Cover image: "Untitled (from Puddle Series)" by Matthew Fertel
Gallery 3
Let this connect us
Aimee Chor
Broth
Chicken carcass, couple of carrots, quartered onion, water.
Four peppercorns, salt, a brittle bay leaf.
Boil in the stockpot bought at the hardware store twenty years ago.
Set a colander into a large steel bowl.
Pour memories through it, filtering out the vegetables and bones.
Discard those relics, relief and regret.
Obscure sediments, animal, mineral, cloud the broth,
sink soft as marine snow, decayed debris floating through sunlight to twilight to midnight,
sustenance settling in drifts
where whalefall, woodfall, kelpfall keep
congregations long as centuries.
Filter again for clarity. A sieve lined with cheesecloth, a funnel, a jar.
Precipitate billows back into suspension when the heavy bowl is lifted.
Strain the broth through delusions of purity.
Trillions of viruses fall from the sky,
Order transgressing all bordered disorder.
Grease rendered on cheesecloth, time smeared across cotton,
chicken farms, pesticides, border walls, cages.
Gyres of garbage spin in the seas.
Belle époque consommé served in some chic café.
Mason jars, lids tightened, freeze for a year.
Enough for forgetting, if you can stand it.
Look for forgiveness, try to remember
neutrinos pass through the earth every second
not touching anything, not even oceans.
Aimee Chor is a poet and translator in Seattle. X: @aimeechor
Heather Gluck
Giants on VHS
after Bidart
I was in my mother’s womb and found it crass,
all hard nails against my underarms. A vine
grew in me, twisting and tacky with the sap
of memories: the word bitch in one long shout
echoing in the high ceilings of our home.
My mother’s tight and glassy eye, just above
the sound. I was always listening—rubbing
lotion on the floor, hitting the monitor
when my computer crashed, stroking my vine,
studying the dog. I caught it all on film. I was in
my sister’s arm and it was skinny strong, made
for a smack but not a blow. She promised not to
coddle me, and my vine crawled to her, the red
blinking light. Mother stumbled into her room,
into the blackness looking for something gray.
Night inside night. I was in my father’s mouth
and we hung wet rags from the chandelier, to trap
disease. I dry-swallowed two pills to impress him.
He pretended to choke. When my mother dislocated
her own jaw, he gave me a wink and faded into
the curtains. The house inside the house. He yanked
at my vine and it made my stomach burn. He did it
again and the tape pulled out.
Heather Gluck is a poet and editor from New York who received her MFA from Columbia University. Her work is published or upcoming in Anthropocene, Anti-Heroin Chic, Palette Poetry, Poetry Online, Beyond Words, High Shelf Press, and others. Her portfolio was shortlisted for the 2021 Tennessee Williams Writing Contest. She has served as Editor in Chief of the literary magazines Exchange and Some Kind of Opening, and she is a reader for the Adroit Journal. She is the Managing Editor for MAYDAY Magazine and a Nonfiction Editor at Majuscule. See more at www.heathergluck.com.
Sandrine Letellier
Octopuses eat themselves after mating
and I, in a makeshift aquarium
nibble on my heart;
little knobs kneaded between my fingers,
thumb and lewd—
hatching my serotonin levels
in the lotus position.
Soon, my own ecosystem.
Sandrine Letellier finds inspiration in human nature, music and visual images. She spends a great amount of time observing, pondering and wandering around her city. From Montreal, she self-published her first collection Aftermath in 2022. Her work has been published in Firewords magazine. You can find her on Instagram @aftermath.poems, where she posts daily.
Aggeliki Avramopoulou
Aggeliki Avramopoulou is an artist based in Greece. She draws inspiration from her life experiences in her homeland as well as her work in a national incarcerated facility. Despite the challenges she has encountered, Angela’s artistic journey is a testament to her resilience and creative spirit. Angela’s art serves as a bridge, inviting viewers to immerse themselves in her creations and discover other forms of experiences. Through her art, Angela aspires to ignite a spark of creativity and wonder in others, encouraging them to embrace their own unique stories and find beauty in the simplicity of everyday existence. More of her artistic work can be found on Instagram @angies.a.r.t.
