and the
crumbling old stones.
It was the music that set these ruins apart from the other
castles scattered across the country. It was the music that sparked the
stories, the rumors, the legends. The stories claimed that the music
played itself. The rumors claimed the music came from the crazy old
man that lived at the edge of town – that he was secretly a musical
genius who practiced near the ruins so no one would hear him. The
legends claimed that years ago, a fairy had cursed the royal organist to
play forever.
Regardless, the organ played, somewhere out of sight.
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“Hello?” The woman called, not expecting a response. The
organ player never responded to anyone. Somewhere in the ruins, the
music stopped.
Silence.
She sighed. She should have known better than to think she
would be able to solve the mystery of the ruins.
“Hello.”
The young woman jumped, looking around wildly for the
owner of the voice that had spoken. A faint gasp came from
somewhere beside her, but she couldn’t see anyone there.
“Can you… hear me?” The voice asked, no louder than a
whisper.
The woman stretched out her hand, looking for someone
invisible. Surely, she would at least be able to feel the person. She
couldn’t have gone crazy. She had heard a voice, and voices must
come from somewhere.
“Where are you?” She muttered under her breath.
“You’ll never be able to see, but I am here, I promise. I am a
ghost. My life has long been forgotten by everyone, even me. I am
the one who plays the Forgotten Organ, found only in the memory
of this castle, Morgraig Castle. It is all I know of the world.”
exist.”
“You’re a ghost? But… that’s impossible. Ghosts don’t
“Either I exist or you’re talking to yourself.”
“If you’re real… what’s your name?”
Wind rushed past the woman’s left ear, and another, deeper
voice replied, “None of us remember our names. All we remember is
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the castle. We wish we could take care of it the way we once could. If
it fades until even the stones are no more than rubble, the only thing
tethering us to mortal memory will be gone.”
“Why don’t you ask the living for help?”
More wind swirled around the young woman, snickering.
“If we could, dear, we would.” The air seemed to grow
melancholy as the organist replied, “They hear my music, but they
don’t hear me.”
A third ghost cut in, “You are the first living being to hear
our voices since the castle was destroyed long ago. You are our only
chance at being remembered. Please, please help us. We want to
remember who we are. We want our stories to be told.”
To any outsiders, the scene must have looked crazy. They
couldn’t hear the voices of hundreds of ghosts across the moor.
But the young woman could.
The next day, she returned.
She bought the land upon which the castle had once stood.
For years, the young woman returned, slowly rebuilding the castle
with the help of her ghosts. As the castle returned to its former glory,
so did the memories of the ghosts. Often, the young woman could be
found sitting in the green grass with her eyes closed, listening to the
stories they told of the people who had come and gone in the town
far below.
Still, the ghosts couldn’t remember who they were.
When she came home at night, people whispered that she had
gone insane. They heard her stories of ghosts on the moor and
deemed her unsuitable to be around.
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Still, many realized she was wise beyond her years. Children
would listen to her stories with wide eyes and bright smiles until their
parents pulled them away.
Her project expanded. Curious travelers from miles away
came to see the reconstruction of the ancient castle. Some donated to
keep the project going, especially as the castle grew closer to
completion.
Though the townspeople ignored her at first, there came a
time where they couldn’t stand back and watch.
“Do you want any help, miss?” One child asked, the first to
approach the young woman.
“That would be very nice. Do you know what would really
help? Finding records of those who used to live here. Can you do
that for me?”
The child tilted his head and asked, “Why do you need that?”
She smiled and explained, “They’re my friends, and they want
people to remember them. The best we can do to help them is to
spread their stories.”
The child ran off and convinced all of his friends to help him
learn about the old castle ruins. From that point onwards, the desire
to learn about the old castle spread like wildfire through the town.
The young woman watched it with a growing smile, until,
finally, the castle had been completely restored.
Not long after the castle had been completed, the young
woman moved into the castle. She dressed as though she had lived in
the castle before it had ever been destroyed and used her manner of
dressing to teach those around her what she had learned about the
castle and its history. Everyone in the little town called her the Lady
of Morgraig Castle.
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School students came to the castle on field trips. They looked
around with awe written on their faces. Sometimes, the Forgotten
Organ serenaded the students, to their eternal delight.
