Zoe Dong
Waitress
Labrys Art and Literature
Labrys was founded in 2001 by Tammis Day, Margot Atwell, and Rose Ellen Epstein. It is currently Smith’s only student-run publication of art and creative writing. Our mission is to share uncensored work produced by our students with the greater community.
Letter from the Editor
“I only believe in being lost. Amen, amen, and amen, and amen.” / “Sólo creo en estar perdida. Amén, amén, y amén, y amén."
I am reveling in the bittersweet beauty of loss: its contradictions, its mutability. Depending on the setting, loss is relief, sorrow, confusion, wonder. Permanent. Transient. I often mistake change for loss (the bad kind); I fear the day on which I wake up and feel the absence of my own experience. I save the stubs to movie tickets, hide the notes you hand-write me, take too many pictures. I sleep like an archive and wake like an archivist, shaking off my own dust every morning and lying on a bed of papers each night.
What we have made together––these pages, your sure sketches, our whispered lines–– is a moment. A year. A life (yours, mine, its own). We are turning stumbles into free-falls. We are giving up and breathing deep. We are gaining and foregoing and gaining control all over again. We are screaming, We were here. We are here. We are. We…
We are reclaiming loss, you and I. And we could not have done it without each other.
Lena Wilson '16
a r t w o r k
Lena Wilson
All The Shit She Stole
Zoe Dong
The Princess and the Dragon
Hanna Pennington
Getaway
Kelly Weng
Quiet
Gráinne Buchanan
November 4, 2015
June Ahn
Stark
Emma Crumbley
The Lobby
Adela Goldsmith
Obsolescence
Gráinne Buchanan
Imperfect Heart
Zoe Dong
Poison Apples and the Wish for a Child
Tara Sacerdote
Untitled
Lena Wilson
Inside My Head
Leah
Cholera
Lena Wilson
Shifting
Adela Goldsmith
Sentiment
w r i t i n g
City Like Poetry
I think I like it / (when the sky reminds me that blue exists).
6506
I wonder what wet velvet feels like against pewter, / if it still feels just as rich / as porcelain.
Southbound
sound made / of the spot between shoulder-blade and spine / embers, breath(e) out, / burning, breath(e) in.
Drought
you breathing another person’s air is a truth I’m accustomed to / like my dad smashing a plate on rosh ha shanah
For Maya
Your shadowed cheekbone gives the impression / of a late-night cathedral / as the moonlight rests on the shallow tile floor.
The Piano Bench
Sometimes, if I played a piece just right, hitting all the chords at the right time with my fingers perfectly arched and my spine straight, she would call her friend and make me play the piece over the phone for him.
Cormorants
I’ve been simmering the summer away / in a black dress / and sunglasses to match. There is / wisdom in my flesh I know not / how to reach.
Elephants Sometimes Forget
Jackets never fit you well, / everything looked big on you.
'Potential' is my one-word tragedy.
'Potential' is my one-word tragedy.
The Starlight All Night Diner
The truth is we’re all just a part of the universe, the Milky Way, and all of those stars real or glass.
What if we could talk?
He told me that people saw further / When their eyes got smaller / And I think about the pouches hanging from his / The way he holds pictures far away to see them / But he never did smile much
季来，风无––Again
Smog under a grey sky that kept bringing our ceilings closer. / Pregnant air that pulsed with sweat at our temples. / Escape in chaos.
My first time.
If virginity, as it is commonly referred to, is a quality of pureness, a synonym for innocence, perhaps we lose it earlier than we think.
Depression Olympics
crowd staring as i try to bend and twist into a white shape / ‘til i can’t see the end of me / standing, precarious, waiting to dive––
Poder
She is a sacred mestiza kingdom / Of broken brown skin and weak joints / Blistered soles and bandaged soul
Belinda
in her shifting hands she caresses the miniature fruits on the branches, one by one / she counts the offspring like chicken eggs on a refrigerated shelf in a supermarket
Exploring Softness in a Sharps Collector
The four types of stomachaches: / citric acid, muscle cramps, / rabies shots, pregnancy.
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