Natan Last
Netflix and Chill
In the group chat is an article from J—
that says streaming is bad for the environment,
one episode like two
refrigerators kept huffing the whole year long.
Counterarguments pop up on my phone
like the argument has a bad rash,
walked in the reeds by a river it liked
and came home with poison ivy.
I know I’m commuting home
from a job that’s like this commute,
D train hobbled by signal trouble,
taxis on the Manhattan Bridge outrunning it
like a shepherd overwhelmed by his flock.
I need the warmth of H—,
or better yet the new bed she saved up for,
the walk to her apartment lighthouse-lit
by streetlamps catching the wool
of my cool breath.
The sleep she’s in when I enter
is snowdrift deep, so I do what she calls Owling—
quietly watching Netflix in bed
as she streams her surrealist dream work (carbon-neutral) beneath shut eyes.
She means the nocturnality, but my eyes
are stuck open by clothespins,
my pupils denim-blue, bloodshot thickets
like tissue-wrapped cuts from accidents
in the factory. Talons are good
for skipping the water-logged theme song of Friends.
Talons work open the Tostitos bag
so I can snack while watching. In the morning,
H— wakes for her second shift: seeing
the bag I’ve left open like a used-up airbag,
she takes a chip clip from the drawer,
she rolls the bag to a cylinder, she’s squeezing
the air from inside of it, a sort of reverse
Heimlich to drain the life from
the plastic lung, like how trees breathe
differently than us in a way
that all the articles promise
is helpful. With each fold, crinkling
the chips inside like vertebrae
cracking in my back, giving me the posture
I need to work. I imagine H—
getting the massage table out
and working the clench from my talons,
the crook from my shoulders,
all my old feathers dropping
like hairs in a barbershop,
my face stuffed in the soft little hole those tables have,
straining my neck all the way around
so I can thank her.
Natan Last works in immigration advocacy and policy. His writing has appeared in Narrative, The Atlantic, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. He also writes crossword puzzles for The New Yorker and The New York Times. He is currently writing a non-fiction book about crosswords, entitled The Electric Grid, for Pantheon Books.
Sharon Weightman Hoffmann
Subject: Is This You?
Someone at academia.edu would like my money.
They ask if I am the Sharon Hoffmann who wrote “Stable isotope analysis of polar foraminifera and sedimentological evidence of deep paleocurrent exchange within Fram Strait since the last glacial maximum.”
Easy answer: No.
I am the Sharon Hoffmann whose biology lab partner had to dissect the frog.
I am the Sharon Hoffmann who broke two beakers and a volumetric flask in chemistry.
I am the Sharon Hoffmann who had not a particle of interest in physics, and neither time nor space for Schrodinger, much less his cat.
Am I the Sharon Hoffmann with a PhD from MIT who studied paleoceanography at Woods Hole?
Easy answer: No.
I am the Sharon Hoffmann who studied the difference between Petrarchan and Elizabethan sonnets, the Wife of Bath as a proto-feminist, songs of victory and lamentation in Lord of the Rings, and how the blues insinuates itself all through James Baldwin’s books.
Oh, my doppelganger, my brainiac twin,
do we share anything besides a name?
Easy answer: No.
I am the Sharon Hoffmann who has an extremely large collection of polar bear sculptures, though I doubt that counts for much.
And yet…
In my dreams, we are on the same ice floe floating through the Fram Strait.
In my dreams, the earth is healthy, and the ice is not melting.
In my dreams, we wave to a real-life polar bear as we pass.
Dear Sharon, dear friend, let this connect us.
