ST. ANDREW'S SCHOOL
The Andrean
1997
ARTISTS
Cover: Alex Deas '98
Maria Morse'00, p. 2
Alex Deas '98, p. 3
Vita Waters'97, p. 4
Simon Saddleton '97, p. 6
Cynthia Miller '98, p. 7
Meredith Blake '97, p. 8
Barclay Satterfield '98, p. 9
Will Robinson'97, p. 11
Veronica Erard '97, p. 13
Helen Smith '99, p. 13
Vita Waters'97, p. 15
Morgan Foster '97, p. 20
Chip Herr '97, p. 28
Barclay Satterfield '98, p. 29
Jim Maxfield '98, p. 30
Jim Maxfield '98, p. 30
Jim Maxfield '98, p. 31
Katie Edwards '97, p. 32
Liza Tucker '99, p. 33
The Andrean 1997
T A B L E of C O N T E N T S
2
Pastry Chef in Love by Alison Hwong '00
3
Evening Jog by Jamie Carrington '98
4
Geese by Meg Nicoll '00
5
lover's appetite by Meg Alexander '97
5
Prozac's Watchful Eye by Jamie Carrington '98
6
UptyPage Rockwell '97
7
Sun's Shadow by Carly Schneider '98
8
Us? by Julie Teach '00
9
on the stairs by Beth Budwig '98
10
A Baby's Blocks by Meg Alexander '97
11
Mother by Alison Hwong '00
12
Unfitted by Meg Alexander '97
14
Rot by Jamie Carrington '98
16
Shadows on the Moon by Mary Battle '98
21
Study Break by Carly Schneider '98
22
Smooth Velvet by Alexandra Cox '97
23
Quite Simple by Alison Hwong '00
23
Restraining Atlas by Jamila Trindle '98
24
A few moments of early evening by Jamie Carrington '98
25
Carolina Homecoming by Mary Battle '98
26
The Fall by Carly Schneider '98
27
The Difference by Mary Battle '98
28
System Failure by Jamila Trindle '98
31
Our Town by Alison Hwong '00
Pastry Chef in Love
BY ALISON HWONG
Her step was like shortbread—
delicate, light, buttery
Her hair flowed like vermicelli
Her face pale as pure ewe's milk.
Her raspberry cream lips,
a nose as gentle as cup custard.
She brushed against me with lady fingers
and her words poured out like caramel,
coating me as she spoke her name
"Sue," fragile as souffle.
Perfect.
~~
Evening Jog
BY JAMIE CARRINGTON
I glide through the earthy smoothness
Of the grey-time, heart swelling
With cool blowing breezes' energized reminder:
Times of easy jetting breath and fleet-footed treadNot often, to be sure, but perfection within
Fills me with airy glories rarely known
Within the usual slopped dredge of plodding days
And cinder-block cells and black scorching fire—
That crusty eyed necessity.
A blind corner opens into that grassy causeway
Between raw soybean stalks and bare-branched woods
And the silver-streaked sky of fading slates and blues and
Smooth ragweed-amber splashes of earthy colour—
I glide into it all.
Geese
BY MEG NICOLL
A bleak expanse of sky,
pierced by dark angles,
angels that advance.
Formations, their calls echo
in the surrounding silence.
The leader, a Moses, parts the sea of sky.
Pointing to the shimmering horizon,
they soar on.
Receding from view,
vanishing for a season.
lover's appetite
BY MEG ALEXANDER
he then scrounges for the morsel
sweat surges from the summit of his brow
shaking to sate his want he strips the pod
and suspends the feast inches from his face
Prozac s Watchful Eye
BY JAMIE CARRINGTON
Blighted blue capsule of the American Dream,
Electrocuting me with wild laughter, a psychotic bliss
I need your hot whiskey within my barren veins,
Pulsing with pure energy of unsettled uncaring gaze
Every pounding adrenaline moment of an Untravel'd World,
Gleaming with the gassy burst of supernovae: must you?
But yet it remains that life-sustaining spirit which
In former days of languid longing awaited me
From across the panes.
What now? I fear a return to those dark days
Which allowed me to tumble
Into that deep, familiar well of
Needless glassy-eyed slumber
Which in older days drowned great men in pools
Of gassed debility.
