Just 1 word
Sam Ward
Class of ‘26
“A picture paints a thousand words”
But what if I don’t want to tell a thousand words,
What if I just want to say
A few, a couple, a handful
What if scarcity translates to value,
What if I just want to say one,
One really valuable word,
What would that word be?
HAMBURBER
Maybe I’d be better off with pictures.
If I were to be a musician
Sam Ward - yes
Class of ‘26
I’d make my songs sing out
With visions of perfection in my “sea glass eyes”
I’d want the lyrics to leap out of listeners ears
I’d hope the legacy of my words to be written out in books
Such as Shakespeare or Dickenson
Every word I speak remembered, recorded for all the generations
Studied in depth by students who would grow abore to me
I’d want my words to grow into sayings
The words I create to some day in dictionaries
In the lingo of the nations
I’d want my melodies to be hummed and whistled by beautiful women
And sung by children playing and dancing around
Long after the words had been separated from the tunes
I’d want my music to live after the death of the music theory of today
Like Beethoven to his time
That its notation would be alien to the eyes of those in the future seeking to play it.
I hope that somewhere, underground
In a bar full of musicians which they themselves are legends
Would get together on all instruments, playing through joys and sorrows
One man would speak up and say to the others
“Let’s do some Sam Ward”
And the room would erupt in encore,
As they all call out songs from all different points in my career
They would each take turns
Each giving reason for why they should play the song they had chosen
How the song they choose touched them deeply
After they all do their go arounds they all come to a conclusion
That they should do all of my songs
Replay the life I lived through my works
Through days, night, weeks
Weeping and shouting with joy
Never ceasing never breathing, not even winking
Each song with more energy than the last
Until they reach my final and greatest song
And with amazing and climactic ending
They decide to run it all back again
Untitled 1
Jacob Sparks
Class of ‘29
I walk the path where lilacs used to bloom,
Their scent still clings, but thinner, half-remembered.
The porchlight flickers — ghost of gentle gloom,
And memory wakes, its edges blurred, dismembered.
I remember windows calling my name,
I remember the hands that built this fragile frame,
I remember laughter echoing through glass,
Now time degrades; the present cannot pass.
The wallpaper peels — flesh on a dying face,
The floors breathe dust; the walls forget their words.
This house, a photograph in slow erase,
Every moment fading backward into blur.
Then sudden silence — gone now. Nothing stirs.
The air itself remembers how to ache.
A stair groans low — the voice of what once was,
My shadow bends where time starts to break.
Yet through the fractured panes, new light unfolds,
Its warmth reshapes the dust to drifting gold.
The lilacs bloom again beyond the gate,
Not mine, yet mine; the scent remakes the air.
The house exhales. Its ruin hums of fate,
And I, remade, am folded gently there.
What once was still becomes; the broken stays —
But sings in other forms, in other days.
“Every heart vibrates to that iron string”
Luke Sharma
Class of ‘27
You’ve all read “Self-Reliance” by Emerson. Maybe you thought some of the ideas were profound, maybe you thought the entire essay was a fever dream. But the main thing you most likely took away from it is that it embraces radical individualism. His main claim is that self-reliance leads to true freedom; that it’s how you unlock your inner potential. But I want to refute that idea. True freedom isn’t merely trusting yourself for everything; it’s understanding how and when you are wrong through intellectual discourse.
Emerson claimed in “Self Reliance” to “trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string”. I know most of you have taken Physics, but you probably don’t remember much from it, or you don’t want to. But I’m gonna talk about it anyway. Every object has a natural frequency, wherein if a sound wave matches the object’s natural frequency, the object will vibrate, creating a sound; this sound is called resonance. If the sound wave has a high enough amplitude, the glass will vibrate violently, causing it to shatter. Using Emerson’s image, imagine your heart vibrating to an iron string. The iron string is your self-trust. The more you trust yourself and push away other people’s ideas, the more amplitude the string has. Eventually, with too much emphasis on trust of the self, the heart shatters. You may not even realize that your heart has shattered, but everyone else will. You’ll be saying things with conviction even when they hold no truth to them. You’ll attack people if their ideas deviate even a little from yours. Sometimes, it's enough to tell a shattered heart from just a few words.
