Cover image: "As Above So Below III" by K. L. Johnston
Gallery 2
Under Another Sky
Barbara Daniels
April Freeze
I love you the way a tree loves you, wary,
but generous. Right now trees are pushing
leaves out. Is it like speaking, like choosing
small words that might offer enough?
The wind is cold. Ice lines the edges
of ponds. A man dies again and again
on every channel. Who looks toward him,
who looks away? Rain gathers at drip tips
of leaves, lets go, and you and I are wet
through. It’s a long way from blossom
to fruit, apricot blossoms but no sweet
flesh yet, my mouth to its skin.
When I last lay down in warm grass,
a blue cap flopped over my face,
I threw out my arms like a crucified thief.
Xylem, phloem, life moves through the strings
of me like water and sugars in a winter-worn tree.
Everything’s hard. Not just child-sized jobs
like setting the table, learning to skate.
But getting up off the couch to turn out meals,
close the drapes and open them when day
stomps in like a greedy guy putting his feet up
on everything while I wash the floor.
It’s hard to go out to hunt for grape hyacinths.
Even the hated deadnettle sticks out
purple blooms like a parody plant.
Don’t think I don’t love you.
It’s just that I’m one of those sad horses,
barrel backed, fly bitten, reaching
for grass through a barbed wire fence.
Barbara Daniels’ Talk to the Lioness was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. Her poetry has recently been accepted by Permafrost, Westchester Review, Philadelphia Stories, and Coachella Review. She received four fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the most recent in 2020.
Rachel Liptak
Landlock
This all happened
under another sky, in a place
where things are reckoned differently.
It was ashore, mind you, far ashore,
where men need build only river-boats
and the sea is but a wish
and a dream
and a long journey overland;
in a country with hills like frozen fire
and an iron spine.
On a black night the bright belt
of everything there is
stretches across the sky, between those hills,
and that valley is like being
in the bottom of a boat,
pure drunk on stars.
It’s as lovely a place as ever tempted
man to leave off sea-going:
grass like enamel on gold and leaves made of light,
a crisp hazy air in autumn afternoons,
and a stream down the middle
so you don’t pine for the water overmuch.
Around the edges the change of seasons
isn’t so grand, no pomp as the year starts to fade,
but tree-filled lands turn to fire—
fire waving overhead, fire falling to the ground,
consuming itself phoenix-like and rising again to smoke
over empty branches.
Makes winter all the harder, the burning red-gold
days before it, remembering
the last heat and the whirl of color
before all is snow and cloud, ice and echo.
And the people?
Well, the people I hear
love music and strong drink.
The women have long dark hair,
the men eyes like oak forests;
and all are strong and stubborn and
old before time, tending the hard ground
and fending off cruel winters and many enemies.
Not wide-hearted like you and me;
stuck in a little land far off from the tide,
they aren’t overly adventuresome,
but stout in their way, and handy.
I remember one lad.
Steady as the hills, tall, true,
keen as razor’s edge and handsome as you like,
though he didn’t know it…
The world doesn’t wait for us.
Grass grows over you or the tide pulls you away,
all the same, if you do not move.
That land changes hardly ever,
as hardly ever the sea is still;
both are comforting thoughts and both terrifying.
You wouldn’t love the sea without the land.
So your great-grandfather fled
from the flat grey east to the shore, to the sea,
and you would not blame him
but would do the same yourself, and no wonder,
though ’t would be hard to leave
the flowering valleys, the forbidding mountains,
the eyes like forests of oak.
Rachel Liptak is a medievalist who enjoys visiting castles, cathedrals, and cemeteries. An amateur photographer and postcard designer, she currently works as a librarian.
K. L. Johnston
K. L. Johnston is a poet and photographer who first realized her interest in photography in 2014. Her first published photos appeared in SC ETV Endowment’s in-house magazine, Scene. Since then, her images have appeared in journals, magazines, and online galleries, such as Burningword Literary Journal and Still Point Arts. She sees photography as a natural extension of poetry, distilling moments of awareness into single images. Her favorite subjects are whimsical and/or environmental and her camera goes with her wherever she goes. Other interests include horticulture, philosophy, and historiography.