Sharon Weightman Hoffmann is a writer based in Atlantic Beach, Florida. Publications include The New York Quarterly, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Banyan Review, Showcase, Alice Walker: Critical Perspectives (Harvard University), and Isle of Flowers (Anhinga Press). Previous awards include fellowships from Atlantic Center for the Arts and Florida’s Division of Cultural Affairs, and two Pushcart Prize nominations.
Mar Ovsheid
Frendulity
Frendulity is the headrush you get when the sports ball moves too fast and you can’t keep track of who has it. It shows up when friends are talking and the words coming out of their mouths stop making sense and you fall behind the conversation. Frendulity can pop up when you’re half-awake and driving to a doctor’s appointment at 80 mph. When this happens, the flashing ghosts of traffic lights and yellow lines don’t register until you hit the guardrail and flip into a ditch.
Frendulity is helpful when your knocked-open head is bleeding and your ankle is busted in two. It ensures unawareness of pain until you’ve climbed out of your crumpled tin can car. You stumble to the dirty roadside and dial emergency on your phone’s cracked glass. Then, you collapse, stare at the passing clouds, and wait for time to match up with the information that’s tumbling through your head. The data-tape gets caught, you black out, and wake up even further behind. You lie helpless in bed, in a hospital whose location you cannot place.
“What year is it?”
“2023.”
Frendulity doesn’t affect the part of your mind that continues to write the wrong year on checks and forms until you finally get it right. That’s a different cognitive process a lot of us suffer under.
“Who’s the president?”
“The old guy. Forget his name.”
The nurse laughs a little, scribbles something down, asks a few more questions, and pulls the curtains around your cot to separate you from the other bodies and their attendant machines. You fall asleep, hoping a reboot will line everything back up.
#
“You said you’d send the paperwork three days ago.”
Your coworker, whose name escapes you at the moment, seems genuinely concerned for your work ethic, future, and wellbeing.
“I have it by the printer. I’ll try to get it scanned and sent after lunch.”
You have breakfast around 1 PM, seeing as you woke up around noon. Your days are being eaten up by frendulity. This makes returning to your job near-impossible, since you can’t even remember to pick up the remains of your car from the repair shop. When you do get around to calling the mechanic, the vehicle’s been sold at auction.
“Property unclaimed for three months gets sold to the highest bidder.”
The whirring of tools and motors crackle behind the repairman’s voice.
“Sorry, buddy.”
You make a doctor’s appointment but forget to wake up on time. You’re distracted by your dreams, dancing backlogs of unprocessed childhood pain, slowly recalling themselves like the Reconciliations of the Catholic Church. Assistance papers meant to be mailed to the government are buried beneath unopened mail and books you begin to read but just can’t seem to keep up with. Everything slips through your mind, all memories dripping like water cupped in your hands.
The closest you can get to hitting fast-forward is a ritual of present forgetting. Wipe out the day you’ve got ahead of you, and it leaves room to sort through the sulking piles of missed obligations and letdowns. You suck down half a bottle of gin on Monday and scrawl your troubles across parchment, until the same black cloud that hit you on the roadside halts the evening’s terror reel. On Tuesday, you finish the bottle and compose a response to the bawling angst of yesterday’s phantom. Then, before the lights go out again, you roll the paper and stuff it into the empty, stinking glass. Wednesday, you typically make the stuporous journey to the pawn shop or to visit some online buyer you met a week ago. It helps that their question is always the same:
“Is this still available?”
By the time they ask, you’ve caught up to the idea of selling your TV set, old musical instruments, less-weathered sticks of furniture.
“Yep. Still here.”
Wednesday evening, after your errands, you buy a couple more bottles of liquor and snap photos of the possessions you’ll sell next week.
You suck down half a bottle of gin on Thursday and scrawl your troubles across parchment, until the same black cloud that hit you on the roadside halts the evening’s terror reel. On Friday, you finish the bottle and compose a response to the bawling angst of yesterday’s phantom. Then, before the lights go out again, you roll the paper and stuff it into the empty, stinking glass.
