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On this page
you will find the Artful Tangents, prose poems and flash fictions
composed by our
past and present student editors. The students are free to write about
whatever intrigues them as long as they use the words 'artful' or
'dodge', even fleetingly.
We hope you
enjoy their works.
Grace Hansen '10
High Tea
Every move we make is artful, perfectly thought out
and yet instinctive. This is after all High Tea, and each motion must
be just so, the sandwiches arranged in half-circles on plates that are
themselves set up in gently curving rows. Since moving in we’ve done
this every day at four, the cups set out at a low table, the matching
teapot waiting for the water and the leaves. At exactly half past
three, when we get home, Emma puts the water on to boil, and at quarter
to she puts it in the pot to steep, the smell calling me from where I
mutter over essays and Sarah from our room upstairs, and Kat from out
of nowhere. And once we’re seated everything is ceremony, from the way
the tea is poured and by whom, to exactly where we sit and how, each of
us on a cushion on the floor, backs ramrod-straight, and the
conversation is always led by Emma, and the subject always as light and
floral as the tea we drink. We are all less than twenty and yet we talk
with the dignity that comes with age, with the slightest of snobby
accents, setting aside the things that college students are so prone
to, the dodgy things we do the other three-and-twenty hours of the day,
in favor of the language of the English, and of tea.
Joe Jensen '11
The Admiral
There was a dirge humming in Frederick's ears as he assembled the
wooden ship through the hole in the bottle. He was sure that the whole
thing was on the verge of collapsing as he maneuvered his tweezers
artfully around the fore- and main-masts setting the mizzen in its
resting place. Loretta came into the room.
"I'm sorry, you know."
"I know," he said.
"It's the medication," she said.
"I know," he said.
He began attaching the sail to the final mast, its cloth standing taut
and erect as if a breeze had caught it on course for the Indies. This
was the final step, he kept telling himself. Gently now. Don't lose
your temper.
"You know, I won't see him again. I know
I've said that before, but I swear I mean it."
"I know," he said."
"Please say something else," she said,
her fingers rubbing the corner of her eye.
"There's nothing else to say."
"I wish you wouldn't build one of these fucking ships every time this
happened. They just sit there on the mantle. And I have to stare at
them. Every day. Little fucking reminders right towards my forehead."
"I'm sorry."
He tied the sail down with the gentlest touch. He admired his work. It
was a beautiful clipper. He put it on the mantle with the rest. Pretty
soon he'd have an armada.
Emily Davis '11
Power
For as long as she could remember, the girl had had the uncanny ability
to attract and repel people from her. It wasn't a physical
thing, like a magnet against metal. Instead, her power was
rooted in her mind. She could steal any boy she wanted just
by thinking about him; make him long for her so much he would curl up
on the floor, nearly paralyzed from heartache. She could
conjure loyal friends from strangers and even enemies, and if
she felt so inclined, she could make her professors trip over
themselves in their rush to ask for her opinion during class, ignoring
the other students. However, it was not in her nature to be
the center of attention, and if there was one thing she was good at, it
was hiding - or, rather, making everyone around her think she was
hidden. She reveled in her solitude, keeping only her family
and very small group of friends aware of her at all times (because, she
figured, it would be cruel to them not to, even though she herself
would be fine without them), while drawing others to her only when she
absolutely needed them. Sometimes, she would go to the mall
or the main street of town, or she'd go to the quad at her college as
classes changed, and she would stand perfectly still, content, watching
strangers dodge her without even knowing what they were dodging.
And then one day, while working on a paper in the library, she willed a
classmate over to her table so she could ask him for help - he was the
only person in her comparative anthropology class she'd ever seen
actually paying attention (not to mention the most annoyingly vocal; he
seemed to think every question the professor asked was for him
alone). If there was anyone who would have a good grasp of
the paper's topic of the effects of the Code of Hammurabi on
Judeo-Christian culture, it would be him. When he was halfway
to her table, though, the spell broke and the boy disappeared into the
reference section without another glance her way. No one else
would come to the girl, either, even when she tried moving her hands
and fingers in artful gestures like the witches and wizards she'd read
about in her favorite books.