Laurel Benjamin
Concoctions
Cherries steep in sugar, their translucent threads
stretched as far as they will go
architecture of needles
penetrating the scent of medicine
once plucked.
Numb, a person gives to the brain knots
that need untying or
must be cut off before turning
in the dim light, tawny, oily—
binding matters because
the mind may journey with wings.
Take six grapefruit and four lemons
cut each fruit in quarters and
precious, sharp
slice the quarters through pulp and rind
as thin as possible, discarding all seeds.
Weigh the prepared fruit and to each pound
add three pints of cold water.
Set aside for twenty-four hours
almost combustible with gleam—
let boil gently until the rind is perfectly tender
eyes vertical
then set aside until the next day
swathed from shoulders to feet.
Weigh the material and to each pound
in bandages, add one pound of sugar.
Let cook until thickened slightly,
prepared for sacrifice, tangle-tongued
on a cold dish. Stir occasionally
to avoid burning
the late afternoon breeze.
The mixture will thicken still more
as it cools, sedge grass red green
and care must be taken not to cook too much
hearts, pricking.
Store as jelly as it whips through
the empty circle with a small, wooden board
upon which to rest the fruit
among trees, witnesses to the crime
and with a thin sharp knife
a system of living
break the stumps in a clearing
waiting for the first tree to fall.
Slice quickly, unprotected
to the end, feet protruding.
Temperature, colors, music
think of it this way
unbinding, not the mental—
defer to a native speaker,
but then ask, is it idiomatic enough,
translation read aloud
olives bitter, pits included as a sign
of original flavor, footnote of a tree
alone on a brambled hillside, remnant where
once there were twenty.
Binding matters in love.
What is emotion behind the details,
but a standard of a new palette,
a Siberian winterland people evacuate
inventing words on horses half-starved.
Never look back.
Laurel Benjamin is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, where she invented a secret language with her brother. She has work forthcoming or published in Lily Poetry Review, Black Fox, Word Poppy Press, Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry, South Florida Poetry Journal, Trouvaille Review, The Fourth River, Limit Experience, California Quarterly, Mac Queens Quinterly, among others. Affiliated with the Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and the Port Townsend Writers, she holds an MFA from Mills College.
Ash Good
serious child
Ash Good is a queer & non-binary poet, designer & activist in Portland, OR. They are a co-founding editor at First Matter Press (501c3 nonprofit) & a reader for Frontier Poetry. Ash’s newest collection, Us Clumsy Gods, is forthcoming from What Books Press in 2022. Poems recently appear or are forthcoming in Voicemail Poems, Willawaw Journal, Cathexis, Not Very Quiet, The Timberline Review, The Cape Rock, Rise Up Review, Gulf Stream Magazine, deLuge, House Journal, Birdcoat Quarterly & others. www.ashgood.com
Daniel Reiner
Bad Land
Have you ever listened to the song of the earth?
A difficult task, to be sure, but success can be had if one takes care. Trading the mad din of civilization for a calm, natural setting is a necessary first step; the second, making the effort to concentrate. Many who try pay fervent attention to any and all sounds, believing that to be enough. Hearing nothing of note, they stop. Some end up confused. Or disappointed. Their mistake? Relying on the ears.
More felt than heard, the unspoiled essences of sand and soil and rock hum oh so faintly, a harmonious exhalation of their wholesomeness—if yet whole. When a willful assault has occurred, a taint introduced, the contrast is striking. Proof of the misdeed is evident in the disquiet that follows, a wail that grates upon the soul.
