May 13, 2020
Cover Art by Philip Salzinger, grade 9
Morning Suns Don’t Rise for Village Fools
Jetta Strayhorn, grade 11
Mothers grab their babies--
praying that the sounds of shooting stars, flying over and through heads and homes, will come to an end and their children can once again stare up into the starless night-sky. The blanket of the night and the sounds of unwanted sirens cover the white noise-- white noise made by the village fools. Village fools armed with sticks, and bricks, holding keys, on their knees praying to the sky above-- praying not to He that made them, but to he that made them. he that was breathing and living, teaching the ways of village fools to his heirs disguising them as lessons for the “real ones.” The old fable goes, “Real eyes realize real lies,” but the village fools can’t see the ones on the age-old chalkboard that sits in front of them. Their feet binded to their paths by the tape of quick-lived legacy, hands binded to cold, heartless steel, eyes blinded by generations of chalk-dust. Only to be freed by a night’s worth of shooting stars that fly through and over heads and homes, chalk-dust washed away by blood. Streets lined with dried blood and melted candles, mourners looking on the horizon for a new day’s glow. But the village fools stay on their knees, on the bloody, dusty concrete, not knowing a new light shines for them to rise. Because, whether they’re with eyes covered in chalk-dust or blood, morning suns don’t rise for village fools. |
Art by Addison Kerwin, grade 12
|
My Wish
Lilly Margolis, grade 8
One by one
I pick dandelions
Making my wish
Little seeds fly into the air
Like birds flying free
My wish overtime changes
As does the world we live in
School already cancelled
My summer in the trash
But can I count on that
One little seed to make its way
To a better future
I pick dandelions
Making my wish
Little seeds fly into the air
Like birds flying free
My wish overtime changes
As does the world we live in
School already cancelled
My summer in the trash
But can I count on that
One little seed to make its way
To a better future
Art by Isabel Goico
the poetry within you
Julia Victor, grade 10
“poetry?” you ask.
you are thinking of delectable phrases that roll off your lips like honeyed water;
of spoken melodies that melt on your tongue like expensive chocolate;
of rhythms that compete with the ocean for a place within your veins;
of handfuls of words that you shove into your mouth like forbidden fruit.
you say, “no, i don’t write poetry.”
but poetry breathes in many forms
it has no lungs to constrain it.
poetry is the sound a broken heart makes when it finally feels full again;
it is the silence of a snowfall when no one is there to hear it;
and it is the waves that crash against the shore but crash within you too, forming whirlpools and riptides in your bloodstream, thousands of currents flowing this way and that way with no order to them pulling your soul and your heart to and fro unrelentlessly until pieces of you reach every shore in the universe;
poetry is the unspoken yet sacred connection between concert-goers as they scream the songs they have smiled to and cried to and loved to but this time they are not alone;
poetry is the symphonious clinking of forks in an alley cafe in rome;
it is the woosh of air on your cheeks as you roll down your windows and drive the streets of your hometown much faster than you should;
it is the plunk of a salty tear on the peeling windowsill as you hope for something, anything to change.
these tears make their way to streams and rivers and flow towards the omnipotent ocean that does not make appointments, yet somehow all the other waters are always rushing to meet it.
you are not exempt from these tides
the poetry within you aches to be free and return to its place under the stars
every moment of your life that has ever meant something has been dictated by the splashing of celestial rhythms against your skin
don’t you hear it?
you cannot ignore the calling of the universe.
you are thinking of delectable phrases that roll off your lips like honeyed water;
of spoken melodies that melt on your tongue like expensive chocolate;
of rhythms that compete with the ocean for a place within your veins;
of handfuls of words that you shove into your mouth like forbidden fruit.
you say, “no, i don’t write poetry.”
but poetry breathes in many forms
it has no lungs to constrain it.
poetry is the sound a broken heart makes when it finally feels full again;
it is the silence of a snowfall when no one is there to hear it;
and it is the waves that crash against the shore but crash within you too, forming whirlpools and riptides in your bloodstream, thousands of currents flowing this way and that way with no order to them pulling your soul and your heart to and fro unrelentlessly until pieces of you reach every shore in the universe;
poetry is the unspoken yet sacred connection between concert-goers as they scream the songs they have smiled to and cried to and loved to but this time they are not alone;
poetry is the symphonious clinking of forks in an alley cafe in rome;
it is the woosh of air on your cheeks as you roll down your windows and drive the streets of your hometown much faster than you should;
it is the plunk of a salty tear on the peeling windowsill as you hope for something, anything to change.
these tears make their way to streams and rivers and flow towards the omnipotent ocean that does not make appointments, yet somehow all the other waters are always rushing to meet it.
you are not exempt from these tides
the poetry within you aches to be free and return to its place under the stars
every moment of your life that has ever meant something has been dictated by the splashing of celestial rhythms against your skin
don’t you hear it?
you cannot ignore the calling of the universe.
