Issue 54, October 2021

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Dragonfly Out in the Sun

Tracey Dean Widelitz

Hold On To Me,
Sunlit Beauty,
and Rose Petals and Golden Wings

Refugees DRC

Despair Paintings

Owen Brown

The world seems to carry on as if there aren’t a million reasons to be shocked. But because I don’t want to go numb, I try to paint them, at least a few. For these, I paint figuratively, as I was trained, even though now, often, my desires, and my output, is abstract. Still, how can we ignore the drought in Afghanistan, the strife in Sudan, the war in Gaza, the invasion of Ukraine? Or even what goes on in our own lives?

Finding a Pathway

Finding a Pathway

Mark Rosalbo

As an emerging artist, the art form I work with is primarily abstract painting and large-scale installations. My artistic process involves using various mediums and techniques to create physical manifestations of internal dialogues and personal judgments. In my abstract paintings, I use house paint, various tools, and textured canvases. The technique involves creating overconfident brushstrokes that mask my imposter syndrome, with multiple layers of paint partially hidden under the surface. The inner turmoil arising from self-doubt is expressed as geometric shapes woven together with texture.

In Between

Wholeness Through Fracture: Sculpting the Human Condition

Aleksandra Scepanovic

Three works in clay by Aleksandra Scepanovic.
Each of these works tells a story of the complexity and beauty found in life’s fractures, embracing the wholeness that emerges through resilience.

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Coastal Grey

Miki Simic

This series of photographs, titled “Coastal Grey,” depicts elements of summer themes. My goal was to capture a vibrant setting and allow the viewer to realize it remains vibrant even though color is lacking.

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Symphony in Green

Patrice Sullivan

I paint landscapes, interiors, exteriors, still life’s with figures interacting and posing for the camera displaying memorable moments with families, friends, and neighbors.

friends

Friends, Triplets, and Family Narrative

Tianyagenv Yan

Tianyagenv uses light clay to make miniature figures and wishes to capture the characteristics of femininity, vulnerability, and resilience in potential.

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Green Canyon Bridge 1993, Thrive, and Tarot Deck: The Moon

Robb Kunz

My paintings explore the abstract simplicity of ordinary life and the deductive impulse to see ourselves reflected back in art.

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Metamorphosis

Marianne Dalton

The photographs are from the series, Metamorphosis. Each painterly creation constructed from dozens of layered photographs is driven by my reaction to nature’s extreme seasonal change.

La Huasteca

La Huasteca, Roots in Nuevo Leon, and Frames

Tee Pace

La Huasteca, Roots in Nuevo Leon, and Frames

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Cherry Blossoms

Annika Connor

Cherry Blossom Forest

Les Femmes Mondiales Black and White

Les Femmes Mondiales Black and White

Janet Brugos

Les Femmes Mondiales Black and White
Hurricane
Chicago Ice

Sunset over the Pacific

Three Photographs

Lawrence Bridges

UNDER THE PIER, MALIBU CA
SUNSET OVER THE PACIFIC
and POOL, POST RANCH INN, BIG SUR

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Joshua Tree Project

Holly Willis

The images are part of a larger series created in the Mojave Desert around Joshua Tree in the fall of 2023 that explore the shifting state of the desert.

October Still Life

Chasing Paradise

Marianne Dalton

This series, Chasing Paradise, draws upon my work as a fine artist in painting, as I create stylized photographs of flowers and plants found in my rural environment.

Turtle Light

Ocean Sleep and Turtle Light

Maite Russell

Turtle Light and Ocean Sleep are works of multimedia and sculpture mediums, respectively, depicting the natural world with fantastical elements.

Issue 54, October 2021

Featured image for “Signs of Amelia”
Kathleen Shemer

Signs of Amelia

Great whooping sounds, a furious rattling, and a pounding like thunder spread through the lab. Brad felt the concrete building vibrate under him. The chimpanzees were banging and smashing on the steel slats of their cages, using their hands and feet. He dropped the bolt cutters he had used on the loading dock door and pushed into the sound. He had to find Amelia before someone found him.

