Colson Gomez Colson Gomez is a visual artist at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts who specifies in Drawing/Painting. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville and has won several regional Gold and Silver Keys in the Scholastic Arts and Writing Contest.

< Back Spring is the start of new beginnings, and this year, it is also the start of a new decade for Élan. With hotter days to look forward to, we hope you enjoy the breeze of curated writing and art pieces from students different and alike. Élan is more than proud to continue showcasing the blossoming talents of young artists. Throughout this edition, you will witness how students transform the simplicities of life into fleshed out pieces of art. We encourage you to use a lens deeper than the eye to dissect how these young artists emulate the world through varying art forms. We cannot thank you enough for supporting not only Élan—but every voice it has uplifted, too. Previous Next

8 < Table of Contents Jack o’ Lantern by Mackenzie Shaner 1. I dream of the cutting board— I'll let you put me down, a secure hand keeping me from rolling right off the counter, your body casting long shadows over my round frame, " Slathering virgin olive oil / And a pinch of cinnamon / Onto every curve." Slathering virgin olive oil And a pinch of cinnamon Onto every curve. Licking sugar off deft fingers, The oven purring, heat rising In a plume of saccharine vapors. The fan kicked on so the smoke alarm Doesn't whine. Consume me. Slice me with the most decorative spatula, The one with the white handle, The curling grapevines— maybe It’s even shaped like a wide leaf, creating A schism between pie and slice— but 2. You find it is much easier to mutilate. To Take a spoon, your bare hands, shirtsleeves Rolled high, clawing out my seeds By the fists full. Slick Strings stuck under nailbeds As you flick them into the trash With a wet smack. Your hands smell like resistance, dyed Carotene orange while fibers lull Down the drain. Here, you take certain creative liberties, Carving out jagged eyes, Two triangles, so I may stare Vacantly at the back of my skull Or count tiles on the ceiling. A sprawling smile, perpetually open Should you feel the need To reach a slender fist Through my gaping maw. When you’re finished, You light a fire. Drip wax on my core So the red candle sticks. You set me on your porch. You let me die. About the Writer... Mackenzie Shaner, a senior at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, has been studying Creative Writing for seven years and hopes to one day teach the subject. She writes mostly poetry, which circles such ideas as identity, self-worth, and the relationship between mother and daughter.