You suck down half a bottle of gin on Saturday and scrawl your troubles across parchment, until the same black cloud that hit you on the roadside halts the evening’s terror reel. On Sunday, you finish the bottle and compose a response to the bawling angst of yesterday’s phantom. Then, before the lights go out again, you roll the paper and stuff it into the empty, stinking glass.
You suck down half a bottle of gin on Monday and scrawl your troubles across parchment, until the same black cloud that hit you on the roadside halts the evening’s terror reel. On Tuesday, you finish the bottle and compose a response to the bawling angst of yesterday’s phantom. Then, before the lights go out again, you roll the paper and stuff it into the empty, stinking glass.
Wednesday disappears, somehow, as does Thursday. You stay trapped in the void of your dashing, frantic mind, until you wake up in an almost familiar place.
“What year is it?”
“2023.”
The nurse frowns and writes something on her clipboard.
“Who’s the president?”
“Some old fart.”
She doesn’t respond with laughter this time.
You peer to your left and are amazed to discover that this visit has warranted bigger machines and a suite all to yourself.
“Visiting hours start at ten,” the nurse says before gently stepping outside your room and closing the heavy wooden door behind her. All you hear for the next few hours is the beeping and hissing of machines. No one comes to visit, of course.
You toss and turn in dissociated discomfort, tubes and wires limiting your ability to move freely. You search your mind for signs of frendulity. But you remember Tuesday, and Monday, and at the very least the beginning of every day for the last few years.
“Oh.”
You hit the call button, intent on letting the nurse know that you do remember the year is 2028. No one comes.
“Maybe I can get some of these off, go find her myself.”
You pull the monitors and IV lines from your dulled-out skin, and feel the room begin to spin. You remove the oxygen tubes from your nose and try to stand, before falling to the tile floor, bare-assed in your floral-print hospital gown.
“I’ve gone too far, too far forward.”
You take shallow breaths and do your best to force your mind to lag behind, to locate yourself in frendulity and undo whatever it is your time-skipping has done.
“I need to go back, sort things out. I must’ve missed something. I think I missed it all.”
The call button continues to flash, unanswered, as you sit alone and fade into the cold floor. You’re fully aware of what’s happening, moment by moment, watching the clock pile dirt over your eyes. But it is frendulity, in the end, that takes you down. Your mind runs too fast for your broken heart to keep up with, and you collapse backwards into yourself, into the dark.
Mar Ovsheid is a spoilsport who tragically dropped—and lost—her sea monkeys in the carpet as a kid. Her work has been featured in Cream Scene Carnival, the Los Suelos, CA anthology, Mulberry Literary, and oranges journal, among others. Mar works as a housekeeper and is visible at @mar_ovsheid on Instagram.
Philip Dees
Philip Dees is an artist/sculptor who also writes with an MFA from Indiana State University, a BFA from Southern Illinois University, and an associate in arts from John A. Logan College. He currently lives and works in Terre Haute, Indiana with his wife Gemma, his two dogs Lola and Pepe, five cats, and two turtles.
Barbara Daniels
Don’t Wish on That Star
Vultures veering
like floating umbrellas?
I’m sick of them tipping
their wings in slow Vs.
I don’t want to drop any more
quarters down a dark well.
I’d rather claim a freshwater
pond, take off my boots,
my plastic hair tie.
I’m ready to turn myself
into a carp, stiff rictus bristles
surrounding my mouth.
Day burns up. Night
leaks in. Don’t wish
on that first star. It’s just
a planet. Give me a larger
pond, and I enlarge myself,
grow a gold frill
where my chin used to be.
Lines of moonlight slide
down my body, brighten
my fins and tail. Planets
turn quickly now,
spinning through fire.
Barbara Daniels’ Talk to the Lioness was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. Her poetry has appeared in Qwerty, Image Journal, Rogue Agent, and elsewhere. She has received four fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Rose Mary Boehm
Hanging the Washing
Mother had the cloth pegs in that huge apron pocket.