Up
BY PAGE ROCKWELL
Someone drowned in Trumpet Lake
slept soft, under thin blankets
of algae and silt,
murky green and gold.
He rose from those covers in the spring,
the lake's slow somnambulist
pushed by melting,
and we all turned from the swollen face,
loosening limbs, clouded eyes.
His resurrection, terrible and cold,
came on a day when slight streams of light
shone from cloud gaps, like warm, pale fingers.
Seeing his painful fullness
then that favorable sky,
I weighed his sad and heavy corpse
against the shadowed promise of light.
But my lakeside view showed neither the dark bottom
nor the sun's back, so I don't know
in what silent ground,
or in whose arms,
he might rest.
Suns Shadow
BY CARLY SCHNEIDER
The eyelash that you
(lovingly?)
brushed from my blushing cheek
must have landed in this ink sky.
For now it winks down in golden mockery
of my frustrationsilent as a timid crescent moon.
It burns, as I do, at the sight of you
and her.
We are both forced to sit, motionless and silent,
resigned to love you from behind
this unfeeling world of clouds and curtains.
All I can touch is this frozen glass,
muttering a wish
on a lonely stara tear that you could,
lovingly,
brush from my blushing cheek
into the liquid sky.
Us?
BY JULIE TEACH
Reflection—
His eyes shine
like fresh grass
mowed by her.
Pacing through eternity, endless halls,
she succumbs, swallowed.
Swept by open arms
to hold, hold her, held?
His touch wraps
her soul, surrounded.
A twist of paradise,
laced with heat.
Together blanketed by their dreams,
smothered by a shield of his stars,
oblivious to place, numb to time.
She is the light, the passion dancing in his reflection.
on the stairs
BY BETH BUDWIG
my blotched-pink hand
squeezes the cold metal rail,
knuckles white,
fingers tighter
the clouded sky
sits on the day
and the trees
and the listless pond
in the wind
the air chills
my nose and cheeks and toes
my eyes full of
nowhere
until you wrap
my numb hands
warmly in yours
until your eyes
caress the frozen landscape
reflected in mine.
A Baby's Blocks
BY MEG ALEXANDER
the last one plops on top,
shiny red
with plastic edges
and smooth surface
tiny hands smack together
lips spread wide,
up,
eyes crinkle
ArfArfArf...
shapes erupt
from vulnerable balance,
a whole
toppling
back into pieces
colors dance
but for a breath
lips quivering downwards, eyes drowning
Suddenly,
round, bouncy
yellow rolling closer
shapes forgotten,
left as ruins.
10
Mother
BY ALISON HWONG
A spider built her nest between the handlebars
A film of dust covered the leather seat
I hadn't touched it since that joyless day when she stopped riding,
But now I slowly wiped it
With a clean, white cloth
And I mounted hesitantly to pedal
up and down, up and down
Like her heart before it stopped
And suddenly I felt free
n
Untitled
BY MEG ALEXANDER
Just as I begin to disremember
he utters hello
and my heart stings.
I struggle for Keats' drowsy numbness
to overcome the
torture
of his breath
branding
my cheek.
But as he pushes past,
the brush of his fingertips
slashes this crisp
shell
protecting my unseen
want.
Sweat bleeds
from my pores
as hurt floods through my body
with the anguish
of the addicted.
I strain
for the wash of indifference
to smother
my suffering,
and I am
still.
But soon
I yearn to taste again the pain
and feed my craving
to revel in the torment.
For this dullness aches with a greater
hurt
of forgetting him
12
13
Rot
BY JAMIE CARRINGTON
Tonight I sit sunk into the rough
Warmth of institutional furniture,
Leaving behind some concern or another,
Some oft-ignored responsibility,
As I dip myself into pixeled worlds of
Dead dazzle, beyond the life's carving 8:05's
7:30's and 10's '
"Finally!" exclaims trim, pretty Jenny
"Financing cosmetic surgery needs only 9.5% APR!
Liposuction, Breast Augmentations, Face Lifts, Chin Tucks
—It's within your reach!"