Near one such haunted place, local tales tell of how the crops in that patch had always been sickly. The weeds that replaced them, though deep-rooted, are just as frail. The ground is dry, unable to hold onto life-giving water. In the bitterness of January, a foot of snow all around is but a dusting there, and soon gone. Ravens alone are seen to alight, pause, then depart with a caw. Whether their pronouncements are concurrence or dissent about what may have been learned, only they can say. And those fey creatures do not share their secrets.
So described, and without laying eyes on it, the imagination will attempt to apply geometry to the blight. A circle is the most sensical, with both physical and metaphysical energies radiating outward from a central point. Or, a square may come to mind, the stiff, angular symmetry a reassuring figure corralling the scattered debris of human thought.
A house-sized oblong blob, it resembles neither.
One popular explanation is that the polluting element, confined at the start, had seeped irregularly into neighboring spaces over the course of time. A less conventional theory holds that it had been birthed by a titanic demoness, her poisonous fluids staining the land in that pattern. Regardless of whether the sensible or the absurd is more appealing, all silently acknowledge that anything is possible and accept that the truth of the matter will likely remain forever buried.
More open to philosophical debate is the nature of the contaminant. Some opine that the subtraction of a positive factor is the issue; others, that it is the addition of a negative. A fine line, that, but one that members of the camp on either side refuse to cross. Discussions on the topic are often heated, at times devolving to blows, especially when alcohol is added to the mix. And more so when the heart of the town is stabbed by frigid winds out of the north, winds burdened with menacing whispers.
A holy man of some reputation arrived once. Prideful of the wonders he could work, he decided to bless the accursed area and build a church on the very spot. His progress on the undertaking, zealous at first, slowed, then stopped. He vanished. The townsfolk say that he moved on, to the east (or north, depending upon whom is asked), after learning that those easterners (or northerners) were in greater need of his miracles. With none willing to set foot there, the skeleton of a church was lassoed and pulled down. And dragged away. And burned. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Numerous strangers have since visited, looked, listened. They have wondered if a farm, a business, a home could be built there. With the price set so low as to negate haggling, money has never been an obstacle. Could I spend a single night there without running into the darkness, screaming? That has been the real question, contemplated by all, unvoiced by all. Before long and with little effort, the same answer is reached by all.
And that answer had been unchanged until a young man overflowing with ideas and enthusiasm appeared one day. Exhibiting a seemingly boundless vitality, his mental acuity was still more remarkable. He had been trained in a variety of crafts and sciences. Those who spoke with him were impressed by his practical knowledge that spanned from masonry and woodworking to surveying and geology.
Unafraid of rumors, he purchased that plot. His education, combined with a heavy dose of rationality, gave him confidence that whatever ailed it could be cured. He proposed that a layer of clay some feet down could seal off the water, contributing to the effects with which everyone was so familiar. A charismatic man, it was difficult to not smile when hearing him declare that he would solve the problem with those grounds and put a home there in which to raise a family. Alongside it he would build a general store as well, to help the town grow and prosper.
His exuberance set them to wondering: Could this one succeed? The most optimistic gave him a fair chance, believing that his spirit could overcome what was out there, perhaps rebalancing nature. But the majority were convinced that its defeat was impossible, the cancer having gotten too entrenched over unknowable years.
Unfortunately, though his goodness and intentions were plain to see, none would take the risk of letting him a room. All agreed that something was there, and they feared that his continual presence on that parcel might tempt the undefined evil to follow him into their midst. Finally, an older couple, childless and inured to the horror after so long, took pity on him—to a point. They permitted him to stay in their empty barn.
With no one nearby lending any aid, his days were filled with toil: pick and shovel, scythe and rake. The time spent leveling and clearing that property, all the while planning and looking to the future, allowed him to become well-acquainted with the peculiar shape of the polluted area: like a melting snowman, tilted to one side, ready to topple over.
Occasionally, a vagabond or restless explorer passing through, in search of a few dollars and unaware of the troubled history, would add their own muscle and sweat for a day. But never more than a day. One man, a sensitive fellow, quit before the sun hit noon. Tears running down his cheeks, he apologized and trudged off, refusing his pay. And murmuring prayers as he left.
