Cover image: "Shelter-in-Place Still Life 1" by Jeremiah Gilbert
Gallery 1
Visual Art, Poetry, and Prose
Laylage Courie
Laylage Courie is a writer and maker of luminous things-from-words. Her latest big thing is the radio-play/concept album these fountains rare here, which is available everywhere you download and stream music (YouTube, Spotify, etc.). Other work includes collage, the sporadic podcast of strange poetry readings cosmic dream radio, musical improv, and performance art. Her work has appeared on stages all over downtown New York, been a finalist for the Jane Chambers award for feminist performance text, and been published in international performance journals as well as in Permafrost, Azure, Fence, Adbusters, and the Exposition Review. Experience whatever new thing she has made (next up: a video-poem about climate catastrophe) by joining her mail list at www.luminouswork.org or following her on Instagram @laylage.
Donna DeRosa
In The Holiness of Moonlight
1
Eyes like sticky camera lenses,
your dress of unused wallpaper, unopened packages
I paint you—watching like someone
coming back from war, with their boots
untied—I keep the company
of lampposts, up to their necks
in the cold air—
chewing my nails, chewing my way
to a quarantine, busted charm, I leave the city—
The night has an open face,
I come to
moon—it is heavy
like a greased crown,
it unwound
down my spine; loosened my teeth—
Somewhere a flower pot shatters
not far off—
the miscarried roses shiver, their petals
full as lungs.
2
I see the moon, a scribbling halo
on glass in dusty lines—I used
all my words up. Undone
in thin channels, I paint her,
place a candle next to her eyes
they swim, appear long
like hallways.
Moon—what do you know
of waiting? I know
an empty bed, without
the remaining indent—
What do you see
in my waiting eyes? The used face?
A glassiness, like a clock encased
in mirrors.
A cast I cannot remove.
3
Be my friend tonight, Moon,
flashing there
in the wet pink sky—
swathed in tulle; heavy, hallow, pale
like the bones of whales. You are not
lost under sea waves, devoured,
picked clean.
Northern California
With my life jacket
I rest in dark water—my hair floating
out, the seals bobbing up
in the open water, like warm hearts
the Selkies with the black
hair, their tender hands
gesturing to let me sink, heavy
with wobbly breath, wobbly
with age—
In the Northern hills
of California—seven years ago,
I am drinking well water, roosting
by a fire burning stove—I came by roads
cut through red clay summits,
with so little snow.
I came to shed blood
into clawfoot bathtubs,
to feed cougars—I built
a borrowed pyramid
of copses drooping with paper flowers,
just outside the windows—
The wilderness now in residence—
I wash my hands
in the far-off Pacific.
I left a home
imprisoning me—
Two of these decaying moments
still yield warmth,
miles of green—rocky beaches, saline pines, and stretches of road
where the blue of the ocean, is white
at the close of winter.
Fated to dim a little
at this hour—like a damp fire, worming—
nothing announcing
the sudden tide.
To them,
only a shadow
in the gloaming—
Donna DeRosa is a graduate of Marshall University with a BA in Creative Writing and Literary Studies. She is a dedicated mother to a spunky one-year-old boy and currently works as a Licensed Massage Therapist. She is also currently studying to be a nurse, but poetry is her ruling passion. She has had publications in Et Cetera and Words Dance Publishing. She herself is a work in progress who was a tomboy growing up, a girl scout, a soccer player, a sister, a best friend, the girl at summer camp washing her hair in a creek, the girl who preferred thrift stores to malls, and the girl who crocheted with old women at church. Now she’s the nurse-to-be who writes poetry, pets cats, and drinks green tea.
William Bain
ringing rocks
the distant green field rings
along too a brick structure lending
not haze or rise but something hinging
time somehow doesn’t stop
a wedding glass raised forth
on that grassy path
constancy of memory’s simultaneity alongside heightened perception apparently due to letting go of enjoyment those who negotiate
circling flows
belling the aftermark
William Bain’s writing and small format visual artwork have appeared online or on paper in Abstract|Ext, Barcelona Ink, On-Barcelona, Ferbero, larealidadnoexiste.com, Red River Review, and Zone, among others.
Mia DePaola
Mia DePaola is an inspiring, creative, independent artist and photographer residing in Washington DC. Originally from Portugal, she has lived, studied, and worked most of her life in Belgium. Being of an introvert nature, art has always been her favored medium of expression. Her interest in art, nature, and travel has provided opportunities to develop a unique, and even unorthodox, photographic signature.
