Tag: Portfolio
The Underground
by trogers5 on February 10, 2022
Portfolio
Kate Ward ’23
By the time of his lunch break, Edmund was exhausted from an early morning preparing a case to defend his client. It wasn’t looking good, and frankly, Edmund had little faith that his client would get out of this unscathed. He walked outside to the loud street and waited under a streetlamp for the “walk” sign to appear. The wind, which smelled awfully polluted, tousled his neatly-kept hair and sent the tassels of his bolo tie flitting around. He placed a hand on his chest to try to prevent it, but just like his efforts to strengthen the case with his current client, it proved to be futile.
He crossed the street and walked up four blocks to his favorite haunt, a tiny tea shop that had the best lavender-vanilla tea.
Lanam looked up as the door jingled. He snapped on a fresh pair of gloves and pulled his mask up over his nose. Seeing it was Edmund, he paused a moment, hands fumbling with the delicate porcelain cup he was polishing.
“Good morning sir, what can I get started for you?” he asked as he set the cup down.
Edmund looked over the menu, fingers poised on his chin, rubbing a spot there as he read and reread the options.
“Morning.” He paused and glanced at Lanam’s name tag. “Morning, Lanam. Say, may I have a cup of the lavender-vanilla tea with a bit of milk? Actually, make that two.”
Lanam was taken aback—Edmund was switching up his usual order. “Do you have someone joining you?”
Edmund made himself comfortable at a table by the window, legs crossed as he skimmed through a real estate magazine. “Oh, no but I was hoping you would?” He glanced around the shop. It was empty save for the two of them, a quiet hour amidst the chaos outside. “If you aren’t too busy, of course.” A small smile graced his face, blue eyes twinkling.
The barista made a noise of annoyance and continued to assemble the two teas. Edmund liked listening to the process—the meticulous craft of tea-making, especially with loose leaves and complex flavoring, was mesmerizing. He found it to be far more interesting than brownstone apartments on glossy pages.
Lanam sprinkled lavender petals into the cup and flourished it with a dash of milk. “Did you want the other one to have milk?”
“Make it how you want it,” Edmund replied, dipping his chin in an affirming nod.
Another scoff and a dribble of honey later, Lanam passed the barrier and came over to Edmund’s table. He carefully folded and set aside the magazine; he hadn’t been able to get past the first few pages anyway. He took the tiny cup in his hand and took a sip, and only then did Lanam take a seat.
“Why tea?” Edmund asked, cup nestling against its plate.
“Why law?” Lanam returned, bristling at the question.
Edmund lifted a hand. “I didn’t mean any offense. I was just trying to make conversation.” He found himself a bit more flustered than usual. He was used to clients being emotional, but at work, he could detach himself from the situation. This felt different.
Lanam sighed and smoothed his hair back. “Whatever. I guess I settled on tea because no one could do it the way I liked it, so…” He shrugged and pulled his mask up once more.
“I chose law because I wanted to help those who couldn’t help themselves. Get them out of situations that they didn’t choose to be in.” Edmund’s eyes glossed a little, recalling something distant.
A few beats of silence passed before Lanam nodded. “That’s very noble of you.”
“It’s just a job. But…thank you.” Edmund took another sip. “How did you come up with the name for this place?”
“The Underground? I don’t know. It was a place I was fond of as a kid, so…I decided to carry the name over to here.” He shrugged. “Look, I’m not interested in small talk, really, I’ll be honest with you.”
Edmund finished his tea and fished around in his wallet. With a thunk he set it on the table and gave Lanam a look. “I’m just glad you’re interested in talking at all. Here, I haven’t paid you. This has been the best tea yet.”
Lanam took the bills he offered and slid them into his apron pocket with a curt nod before getting up and carrying his own cup and plate to the back, and then coming back to get the other. He picked up the dish and the cup in one hand. Edmund caught his other hand and held fast. Lanam nearly dropped the dishes in shock. He looked down at their joined hands and gave the lawyer a startled look.
Edmund rose from his seat. “So, you don’t like small talk. That’s fine. Let me cut to the chase.” He paused and was met with a scowl. “Let me take you out to dinner.”
Frankly, that was the last thing he expected, so Lanam was caught off guard. He averted his eyes. His cruel mask had slipped and there was no recovering it, so he sighed. “Fine. One dinner. It’s not like it’s going to change anything.”
Edmund smiled warmly and dropped his hand, heading toward the door before glancing over his shoulder. “Oh, make sure you count those bills before putting them in the register.”