Silicon dreams for every American
Joe, sucking greased pleasures
Off of a micro-wave-ready Tupperware platter;
Riveted
To re-run hermaphrodite
Hitmen, sobbing 4001b. women,
John Bobbit's penis and its new career:
Beaming colors tramping
Through their deadened minds,
Still waiting for
That golden visit
From Santa Claus or Ed McMahon, to gorge with
Instant-win-Cadillac-big-screen-Wonderbread
The void sucked dry
By each pulsed Trinitron glimpse
Of blank-eyed glee:
-E-Z financing-See your friendly Buick dealer today
-After as swing by the Arches of Ray Kroc's
-Twisted red-and-yellow-fantasy
-For a bite
U
-And cheery wish
-For the day's untarnished conclusion
Garbled from the crusty mouth and pockmarked chin
Of some short swarthy Mexican
-A desperate manA uniformed prop
For you to disdain with haughty eyes as you hand him
Your crushed green five.
"Have a nice day..."
"Can I help the next in line?"
Primetime's special sauce cakes itself around your cells,
A Skittle-sweet anesthesia
Nodding you, idle eyed, into Technicolor escapes
Beyond the bounds of your mediocrity.
You awake: now you see trim, pretty Jenny bubbling
With star-spangled
delight,
Success,
Acceptance
She calls for you to join in her myth
Of American perfection.
"It's within you reach," Jenny again entices us, but is cut
short by a silent shot
Of the dying red
White and blue
-This concludes our broadcast day-Goodnight-
15
Shadows on the Moon
BY MARY BATTLE
The crooked waves broke into the television screen again,
splitting the zit cream- model's face in two. Carrie leaned over the box,
twisting the aluminum foil wrapped antennas in her fingers, but the
picture only became more choked with fuzz. She was too tired to smack
it with the back of her hand, so she clicked it off. The green numbers on
the VCR said it was 4:17 in the afternoon. Outside, the next door
neighbor, a middle-aged Canadian named Joseph, was trying out the
motor of his new lawn mower. There wasn't much grass in their trailer
park, but Joseph told Carrie he thought he could get some business at the
Collins Community down the road. He said the owner had installed a
sprinkler system and now the grass was all overgrown, and nobody had
time to mow the stuff. Carrie had told him it was a good idea. She liked
way the gasoline smelled as it drifted through their open window from
his engine.
Carrie also liked the way it muted the house— no voices— just
the dull drone of Joseph's mower. In the gray reflection on the TV
screen, she could see the lumpy figure of her mother asleep on the couch.
With her cheek smeared against the arm, her mother's dry lips looked
pursed, as if they were waiting for a kiss. Her weathered skin hung lazily
from her bones, rolling off her arms in dimply flaps. She was wearing
the same tight pink T-shirt she had worn to the bar the night before.
The beer stains were still smeared across her bulging chest.
Her mother was half-Cherokee. She never wore beads or
moccasins, but when Carrie was younger she used to let her black hair
grow all the way down her back, to the waist of her blue jeans. When
she bent over, Carrie would seize long strands of it in her ten-year-old
fists and rub it against her cheeks. But then a woman in the express line
at Winn Dixie told her mom that long hair was dangerous for little
Theresa. 'It only takes one strand to wrap around her sweet little neck,'
she said, 'and she could choke to death.' The next day her mother took
out a pair of scissors and cut it all off, right in front of their bathroom
mirror. It took Carrie's father weeks to unclog all the black hairs from
the sink. He said she looked like a fucking dike. Three months later he
moved to Arizona.
Carrie turned away from the television and walked back over to
the kitchen. She stole one of her mom's cigarettes from the crumpled
pack she had left on the counter and lit it while she put two pieces of
Sunbeam in the toaster. The phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Hey sweets, it's Corey. I just wanted to see what you were up
to."
"Not much—"
16
"Huh?"
"Sorry, neighbor is running his mower. I said, 'Not much.'"
The toaster hinged and coughed up the two pieces of black
bread. Carrie ducked under the telephone cord and walked to the
counter. On her way over she felt the rubber face of her sister's naked
Barbie doll squash into her heel. Theresa would have screamed if she
had seen her. A few weeks ago the six year old had seen sex for the first
time on a movie Corey had brought over. Carrie forgot to tell Theresa to
leave the room, and ever since, Theresa had been leaving her Barbies
lying all over the house without any clothes on, with naked Kens laying
around nearby. Corey thought it was funny.