On his mattress of straw, the sleep of exhaustion overcame the determined young man each evening. But the nights could hardly be described as restful, a shadow influencing his dreams. Despite that ill omen, he refused to entertain superstitious thoughts. Nightmares could be explained away as a product of daily exertion and strange quarters. Any wailing, regardless of the hour, was simply wind whistling past a unique geological feature, an outcropping of rock that he had yet to identify.
The day arrived when his labors were complete. Understanding the lay of the land and equipped with the experience to make good decisions, he had already reckoned the best location for a sound structure. Given that, and based upon other subtle clues, he calculated the best place for a well: in the center of the bad patch. Waves of summer heat lapping closer and closer, he knew the water would be needed sooner rather than later. More than likely, it would be necessary to travel a great distance to find someone who would agree to the job. However, at the end of that day, sun lowering, someone showed up.
Her coarse beige clothing was of an older style, accented with dull reds and greens. A billowy skirt brushed the ground, and sleeves covered her arms to the fingertips. Thick white tresses, hanging loose and falling far below her shoulders, concealed her face. Strong, confident movements were at odds with hints of advanced age.
The young man asked if one of the local residents had directed her there.
Responding with just a shake of her head, the woman pulled a pair of bent copper rods from a skirt pocket. There was no trepidation to be seen as she set to work.
Although having no faith in the art of dowsing, his curiosity won out. He observed as she traipsed back and forth, and—at the precise spot where he had hoped to dig—the rods crossed. Smiling, relieved to have that confirmation, he rushed to her and detailed his theory of how a layer of clay could prevent water from moistening the soil above.
The woman listened and nodded, saying nothing.
He went on about his plans to build a home and store. His smile grew while speaking of his wife, pregnant with their first child, set to join him in the coming weeks.
At that, she sighed and put the rods away.
Puzzled by her reaction, the young man asked what she charged for her services.
She did not answer, instead relating a tale. Her hushed words reverberated in his head and chest, more felt than heard.
Ages ago, she began, a man coveted power. He craved supremacy over other men and women. And animals. And the wind, rain, and snow. Everything.
He reigned with terror and brutality, subjugating all of the peoples of that era to his will, as well as the beasts living on the land and above it. Turning his attention to the ethereal sky, he learned how to manipulate its every wispy aspect. His mastery was undeniable.
But having achieved his goal, he came to realize it was not enough. He craved a wife, and there was one who could fill that role. He asked the earth to join him as his consort.
She said no.
Swallowing his arrogance, he tried again. They were alike, he argued. And that much was true: they were made of the same stuff.
Her answer was the same.
Insulted by her rebuff, he demonstrated his abilities, calling upon the winds to strip a swath bare of trees and grasses and flowers, gouging a dreadful hole. The destruction was appalling. Heartbreaking.
Again, she refused.
Patience exhausted, he decided that he did not need cooperation. Through that barren, defenseless area he entered her. But that foolish misstep granted her power over him. The trap had been sprung. At the cost of a scar, she had won. And, with time, had healed.
The enigmatic woman finished with: To this day, he yet rages. Can you not hear him?
A gust blew her hair aside. On the face of the young man, any remnant of a smile was extinguished as he glimpsed a mark on her neck, both familiar and terrible: a snowman, tilted, ready to topple.
Hidden eyes studied him for a moment. Then, she turned and walked into the sunset.
There was no sleep to be had in the barn that night. In the darkness of the cloud-shrouded moon, that now-hateful sound drowned out all else. And that awakened mind, neither as youthful nor innocent as it had been hours previous, could no longer dismiss it as being merely a consequence of wind blowing over odd rock.
In the morning, the young man contacted his wife. They decided that another town may be a better choice to buy some land and raise a family. Somewhere further to the east. Or north.
And that patch of dry, dusty earth still wails.