The girl sat, stared at her computer screen, and shivered. An
eye for an eye, she thought. Then, before she
realized what
she was doing, she was walking away from her table, obsessed with
finding the boy. She saw him sitting at a table with maps of
Mesopotamia and dark blue encyclopedias laid out before him, and before
she knew what was happening, she had walked up to the table and asked
the boy for help.
He kept reading, though, and did not look up once, even when she
screamed her question, even when she shook the boy's shoulder, even
when she slammed his anthropology textbook down on the table.
It was a wonder the entire library didn't come running, but no one even
batted an eye.
Missie Bender '09
Ball drop
One by one I sit and spin the big black cage of color. I have no
problem touching dirty bingo balls. I am the only one who has called
bingo numbers at this nursing home for as long as I can remember, so if
they’re dirty, at least I know the dirt came from me.
I have always loved New Year’s Eve. Last year we
had a midnight bingo tournament, but not this year. This year I’ll
probably go to bed early along with the rest of the people in the
nursing home. I won’t get to watch the refulgent ball dazzle down from
the sky in New York’s most popular theme park, Times Square.
I wish I could trade balls with those people. Let
me watch everyone in front of me swoon as I pull out this giant
sparkling sphere. And what would happen in Manhattan if they used bingo
balls? The countdown to midnight would begin and after the crowd
chanted “one,” then the sky would erupt with color. People would move
like Tetris pieces, dodging the blizzard of red and blue and yellow—all
the collisions and concussions these balls could cause. It would look
like a giant game of bingo and all of Times Square would be inside the
cage, trapped with no way to get out unless they are chosen at random.
Jackie Hunter '08
Don’t ride the clutch
Learning to drive a stick is not as easy as it looks. The first time I
climbed into the cab of our 1992 Dodge Dakota I figured it was mostly
about pushing the gearshift around when things started to rumble. I
grew slightly unnerved when I rattled the key in the ignition and the
rusty old truck didn’t even make a sound. My father looked at me and
waited, and then finally told me to put one foot on the brake and one
foot on the clutch and I thought, wow, I wish I knew what a
clutch was. But I knew the difference between the brake and
the gas, so I figured that third pedal down there was the one I wanted.
Before he could tell I didn’t feel like bothering with this shit, I put
my right foot on the brake and my left on pedal number three. A twist
of the key and a low growl confirmed my suspicions about the location
of the fabled clutch.
With the motor idling my father told me to go
slowly to the end of the driveway and it was at this point that I
realized he must have been delusional about my ability to operate this
truck. I pressed my foot on the gas and revved the engine so hard I was
sure I would be drag racing down the driveway before I could do a thing
about it, but the car didn’t budge. I smiled at him, and he told me to
stop messing around and get my foot off the damn clutch if I felt like
going anywhere but back inside.
Great. Experience with my perfect older brother
had taught my father that most knowledge about the real world was
innate in his children. Before he could catch on to my stupidity I
removed my foot from the clutch, slammed on the gas pedal again, and
sent the truck bucking back and forth and sputtering before hissing
into silence.
My father took one look at me and got out of the
car, walking to our front door without looking back, and I was strongly
reminded of the first time he tried to teach me to play baseball after
my brother died. I’d stepped out of the way of his slow pitch before
dropping my bat and informing him that none of the other girls on the
block had to play sports and I’d rather join them in the ranks of tutus
and ballet slippers at Miss Antonia’s than have to run from another
stupid baseball. Before then, I’d never known the back of a head could
look so disappointed.
Gillian Daniels '10
The Dodger’s Slant
It is with the greatest unfairness that the world treats him, at least
if one considers the world as he does. His world begins and ends with
the waistcoats of respectable, fat gentlemen and the respectable, fat
purses of respectable, fat gentlewomen, all that is eye level in the
thick of the crowded streets. Pushed back and forth between them, he is
not tall enough to break through, not by half, but he can dodge, and
slip away like air.