Lanam scoffed as he hurried behind the counter, trying desperately to hide the blush that had crawled up his face. “What kind of idiot doesn’t count bills before putting them away?” he grumbled as the door slammed shut, Edmund’s laugh carrying out into the street. He thumbed through the bills. Aside from being overpaid, he didn’t see anything inherently wrong with them. What was that lawyer on about? Then he noticed that one of the singles had a slight tear in the upper corner, and directly below it, ten digits scrawled in blue pen.
“Unbelievable,” he sighed.
Listomania
by trogers5 on February 10, 2022
Portfolio
Biggest Red Flags
- Asked me out to the PC basketball game
- Is a business major
- Has a pet monkey
- Doesn’t read The Cowl
- Is in their red hair phase (no offense, Sarah)
- Goes to URI
- Is Nate Jacobs (from Euphoria)
- Posts regularly on Yik Yak
- Gets hazelnut or pecan flavored coffee
- Has a favorite song from Certified Lover Boy
- Doesn’t thank the UG2 workers
- Prefers Ray over Alum
- Makes thirst traps on TikTok
- Chooses Old’s over Brad’s
- Doesn’t like Chicken Nugget Thursdays
- Posted about their lost Airpods on the PC mobile app
- Lives in Guzman
- Calls Suites “McCarthy”
- Doesn’t like Dean Sears’s emails
- Willingly has an 8:30 every day
- Has a red “Saturdays are for the boys” flag
- Picked me.
How to Write a Love Poem
by trogers5 on February 10, 2022
Portfolio
AJ Worsley ’22
Light a candle, admit your flaws, set the tone.
Don’t let the process turn your heart to stone.
Find warmth in lost love, but always try to keep it in your sight.
The best love poems are written after the love has gone to light.
Compare your lover to a flower, delicate and beautiful.
Nature’s divinity couldn’t compare to what we have.
Sing a proper country song in a thick Western accent,
Skip around the town, each step its own cloud.
Think in terms of pink and red, anatomically incorrect hearts,
Cupid’s bow never turns arrows to darts.
The most important step to writing a love poem is this:
Know that love exists beyond everything.
Love exists for the memory foam pillow you rest your head on after a long day of tiring work.
Love exists for the trees you pass on your daily commute, each vein designed to satisfy such rich fruit.
Love exists for the people who make life a bit easier,
A lighthouse in the distance, they bring your mind back to its body.
Love heals and often feels like rehabilitation,
Like a dove set free from its cage, love is liberation.
Ugly Puppy Love
by trogers5 on February 10, 2022
Portfolio
Taylor Maguire ’24
They don’t tell you when you’re a kid that love is depressing. When you’re five, you start watching movies that project the happily-ever-after trope, and as you continue on through middle school, your curiosity grows on the concept. Then high school rolls around, and you listen to music that praises the pretty girls with dead hearts or songs about the boy whose car was keyed after he cheats. You listen to your parents spew nasty words at each other, and you break up with your high school boyfriend over text, causing the delicate curtain of romance to slowly dissolve before your sixteenth birthday. But when you get to college, the curtain of romance is ripped off the rod entirely, and you can’t help but feel like the creators at Disney purposely pushed your little heart towards failure.
College is a world full of the newly broken-hearted. Some people attempt to patch up their pain in order to mask the wounds caused by their high school sweethearts, while others wreak havoc on the opposite sex as an ode to the girl who broke their heart months earlier.
The options for lovers are limited. Most put on an entire play-like performance in order to convince you they’re not the douchebag you know they are. They say they like poetry and want to study Russian and comment some bullshit about the color of your eyes to distract you from what they are. But they’re all horrible actors. As each new lover steps into your life, you come to realize the snippets of intimacy you shared a few nights earlier are no more special than the cheap carnival toy you won during a ring toss game.
Watching your friends fall in love is depressing. Watching you lose yourself to love is depressing. Infatuation feels like a parasite crawling into your brain, constantly whispering the names of your lovers on repeat. The parasite compels you to only spew out the same stories about the one you have knighted as the flavor of the month, and suddenly you become a broken record rather than a person. The three-in-the-morning hook-up stories that you swap like foreign currency with your friends over cheesy eggs reveal themselves to be the same story in a different font. The lovers that play the main characters of these fables are the ones who have funny caterpillar eyebrows and giant noses. They stroll around campus wearing the Vineyard Vines shirt their mom bought them last Christmas, or in terrible skinny jeans, and you can’t help but think, “What a jackass,” when you spot them. When you first meet them, infatuation dresses them up in the costume of desire, but as time goes on, their cartoonish qualities become more animated, and your friends say, “Don’t look now, but Stuart Little’s doppelganger has entered the building,” and collectively everyone can’t help but think, “That’s the guy you talked about at breakfast?” as you cringe against their gaze.