Daniel Reiner was born, raised, and still lives in Pittsburgh, PA. Although he was influenced at an early age by the imaginations of Larry Niven and Stephen King, it was a later encounter with H.P. Lovecraft’s dizzying use of adjectives that set him on his course. That path has led to the creation of a set of characters within Lovecraft’s universe, their tales currently being published by Vulpine Press in The Shadow Saga. Though the bulk of his creative output remains Lovecraftian, he does branch out and dabble in shorter pieces with horror, science fiction, and other uncategorizable flavors. Samples of his work and the latest bits of news are available at www.danielreinerfiction.com.
Elissia Kimball
Elissia Kimball grew up in Southern Illinois and she holds her B.A. in Art History. She is a self-taught artist, and her goal with her artwork is to inspire people to consider all the ways that a person can change and evolve while searching for self-actualization. She feels that people should embrace these changes and spend time in nature to reveal the deepest sides of oneself, and to strengthen one’s spiritual connection with the world. Please visit her website at www.hollowsemblance.com to learn more.
Lindsay Donovan
Bloodguilt
We stood on gravel lips of the vast nuclear lake. It glowed green mucus.
We thought it strange to reflect light but not collect it. We watched
with empty beers sticking to our hands. We waited.
We heard them screech as they emerged, their glass wings shuttering.
Flicking off specks of sand like minuscule landmines bursting from the
skin of the Earth. Sparkly little pockets of pus exploding more topsoil.
We thought it strange to kiss someone but not use tongue.
The Bottle Bees are fragile, their fluttering always chipping their own
appendages that grew from discarded shards years ago. They can hardly
fly, little miner bugs.
Through the smog—No substance; greedy, beautiful things.
He stepped enough to shatter their wings.
Little pops under his feet like squirming cherry bombs.
They were quiet, unable to clink or gleam. They retreated.
We’re humbling
the bottle bees, he looked up and backwards at me with a cracked smile,
china plates barely rescued from rubble. We both buzzed
with drunk discontent. We still think it’s strange to wear a cross
and not know what it means.
The moon calves were starting to graze, we put lilies in our hair that
never bloomed.
Lindsay Donovan is a New England poet who graduated from Emerson College in 2015 with a Bachelor of Arts in Writing, Literature, and Publishing with a minor in Political Communication. She recently had her first published poem, “Infinite Canon of Remembering (The Lake House),” appear in the Knight’s Library Magazine First Publication Series Volume 1. She currently works at Boston Healthcare for The Homeless Program where she teaches an introductory poetry course to veterans. Most importantly, Lindsay is a cat mom to Helena and Tusk.
Nancy Calef
For decades Nancy Calef has been creating “Peoplescapes”: oil, sculptured characters and applied objects on canvas addressing cultural, political and spiritual issues facing society. By juxtaposing people in recognizable places and situations, each painting weaves together a story about contemporary life, filled with layers of detail, symbolism, and humor. Website: nancycalefgallery.com
JT Godfrey
Floating Sun Soaked
Zoom fucked up my world perspective.
I spent so much time in class watching people with interesting listening faces, or communists I knew whose homes were way too good for proletariat.
Most of the time I spent not learning ancient history, I was staring at the line in my tattooed shoulder muscle and thinking about how I’d never wear a tank top to real class. But this wasn’t real class, time, and space, and my exposed arms and messy hair didn’t matter. The only way I could convince myself to click the link for class was to go outside in the North Carolina sun. This incentive stopped working around Easter. I never went to Geology 100. I cheated my way into an A on the final.
The sun still worked for two of the three ancient history classes per week, my absences followed by an apologetic email and some masculine groveling.
The best part of being a schmoozing man in a mostly male Classics department, an email usually does the trick. I didn’t need the sun to go to my theater writing class. For those classes, I found a dark corner in my parents’ sickeningly sunny house. I’d drink tea out of a large cup and wear my cute glasses and say things like, “provocative,” or, “deeply profound,” or, “I’d love to learn your creative process,” even though I didn’t feel any of those things.