Fern, The Storyteller
Natanya Norry, grade 12
I
If you have never told the story of a storyteller, know that it is a daunting task. To start, you must acknowledge that it is impossible to do. Each weaver of words ties an unseen warp of their own threads upon the loom, and no weft of any color can change it. Every story you tell is yours, through different lenses. So, try as I may, this is not the story of Fern, but my story of Fern. If you ever meet Fern, she may tell the untouched story to you, but that would make you very lucky, for she does not give that gift lightly. So (and rest assured I have asked her permission) I will do my best for those who haven’t met her. Forgive me my imperfections, and let us begin:
Many are surprised to hear the beginning of Fern’s story. She grew up an ordinary child at first. She went to school, made friends, played pretend games. Once she was old enough to read—which was early —her mother gave her a book of fairytales. It was bound in deep blue fabric, pages sewn in with silver thread. There were illustrations of maidens and knights and dragons, still bright over the yellowing paper. When the book entered her hands, Fern ran to her room to read it start to finish.
The following morning, her mother found the book soaking in a puddle outside Fern’s open bedroom window.
Fern had thrown the book. That was when she became a storyteller.
Her rebellion against the world’s stories showed no signs of stopping. When her teacher read to her class a picture book of Snow White, just as the seven dwarves entered, one student interrupted with a cry of “That’s not what happens!”
“The queen finds out that Snow is prettier because she’s happier, so she sends her to the woods and she has to live with the dwarves in their tiny house.”
The teacher was hesitant to ask what came next. She didn’t have to; another child chimed in with the answer.
“Yeah! And then a prince finds her and they walk in the forest, and they find an apple tree and they’re the bestest-tasting apples she’s ever had, and… I don’t remember what happens next.” A few children giggled.
“Well, I’ve never heard that… version of the story,” the teacher said. “Where did you learn that?”
The children turned to Fern, who looked up at the teacher and told what she believed to be the proper ending.
“Snow and the prince leave for the kingdom on the other side of the forest. They fall in love, they marry, Snow becomes a princess, then a queen. Her mother is the fairest in her kingdom, but only because Snow is in a beautiful kingdom now, not a dark and mean one.”
“That’s very creative of you, Fern. You know this version of the story?” The teacher held up the storybook.
“Mhmm. It’s just wrong, is all.”
“But a fairy tale is just a story. It can’t be wrong, can it?”
“It can if it’s not what happened.”
Now, Fern didn’t believe in Snow and the fairytales the way children believe in Santa. She believed in them the way some people still believe in the old gods, as something meaningful but untouchable. And she knew that Snow was too smart to trust a menacing stranger and elope with a slightly less menacing stranger. That Cinderella wouldn’t marry someone who couldn’t remember her face, and would learn to ask for what she wanted—not a fancy ball, but a kind man. That Ariel had a powerful magic of her own, and would call her love to join her in the sea before she’d ever step on land.
So she looked for new tales, creating ones of her own when none satisfied her (which was often), and would tell them to anyone who’d listen. She knew how to hold an audience: how to shock them, comfort them, make their eyes go wide. The teacher gave up trying to hold storytime; if she told an old story the kids would have heard it differently, and if she told a new one Fern would tell something better. She had found her art, and so there was no match for her.
II.
Fern never grew out of telling tales; that would be an unfair characterization of what happened. But she did slow down, and she did stop for a time. I wish I could tell you why, but I am not Fern, and I would rather tell this story right than hers wrong. But I can tell you what I understood the situation to be.
Fern did not grow out of fairy tales, but those around her did. They had found new tales, ones that said what they wanted to hear. Fern didn’t understand. An earth-shaking story beat a predictable story any day. But that didn’t seem to matter to them. Fern found herself bombarded with their stories. They were clearly false to her, and rather poorly told—thin veils of a plotline that hid more of an instructional book than anything. How to succeed, how to be loved, how to make it into heaven; every single one was the same.
No one stopped her from speaking up, but they did something far more destructive—they stopped listening.
Fern kept her stories deep within her, but without anyone to tell them to, they stayed stuck, and moved further still. So she listened, and even then only sometimes. She was not the listening type, certainly not now. And she knew—Briar Rose from the old fairy stories had taught her this—that it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve been blessed; one curse, even an untrue one, when it’s told to you over and over, can take you apart completely.
