NCSSM Blue Mirror Volume 6 Issue 3

8/6/2019 NCSSM Blue Mirror Volume 6 Issue 3

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/ncssm-blue-mirror-volume-6-issue-3 1/36

spring 2011volume 6, issue 3

journal of artand literature

b l uem irrorncssm’s



But, if youhave nothing

at all to create,then perhapsyou create

yourself.

Carl Jung

“

”



t a b l e

of c o n t e

n t s

My Melody

Molly Bruce

page two

Roll of the Dice

Jozef Lisowski

page three

The Life Shop

Katy Drews

page six

Polyphemus Pours

a Glass of Milk

Jozef Lisowski

page seven

A Recital Jozef Lisowski

page ten

The Extent of a

Touch

Mara Guevarra

page thirteen

Methuselah

Maili Lim

page eleven

Paul Eager, M.D.

Liz Ball

page fifteen

6:59 am

Ash Gray

page nineteen

Pigeon’s Song

Maili Limpage twenty-three

Dogs and Money

Ash Gray

page eighteen

Untitled

Alyssa Rabel

page twenty-two

“A Story Written

in the Aftermath of

Reading Too Many

C.S. Lewis Books”

Abigail Gruchacz

page twenty-six

Point Cleaning

Jennifer Kronmiller

page twenty-seven

Founded Beliefs

Jennifer Kronmiller

page thirty



Color of the Moun José Luis Salazar EspitiaDigital Photography

page one



The trees rustle with the music of our world.

Wind passes through the intertwined network of aged, sinewy branches

and the leaves make networks of canals for the rushing air

This air, it creates the most wonderful symphony known to Mother Earth.

No Beethoven, no Bach, no Mozartcould ever recapture the raw, beautiful, complex harmonies.

Yet where is the melody? I listen closely.

Water swooshes between the rocks on the shoreline,

creating layers of lapping sounds that only add to the dynamics of our world

And yet even deeper, I hear crickets, chirping a beautiful tune

Facetted with they different tones they add the wind and water.

Still, where is the melody? I breathe in – I breathe out – I breathe in

And then I listen to my own breathing;how it resonates, not as another piece of the underlying puzzle

but as a sound all its own

ains

My MelodyMolly Bruce

page two



The best poems are the ones no one likes

the ones that assault your every sense,

that go on and on and never stop

Or the ones that stop within two lines,

that make you wrinkle your nose

and say, “boy, this is a stinker.”

The best poems are the outcasts.

Never published, we trade them

behind closed doors like playing cards.

They’re by no-name authors,

flung out in the dark, rejected or

resigned to an overstuffed drawer

And this morning, I found one of them

hidden in my pepper shaker.

It tasted dry and salty.

The best poems aren’t even poems.

Lingering in the sun, all hair and teeth and legs

we scoop them up in our butterfly nets

and pluck off the wings.

We pin them in our closets,

toss them under some mothballs.And when we dare to open the door,

they scurry, sideways,

into the shadows

and we close the door once more.

Roll of the Dice

page three

Jozef Lisowski



A g e o

fB e a

u t y A n n

i e V e n a b l e

D i g i t a l P h o t o g r a p h y



Lauren Fulcher

Digital PhotographyFelt page fve



Are you our type of person?

Are you ashamed?

Do you have

ambrosia nectar

the philosopher’s stone

or a formula for the Jekyll and Hyde disease?

No? Then step right in,

let us show you our wares

We have deceit,

selfloathing,

problems,

depression,

bottled tearjerkers,

and hopelessness that’s spreadable on anything edible.

All derived from the purest of life.

Do we have sunshine in a bottle?No sir.

But you wouldn’t want any of that anyway.

It’s so pleasant and easy,

not at all classy.

Here, have some disdain.

Fresh off the shelf.

I promise that it’ll give you a turn.

I see that you have shoes.

How droll,

here is some glass and a few eggshells.

Why? They’re for your floor.

It’s all the rage nowadays,

such a simplistic way to add pain to your day.

Business? Why it booms! No advertisements needed my good sir.

Who needs to advertise with products like these?

Everyone needs them, everyone wants them.

Everyone requires our disease.

The Life

ShopKaty Drews



I’d like to think it was a comfort to him.

His one eye sore and crusted,

teeth still gnashing bone upon bone,

he plods up, grabs a goatskin,

downs three tremendous swallows of milk.