Then I’d Zoom with my partner, and they’d always be outside, trying to tan skin that rejected their beauty standards and the sun. I’d stare at them and try to connect their face to my fading memories. It’d been months since I’d seen their face, their real face. I began to forget what Zoom wouldn’t show me; their nails on my scalp, the tight skin on their round cheek, the feeling of my head gently rising and falling on their stomach as I pretended to sleep.
When I finally prepared for my trip to New York, I called my friends and pretended to not be terrified.
I’d not seen my partner without seeing myself in four months, my vision of them tainted by a narcissistic pool of my own reactions. They would tell a joke, and I would watch my reaction, dissect how my face muscles tightened. When we’d cry, I’d watch as the tears slowly traveled from my green and bloodshot eyes and stopped midway through my quarantine beard. When I finally get to kiss them, I can’t see myself, no reflection to prove my existence, to show my lips connecting with theirs. I know my arms are wrapped around their waist, I feel their legs wrapped around me, the pressure of holding up their small gymnast’s body.
“The Long and Winding Road” is playing from my car speakers, and I feel the warm tears running down my recently clean-shaven face. I’m not sure I can actually confirm my existence.
***
On our first night in bed, I can’t stop staring at the face I’d studied on my computer screen, the three freckles on their round cheeks baiting me to rest after a twelve-hour drive. Instead, I stay awake and think about my fear of growing crazy. Could it even be possible that this is what would break my white-knuckled grip on reality? I think. A lifetime of survivor’s guilt doesn’t get me, no. I’m not able to see myself during our morning coffee and it’s loosing my grip.
Slowly over the weeks of my knowingly last visit, I puzzle piece a new world view. I learn how to eat ice cream and just look at them. They teach me that my hands can be more than impermanent objects I’ve forgotten how to look at properly. Between the sun and the touch of their soft and sweaty skin, I learn how to float with my eyes closed, bobbing along to a dream of normal awareness.
Then I’m back driving south again after a Connell and Marianne conversation, the taste of their last kiss and salty tears stamped on my lips. I don’t want to drink, or eat, or touch my face because it will taint it, the muscle memory of them. My face is still clean-shaven. They always liked my face, even when I couldn’t see it. It grows warmer until I hit the border. I pull off the highway onto the shoulder of the road to Carolina. At this point, they are only three miles away. I think about turning around and begging them to take me back, to somehow, someway make this work. I look down at my hands and realize they may never be theirs again. They may never make them feel corporeal again. A line arbitrarily drawn to separate the division of interstate commerce is the cost of my new reality, where floating sun-soaked is acceptable.
I cry when I see my parents, feeling the tears effuse with the moisture of the North Carolina air. I don’t cry because I miss them; I cry because they are the ethereal foggy them-less realm where I have to see my eyes to feel real.
I start smoking again because the burn and cough remind me of consequences. Now I float in my parents’ pool, my beard growing back. For a moment I’m me again, the other me, writing in my journal, mourning my self-death, myself that was given to me momentarily crystal in their bright blue eyes. Now, I’m the me who smokes, takes Lexapro, grows a beard, and cries reading perfume-soaked love letters alone in my room. I’m the me who has a cold chest even though the small pool in my parents’ backyard is 90 degrees. Then, I’m the me who swipes and likes and shares to get attention, all the while jealous of them possibly doing the same. I imagine them making someone else feel real, and I can’t sleep. We slowly stop saying I love you as we decided. We slowly stop calling every day, as we decided. We slowly stop texting each other good morning and goodnight, as I decided, angry that I couldn’t call them every day to confess my undying and distant love.
They’re the only person I’ve ever given this power to; a power I’ve held over other partners, the power to actually hurt me. I’m a confident giant, who’s dated people that have loved me all my life. I’ve had brothers die, I’ve lost all my grandparents, I’ve watched family members crippled with addiction, I’ve had 10 concussions, I’ve broken all my fingers, my back, my shoulders, my knees. Short of a gun or a knife, what could anyone do to actually hurt me?
