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Acknowledgements

Cover Art: Blowing in Place by Yuan Yuan

Poetry and Prose

Artwork

from helsinki, fragments

Christine Chang �’09

A Real Love Story

Asiya Khaki �’09

Leslie Ribovich �’ 11

Amy Johnson �’09

Stick Figure Dilemma

Christine Chang �’09

Selkie

Elizabeth Yalkut �’11

Tessa Freeman �’11

The Upside Down AwakeningAs it happens, I found Sophie and James in the real world. They

were sitting on the subway, and she was knitting what I imagined were socks, with an extra set of needles wound in her hair. He was resting his head in the space between her jaw and her shoulder, in the midst of the everyday crush of people. And they were unusually peaceful, which is why I noticed them, I suppose. Several weeks later I was sitting in a sculpture garden, surrounded by the ghostly relics of eras past when their image and the following lines materialized, demanding to be written:

At this point, James and Sophie had established themselves, and I could imagine them standing across from me, the kitchen counter between

us. Confounded as to how their story would continue, and mercilessly pursued by the image of a woman�’s glasses folding and unfolding like grasshopper legs, I questioned them, dutifully recording the answers in my diary.

Suddenly, from the darkest recesses of my mind emerged the elusive mammal that I had long been seeking, a plot. I imagine it now as a large and marvelous sea creature emerging from the depths, the watery matter of my mind sliding off its back, lit up by the sun. �“What color is your living room wall?�” I asked them slyly. My previous questions

image of them leaning on the kitchen counter began to waver. Silence followed my question. �“Blue, steely blue like the churning sea,�” Sophie

were incongruous with her practical manner. The couple�’s hesitation and her nervous answer made it instantly clear that the living room wall represented the plot I had been seeking. Now that I had found a source of

I was preoccupied with Sophie and James and their living room wall when Lilah burst suddenly onto the scene. Perhaps this is why it took me so long to realize that she was myself. Slightly exaggerated, of course, but the worn shoes, the indiscriminate hair color and the love of Romantic poets are all mine. It was comforting to have a character that I knew I could capture accurately, but I was anxious to protect my newly discovered plot. Lilah was intended, through contrast, to reveal more of sophie. Now, however, she threatened to abscond with the plot altogether.

Fiction is in many ways a living thing. As such, it develops organi-cally, often quite outside the consciousness of the writer. At this point in the story, Lilah had energized the plot gleaned from the living room wall and it had run away from me. Drowning in my own words, I grabbed hold

to that repugnant wall, but more than that I did not know. James was learning to cut himself off as Sophie was acquiring a child�’s eyes, and Lilah was going nowhere fast. And for several moments, I became them. Swept powerlessly away by a current I had generated, I rushed along a channel of scenes before running into something entirely different.

found them. Returned an artifact of life that I picked up, studied, and tried

of us to emerge unchanged.

Elizabeth Keene �’11

Asiya Khaki �‘09

Poetry in the Parlor

Hannah Stein �’ 50

Beautiful Lives

Mikhaela Mahony �’11

Alcoholic(After Plath�’s Paralytic)

Sara Zielinski �’11

Grandma Mary�’s Corset

Untitled

Gizem Ozcelik �’10

Horses Leave Bones in the River

Yuan Yuan �’11

Morgan Davies �’12

Yuan Yuan �’11

The Readiness is All

Leslie Ribovich �’11

Au stgu

Kari Putterman �’11

Margaret Speaks

Elizabeth Yalkut �’11

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