Do Cyclopes dream of mothers?

I picture moments of this poor sucker’s

childhood-- crushing a little league

team bench under his girth,

eating goat-cheese oreos until

he was sick.

He tried to ignore the fighting, I hope.The always-absent father, the angry

mother. He clung to her from an early age,

but after a while, she too drifted away.

Even monsters have to learn to die.

No man entered his cave at the end,

but it was no mother, either,

and I think he was disappointed.

That’s all he wanted, really,

I think-- one last memory,

a mother’s embrace,

and a warm glass of milk.

Polyphemus Pours

a Glass of MilkJozef Lisowski

page seven



M a y

a A d e l e B e r n a r d

W a t e r c o l o r



Down and Out page nine



The heat of the summer

bakes the building like a potato,

and it ain’t even spring yet.

I can’t live like this, man.

The sweat traces worry lines

down my forehead,

and bugs carcasses patter the window

with alarming frequency.

Weather like this is meant for

retreating to your cave, naked and sleep-eyed.

Instead, I’m stuck in an over-heated cell

listening to a zit-faced Yorick

clown through a handful of lines.

“Now, a structured poem,” he says,

and I want to shake him,

bellow out, you nitwit! nothing

is structured, let alone your poetry

Even the biggest of things

can be destroyed with a single whisper,

and where is the

beauty or poetry in that?

I start to yell all of this

but the heat is increasing

and my words are faltering

and my pants are making

a permanent seal of sweat around my ass

and the moment is lost.

So I sit back down,

swat the odd fly,

stifle in the winter heat

as he talks on.

I don’t know how I’ll live through summer.

A Recital

yler HayesDigital Photography

Jozef Lisowski



Now that I’m never quite surewhat I’m doing anymore

I stand decomposing

in the refrigerated leftovers of yesterday.

After centuries of silence,

Methuselah,

how do you do it when 1:36 am

becomes its thousandth repeat?

Beneath the surface of my skin

I am one degree below a boil

and drowning in white noise.

Nobody sees you either,

you’re so ordinary.

But they don’t know

you keep your head above water,

Methuselah,

you unsinkable, proud thing you,

for four-thousand

eight-hundred forty-two years

you never oncestopped swimming.

Methuselah

page eleven

Maili Lim



Myst Adam Carey

Digital Photography

page twelve



I.

I don’t like when people touch me.

I am the awkward hugger; I cringe at kisses on the cheek; I am the person to suddenly spazz at a mere brush of hands. I

hate the feeling of something that’s not wood or plastic, and I’ll admit I prefer the faux leather of my bean-bag chair tothe texture of grass. God forbid me to willingly lie on top of something biodegradable, let alone touch another human

being.

So screw you and your kissy-kissy greetings and your false declarations that you love me because I haven’t seen you in

so long. I’m too shy for you people; let me read my life away instead.

II.

I’m no longer afraid of touching the ground. (Or people, for that matter, if you were wondering).

I don’t know what happened. Whatever it is, maybe it was too drastic of a change, because I’m running through life like

a wild child. “Let’s be natural!” I’m shouting at the girls with their layers of caked-on chemicals. “Let’s be humane!” I’m

screaming at the pigs with one-track minds. They hear me, but since when did my opinion matter? I’m the girl with the

matted hair and the dirty feet: I’m comfortable with making relationships now, but I have no one to do that with.

III.

I’m living through retrospect vision, glasses that act like what a kaleidoscope looks like on a bad acid trip. My present

isn’t really what I think it is, but instead it’s a giant rewind button that plays like a broken record. It’s messy, because

now I’m trudging along with what I used to do and what I do now, and they clash and collide, and I’m buried in two

people who aren’t the same at all.

IV.

“Let’s watch the stars.”

You manage to say that while you grin genuinely. You’re smiling, so how can I say no? You pick a tree to lie next to, and

then it’s all we need—body down, limbs sprawled out, faces first into a black pool of white dots. Because now we have the

opportunity of salvation: it’s got its little wings flapping against our faces; it’s got its beauty in the midst of our vulner-

able impulses.

And, my God, isn’t this beautiful? Your head rests on my stomach, and my hand strokes your hair. I realize this is what

harmony is, while our eyes tune out to the dark and leaves the flickering lampposts behind. We backtrack to the past

and the future and the present again and again, living it all through our life stories, the stupid screw-ups, and those ran-

dom embarrassing moments we laugh at now, but used to hate at the time. Suddenly, we take a turn into the deep end,

discussing God and fate and aliens and galaxies and parallel universes far out behind that curtain of stars. You think

aliens are using us for a reality television show. I think you’re mental, and I tell you so. You smile.