I realized it too late, long after I convinced myself I was over them, but I’m nearly certain that I was so terrified of losing them on their terms that I decided to lose them on mine.
In the 50’s someone might say “you didn’t fight for your love.” That’s not necessarily true, I took a dive, ask any boxer, there’s a difference. I willingly stepped in the ring, I listened to the bell ring, I danced the sweet dance, but when it came time to finally get hurt, I feigned that a jab had sent me to the canvas. The first person that truly loved me. Not part of me, not just the scholar, or the singer, or the story-teller, or the comedian, fucking ME. Now I’ve got to live with that because I hope they never have to read this and know how bad of a person I am.
There comes a ‘gin rummy’ moment in any depression that you count your cards and see if what you’ve played is greater than what’s in your hand, a value judgment. Is this worth continuing the game? Like a drunk freshman, I call occasionally to find my way home from a campus I shouldn’t have chosen. I’m the me who chose this; terrified of where me who wouldn’t lead me.
JT Godfrey is a writer and humorist in Cleveland, OH. A Cleveland and New Hampshire Native, JT writes about his unique rust belt experience, dissecting themes such as masculinity, mental illness, heartbreak, and familial duty love. An Oberlin College alum, JT found his passion for writing while performing comedy and reading sad books. In his time at Oberlin, JT was an Honors Scholar in Classics, the Thomas Van Nortwick Scholar, and the Louise E. Lord Prize for Creativity in Classics winner. In everything he writes, JT attempts to scribe familial storytelling traditions and communal acceptance. JT’s stories can be found in the Rappahannock Review and Wild Roof Journal. JT is currently working on his first collection of short stories and a sci-fi novel with his writing partner Adrienne Rozells.
Noé Piña
Noé Piña’s works with found materials used in construction, using terracotta bricks, nails, and wood fragments to create sculptures and installations that address the complexities of maintaining balance, from personal to social to economic. Noé explores the fragility, the precariousness in things, nature, and systems and how the forces of pressure and stress remain in or produce balance. Noé’s installations display an environment that is at once an environment of graceful balance and crude counterbalance, thus a sense of tension. The result is an anticipation of a disaster, the expectancy of a cataclysmic fall. He has taught visual arts at various schools in Los Angeles, including The Getty Art Center. His work has been exhibited at The University of Memphis Art Museum and a public installation for The City of Alhambra, CA. In addition, he is an artist in residence at ARTLab Mexico City, Proyectos Galería, Dab Art Co.
Christopher Ruff
US Rt. 322
A river-wedged strip of land, a bridge-skipped road:
a strip joint, another, a third, a massage parlor, truck stop,
burger joint—the whole of American road lust
dug in along the highway, tapering out into a corn field,
cracked macadam veering off toward low-land grasses.
The flood plain: a campground, trailers, pavilions
the railroad, cliffs walling in the sky
a hill clear of trees, the fresh road cut—
geology students trace shale, sandstone, quartzite,
mark out the arching bands of ashen, rusted, chalky rock;
hands realign shifted fault cracks, map out a history of land.
But to chart out the history of flesh, you have to
peel back layers of language we’ve laid on place:
pornography, liquor, native, immigrant, savage
glass, concrete, diesel, caution: cross traffic
rebar, mechanically stabilized earth
Susquehannok, Onajutta, Devonian, limestone, chert.
You have to dig up the old two-way road
its death-born passing lane, its berm-staked crosses—
and deeper, below the railroad ballast bed,
the canal takes shape, out of dirt
and below that, the pick and shovel scars fading.
Imagine this all removed, put back in place,
back into furnaces, quarries, mines, the land—
imagine just dirt, sand, clay, and trees:
white pines shading a foot path, a game trail
to a tangled grove of rhododendron, where deer bed down
and watch our knotted histories unravel.