"So do you want to do something tonight? My cousin's having
something, his mom went out of town—"
"You mean Smithy?"
"No, Ray."
"Oh yeah, red hair. Yeah, I guess so."
"And how about we go get coffee or something in about an
hour? I haven't eaten all day. It might be longer than that though, I have
to fight with my dad for the car—"
—Yeah, okay, I'll see you whenever, just call before."
"Alright, sweets, I'll see you soon—
—Bye.
Bye.
Carrie hung up the phone and started scraping the black layer
off her toast. Her mother forgot to get butter at the grocery store so she
ate it with a glass of ginger ale, sucking on her cigarette between bites.
Her mother had woken up and was watching her from the couch. She
had pillow lines running down her face. A portrait of a soft-eyed Jesus
hung above her head. He was wearing a blue robe and had his hands
outstretched to a few barefoot kids and barn animals.
"Did Charlie call?" her mom asked.
"No, it was for me. Do you want some toast? Do you need me
to get your medicine?" Carrie asked. It made her nervous when her
mom was awake.
"No, just tell me when Charlie calls. He's supposed to watch
Theresa tonight, since you're so busy—"
"I'll watch her tomorrow night, okay?" Carrie finished her drink
and put her glass in the sink. Her mother rolled over and went back to
sleep. Carrie shuffled into her room and left the rest of the toast out for
her mom when she woke up. Outside, Joseph had cut off his mower and
was pulling it back into the shed.
• • •
Carrie was trying to make steam circles on the car window with
her breath. They had decided not to get coffee. Corey was drinking a
beer he took from Carrie's refrigerator instead, and had brought some
«
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"
W
17
cold chicken with him in the car.
"I'll take you to the Waffle House another time okay," he said.
He smiled at her and laid a greasy chicken bone on the leather interior of
his carseat. He like messing up his dad's car, so Carrie wouldn't feel
weird about being in a BMW. She still didn't ask him if she could
smoke.
"I've got to tell you though Carrie— this is hilarious. I went to
the Waffle House with Patrick last week, and there was this new waitress there. First of all she was ugly as sin and she was missing her front
tooth. But the best part was her ass— I swear to God Carrie, it was
square." Corey looked at Carrie and started hiccuping laughter and
pounding his fist on the steering wheel. "Sh-she thought she was real
cute too! You should've seen the way she was shaking that flat, square
butt around all those truckers. We started calling her that too, 'SquareButt'. 'Hey Square-Butt, bring me some coffee!' Isn't that the greatest?
You should see her, Carrie. Man..."
Carrie's eyes followed the lit up billboards and telephone wires
rolling outside the window. They were getting farther out into the
country now. The dark silhouettes of rotting barns and silos melted in
and out of the gray-blue night sky. Behind all this movement, Carrie
watched the sharp , white moon creeping after them incessantly, ducking
for moments behind a dark curl of trees, but always reappearing at the
next turn. Even as she stepped out of the car, accepting the hot beer
from Corey's cousin, she could still feel it bearing down on her, bright
and rude.
•
•
•
Carrie couldn't remember how long they had been at the party.
Her head was sloshing with shots of whiskey Ray had slapped down her
throat after he cornered her against the sink of his mom's kitchen. Corey
had told her his cousin was a desperate guy, but she didn't think about it
until she felt his hot breath burning her neck. She told him she had to
piss, and headed to the backdoor.
Outside, a group of skinny-legged girls were huddled around
each other beside a pick-up. They were pulling beers out of a Styrofoam
cooler in the back and passing a joint around. One girl turned around
and peered at Carrie through the thick chunks of mascara on her eyelashes. Her name was Alicia, she used to give Carrie fat squares of
watermelon bubble gum in middle school.
"Damn Carrie, what are you doing here?" she yelled, laughing
little too loudly. She wobbled over to Carrie and held her shoulder for a
moment, half as a greeting, half to hold herself up.
"It's been a long time, huh? Long- yeah. How've you been?"
Carrie felt her insides twisting. The odor of Alicia's raspberry
perfume burned the inside of her nostrils.
"Fine-"
18
"This whole night you know what I've been thinking about? Do
you know?"
Carrie shook her head; her knees were shaking.