She looked like a pregnant kangaroo — had I known
then what a kangaroo was, let alone a pregnant one.
Much later I met a joey made from wood, moved by strings,
in a wandering puppet theatre. “They steal the washing
from the lines, quick, ladies.”
Worried about the birds. Playing hide-and-seek among
those bedsheets. “Hiding” was a double-sided word.
Our mothers couldn’t get the birds, but they did
have carpet beaters at hand.
Lying in grass so high it made me disappear, watching
the beetles doing their acrobatics on the thinnest
stems that bent under their weight, September already
threatening its imminent arrival; the first swifts gathered,
discussing their travel plans in agitated voices.
Looking up into a sky lined by yellows, purples, pinks,
the world was framed, manageable and magical, and occasionally
one of these empty clothes would stroke my face.
Leaving angel dust. Of course.
I don’t need madeleines. My childhood opens its doors wide
remembering the smell of summer sun, dry heat, freshly cut grass
and that whiff of blue, that cutting transparency approaching
from the mountains, weaving its magic into the dancing, incorporeal
sheets on lines made from old string.
Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as seven poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart. Her latest, Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books, July 2022), Whistling in the Dark (Cyberwit, July 2022), and Saudade (December 2022), are available on Amazon. Website: www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com
Matthew Fertel
Matthew Fertel is a Sacramento-based photographer who has worked at Sierra College since 2004. Before that, he was a fine art auction house catalog photographer in San Francisco for over 10 years. Matthew’s work seeks to expose the beauty in the everyday objects that make up the landscape of our existence. Going to the same locations over days, months and years allows him to capture images under different lighting and weather conditions, and to see objects change over time. There is art hidden everywhere if we can learn to see it. Website: mfertel.wixsite.com/matthewfertelphoto / Instagram: @digprod4
Janis Kirstein Rigor
Janis Kirstein Rigor is a mixed-media painter from the USA. She received an MFA at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has been fortunate enough to be able to exhibit her mixed media paintings and drawings all over the world. Visit her website to discover more details about her art and exhibitions: janiskirsteinrigor.com.
Cleo Griffith
Unmapped
As we tripped and traipsed and skidded
along our early narrow path
we could not see
around the bend
where the willow hung heavy
or across the river
behind the sagebrush.
Neither can we today forget
the sudden slides —
winter storms in summer,
loss of direction,
all tossed about
in our memory basket,
no cause and effect
unless you count
genes —
connect the living to the dead,
project unhappily
toward our children’s future,
so sorry, we cry, so sorry.
Forgive us, it was not us,
it was those traits enhanced
by ancestors long buried.
I wonder if they ever
said sorry to us.
Cleo Griffith has been on the Editorial Board of Song of the San Joaquin for twenty years. Widely published, she lives in Salida, California. Her poems have recently appeared in Wild Roof Journal, Straylight and POEM. Fantasy and reality play equal parts in her work.
Linda Mills Woolsey
Pastoral
Under the eye of morning
heifers amble up the slope,
eager and reluctant as
schoolgirls on the first day
back, nudging each other
while swallows swoop across
the rain’s fine warp, flashing
amber bellies, blue wings,
their slender beaks scooping
invisible insects. Just
another morning—ruminant,
predatory, ripe for plucking—
brief world of exchanges where
the green fruit already sings
nectar, cider, windfall, wine.
Linda Mills Woolsey is an educator and writer whose poems have appeared in The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, The Windhover, Relief, St. Katherine Review, and other journals. She lives in the rural village of Rushford, New York with her husband and two companionable cats.
Tinamarie Cox
Tinamarie Cox lives in Arizona with her husband and two children. Her work has appeared in several publications, and she is also the author of Self-Destruction in Small Doses (Bottlecap Press). You can find more of her work at tinamariethinkstoomuch.weebly.com. And visit her on Twitter @tinamarie_cox and Instagram @tinamariethinkstoomuch.