Christopher Ruff earned his MFA from Chatham University and teaches near Harrisburg, PA. His work has been published in the Front Range Review, Alluvian, OJAL: Open Journal of Arts & Letters, and The Stillwater Review.
Joshua Sabatini
Ashes
Despite their rears and backs and skulls being pressed against the soil by gravity, they had the sensation of being weightless and floating in the space of all the blueness they were looking at through the arms of the eucalyptus trees. They were experiencing delight floating with little to no cares and burdens, certainly none based in the world, while retaining in the most peaceful of manners their own identity, hoping the moment would prolong itself against time just this once to hold them there—maybe for all of eternity.
They were like floating on water but there was no concern of sinking or the annoyance of water lapping up around the ears, which he had experienced when he swam them out their lunch over his head across Eel River. He thought eating took away from these kinds of experiences, but without eating he would never have the dichotomy or the self-reflection, for it would only be the experience lasting to the point of no return in death and he’d have nothing remaining but his rotting carcass or ashes.
“I would like to be cremated, if I had it my way. If the choice was that or burial,” he told her suddenly, changing the experience without meaning to.
He addressed the subject immediately because it was ingrained in him that worldly affairs related to death required immediate attention to avoid the world’s own complications when it came to all that dead business. There’s nothing the world makes easy. As for the dead, what do they care? He half-thought she’d ignore him, but it didn’t ring tin and hollow like those things she does ignore.
“I’d like the same for me. But what should I do with your ashes?”
He thought about it, after first thinking how glad he was that she took his comment in earnest and responded with equal earnestness and that they were now having an earnest discussion about their eventual deaths; it brought him a strange pleasure, but he didn’t care why he was feeling it, only that he was. Maybe he felt like it further enshrined their union they had so deliciously forged between themselves in ways and means altogether unique since they were outsiders scoffing at the conventions of the day. And yet here they were going to get cremated like everybody else, that or buried, but hey, even in death there’s no way out but through the conventions or they could bust them and what? There’s only burial and burning or simply rotting in the open air or whatever.
“I’d like to have my ashes poured into water. I don’t like the idea of being stuck on land,” he said.
“I’d like the bay waters for me,” she said. “The water washes it all away but leaves the spirit where it first lies. And in that case, you can come visit me by the water’s edge and talk to me and you can answer me and it would be like we weren’t really separated by life and death.”
“You could visit me too, if—”
“And you’ll have to believe everything you see and hear there and have faith in it that it is me, otherwise you won’t think it’s me at all.”
“I won’t be a fool, I promise,” he said.
He didn’t know where she came up with these ideas. It was like she drew them not from any external source, not from materials on bookshelves or other mediums, but from an interior source like a wellspring from which she would draw up the bucket and drink and have in her possession bright wisdom.
Joshua Sabatini was born in Hartford, Connecticut. In October 2002, he moved to San Francisco, California. He’s currently on retreat in Katama. His short story publications include “Boneyard” in Delay and “Sunrise” in In Parentheses.
David S. Higdon
Tuesday in August
The moth gave up,
surrendered against
sweating glass. A lithe
and fragile form
—a white hot star
exploding from
the black of morning.
I step to it to touch it,
shy of it, unsure of it—
if it’s on the inside
or on the outside.
I tap the glass like a child
banging piano keys,
transmitting a code,
gestural. Action painting
the mechanics of life,
little quakes that
wander deep down past
the breaking dawn
on diminishing wingbeats
with cautious touches
from a calloused hand.
David S. Higdon is a writer from Kentucky. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Appalachian Review, Still: The Journal, Rust + Moth, Exposition Review, Lucky Jefferson, Coffin Bell Journal, and others. He is the 2021 winner of The Grand Prix Prize from the Kentucky State Poetry Society. He lives with his family in Louisville, KY.
Tricia Townes
Tricia Townes is a painter and teacher who enjoys nature and gardens. She teaches Art Appreciation at Tennessee State University and enjoys doing both figurative and abstract work.