"That guy, you know, Sally Greenly's brother? He was killed last
week-killed- in a car wreck with some other people. He wasn't even
driving, I don't think. They just ran off the road- drunk as hell in the
middle of the night- right into a telephone pole—" Alicia smacked her
hands together and sputtered her lips. Carrie wanted to sit down. She
didn't know Sally Greenly..-she didn't know her brother...
"You know they couldn't even find his body-just a few chunks I
guess- 'cause the engine exploded. It's weird you know? Just dead, just
like that..."
Carrie curled up on the ground and Alicia stood over her for a
few minutes, swaying gently, her eyes focusing on something off in the
distance. Eventually she wandered back to the other girls, leaving Carrie
asleep in Ray's mom's flower bed, next to the wooden cut-out of a polkadotted rear end.
• • •
Carrie woke up a few minutes later when Corey tripped over her
ankle. She stood up slowly, wiping the vomit from her mouth. With the
whiskey in a puddle at her feet, Carrie's head had come back together,
and she pulled Corey up.
"Oh sweets, I'm glad I found you. I'm so glad I found you—"
Corey slurred as he gripped tightly to Carrie's arm.
"Yeah, well listen, I want to leave, right now—"
"What, do you want me to drive?" Corey tried to look straight at
Carrie with his bloodshot eyes, but they kept wandering off.
Carrie helped Corey into the passenger seat of the BMW and
backed out of Ray's driveway. The leather of the steering wheel felt
squishy in her sweaty hands, as she tried to follow the white lines. Corey
sat slumped in the seat beside her, with his neck twisting softly from side
to side. After a few minutes he lay still, with his head cradled in the
chest strap of the seat belt.
Carrie pressed down the arrow on the car door and let the air
blow through the armhole of her shirt and numb her cheeks. She could
still see the moon sulking after her in the rearview mirror. It was inescapable— the hollowness— One night, about a week before he left, her dad
had pulled Carrie out of her bed in the middle of the night to see a moon
like this one. He said that he wanted to show her its face-the man's that
was up there. "Look Carrie, you see his eyes- and his mouth? You see
him? He's smiling at you-watching after you-you see him?" Carrie
couldn't see the man though, she only saw dark shadows, rotting the
surface of the moon. "Carrie it's a man. Come on baby, this is important, listen to me..." He grabbed her shoulders with his wide hairy
palms. The little girl beneath him began to cry— his fingers tightened,
19
but he wouldn't hurt her this time. He just stood there holding his
daughter against his chest, making her stare at the shadows on the moon.
Corey jerked up from his seat and laid his head against the
dashboard. He looked strange all hunched over like that, even with his
broad shoulders and deep gravel voice, he looked like a little boy—too
young for his heavy body.
"Hey Carrie,"
"What?"
"Did you hear about that guy, the one in the car wreck?"
"Yeah"
"I wanted to tell you before-"
"What?"
"I don't know, I can't explain it. It just makes you think about
things—"
"Yeah... it does."
20
Study Break
BY CARLY SCHNEIDER
The wind whispers my name,
thick rubber waits to clutch me tight,
and rusty metal chains
creak to bind me to the gentle night.
Letting the leaden books fall, my lips rise like shoulders to float in
a smile
as they thud down beneath the massive oak tree—
its roots are strong enough to hold my worries for a while,
and black arms stretch, beckoning, toward me.
So I release.
Muscles sag back into arms of air.
With arms full length, stretching toward the moon, I lean back
into peace,
the leaves rustling in the fingers of my hair.
Shoulders slump at the sight of the books beneath the tree, thinking,
0
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I
n
a
i
s
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s
21
Smooth Velvet
BY ALEXANDRA Cox
When my father holds the picture,
He sees a composition of light and color, not a memory.
He holds it at a distance, squinting,
Turning it in his hands.
But the chipped gold frame is a
Muse to my senses; its silent notes
Hum to my eyes and
Draw me behind the glass, onto the bench where I
Sat, one summer afternoon, in my
Fondest dress up robes. A hat
Droops over my eyes, the sleeves
Crawl over my lap, and
Merge with the pool of fabric that
Floods the bench.
