Cover image: "Ablaze" by Sarah E N Kohrs
Gallery 3
Visual Art, Poetry, and Prose
Rita Redd
Civil Disobedience
There is a novella I read a summer ago, Destroy, She Said, and I did.
A woman reads a book, or merely pretends to:
“When you’re on your own… you do it to… to keep up appearances…”
Her husband sent her away, an extended visit to the Heartbreak Hotel.
A place I am familiar with / Would rather I wasn’t
Appearances are noodles: bendy, slippery, edible.
I stole mine and haven’t given it back since.
I suppose it was never mine to have, rather it’s theirs to keep.
Later on there is
the Uno card married to the Queen of Hearts.
They go on vacations together to the Isle of Lost Things–
They came from aisle five.
To the left
lists of fruit and fallacy dipped in contact solution,
sweatpant strings taken out of context,
a word search only half sought.
A move toward patience:
“I love and desire you,” she says.
Maybe so,
but madness comes before civility.
Rita Redd is an emerging writer from Las Vegas, Nevada, currently transplanted in evergreen Ashland, Oregon. She studies creative writing there at Southern Oregon University. She enjoys swings in park playgrounds and crocheting sweaters. You can see more of her work on Sad Girls Club.
McLeod Logue
Power
After Corinne Hales
The shower boards fit together like patchwork,
the splinters all zipped up. I remember
watching my grandfather build it, laying each piece
like a newborn, nailing them into the earth.
Tiny tree frogs perched on the pipework above,
staring down at me. I imagined them scoring
my body as I aged, wishing I had more figure,
watching the soap race down my back.
They were a chorus, echoing my judgements.
From them, I learned redness
learned to fear their eyes on me.
Even nature had a temper.
When I was brave, I’d cup the frogs
and peek in through the cave
I made with one palm. It was easy to reverse
the gaze. I could see their heart beats bulge
through their skin. I could see them flush white.
I couldn’t stop watching.
We were never truly equals.
McLeod Logue is a creative writing MFA candidate and poet at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, her work is influenced by her family’s fine art, southern roots, and attachment to location. McLeod’s work has appeared in The Nashville Review, The Shore Poetry, and elsewhere.
Shkurte Ramushi
Shkurte Ramushi was born in Kosovo, and she now lives, works, and creates in Prishtina, Kosovo. Her artwork presents a breathtaking expressionistic nature, especially in her “mushroom kingdom” series. She completed her Bachelors (2014) and Masters (2016) studies at University of Prishtina, “Hasan Prishtina,” a branch of figurative art and painting direction. She currently works at Kadri Zeka Public University. Her favorite technique is oil and her inspiration is nature, society, and the human soul itself.
Peter Mitchell
Onion Patch
In memory of my father, Vince
and grandfather, Charlie
With the soil now tilled at my feet, I stand, fork-in-hand &
pause. I turn my eyes to the blue dome, a million reflections
deep. Memories image a chain of connection.
Vince’s “Sweet Pickles” – 2 lbs Any Vegetable 2 lbs Onions –
fell out of Cookery Book of Good and Tried Receipts.
Your backhand script bequeathed my childhood: the
chook house in backyard Thornton; the vegetable
garden edged with onions. Nearby, the compost
heap, your work of renewal. A shadowy presence
opens your boyhood in Kandos: town of coal &
cement dust. The backyard was inclined away from
the door. Again onion leaves leaned in the air.
Your father nurtured these bulbs for survival: soups
and stews through the Great Depression. I turn the
earth again. The steel tines powder the clumps.
Onions become memory stills: you and your
father’s hands hold these vegetables. Now your
digging in the onion patch is closer than I think.
Peter Mitchell lives in Bundjalung Country, crafting poetry, short fiction, memoir, essay and literary criticism. He was shortlisted for the 2021 AIDS Memorial Green Park (Sydney, NSW) Competition (with his collaborator, Architect Matteo Salval) and the Robyn Mathison Poetry Prize. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the following journals: Verity La, The Blue Nib (Ireland), Bent Street, Mini Pack (United States), and Blue Bottle Journal, among others, as well as anthologies Writing Water: Rain River Reef (Red Room Poetry, 2020) and Searching for the Sublime: Poems from Australia & India (Cyberwit, 2013). At present, he is working on a full collection of poetry and another chapbook of poems. Find him @electricmoonpete.
Amanda Roth
On the Eve of My Birthday
I spent the morning
mirror-marveling,
wondering if I am beautiful,
even after all that has been
unlearned.
I have spent
the year hanging
out of my own windows,
calling myself
home.
I suppose this will mark
my arrival at noonday –
harsh shadows
and a heaving
desert wind.
I had hoped
to be
sure-footed
by now.
Amanda Roth is poet, photographer, and former clinical social worker. She is the author of the full-length poetry collection A Mother’s Hunger (2021) and has been published in Rag Mag Revival. After nearly two decades in the Pacific Northwest, she now lives in Central Texas with her husband and two sons. Find her on Instagram @amandarothpoetry.