9 < Table of Contents Metallic Amalgamation by Conner Pendry Midnight Oil by Teigan Edwards The lights cutting streaks into the pavement, the car humming when I pause at the start of the track, the gray bleachers the only thing protruding from the otherwise dismissive darkness. They ground me when my head aches under the oppressive weight of his voice in my ear. They center me when my eyes grasp for every detail of the track even days before race day. I feel like I can think. Like I can breathe here. " An hour on the track becomes a night, becomes a century." An hour on the track becomes a night, becomes a century. Time slows and jumps and fluctuates between sleeping and hyperventilating. Two minutes fill the space of a second, a decade. I lose myself and the voices and the burning, bleeding need to move in the hum of the engine, the lure of the void. And when it all settles down, when the car finally stops and my brain finds itself again, the slate is washed clean. A part of me wants to drive, to see if I could do it despite my fear. But Jessie is in the trunk, and I don’t want to be the karma that finally gets him killed. And, more selfishly, my head is too alive. To drive I need quiet, and right now I’m all noise – change the oil before the race on Sunday, go faster, faster, keep the first turn in mind but not so much that you’re in your head on the second . I want – need – to go so fast my world stands still, and Jessie is the only one who’ll drive like that on a whim in the middle of the night. Just so long as it’s on a nice, safe race track. I step out, not bothering to shut the door behind me, and pop the trunk. Jessie grins up at me in the bright light, arms up as if I’ll punch him. I might. Not because I’m impatient – though I am impatient, thrumming with the kind of dopamine only the sleepless ingest – but because he’s my brother, and he’d let me. His round glasses glint from their unstable perch too far down his nose. “Game time.” “Heck, yeah.” He rolls out and starts for the driver’s side, smirking back at me. I roll my eyes to make a point. But he just smiles wider. He has this way about him. The kind that says he does his math homework before he goes out street racing and brings the groceries in with one hand, his phone open in the other. The kind that gets into fights with everyone. Fights that everyone, himself included, knows he can’t win. But he squares up anyway, a smile on his face. I slide into the passenger’s seat. The leather isn’t worn the same way as in the driver’s. The smell is too much like my race engineer – hot coffee and motor oil – from when I gave him a ride home on the way to pick up Jessie. One of his hands is already molded onto the steering wheel. The other adjusts the phone connector and volume knobs. He whoops when his favorite techno track blares through the speakers. The car pulses with it. He switches to drive and floors the gas without a second in between for me to snatch at a breath. I make an involuntary, shapeless noise. The track runs under us, from us. Gray and black and blinding white. The speed is lovely, violent, seething. Outside the windows, a river of strobe lights rushes by. Clubs can’t compete. Dreams of it can’t live up to the real thing. It’s like being drugged and drunk and only half-disillusioned of a lucid dream. I can move, but moving feels wrong. Like shifting positions on one of those centripetal force rides at the fair. We’re spinning. We’re flying. We’re going as fast as I ever dare to go in broad daylight surrounded by my team. My gut burns but finally not in the way it does when I have to run the same turn a dozen times in one afternoon. I grab the armrest when I’m pressed further back into my seat. I’d close my eyes, but it’d be like closing them to monsters in the dark. I’m so still that I can feel my heart quaking in my chest, the only muscle that’s anything but taut. I’m a passenger on a reanimated train I can’t jump out of. I want to grab the parking brake, but I couldn’t hurt Jessie like that, and I can’t trust the car to stop just because it’s told. We need to slow down or we’ll miss a turn and spin out through the chain link fence and into the unseen woods. Every second is the last and yet every next second comes. My fingers twitch against my restraint. I clench my stomach to hold onto the way it churns, to push through it to the other, blissful side and keep gripping the door of this metal animal, its brain at my side, shouting over the music. He’ll stop if I ask him. The knowledge of my choice in it all is comforting. And I would ask. I would. If I didn’t have a race this week. If the rush, like a cold shower only without the sting, didn’t feel quite so good. If he didn’t have that look in his eyes – glued to his seat but smiling through the pain, smiling like he does in photos of us from high school. Like he does by the finish line when he wins a late-night race. Like he used to in the car on school nights. I almost died for that look, once. But I haven’t. Not yet. In high school, just before Jessie went off to state college, we’d take Cooper Highway north. It was dead except for us. Pine trees are stacked atop one another by the shoulders. No one used it late at night after the bigger interstate was built a few miles over. Beyond the windows, the world was leached of color, but we were brighter than we’d ever been. Jessie’s music and the headlights ate away at my brain’s insufferable conviction to stay awake. It wasn’t races that kept me up then. It was college and an early morning job and Friday afternoons helping the pit crew set up for race day. My budding fear of driving in the dark was fed by race track horror stories and hours of analyzing crash videos. But I needed to be awake, and to be awake I needed to sleep, and to sleep I needed to drown. About the Writer... Teigan Edwards is a senior creative writer at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. She has been enthralled by stories since she was a young girl and her mother sat her down every night to read. About the Artist... Conner Pendry is a sculpture major at Douglas Anderson with a focus in metalwork through processes such as welding, grinding and soldering. He is completing his sustained investigation for AP 3-D Art & Design based around exploring how metal can be unified into interesting compositions through a variety of techniques.

Marcus Holley Marcus Holley is a senior poet and performer in the creative writing department at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. He is the senior Art Director for Élan Literary Magazine with a goal of expanding the combination of visual art and literature into the community. His adoration for writing and spoken words has manifested in hosting, organizing literary events, and bringing poetry to the stage.

