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6f178f10-c39c-4e20-af87-b3599b872ff0 Blooming Petals by Bria Mcclary Rose-Colored Glasses by Mackenzie Rud A single chain-link fence snaked along the property line of San Pablo Elementary. I hardly even noticed it until I had to pass by it every day of 5th grade on my bike ride to school. For some reason, it has always captured my attention. I was so used to seeing fences rusted to hell and back, as if they were mere days from falling apart, but this fence looked so pristine. The clean metal glinted so nicely where the sun kissed it. The gleam was always reminiscent of my mom’s reflective hair clips (silver woven between strands of dark brown until it looped into a half-bun). Thick sheets of laminated poster-board were scattered along the surface, tied in between the chains with thick rope and flimsy zip ties. Each poster was its own planet and had been spaced accordingly to mirror a shrunken down version of the planets’ true distance from one another. All were emblazoned with pictures and facts, but I was always drawn back to the distance. It really forced my kid-brain to consider how vast the universe was. The fence is still standing but it has been deteriorating for a while. It had welcomed every threat imaginable, like moths drawn to a flame. Looking back, the signs were always there. There had always been hints of rust lurking around the chains, waiting for the moment to strike with a parasitic, vice-like grip. The signs were always sun-bleached, any remaining color ready to fade at a moment’s notice. The flowers were always riddled with persistent, invasive weeds. With perspective, your understanding shifts. Facades can crack and crumble, revealing the undesirable underneath; a lesson I hadn’t learned until recently when things fell apart with my mom. It is a tradition, a constant when nothing else is, to pass the fence. Despite not going to the schools in the surrounding area anymore, I still see the resilient chain-link every day, as my bus stop is just beyond the elementary school’s borders. The fence is so familiar, nostalgic, even. I can’t help but draw comparisons between it and my personal relationships. There was never a middle ground when I rode my bike past the fence. I felt obligated to either speed past it as fast as I could or go at a snail’s pace. Going fast caused everything to blur together wonderfully. The fence would look all silver, loops of metal indistinguishable from the rest. The flowers planted alongside the bottom would become one big patch of color that followed me as I sped towards the crosswalk. It always felt like something straight out of a cartoon, bright and animated, but going slow allowed me to appreciate the signs. I could take the time to absorb it all. Those were the two polar opposites I faced, either a pause or a rush. To keep the promise of the comparison, this was always how it was with my mom, yet not nearly as positive as the bike rides. Most times, she would unashamedly ignore both me and the tension looming over us. Days and nights would go by with few words passing between us. It was the suffocating type of silence, as if one wrong word would end it all. Occasionally, she would pretend to listen, but it was always clear she wasn’t invested. Her eyes would glaze over, and she would mumble unrelated comments. The latter half, the adrenaline rush, was always a whirlwind of emotions. Her erratic behavior, ever unpredictable, was paired with screaming matches and pointless arguments centered around myself or her ex-husband (my dad, who had escaped her ensnarement years ago). Her deep-seated indignation gave way to a passionate fury as the hours dragged on. She would scream her throat raw until her motive was lost, and everything felt blurred and muddled, until she would inevitably fall back on her constant: Heineken. "Oddly enough, the moment I can pinpoint as the beginning of the end of our relationship involves that dilapidated school fence." Just as it took a while for me to pick up on the fence’s declining state, it would take years for me to realize the ongoing situation with my mom. I was unable to recognize the abnormality of a house being somewhere to tread lightly upon, rather than a home. It became something I was subconsciously aware of yet chose to ignore in favor of avoiding the fallout. I did so until everything was too much to handle. I couldn’t shove my feelings or anxieties down and pretend they didn’t exist. San Pablo didn’t bite the bullet and start repairs until last year either. They waited until the fence had unapologetically gaping holes. Oddly enough, the moment I can pinpoint as the beginning of the end of our relationship involves that dilapidated school fence. It was the summer between middle school and high school, and I was hesitantly awaiting my acceptance letter to a high school I had auditioned for. As soon as I got it, things exploded between my parents. My dad wanted my mom to sign a notarized agreement saying that she would not move away from my bus stop. He wanted me to be able to ride my bike to the pick-up spot. My mom was always late for everything, and seeing how the school was an hour away, missing the bus would be a problem. I have always been under the impression that she believes time waits for her. She received an emailed draft of the papers and had a meltdown. She was convinced there was some secret trick, or something hidden within the subtext. I had read them myself and knew that to be untrue, and I told her such. It was an off-handed remark, really; I had not thought before I said it, but it became the catalyst. She yelled until her voice was hoarse, only to start right back up again. With wild gestures, she told me it was all a big conspiracy. My dad was supposedly creating a masterful ploy to steal custody from her. I couldn't even begin to explain