October 2021
Featured image for “The Birth of the Banshee”
Micaela Michalk

The Birth of the Banshee

I’ve always loved cemeteries, but my parents said I was tempting fate. Every time I cut through the graveyard to walk home from school, my mom would be waiting on the porch, hand covering her mouth as if she had held her breath since the bell rang. She somehow always knew the days I took the shortcut. Her pale face beckoned me inside quickly, lest a spirit should have followed me.

October 2021
Featured image for “Roman Days”
Paul Perilli

Roman Days

Willie’s new to Rome. In town with his companion Anne, an artist with a one-year residency at the Crest Foundation, they have an apartmentino on the second floor of a giant villa that fifty others live in with them. It’s a neighborhood southwest of the Vatican with good markets and restaurants, a big park he jogs in and an old-world Italian bar down the hill in Trastevere…

October 2021
Featured image for “Hello, Dad”
Allison Turrell

Hello, Dad

Hands grab and thrust me midair. At first, I flail, trying to gain traction, but realize its futile, her grip convincing. The overhead florescent is glaring. I don’t recognize this room. A dusty ceiling fan hums an awkward buzz, stacks of paperwork and torn Amazon boxes clutter the desk. They pace, shuffling towers of sweaters, pillows, and shoes. The jingle of a dog collar tests my concentration. Sugar?

October 2021
Featured image for “Plan B”
Diana McQuady

Plan B

Joanna Gentry hadn’t been inside the building in over a decade, though throughout the first year following Patrick’s murder, she went to the parking lot daily. Coleman’s employees came by her Camry during those early months and stopped to speak, awkward conversations avoiding the mention of what had happened or even her presence there at all. Soon enough, they only waved.

October 2021
Featured image for “The Prayer”
Matthew Downing

The Prayer

Ashley moved to New Mexico because her mother’s relentless grief was driving her mad. It’d been six months since Dad died, and she couldn’t brush her teeth in the morning without hearing Mom’s moans drift down their lifeless hallways like a specter cursed to haunt her every waking breath. She tried to hide Dad’s pictures in the attic, but she saw his waxy corpse in every tear that slipped off Mom’s hollow cheeks.

October 2021
Featured image for “Men Will Be Men”
Andrew Sarewitz

Men Will Be Men

We haven’t spoken in years, but I almost always remember George’s birthday. The first day of summer. This year, it landed on Father’s Day. Without a message attached, he texted me a photograph of his family. Not the one that raised him when he and I were growing up. This is of him, his wife and three kids.

October 2021
Featured image for “Seed of Doubt”
Stephen Newton

Seed of Doubt

It was late afternoon, with the room temperature well over ninety degrees, before Prominence County Sheriff Eli Martin was called to the stand and sworn in to testify for the prosecution against Gerald Hartley. Hartley faced charges of vehicular manslaughter, but so much time had passed since his arrest, there was little public interest in the trial. Most people assumed Hartley was guilty as charged.

October 2021
Featured image for “A Run Home”
Jennifer VanIwarden

A Run Home

It is important that you know that I am a very sensitive person. So much so I have worked really hard to not be. I have found it too difficult to feel all the world’s problems on top of my own. I have worked to build walls so as not to feel it all.

October 2021
Featured image for “The Snitch: Hector”
M.D. Semel

The Snitch: Hector

Someone yanked the watch cap off Hector’s head, and it took him a moment until his eyes adjusted to the light. His lids felt droopy, and his brain fogged in. With his head slumped down, he looked to his left, tried to orient himself and saw the jean clad legs of one of Tino’s cousins. He glanced right and saw Julio sitting next to him.

October 2021
Featured image for “Oubliette”
David Kennedy

Oubliette

New York City had never seen such dreadful weather. The rain poured on Sunday with such ferocity as to relieve wavering worshippers from attending services, for it suggested that the heavenly deity would rather that they stay at home. No sooner had night fallen, however, than a bitter cold set in, first freezing the remnants of the day’s precipitation upon the streets, then turning the rain into heavy snow.