Around this time, Fern has told me, she and her family moved houses. It was the first time for her, and she hadn’t realized how much worry there was in the process, how quickly the many pieces could become something significant. Perhaps it was only her existing worry, agitated by the smallest and strangest of things. But in such a short time, as she put it, everything that mattered had been swapped out for something new, or disappeared entirely.
The new house sat unassumingly on the far end of a cul-de-sac. Their neighbors were an old couple who socialized with no one, and a well-off family who socialized with everyone. The brother and sister of this family were musicians; he would sing and she would play guitar, and the neighborhood adored them. It made Fern suspicious.
But she heard them one night; opening her window, she saw the two sitting on their porch. Making music for the sake of having music to listen to. He sang, she played guitar. And while Fern couldn’t make out the words, they sounded kind.
It did take time for her to warm up to them, but over the following weeks and months, this became a nightly practice for Fern. She would open the window, lean into the cool night air, and listen to the music. Some nights the brother and sister weren’t there, and all was silent again. But every time they showed up, there was a different song. Some were ones she’d heard on the radio years before, others carried that distinct flavor that told Fern the siblings had written them. This was their art, she realized. The same way hers was storytelling.
And she started to understand then that, however rare they might be, there were still tale-spinners worth listening to.
She grabbed a pen and paper one night and began writing. It was awkward at first, not only easing back into her old fairytale ways, but committing to paper as well. But now there was a story that deserved her commitment. She would only write on nights when she could hear the music from next door, because this was to be a story for the brother and sister. Not about them, per se—so far, it was about a flower that grew under the shadow of a redwood tree, and a hawk-winged angel who promised the flower it could grow to greater heights. But something told Fern the story would turn out right for them.
The first night’s song was gentle and quiet, the next night’s vivid and exciting, and her pen slowly followed suit. Nearly a week passed till they started up again, and when they did, the music was solemn. But Fern stayed true to what she heard, and as the songs grew kind again, someone found that flower—which hadn’t grown any taller—and gave it as a gift to a friend, and it became the most precious thing they had ever been given.
That morning, on her way to school, she left the piece of paper with this fable folded in half on their porch.
The following night, when she opened her window, and leaned into the cool night air, and listened to the music coming from next door, she made out a few words—“sky,” “promise,” “treasure,” “flower.”
Fern listened ever closer. She hummed the melodies with them, and when the two went back inside, she kept humming, to hold them tightly in her memory. And she cried for the first time in too long.
III.
I met Fern years later, when she had long since eased back into telling stories. It was a profession of sorts for her. She asked very little from the people who came to her, only what they wished to give. And for each of them, she would create a story then and there, much like she had as a child. Each tale was crafted like an arrow that could pierce one heart and only one. One visitor asked for a story that would show him the way out of his old life and into a better one. Who could take him there, what road would bear the right signs? Fern didn’t know the answers, but she looked him in the eyes and told him a story of a warrior first learning to wield a sword and shield. Another told Fern they felt like they were missing something, but they didn’t know what. Their story was one of a body that had lost its head, a head which thought it had lost its body. Fern never planned these stories; each one was made when it needed to be. She was of the opinion that the most impactful moments of life come unexpected.
Fern’s friends are small in number but large in heart, and I am glad to count myself among them. She is selective, so those whom she accepts receive only the best of her kindness and wit. She understands people better than most that I’ve met. It isn’t so much that she can read others like some figurative open book; she is more the kind to open books that have walked around closed their whole lives.
She gave me a story once, a short one about a daughter of the moon and sun, torn between joy and sorrow, who painted the colors of the sunrise and sunset each day. I asked her to tell it again so I could write it down—I felt like I would need to be able to remember it one day—but she shook her head.
“If I start over, it won’t be the same story.”
“But what if I forget it?”
She smiled a genuine smile. “Stories like that are not forgotten.”
So years passed between us, living our stories. There were times where one of us was busy, or far away, and we didn’t see each other for weeks or months at a time. But every time we met was a small piece of a large treasure.
Last I saw her, Fern had been quiet. Not unhappy, but quiet. We ate lunch together and caught each other up on our lives, but not much else passed between us.
I asked her to tell me a story at the door, but she shook her head again.
“I’ve told you your story already.”
But she understood. I hadn’t asked for my story.
She was quiet again.
Then she sat me back down, and she told a story that sounded as if it had grown foreign to her.
She told me the story of Fern.
