Cover image: "The Far Country (2)" by Julie Fritz
Gallery 3
Visual Art, Poetry, and Prose
Igor Zusev
Igor Zusev is a creator of chaos art. After a lengthy career in tech and AV project management, Igor discovered art as a way to unwind and connect with himself…and it all started with adult coloring books, shortly followed by a gifted paint set. He dove into it with enthusiasm, often scouring thrift stores for elements he could add and experiment with. Igor settled into his unique style of using rollers to paint, and layering cut-outs onto canvas. Sometimes he’ll produce a deeply personal piece, and other times you’ll find him exploring messages he wants to portray in his style.
Brittany N. Jaekel
commute
at first i needed my little signs — the field of solar panels — the blown-out barn — the strange, fake teepee — but as the weeks passed the corn grew too tall, and i had to learn my way all over again.
now the machines have roared through, lights burning ferociously, tearing holes in the night-fabric. the old landscape emerges dark, barren, and wet with snow. my long-lost friends: grids of black glass — the wounded flower of wood — the skin of the teepee, looking worse for wear:
clutter in the map.
commute (tonight)
the clouds crawl toward the moon like a rush of seawater
the sky is taller than it should be
the forest has lost its fullness.
the souls tumble in ragged wind,
crushing grass, rushing
to the edges of
this night,
this night
when the membrane
weakens, when the ghosts
can press their faces against
the glass, and maybe see their breath.
Brittany N. Jaekel writes from Minnesota, where she works in the medical devices industry. Her work has appeared in RHINO, Bird’s Thumb, Right Hand Pointing, and other places, and she has received several awards for writing and research. She earned a BA in creative writing from Northwestern University and a PhD in Hearing and Speech Sciences from the University of Maryland. Visit www.brittanynjaekel.com to view more of her literary and scientific work.
Andi Myles
The Cannibal
“Take. Eat.
This is My body.”
That’s gross motherfucker.
Unless you are talking about
the delicious sensation that shivered across my skin
when I first learned the wolf devoured Little Red.
When I was young, I gloried
in the privilege of swallowing you
after we registered my every sin.
I don’t trust your meat
or the seed it implanted in me as a child—
now full term.
Let’s see what we birth.
Shall we?
Andi Myles is a Washington DC area science writer by day, but she nourishes her creative writing ambitions at red lights, on walks, and in pediatrician waiting rooms. She has published a lyric essay in Alligator Juniper, poetry in Beyond Words, and received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.
Matina Vossou
Matina Vossou is a self-taught artist painting with acrylics and toothpicks. She is based in Athens, Greece.
- Instagram: @matinavossou
- Website: www.saatchiart.com/account/profile/1398719
Rachel Eban
Bicep
I dug a hole in the soil with my hands, and it stuck darkly under my nails. The earth in my fruit cage was wet and warm, red from the juice of crushed raspberries and fertile with the bodies of little dead things. I buried you there to grow tall and strong. When you were sturdier than me and your head came up higher than the plum tree by your patch, you tore your feet from your roots and came into my kitchen. Your muddy soles got dirt all over my clean floors. I didn’t mind, that first time.
It was good for a bit. You didn’t smell like soap and, when you held me, your beard scratched at my chin when we kissed. All my friends loved you and congratulated me on finding such a strong and handsome husband.
But you forgot my birthday. You never took the garbage out when I had asked you a thousand times and it brought the smell of rot into our home. When you walked through the door, slick with your work sweat, and I didn’t have dinner ready, well, you could be quite mean.
So, I fixed you a drink. Garnished with homegrown orange peel and sleeping nightshade. While you were asleep, I cut off the hand you hit me with. I chopped it into a salad. We ate it for lunch the next day. You were delicious, and I felt better after that. When you were rude to my mother, I cut out your tongue and baked it into a pie. When you started going for those long drives without me, I severed your legs and froze most of them for later. I spread your liver on crackers and gave it to my friends, who were less impressed with you now that you weren’t much more than a torso.