The young woman was often quoted, saying, “If we forget
the past, it may as well have never happened. There are lessons to
learn from the past that should never be swept under the rug. There
are people out there who are waiting for their stories to be told. We
must remember the past.”
The young woman published all the information the town
found out about the original castle, and all the stories the ghosts had
told her in a beautiful, leather-bound book. The books sold in
countries all over the world.
One copy, she kept for herself. She wrapped it in golden
paper and carried the package through the main entrance, up the
grand staircase, down a drafty corridor, and into a large hall with an
organ at the end. The keys moved on their own, playing the same
haunting melody that the organist had played when the young
woman first heard the ghosts of the castle.
She gently placed the gold-wrapped book next to the organ
and left the room, a smile tugging at her lips.
The organ stopped. Gusts of wind rushed into the room;
hundreds of ghosts crowded around the glittering gift.
The organist read the tag aloud to the crowd of ghosts, “To
the first ghost I ever met, the player of the Forgotten Organ, Lady
Gertrude of Wales. I know your name. I hear you. You are
remembered and will never again be forgotten.”
The Ghosts of Morgraig Castle was the winner of the 2019 Fiction Contest
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Blood Red
by Jack Micallef
(photograph)
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Scanner Art
by Deeksha Vaidyanathan
(digital)
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2020 Middle School Writing Contest
We are ecstatic to introduce for the first time the Hopkinton
Middle School writing contest and welcome two very talented middle
school students to the pages of our publication. The contest this year
dealt with the complicated and ever-fluid subject of identity. The
invaluable perspective on the identity of youth shone through in all
of our submissions. This year’s second-place winner is Sofia Dunne’s
I Used to Be…, a sentimental and inspiring tribute to the triumphs
attributed to an evolving identity. In this poem, Dunne uses touching
language as she reveals her path to becoming who she is today:
responsible, funny and enthusiastic.
This year’s first-place winner was Angela O’Leary for her
poem A Simple Response Would Have Sufficed. This was an introspective
rendition of a coming of age story. O’Leary writes with impressively
natural inflection coupled with skillful placement of imagery, relaying
complicated emotions in a touching yet compelling way. A powerful
rhythm is achieved through rhyme and repetition. The poem is
potent, and we cannot wait to see more from Angela in the coming
years.
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ANGELA O’LEARY
A Simple Response Would Have Sufficed
I thought it to be, as simple as it was said
Nothing to go wrong
Nothing to go red
If only I had known
I wouldn’t have made a fool
I wouldn’t have been deserted by those I thought I knew
Nothing would happen
No, I wouldn’t take the bait
I wouldn’t cry
I wouldn’t faint
If only I had known
She wouldn’t have seen
He wouldn’t have heard
They wouldn’t all mock me
They wouldn’t all stare
I wouldn’t have to change
To fear, to leave
I would just be me
Without all the grief
I’ve made my mistakes
I shouldn’t have tried
I shouldn’t have said
I should have simply tried to pretend
If I never did say
Then everything would be the same
And I wouldn’t be sitting here wondering
If it was all a mistake
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A mistake that edged on and on
Causing the loss of all my friends
The loss of me
I am lost
Hoping to be found
By the one I still love
The one who broke me down
Everything happens for a reason
As I used to say
Even if it hurts me
Even if it hurts
It can’t be undone
Even if I could choose
I wouldn’t undo
Because this is where I am
This is who I’m supposed to be
If only I had known
It would be alright
It wouldn’t be the same
But it would be fine
It isn’t my ideal future
I imagined with the one I loved
But they didn’t feel the same
Not the same
Now I look back
At how they all pushed me away
Even him
Even her
I wonder if it was truly them
Or if it was forced
By someone they thought
Cared for them
marginal.
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Now I wish I could talk to them
The one who broke me down
Tell them I wasn’t mad
Ask them how they felt
marginal.
Alas, I, like others, always thought of myself first
No matter what you say
No matter what you feel
Always you first
Then them
But If I never did say
Then everything would be the same
And I wouldn’t be sitting here wondering
If it was simply fate
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SOFIA DUNNE
I Used to Be…
I used to be a shy little girl,
But now I am a responsible
Funny, and enthusiastic girl.