If you have never told the story of a storyteller, know that it is a daunting task. To start, you must acknowledge that it is impossible to do. Each weaver of words ties an unseen warp of their own threads upon the loom, and no weft of any color can change it. Every story you tell is yours, through different lenses. So, try as I may, this is not the story of Fern, but my story of Fern. If you ever meet Fern, she may tell the untouched story to you, but that would make you very lucky, for she does not give that gift lightly. So (and rest assured I have asked her permission) I will do my best for those who haven’t met her. Forgive me my imperfections, and let us begin:
Many are surprised to hear the beginning of Fern’s story. She grew up an ordinary child at first. She went to school, made friends, played pretend games. Once she was old enough to read—which was early —her mother gave her a book of fairytales. It was bound in deep blue fabric, pages sewn in with silver thread. There were illustrations of maidens and knights and dragons, still bright over the yellowing paper. When the book entered her hands, Fern ran to her room to read it start to finish.
The following morning, her mother found the book soaking in a puddle outside Fern’s open bedroom window.
Fern had thrown the book. That was when she became a storyteller.
Her rebellion against the world’s stories showed no signs of stopping. When her teacher read to her class a picture book of Snow White, just as the seven dwarves entered, one student interrupted with a cry of “That’s not what happens!”
“The queen finds out that Snow is prettier because she’s happier, so she sends her to the woods and she has to live with the dwarves in their tiny house.”
The teacher was hesitant to ask what came next. She didn’t have to; another child chimed in with the answer.
“Yeah! And then a prince finds her and they walk in the forest, and they find an apple tree and they’re the bestest-tasting apples she’s ever had, and… I don’t remember what happens next.” A few children giggled.
“Well, I’ve never heard that… version of the story,” the teacher said. “Where did you learn that?”
The children turned to Fern, who looked up at the teacher and told what she believed to be the proper ending.
“Snow and the prince leave for the kingdom on the other side of the forest. They fall in love, they marry, Snow becomes a princess, then a queen. Her mother is the fairest in her kingdom, but only because Snow is in a beautiful kingdom now, not a dark and mean one.”
“That’s very creative of you, Fern. You know this version of the story?” The teacher held up the storybook.
“Mhmm. It’s just wrong, is all.”
“But a fairy tale is just a story. It can’t be wrong, can it?”
“It can if it’s not what happened.”
Now, Fern didn’t believe in Snow and the fairytales the way children believe in Santa. She believed in them the way some people still believe in the old gods, as something meaningful but untouchable. And she knew that Snow was too smart to trust a menacing stranger and elope with a slightly less menacing stranger. That Cinderella wouldn’t marry someone who couldn’t remember her face, and would learn to ask for what she wanted—not a fancy ball, but a kind man. That Ariel had a powerful magic of her own, and would call her love to join her in the sea before she’d ever step on land.
So she looked for new tales, creating ones of her own when none satisfied her (which was often), and would tell them to anyone who’d listen. She knew how to hold an audience: how to shock them, comfort them, make their eyes go wide. The teacher gave up trying to hold storytime; if she told an old story the kids would have heard it differently, and if she told a new one Fern would tell something better. She had found her art, and so there was no match for her.
II.
Fern never grew out of telling tales; that would be an unfair characterization of what happened. But she did slow down, and she did stop for a time. I wish I could tell you why, but I am not Fern, and I would rather tell this story right than hers wrong. But I can tell you what I understood the situation to be.
Fern did not grow out of fairy tales, but those around her did. They had found new tales, ones that said what they wanted to hear. Fern didn’t understand. An earth-shaking story beat a predictable story any day. But that didn’t seem to matter to them. Fern found herself bombarded with their stories. They were clearly false to her, and rather poorly told—thin veils of a plotline that hid more of an instructional book than anything. How to succeed, how to be loved, how to make it into heaven; every single one was the same.
No one stopped her from speaking up, but they did something far more destructive—they stopped listening.
Fern kept her stories deep within her, but without anyone to tell them to, they stayed stuck, and moved further still. So she listened, and even then only sometimes. She was not the listening type, certainly not now. And she knew—Briar Rose from the old fairy stories had taught her this—that it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve been blessed; one curse, even an untrue one, when it’s told to you over and over, can take you apart completely.
Around this time, Fern has told me, she and her family moved houses. It was the first time for her, and she hadn’t realized how much worry there was in the process, how quickly the many pieces could become something significant. Perhaps it was only her existing worry, agitated by the smallest and strangest of things. But in such a short time, as she put it, everything that mattered had been swapped out for something new, or disappeared entirely.
The new house sat unassumingly on the far end of a cul-de-sac. Their neighbors were an old couple who socialized with no one, and a well-off family who socialized with everyone. The brother and sister of this family were musicians; he would sing and she would play guitar, and the neighborhood adored them. It made Fern suspicious.