how wrong that was. The papers were so simply written. They stated the only way my dad would get full custody was if she moved me to Orange Park. That request was understandable, as she had moved me there the previous year even though I went to school at the beaches. My mind was reeling at this point. Everything was dull and distant. It felt like I was submerged under water. I told her I was done, that I was leaving, and stumbled towards the shoe rack. She yelled after me with a favorite phrase of hers. I was “misremembering it all”. I don’t know what there was to “misremember” about it as the terms were written down. I had my hand clenched around the doorknob when she made one final attempt to keep me trapped. It was a sob story I had heard endlessly before: my dad was brainwashing me. Every inconvenience, every time she lost her temper, every perceived slight against her was my dad’s fault. In her mind, her shortcomings as a parent were because he divorced her. The speeches were always filled with half-baked lies, but it still stung to hear her talk so poorly of my dad after all he had done to shield me from her mess. He had spent years cleaning up her mistakes so I could cling to that belief of a loving, picture-perfect family. The impact of the door slamming behind me made the window tremble. I felt numb as I mindlessly walked. I hadn’t noticed it before, but tears had been steadily falling down my cheeks. I wound up at San Pablo with my nostalgic memories of elementary school dragged to the forefront of my mind. Not my best years, but hey, I was begging for any distractions. My hands shook as I called my dad. I have no memory of what I told him—repression is a hell of a thing—but the little comfort our talk offered was nice. I wanted nothing more than for him to pick me up and take me home, but I knew that would only lead to a kidnapping claim, courtesy of my mom, whose house had never been my home. After ending the call, I didn’t turn back. I put my hand up on the fence as I walked and let my fingers dip in and out of the gaps. The metal wavered in such a satisfying way. I returned to the house after an hour to my mom with a glass of wine shaking in her twitching hands. She apologized with a sickly, honey-laced tone, but as soon as the bottle was drained, she pounded on my bedroom door and returned to the verbal barrage. Weeks later I returned to San Pablo, aching for the familiarity of the fence, but my heart dropped. That was when I finally realized the poor state it was in. My naïve perspective, my rose-colored glasses, shattered. My favorite planet poster, Venus, swung in the wind and made an awful raucous as it hit the metal links. The onslaught of disappointment was crushing. It felt as if the decay had happened overnight. My mom’s steady decline had spiraled as well. She always had a balancing act between her narcissism and her addictions, but it began to teeter. It would take getting Baker-Acted for meth usage and suicidal tendencies, being held in a facility for weeks, a second eviction looming over her head (without anywhere to go), and me outright saying I did not feel safe for her to sign away her custody. She still claims she did nothing wrong and expects me to come running back. She claims my dad is ruining our relationship, but she has texted me three times in the three months following her giving up custody. It has been very weird living at my dad’s house permanently. It’s liberating and wonderful, but it’s hard to believe I’m free from the suffocating tension I lived with for so long. I feel like I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop, or for some unforeseen consequence to rear its head, but I am slowly getting back into the swing of things. With the opportunity to step back, reflect, and to fully take off those warped rose-colored glasses, my perspective has been broadened, and both her and the fence’s facades have cracked. Return to Table of Contents

Fall/Winter 2021 Cover Art: Ephemeral by Jayci Bryant Table of Contents Connect to "TOC Art Title" Connect to "TOC Title" Connect to "TOC Art Title" Button I'm Refolding Foreboding Gustave Rish Small Title Kierra Reese Small Title Small Title Connect to "TOC Title" Connect to "TOC AUTHOR" Connect to "TOC ARTIST" View

4 Back to Nature by Sachiko Rivamonte в машине (in the car) by Alisa Chamberlin the seven-hour trip begins. a man we paid to take us (мама, бабушка, и я) [Mama, grandma and I] through the пустырь [emptiness, plains] that is russia. my mom says something about camels, or лошади (horses) living here. all i see is dirt, abandoned здание, [buildings] грязный ад [dirty/filthy hell]. clear blue skies do nothing to hide the пустой [empty]world. a gas station: then open road, stretching длиннее [longer] than my eyes can see. sitting atop a throne of багаж,[baggage] i reign king of the leather чемодан [suitcase/briefcase] empire. us against the desert: yellow травинки [strands of grass] and tumbleweeds tell us we are not alone. the earth is тихий [quiet] here: никого нет. [nobody here/around] concrete structures like boils plague the land. no windows, no doors. the apocalypse держит своё. [holds its own] пять часов. [five oclock] i eat black bread for dinner. the only animals i’ve seen are the ones внутри моей головы. [inside my head] a fire truck screams by, entering a concrete hell. астрахань [Astrakhan—city] waves in the heat, over the horizon. городской горизонт [city horizon] welcomes me back: добро пожаловать домой. [welcome home] About the Writer... Alisa Chamberlain is a bilingual Russian-American who enjoys writing poetry about culture, self-identity and mental health. She loves animals and rock & roll music. About the Artist... Sachiko Rivamonte is a senior at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. At DASOTA, Sachiko is a visual arts major. The medium of their piece is pencil.