< Back Compare & Contrast by Jandellyn Silvers-Lozano With Love, From Home / Mexico Si Me Perdonas By Meztli Hipolito Mile 1 When people ask me where I'm from, I say Mexico. I have only been there four times since I've been alive, but it seems simpler than to force someone into the hopscotch game that is attempting to reconcile the word “American” to how I look. I believe I am noble by taking them out of this contorted misery. I never liked Denver; I don't mean it rudely, I don't. I am sure that to some, the beauty of the Rocky Mountains or the snow down by Union Station warms into their heart with a familiar glow that speaks, “You’re home.” But it never happened to me. No. I grew resentful like the willow tree at Cheeseman Park’s veins grow to twist further into the ground every time I visit it. Immovable. Unimpressed. I wish I loved Denver; I feel as though life may be easier that way. That I spend my summers deeply rooted in baseball fields across Brighton. That the mountains heal me from some impenetrable emotional wounds like every hippie in Boulder proclaims happens when they go rock climbing. But I must admit to you now, without a doubt, that I don't like skiing, or hiking, or the Broncos, or the freezing cold, or the great plains or even the buffalo. Forgive me, for I am not a good Coloradoan. I never have been. I love my parents dearly, but when my mom asks me to stay for college, I feel stuck up admitting that I dream of more. I dream of far more. Mile 1,017 I tell people my hometown is L.A. Despite that being a lie. I wasn't born in Los Angeles, yet I know those highways, those tall Art Deco buildings, and rose gardens like they were my own. I tell them I grew up there, even though that's a lie too. I spent four years of my childhood in L.A., years I am too old to remember now, but every time I have a holiday from school I end up back there. Back on my Abuela’s front lawn, in a booth in a Little Tokyo restaurant, in the three-story bookstore at the Grove. I love L.A. because it holds the dream I haven't fulfilled yet. A life I could have lived, a life I still believe I can achieve. L.A. greets me with its bright pink-orange sunsets and plumeria trees. Manhattan Beach watches me run to its waves at least four times a year, never submerging myself fully, still tethered to the surface, but every time traversing further and further into the vast sea. I am sorry Denver, but I miss the beach. Mile 1,703 When I visit Mexico City, people ask me where I am from, and it fills me with shame to say Denver. I feel my shame grow when they call me American, when they tell me my Spanish is quite good despite being from the U.S., and I bite my tongue from admitting that I was not able to control where I was born. I never used to like Mexico. I feared being kidnapped by the cartel, despite my father's reassurance that I was not the target demographic they were looking for; “Meztli, you look poor,” he would say, which offended me at eight years old. When I first visited at fifteen, I felt a weight lift off my chest as I spoke in my native language for weeks on end, greeting strangers at restaurants, hugging family I had never met before. Porque en México se saluda con un beso y abrazo . I used to cry every time I left Los Angeles. Sobbing as the plane lifted off the airport ground. I cry on the taxi ride to the airport of Ciudad de México because I realize that this too could be home. I try to explain the ache in my heart during the weeks following my trip, but I realize others may never understand. No one might ever get the sheer amount of joy I collect when I watch TV shows in Spanish rather than English, when instead of asking me why my skin looks a certain way, people pass by me diciendo “buenas tarde.” I realize only then that I have never written fully in Spanish, at least nothing good enough to brag to my extended family about. That they may never come to understand my art or what I say in my writing. I realize I had grown to hate Mexico as others had made me grow to hate myself. And perhaps that had been the problem all along. México, si me perdonas, por mis pecados y errores, no estaba correcta pero te extraño mas que nada. México te pregunto si me aceptas si regreso algún día. Mile 1 People ask where I am from, and I am not sure what to reply sometimes. I am from so many places and so many things that it is hard to account for all of them at once. I do not know where home is yet. I know I feel it every time the wave of hot, humid air hits me getting off the plane at LAX, or when I see the first billboard in Spanish saying “Bienvenidos a México.” But I would tell you that home is in my mom’s embrace in the kitchen of my house while she cooks dinner, home in the chain with my name on it that hangs on my best friend's car’s rear-view mirror. Home in the dedication my dad leaves me in his published book, in my friends' Christmas parties and in car rides with my Nana to get food. So for now, home remains in the sureness of my heart. Which stretches far more than 2,000 miles across this world. With love, from home Con amor, de mi corazón Meztli Rosaherminia Hipolito About the Author... Meztli Hipolito is a junior at Denver School of the Arts. She is an award-winning poet and enjoys spending time with her family. About the Artist... Jandellyn Silvers-Lozano is a 12th grade Visual Artist at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. Her ideal mediums are cardboard, fabric, and painting. Previous Next