So we lose ourselves somewhere in between stupid stories and profound philosophies. It’s cold outside because our

laughs are turning into miniature white clouds; I think I’ve lost feeling in my hands. But I don’t mind that, as long as

I’m not what I used to be—a girl that’s an outcast no matter where she went.

Frostbite is much better than social suicide.

V.

One day, you destroyed my retrospect glasses—you took them off my face and stepped on them, breaking my past and

my nightmares until they were finely ground, the color of it a cross between puke green and assorted pixie stix. (Maybe

even a lava lamp, now that I think about it.)

I didn’t know what to do now that they were gone, whether I should cry or laugh or beat you into the ground.

So I did nothing, and you held my hand, kissed it, and told me, “You’re welcome.”

The Extent of a TouchMara Guevarra


http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/ncssm-blue-mirror-volume-6-issue-3 17/36Turning a White Orchid Blue

Adam Care

Colored Pencil, Penc



I always felt that I was born into the perfect family,

with the perfect surname: Eager.

Eager was I, to enjoy life, to enjoy love.

And when I saw her blue eyes -

when Granville was brand new and wondrous -

when I saw the way she lifted her long skirt to cool off

when she thought nobody was looking,

I did enjoy love.

We enjoyed love together,

and my new wife Elizabeth

birthed the beautiful Harriet.

Mary joined us,

a short two years later.

From Wales I came, a transplant.

But I earned a degree,

made a name for myself:

Doctor Eager, eager to help.

But when Mary struck ill,

there was nothing I could do,

though I tried anything, everything,

to save our precious twelve year old.

I could not.

Harriet, a short two years later, only sixteen,

copied her sister in death,

as her sister had copied her in birth.

Elizabeth blamed me.Every day, for the rest of her life.

She struck ill, just like the rest.

It must have been the dresses,

too constricting for a woman her age.

I tried to save her.

She told me I would fail,

but I was stubborn.

As it happened, she was right.

About everything.

And I -

simply old and decrepit,

cracking under the weight of three deaths, three failures,

died, one year later.

The three of them gasped their final breath

on the 17th of their months.

I, however, died on the 18th.

Even in death, I failed.

P a u l E a g

e r , M

. D .

L i z B a l l



Cupcake Mae Davis

Digital Photography

page sixteen



Parisian StGabby Burnett

Digital Photography

page seventeen



Dogs

It’s hard to put a price on this one,

but the man will do it anyways,

and some kid will reach deep into his corduroys,

where all the sums round up

and the art of driving a hard bargain is absent,

and emerge with a handful of singles.

Someone will say,

“That’s not how it works, son.

Go lower.”

And he will slide three dollars

back into the seat of his pants

and learn how to lie.

page eighteen

andMoney

Ash Gray



Somewhere along the way,

I lost my shoes.

That’s okay.The linoleum isn’t too cold,

and sometimes

I need to be tethered,

but not too close.

The phone rings.

I wedge the jack

behind my big toe

and pull.

It dies.I lie down.

Across the floor,

the phone is still asleep,

and I’m dreaming.

6:59 am

page nineteen

Ash Gray



B o o t s

a n d L

a d d e

r s T y l e r H a

y e s

D i g i t a l P

h o t o g r a p h y



MyMot h er ’ s F

a vor i t e

Untitled

D omi ni q u e B e a u

d r y

Oi l

I.

You tell me I’m not going insane,

but sane people don’t imagine chunks of burning flesh

while they’re watching cookies bake.

I’m afraid you’re too blinded by admiration

to recognize how my mind is slowly disintegrating.

II.

Sane people don’t associate insects with chocolateor corpses with flowers.

Sane people don’t associate death

with tokens of affection.

III.

My favorite flowers are delphiniums.

When others were placing roses on my father’s casket,

I placed a stalk of delphiniums.

I want you to buy me flowers,

and I want them to be delphiniums,

and I want you to understand

why they will always make me cry.

IV.

I told my brothers once

that if their lovers

ever burst into tears upon receiving a bouquet of flowers,

then they were completely nuts.

I think it may be time for me to re-evaluate

my definition of insanity.