1 < Back Mango Heart Mango Heart by Camille Faustino About the Artist... Camille Faustino is a student at Douglas Anderson. The medium is mixed media involving acrylic paint folded and layered paper, trasferred photos, and plastic.

96dba0f8-05be-4c6b-b082-1a718ee89c00 Silhouette by Lan Turner Anthem by Brendan Nurczyk And as Jon Bon Jovi peels his blasted red-knuckled fists through the silver Sedan casting its shadow through the parking lot, lone star and single street light. Four more hours before the sun even thinks to rise, before he buttons the top button against his neck, the voice box of sharded glass, bullet roster and black coffee, before Marvin Gaye ever opens his lips, every sings in 1971 angels falling “Fly high, fly high,” the lark spilling its song into the gutter, the cicada grinding its teeth halving a toothpick or cedar cigarette, a wing dancing outside of a plastic bag, a plastic bag hanging from a windshield wiper. Rain, how it beat down on that tired old parking lot and washed out us. Like Noah, or some violent baptism, I think this must be it. The last night alive, the last feel fragile eyes of morning before dawn will hush out the neon lights of that McDonalds we buy coffee from because it’s cheap not because its good. We don’t often say it enough in the moments we are thankful to be alive, for what it’s worth I have a single nickel in my pocket that’s been rusting since I was six. Dryer lint and good god, the woman sweeps the parking lot and asks us to move our feet, she sings a school I do not know yet; this is her anthem. This is her riot, her burning bird, her tired old rick-rock and roll over your stomach is just asking for the knife. You cry a little, lean on my shoulder, laugh. It is not enough to not know what we hunger, it is not enough to know what we taste. You down the last of your Coke chilled in that 2am electric. The cicada, I imagine, moves its wings with your breath, it eats through summer. The lark, it too, knows what it means to walk a little on the ground. Return to Table of Contents

The Minkin Kitchen by Hana Minkin An Open Door By Lila Hartley AUGUST 2010 Two young parents nervously walk up the driveway to a stranger’s door, curious—or maybe unaware—their toddler following closely. The sun is setting, sky bright orange and pink, the warmth of August day holding onto dusk: iftar approaching, and the family approaching iftar. The man’s pre-glow-up hair, dark, long and curly, shifts with the soft breeze that offers no aid to cool. He wears a T-shirt and jeans. The woman’s brown hair drapes over her shoulders and touches her seven-month pregnant belly. She wears a dress that allows stretching around the abdomen. The toddler with her light brown hair, thin on top of her head, neck length, waddles like a penguin; she can’t take too far a step, or she’d stumble. Next to the driveway, there is a prayer garden, small fountain, wooden bench and a little bridge if you’d rather go through the garden instead of the concrete path, if guests would like a moment of solitude before entering the busy home of strangers and conversation. The family hopes that this is the right door, and knocks. When the door opens, they are warmly welcomed by a man who looks like how one would imagine an Ottoman warrior in ancient Turkey: built like a wall, tall and strong with short, dark hair and a mustache. They are asked to take their shoes off at the door before they enter the house. Immediately, the smell of delicious food invades their noses. They walk past the office and dining room, toward the living room. In this house, the living room is life, where friends and strangers talk alike. Yellow walls are covered in paintings and décor. Every surface has an item or three carefully and intentionally placed, including a glass vase on the back patio behind the kitchen. A semicircle forms in the sitting room, and the strangers go from nameless to acquaintances, acquaintances to friends. The hosts introduce themselves as Sel and Angie. Sel is Turkish and Muslim, and Angie is Filipina and converted to Islam. The two of them moved from the Philippines to Jacksonville in 2002 and started hosting these dinners in 2007 to share the nightly Ramadan tradition with friends and soon mutual friends. They started a charter school in 2007, Sel inspired from his brief work as a janitor when they first arrived in Jacksonville, his parents’ work as teachers back in Turkey, and his work building schools in the Philippines. They wanted to bring people together; they wanted to build bridges and introduce others into a tradition that may be outside of their own religious or traditional practices. They talk about Ramadan, introducing some of the strangers to a foreign practice they didn’t grow up knowing. Ramadan is the Islamic holy month where Muslims fast and reflect