17 < Table of Contents Growing Pains by Kayden Davis Homemade Blueberry Pie By Via Sheahin " our laughter / echoes like thunder / erupting from the night sky / & / washing away every / lasting drop of our innocence" we watched the sunrise every morning, observing as the sky curled and twisted into hundreds of different hues, i view our childhood through pink and orange tinted glass. every memory is splattered on slabs of concrete glittered by vibrant chalk. ice cream dripping down chins, catching raindrops on our tongues; our laughter echoes like thunder erupting from the night sky & washing away every lasting drop of our innocence; i sat alone and watched every sunrise slowly turn to gray. i still feel the sickly sweet taste of lemonade stands and homemade blueberry pie settling uneasily in my throat. you drank your freedom away to forget but i'm still drinking the rain. About the Writer... Via Sheahin is a 15 year old student from Chicago, Illinois. She enjoys poetry as an escape from life but also a look into it. She has been previously published in Cathartic Lit and Teen Ink, among others forthcoming. About the Artist... Kayden Davis is a visual arts senior student at Douglas Anderson. She enjoys painting and drawing as a medium but also enjoys a bit of photography as well.

14 NO WAR by Elizaveta Kalacheva Universes with you by Reese Mitchell I remember when I first came into that classroom. I had been bruised, buried, and bled dry. I used all of my love on her like coin-slots at a casino, burning away what I had for the promise of more. There was never more. And when the haze faded I realized I was left broke. I don’t want to say you're different. I don’t want to brand you with the promise of infinity, and have you mark me like a scrape on hard concrete. I know that feeling all too well. I just want to say that when you look at me, leaned against the chair, your liquid caramel eyes dig into my soul. You teeter, not trespass. When we talk I do not garble, stumble, or trip like my legs do. You feel like walking never could. But here’s the catch: I imagine so many universes with you. There is a universe, somewhere, in some time, where you like me. We go on dates, I take your arm, you hold the door. Your caramel eyes well when you call me beautiful. They well again when you see my scars, I put my shirt on again, our backs lay on the mattress, we say nothing. There is a universe where I hear you play, the sweet vibrato sound. There is a universe where you see me write. I love you’s could be thrown, catched, and broken. Slipping out of your hands once you realize what I’m really like. There are so many universes where you hate me. Hate my skin, My clothes, How you have to remind me that pain isn’t supposed to be chased, and ask me why I keep running. So, yes, universes. How much mess could we make? So, I’ll sit here for another Tuesday, look at those liquid eyes, and wonder if somewhere, in some time, we could love each other. But they’re just universes. What a fickle thing. About the Writer Reese Mitchell attends Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C. which specializes in training young students in the performing arts and preparing them for the art world. About the Artist Elizaveta Kalacheva is Russian and her and her family immigrated to the United States. The field pictured was inspired by Van Gogh's last painting, where he did not know what path to take in life; stuck at a crossroads, and in her version, that depicts the directions the war in Ukraine can take in. Слава Україні, Героям слава!

Handcrafting a Predictable Meatball Anthony Bernando The Peace of Pre-Quarantine Kyra Lai “Arrivederci Roma” playing from the street like Dean was there himself, Vendors selling fresh bread, fruits, and vegetables. Brooklyn, New York, 1983. Frank Caporaso got his hair cut. No charge from the barbers. They were joyful to see their homemade Italian meatball prepared, Covered in his own red sauce and shame. The dismal child walks home, His empty abode filled with the lingering stench of a vodka soaked carpet. Mama never had the money to replace it. Papa spilled drinks on the carpet whenever he got disoriented. He’s been gone for three years. Papa had his own world. It was filled with parallel figures, Deforming the fabric of his family. He was never alone, though he was never there. Cut Frankie out like the chooch’s cut into his head, Disappeared into a forest of voices and riches, Never cooking the meatball, No seasoning or preparing, only leaving blood and ground meat of a cow. Meatballs are meant to be cooked and served for the world to enjoy: Just a little pink on the inside, Delectable and scrumptious with a little ricotta. So why not follow in its true footsteps alone? Return to Table of Contents