Imagine a student named Leo. He is top of the class, he has a sharp tongue, and he is always the first to answer. He’s the kind of person that is praised for being independent and self-reliant. Because of his characteristics, he starts to believe that listening to others is optional. When his mock debate group tries to warn him that his argument for a debate is factually wrong, Leo waves them off. The topic is about Christian churches, and he firmly believes that the Orthodox Church is the best church out there. He’s convinced his reasoning feels right. He trusts himself so hard he doesn’t even look up the facts. Debate day comes, and he delivers his speech with speech akin to Emerson, chin up, voice steady, and his heart vibrating to that iron string. And then the opposing team calmly dismantles every point he made using sources he refused to check. When Leo said that Jesus formed the Orthodox Church, and the opposing team dismantled this claim, you could practically hear Leo’s heart shatter into a million pieces, just like the glass. Leo’s not destroyed, but something inside him fractures: the realization that raw confidence isn’t competence. Has anything like this happened to you? Where you’re so sure you’re right, but you’re just spitting the complete opposite of facts. Trusting yourself blindly doesn’t make you strong; it makes you fragile in ways you can’t see until someone lightly taps the glass.
So, if self-trust isn’t the key to true freedom, what is? Is it a balance between self-trust and open-mindedness? Jonathan Rogers from Seeing What You See claims “If you will allow yourself to see what you see, and then write what you have seen, you can be sure that originality will take care of itself”. Although Rogers is referring to writing, this can absolutely be applied to general knowledge and discourse. The key to true freedom is a certain open-mindedness. There is a cognitive bias called the illusion of explanatory depth, where people believe they understand complex systems (like in politics or science). For example, have you ever been studying for something with someone, and the person you’re studying with thinks they know the topic, so you ask them to explain it? And then you just hear “Well, uhhhh… atomic radius does stuff…”. This is precisely where talking to people comes into play. Someone experiencing the illusion of explanatory depth may have their heart vibrating to that iron string, and when they try to explain a topic, their heart will shatter. To avoid this cognitive bias, it’s incredibly important that you see things for what they are, as Rogers put it. Participating in any debate where you could be wrong, such as talking to your friends about some scientific topic, will almost always reveal holes in your logic, simply because you realize something that you haven’t considered before. Debate is the key combatant of the self-reliance that Emerson was referring to because it attacks the very essence of the illusion of explanatory depth: it makes you realize how much you don’t know about a topic. An open mind is the beginning of mastery; and mastery gives you the freedom to express your talents.
“So what, who cares about open-mindedness? When will this actually apply to my life?”, you may think to yourself. But I say that this is the most important time to throw away your self-righteousness. Look at what is happening in Chattanooga. Around 150 people protested against ICE in July, in this very city. But I doubt you heard about that, because almost no one talked about it. People didn’t talk about this protest because we don’t want to reveal that people in our community have wildly differing views. We need to practice open-mindedness and debate, because polarization isn’t just happening in the big cities like New York and Los Angeles, it’s happening here, in our little Chattanooga. Because if all our hearts vibrate to a different string, no hearts interact with each other.
MR. SNELLER
Keira Shreeves
Class of ‘29
Mr. Sneller is animated and amusing
He exhales rays of sunshine
The jaunty elder can release a giggle out of a grin
Sprinkling the salt on a bland steak
Seasoning every day with a new aroma
Mr. Sneller serves a daily smile
Stimulating the sluggish weeks
He motivates the monotonous Monday mornings
He will spark up Fridays of fatigue
Mr. Sneller waters the seedling of my brain,
Allowing me to absorb new knowledge
His bright amber cubicle
Expressing it is an elated, vivid day!
