stone-cutters

2013

stone

-cut

ters Editor-in-Chief

Jamie ChangVisual Arts Editors

Cosima ElwesMadeline Lear

Emma Lesher-LiaoDanielle StolzAlisa Tsenter

Literary EditorsJulia AizussLouly Maya

Staff

Sophie Kupiec-Weglinkski, Melanie Krassel, Angela Knight, Lauren Lee,

Alessandra Marenzi, Jason Park, Lucas Foster, Gil Young, Alexander Ravan, Patric Verrone, Gaby Romano, Tara Stone,

Merissa Mann, Anser Abbas, Kacey Bae, Hannah Kofman

Faculty AdvisorsAmber Caron English DepartmentSasha Watson English Department

Alyssa Sherwood Visual Arts DepartmentCheri Gaulke Visual Arts Department

Front Cover: Doesn’t Make a Difference by Luke Soon-ShiongBack Cover: Babble by Merissa Mann

Special thanks to the Chronicle and Kathy Neumeyer

Stone-cutters is a Harvard-Westlake publication for prose, photo, and art. The fonts in this issue are Garamond and Adobe Garamond Pro. Printed by Sinclair Printing.

A Silent Observer // Alisa Tsenter 2Unbearable // Mazelle Etessami 3 The Blue House // Louly Maya 4

Hands and Feet // Madeline Lear 5 Untitled // Emma Lesher-Liao 6

California // Savannah de Montesquiou 7And some more // Hannah Kofman 8

Pretty Boy Swag // Darby Caso 9Jungle // Savannah de Montesquiou 10

Untitled // Xenia Viragh 11A Dead Shirt // Deborah Malamud 12Kemang // Kallista Kusumanegara 13

Wave Cycles // Alyse Gellis 14Untitled // Emma Lesher-Liao 15

Poem Without a Single Heart in It // Julia Aizuss 16Don’t Know About That // Conor Cook 17

Backstage // Lucas Simon Foster 18Self Portrait // Jamie Skaggs 19

Justin Carr 20-21Sometimes I wish I had beautiful things to say // Hannah Kofman 22

Untitled // Maria Gonzalez 23Nude Self-Portrait // Matt Leichenger 24

Sea // Daniel Modlin 25Untitled // Mazelle Etessami 26Over Under // Jamie Chang 27

Abstract Appetite // Teddy Leinbach 28Miscellany // Kallista Kusumanegara 29

Sanskrit Tattoos // Xenia Viragh 30Theme for English III // Justin Carr 31

Oriental // Chelsea Pan 32the Prince // Angela Knight 33

When You’re Lowkey Heated // Luke Soon-Shiong 34Lull // Alisha Bansal 35

Poem for Wyatt // Gil Young 36Untitled // Maria Gonzalez 37

A Twiggy Contemplation // Danielle Stolz 38Ice // Bea Dybuncio / Lincoln // Gil Young 39

Sisters // Deborah Malamud 40Worry-Wart // Wendy Chen 41

contents

A Silent ObserverAlisa Tsenter

2

UnbearableMazelle Etessami

3

My grandparents’ house used to sit right thereWhere wild weeds cover the empty.I close my eyes and rememberThe house, in all its glory, before it fell.The creaks, the dust, the cobwebsI never appreciated when I was young.

I feared the blue house from a youngAge, and the dark corners that lived there.An attic of desks, all emptyExcept the one in the corner, I remember.The drawers opened and old photographs fellBut remained unseen as I ran from the accompanying cobwebs.

They lived everywhere, those cobwebs,Spun from various mothers and her young.My grandmother, a friend of the eight-legged visitors, sat there,My grandfather across from her, the room emptyOf noise, yet filled with affection, I remember,Before the cracks in the foundation fell.

My grandfather, the rock, suddenly fellAs pneumonia bloomed from dust and cobwebs.My grandfather, not as strong as when he was young,Fought, and my mother flew thereBut suddenly his plaid chair would remain empty.His five o’clock martini we drink to remember.

My grandmother crumbled slowly, I rememberAnd Mother Nature took her merciless time before she fell.In her honor, the spiders spun a masterpiece of cobwebs.We found photographs, letters, journals of my youngGrandparents through the house, here and there,And suddenly, it did not feel so empty.

For a long time it stayed empty,Save for the memories I will always remember,And on a hot summer day, the house finally fell.I cried for the creaks, the dust, the cobwebs,But most of all, that someone new, someone young Will never know the love that lived there.

The sad, young beauty of the lot fellAs cobwebs lost their treasured home and as emptyPeople ceased to remember what once was there.