< Back Walking on the temple stones by Nakshatra Kallepalli I used to pray By Essia Mahmoudi My father’s hand twists the faucet, its screech clashing with the ceiling fan. He tells me to pray with Sunnah’s surge in my heart as I cleanse my feet for the sacred rug beneath me. Rituals, I told myself, drag me from the fleeting sunrise to blackened dusk. I’d pray loosening my guilt, the remainder of sin between my palms spilling onto the floor. Concealed, precious veils worth verses of “Alhamdulillah’s” I told my surrender as irreverent to the cast of translucent wax buried in my fingernails. How shameful upon the rehearsed ceremonies it is to be anything other than the holy pages burning from the wavering candlelight. I should’ve prayed at eleven, but those twin flames couldn’t save me from the ignited kerosene that grazed my skin before scorching it to tender buds of smoke. These trails of gasoline tamed to deem the glory of a mosque desirable. I’ve seen the damp fields where bodies are claimed by prophets, sheep owned by their obedient men walk down the aisle shackled to their fate. Across the river of idle corpses soaking up their dignity, I hear the weeping of lamb on Eid bleating in futility, its hiss of bloodshed ringing in the name of Allah. I held the slashing across the fur in my book of knives, I was taught that sacrifice eats Innocence, feasting upon its last blessings. I used to pray for another witness to set aflame, For this secrecy to be lured into body bags that it cannot escape, For this fasting to mean something it isn’t. My father’s hands gather under the water, but the ceiling fan can no longer seep into the sinful tears on my rug. About the Author... Essia Mahmoudi is a fourteen-year-old writer who resides in Florida. She attends Douglas Anderson School of the Arts and proudly majors in their Creative Writing program. Her favorite genres to read are gothic fiction, science fiction, and poetry. Essia's favorite authors are Irvine Welsh, Ayn Rand, and Janet Fitch. She enjoys reading compelling, unique stories with intricate storylines and aspires to advance her literature exposure. About the Artist... Nakshatra Kallepalli is a high school student and artist with four years of experience in the fine arts. Her work explores emotion and personal perspective through visual storytelling. She works across multiple media, including painting and mixed media, and enjoys experimenting with composition and detail to strengthen the meaning of her pieces. Through her art, she aims to create work that feels thoughtful, expressive, and open to interpretation. Previous Next

< Back Daily Errands by Lucy Hwang Rotten mangoes By Simmi Sirohi While skimming through the half-off groceries in the shop, where the spider knits a home over the withering fruits in the splintered crate— I picked up a mango, ignoring my mother's comment on its blemishes. The rustic bulb casts a blue light beside the mirror, which smirks at the counterparts. While checking out, twenty-one, two, three—the blonde counted as I translated the total to my mother under censored orbs. The mango’s meekness felt obvious; English murmurs faded into distant sounds. That must've been from a different tree; my stomach churned. Or perhaps it was plucked in January, like the young girl dressed in red on my grandfather's veranda, with eyes of a swan and scorched fingers tracing the white pearls of her dupatta, left to wither until harvest—the mango. Upon getting home, I noticed the neighbor's tree passing our yard. I watch my mother cutting the mango with an archaic knife, the nectar dripping on her young, scarred hands from the burner’s sheath, tossing the blemished pieces onto her chipped plate, until I was served neatly cut pieces in a porcelain bowl. About the Author... Simmi Sirohi is an 18-year-old poet from India who writes about the layered realities of contemporary life. Her work explores the struggles faced by women, the complexity of teenage years, and the subtle pressures of social dynamics that shape identity and belonging. About the Artist... Lucy Hwang is an Asian American painter based in New York City and is currently a senior at Francis Lewis High School. Her artworks showcase her culture and Asian American identity, along with the nostalgia that comes with it. Lucy views art as an outlet for documenting her experiences to memorialize them. Her acrylic paintings tell her story with each brushstroke. She creates to allow viewers to relate, making them reflect on their own identity and memories. Previous Next