He calculates, sums up, and adds
To our arithmetic academics as a routine
Residing next to my crammed, cluttered locker on Room 317,
Mr. Sneller is just as prosperous as a pot of gold!
The Forget-Me-Nots of Freedom
Evie Reed
Class of ‘27
Bring in the Dawn
And with it bring the freedom of tomorrow
Change is always possible
If you have the audacity to obtain it
Fight against your grief
Fight against your exhaustion
Fight against your fate
The Dawn is coming
And with it the forget me nots grow
They will bloom again soon
And cover the earth with the colors of sky
Reach for the stars
Reach for the Freedom
Reach for the tomorrow
The Dawn is arriving
And quetzals colors will fill the sky
You will not stay in The Cave
Your fate will not be sealed in stone
Fizzle
Evie Reed
Class of ‘27
I hear the fizzle of electricity through my veins
Through the walls and the air
I watch as it warms all it touches
Heat evaporating off all things as if it were vapor
Warm the soul despite the buzz
Remember the invisible
Be in awe of the unseen
stomach bug, a bug in the tum
Evie Reed
Class of ‘27
What’s with this nauseating feeling?
Like there’s something crawling around inside
Yeowch there goes my last meal
It’s really gross at first
Then it just starts getting annoying.
I want to eat without feeling that bug
He likes crawling around
Can’t he just dissolve in the acid?
Leave me be and keep me from this suffering?
I don’t even like bugs enough for this
He didn’t have any warrant to enter
I didn’t give him any permission either
He forced his way in through the air
Stopped before he made it to my lungs
And instead went right on down to my stomach
What a pain
Glad he’s gone now
I don’t ever want to deal with him ever again.
Amazon truck
Lillian McArdle
Class of ‘26
“Warning: contents may cause happiness,” reads the bold text on the back of an Amazon semi truck on the freeway. Boxes upon boxes stacked on top of each other, consisting of cardboard and plastic, so-called bundles of joy.
Contents may cause happiness, but the contents have price tags. They lack meaning, lack permanence, lack love. They won’t stay with you.
Contents may only cause a short lived serotonin boost, associated with the click of a mouse, an arrow hovering over the buttons Add to Cart. Order Now. Get Free Shipping. Special Deal. Two-Day delivery.
The ring of your doorbell, the quick sound of tape being sliced apart by scissors desperate for a release from reality and truth.
We click the button in an attempt to convince ourselves this will be the last thing. The last thing you order. The last thing you need to be successful, to lose those pounds, to make your room look cool enough, to make your life just a little bit easier. But it’s never going to be the last thing, is it?
It’s such a promising offer, happiness. Until it fades, leaving you running after that semi truck, your fingers searching for the Order Now button. Until it leaves you to never recognize the things you already have, to keep chasing and chasing the fleeting fraud that will outrun you every time, because happiness will never be found in a box with a price tag.
Cold Cotton Drags Me Down
Margo Windemuller
Class of ‘27
Cold cotton drags me down
Underneath the 5:00 am sludge
Right before the dawn broke
And I’m seeing a kind of light
That can’t be found in the day
There’s a tiger in the attic who’s scared of dusk.
His cage is lined with black nylon
from the flashlights he breaks nightly,
Because the batteries are for people
And not the tiger who fights the shadows.
I can hear the rat in the basement
yelling at the windowsill; the glass is too high.
I know there’s something out there,
But he can’t be sure; the glass is too high.
so he digs a tunnel into the carpet.
There’s four nickels in my pockets
Twenty cents: not enough for a gumball,
Not enough to buy more batteries
The tiger bites the back of my calves
And the rat pulls me into the hole
Don’t you know? The tiger and the rat are yelling.
Inflation is all the rage,
The housing market sucks,
And I’m afraid of the dark;
But the light burns more than my fear,
And the cold cotton is dragging me down.
My Muse Seized Me
Noel Warren
Class of ‘27
When a poet is born, nobody knows and nobody cares.