No one has ever asked the Dodger what his real
name is, not the old man and certainly not the little boy. The boy is
not half so wise and clever, and hails from a little country workhouse
though he speaks Queen’s English as perfectly as a prince.
The Dodger is careful, the Dodger is artful, and
sometimes he wants to take the boy aside and tell him his parents are
just as dead, if not more so. The Dodger never does this, not in any of
the hundreds and hundreds of worlds into which he has been staged,
filmed, or written. He is the Dodger, the shell of a boy who is not
tall enough. When his part is done, with no home to go home to, he
slips back into the thick of the crowd, eye level with the waistcoats
and the purses as he wears his coat and hat, each two sizes too large.
He plucks purses as he goes along and tucks handkerchiefs into his
pockets.
Chalkey Horenstein '10
Wendy
Two months after the breakup, his face on a photo in the floor of her
room still infuriated Wendy. She tore it to pieces, wishing it were
simply that easy to forget the man ever existed.
Still, spring was in the air, and that meant one
thing: spring cleaning. Determined to move forward, she spent that
morning filling a small waste basket by her desk with everything that
reminded her of that boy.
Mock trial ribbons. Before the jerk had shown his
true ways (or perhaps before he turned into the very thing she hated),
he had always encouraged Wendy to pursue this as a hobby; she loved the
attention, and she loved the ability to work with words. Knowing just
how to interpret someone’s argument, knowing all the right questions to
ask and the answers that inherently follow--those were all the artful
little tricks that he taught her. Next to the stack of ribbons lay a
few that she had earned after their separation.
A copy of Barking at Prozac,
the one that he gave her. About a week ago, she heard that she won a
writing contest that took place in January, with a story she wrote
personifying dogs. She still remembered all of the times she dodged
responding to comments like “Where ever did you come up with the idea
to give dogs such human characteristics? Politics, haikus, a sense of
‘breedism,’ this is all marvelous! Excellent work!” Nobody else knew
about the book; before now, she assumed such a thing was only funny to
the two of them.
Suddenly, it became an uphill battle to try and
forget three and a half years.
Wendy let out a sigh. At this point, it may be too
late to forget this guy ever existed; regardless of how she wanted to
see it, her history and development had forever been stamped with his
existence. With time, she knew she could eliminate his face from
memory, but his silhouette would never go away. As she emptied the
trash bin back onto the floor and put everything back, she couldn’t
tell whether she loved or hated this guy more than ever. But it was
definitely one of the two.
DJ Francis '08
The First Time Billy Killed
Himself
He fell out of the apartment today onto the street and paused to look
around and get his bearings. It was just a trial run--practice makes
perfect. He bought a paper and flung it open, shuffled a cigarette out
of the pack and into his mouth, sidling past the crowd the way he had
dodged her, castling to save the king, rook be damned. At the greasy
spoon he ordered the regular. Before the meal arrived, he recalled a
dream in which he had pushed away his wife (he'd never been married)
and found she had unknowingly packed his greatest aspect, his beautiful
muse, and his intolerable weakness, all gone in a midnight's rush. His
"wife" would not be skinned; he had to hold her, peel her, pluck her
until he saw the underside and realized he didn't know what he wanted.
He grew weaker and weaker and just when he had looked everywhere, he
found her.
She had always been an artful patron of failure.
She stood at the edge of a cliff at the end of the world with his
cherry pit held lightly between thumb and forefinger. "It's your
decision," she replied and then he did what he had to do, the only
thing he knew how. He ate his omelet, returned to the apartment, and
phoned his mother to ask if he could come to dinner. She asked how he
would get there. "The bus," he said.
Holly Kyle '98
Dodgeball
Some girls think it's cool to say they always played with boys when
they were little, that somehow stories of how they defected from tea
parties and My Little Pony and instead played CHiPs Patrol with the
neighbor cul-de-sac boys would dilute the fact they now always think
about dieting and the GAP and feel that their hair has to be down and
so soft around their shoulders. Those hot, stuffy days meant combat
drills and ultimate mountain biking and arguing until the spit came out
whether Hulk Hogan could be taken down with a swift kick in the crotch.
