PRISM

Explore this collection of creative projects by Spectrum's Creative Committee.

Featuring works by Sophia Petrucci, Jesica Bak, Charles Madden, Naomi Desai, Allison Choi, and Hollie Park.

1417

Linger

fourteen

nine months in my mother's womb,

fourteen years of eating my grandmother's cooking.

six years since the first boy starved it.

five years since the first man.

four years since the second boy.

thirteen days since the second man.

four people to undo twenty years.

i feel fourteen every time.

breath one

i remember the ceiling light in the room of the first boy.

we played staring contests and i lost with every forgotten breath.

a circle, the perfect shape.

it reminded me to breathe.

Downward Spiral

seven years

it takes seven years for all the skin cells of your epidermis to replace themselves.

a new skin, one that your childhood dog will never smell.

just seven birthdays.

i have had two first birthdays.

and now,

i am back in my mother's womb.

i pray this time i grow longer arms.

Roots of Home

From the Artists

My writing is both a mourning and a celebration of elapsed time. We think we're done, free from experiencing our past again, but I'm learning that a part of growing up is to relive our past and experience it better. I don't wish that anyone is able to relate, but I know we're all growing up together and starting to talk about it.

A camera allows me to capture moments that I wouldn't remember otherwise. In each of these moments, I catch light interacting with its environment in a way it might never again. But it will. In my camera and in my head, the moment is extended beyond its miniscule lifetime.

C. Madden and H. Park

Dear Delia

In the novel Beautiful World, Where Are You, Sally Rooney opens each chapter with a beautiful exchange of emails between her two main protagonists, Eileen and Alice, who are best friends from college nearing their 30s, struggling to find meaning, purpose, and integrity in a world that feels increasingly vacuous. Except, each email reads more like a letter than an email, and each correspondence opens us up to Eileen and Alice’s lives, hearts, and minds. What are their romantic relationships and careers like, but also what are their anxieties, doubts, fears, and insecurities? What are their thoughts on class struggles, corruption, sex, and beauty?

Mirroring this kind of letter format and writing style, we have conjured up a fictional girl at the cusp of age 20, “M”, who writes to her friend Delia with whom she has been disconnected with since the death of their mutual friend Zach. The letter is situated on a train as “M” leaves her hometown to move across the country and along the way, she must confront her feelings of grief, love, and departure while writing to Delia. She opens up her heart and mind—we hope you can feel it all.

Written by Jesica Bak

Illustrated & Designed by Naomi Desai

For Valentine’s Day, we composed a collage using photographs, artwork, paper scraps, poems, and prose from Spectrum Magazine’s archive of past issues. Oranges, hands, mouths, blood, hearts, spit, the sun – we attempted to represent the many themes that Spectrum poets have visited and revisited. Though the best part of a poem is sometimes its reversal of a simple topic, we didn’t want to cut the sweetness of the words and images we found; this is a homage to the giddy, butterflies-in-the-stomach love that Spectrum poets have explored through the years.

Love,

Allison and Sophia