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Marcella Lesmes is a junior at PPCHS and enjoys making art. She has been doing art for about 7 years. Although she usually uses acrylic paints, in this piece she went with watercolors and pens.

*A sonnet is a fourteen line poem written in iambic pentameter and following a particular rhyme scheme typically dictated by either Italian or English form rules. This sonnet qualifies as an English sonnet. I amputated my arm yesterday Blood relentlessly spilled out of the wound I watched it pour and I began to pray MaybeContinue reading “Adiela”

In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood’s use of the fairytale motif as a framework for the novel critiques our innate desire for archetypes, exposes the innocuous nature of oppression, and highlights the flaws of cruel optimism. Atwood subverts the innocence of predictable, archetypal tropes in fairy tales to call into question the concept of a hero.Continue reading “The Collective Unconscious, The Death Drive, and Cruel Optimism: Pessimism as a Framework for 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑯𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒎𝒂𝒊𝒅’𝒔 𝑻𝒂𝒍𝒆”

The world teaches us that we must fit into a box. What do you do when you can’t fit into all the many boxes? What do you do when every action you take goes against what society deems as normal? What do you do when your very skin goes against what the world sees asContinue reading “The Box”

 Carolina Calonge has been in NEHS for two years now and enjoys reading historical fiction. She usually uses physical mediums such as ink to create her art, but created this piece digitally as cover art for the atala’s inaugural issue.

The first morning I awoke under your roof, it was March, and I ventured into your garden for a stroll over installed stepping stone paths, towards cold, stony-faced statues to tend to flower beds in full splendor reclining like nudes in the sun while you, rigid, clothed, sat between busts of dead men over aContinue reading “Pushing Up Lilies”

talk to me in the tone that only i use tell me i’m like the penny in your change and that i’m worthless unless i change talk to me in that tone do it just like how i say i’m nothing more than the lumpy stone that keeps cracking in the driveway say it theContinue reading “say it like i do”

Leaf-like thoughts  flutter and fall as I forget  But to the soil they go  Enriching the ground  From which new trees, and leaves, will grow. Alan Mathew is a high school senior at PPCHS and an aspiring writer. Plagued with cluelessness and clarity in unequal measure, Alan continues his effort to find the shapes of important ideas throughContinue reading “Leaf-Like Thoughts”

Let my body run And my mind escape Travel to space Let it dance and shower in the sun’s harsh rays Let it be I’m pulled down to sit in a desk By a big tree With crowded branches that are so close to me No it won’t set me free  Helen Godoy is aContinue reading “Itching”