on how they live throughout the rest of the year. Sel has said that it is a time for him to recharge or reboot, and to truly appreciate the food and water he has throughout the rest of the year. The group gets into a line towards the potluck-style trays in the kitchen as the sun sets and iftar begins. As each guest gets their food, they trickle out to the screened-in back patio. The table becomes full of conversation about each other’s lives and origin stories. While the mother eats, she converses with a fellow stranger. In this moment of distraction, the toddler wanders away from her mother and father. She does what any curious child would do: inspect everything with her hands. The girl lifts a small glass vase smelling of a subtle eastern perfume oil. A crash of glass shards follows shortly. To the young mother’s horror, she quickly realizes what her daughter has done. She rushes to the scene, partly to keep her daughter from hurting herself, partly to try and clean up the mess that her child had caused in these strangers’ house. But the host couple comes to the mother’s aid and tells her that she doesn’t need to worry. “We will take care of it,” they say warmly comforting the mother. The young mother and father worry whether they will ever be invited to iftar again, whether they will ever be invited to Sel and Angie’s house again. Did their toddler just sever any possibility of friendship? * * * I am that toddler who broke the vase in 2010. I can tell you Sel and Angie did not even wait until next Ramadan to invite my family back to their home and hearts. That iftar in August 2010 is exactly what started a friendship that has lasted over a decade now. After years of attending iftars, not a common experience for white, Christian children in the south—and for a time having someone in the house who was Muslim and fasted—I started to question what the deeper meaning of Ramadan was. Ramadan is important to Muslims religiously and culturally. “Muslims observe this sacred month of Ramadan to mark when Allah sent an angel who revealed to the Prophet Muhammad the Quran, the Islamic holy book,” according to Trafalgar. Ramadan also fulfills one of the Five Pillars of Islam, called Sawm, fasting. Sel discussed one of the reasons he and Angie were called to start hosting iftars: “…it is a cultural background, because prophet Muhammad said share your breaking fast with your neighbors, but doesn’t say your Muslim or any other religion, just says your neighbor. So, we are in Jacksonville neighborhood, right? Every day we see people at different times. Sometimes we understand people more than our real neighborhoods. So, that’s why I started bringing, because sharing is good.” Opening one’s home to friends and family is not an uncommon practice among Muslims during Ramadan for this reason and others. It allows people to connect with each other and appreciate breaking fast in community together. Sel talked about what the significance of Ramadan, saying “Ramadan is like a recharging for me, recharging spiritually and mentally and also physically, and it is the opportunity for me to get better person every year.” Ramadan is a thoughtful time to recognize all the things that one takes for granted during the rest of the year. It is a way to empathize with the poor, hungry, and thirsty, and to remember to give to others when you can: helping our friends, family, communities and putting ourselves in each other’s shoes. I began to notice parallels between the beliefs that have been instilled into me throughout my childhood and those of Ramadan and that have been brought out because of those evening iftars at Sel and Angie’s house. I see how my family and friends’ actions parallel with the ideals of Ramadan. Regularly, my dad gives some of his extra cash or change to a homeless person on the sidewalk. My mom hosts dinners at her house to bring people together. At school, my classmates and I hype up each other’s writing and outfits and bring extra food for a friend who forgets to get lunch. About the Writer... Lila Hartley is a Creative Writing sophomore at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. In her freshman year, Lila fell in love with performing literary works. She participated in several open mics and in Douglas Anderson’s annual show, Extravaganza. She enjoys writing poetry and creative nonfiction. Lila is currently the Vice President of Literary Arts Honors Society at Douglas Anderson. Previously, her poem The Blue and Yellow was published in Élan Literary Magazine’s Middle School Writing Contest the 2022 Spring/Summer season and placed third in the writing category. About the Artist... Hana Minkin, 18, is an art student based in Savannah, Georgia. She plans on attending the Savannah College of Art and Design to purse Fashion Marketing and Merchandising.