Photography is an essential part of her life. Following the light and her instincts, Mia sees art in the most mundane things. Her artistic approach is to evoke a gamut of emotions. She is constantly looking to experiment with her work and striving to learn, improve, and grow as a photographer, as an artist, and as a woman. Instagram: @mia.depaola
Ryan Harper
Motif at Nineveh Creek, Indiana
Strafed already in May-flow, now wind,
now shadow of the brush, the stream:
bait and bobber flam the water—
breakthrough, dissolution, then the bleed
of diverted light, renewed. There was a point
I thought the mackerel light might peel
off the water—a clean fillet, the flutings
hued in turn—that I could handle it all
by turns, a breathing rubric of the strung
catch, redeemed. Prepared to lay it on thick,
I foresaw a singly apprehended field,
where that would be that. Then there was the motion,
the floater listing in the eye, an arc
of the nimbling travel rod, the roll, the drag,
of nylon backlit, there was then the buzz,
the reeling, striped body snared, matched grips
tauten, touching metal at the ferrule.
There was the breach, the tearing through
of morning, in fierce, diddling impastos
shunting the Nineveh to pieces, one final jolt
as the body made off with the appointed worm.
Fish story. Older anglers know the strokes,
loosed strokes, laid down, must be binding, bind all.
Cast them in, entirely, casting off.
Kennebec Mission
I find the season clear
of the roads that brought me.
There is Maine for you:
making straight the path
for the latest settler
playing for the wild,
searching for the natural
resolutions—I breathe
the raw air, consider
the surface: frozen
save the black breaks melled
open by whatever powers
urge darkness upon ice,
spring upon light; riverside
the path is white, empty.
My snowshoes plant
and brush, wisp of the new
powder on the trail, rootless
voicings across this,
the first place I have lived
alone. Given to hemlock
I walk the stands, graced
in coarse vesture to the last,
cone shudder and spruce
windfall, pitching husky
through the old points.
I am bound to the father’s
monument, playing balsam
in the clearing. Nothing
is first that I know—where
the field opens, light;
where the river opens, dark.
To think in these horizons
is to mind lofty things at cold
intervals—augmented
the frozen markers, the roots
concealed in their vicinity.
For a ratio to get shut
off—alone and consequent
in the dawn land—I turn
modal to the still current,
eye the pupils in the ice,
wondering which among us
has forgotten more,
which flows free with loss.
Autumn Fog, St. Croix River
Not a thing living moving
but the living in the cloud—
fierce, elaborating gray,
curate of the grave river,
lights the Dalles in hiding, works
the grand, tender luminance
of resting air. What figures
here—ruddy oak, pine scramble
up the fall’s steep enclosures,
gristly rock conglomerate,
occult in sheer sweeps the burn,
au premier coup, thick churn,
no frame but the living vale
drawing, withdrawing the secret
breath, not a whole thing witnessed
but the witness of the whole.
Ryan Harper is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Colby College’s Department of Religious Studies. He is the author of The Gaithers and Southern Gospel: Homecoming in the Twenty First Century (University Press of Mississippi, 2017) and My Beloved Had a Vineyard, winner of the 2017 Prize Americana in poetry (Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2018). Some of his recent poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in the Maine Review, Killing the Buddha, Spoon River Poetry Review, LETTERS, Jelly Bucket, Cimarron Review, Chattahoochee Review, and elsewhere.
Sylvia Byrne Pollack
Ghazel for Birdseed & Poetry
The concatenation of atoms that formed her
scatters, each electron charges into the future.
In springtime, scanned irises, each one an original.
Behind veils, blank faces – a flicker darts into the future.
Delightful dispersal, ungluing of each sticky wicket –
whoever tries to squeeze through enlarges the future.
Brief verdant flames before the slow rumble of ashes
mixes with lies, makes soap, scrubs memory, purges the future.
A waxwing flies over the land, far from The Flood,
looking for birdseed and poetry. What else recharges the future?
No dashing Morse code, just a slow amble of words.
A halo remains, stuns our eyes as we regard the future.
Old growth forest – cut it down or let it rot slowly?
No matter – sylvan nurse log lifts new trees, merges with the future.