But she heard them one night; opening her window, she saw the two sitting on their porch. Making music for the sake of having music to listen to. He sang, she played guitar. And while Fern couldn’t make out the words, they sounded kind.
It did take time for her to warm up to them, but over the following weeks and months, this became a nightly practice for Fern. She would open the window, lean into the cool night air, and listen to the music. Some nights the brother and sister weren’t there, and all was silent again. But every time they showed up, there was a different song. Some were ones she’d heard on the radio years before, others carried that distinct flavor that told Fern the siblings had written them. This was their art, she realized. The same way hers was storytelling.
And she started to understand then that, however rare they might be, there were still tale-spinners worth listening to.
She grabbed a pen and paper one night and began writing. It was awkward at first, not only easing back into her old fairytale ways, but committing to paper as well. But now there was a story that deserved her commitment. She would only write on nights when she could hear the music from next door, because this was to be a story for the brother and sister. Not about them, per se—so far, it was about a flower that grew under the shadow of a redwood tree, and a hawk-winged angel who promised the flower it could grow to greater heights. But something told Fern the story would turn out right for them.
The first night’s song was gentle and quiet, the next night’s vivid and exciting, and her pen slowly followed suit. Nearly a week passed till they started up again, and when they did, the music was solemn. But Fern stayed true to what she heard, and as the songs grew kind again, someone found that flower—which hadn’t grown any taller—and gave it as a gift to a friend, and it became the most precious thing they had ever been given.
That morning, on her way to school, she left the piece of paper with this fable folded in half on their porch.
The following night, when she opened her window, and leaned into the cool night air, and listened to the music coming from next door, she made out a few words—“sky,” “promise,” “treasure,” “flower.”
Fern listened ever closer. She hummed the melodies with them, and when the two went back inside, she kept humming, to hold them tightly in her memory. And she cried for the first time in too long.
III.
I met Fern years later, when she had long since eased back into telling stories. It was a profession of sorts for her. She asked very little from the people who came to her, only what they wished to give. And for each of them, she would create a story then and there, much like she had as a child. Each tale was crafted like an arrow that could pierce one heart and only one. One visitor asked for a story that would show him the way out of his old life and into a better one. Who could take him there, what road would bear the right signs? Fern didn’t know the answers, but she looked him in the eyes and told him a story of a warrior first learning to wield a sword and shield. Another told Fern they felt like they were missing something, but they didn’t know what. Their story was one of a body that had lost its head, a head which thought it had lost its body. Fern never planned these stories; each one was made when it needed to be. She was of the opinion that the most impactful moments of life come unexpected.
Fern’s friends are small in number but large in heart, and I am glad to count myself among them. She is selective, so those whom she accepts receive only the best of her kindness and wit. She understands people better than most that I’ve met. It isn’t so much that she can read others like some figurative open book; she is more the kind to open books that have walked around closed their whole lives.
She gave me a story once, a short one about a daughter of the moon and sun, torn between joy and sorrow, who painted the colors of the sunrise and sunset each day. I asked her to tell it again so I could write it down—I felt like I would need to be able to remember it one day—but she shook her head.
“If I start over, it won’t be the same story.”
“But what if I forget it?”
She smiled a genuine smile. “Stories like that are not forgotten.”
So years passed between us, living our stories. There were times where one of us was busy, or far away, and we didn’t see each other for weeks or months at a time. But every time we met was a small piece of a large treasure.
Last I saw her, Fern had been quiet. Not unhappy, but quiet. We ate lunch together and caught each other up on our lives, but not much else passed between us.
I asked her to tell me a story at the door, but she shook her head again.
“I’ve told you your story already.”
But she understood. I hadn’t asked for my story.
She was quiet again.
Then she sat me back down, and she told a story that sounded as if it had grown foreign to her.
She told me the story of Fern.
pleading
Kate Sarvady, grade 11
please don’t take my mother’s necklace
the silver wishbone, ever so hopeful gifted to me on my 16th birthday. you’ve already drained me anyway. you stole the words on the tip of my tongue knowing they were mine. my grammatical errors, my stutter, my experiences, the ones that leave me bedridden. you locked these lethal words away and say it’s to protect me, but all i want is to set them free. you poisoned the rose on my windowsill and forced me to watch the petals fall. I keep them in a box opened twice a week. the toxin remains on the stem burning a hole through my brain yet I’m the only one to blame. i gave you shelter, i brought you warmth even after you blew out my candles twice before. mama always said i gave too many chances. so please don’t take my mother’s necklace. she knew well enough. |
Art by Addison Kerwin, grade 12
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