Granny Girl by Ji'niyah Alexander November's Cardinal by Emerson Flanagan My grandmother holds my hand, gaunt fingers laced between my own sticky, curious fingers. The smell of her skin clings to me, powdery roses and oversweetened strawberry perfume that sticks to the back of my throat. She chirps over family, sipping on unsweet tea with lemon, perched on whining leather in her faded pink nightgown. My grandmother listens to my stories for oily action figures and crayon smeared Barbie dolls when a stuffed animal audience can’t laugh or applaud. She’ll stay on the porch, lounging beneath wind chimes while I chase butterflies and beetles through her planter. My grandmother holds my hand, cold fingers laced between my own bony, soft fingers. I’ll drive down the bumpy street of Fisherman’s Cove, the color black hanging heavier than usual. The house is quiet. Weekly pill organizers lay on the dining table, my grandmother’s nearly full. Her chair sinks with her imprint, leather peeling and quiet. I’ll sit on the porch and hum along to the quieting wind chimes only to stop as a red cardinal lands beyond the screen door. I smell the sickly sweetness of my grandmother’s perfume in the wind as the cardinal takes off only to be replaced with the thick odor of diesel exhaust and the neighbor's cigarette smoke. About the Writer... Emerson Flanagan is a senior in the Creative Writing department at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts and is the current Senior Art Director of Élan. She enjoys writing poetry and fiction, often pulling inspiration from herself and the arts. About the Artist... Ji'Niyah is a senior at Douglas Anderson, as well as a drawing and painting major. Her works are all influenced by her life experiences as a black girl. She specializes in painting but loves to try all forms of art. Ji'Niyah was the youngest to win third place in the Jacksonville fair mural contest and the youngest to live paint at a Winedownfest event.

Once an Editor-in-Chief of Élan when she was a student, Tiffany Melanson has been Élan’s faculty sponsor for the last 11 years. Recently, she stepped down from her position in Élan to further her artistic career. The mark Mrs. Melanson has left on our publication is unmistakable. It is through her that Élan became what it is today: a vibrant magazine embodying the hearts and minds of teenage artists from around the world. We are honored to continue creating in her legacy. This issue of Élan is dedicated to you, Mrs. Melanson. We thank you for all that you have done to bring life to our publication and wish you luck with whatever you do next.