Instead of looking down when
I meet someone I look them
In the eyes and greet them.
Instead of talking in a quiet
Voice, I speak in a good volume.
I am no longer a shy little girl.
I am a responsible, funny, and
Enthusiastic girl.
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MAXIMILLIAN J. VALENTINE
marginal.
Spite
Every person has both an angel and a devil on their shoulders.
The form that each one takes depends on the individual.
In your case, they take the form of Spite and Anxiety.
Your life is sunshine-filled, unpredictable, wild. You are young,
exploring the world. Seeing for yourself the life you know so well from
television and picture books. All children fall, your mother reassures.
They always get back up. A phrase your father repeats. He wants you to
believe it, to become it. You can do anything you put your mind to.
Your parents’ advice is something you follow daily. Never let
someone tell you what you can or cannot do. Defiance is your flame. Spite, your
motivation. Something that strengthens as you grow, learn; thrive. But it
is not negative; it is the voice that defies. When someone asserts that
you are incapable of something, Spite contradicts: Look! Here I am! I can
do it, and I have!
This voice is your closest friend.
Through elementary school, your hometown. Your teachers
claim you are the problem and do nothing to help. You have never been the
problem; accomplishments state otherwise, passion prevails.
Through middle school, a charter. You are introduced to the
internet, cliques that try to mold you into someone you are not. Never let
them change who you are; your happiness is harmless; they are not worth your time.
And into high school, home again. The real world begins to
creep in. Diagnosed with depression during freshman year, returning to
prior friendships is difficult. Almost a forgotten memory, friends never
think of inviting you to events. You spend this year alone. Spite’s voice
is still there, albeit quiet. Chronic anxiety is not something you have
officially been diagnosed with, yet it is something you’re certain you
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have. It is to be acknowledged, not ignored, as much as you want to at
times. Anxiety sits on one shoulder, Spite on the other; the two will
always clash.
Anxiety grows with the pressure of grades, classes, homework,
and tests. Paired with Procrastination, it seems nothing will ever get
done. You manage, with the help of parents, friends, and Spite. Still,
Anxiety has burrowed into your head, slowly but surely.
It starts in your toes, a tapping foot, then crawls up to your
knee. Your entire leg bounces now. It continues up your thigh and into
your stomach, coiling inside. A piece of it is left behind, you can feel it
blistering, as the rest moves up your torso, through your throat and out
of your mouth in the form of harsh words.
Spite keeps your grades up; Anxiety keeps you rooted to the
spot during junior year. College is in two years’ time. Memories of
horror-story-like experiences of older friends are brought to the surface.
Fear of the future. Sexism, racism, ableism, classism. Factors that terrify
you because you worry you cannot make a change. You are afraid that
you will not survive in the society that older generations have built.
Again, Spite triumphs; rendering Anxiety nearly nonverbal. You
have survived junior year. With the help of your teachers, something you
never had in elementary school. With supportive friends, something
middle school never quite accomplished. You do not yet know what you
want to do next, but you are determined. To help others and yourself, to
do what you enjoy.
My future is mine and mine alone. Even with Anxiety
whispering in my ear, I know that the voice of Spite will lift me up and
past what I have already done. Spite is confidence; I embrace it fully in
my work. There are strong negative connotations with a word such as
Spite, but the strength of such a word is a necessary descriptor of my
abilities. Both the harsh sound of spite and the meaning I claim for it are
a strong blow against those who denounce my worth. And I will never
give it up; not for anyone.
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MANTRA RAJKUMAR
Words Like Music
Foreheads kiss the dusty floor
Bare feet caress the stone steps
Beaming bright eyes
a thousand fires in the dark
light the curved oil lamps
of each work-worn and weary heart.
A voice ripples through the room,
warm as golden honey
and deep as the roaring ocean.
In a strange tongue,
it chants words
that spiral around me like smoke
and I breathe them in
filling my soul
with their mystery.
They ebb and flow,
like water lapping a riverbed.
Rise and fall,
like a breathing body.
I do not understand what they mean,
but the words are like music,
and you do not need to understand
the words of a song
to know its meaning.
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SIMRAN KAUR
The Ups and Downs of Confidence
I long to be a sunflower.
You’ll never hear me say
I am loved.
