Cover image: "Star-Studded" by Madison Fairburn
Gallery 3
Visual Art, Poetry, and Prose
Christopher Paul Brown
Christopher Paul Brown is known for his exploration of the unconscious through improvisation and the cultivation of serendipity and synchronicity via alchemy. Over the past three years his art was exhibited twice in Rome, Italy and in Belgrade, Serbia. His series of ten photographs, titled Obscure Reveal, were exhibited at a Florida museum in 2017. His work has appeared in juried exhibitions throughout the USA and in books and periodicals. Brown earned a BA in Film from Columbia College Chicago in 1980. He was born in Dubuque, Iowa, USA and now resides in Asheville, North Carolina.
- Website: www.christopherpaulbrown.com
Emily Hyland
Golden Hour Sculpture Shadow
In the bedroom we painted lavender
before Brooklyn had towers
we could see the great amplitude
of neighborhoods down to the Verrazzano
hit with light every night
struck across the Hudson like a match.
Sometimes we’d have to strip bare
as the star beamed like fire
and you’d endeavor, in your boxer shorts
to photograph its phosphorescence
pictures long buried now
in some drawer we do not share.
Years before, you’d inherited
a deity from your dad
it sat bronzed, centered on the mantel
array of arms
outstretched in giant antique awesomeness
cross-legged and crowned
it livened into fantastic shadow
in the golden hours of that room
the whole wall cast in the projection of divinity—
unpreserved, we were not everything
or included in everything, even there.
Emily Hyland’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Apple Valley Review, armarolla, Belle Ombre, Belletrist Magazine, The Brooklyn Review, The Conglomerate, Free State Review, Mount Hope Magazine, Neologism Poetry Journal, Sixfold, Palette Poetry, The Virginia Normal, and Stretching Panties Magazine. A restaurateur and English professor from New York City, she received her MFA in poetry and her MA in English education from Brooklyn College. Her cookbook, Emily: The Cookbook, was published by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, in 2018. She is a member of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and studies writing with Mirabai Starr at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. Emily is the cofounder of the national restaurant groups Pizza Loves Emily and Emmy Squared Pizza.
Shyla Shehan
Open Window
What if
one day all the cars below were stopped in gridlock
and people all got out
and started talking—started walking home or somewhere else
they wanted?
Would she have written that note that day and gone out the window?
Would she have been
thirty-two flights above, thirty something, loving nothing
throwing herself away
to change her life?
Would he have gone out the window after her?
Would we?
Or would we end up by a stream with flowers in our hair? Would we
find peace
is not having to decide
and work on watching birds fly or the sunset or something else—
holding on to life
instead
of learning to let go?
Would we
discover what we lost
when we lost our way, climbing through the gridlock
climbing
inside a cinder block building stairwell, paint chipping off the handrail
to this 32nd floor apartment
window?
Shyla Shehan is an analytical Virgo who was raised in Iowa and has spent the majority of her life in the Midwest. She currently lives in Omaha, Nebraska and will earn an MFA in Writing from the University of Nebraska in 2020, where she received an American Academy of Poets Prize. Shyla is a mom to two amazing humans and four wily cats. She enjoys gardening, road trips, and hunting for the perfect cheeseburger. More about Shyla can be found at www.shylashehan.com.
Brian D. Cohen
Brian D. Cohen is an educator, artist, and writer. In 1989 he founded Bridge Press to further the association and integration of visual image, original text, and book structure. Artist’s books and prints by Cohen have been shown in over forty individual exhibitions and in over 200 group shows. His books and etchings are held by major private and public collections throughout the country. Cohen was the first-place winner of major international print competitions in San Diego, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. His essays and reviews on the arts and education appear in the Huffington Post and other online and print publications. He lives in Westmoreland, New Hampshire.
Lisa Novick
Where the Butterflies Sleep
As a child, I often woke in the early morning darkness, wishing it were light. Not from fear, but excitement at what the day might bring. Snug and warm in bed, I waited for the soft coos of the mourning doves that would signal sunrise was near. And when, at last, light leaked into the room around the edges of my curtains, I scrambled out of bed and into my play clothes, pajamas bunched underneath. The sooner I could be outside, the better. Then, as now, I loved the waking beauty of the day.
Fifty years later, pajamas under my sweater and jeans, I am again outside in chilly morning air, the sky dark overhead. Sitting on the cold cement steps of my front porch, I watch a faint gleam in the southeastern sky. The gleam becomes brighter with each breath I take. Soon, shimmering bands of brilliant gold, deep orange and magenta stretch from the San Gabriel Mountains to the saddleback of Mt. Santiago fifty miles in the distance. In purple shadow, the faces of the mountains pale as the colors above them glow brighter and brighter. Since childhood, I have oriented myself by these mountains. Near them, I know I am home.