1841830b-e835-4756-b712-b37651d49a80 I Sea Trash by Christian Silva the girl in the pool has all her clothes on by Ali Ximines I often think of the summers I spent with the lavender-haired girl by the side of the community pool - too afraid of what the town would think of me if I jumped in, but too mesmerized by her blue-green eyes to go home. It shouldn’t have been a big deal, really, for an innocent swim was hardly cause for a scandal. But the truth of the matter was, the lavender-haired girl in the pool…well, she had all her clothes on. "It was invigorating, she declared - and because of my cowardice, I had to take her word for it." You see, she always jumped in that way…fully dressed, sneakers and all. Said it felt better when the water made your clothes cling, air-tight, to your skin. It was invigorating, she declared - and because of my cowardice, I had to take her word for it. Because while the experience was ever-so-tempting, it just wasn’t done. And so I returned, day after sweltering summer day, denying myself the luxury of a sunlight swim with her, all in the name of maintaining appearances. I could have slapped myself. As a result, the only opportunity I had to let go of the boundaries that persistently reared in my head every day was during the cover of night. We’d sneak into the pool almost every evening and swim together: two trespassing fish with cotton scales. And when her hands traced a path down to my waist on one particularly humid evening, I could pretend that the shiver traveling down my spine was caused by my damp clothing - not the sight of the moonlight reflecting in her blue-green eyes. It’s quite funny, really, the way I couldn’t remember what I ate for dinner last night if you pressed a pistol to my temple, but I can recall every second I spent with her in vivid detail, simply by closing my eyes. There will always be the ghost of her lips on mine, a tentative exploration that we could only undergo in the dark, echoes of her whispers in my ears, full of words that made me shiver even when we were dry. Those very words filled my ears every afternoon, when a subtle shake of my head was all I could answer to the unspoken but persistent invitation those eyes offered me from the pool - never demanding for me to join her, but making it clear that the choice was mine. This afternoon, hands that don’t feel like my own tug at the hem of my shirt, begging me to tear my gaze away from her, to stop admiring how perfectly that lavender hair compliments the bright blue of the pool, to escape to the locker room and change into a swimsuit, to remain ordinary for one more day. She’s floating on her back now, an otter in denim overalls and a Hayley Kiyoko t-shirt. I stand up from the pool chair, forcing myself to finally leave, but aquamarine eyes meet mine, and my legs betray me, refusing to take another step away from her. We stare at each other for a moment, her steady gaze never wavering, asking a question that I’m afraid to answer…it’s much too long, really, considering the vantage point the pastor’s daughter has from the top of the diving board - but that one look is enough to crumble my defenses. I don’t want to say no to myself anymore. And I know what the pastor himself thinks about the shade of her hair, the clothes she wears, the opinions she freely shares, the way her parents are prone to leaving her by herself for days at a time, the unconventionality that makes her so magnetic. But the pastor doesn’t know the girl in the pool. I do. The pastor hasn’t spent any time with the girl in the pool. I have. The pastor hasn’t heard the gentle tingle of her laugh, hasn’t seen the tender way she feeds the birds in the park, hasn’t spent hours watching her sing while braiding that hair. I know the girl in the pool has all her clothes on. And I love her all the same. I don’t go to the locker room. I don’t change into my pale-peach swimsuit. I stand, walk a few paces back, and do a running jump into the water. There’s a colossal splash before I sink to the bottom of the pool, knowing very well that the whole town saw me, and hoping that they did. There I sit, one leg over the other, picture-perfect blonde hair hovering above my head. My heart pounds twice before I open my eyes, and…there she is. She giggles, and although I can’t hear her under the water, the sight of it puts a warm glow in my chest. We lean forward until our foreheads touch, and my eyelids flutter closed in contentment. The summer is almost over, but we’ve only just begun. Return to Table of Contents