October 2021
Featured image for ““Olive,” “Dishwasher” and “Orange””
Steve Brammell

“Olive,” “Dishwasher” and “Orange”

Who was the first to try
an olive ripe from the tree,
the paltry flesh over stony seed
so bitter it must be poison?

Who learned the magic
to make it succulent?

October 2021
Featured image for ““Nicole Runs Her Fingers Through Her Hair,” “Medusa’s Revenge” and “As I Watch at the Last Dinner of the Year””
Aydin Akgün

“Nicole Runs Her Fingers Through Her Hair,” “Medusa’s Revenge” and “As I Watch at the Last Dinner of the Year”

Like a willow
branch that must rise
and sway
with the evening
wind, she raises her hand
and runs her fingers
through her hair.

October 2021
Featured image for ““Fish,” “Paper” and “Unsteady””
Samantha Wright

“Fish,” “Paper” and “Unsteady”

What are these fragile little lightning dreams?
The apparitions of million ideas?
Universal clues disguised as flashing silver fins?
Fine-boned and slick,
fish swim through dark-eyed waters.

October 2021
Featured image for ““Scars,” “Crossing the San Andreas Fault Zone” and “Old Souls Singing in the Chiricahuas””
Susan Cummins Miller

“Scars,” “Crossing the San Andreas Fault Zone” and “Old Souls Singing in the Chiricahuas”

Traces—faint or bold, visible, or not—left by scalpel, scandal, scurrilous tongues, the scalding steam from a cast-iron kettle, the scolding tones in a mother’s voice, the screams of a child scared straight.

October 2021
Featured image for ““A Pair of Sneakers from Far Away,” “Asking the Mid-Autumn Moon Out on a Date” and “Two Chestnut Trees””
Sik Siu Siu

“A Pair of Sneakers from Far Away,” “Asking the Mid-Autumn Moon Out on a Date” and “Two Chestnut Trees”

Like the sky that shines
because of dawn,
I shine
because of a pair of sneakers
wrapped in a package
sent from longing.

They have flown
across several oceans.

October 2021
Featured image for ““Cancer,” “Where It Starts” and “Anatomy of Disaster””
Heather Cameron

“Cancer,” “Where It Starts” and “Anatomy of Disaster”

The life lived in the body
Was the blood, warm in the veins.
White halos of icy breath,
Frost caught in the sportsground lights.
How you ran and played hard for the team.

October 2021
Featured image for “Showtime Cows”
Jennifer Holdridge

Showtime Cows

“This is just in, cows on strike! Hi, I am Reggie Stone with KPLM news. I am at Farmer Dale Robin’s fenced-in pasture, where we are seeing cows on strike. They’ve refused to give milk for two days now. Dale, what is going on? Why are your cows on strike?” Reggie moved the mic from him to Dale. 

October 2021
Featured image for “Train Songs”
Brandon Daily

Train Songs

A west-blowing wind moved over the grassland, billowing Henry’s pants and shirt wildly about him and tousling his hair so that it whipped violently onto his face. He did not shake the hair from his eyes. His attention, instead, was focused completely on his hands held out before him, on the fingers that twitched ever so slightly as if they were keeping time to some melody that he could not hear but could only feel.

October 2021
Featured image for “Weekends”
Neal Lipschutz

Weekends

I put down the book. Once I saw where it was going, I couldn’t continue to follow the words to their inevitable conclusion. That’s new. I used to make a fetish of finishing every book I started. The writing was fine. Closing the book had nothing to do with the writing, just the story. It’s about a woman older than young, younger than old, who has been done wrong by the world.

October 2021
Featured image for “Now It’s Come to Distances”
William Cass

Now It’s Come to Distances

Jen and I became a couple in 1988 during my third year teaching in Juneau, Alaska. She was living in a big rented house out on Auke Bay with a handful of other people, one of whom was a good friend of mine who’d been on the same coed soccer team with her. It was so long ago now, I don’t remember exactly how she and I first became romantic together.

October 2021