Silhouettes of neighbors’ palms and pines block portions of my view, so I step down into my front yard. Through my socks, the mulch is prickly underfoot. I sit down on a log for an unobstructed view of the San Gabriels. One segment of their ridgeline glows brighter than the rest. There, the light becomes yellow, then buttercream, then golden white, and then the luminous arc of the sun appears, so bright I have to quickly look away. To the south, low clouds ripple with incandescent ridges of yellow, apricot and pink that shift to periwinkle and robin’s egg blue at skyward edge. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the disc of the sun grow more and more complete, then appear in its entirety, a ball of shimmering orange light.
I stand and stretch in the morning chill, stiffer than I’d like. Soft orange sunlight bathes the yard. The young oaks, bush sunflower, buckwheat, penstemon, and a variety of sages, all native, look washed in warmth. A silvery glint in a Cleveland sage catches my eye.
Peering down into the dense, gray-green leaves, I nearly overlook the Gulf Fritillary butterfly clinging to an upright branch. Wings together, stone still, the butterfly is tucked among the branches for safety, waiting out the cold of the night. Drops of silver streak the dull orange underside of the butterfly’s wings. I study the jointed tendrils of her legs, the white fur on her chest, the orange knobs at the ends of her antennae. Worried that my proximity might frighten the butterfly, I step away from the plant. When I do, four other Gulf Fritillaries glitter among the branches.
Outside to see the sunrise, I’ve discovered where the butterflies sleep.
Clustered on the southeastern side of the sage, the butterflies are waiting for the warmth that will allow them to move their wings. In dappled light among the leaves, the butterflies wait. I peer into the other parts of the sage. No butterflies there. Only on the side that first receives the morning light.
Aching from the cold, I go inside the house to warm up. Then, every fifteen minutes or so for the next hour, I check on the butterflies. Something is different each time I return: One butterfly has crawled up to the tip of its branch; one is slowly pumping its wings, revealing its bright orange topside streaked with black; one has changed position so that its closed wings are perpendicular to the rays of the sun. All are nearly the same size with similar markings, the females slightly larger, their colors more subdued. I am in awe of these delicate-looking creatures somehow robust enough to live in a place where night-time winter temperatures can dip below freezing and day-time summer temperatures can hover above 104 degrees Fahrenheit—the temperature that all but shuts down photosynthesis in plants.
It’s not just luck that the Gulf Fritillaries are in my yard. I extended a sixty-foot-long invitation: a rebar fence planted with passion vine—the host plant for Gulf Fritillary caterpillars. Dark green and lobed like a hand, the leaves of blue passionflower vine contain a mix of toxic alkaloids that release cyanide in the body. Gulf Fritillary caterpillars specialize on the leaves. Female Gulf Fritillaries zero in on the chemical signature of the plant; passion vines are where they must lay their eggs. With chemical receptors on their antennae, legs, and body, butterflies are equipped to find the plants their caterpillars cannot live without. By day, Gulf Fritillaries swirl in aerial displays above the vine, mate among the leaves, and lay their eggs. By night, the butterflies shelter nearby in the sage.
As the mountains orient me, passion vines orient Gulf Fritillaries. Near them, the butterflies know they are home.
Lisa Novick was a member of Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti’s Biodiversity Expert Council and Urban Ecosystems Working Group, as well as Director of Outreach and K-12 Education for the Theodore Payne Foundation. She co-founded Landscape Integrity Films and Education (on YouTube), whose work has been supported by water districts in Southern California. Her short fiction has appeared in Bellowing Ark, Kaleidoscope, and Rohwedder, and her creative nonfiction in The Write Launch and Plants & Poetry Journal. Forthcoming work: creative nonfiction in The Hopper magazine and, in Fall 2021, the picture book Sometimes a Question through Dawn Publications, an imprint of Sourcebooks eXplore. Now living in France, Lisa focuses on writing and community activism. Where the Butterflies Sleep is part of a collection of stories in progress.
Julia Gibson
Julia Gibson is an aerospace engineer, poet, and visual artist based in Toronto. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Two Doors, was published in 2018 by Clare Songbirds Publishing House. A committed ally of pluralism and free speech, she is a member of the production team for Shab-e She’r, Toronto’s bravest and most diverse poetry series.