I know in my heart
The sunflowers are always leaning towards the bright, infinite sun.
And that…
My emotions are my own suffering; not to be shared with anyone.
I refuse to believe
I am valuable.
I am ashamed to hold my stem and petals down low, deep into my
roots.
No longer can I say
I belong in a florists’ garden.
(read bottom to top)
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Venetian Sunshowers
by Kevin Gu
(digital)
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JACK MICALLEF
LOVEDRUNK
I’ve been drinking all night. I don’t feel drunk, but my fingers
keep messing with the radio. I want to just get back home to sleep
but the monotony red and green lights shining from above keep
distracting me. The never-ending white dashes zip past me in
perfectly spaced out increments. I wish life was forgiving. I wish I could hit
the magical ‘undo button’ and remove the past that haunts my present. But there’s
no going back in life, and hindsight is crystal clear. Just got to learn to live with
the shit, I guess. My cup is filled to the brim and I have to sip it before I
turn, or I’ll spill it all over my shirt. My hands are not too steady, and
I keep messing with the radio. But I don’t feel drunk. I don’t feel anything.
Damn, this drink is good. I continue to mess with the radio.
‘And I swear that I don’t have a gun, no I don't have a gun…’ Come
As You Are, Nirvana. What an awesome song. The whole album is awesome,
one of the few that I can play through and enjoy every song. Such emotion. The
pain in his voice is all I can feel right now. I’m not listening to the music or the
rhythm, no. I’m not listening to the words; I’m listening to a cry for help. If only
you didn’t have that shotgun, Kurt. What a waste.
My phone rings at the best part. How typical. Ignore. My
thoughts are scattered like the buckshot throughout his brain. Orange
juice, 18 years old, Vietnam War, girlfriend, Kermit the Frog, breakup, Stranger
Things, Layla. Thoughts of her always crowding my head. Why are
thoughts of her always crowding my head? I can’t think like this. I gave in.
The weather reminded me of her. Of us. How we used to stay out all
night with no destination in sight. We had an unfathomable love for each other.
She was warm and golden like the summer sun. She was the flowers’ buds
beginning to bloom at the tip of the season. She was the distant memory of winter
and my escape from the cold. She was mine. And just like the weather changes,
she did too. Why? The sun’s rays stopped gently shining down onto my face, they
were blocked by the smog of cumulonimbus clouds circling above. I am now
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engulfed in the midnight blue light that illuminates my face. I am
blue.
It starts to rain outside. I roll down the window. The cool
breeze stroking my long mahogany-colored hair. The brisk raindrops
caressing my face, falling onto my lips. The wind calling out my
name, like she used when I was making love to her. I can’t resist, but
I have to. The pitter-patter of water droplets rain down onto my
windshield like a symphony of snare drums. I turn up the volume. I
drown out the outside world, I sink into my worn-out leather seat,
and I immerse myself into the soft strumming of guitars playing on
the radio.
My phone rings again. I take a glance at who it is. It’s her,
Layla. Should I answer? No, I don’t need her anymore. I’m independent. I’ve
moved on. But what if it’s urgent? I have to act somehow, right? What if
something really bad happened to her? I pick up. An instant surge of regret
flows through me as I tap accept.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Can you talk?”
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“Peter, I’m sorry about what I’ve put you through, I sincerely
am, but I need some space. These last couple of days, our
relationsh– friendship has gotten a bit unhealthy and I think
tone. She spoke with such superiority, as if she was my mother, enraged
at me for not taking out the trash. She made me feel like nothing, like it
was her world and I was merely just living in it. The daggers in her voice
pierced me, a sudden pain radiates from my chest. She didn’t even realize
how much her or her words meant to me. She throws them around like
they’re nothing, and they’re not.
Earlier tonight, when I saw you at the party, while I felt awful
for how you were feeling and looked, you said a few things
that made me pretty uncomfortable. If you’re feeling lonely
and confused, just talk to someone, anyone, just not me.
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She was at the party? I didn’t even see her. She was probably upstairs with some
dude who doesn’t even know the first thing about her. They were probably saying
some sappy shit about how they’re soulmates or some bullshit stuff about
horoscopes while sharing a drink. The fella probably got a little taste of her too for
all I know. She wouldn’t do that though. That’s not like her. She likes me too
much to move on that fast.