I took you to bed one last time. I balanced you on a tray, with a knife and fork and the TV on, and I chewed through the last of you. Except for the bit which I needed to plant. Last time, I had grown you from tough muscle, so you’d come out all wrong. The next time, I knew, would be different.
~
Rachel Eban was born and raised in London, England. She is primarily interested in weird fiction: the surreal, fantastical, strange and eerie. When she isn’t writing, she fills her time watching cartoons with her two large cats. To read another of her stories, purchase “Bathory” for Kindle here.
Kurt Luchs
Behind or Beyond
Is there anything behind or beyond?
Unknown. Insufficient data.
Most of the cerebral cortex is devoted to visual processing,
and perhaps our natural bent for pattern recognition
leads us to look for purpose and meaning
where our eyes cannot reach, in the invisible heart of things.
The year is turning, the leaves are turning, I am turning.
Into what? Questions many, answers none.
The least I can do is record my ignorance and confusion accurately.
On planet earth I have moved a few paces north and west,
far enough to take me from those I love.
I might as well be living across the ocean
in a different century. My skills are in demand here,
and for that I receive food and drink and a third-floor window
from which to observe the coming of autumn to Red Wing, Minnesota,
a bare beauty reminding me that I am alone, I always was.
From here I can see where earth and sky appear to meet
but not whatever might be behind or beyond them both.
Kurt Luchs has poems published or forthcoming in Plume Poetry Journal, The American Journal of Poetry, and The Bitter Oleander. He won the 2019 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest, and has written humor for the New Yorker, the Onion and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. His books include a humor collection, It’s Funny Until Someone Loses an Eye (Then It’s Really Funny), and a poetry chapbook, One of These Things Is Not Like the Other. His first full-length poetry collection, Falling in the Direction of Up, is forthcoming from Sagging Meniscus Press. Website: www.kurtluchs.com
Julie Fritz
Pentimento
The first time he brought me to his home
there was a softness I understood;
he had a femininity I worshipped
and a dead wife I was thankful for.
Slowly and gently I took over
the quietness of the rooms and
wasn’t surprised she was still there
even a year later.
Taupe hairs caught in the dustpan,
tiny quilting needles I didn’t even know
existed, an English china tea set
like mother’s, worn garden gloves.
I moved in fresh furniture, moved out
foreign relatives’ photos, and still there
was always a luminance on the walls
that didn’t belong to me.
But that was fine,
wives should remain
in their homes after so much
care and suffering.
I plan to stay in all of mine,
shining through every
new coat of paint
she puts on.
Julie Fritz is an abstract landscape artist working in the oil and cold wax medium. As many as thirty layers of transparent colors are applied to bring to life a specific place and a lifetime of memories. She now calls herself an emerging artist at the age of 78. Her poems choose a simple language but confront a complex set of emotions, and when you arrive at the end, there is usually a surprise but not an answer. Website: www.juliefritz.com
Frances Koziar
Note: This is a work of historical fiction based on the Aztec New Fire Ceremony, last held in 1507 in what is now central Mexico.
The Rite of New Fire. Xiuhtlalpilli.
We huddle on the rooftop in utter darkness. Even the stars, the lights of the Tzitzimime, are hidden by dense cloud. We wait.
I clutch a maguey thorn in my small brown hand. It would be the greatest gift to be able to use it on myself. To bleed my ears in thanks and love and submission and offering. To live one more year, one more epoch.
But that’s not what I am thinking about.
I am thinking about grandfather, my mother’s father. I am thinking of how he always smiles. I am thinking of my mother, crouched beside me now, her face calm despite everything. And I am thinking of the gods.
The gods need us, my mother told me once. They need our blood, our power, our spirits after we die. Without us they would be weak, and without them—without the rain and the earth and the maize—we would die.
But she had never said that they would need my grandfather.
I try to be as still as my mother, but my hands fiddle with my cotton shift, clench around my awl. Take care, I remind myself, for it is still Nenontemi, and unlike the Rite of New Fire, I have seen many Nenontemi’s. They are the last five days of the year; the dead days are how I have always thought of them. The days when no one works and the courthouse is empty. The days when no one argues, when everyone is like a shadow of themselves. Five days of no fires. Five days of uncertainty. Five days in a time apart from time.