The Blue House

Louly Maya

4

Hands and FeetMadeline Lear

5

UntitledEmma Lesher-Liao

6

CaliforniaSavannah de Montesquiou

7

When she reads his palm she tells him it is a crescent. She tells him there are secrets in it, undefined luminous secrets she says. And he rolls the world with his eyes. When I close my eyes I imagine them. Whether the secrets stand side by side, jabbing shoulders awkwardly aligning elbows. Or maybe a single file line, collapsing as dominos, as waves until shore and hell break. I hold the crescent, tight. I feel the craters first, and then wrap around the shadows. I imagine the secrets again. I feel under the wrist for a mass, a cluster. She asks him if the crescent is Io or Europa. He shrugs. I think it’s Io, the scorched red earth. Tumbling of rocks and rage. The way his skin burns right through in the heat. Maybe Europa if I think about the way his eyes turn cold and glacial when he walks home. The tears when it finally thaws. I bump shoulders as I wait on the subway. She asks him if he thinks the crescent was waxing or waning. She tells him it’s waning. She tells him to hurry and buy roses or a new pillowcase. Now I shrug. How much more time before full moon?

And some more

Hannah Kofman

8

Pretty Boy SwagDarby Caso

9

JungleSavannah de Montesquiou

10

UntitledXenia Viragh

11

I wore a dead person’s shirt. I was young, but not oblivious and I didn’t believe in ghosts. So there was no last time, no last word. I wore her. And my mother, not only unflinchingly but as though there was no reason to shudder told me to

wear it in good health. I spent some time inventing memories after the funeral I didn’t go to. And I thought death a boat shipwrecked. Because it must have purpose –

one which, unless searched for, is not found.

And I spent a lot of time breaking my own heart. I curled into the arm of my One Month Stranger, half hallucinating, and mused to him that there are only two things one can be. Three, he said. Alive, dead, and in love. It rang in my ears as he didn’t kiss me. I soaked my tears in a dead person’s shirt and then I lost it, and death’s a boat.

A Dead Shirt

Deborah Malamud

12

KemangKallista Kusumanegara

13

Wave CyclesAlyse Gellis

14

UntitledEmma Lesher-Liao

15

When my veins are emptyI want you to say,I’m hereas many times as youare, your presence a constantaffirmation,I’m hereas you cross your knees, scratchyour shoulder blades, pickyour nose,I’m here.The rest is up to you.Cut off your hands, your lips,your life, surrender your body to the birds. Everythingcan go so long as whatremains of you lingersin place: red knee imprints,relieved itches, crumpled tissues,birds with full beaks calling.

Poem Without a Single Heart in It

Julia Aizuss

after Jack Spicer

16

Don’t Know About ThatConor Cook

17

You write poetry for girls,and it sits. You drink the juice,and wake up a bit,but the lines grin, like babies.Your initial reaction: IT IS her,and she has transformed,and this is good.Next, you’re wrong, and the smile shirks its duty,embarrassed.Click and clap, she needs to be quiet,and she did, she shut up,and you can work without force.I reread it,her,and it was crap, without the boost.‘Wherefore art thou gone?’That’s not my style, never has been.Maybe, years later, you’ll see her cry;she’d never WEEP, but she musthave thecapacityto cry.Relevant songs that were once forbiddenmay even become audible, and you may even find the word,theoreticaland orliteral, ‘THE WORD.’Thank your god,Spindrift, Spinoza, Adonai,thanks, guys, for,for editing; it’s an ability.

Backstage

Lucas Simon Foster

18

Self-PortraitJamie Skaggs

19

20

Darkest in water, brightest on stage.- Justin Carr

21

Sometimes when I’m walking on the train tracks I see water running through them, and then I see my blood running through them. The thin red canals, veins of the city. And then I wonder what the spine is. The airport? No that must be the mouth, with mistaken words. And how the people of the city must just be thoughts. Why do thoughts die? We hate ourselves just a little more, a little less. Ten minutes later I’ll still be walking, turning around the familiar corner. I think I could lose my eyes and still get there. City eyes? Maybe they are the windows, but I don’t know, that would make cathedrals flies. I approach the fence that has always been there, where previous painters and decorators like dogs marked their territory. Then I walk back.

Sometimes I wish I could control myself. I paint my toes a muddy green, the color of the ocean. I wash my glass in the sink and wonder if I’ll sleep tonight. I do the easy ones. Skin is the houses, toenails, the swept up leaves. I wash my hair in the sink, an attempt to fade the dark streak underneath. I think about the girl who convinced me to dye it. She must have been an afterthought on the city’s part.