The truth is, Peter, I don’t like you anymore. It’s over…
Please don’t drive by my house to see me. Try to maybe use
some of your free time for schoolwork, I’ve got work to get
done and I’m very busy after school. Please don’t tell me how
you want to cuddle me, kiss me, or anything else about my
body. I know you have feelings for me, but this has been very
difficult for me since I cannot give you this. You have to stop
making this harder for me than it has to be, I am in another
relationship with someone else… I know you’re unhappy, but
what I do alone with Tommy…
Tommy? Why the hell Tommy? Why him of all people? He’s the sort of guy who
values looks over personality. All he ever wants to do is hook up with someone.
He probably took you to his room and showed you things you would need a
private browser to find. Get your head out of the gutter, Layla. You’re better than
this.
… is my business. I haven’t been dishonest or mean about it.
I can’t control how I feel, and you’ve got to understand and
respect that. I don’t mind hanging out and talking with you,
but some of these behaviors need to stop. Please consider
what I’ve said… I would really hate to see something happen
to our friendship but if you need to be angry, or cut ties with
me, I would rather you do this than we continue acting this
way with each other. I’m sorry this had to be over the phone
rather than in person. Let me know if you have any
questions.”
…
“Hello? Peter? Do you want to ask me anything?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure, you don’t sound it?”
“Yep, sure, I’m fine.”
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“Alright then. Goodnight Peter.”
“Goodbye Layla.”
I hang up. I scream. I never thought that she would be one to break
up with someone over the phone. That tore me up inside. She tore me up inside. I
will never be able to put myself back together. I don’t want her subtle whisper to
soothe me. I don’t want her hand to gently rub up beside mine. I don’t want her
sweet scent of Chanel perfume to cloud my head. I don’t want her soft lips to press
against me. I don’t want her perfect ocean-blue eyes to look into mine. Never
again. Not anymore.
My eyes well up, they begin to water. A tear runs down my
cheek. My vision is nothing but a blur. I tilt back my cup to take a sip
of my drink. THUD. THUD. My drink spills onto the already tearsoaked
shirt that I last wore when we had our first kiss. What was that?
Did I hit something? Whatever. I had to go. Places to be and drinks to be drunk.
I just kept driving. I didn’t look back. I don’t know what happened. I saw
a figure, moving, flailing its arms. Maybe it was a deer. Flashes of red
and blue lights reflected in the rearview mirror. The noise grew as the
lights got closer. My hands are not too steady, and I keep messing
with the radio. But I don’t feel drunk. I don’t feel anything. There’s no going
back. ‘Everything's my fault, I take all the blame, aqua seafoam
shame, sunburn, freezer burn, choking on the ashes of her…’ All
Apologies.
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marginal.
Space is the Place
by Linnea Pappas-Byers
(pen & collage)
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SALMA BRYAN
Permanence
I am in love with the
permanence
of the pen
a flourish of dark ink
a smudged word from
an over-eager
Reader
Hounding my work like a
Bloodthirsty monster
Chasing the strong scent of my words
The colors themselves
vary
Bringing with them an aura
Of difference
Setting the ether of thoughts in stone
On the bright white
of the unexpected page
Never to be undone
By the eraser of time
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SARA WESSINGER
Conformity and Roles in American Society
As much as many statues, poems, and nationalist ideals may
try to tell us otherwise, America is, and has been throughout its
history, defined by conformity. Conformity can mean women’s
choice to wear pants in the workplace to solidify their respectability
and empowerment by conforming to a traditionally male style of
dress, while men who wear skirts or other “feminine” clothing to
express themselves are emasculated and viewed as weak or lesser by
many. It can mean immigrants and their children forgetting their
traditions, distancing themselves from their culture to avoid the sideeyed
glances from those who fear that which is different, it can mean
crowds screaming that “in America, we speak English,” despite the
fact that we have no one official language. For people of color,
especially African Americans, it can mean concealers that are always a
number of shades too light for you, or mainstream hair salons that
can’t cater to your hair type, or in the past it could mean
advertisements for creams that were meant to lighten your skin, or
relaxers that were meant to remove any and all texture and natural
beauty from your hair. It can be looking up to white characters and
celebrities in the media and marveling at their “beauty,” it can mean
wishing for blue eyes.