The worst part is when you see those same people strolling through the cafeteria in Ray making a sandwich that brutal Sunday afternoon after kissing them in some basement party the night before. Sometimes an awkward glance will be exchanged and you both will act as if they never cried on your bathroom floor. But that’s just the puppy love we’ve come to yearn for.
Heist
by trogers5 on January 27, 2022
Portfolio
Kate Ward ’23
My piece of art had been hanging in that museum for far too long. I was never entirely on board with the fact that the museum would take it and display it, and I wanted it back—it was a masterpiece, after all. I called and emailed and called again, but the museum refused to give back my painting. Even worse? The painting was of my dead dog. How ruthless that the museum wouldn’t return it to me! Did they have no souls? I came to a realization: I would need to steal it.
The idea came to me while I was watching some movie about a heist and they seemed to pull it off pretty well. I understood that someone else wrote the plan and that these people are just actors, but to be honest, I was desperate. In my desperation, I didn’t bother coming up with a bombproof plan; I decided I would walk into the museum, go to the exhibit that held my painting, and take it off the wall. I would, of course, take a bag with me so I could hold the painting, and thankfully it wasn’t much bigger than two sheets of paper.
Normally when artists have their art stolen, whether it’s online or out of a museum, it isn’t the artist himself doing the stealing, so I thought that if this went south, then I guess I’ll make history. I didn’t want to sit with my plan; I needed to carry it out as soon as possible, so I didn’t psych myself out and end up staying home. The day after I created this plan I got up, got dressed in the most boring outfit I could muster, and went about my morning routine. I walked down the steps of my apartment and started the trek to the museum. Thankfully, it wasn’t too far, so I didn’t have too much anxiety building up about it, but I was still nervous.
I got into the museum unscathed. The guards didn’t ask me about my empty bag or why I had it—as far as they knew, I was just another environmentally friendly New Yorker making his way through an art museum. I found it. The watchful eyes of the guards were elsewhere, either on their phones or focused somewhere else entirely. I approached my painting and let the top handle of my bag slide open, I lifted the glass and the canvas off the wall and slipped it into my bag. I tried not to, but I did scurry out of there. I hurried back down to the entrance.
A guard’s heavy hand clapped down on my shoulder. “I’m going to need to check your bag before you leave, sir.”
“You only check bags when people enter the museum—why are you coming after me?” I asked, pulling my bag away from him.
“We have reason to believe you may be stealing. Now, would you please step aside so we can get this figured out?” He swept his arm to the side, pulling me with him so other people could pass. The guard picked up his walkie talkie and spoke into it, calling for the museum director to come assist.
“Why are you stealing?”
“You never got back to me,” I snapped. “I wanted the painting back, so I took it. It’s mine.”
“Sir, I have never seen you before in my life,” the director replied. “That isn’t your artwork.”
New Year’s Eve
by The Cowl Editor on December 9, 2021
Portfolio
Anna Pomeroy ’23
As the year’s clock begins to wind down,
I am reminded of the infinite cycle that begins every new year.
As it strikes midnight, we cheer and clink glasses filled with bubbly and
Ambitious hopes for the next months to follow.
Our warming smiles are not the only thing that lights up the room,
Covered wall to wall in gold balloons and confetti.
The reflection of the TV screen’s countdown sprawls across our “2022” glasses.
And while we once again repeat this special night in which
We set personal expectations for the year––
Some seem reasonable and others are placeholders for our dreams––
Our future selves continue to look back on that moment, mocking
The blissful ignorance.
Personally, as this time of year begins to roll around once again,
I naturally feel it is necessary to push off any personal efforts in growth
Until the next 1st of January.
Piling baggage onto my future self that will once again hope to reclaim these goals.
Editors’ Holiday Wish List
by The Cowl Editor on December 9, 2021
Portfolio
What is your guilty pleasure gift that you would never ask for but wish someone would read your mind and buy for you?
Liam Tormey: Off-White VaporMax Shoes
Sarah McLaughlin: Tickets to see Hamilton at PPAC (for the third time…)
Madison Palmieri: Ridiculously expensive Taylor Swift merch
Julia McCoy: the $95 Harry Styles sweatshirt that sold out in like an hour
Taylor Rogers: Pit tickets to Lorde’s upcoming concert
Colleen Joyce: Perhaps Tessa Young pants to match my Hardin Scott shirt. Or the rest of the After books (the hardcover version, preferably).