My father sits beside me, his glasses
Glint in the sun, and his arm is
Caught beneath my robe,
Hidden beneath the overflowing sleeves.
Now my father sees our front yard.
He sees the dry grass, the
Uneven hedge, and Wait....the colors, the shapes, and the lengths begin to
Frame his mother's face,
Leaning over to kiss him, her long arm
Draping over his back so he can feel the
Smooth velvet against his shirt;
He can smell her perfume.
22
Quite Simple
BY ALISON HWONG
Life is a hollow glass sphere balancing on the tip of a cone
—and it's not an ice cream cone
or a grand teton with grassy paddocks down below
It lights upon a silver petal with golden pollen
on a slender green stalk
If it teeters it might drop and shatter
and God can't play with his marbles anymore, can he?
He'd vacuum up the pieces
and toss them into a garbage can
full of other broken shards.
Restrain ing Atlas
BY JAMILA TRINDLE
She sits on the porch, staring at the bricks between her sandals.
Gripping clumps of her doll's red yarn hair, she hears the gravel
crunch as he walks, between the uniforms, away.
ants with enormous hunks of oatmeal cookie on their backs
(tentimestheirownweight)
He turns with watery eyes, blue as their backs,
but no tears.
ants march along the cracks of the bricks seeing only
their gray moss path
The arms which held their universe
slump behind his back like Raggedy Anne's.
Bowing his head and ducking into the car,
he makes a last attempt to smile reassuringly.
Though the sun on the window she sees a drop
roll down his cheek (bowed chin, clenched jaw).
She silently watches
but all of the ants return home.
23
A few moments of early evening: 12/11/96
BY JAMIE CARRINGTON
Legs wobbling, I push open the dual sets of doors to leave
that day-glow muscle chamber, decompressing into the natural
surroundings. That cool night air flowed easily into my coughing
lungs. A clean cover of water slickens the concrete. Whether it was
raining or not I never knew; I had gone adrift in that tranquil high
which rescues me from the mundane. Through the gap in tennis
courts and brush which emptied onto the football field I throw
myself. The thick red sea of buildings, people, time—it parts here.
On the football field, the yard lines have faded from the grass: all
that remains is mere scattered flecks, lackadaisically laid art, of a
madman's fit. The gently rolling fields, a Vermont dream, a ghostly
English memory, halt at the thin line of bare trees, their haggard,
sparse branches outstretched—a gatekeeper. Beyond them and
seeping through the gaps seethes a downy fog; a light shines on.
The street lamp, I say, to Narnia, an invitation to the dreamy ecstasy
of escape.
I glance behind into reality; a self-conscious shiver doesn't
want others to see me in my bliss. I walk, but on the right. The
sidewalk pressed up against the classrooms doesn't suit me today. To
the right I am closer to the land over that rainbow of the fog. I veer
over—I see a pursuer behind enshrouded in the grey time. I nearly
crash from this cool buzz, but it can't end. The glow of the Christmas tree diffuses in the mist, another invitation. Humbly it plants
itself, about six feet downhill of the gravel Highway for grinding
tires of construction crews. As soon as the pond comes into view, I
cease my tread, suspended in some foggy childhood dream. Never
have I seen it this beautiful, enveloped in the dream time. The water,
completely still, is merely floating air, off a rounded grass cliff. It
calls me to fly through it, to the suspended trees, symmetrical across
the base, and beyond. I turn to the darkening template of the clock
tower against the glowing windows beneath. I'll head on back to
shower; the lines get long this time of day.
24
Carolina Homecoming
BY MARY BATTLE
Her fingernails are square and pink,
She holds them to her teeth, scraping along their grainy edges
while she watches his bourbon,
sweating into the cork London square
she casually slipped between his drink and the coffee table.
Outside the creek sighs into the pluff-mud banks
and laps the barnacled legs of their dock.
Their old Labrador is lying out there,
even from the window, she can see her rib cage
rising and falling.
Every now and then her head jerks up as she smacks her teeth
at a mosquito
but most of the day she just lies there
while her old bones sink deeper into splintered wooden planks.
"Your mother loved afternoons like these," he says.
The ice cubes are melting into his bourbon,
she asks him if he wants more.