The idea of assimilation and the assumption of the role given
to you in the face of an oppressive society is one that drives many of
the events of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, although ideals of
conformity affect many characters differently. As seen in society,
many of the pressures that these characters face are due to their race,
pressures that are further exacerbated by their gender through male
struggles with toxic ideals of masculinity and, similarly, female
struggles with their femininity.
As reflected in American society at large, many women in this
text face pressure to conform to ideas of motherhood, beauty, and
housewifery, a pressure which is further compounded by that which
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derives from their race. When confronted with the societal
expectation of loving white dolls as her own children or idolizing
white celebrities like Shirley Temple, Claudia initially rejects these
suggestions. She then speaks of how she “learned much later to
worship her, just as I learned to delight in cleanliness, knowing, even
as I learned, that the change was adjustment without improvement,”
describing her process of changing from loving herself as she was to
assimilating into the role society offered her. This adjustment, to the
adjuster’s detriment, is one endemic to many characters in the book,
including Geraldine and Mrs. Breedlove. Both of these characters
latch onto organization and housework in response to the roles
presented to them in accordance with their gender, and distance
themselves from their blackness, or “funkiness” as Geraldine refers
to it, in their desire to seem as white, or socially desirable, as they
possibly can.
For Mrs. Breedlove, she throws herself into her job as a
servant to a white household, and begins to resent her non-white
family as she revels in the fragile “power” she is granted by her job, a
power which is simply due to her association with white people and
not actually belonging to her. Her consumption of mass media, as
well, leads her to compare the people in her life to fictional, white,
rich characters, and leads to her finding that “white men [take] such
good care of they women” and that seeing them “ made coming
home hard, and looking at Cholly hard” (Morrison 123). In her
adjustment to the societal pressures she faces, she learns to see
herself and her children as “ugly,” internalizing the hate that’s
directed at her and thereby helping society at large to keep her in her
place.
Meanwhile, characters like Geraldine, with her boiled sheets
and “perfect” household, strove with all of their might to be the
perfect housewife, trying to get as close to whiteness as possible to
do so. This internalized racism that drives much of Geraldine’s
actions and aspirations makes its greatest appearance through her fear
of Pecola as the girl “she had seen... all of her life” (Morrison 91),
and also expresses itself through her providing for her son in many
physical ways but never emotionally. In many ways, she uses her cat
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as the one source of humanity and happiness in her life and fills the
role of a mother but not of a true mom in her son’s life.
In men throughout the text, oppressive social systems
manifest in the oppressed a self-destructive mixture of toxic
masculinity and internalized racism. In some ways, these men are
more fortunate than their female counterparts, because at first it
seems as though race is the only marginalizing factor in their lives,
but it soon becomes evident that where women’s issues arose from
gender issues compounded by their race, men’s issues arise mainly
from their race, which is then compounded by their gender.
Characters like Cholly reflect the societal pressures of not being
“wanted” by society, and of being viewed as lesser for their race,
which is then made worse by the expectations on him to be powerful
and protective. His initial societal failure is that he wasn’t born white
and that he was born to parents who didn’t want him. Blue, his father
figure, then gives him purpose through “the women Blue had had,
and the fights he’d been in when he was younger, about how he
talked his way out of getting lynched once, and how others hadn’t”
(Morrison 134). These expectations, those of strength and masculine
ideas of success, are incredibly damaging to Cholly especially when he
is then humiliated by white men and unable to protect Darlene,
because he realizes he has no emotional support whatsoever from the
people who matter most to him. Blue, due to his tales of his own
heroism and strength, doesn’t offer any chance for emotional
vulnerability for Cholly, and when Cholly finally finds his true father,
he’s cast out yet again by his last remaining family in favor of his
father’s gambling habits, preventing him from reconnecting and
growing and overcoming the emotional damage he’s accumulated
throughout his life. Without a support network of any kind, Cholly
turns to a perverted sense of freedom in which he takes what he
wants, hurts who he wants, “loves” who he wants, and generally
turns outward the abuse, distaste, and hardship he’s faced throughout
his life, taking out his misfortune on others and masking the pain
through his alcoholism. Even once he “settles down” with Mrs.