Sylvia Byrne Pollack’s work has appeared in Floating Bridge Review, Crab Creek Review, Clover, and Antiphon among other print and online journals. She is a two-time Pushcart nominee, the recipient of the 2013 Mason’s Road Winter Literary Award, and a finalist for the 2014 inaugural Russell Prize. She was a 2019 Jack Straw Writer.
Tara Holl
Tara Holl has been a professional teaching artist for over 25 years. She has created glass installations (sculptural, leaded, fused, & cast) mosaics, murals, sculptures, and many mixed media art works in public spaces. She received an American Institute for Architects award for excellence on two large glass projects created for the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in Reston, Virginia, opened a National Geographic exhibition at Explorers Hall at Washington, D.C. with 8 large sculptures depicting the many uses of glass, and has been the curator for a variety of exhibitions at an assortment of galleries. She utilizes glass, ceramic, fiber, wood, cement board, paper, recycled materials, found objects, and assorted painting mediums.
Tara has taught over 47 visual arts integrated residencies at public and private schools in Maryland and classes/workshops in several states, as well as overseas in Panama, Egypt, and Italy. Her work has given her the opportunity to teach K-12 students, adults, and a variety of children and adults with special needs. Recently, Ms. Holl taught arts integration workshops to children and adults (the Kuna Indians) in Armila, Panama while on an eco-residency.
Melissa Mulvihill
Revenant Gloam
She often attends
my manic ruminations.
Invisible agent, unyielding meddler
she howls
her declarations
that she’ll expose me
obdurate specter
wretched wraith
manifesting hallways to pace
walls to scrape
air in which to shriek
precious objects to shatter
visions to pollute
with vague and false calls
palpable deception
stomping and rioting
lying in tongues
terrorizing this moment
in odious taunts
with incorporeal haunts
murking the reasons
for these visitations
these possessed spooks
these eidolons of pain
claiming me
during the
revenant gloam.
The silence sat
still, sullen
and wrung out.
“The ghosts
don’t like you,”
she mumbled finally.
I reached for her
but she had gone.
She’ll be back.
Melissa Mulvihill writes about finding things in places she thought were empty. Her poems and essays can be found at Prometheus Dreaming, The Feminine Collective, The Write Launch, and Impspired Magazine. Melissa’s poems are anthologized at Poet’s Haven Digest and her poem “Your Phone Call” was selected for the 2017 Blue Nib Anthology. In 1990 she graduated from Kenyon College with a BA in psychology and in 1996 she graduated with a BS in counseling from John Carroll University. Website: www.edgesofthings.com
Sean William Dever
laughing into the summer sky
we paint rosewater lines
along our backs, damp with dew
from the grass along Duxbury Bay
and you whisper if you can fill the erosion
hollowed by alcohol abuse. Evidence of myself
years ago, remembered through these scars. You ask
so I show you the exit wounds
within my stomach lining
treated by my own unsteady hands
signs of a body more shell, a husk. You reach
into my gut, ring the holes with your finger
and create a tone resonating through the rings
of us. I wonder what sounds we’ll make,
how long my eyes can stay open under the sun,
and if the rising tide will touch my toes
in areas where I still feel. I watch
as you hold sand between your hands,
carry it like an infant holds hope
and pour the content inside.
We watch as the sand begins to settle
and hope it will stay.
Sean William Dever is an Atlanta-based poet, educator, and editor with an MFA in Creative Writing and a focus in Poetry from Emerson College. He is a Lecturer of English and Writing Studies at Clayton State University. Sean has recently been published by FEED Lit Mag, io Literary Journal, Levee Journal, HOOT, Stickers, Unearthed Literary Magazine, Coffin Bell Journal, and Fearsome Critters Literary Magazine. He was a nominee for 2019’s Best of the Net. Sean is the author of the chapbook, I’ve Been Cancelling Appointments with My Psychiatrist for Two Years Now, published by Swimming with Elephants Publications.
Gretchen Berwick
Gretchen Berwick, from artist statement: I began oil painting at the age of 14 and fell in love at first stroke. My formal education is a BA in Fine Arts with an emphasis on Painting and Illustration from the University at Buffalo. Combining various mediums, textures, and shapes are what interest me.
My abstract work draws on both the human condition as I experience it and the environmental landscape around me. My joy comes from telling a story in bits and pieces by visually engaging the viewers into conversation and allowing them to come to their own conclusions via observing and questioning their preconceived notions about people, places, and events. The three-dimensional canvas also intrigues not only the viewer, but myself as I work with the concept almost like an archeological dig will progress. I have my theories on how I will portray something as I build my canvas; however, often I am wonderfully surprised at what I find bubbling beneath the surface once the painting takes on a life of its own.
