Piece – Moose in Traffic by Perri Schellenburg

We chose Moose in Traffic because it is broad enough for interpretation. This piece is unique and tells a story. We also thought that the color schemes, distinctive lighting, and shadow-play was interesting, and allowed the message to pop from the flat surface. Also, the piece displays a balance of abstract and realistic concepts which we felt made it extremely unique.

We chose the art for our Winter 2013 Edition and it will be available to you online November 15, so save the date!

–Sarah Buckman, Junior Art Editor

Sophomore year, I decided what my final words would be.

Famous and noble men are remembered fondly for their last words. Thomas Jefferson, Marie Antoinette, and countless others have created a legacy through their final sentences.

There’s so much pressure to put the right words together, to leave the world with a message that in essence captures a whole person. With all of this in mind, I put some serious thought into what I would say. I added articles and cut out nouns. I frowned at the definitive period at the end of the sentence and stuck my tongue out at my sorry pronoun usage.

All of that culminated into what will be my final message to the world:

“It was the chicken.”

Short, sweet, and to the point of my greasy, characteristically unhealthy diet that will most likely be the cause of my early grave.

Don’t judge.

The words “It was the chicken,” came from the voice of an elderly woman from a fiction story I wrote. The words were the final statement of her will and this was her way of confessing to killing her husband years earlier.

Out of every story I wrote last year, this was the only line that even my friends walked around saying after they read it. Somehow the simple, four word, foodie-induced phrase created a memorable effect.

Now that I’m on Élan staff as the Junior Creative Nonfiction Editor, the truth to that statement has never seemed clearer to me. The pieces we read don’t have to have a car chase and a gruesome death. There’s nothing better than writing with subtlety that engrosses you more than the graphic detail given to how someone butters their toast.

Strong writing has needs nothing but the words and the essence of the writer themselves.

It’s always the not-so-famous last words that make the greatest impact anyways.

–Shamiya Anderson, Creative Non-Fiction Editor

Here is a throwback piece from Elan’s 1999 Spring Issue, by its then Editor-in-Chief Billy Merrell. Since graduating from Douglas Anderson, Merrell published his first book Talking in the Dark, a poetry memoir, with Scholastic in 2003. He also co-edited The Full Spectrum: A New Generation of Writing About Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, and Other Identities for Knopf Books for Young Readers with David Levithan. It was released in 2006 and won the 2007 Lammy in the Children’s/Young Adult category. Merrell has been a frequent guest writer at the bi-annual Douglas Anderson Writers’ Festival.

Quickening

Billy Merrell

I felt it push inside

the poetry

I read it, but didn’t

dream it, and now

there… Oh! a push

from the inside, and words are in me

pregnant of language

kicking with the verse

and verbiage, but Oh!

And I love that feeling

being a father a mother

giving life.

They told me

“It will come in time,”

But when I dreamt it

it was ugly

the rain came angry

and the process married

only hours of cold sweat

and in the end, a still born…

but don’t worry,

that was only a dream

I am here still

with a child inside me

waiting to be born,

I have found clothes, fitting

prepared the nursery and now,

am only waiting

for the inspiration, the night

and the child, unborn and breathing my

breaths.