Sometimes I think if I could just throw things out it would be better. Pain is something I was always keen on.

There was a time where I ate or didn’t in earthquakes. The damage done increasing exponentially. Around the same time I exercised in earthquakes, and that same time my bones were fragile like smiles and visible through my shirt like smuggled goods. I wasn’t sick. I was just in my own skin. My own thin deflated chipped at skin. And for once my outside vaguely resembled my insides.

Sometimes I think about if I have a homonym, something that asks questions like me but has a different purpose. Today I passed by a dead crow without a pause. But when the feathers ruffled in a pocket of air I turned. I imagined it the moment before it went still. Still past the point of feeling rain in its feet. The kind of still where loose hail would collect like unswept dust, freezing the broad frame over. Still when the breathing sea of tiered ebony would simply stop like a worn-down watch. The drive of curiosity would end, and that would be it. I’ve never thought death wasn’t a choice.

Always I am alone. And I think sometimes, how do the thoughts combine?How do cities hold hands?

Sometimes I wish I had beautiful things to say.

Hannah Kofman

22

UntitledMaria Gonzalez

23

Nude Self-PortraitMatt Leichenger

24

Jaws ajar, our eyes equate,The soil sieves the brine.Your Whip crashes – lacerates,My flesh inhales saline.

As your dark and heavy fist,Proceeds to maul the Earth.Your wrath and I can’t coexist,We are from different hearth.

But it’s too late! I’m ripped back in!I’m swirled amidst your churn.Chicanery is to our chagrin.Ahoy! Gaze upon a stern!

Through filled eyes of horror still,I remain your tenant - Damn God’s Will!

Sea

Daniel Modlin

25

UntitledMazelle Etessami

26

Over UnderJamie Chang

27

Death:Doom - BlackberryDestruction - ArtichokeRuination - Fresh AsparagusArmageddon - Pinto BeanJudgement Day - Lima BeanDoomsday - Black BeanSuicide - BlueberrySuffering - DragonfruitFear - PumpkinSadness - Leek Pain - Prickly PearMelancholy - Honeydew MelonNostalgia - PruneFailure - Brussel SproutDarkness - PlumChaos - OrangeFrustration - Beet

Life:Joy - BasilLaughter - PineappleContentment - Warm CranberryPeace - KohlrabiHope - RosemaryEnlightenment - StarfruitColor - KiwiMorality - AppleLove - PeasAdmiration - AvocadoExcitement - TurnipOrder - CucumberLight - Daikon

Abstract Appetite

28

World:Fire - Habanero PepperIce - MintAir - WatermelonEarth - EggplantWater - RiceGold - CantaloupeWood - Mustard

Other:Spontaneity - PotatoAnticipation - TomatoPlanning - RaisinForesight - Carrot

MiscellanyKallista Kusumanegara

Teddy Leinbach

29

Death:Doom - BlackberryDestruction - ArtichokeRuination - Fresh AsparagusArmageddon - Pinto BeanJudgement Day - Lima BeanDoomsday - Black BeanSuicide - BlueberrySuffering - DragonfruitFear - PumpkinSadness - Leek Pain - Prickly PearMelancholy - Honeydew MelonNostalgia - PruneFailure - Brussel SproutDarkness - PlumChaos - OrangeFrustration - Beet

Sanskrit TattoosXenia Viragh

30

31

The instructor said,“Go home and writea page tonight. And let that page come out of you—Then, it will be true.”

I am an only child. Not one of three,Just me. I go to a school where I feel like a fly in a bowl of milk.Alone. Walking down halls where I am one of three…or at least one of the few with dark skin like me.

The kinks in my hair and the dark skin I wear connects me to the trailblazerswho struggled to clear paths in order to make my journey easier.As I walk through the white halls with the white walls,I see the footsteps of Martin, Malcolm, and Coretta before me.Their pain and suffering endured just so I can be me,Free.

In my classroom,I don’t sit in the back waiting to be called onbecause the sea of seats are all available to me. It’s hard for me to imagineBeing stationed in the back just like my mother and father were,where they couldn’t even see,that they were lacking opportunity.

I turn on the TV to see faces with brown tonesSing through microphones,Not of yesterday’s sorrows,As the wounds have healed leaving scars of remembrance.

Then I look back at me and what do I see?Not a rapper or a ball player,But a boy with dreams.Goals.Promise.Opportunity.