But this is no ordinary Nenontemi.
Four of my family members crouch on the roof around me, but I can’t hear anything, not even my mother’s breathing. We don’t wish to draw attention, I know, but maybe too, there is nothing to say. We watch the Hill of the Star, rising up over the great capital of Tenochtitlan, and we wait.
~
Frances Koziar is a young, recently retired (disabled) Aztec archaeologist who specialized in human sacrifice and Aztec ontology. Her prose and poetry have appeared in 45+ literary magazines and she is seeking an agent for a diverse NA high fantasy novel. She lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Website: www.franceskoziar.wixsite.com/author
Kelsi Folsom
Prehistoric
Is the earth
just like a
big spinning brain,
teetering on the edge
of panic and peace?
If I pull a bone
from the ground
would I steal
from another time
running around mine
in concentric circles?
Maybe millions
of years ago,
an Allosaurus stumbles
as a thigh bone
is removed,
Meticulously
lying down
To a studious
future of extinction.
I am amazed by time,
by eternity’s tactile
web of connections.
Nothing is fixed,
but the spin
of persistence—
angling,
Arching,
hovering,
Yearning,
touching,
Longing,
all for the sake of knowing
it was.
But the miracle
of time is
Relevance
and
Remembering,
like finding
the hidden meaning
Under layers and layers of dirt.
Kelsi Folsom is a Texas-born writer whose work is published in The Caribbean Writer, West Texas Literary Review, Grit & Virtue, Mothers Always Write, Voice of Eve, borrowed solace, and elsewhere. She is the author of Buried in the Margins (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and poetry chapbook Words the Dirt Meant to Share (Desert Willow Press, 2018), and she was recently a featured poet for Tupelo Press’s 30/30 Project. She enjoys traveling with her husband and four kids, scouring estate sales, getting lost in a good novel, occasionally putting her B.M. in Voice Performance to good use, and connecting with her readers on Instagram @kelsifolsom.
Jennifer Carrier
Jennifer Carrier is a visual artist from San Jose, California. She uses art as a tool for good and finds comfort and purpose in the process of creating “chill” and unbothered atmospheres. She has painted several public murals, has shown at many venues and galleries across the Bay Area, and is a Resident Artist at KALEID Gallery in San Jose. Jennifer has been an art instructor for ten years and thrives in helping people of all ages find their voice through their creations.
- Website: www.jennifercarrierarts.com
- Instagram: @jenneeferjuneeper
Holly Eva Allen
What Have You Done
Clamoring into your Buick, your Ford,
your hunk of drab fiberglass and stained footing,
you set a gleeful course for somewhere once-mentioned,
somewhere once-photographed
and pasted to the edge of your mother’s headboard
with the foggy bloom of super glue
and the lonely mauve of waxy lipstick leftovers.
You bring your lovers, your brothers, your so-called-friends.
You picture them like deck boys, swabbing boys,
cabin boys,
all tousled hair and unwanted squawking
while you endure fifty-five, tease sixty, down the highway.
When you park and stretch your trembling legs,
when you first lay eyes on that postcard-place of childhood color,
the breath goes right out of you.
What have they done, what have they done,
with their lemon-lime-soda-can and their impish indiscretions?
The fields are parking lots, the parking lots are troughs,
troughs filled with bubblegum hills
and the glossy-dark stains of where-vomit-once-was.
What have they done, what have they done,
with their silly photograph-hopes and their colorless cars
just like yours.
Holly Eva Allen is a writer currently living in California. She has a degree in English from the University of California. Her work has been previously published in magazines and sites such as Rue Scribe, Blue Unicorn, The Courtship of Winds, and The Slanted House. She is currently working on a Master’s in English at Claremont Graduate University. You can find her work at www.hollyevaallen.wordpress.com or follow her on Instagram by searching for @hollyevaallen.
Nina Wilson
Nina Wilson is an author, poet, and photographer from Iowa. She enjoys hiking with her cat and exploring cemeteries. Her work has been published in over a dozen literary magazines and she is the author of two novels, Surrender Language and Malady.