Breedlove and his children, he continues on a destructive,
irresponsible path, raping his wife and eventually his own daughter,
fighting constantly with his wife, and instilling yet another generation
of unhealthy coping mechanisms in his son, Sammy, who has a habit
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of running away from his problems. Cholly’s life, just as his son’s and
his father’s before him, is one of violence and escapism, one without
responsibility, “but to whom can [they] be responsible, and why
should [they] be, when you refuse to see me?” (Ellison 10). Because
these characters are “unseen” by society, their futile attempts to be
heard are unsuccessful, and they fail to realize that while they may
not be responsible to society at large, they still owe a responsibility to
their family and those they care about. Cholly’s adherence to
detrimental masculine ideals in an attempt to conform ends up
hurting and pushing away those who are actually capable of listening.
In his focus on conforming to masculine ideals of protection,
Cholly hyper-fixates on an idea of impotence that stemmed from his
oppression by white men and does anything he can to recover from
that “humiliation”. In his effort to assimilate into the toxic, white,
patriarchal ideals, he destroys any chance he has of healing, and of
finding love and support in the people who could best understand
him. In his case, “adjustment without improvement” is more of an
adjustment to his immediate detriment. His feeling of impotence is a
manifestation of his helplessness in the face of a society that already
despises him for his race, a feeling which is then worsened by the fact
that he doesn’t live up to masculine standards either, through his
failure in providing for both monetary stability and the protection of
those he loves. His conformity is to the negative stereotypes he sees
himself portrayed as, from his idolization of the Devil early in his life
to the implied murder in his young adulthood, when discussing his
dangerous freedom.
Throughout the text, both men and women face innumerable
issues that stem from their race, which results in an attempt to
conform as cleanly as possible to a society that leaves no place for
them in order to cope with the weight of it all. As influential authors
like Ta-Nehisi Coates put it, they “have wanted to escape into the
Dream, to fold my country over my head like a blanket. But this has
never been an option because the Dream rests on our backs, the
bedding made from our bodies” (Coates 11). Regardless of gender,
the characters in this book all must grapple with this idea, as must all
Americans today. In many instances, patriotic conformity is at the
forefront of this issue, with societal pressure against black athletes
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who kneel during the national anthem as a protest for their fellow
African Americans who are subject to police brutality. In this case,
white Americans who decry what they perceive as “disrespect of the
flag” need to realize that their ideal of America is not a reality for
most Americans. They don’t realize, or more sinisterly, perhaps they
do, that an America where police are to be trusted and the flag really
does stand for freedom only exists for those who are free to enter,
and those pushed to the outskirts by society in generational or recent
past cannot take part in their idea of America. For those whose role
is to work with no reward, to either change themselves to fit a mold
of self-hate or face backlash against their self-love, America is less a
beacon of light and democracy and more a blinding flashlight wielded
by those in power, searching for every exploitable “flaw” in those
deemed lesser.
Works Cited
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. Spiegel & Grau,
2015.
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New American Library, 1952.
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. Vintage Books, 2007.
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A Perception of Makeup
by Kate Lagassé
(pencil drawing)
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ALISA STOLYAR
Storm
On the verge of tears but I remind myself
That far beyond the fears, a gentle force resides.
An energy too simple to be reckoned with so passionately.
Behind the curtain is a story waiting to be unleashed,
But it stands still, frozen in its forgotten sanity.
Rationality is something easily escaped
As sprinting from reality is a hopeless approach to soothe the weary
lungs.
A rampant mind is not something one craves,
For it is the cause of the ruins of another beautiful masterpiece.
There is not enough time in the world,
And the calm after the storm will not come soon enough.
Struggling for air while the merciless current pulls me under,
But it is shallow here. Why are you drowning?
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KATE LAGASSÉ
Wasp’s Nest
Light underneath your touch
Hold her like the air
Escaping from your lungs
Afraid of when it runs out
You draw her closer.
Watch her trace lines on your skin
Her eyes
Flickering across your face like
Wings beating
Beating
Her head against your chest
She can hear the rhythm of life
Beginning and ending
The moment caught in between
Life only just beginning
And already moving on
Without reason
She left you on fire
The taste of honey in your mouth
The cruel kiss of a liar
Only seeming to have chosen
Dancing along petals
Then to be one with the wind.