Spring/Summer 2022 Cover Art by: Vera Baffour Table of Contents Writing Art Editor's Note 0 Blair Bowers and Brendan Nurczyk The creased polaroid my grandmother keeps in her wallet 7:30AM 1 Kota Locklear England Townsend I Left my Heart in the Knot of a Weeping Willow Tree Off 2 Peyton Pitts Jadalyn Gubat The Willful Pisgah 3 Nayra McMahan Audrey Lendvay my childhood friends 4 Raymond Chen For Medusa El Tiburón 5 Mia Parola Natalie Holden motherland My Inner Brewing Conflicts 6 Evangelina Ariana Thornton Alana Guifarro Mountaintop Soho 7 Itay Frenkel Ivory Funari My mother's letters to my father. Dreamscape Randos 8 Chloe Pancho Vera Baffour Innocent Until Educated 9 England Townsend Deep in Georgia Blackout 10 Autumn Hill Micayla Latson Doll Dancer 11 Zarria Belizaire Reagan Hoogesteger Recursions Wasting Time 12 Nolan Lee Elizaveta Kalacheva The Last Rite LORD BABA (GOLDEN PRIDE) 13 Giovani Jacques Taylor Ekern Anthem Silhouette 14 Brendan Nurczyk Lan Turner Iridescence for the Soul Lucky Numbers 15 Hallie Xu Christopher Thomas My Body, the Sea/Mi Cuerpo, el Mar The Gain and Loss in Transformation 16 Raquel Silberman Alyssa Giraud icarus & her lover A Challenge Approaches 17 Eva Chen Alyssa Giraud Midnight Skin Ave Maria 18 Alexander Sayette Vera Baffour Oliver A Mother's Love 19 Esmé DeVries Chloe Robertson An Evening to Remember 20 Audrey Lendvay Aschnakä 21 Niveah Glover A Tribute to Mitski’s “Class of 2013” Tangled in Transformation 22 Hollis Ackiss Camille Faustino the girl in the pool has all her clothes on I Sea Trash 23 Ali Ximines Christian Silva The Orange Tree Across the Street Groceries 24 Sarah Ermold Camille Faustino The Bird dovetail 25 Blair Bowers Sachiko Rivamoute Between the Eyes Commensalism 26 Maeve Coughlin Arabella Riefler Firstborn Late 27 Satori McCormick Jadalyn Gubat Who's Point of View 28 Solara Cotton to she who fights the snow Afternoon Painting 29 Sarah Sun Zoe Turner Rose-Colored Glasses Blooming Petals 30 Mackenzie Rud Bria Mcclary the summer you learned to bike Marine Karma 31 Eva Chen Grace Kim Spring/Summer 2022 Staff Blair Bowers Brendan Nurczyk Zarria Belizaire Nia Moneyhun Parker Sheppard Lanina Herndon Anna Smith Nayra McMahan Bonny Bruzos Sage Whitecotton Kaysyn Jones Leila Warner Editor-in-Chief Junior Editor-in-Chief Poetry Editor Prose Editor Art Director Junior Art Director Associate Art Director Managing Editor Junior Managing Editor Social Marketing Editor Associate Marketing Editor Associate Marketing Editor

21 Life in a Shadow by Isabelle Woods We Call it Our Mother Tongue by Saria Abedin We Call it Our Mother Tongue because it is the melody that our mothers sang to us in lullabies. Because they were the first ever words to birth the voices of our young minds. Yet ever so often, when I find myself afraid That someday it would become foreign to my ears. I remember the sounds that flow through the blood in my veins have carried this language for years. I carry with me the only language for which the Earth was stained in red, The only language for which martyrs stood unwavering to the gunshots that silenced them in my stead. For a generation of voices had echoed battles cries As they fought for every last word, So that one day when it would reach me, My voice could be heard About the Writer... Saria Abedin is a senior at Perry High School, Gilbert Arizona. She writes about memories and moments in her life that define her and inspire the creativity for her interest in writing. Besides enjoying typing away at her laptop or scribbling thoughts in a journal, she loves reading all sorts of literature and poetry, and cannot live without listening to her favorite music. About the Artist... Isabelle Woods was born in Savannah Georgia and has lived their whole life. She knew at a young age that she was interested in doing art. Some of her influences of doing art have come from her grandmother and mom, who both inspired her with their own art. More people that have influenced her are her teachers. Now, attending Savannah Arts Academy, she is able to be creative every day with multiple different kinds of art.

< Back Meshes by Sofia Lataczewski You Told Me Not To Watch By Conlan Heiser-Cerrato For Grandma "I am the grandson / of brightened forests, / newly grown after / fires." I am the grandson of flooded moon—of still frames holding last Christmas’ flowers. Their reds, yellows, and the out-of-focus brunette that drips to the floor. You, tucked between glass panes, reaching within yourself to let go. Pressed against the barbershop window, one eye closed, and my vision clears. Deep she cuts, she shaves letting edges fall away into things I cannot see. The pink-crystalled rosary held tightly within your peeling hands. Watching as you lose your Irish curls. But I was always peeking around the corner, looking upon you picking clumps out of the shower— their ends tinged with graying blooms. You did not want me to see such weakness as you gave up part of yourself to an unwanted settler. The barber cuts deeper; your hair spins towards the ground. I am small, crammed against the barbershop window. The fluorescent lights illuminate your rosy cheeks, turned upward in defiance, in strength. I am the grandson of brightened forests, newly grown after fires. I am the grandson of lingering goodbyes. I am the grandson of the fight—the wars we wage for family. About the Author... Conlan Heiser-Cerrato is a junior at Loyola Blakefield in Towson, Maryland. He loves to write poetry and listen to music. He has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, National Council of Teachers of English, and JustPoetry. He attended the Kenyon Young Writers Summer Residential Workshop. About the Artist... Sofia Lataczewski is a Venezuelan immigrant currently studying at New World School of the Arts in Miami, Florida. Since a very young age, she’s been involved in art, believing that it’s a better way to express the hidden meanings of her words. Previous Next