James B. Wells
-From The History of the Wedding Band
~
Dr. James B. Wells is a Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice in the School of Justice Studies in the College of Justice & Safety at Eastern Kentucky University. He has an A.A., B.A., and M.S. in Criminal Justice, as well as a Ph.D. in Research, Measurement, and Statistics. In addition to having over forty peer-reviewed publications in areas related to adult corrections and juvenile justice, he has authored or co-authored multiple books and over 150 research reports for various local, state, and federal agencies. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at EKU’s Bluegrass Writing Studio. Recent essays from excerpts in his in-progress memoir appear or are forthcoming in Collateral Journal, About Place Journal, Alternating Current, and Shift. His work has also recently been nominated for the Charter Oak Award for Best Historical.
Thomas Kenneth Anderson
Thomas Kenneth Anderson was born in South Bend, Indiana, raised in Romeo, Michigan, and currently resides in Tacoma, Washington. He is a Western Michigan University graduate working as a paper engineer. His focus is on flash and short fiction, with a background in journalism and satire. He enjoys mountains, beaches, and fantasy baseball.
- Instagram: @tandersonman
Ana Fores-Tamayo
The Road
The road seems endless
caressing the brown land of winter.
Cold rain droplets turning to icicles of
blue smoke,
the division lines of road white against black
yet seeming the meandering way.
Clouds menace the landscape
dark against the horizon,
wet against the drenched sky of winter’s day.
The wheels keep turning about
the wild rose tree, which is dry.
The birds are soundless
countering the backdrop of torrid rain,
hard unbearable pelting.
Cities come and go,
Towns trickle small and tedious,
Gauntlets covering spring and
sun peeking through.
Yet the pathway figures onward,
black merciless tree limbs forsaken
like crooked witches bearing
antidotes of sin.
Why do the browns channel poverty?
Why do the green spots turn dry?
Why do the flowers not grow in the seeming black
of winter?
The cows pasture on the meadow
yet grow scant in the dead of winter.
A yellow line sputters on the white and black and gray.
The haystacks–still a few spotted through the jaundiced land–
rise stark against the bleakness of a leaden earth.
And we travel on, forward forward
shedding waste, not departing where the roadway leads,
but following endless white on black,
interminable finite of eternity.
El camino
An interpretation, not a translation (because translation is never poetry)
El camino se hace interminable,
acariciando la tierra quemada de invierno.
Las gotas frías de la lluvia se convierten en témpanos de
humo azul,
las líneas de división en la carretera–blanco contra negro–
imitan a un sendero serpenteante.
Nubes amenazan el paisaje,
oscuras contra el crudo horizonte,
húmedas frente a un cielo empapado de invierno.
Las ruedas rotan por
el rosal silvestre, que permanece seco.
Los pájaros se encuentran silenciosos
afrontando el telón de una lluvia sofocante,
Atontamiento duro e insoportable.
Las ciudades comienzan y terminan,
Los pueblos fluyen, pequeños y tediosos,
Simulando guantes cubriendo la primavera con
el sol que espía su punto máximo.
Sin embargo, el camino sigue adelante,
con brazos de árboles despiadados, abandonados,
imitando malvadas brujas con sus
antídotos de culpa.
¿Por qué es que el color mestizo simboliza la pobreza?
¿Por qué las tierras verdes se vuelven secas de una vez?
¿Por qué dicen que las flores no crecen en el aparente negro
del invierno?
Las vacas picotean el pasto del prado;
sin embargo, crecen escasas en pleno invierno.
Una línea pálida chispea contra el blanco, negro y gris.
Los almiares–aún algunos salpicando la tierra amarillenta–
resurgen contra la desolación de los campos ya mortíferos.
Y seguimos adelante, avanzando avanzando
arrojando desperdicios, no siguiendo el camino de la carretera,
sino buscando el infinito blanco sobre el negro,
interminable límite de la eternidad.
Conflicto
Poem with its interpretation previously published in Fron//tera, Madrid, Spain, September 2017
Atrapada entre dos idiomas
me siento . . . nadie.
Entiendo que me quiera atraer el romance
de la lengua,
su ritmo escalante,
su sabrosura ardiente.
Las palabras entendidas
y tan poco conocidas
también me seducen,
y el sonido musical me baila,
vuela alto,
se esconde entre los suspiros
y desaires solitarios.