The prettiest things sting too
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KEVIN GU
Blizzards of Monochrome
i. Snowflakes and Dusty Ice
when I was young and free,
I used to watch snow
fall
during cold,
dreary winter months
grey skies would
surround the world
and envelope it
in monochromatic
light that seemed
to come from
everywhere
and
nowhere
slight wisps of curling wind
brushed past my rose-blossomed cheeks
and I would lay
on thickly blanketed ground
that sent shards of
bitter coldness up my
spine
those days were when
white, fluttering
pieces of confetti pulled down
towards the earth
in sheets
in whirls
in blizzards
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the warmth from my body
would transfer
onto swirling pieces of white
and turn them
into clear drops of
liquid that slid down
my face
I closed my eyes and would imagine
that tears trickled down instead of
melted snowflakes
I tried to become
an adult
adults were always
sad;
suppressed tears
built up before overflowing
eyes became watery
before becoming thawing ice
that fell on dusty floors of kitchens;
noticeable, but ignored,
forgotten
the adults shivered and mumbled as
if they were cold,
as if hypothermia had already reached
their pale, blue-colored
veins
blankets could never
warm them up and
fires never
melted ice that
hung from thin, wiry
eyelashes
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tape never silenced
constant droning noises
of useless mumbles and
monotonous dreams
that came from their
chapped lips
ii. Hills of Snow and Wood
when I was young and free,
I used to sled down
snowy hills,
trying to reach a
destination I
didn’t know of
joy pushed me
along
smooth, white
landscapes.
my mouth, wide open,
captured tiny snowflakes in it,
and my laughter
bounced through
snow before being captured
in blanketed
ground
I wondered,
if my father sat on
the old, wooden sled that
I traversed upon, would he move?
or would hills flatten out into
featureless,
undamaged
planes where joy
Volume 5 – 2020
83

marginal.
cannot push,
and despondency
causes him to stay,
unmoving?
the urge for
an unblemished,
perfectly stable
life leveled
the curves and
valleys of their
imaginations
failure enhanced
the fragmentation
of their fizzled
ambitions until they tried
no more
Won’t you join
me in the snow?
When I was young and free,
in the snow I would
smile
and
play.
But not
anymore.
84 Volume 5 – 2020

marginal.
Walk
by Jack Micallef
(photograph)
Volume 5 – 2020
85

How to Submit
marginal.
Marginal accepts submissions from any HHS student, and we accept work
throughout the year. Students may submit any original writing or artwork to
Mr. Lally in the English hallway or to our email address:
marginal@hopkinton.k12.ma.us
There are no limits to the number of submissions an individual student may
enter, although the advisor retains the right to trim the selection of any
large number (10+) of submissions from a single student. We ask that
students consider keeping their written submissions shorter than five full
pages, double-spaced, although longer pieces will be considered. Artwork
should be submitted digitally, with a high-resolution image of the artwork.
Around January of each year, we close submissions for that school year’s
magazine, but will still accept submissions from any non-seniors for the
following year’s publication. Due to space constraints, we can only accept
20-25% of all submitted work, depending on the number of submissions.
How to Join
All HHS students are welcome to join our editing staff. We generally meet
after school once a week (which day in particular is an annual choice made
by the returning staff). Regular attendance is not mandatory. Students can
assist as frequently as they are able. Once a student attends his or her sixth
meeting, that student earns the title of Assistant Editor. Once a student
attends an eleventh meeting, that student is promoted to Editor. Our Head
Editor positions are generally selected by the departing staff or returning
staff in years when we do not have many seniors, in collaboration with the
advisor. Students do not need to submit original work to be an editor.
How We Work
Marginal’s main goal is to provide an avenue for the school’s writers and
artists to receive a greater audience for their work. Student submissions are
made anonymous by the advisor and are graded by the student editors, with
the highest cumulative scores earning a place in our magazine. This year, we
primarily held discussions of each piece to determine which pieces would
be published, and to determine our contest winners. To prevent
overvaluing any particular student’s artwork or writing, students may not
have more than two written or two artwork submissions printed in the
magazine, excepting contest winners.
86 Volume 5 – 2020