Susan Kay Anderson
Remote Mineral
I drank water just a sip
from the dark lagoon that was
all it took to throw the data
topsy turvy into a realm
of forgotten deadlines missing links.
What had I expected? More dust to grind
chomping on shreds plant material
it was old hat I was newly hatched
a minute past noon Daylight Savings Time.
Those twins their transfusions
my dream of them free
walking around in animal form.
Susan Kay Anderson won a Jovanovich Award and was short-listed for the National Poetry Series, Blue Lynx Prize, the Panther Creek Nonfiction Award through Hidden River Arts, and a Blue Stem Award. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Oregon University and an MA in English Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Colorado Boulder. She is the author of a book of poems, Mezzanine (2019), and Virginia Brautigan Aste’s biography, Please Plant This Book Coast to Coast (2021).
Sarah E N Kohrs
Sarah E N Kohrs creates art with a unique perspective on how surroundings kindle hope in even a disparaged heart. Find her photography most recently in CALYX, Glassworks, Gulf Stream, iō, Manhattanville Review, and Raven Chronicles. Surrounded by Shenandoah Valley mountains, Sarah is also a poet, a potter, a homeschooling mother, director for Corhaven Graveyard (a preserved burial ground for African Americans enslaved on an antebellum plantation), and more. Find her online at www.senkohrs.com.
Monica Anderson
Red
Close your eyes and you see the planet Venus up close, hot and burning. Or you see a banana and I see lovers in a Valentine’s Day-themed room. It’s a lot of intimacy, and the color red always scares me more than sex. It is blood, and murderers, and horror movies that I refuse to watch, and people who are so passionate that you don’t know if it’s love or hate. And being impulsive in a way that self-destructs. Taking life by storm, unlike me. Speaking up in meetings and speaking up to friends and fighting. Take too much and it is unrealistic expectations for love, when really what red is is menstruation, and something that I don’t want to spread. Wearing red makes me feel like I’m just waiting for you to shoot me. Like I’m giving off the impression of the kind of woman I’m not. Because I’m soft and sensitive and calm. I move quickly sometimes but mostly I meander. It’s not that I take my time, it’s that the time isn’t mine.
I’m not a fire. You’re a burst. I’m a prolonged and sustained wave, a rocking. I’m lost in my dreams but most at peace in the ocean, or on top of a mountain, or deep in the trails. I am not at peace by fire. Not even close. You like the warmth but I like more the coldness of winter, of ice and snow and sometimes rain, but please in moderation. Too much rain depresses me. Though I love the deep blue of the ocean, the grey blue of the rain means another evening engulfed in despair. The blue of the bright open sky in winter heals but the blue of a cloudless spring torments. Then again, I love my own blue eyes but not yours. As if there’s not enough to go around. I’m comforted by deep, dark brown eyes but they would never make sense on me. I’m blue through and through. Anyway, what I want you, me, the audience to know is that today I am safe, but I do not feel okay.
Monica Anderson is a writer, teacher, runner, and caregiver. After a lot of traveling and wandering, she has settled for the moment in Corvallis, Oregon, with her partner and their cat.
Anna Hillary
soft silk bag
Cocoon I left you, but it feels
Like you left me
Nest I’m building, not what
I thought I’d be
Growing now
Got to get going
Now, surprise then
Surrender/So when do we learn how to fight?
For ourselves, those rights/
One another, love,
Sagacity, sanity,
For a way
To mis-behave
Because even the sun starts to feel un-just
As the begonias wilt and the poppies stand up
Lily, lavender, lilac
Purple starts to wonder/like silk
On silk, from outside the cocoon,
Dandelions, when did we stop wanting you?
Anna Hillary is an educator, writer, and editor. She loves plants and animals, enjoys humid summers and snowy winters, and calls both Buenos Aires, Argentina and La Crosse, Wisconsin home. Anna is based between the two cities, where she is currently writing her doctoral dissertation on high school student activism.
Su Knoll Horty
Su Knoll Horty completed the CE Core Curriculum Program at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) in 2012. Su continues to study with Abstract teachers Kassem Amoudi at PAFA and Peter Bonner at The Art Students League of New York. Su has been published in The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Woven Tale Press; she was also interviewed on Art Watch radio. She recently received an Honorable Mention in the Visionary Art Collective’s online exhibition, Finding Sanctuary, 2021, and a 3rd Place award in The ArtList’s September Artist of the Month contest, 2019. She also received an Award of Merit from Manhattan Arts International in the online exhibition of The Healing Power of Art, 2019.
Website: www.suknollhorty.com / Instagram: @su_knoll_horty
Marc Frazier
Ground Swell
Being young was enough.
After the third beer I knew who I was.
That layer of insulation between me
and the world echoed it doesn’t matter.