Maura Campbell: Federal student loan forgiveness! (Looking at you, Mr. President)
Abby Brockway: A Nate Watson basketball jersey to increase my chances of making it on the Dunk big-screen during “Jersey-Cam.” Oh, and Taylor merch.
Nicole Patano: Puzzles large enough to use around the house as rugs, blankets, and shower curtains, etc…
The True Christmas Spirit
by The Cowl Editor on December 9, 2021
Portfolio
Kate Ward ’23
Dear Diary,
Another day in the workshop—you know, it’s exhausting being an elf. We’re given shoddy tools and forced to work year-round. Do you know how insufferable it is listening to Christmas music all year? The good part is the Big Man sometimes shares letters from the kids with us, so that makes us all feel a little bit better. But my favorite part? The reindeer. We get to feed them sometimes and take them on long walks. But do you know how hard it is for me, an elf, to walk a reindeer? They’re fussy animals. I didn’t even want to work up here in the North Pole! I wanted to work somewhere warm with a wide variety of music and a diet other than Christmas cookies and hot chocolate.
We watch a lot of Christmas movies while we work, and a lot of them are extremely inaccurate to the elf lifestyle. The only one which got it right was Elf with Will Ferrell. We do have intramural sports and we do have quotas we need to reach! Plus, Buddy the Elf did a great job depicting our diet. I mean, I’ve never had spaghetti before, but I’m sure with all the sugar he put on it, it would be delicious. Our uniforms are the same as the ones in the movie but instead, the different colors represent our different ranks. I would do anything to get out of this workshop and out from under the foot of the Big Man, but he keeps us so busy that the only breaks we get are lunch, dinner, and sleep.
It’s not all holly and jolly here in the workshop. Instead, the mood is more like the claymation Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with Hermie who wants to be a dentist. Sure, singing songs and building toys for all the little girls and boys is great, but I have dreams and aspirations! I wanted to be an archeologist, and now I’m making toys! What happened? We definitely skipped a few chapters. Anyway, I’ll leave it there—I need to get some sleep so I can get up and keep making Etch-A-Sketches for kids who will use them once then leave them at their grandparents’ houses.
Yours truly,
Elf-vis
Invocation of the Muse
by The Cowl Editor on December 9, 2021
Portfolio
Sarah McLaughlin ’23
It’s far too late for me to be lying on my back with my guitar in my lap and thinking about Homer.
Olive’s hanging out with some friends. She invited me, but I said no, to no surprise, and she told me to have a good night as she left with her purse and sensible flats. It’s not like she’s going to some wild Saturday rager; she’s going to sip Chardonnay and talk about Jane Austen with a couple of girls from the debate team.
I’m almost always invited. I feel bad that I almost always decline. When I mentioned once that I read Northanger Abbey, it piqued their interest, but I haven’t read anything else, not even Pride and Prejudice, and so I get left out of the conversation when it inevitably shifts to their unanimously elected, favorite author. Still, I enjoy the discussion when I can, though I never drink wine. I never drink anything. The one time I tried alcohol, the first weekend of freshman year, I had a panic attack and my roommate almost called 911. I convinced her I was fine while my mind told me I was asphyxiating and ended up sitting on the sticky floor of a locked bathroom stall with a damp cloth on my forehead, counting the seconds between breaths as drops of cold water trickled down my face.
When we first became friends, Olive used to tell me I was no fun, because truth be told, I am, and that means something coming from a girl whose idea of fun involves discussing the politics of the steel industry. But by now I think she understands and respects the fact that I don’t want to do anything. Well, maybe not respects, but she lets it be.
It’s not that I don’t want to do anything; I go to extracurriculars and to lunches at the mall and to see musicals at the community theatre. I simply draw the line at things I’ve never done before that have a high probability of ending in embarrassment. And that line happens to exclude a whole lot of things when one sip of hard seltzer is enough to shatter me.
You get drunk every now and then. Not frat-party drunk, that’s below you (you’d say), more like bottle-of-wine-in-bed-while-watching-a-Russian-film-with-subtitles sort of drunk. Do you remember how you called me once? Your dorm was a block away and you asked me if I’d bring you my copy of The Tempest because you knew I was reading it for class and you wanted to recite Prospero’s final soliloquy while standing on your bed and you were sad you didn’t know it from memory. I told you to go to sleep and not stand on your bed and that you could find it online if you really wanted. Then you started ranting about how your laptop could never compare to the weight of a physical book in your hands, and as you waxed poetic about weathered pages and cracked spines I laughed and laughed and thought you were going to cry.