I knew he couldn't, but when I said so, Marty just kicked the dodgeball
so hard toward my own crotch that it nailed me. At times like
this--regardless of gender--you just fall to the asphalt and start to
scream.
Melissa Myers '02
Progression
I was the sandy-haired boy with the homemade overalls. I never wore
shoes except when I went on my morning excursions with my mother
through the paths that wound through our back yard. Back yard: the open
fields of waving grasses and chickens. I grew up on a commune in
Nebraska. My parents were dodgers of the system. They planted their own
vegetables, taught me and my five brothers how to meditate, how to
harvest our own plot of bottomland homegrown (my father had a thing
about having your own share of ganga. Who wants to be a mooch?), and
most importantly, how to steal. But, it was not "stealing" in the
average sense--it was bucking the system. It was okay to "borrow" items
such as food, clothing, and shelter from the government, but it was not
okay to "borrow" anything from anyone inside the commune. Times were
different then. Abbie Hoffman was a prophet, Jethro Tull our choir of
angels; Nature the curvaceous, bra-burning, hairy arm-pitted mother of
all. We stole that book, knew exactly how Cross Eyed Mary felt, and
taught every inch of our land how to flourish and feed us throgh almost
fifteen years. But, by the time I was sixteen everyone with the
exception of my younger brother Skye, and my parents, and I had
deserted the commune. We moved out of our beautiful hand-built house
and into an apartment in Omaha. My father worked at a carbide dye
factory and bought a Dodge Aries, my mother sewed for the few people
who still relied on seamstresses. She went to the Krogers armed with
double coupons and hunting for bargains ever Saturday afternoon. I went
to a real high school, cut my hair, made the grade, went on to college.
I took my girlfriend to movies, drank beer on the weekends with my
fraternity brothers, and scoffed at the neohippies who sat around in
the park smoking grass and singing Mississippi Uptown Toodaloo. Been
there, done that. I was just five years old when my father rolled me my
first joint. But by the time I became "straight edge" my folks were
burnt out in every sense of the word, so bad that I was ready to be
strapped in my three piece suit. People didn't remember the Cuban
Missile Crisis, there were more riots and gatherings outside of Star
Wars ticket offices than in Berkley. With nothing left to fight for, no
soldiers to spit on, no singers to follow (because Madonna was a
Material Girl and Michael Jackson too Super Bowl) my parents were lost
without a cause. They were exhausted from fighting the current of
Progress. They dropped out again, went back to Nebraska, and bought a
small farm. My father grew some vegetables in his garden and left his
Dodge in the front yard to be embraced by the weeds and flowers. But
things were not like they used to be. Someone bought my mom a
television for her seventith birthday and suddenly they were both
transfixed by the strange worlds they had never known. Their days and
nights revolved around American Bandstand, Diff'rent Strokes, and
Hee-Haw. The garden shrivled, the house creaked and cracked, my parents
became non-psychadelic mushrooms growing from the armchairs they
inhabited. They died a week apart, both sprawled slack-jawed in front
of the magic snow between the time when the station went of the air and
The Star Spangled Banner played.
Katie Rybak '01
Minnows
When I was little, I loved the water and when Mama would take us to the
beach I would splash right in, planting my butt in the shallows,
sifting wet liquid sand through my fingers and tracing underwater
ripples with my toes. The minnows would travel in tiny schools around
me, though evident only from their flickering shadows, changing
direction in unison while I would stalk them, or rather their traces,
the cold waters of Lake Michigan trailing down my pudgy legs, taking
one step after another like a thoughtful heron. Then, in a flurry of
motion, I would run, splashing, dodging right and left, trying to
change direction with the little silver streaks and finally jumping,
hoping to land on a fish or two. Around my feet the disturbed
underwater sand would finally settle and come to rest, a tiny cloud of
drifting particles sliding into the crevices of my toes and burying
them. The minnows would swim away. I was the giant, they were merely
thin silver ribbons streaming through the afternoon light-- away from
me, always away.
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