Madison Fairburn
Madison Fairburn is an artist, educator, and writer who lives in Richmond, VA. If you look inside Madison’s family photo albums, you’ll see her parents’ landscaping successes. Photos of plants, their blooms, and the arrangement of them in the yard are next to family holiday photos and birthday celebrations, which notes their importance. These albums also hold pictures of her paternal grandfather’s farm and her maternal grandfather’s elaborate garden. Madison did not inherit her parents’ natural green thumb, but she did receive a visual language rooted in the earth, agricultural practices, and a strong appreciation for all things botanical. She loves tedious, obsessive, and labor-intensive processes as much as she loves ideas and conceptual work. Her work floats somewhere in between these two worlds.
- Website: www.bymadisonchase.com
- Instagram: @by.madison.chase
Loss, grief, and healing have been central in my work. I create relationships between physical objects and universal emotions based on my internal dialogue and experiences. I used to shoot strictly black and white films and print in the darkroom. However, more of my work is becoming a hybrid of darkroom prints, color film scans, and digital images. The images “Dark Pairing,” “Self-Manicure,” and “Whiskey Neat” included here are from a series titled “Whole/Hole,” which was completed during our Spring stay-at-home orders. I buried the inner circles for 1-2 weeks, then dug them up before letting them “soak” with common household items. I also have film scans of magnolia leaves as I notice our connection between the ground to the sky—being grounded and yet open to infinite possibilities. This body of work is a byproduct of the healing process during uncertain times.
Patrick T. Reardon
Psalm zero
Let me tell you:
Listen:
My father, self-statued
in every one of his
corners, joined me in
the upper room, and
my son, joyfully
tuxedoed — both tall,
both aching, both with
feet for me to wash.
And my brother, also
tall, washed white in
the 3 a.m. rain-snow
of the Lamb, his last
stains sacreding
cement and icy grass.
All named David.
None with the shepherd
king’s song or swagger.
All trying to scratch
a sacred itch.
Patrick T. Reardon, who has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize, is the author of ten books, including the poetry collection Requiem for David and the history The Loop: The “L” Tracks That Shaped and Saved Chicago. His poetry has appeared in Burningword Literary Journal, The Esthetic Apostle, Ground Fresh Thursday, Literary Orphans, Rhino, Spank the Carp, Main Street Rag, The Write Launch, Meat for Tea, Silver Birch Press, UCity Review, and Under a Warm Green Linden. His memoir in prose poems Puddin: The Autobiography of a Baby is to be published in 2021 by Third World Press.
Victoria Hattersley
The Goldfish
The bloody fish is long dead; you appear to be still very much alive – if a little ruffled by time. But it’s been more than fifteen years, so of course you look older now. Can’t even call yourself a girl anymore, can you? In fact you look a lot like your mum in those grainy photos from the ’80s that you used to keep in fading albums with pressed flowers on the front: big hair and blue eyeshadow and holding Baby You in her arms.
Now the door of the pub across the road with the hangman’s noose on the peeling sign opens to cough out some smokers and the Rolling Stones are blaring out; of course it will make you think, Me and Leah would be there right now, if this was 15 years ago. A group of you probably, none of you with jobs yet but somehow still able to afford endless drinks, talking happy shit that seemed important and not knowing yet what time really meant.
Now look at you – sitting upright in a café with a pot of tea in front of you like you’re something Alan Bennett wrote. Time’s a colossal bitch.
At this moment, as though responding to this thought, you look down at your stomach – still clearly sticking out more than it ought to since the baby – and you’re studying your hands. Who cares? You’re fine, of course.
Leah’s late, like always, that’s what you’re thinking – and of course you don’t even know why you’re here, do you? She didn’t give a damn about me really – or anyone, you’re thinking. It was all her, in the end – she turned everything back to herself, even the day poor Grandma drowned in the pond.
About time to ask yourself: why does she want to meet up when it’s been so long you can’t even remember what it was that made you lose contact in the first place?
~
Victoria Hattersley lives in Norwich, UK, and works in publishing as a technical journalist of sorts. She’s had a few stories anthologised (by Unthank Books, UK; Great Weather for MEDIA, US; and The Cossack Review, US; among others) but had let the writing slide a bit the past couple of years. Then last year she was diagnosed with MS which, although she will be the first to admit kind of sucked, has also given her a kick to get back to doing what she loves.
Timothy Tarkelly
Three Figures Near a Canal with Windmill by H.P. Bremmer
Inscribed above the entrance to hell:
For those who love color, abandon all hope.
Your cone cells have been co-opted,
their red-green-blue robbed
by disease, the inevitable, destiny’s draining hands.
