1 THE TYGER (from Songs Of Experience) By William Blake Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, & what art Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? 1794 2 Editors Editor-in-Chief: Mitchell Esterle Graphic Designer: Baxter Moneypenny Senior Editor: Sam Lewis Junior Editors: Michael Allen, Matt Hess, Austin Krueger Faculty Advisor: Rebecca Reisert Special thanks to Sam Melchior for Photography 3 Table of Contents On Madness Jordan Blair 4 Death of the Individual Doug Krauth 5 A Disinherited Race Jon Fish 6 Fire Sam Lewis 14 Leaning Robbie Goltz 15 Nolin Lake Jordan Blair 16 My Goal Treyveon Percell 23 Gray’s Tragedy Mike Allen 24 This Happens Trevyeon Percell 31 American Soldier Donny Hyman 32 Ride Matt Effinger 35 The Kaleidoscope Nicholas Spoelker 36 On Preparation Treyveon Percell 41 Eldertown Matthew Hess 42 Stork from New York Sam Lewis 45 Disturbing the Peace Dean Mock 46 On Struggle Alanson Stumler 48 Experiment on Language Doug Krauth 49 Fleeting Robbie Goltz 50 Guess Alanson Stumler 52 Nimbus Rising Anthony Epifano 53 Brothers Sam Melchior 56 A Day in Manhattan Cedric Miller 57 Aaron Landon Hagan 60 On Patience Anthony Epifano 65 On My Own Austin “Freddy” Krueger 66 Bee from Beijing Sam Lewis 69 Dark Tendencies Robbie Goltz 70 Speech Zack Amato 71 Title the Musical Blake and Amato 73 Water in Prison Mike Allen 81 Desire Matthew Hess 82 Rescued Baxter Moneypenny 83 Ode to Elephant Sam Lewis 84 Deep Within the Ground Mitchell Esterle 85 Sunshine at Night Treyveon Percell 86 On Our Legacy Sam Melchior 87 Stalker Baxter Moneypenny 88 4 On Madness Jordan Blair Lord Byron wrote, “If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad.” All of you reading this can relate to this in some way. You might not write to prevent yourself from going mad specifically, but I’d be willing to bet most of you find writing relaxing and therapeutic. This quote strongly rings true in my life. If I don’t write down my thoughts for a few days, I find they get all jumbled up in my head and I get overwhelmed as a result. Writing down my thoughts and concerns helps me find clarity in my life, and it also is a great tool for making tough decisions. When I feel overwhelmed and stressed, I turn to writing. By the time I’m done, I feel much better without exception. Dear God, help us to keep in mind the gift of writing when we feel alone and troubled. Let us see all that it can do for us. Amen. 5 Death of the Individual Doug Krauth It isn’t a room, where I am, it has no walls. It is blank nothingness. Well, except me. Except the mirror. I’ve been here for a while now, floating in the ashen haze of nothingness and gazing into myself. Sound has failed. I guess I’m dead. I guess I was alive. I have dark-russet hair that curls in ways that probably should annoy me. My eyes are green. I am of average build. I know all this by the mirror. But this is fading. As I stare into myself, I notice loss. My eyes are grey. My hair is black. My skin’s a pallid hue, not sun-brushed peach. I notice a dimming of light. I notice less. I stare back at me and we both seem sadder. I can barely distinguish my pale skin from the graying light surrounding me. Sound returns with the bubbling of invisible mud. Though, I stare only at myself, I feel the imminence of someone else. Behind me grow hideous monsters from the smoky nothingness; Beasts that I know not the words with which to describe. I have lost the ability to fear. I assume I had such talent. I stare into my disappearing self as the fiends rip my body to pieces. I do not scream. I cannot scream. I become nothing. 6 A Disinherited Race By Jon Fish The artificial lights glowed dimly in the room above the street. A man of some thirty or forty years sat at a small desk and slowly but eagerly unwrapped a medium- sized parcel, stopping now and then to rest his arthritic hands. The man continued to unwrap. One strip of paper. Another. And there it was. Silas Marner it said in dark, embossed print. Well, it didn’t say it necessarily. It wasn’t like the soundviewers or the talkers. It was called a book. The man knew that, but few people did. In fact, few people could actually hear the book say Silas Marner. It didn’t actually make a sound, but when the man looked at it, a sound came into his head. Reading, it used to be called. And this man could still do it. “Ah,” he sighed as he extracted the book from its tight cardboard packaging. He brushed invisible dust off the cover and set it upon the table. “Silas Marner,” he said aloud. This would be an interesting book. He had a feeling. The man was called Harc. As a boy, his name had been Harvey Colson or something like that, but as he grew up, it became simply Harc. No one had called him by two names in at least thirty years. Not like this Silas character. Harc thought for a moment about what that name would become. Silam, Siler, or just Sim or Smar. Yes, Smar, it would be. So short, so easy to speak, it would save so much time. Harc remembered when his Depart had released statistics about the average time saved just from saying a one-part instead of a two-part name. According to his good friend Thu, the shortening of the name had saved at least six years over the course of one’s life. The statistic seemed abnormally high, but then again, Harc had not lived during the days of the two names. He had merely read about them. In fact, once he had read about a writer with five names. Five! Harc could barely think of such a waste of time. This fellow’s friends must have thrown away a whole year of life on him alone. John. That is what he would be called. For a second, Harc thought about removing the redundant h within his mind, to save time, but then he remembered that no one could read it; no one’s time could be wasted there. Now, though, he had something to do. This book, Silas Marner, would keep him occupied for the next week or so. It was a hefty book, a gift from his friend Morg who worked in the Sub Depart Finder in the Depart Old. Morg was an expert Finder, and he had promised Harc that whenever he found a book that he hadn’t read he would send it directly to him for study. However, while Harc learned a lot from these books, he read them mostly for enjoyment. He turned open the leather-bound book and flipped past the first few pages of notes and copyrights. When he found “PART 1, CHAPTER 1,” he stopped his heedless flipping and resettled the reading spectacles on his face. CHAPTER 1, he read. IN THE DAYS WHEN THE SPINNING-WHEELS HUMMED BUSILY IN THE FARMHOUSES—AND EVEN GREAT LADIES, CLOTHED IN SILK AND THREAD-LACE, HAD THEIR TOY SPINNING-WHEELS OF POLISHED OAK—THERE MIGHT BE SEEN IN DISTRICTS FAR AWAY AMONG THE LANES, OR DEEP IN THE BOSOM OF THE HILLS, CERTAIN PALLID UNDERSIZED MEN… Harc stopped. “Pallid.” He did not recognize the word. With the 7 unexpected muscle memory of one who had done something many times before, Harc spun his body in his chair and reached for a thick book off a low-hung shelf. Across the book was printed the long word Dictionary. An unnecessarily long word by normal standards. The soundviewers that told one what a word meant were called dicters. Much easier on the ear and tongue. “Pallid, pallid,” Harc whispered to himself as his index finger strolled through pages of text. “Here it is,” he said, pressing his finger down against a specific block of text. “Pallid: pale; faint or deficient in color; wan.” Harc thought about the words for a moment until he grasped the meaning of “pallid.” Shelving the dictionary once again, he turned back to Silas Marner, but was interrupted by the sound of a door crashing open. In another moment, the door leading to Harc’s study burst open, and through it came a streak of red. Rone, Harc’s eight-year-old son. Rone charged around the room a bit, making fake airplane noises, before he crashed into his father’s lap. “What are you doing, Da?” the shock of red hair asked innocently.