Katie Naughton '08 winner of the Thomas E. Meehan Prize in Creative Writing
TO DO THE DISHES (you need some kind of magic)
.jpg)
When my mother would ask me to wash the dishes,
I would say that I could not.
It wasn't a case of Sarah Cynthia Silvia Stout who would not take the garbage out.
It's just that there was not,
In the delicate, easily scalded, skin of my small fingertips,
The ability, the craft,
That my mother had,
To take a plate dirty with picked-over dinner,
And make it (somehow),
With nothing more than a squirt of lemony soap,
A dash of hot water,
And a wave of hand and dishcloth,
Into a plate that was clean,
That was meant to go into the cupboard,
That could be eaten from again tomorrow.
Fiona MacQuarrie '09, winner of the Rose B. Tager Prize in Fiction
WALK A MILE
.jpg)
Life did not stop to look for Paul. The city continued to rumble past the washed out awnings of the hidden café. People hurried late to work and stayed in their offices long after five o'clock. Flowers pushed their way through cracks in the suffocating concrete sidewalk, as springtime reintroduced itself to a world that was emerging from months of winter's cold embrace.
Nicole Dietsche '09, winner of the George A. Watrous Prize in Fiction
HEADFIRST FOR HALOS (an excerpt).jpg)
.jpg)
"I want to look death in the eye," Jayney wrote, in frantic chicken scratch. She had ground up five Reds and mixed them with some water. She had injected her concoction into her arm with an insulin needle she had stolen during one of her weekly visits to see her mother.
Yes, mother, my meds are keeping me well-balanced.
No, mother, I'm not being moody.
No, mother, I am not self-destructive like I was in college. Stop bringing it up, it's
been almost four years.
No, mother, I have not found a nice boy yet.
No, mother, I am not a lesbian.
No, mother, I didn't get fired from my job, I merely asked for some time off.
No, mother, I'm not lying.
Yes, mother, I am trying to be less of a failure.
No, mother, I am not actively trying to be such a disappointment.
Yes, mother, I will stop by next week if I'm around.
The drugs' reaction in her system was more intense than when she took them orally, but less terrifying than the time when she tried snorting the powder after getting home from visiting her mother. Mother always was hyper-critical when manic and completely insufferable when depressive. At least genes didn't make Jayney like that, too. She couldn't deal with both her mother's problems and her own.
More ...
Christopher Parmenter '10, winner of the Adam Gordon Poetry Prize for Freshmen
APPROACH BY SEA
.jpg)
I have seen you floating by
with fired eyes
and burning hands
like quartzite sands
halo visible from sea.
And should the fires bear you down,
the flares glimmer
your arms and legs
the coast should beg:
to have seen these lights upon the waters.
Night and evening dirtied hands
from diesel engines' smoke and tar
I do not want you to fall from me
without the glimmer of the stars;
at the turning of a moment's glance
the lover's dance
asked the course between
some one thing and the other,
a girl, ideal, or brother;
when all one asks is life.