We venture in and find the average joe boiling
in his own guts, punishment for
every time he didn’t notice
the carved entryways, or cubist architecture,
every time he walked right on by
an art gallery, mumbling something about wasted money,
when he told his daughter she needed to major
in something marketable.
Once your body has melted,
purged itself of your last memories,
opinions on food, every trace of every thought
you get to spend eternity walking your favorite streets
in the dark, in a greyscale nightmare.
Timothy Tarkelly’s work has appeared in unstamatic, Back Patio Press, Paragon Journal, Floodlight Editions, and others. He has two full length collections published by Spartan Press: Luckhound (2020) and Gently in Manner, Strongly in Deed: Poems on Eisenhower (2019). When he’s not writing, he teaches in Southeast Kansas.
Tricia Lynn Townes
Tricia Lynn Townes is a painter/sometimes photographer who enjoys a good garden.
Janet Stevenson
Digesting The Truth
We’re seated together,
but I’m feeling miles apart
from my parents.
Smooth jazz complements
Sunday’s brunch.
They order their usual,
sunny-side eggs
beautifully paired, well-plated.
After today, I hope they keep
their promise to always love me
as much as their vintage
Shelby GT 350.
Will they?
The instant I’m out, silence seems
naturally exaggerated,
like their eggs in stare-down mode
until poked.
Sipping scotch, my father tap, taps
the table in time with the music
wishing he heard something different.
Then velvety yolks trickle out
like a cold drizzle.
Janet Stevenson resides in Massachusetts. She has been published in Haunted Waters Press, Fine Lines, Star 82 Review, and DAWN, the RISE literary journal of Rivier University. Janet is a member of the Hyla Brook Poets who read at the Robert Frost Farm in New Hampshire.
Scout Roux
The Sandwich that Luck Bought
I have always had bad luck. Luck so bad you could set your clock by it. What I mean is that if I flipped a coin and called heads 100 times in a row, that coin would show tails every time. What I mean is that I have never won a game of rock, paper, scissors.
After some extensive online research, I discovered most all my earthly problems are caused by a weakened luck muscle which, wouldn’t you know it, sits right at the base of your neck and out of sight.
One article I came across informed me of anti-wishes, and the little demons who wish them. It warned that luck is not something one has or does not have, but rather a thing you build and maintain. And wishing is to your luck what sit-ups are to your abdomen. Now isn’t that something?
People wish on a lot of things: dandelions, pennies, a clock that shows a certain time. But did you know? An eyelash wish is the best, the most concentrated, the likeliest-to-come-true wish. By far.
Now here’s the thing I messed up the most. A wish doesn’t just disappear when you don’t use it. Even fully grown, humans often struggle with object permanence. Think of when you’ve just gnawed on your nails or ran a hand through your hair. All the little bits of you these actions create. Flick the nail away; shake your fingers free of a loose strand; they’re forgotten. But they’re still around.
You can technically wish on anything. And if you ask me, you should. Nails, nose hairs, or 12:21. I do, just to be safe. My theory is that all these years, some malignant force has been using my unspent wishes against me. I imagine thousands upon thousands of these anti-wishes following me around, pinpricks of darkness which gather thick enough to block out the sun.
I’m always wishing nowadays, every day, on everything. It’s exhausting, but I can feel the muscle getting stronger. I’m hoping I can make up for lost time and start to turn my luck around.
Last month, for the first time in all my life, I found a penny on the ground. It was heads up. A different me would have walked right past it. Who cares about a penny? But the next day, I found another one. And the next day, and the next…
Some people say a penny doesn’t have any value. Did you know, in this day and age, it costs more to make a penny than the dang thing’s worth? When they find one on the sidewalk, most people don’t even bother picking it up.
30 days have gone by since my new routine. For 30 days I’ve found a penny heads up on the ground, picked it up, and held it to the light like a little miracle. And to me it is.
I keep all my miracles in a jar on my kitchen counter at home. A penny may be useless on its own, but if I keep this up, someday down the line I could buy myself lunch. The sandwich that luck bought. Now wouldn’t that be something?
Scout Roux is a writer of short fiction and poetry in Madison, WI. Their work has been featured in Barstow & Grand, The Allegheny Review, and Furrow Magazine, among others. Scout is a fiction editor for Nightingale & Sparrow Magazine and tweets @scoutroux.
Christian McCulloch
Christian McCulloch is a Scottish writer with a background in fine art. He’s been an international teacher in the British West Indies, Singapore (Principal), Japan, and Hong Kong, as well as 10 years in Special Needs in the UK. He now writes full time. He has written 10 novels, 12 novellas, and many short stories. His artwork can be viewed at www.fineartamerica.com/art/christian+mcculloch.