When a poet cries, you collect those tears and frame them on your walls.
When a poet falls, you take those scraped hands and force it to a pedestal.
When a poet fears, your world seems a little more beautiful.
When a poet dies, you take its voice and bind it to eternal pages.
Winter
Michaela Allen
Class of ‘29
Crunch. Boots grind compacted snow,
Flurries fall from snowy branches,
And like rain trapped in time, the snow falls, all haste forgotten
Snap.
Silence and the sound of frozen, icy leaves discarded by fall
Are winter’s only companions
Looking up, cold, dark skies reign infinitely
My fingertips brush up against the moon’s halo
And the air freezes my expelled breaths
Obscuring the world in crystalline vapor
The wind cries in its undone way
Indicative of the harsh lies of cardboard houses
And bare footprints in the snow, trailing towards nothing
A decrepit door shudders in the hail
The final breath of a year to be reborn again and again for all eternity
Nevertheless, winter knows, each time, that it will die
And refuses, in all its callous beauty, to do so undignified.
The Cycle of Existence
Pierce Alpers
Class of ‘28
A crimson liquid,
Pouring from the vents above.
Just another tuesday I thought;
Walking out the door.
I was used to that.
Just another person
leaving this city;
The city of death.
Outside it was raining.
Raining like it always was.
Raining that same crimson liquid
In the city of release.
A man passes by, he screams at me.
A welcome was all it was,
Because screaming was all he could do,
As he was not alive.
Ideas swim throughout the air
Possibilities of life, possibilities of death
In this red, raining city.
In The city of possibility
There were no old people here,
They left us, as everyone does.
Everyone leaves, because that is the point of this place.
This city of ideas.
This place was not a bad place,
Everyone loved it.
Each day was a day of hope
Hope that you were chosen
The chosen leave us, everyone is chosen eventually.
We never know when someone is chosen,
We just never see them again,
But we know they are happy.
In this city of death
This city of release
City of possibility
City of ideas
I wave toward my neighbor,
She had just arrived,
We don’t know where she was before
She does not remember.
A watcher passes by on my left.
Everyone stares, some run up to beg,
Hoping to be chosen.
It never works.
I walk down the stairs to place I work,
In this world the ground is up
And the sky is down
The antithesis of Life,
As a child, we would learn about purgatory.
How it was the holding place before heaven
They told us this place was similar
The holding place before life.
This place was not a place of death
It was a place where the dead live and
The ones who live, die.
A purgatory
I sit at my desk, ready for another day.
A thought crossed my mind;
If the building is upside down, how does it not fall?
Something everyone thinks.
But this time was different,
The building fell.
Plummeting to the sky,
Or as some call it, the void.
The world was weird here,
We walked on roofs,
We longed for death,
We were happy.
And as we fell to the void below,
I realized I was chosen.
Everyone here was chosen,
And we were happy.
As I looked out my window to the ground below, or above,
I noticed something,
No one noticed this building was falling.
It was as if nothing was happening.
We continued to fall;
More and more making the realization that
We were all being “chosen”.
Chosen for death.
And with a deep breath,
I accepted my fate,
I closed my eyes
And waited for the end.
People were screaming,
People were crying,
People were rejoicing,
People were silent.
Then everything is silent.
I opened my eyes
And everything was dark.
I felt like my eyes were still closed.
I thought…
What was I thinking?
What just happened?
Who am I?
I panicked.
Why don’t I remember anything?
All my thoughts were gone,
Or were they ever there in the first place?
Why was I panicking?
There was no reason why.
I accept that fact,
And my vision, the vision of my mind, goes black.