Alyssa Rabel

page twenty-two



Chalet Tyler Hayes

Digital Photography

page twenty-four



“A Story Written in th

Envoy of BeAnnie Venable

Digital Photography

page twenty-fve

Too



Aftermath of Reading

uty

I am face down, on a dirt road. The dirt is yellow, and I can smell it, feel the slightly

bigger particles grating on my forehead. Yet, I’m not getting up, because I don’t feel

like getting up.

I can hear someone walking towards me, but I don’t look at who’s passing.

The footsteps stop, and I can tell he is standing beside me.

“Why are you lying in the dirt?” The voice is deep, but he doesn’t sing bari-

tone.“Why do you care?” It’s none of his business.

“Well, most people don’t lay in the middle of the road.”

I scowl. “I ain’t most people.”

“Do you need help getting up?”

“I can pick my self up!”

“So why haven’t you?”

My teeth clench say before I say, “Because I don’t feel like it!”

“You sure?”

“Look, I appreciate your concern, but I’m fine.”

“I can’t just leave you like this.”

I sigh. “I was already in a bad mood, because I tripped, and now you won’t go!”

“What happened?”

I don’t want to tell him, but at the same time I have to tell somebody. “I made

a wrong turn, and I got lost. Then I tripped so here I am.”

“I understand. Hey, I’m from around here. Maybe I can help you there.”

I’m touched by his offer. Got that warm feeling in my chest like I just drank

something hot. “Okay, help me up?”

“Sure.” He doesn’t laugh at the irony.

He takes my hand, and pulls as I use my free hand to push. When I’m up, Idust my jeans. Then I look at him.

I like his dark brown eyes. They’ve just got this warmth to them, and I trust

this guy.

“Where do you want to go?”

“Haven Road.”

“Oh! It’s close. Just a mile that way and to the right.”

any C.S. Lewis Books”Abigail Gruchacz

page twenty-six



Point Cleaningmy sister speaks in question marks,

always allowing her insecurities to sneak in

somewhere between one capital and one suffix.

when she says,

“I love you,”

it comes out like she is surprised to find

something still beating in her chest.

my little brother uses question marks, too,always following one letter:

Y

He sprinkles them over estranged uncles (why)

and recessive aunts (why)

and divorces and wartimes and rapes on channel 6 -

he tacks in on to The Simplest Things

and the teacher gives him another letter,

F

because apparently he should just know.

Mama uses periods.

There is a waiting period,

a period for grief,

and her monthly period

where she gets to be bitchier than usual.

“I’m tired,” her throat mutters,

and we all fluff up her pillows

and tuck her deep inside herself,

peering in periodically to make sure she still breathes.

why? my brother asks me,

and my sister answers with a string of reassurance -

“don’t worry, it’s ok, i’m sure she’ll be fine?”

leaving it open-ended and gaping

since it wasn’t an answer anyway.

Jennifer Kronmiller

page twenty-seven



Untitled Adele Bernard

Plaster

page twenty-nine



The pugnacious professor, misquoting Jesus

in a polite, straightforward way:

“I have a dear friend who knows how to put down

anyone who believes otherwise.

Bones grinding by the light of power surges,

the closer prisoner’s attitude,

and the 35 year old actress founded upon ancient biblical verses

These are your lifejackets!”

Shuffling in my shoes while

the audience goes wild -

“I shouldn’t be alive,” I contribute.“I’m constantly amazed at people

worming through hypocrisy

as easily as the comics section,

as easily as death.”

In a polite, straightforward way

he points to the college that crashed in 2006

because it was corrupt and consumed and

still draws hundreds of students each year.

“Did the early church leaders offer students alternative views?

Does the bible include errors?”

No, he agrees, he didn’t think so.

Founded

Beliefs Jennifer Kronmiller

page thirty



cover image

Lights and H2O José Luis Salazar Espitia

Digital Photography



B l u e M

i r r or

S pr i n g 2 0

1 1

Molly Bruce Ash Gray Tyler Hayes

Jennifer Kronmiller Alyssa Rabel Mia de Los Reyes

Molly Bruce Tyler Hayes

Jennifer Kronmiller

Editor-in-Chief Literature Editor

Art Editor Production Editor

Maili Lim Jozef Lisowski Mara Guevarra Nick Liu

John Woodmansee

Strawbridge Studios

Grace Yook

NCSSM Blue Mirror Volume 6 Issue 3

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