Pero cuando hablo aún no entiendo
el desorden posesivo
de mi otra lengua,
esas palabras que son otras,
no las mías,
que me ahorcan
a través de dos idiomas confundidos.
Siempre sobresale el más sobrio,
el más andante,
el son masculino y agresivo
de ese otro,
el idioma ajeno que hasta poco
creía yo que era el mío.
Pero no lo es,
porque con palabras dulces,
apasionadas e instintivas,
el ritmo de la lengua
es único,
y mi idioma
es la madre en donde
yo nací.
Conflict
An interpretation, not a translation (because translation is never poetry)
Trapped between two languages
I feel as if I were . . .
no one.
I understand that language may romance me,
its escalating rhythm,
its ardent nectar.
Words that are understood
but so little known
indeed seduce me,
their musical sounds dance with me,
fly on high,
hide among the sighs,
the slights of hand, the solitary snubs.
But when I speak
still I do not understand
the possessive disorder
of my other tongue,
those words that are so different,
not my own,
words that choke me
through two confounded languages.
The more sober one always excels,
that one knight errant,
the masculine aggressive yin
of that other,
the foreign language that until recently
I thought was mine.
But it is not,
because with sweet lyrics,
passionate, instinctual:
the rhythm of the tongue
is peerless,
and my language
is the mother where
I was born.
Ana Fores-Tamayo, an academic not paid enough for her trouble, wanted instead to do something that mattered: work with asylum seekers. She advocates for marginalized refugee families from Mexico and Central America. Working with asylum seekers is heart-wrenching, yet satisfying. It is also quite humbling.
Her labor has eased her own sense of displacement, being a child refugee always trying to find home. In parallel, poetry is her escape. She has had work published in The Raving Press, The Laurel Review, Indolent Books, and many other online and in-print anthologies and journals. Her poetry in translation and photography have been featured at home and internationally, too.
Writing is a catharsis from the cruelty yet ecstasy of her work, she claims. Through it, she keeps tilting at windmills.
Megan Rilkoff
Megan Rilkoff is a writer and a teacher of young writers living in Central Pennsylvania with her fiancé. She has previously taught English in New York City and Laos. She loves sharing her work with her students to inspire them to take risks and create. Her work has been published in From Whispers to Roars.
Jeremiah Gilbert
Jeremiah Gilbert is an award-winning photographer and avid traveler based out of Southern California. On March 19, 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom became the first United States governor to set mandatory stay-at-home restrictions to help combat the coronavirus outbreak. To keep his creative juices flowing, Jeremiah has been challenging himself creatively by taking a daily photo around the house, which he calls Shelter-in-Place Still Lifes. This is a selection from the first 60 days. He can be found on Instagram @jg_travels.
James Constantine Hatzopoulos
Gardens
A contraction of two words
is like a tightly buttoned
collar.
–slipped together words,
got a job spotting tulips –
connoisseur. A backdrop garden
prattle. For friends
sick in bed I pull flowers,
and for rainy days I loosen words
in the everlasting sun.
I am going back to Japan to visit Hokkaido
some spring. For this thought
I talk to friends about
ground moss of afternoon
trails canopied by
cool green shadows.
I talk to soil unfooted
and pruned leaves slipped together
with me.
James Constantine Hatzopoulos lives, writes, and teaches in Northern California. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy and an Ed.M. in Secondary Education.
Janay Brun
Neighbor
The dragonfly hovers.
I see her shadow circling my feet.
I’m not sure where she comes from in this land of concrete.
I welcome her company.
I place a bowl of water among the flowers
and invite her to stay, to take a sip.
Janay Brun is a human that relates better to an outside world devoid of humans than an inside one full of them. She roams the saguaro-studded mountains and cottonwood creek beds of southern Arizona composing poems and narratives along the trail that she mostly forgets.
Jocelyn M. Ulevicus
Jocelyn M. Ulevicus has a background in social work, psychology, and public health. Her work is forthcoming and published in magazines such as Crab Fat, Beyond Words, The Dewdrop, Entropy, and Life in 10 Minutes. Ms. Ulevicus currently resides in Amsterdam and is finalizing her first book, a memoir, titled The Birth of a Tree, which was recently shortlisted for the Santa Fe Writer’s Program 2019 Literary Award, judged by Carmen Maria Machado. In her spare time, she hunts for truth and beauty.