Happy hour was the beginning of my life.
I didn’t choose this birth either, but
I knew enough alcohol would take me
places that would never leave me,
become part of my DNA I transferred
to other places that were the same place.
I needed to be around men who exposed
themselves to me, my eyes adjusting to
the dark theater, my body alert as I scanned
rows of seats where men played with themselves.
This is what it would be like from now on.
I’d carry my need around in a forever-altered
state fueled by alcohol and sex with strangers.
This would be home.
I was a traveler from now on.
A new me who prowled the nights like a junkie—
no, I was a junkie, determined like one
to make the high last, to put myself in danger.
I was a track of music that repeated until I was that taut,
planned tune, my body an instrument played by men
I would never see again, men who knew
the score, heard the same music, our one-note lives
trawling the floor of dives naked and not needed.
Marc Frazier has published three full-length poetry collections and two chapbooks. He has been publishing poetry in journals including The Spoon River Poetry Review, ACM, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Slant, Permafrost, Plainsongs, Ascent, and Poet Lore for decades. Memoir excerpts from his book manuscript WITHOUT have been published in Gravel, The Good Men Project, Autre, Cobalt Magazine, and Evening Street Review, among others. Fiction of his has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Spillwords, and other publications. His poem “What Lies Hidden” was included in New Poetry from the Midwest (New American Press). The recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Award for poetry, he has been featured on Verse Daily and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net. Marc, a Chicago-area, LGBTQ writer, is active on Facebook and Twitter @marcfrazier45.
Robert E. Ray
Off the Shovel
Under the kitchen window, between the white lap-siding and the garage’s vertical white pine, the gray shadow like the cool mouth of a tunnel, I dug on my bare knees, formed fort walls with mud and small rocks, slivers of rotten wood, sometimes a chunk of coal. Father said it was what they’d burned in the old furnace, off the shovel of the delivery man. It turned my fingers and palms black. I’d scratch my face and leave traces on my chin and cheeks. When we were done playing war, usually after dark-fall, Father helped us clean up, take the washed-off green plastic soldiers and metal trucks inside. He used his boot to drag the dirt, fill in the depression, stomp the rocks and coal deep, back into the black soil. A friend said the coal came from dinosaur bones. I didn’t believe him. But that rotten wood was part of the Ark. I absolutely knew it.
The earth makes the black
artifacts from flesh, blood, bones
we dig, sort, brush off
reconstruct from assumptions
people, creation long gone.
Robert E. Ray is a retired public servant. He retired as a senior manager in 2016 after 25 years of federal service. Robert is a native of Indiana and a graduate of Eastern Kentucky University. He lives in coastal Georgia with his wife and four dogs.
Caroline Davies
Making a New World
Time has softened this black to brown
this grief carries its cracks lightly.
There is no movement like a winter sea
when the waves freeze in layers of ice.
When you go to bed do not leave in the room
milk or bread to summon the dead.
The creamy edges hold everything in place
they invite you to reach forwards.
All you need is a pencil and some paper.
Imagine what would happen
if you were brave enough.
Caroline Davies has an MA in Writing Poetry from the Poetry School, London and Newcastle University. Her books are Elements of Water (Green Bottle Press 2019), Convoy (2013), and Voices from Stone and Bronze (Cinnamon Press 2016). She co-hosts Ouse Muse in Bedford, England which is currently meeting online. She lives in a village in Buckinghamshire. She is occasionally on Twitter @carolinedaviesd.
M. Patrick Riggin
M. Patrick Riggin is an artist, writer, and musician from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He worked as a musician while studying journalism and history for his undergraduate degree. M. Patrick has been a writer and artist for many years and is beginning to enter the publishing and commercial art world. For information on his literary and artistic journey and more of his works, he can be reached at www.mpatrickriggin.com.
Rose Strode
A Poem of First Lines
After I planted the lilac tree I never returned to your grave.
I have not kept the promises you made me make.
Even as you were dying I wanted only for you to be dying.
I can’t recall the words to the psalm of gentleness.
You knew I could not do the thing you asked.
Sometimes a fallen tree reveals a chamber like a heart.
Sometimes a tree conceals a burl like a fist embedded in itself.
In the house of leaves, I heard a hermit thrush confide: If you do not sing you will surely die.
I planted the lilac tree to be your daughter in my place.
I refuse to live by the rules of the dead.
Here is the leafless tree where the winter songbirds perch.
In the chill, in the stillness, the breath of our songs forms a brilliant, silver cloud.
Rose Strode’s most recent poems and essays appear in la piccioletta barca, Dillydoun, Sugar House Review, New Ohio Review, The Florida Review, and Kestrel. She is a recipient of the Gulick Fellowship at Valparaiso University, a master gardener, and an editor at Stillhouse Press. When not writing or helping others with their writing, Rose rehabilitates old, overgrown gardens. Her favorite tools are her eraser and her pruning shears.