Theme for English III

Justin Carr

after Langston Hughes

the Prince

OrientalChelsea Pan

32

Crouched low,weighed down by a gun and his own will,the boy glanced back and forthfrom his father to the pines.He was nervous and his riflepressed into his shoulder,Beaded palms securing the other end of it.Dark brown eyes darting aroundat a quick pace,double checking to see if there was still dirton his father’s old hunting jacket.

He had been thinking of how darkthe woods wereand then he saw it,a young stag.His antlers were only stubs andhis muscles rippled under his glossy coat.The black muzzle twitchedand the boy held his breathbefore glancing at his father,who gave a simple nod.

Just like in his video games andhis dad’s old hunting stories,the boy raised his rifle andgazed into the scope.He could see the buck better now.

Then, more of a twitch than a decision,he pulled the trigger.

The only thing you can seeare his unchallenged eyes,his victoriously muddy jacket,and the messy, soft blond haircoated with mud and dirt.

The boy drags his feet to the warm bodylooking it up and down beforehis moment is interruptedby his father,who asks him to help him haul the body.He stops when he realizesthat the blood on his hands is not his own.

What kills him the most is thatthe buck was half-grown,like him.No one will ever know it was a mistake,or how many times he’d cried at nightbecause of it.But people see him as a man now,and he respects that.With a tightly closed thin line for a mouthand his hands shoved into his pockets,the boy with the steady gazewas the boy who killed a deer.

the Prince

Angela Knight

33

heat signatureLuke Soon-Shiong

34

LullAlisha Bansal

35

My mom leans down and holds the bowl upTo the boy whose name is Wyatt.He’s wide-eyed at everything except the candy,And I remember him walking around our yard earlier todayAnd being wide-eyed at the plants and the dirt.He’s sitting in a wagon, red, just like the one I used toRide around in on Halloween when I was his age,And his eyes—two pools of holy waterOr two dilated maps, caught in the black fluorescenceThat turns most of us into ghouls.He looks up at me and not-smilesAnd for a second it’s just me and Wyatt,Humming the same tune, wearingThe same dinosaur costume. For a second,We can do the Monster Mash in peace.

Poem for Wyatt

Gil Young

36

UntitledMaria Gonzalez

37

A Twiggy ContemplationDanielle Stolz

38

The light on the dashboard is allBroken up into a million little hills,All the edges are blurredAnd I can’t take my eyes off of them.I cruise around for a while, I think it wasSome fuzzy number, And the windows are all rolled down.Eventually I glance up at the sun and, for a second,It coats me like a thin veneer. Everything is wellAnd I look down at my hands and they’re glowing.I remember vaguely that I’m not asleepAnd it all strikes me as very strange.The radio asks me, blithely, “Have you ever been?To Electric Ladyland?”I chuckle and my eyes float back into my skullAnd all I can see is the pinknessOf the grey ocean, and I’m swimming in it.I float on my back and feel okay.

Lincoln

IceBea Dybuncio

Gil Young

39

My sister’s hair got tangled in my fingers and I pulled it. I don’t know why. I pulled it, and I didn’t stop. She was screeching. I don’t know. I didn’t stop. Maybe it’s because we were on a family trip to the jungle, and we were bored as hell on account of the lack of electricity. The bird noises were chronic; the mosquito bites didn’t stop. Maybe I was going a little crazy. She told me to let go; I didn’t. So she screamed. “I hate you!” The words spilled out slowly and spitefully, but I knew what they would be even before they had formed. I began to cry on impact. “What the hell? She’s my sister! Dad! Dad! Do you hear this? She’s my sister. She can’t say that, she’s my sister!” My dad began reciting. “She’s seven years younger than you, damn it, she’s seven years younger.” He meant “get over it,” but he is much too kind a man. He left the room. I stared at her. I tried to really stare at her. You know, mess with her soul – that kind of stare. But my eyes met hers, and my glare went nowhere; her eyes were dancing. It’s sick, really, that she’d consider herself triumphant, but when your little sister’s eyes are dancing and she’s next to you with wet hair and blue eyes and you’re leaving home next year, you hug her and you mean it. We stayed on the bed a while, not talking until we had something to say. My dad came back in the room and looked at us, puzzled. “You were just fighting two seconds ago. How are you guys okay now?” I stared up at him and rolled my eyes. “She’s my sister, Dad.”

The next day the plane arrived at LAX too early in the morning. My sister and I were fighting again. My mom opened the door to our house and said groggily, “Welcome home.” My sister and I met eyes and shrugged. We’d never left home. We’d never leave.

Sisters

Deborah Malamud

40

WorryWart Wendy Chen