Next Time
Nathan Eriksen
Class of ‘29
I was always told there will never be a “next time”
A time like it used to be before
A time where we would laugh together
A time where we would share each other’s sorrow
A time where we just sat down over a steaming hot chocolate
And talked for hours and hours
About nothing important
But I imagine a time like it used to be before
I imagine that next time we meet
Whether that be real or just in the dark abyss of my own mind
Art Hands
Ellery Hamill
Class of ‘28
My hands were clean for a long time
Far too long
Just clean skin, untainted by life
My watercolor palette tucked in the cabinet with a blanket of dust
Oil pastels still wrapped in crisp packaging
Today, I broke my streak
I let paint grace my palms, staining them vibrant hues of scarlet and emerald
I blended pastels with my fingertips, letting their oils slip into the crevices of the prints
I let ink stain the side, drawing looping stories with my left hand
Creating a shadow dragging across the paper
My nailbeds became caked with colored powder, smelling faintly of the past and future all at once
I missed it for so long
Clean hands are expected, but dirty ones are home
I washed the excess off in the sink, but the kisses held on
I missed my art hands
And wonder why I ever put my supplies away in the first place
Red Eye
Ellery Hamill
Class of ‘28
Taking off, the sky black
The world still
Feel the rumble of wheels on cement
The tense air waving goodbye
The heavy pressure and release
And ambient silence follows
Find refuge in the hum of the white noise
A quiet head for a moment
Not a spiral
But a straight shot to the atmosphere
Leaving my troubles on the ground
Entering another world between
Suspension of what was
And what will be
An absence of what is
But even the silence isn’t void
It is filled with a distant storm
Lightning out the window past the wing lights
It rages on
A tempest of thoughts foreign and familiar
The Fall of Leaves
Giulietta Murphy
Class of ‘28
The leaves are changing,
Dual toned and crisp.
Delicate as they fall, reaching their final resting place in grace.
Green of a young life, too brazen to be hurt by the chill.
The sparse and gracious moments
Of warmth and fresh air
To be wrapped up in
To hold on to
While the seasons persist.
Leaves turning to orange, fading to red, falling with intent and acceptance.
The last fire of passion and beauty
Ignite the heart to continue on
When the body is ready for rest
Empty browns, limp and helpless.
Any once held brilliance
Has been lost to the cold and biting.
No longer able to hold a smile, left only is the husk
Of crinkled, crunching gloom.
The leaves are changing,
Dual toned and crisp.
Delicate as they die, broken beneath the weight of what the long winter brings.
Doorways
Giulietta Murphy
Class of ‘28
The doorway remains unlatched
Set ajar on its hinge
Open just enough
For a quick check-up
But closed in a way
To usher the outsiders on
I have done my part
In leaving the door open
I have sent my invitations
Written with the utmost intention
Of being left entirely
Alone
Behind the door
Is my home, personal and eclectic
Everything has its place
Not a rogue mess in sight
The perfect scene for the momentary hello
And in my home
Are the closets, the drawers
The ones that remain forever closed
The shelves are in shambles
The cupboards in disarray
But it is all covered
Locked away from any prying eyes
That may seek to intervene
Eventually I run out of room
In these closets
Eventually, their contents spill forth
Destroying my perfectly curated home
Displaying the chaos and destruction
Wreaking havoc in my space
That is,
Until I can build a new wardrobe
And close it once again
Untitled 2
Joel Plating
Class of ‘26
Untitled 3
Timothy Buckles
Class of ‘26
Untitled 4
Ean Landfare
Class of ‘26
Untitled 5
Ean Landfare
Class of ‘26
Untitled 8
Jacob Guinn
Class of ‘26
Untitled 10
Jacob Guinn
Class of ‘26
Untitled 11
Jacob Guinn
Class of ‘26
Untitled 12
Kate Tinholt
Class of ‘27
Untitled 13
Layla Bowman
Class of ‘26
Untitled 14
Layla Bowman
Class of ‘26
Untitled 15
Layla Bowman
Class of ‘26
Untitled 16
Layla Bowman
Class of ‘26
Leviathan
Tessa Knutson
Class of ‘27
Visions
Tessa Knutson
Class of ‘27
Spirit of Adventure
Barnes Shields; Noah Mizutani - yes
Class of ‘28