He shakes his head, then asks if she'll turn on the ceiling fan—
the pile of documents and faded photographs
tremble and scatter
across the table
he gropes for them with his wide palms
and asks her to turn the fan off again.
"I need a nap," he tells her, "after I finish this drink here."
She watches him raise the bourbon to his sweaty lips—
for a minute he presses it against his forehead
and blinks at her through the curved glass.
the narrow green slits of his eyes magnify to murky brown bulbs
She looks away, he places his glass onto the bare tabletop
Outside the creek swells with the breeze
Together they listen to the brackish water churning—
quietly consuming itself.
25
The Fall
FOR TWO VOICES
BY CARLY SCHNEIDER
She sips her coffee
buzzes past her dreaming features.
The bees outside kiss the flowers..
as his intellectual droning
He calls her namehis mouth full of fruit.
Preaches that god
does not exist
and Knowledge is power.
She turns again to the window,
yearning for the faith of bees...
Ignorancebee bliss
is Evil.
Following her gaze,
he sees the tree.
In its arms he learned to
readBiting hungrily into the
fruit.
The tree...
She rises and walks through the door,
ignoring his shame at her scant bathrobe.
She picks up the ax,
feels its power slither through her veins.
Its fanged blade winking
in the sun
tempts her again
toward the old forgotten
tree.
The anger coils within her
and springs out through her arms,
slicing at knowledge.
Forbidden!
tree.
He rushes outeyes envenomed.
Her bathrobe falls,
and she smiles a secret honeyed smile.
Running towards the flowers,
she doesn't turn back
to hear
his cry
as it
falls.
26
The Difference
BY MARY BATTLE
Two roads diverged under a yellow billboard
a fat white man holding a goat
swallows the indigo horizon
with his ten meter grin
"Jimmy Carter's Fireworks and Petting Zoo"
Turn right, 5 miles down the road, across from Kentucky Fried Chicken.
The couple from Illinois notices it,
"A blister for the eyeballs," Glenda says.
Albert nods and drags a green marker
along the highway to Florida on his road map.
Fifteen minutes later a red Toyota passes the signThe little girl in the back seat twists around and points her finger
at the black and white goat
while her hot breath makes circles on the back window
between the defrosting linesHer father looks back at the billboard and shakes his head
"Wrong way, honey" he says
his skinny girlfriend in the front laughs and rubs his knee
the little girl faces forward and presses her cheek against the glass.
At 7:00 a pair of lights automatically switches on
To illuminate the yellow billboard,
Ten miles down the other road on the left.
Another pair of lights is clicking on,
on another billboard, neon green—
This one features a blue gorilla
holding a llama on a leash
"Crazy Creatures and Pecans"
across from the Burger King.
27
System Failure
BY JAMILA TRINDLE
Ensconced in work taught me
by others' strength: success.
Now, focus up the ladder. Exert without diminuendo your worth;
Conceal any pathos or pathogen. Manifest efficacy.
There.
my mute prayers of leaving
plague
the source.
Chasing the deficit
to the
nucleus
examining the error
of internal declivity.
28
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30
Our Town
BY ALISON HWONG
There's a flower in the park
and a boy walks by with a lollipop
which he bought from the candy store
next to the bakery
where the baker beats his wife
every other day
with a switch
that he bought
from the tailor
who she truly loves
but he can't make clothes that fit
though one mother still buys them
for her spoiled nieces and nephews
who love to play near the pond at the park
yet one cousin drowned
so they must stay near the trees
around his grave
where they always notice that
There's a flower in the park.
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32
ANDREAN STAFF
Mary Battle '98
Meredith Blake '97
Jamie Carrington '98
Susan Clarkson '00
Nick Connell '00
Alexandra Cox '97
Lindsay Dormer '97
Tara Gilbreath '00
Alison Hwong '00
Naomi Jones '98
Maria Morse '00
Kai Newkirk '98
Emmy Nicklin '99
Rains Paden '98
Natalie Reese '97
Steve Reynolds '98
Page Rockwell '97
Pamela Royer '99
Carly Schneider '98
Helen Smith '99
Jamie Todhunter '00
JamilaTrindle'98
KatyWafle'97
ST. ANDREW'S SCHOOL
350 NOXONTOWN ROAD
MIDDLETOWN, DE 19709-1605
(302) 378-9511