The scene replays in my mind as my fingers run over the six strings, strumming a slow major seventh chord, going nowhere and meaning nothing. I think about Homer, how at the beginning of his epics, he opened with the invocation of the muse. I took some poetry classes thinking they would help me with songwriting, but they didn’t give me inspiration to write about anything grand or existential or even subtly poetic, like changing leaves or dust collecting on childhood bookshelves. I still write the same dumb lyrics about wine-drunk phone calls and I realize this is the only muse I can invoke.
I pluck an open B string and let it ring. Olive will come back soon, probably, and she’ll ask me how my night has been. I’ll say it was alright, and I’ll have written nothing.
A Moment by the Sun. / The Arrival of the Moon
by The Cowl Editor on December 9, 2021
Portfolio
Max Gilman ’25
When presented with an idea,
One is intrigued to oppose,
If they have knowledge
In a field so similar
To that of which is being argued,
Because
One yearns an ear,
To lean to with words
That accumulate
And become known as
The seeking of validation.
So,
When presented with a new idea,
Accept it,
At first,
And try
Understanding,
Instead of
Seeking
Such validation.
There she woke up,
Upon a bed of orange sand,
To become the observer of an endless sunset,
Confronted with an infinite horizon.
Around her lay remains,
Which a scholar could barely interpret.
The rumble grounded itself,
With the sand below its structure.
In the moment she sat there,
In the shifting sand,
She felt as if time had given her a break,
For at least the moment,
To witness such a miraculous sunset,
A beauty to withhold from no man.
She felt a breeze come from below her.
The breeze threw small rocks
Toward the sitting girl,
Implanting themselves along her hair.
She left the rocks, though,
A conscious decision,
And began standing up.
She knew not why she was here,
In this desert-like place,
Surrounded by the empty infrastructures,
Obtruding about the moving ground,
Or why the sun was departing from the sky so hesitantly,
But she admired it there.
As the heat had begun to withdraw
From the barren landing,
Another breeze lifted the girl’s hair,
And she thought of its comfort.
Curiosity intrigued the girl,
Yet she remained
By the spot where she had awaken,
To witness a splendid picture,
Emanating art
For art’s sake.
***
Precious sleep…
Perusing…
Shocking cold grasp.
Like the feeling of ice water exposed,
To warm skin.
Uncomfortably frigid sand,
Shifting with her moving arm.
Her mind,
Ablaze with thought,
A frightening light
Above,
A spotlight?
No.
The moon
Has arrived.
Like an entity of vast, colossal size,
The moon tore through the air,
Perching above the world below,
Looking down in a grim attitude,
Shedding little light
Around the barren sand
And protruding buildings.
One could say the moon took on a sinister tone
That night,
As it collected all of itself
Into one cohesive, spherical, godly planet,
Towering above all those residing
On the puny land
The moon so grimly overlooked.
Then night…
Begins to overtake the girl,
As she begins to confront her confusion.
Sand.
Desert,
I am in the desert,
I watched the sun set,
I must have fallen
Asleep.
Then
She reaches to her left arm
To now confront the stagnant grip there.
Who could
It be
Holding my arm
Who
Came here
Now?
The girl kicks the blind spot behind her,
Shifting the sand quickly.
As her body twists
To face the unknown peruser,
Her heart
Beats
Fast,
Beating
Faster,
Beating
Until
No one.
An empty painting
Of a desert at night,
In a museum.
The girl shrieks,
Holding her head tight
Between two hands,
Pushing
The wrinkles on her face
Too close
Together.
Hair
And sand
Don’t mix well,
But the girl has already begun
Pulling her hair out,
Spastically dispersing it around her,
Blankly
Staring at you,
The viewer,
Emotionless.
She keeps pulling,
It keeps coming out.
It comes out like string,
Loose string,
As her eyes stare deep and long
Into your eyes,
The viewers eyes,
Her eyes,
A midnight black,
Your eyes.
She knows you watch her with them,
She knows she is just a character,
Just a character,
For your amusement,
You,
The viewer.
She knows she is here,
In this piece,
Stagnant and without purpose,
But to tell the story,
Laid out before her.
She knows you watch her,
She knows she is just a character
In a poem,
In a desert,
In a painting,
In a museum,
In a cage,
In a cage.
But
She’s happy,
Right?
In a cage.
Did you not read the beginning of this piece?
She seemed happy,
In a cage.
I thought she seemed happy,
In a cage.
Join her,
By leaving your eyes in their rightful sockets,
Or dare to relinquish this poem’s entertainment,
Leaving it
Solely to tear your eyes out.