Issue 7, November 2017

Image

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.

Image

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.

Image

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.

Image

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.

Image

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

Image

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

Image

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 7, November 2017

Featured image for ““There’s Only One Dance”, “Lonely Stars and Stripes” and “Placed  on Pegasus!””
Michael O'Brien

“There’s Only One Dance”, “Lonely Stars and Stripes” and “Placed on Pegasus!”

There is only the dance of poetic rhyme in O’Brien’s poetry, as embodied in the poem “Pegasus,” a moral tale unencumbered by abstraction or opaque allusions: “Rejoice and kick up/the dust/in your/every advance,” the poet commands.

November 2017
Featured image for ““Vertigo, NC”, “Wisp” and “To my daughter, sleeping in the back seat””
Katy McAllister

“Vertigo, NC”, “Wisp” and “To my daughter, sleeping in the back seat”

There is a subdued presence in McAllister’s poetry, as if she is whispering in your ear: feel the sensuous in “Vertigo, NC”; see the fox emerge from the trees in “Wisp”; and in “To My Daughter” know “a temple in the mountain.”

November 2017
Featured image for ““Shipwreck”, “No Going Back” and “A Book Like Mine””
Leslie Soule

“Shipwreck”, “No Going Back” and “A Book Like Mine”

When a poet uses figurative language like Soule in “Shipwrecked,” you feel the extended metaphor or conceit alive in the paradox that the men on board will perish, “becoming pearls, their skin coral.” Ditto “A Book Like Mine” and quicksand.

November 2017
Featured image for ““unicorn”, “grass icon” and “Bradbury’s butterflies””
Dmitry Blizniuk

“unicorn”, “grass icon” and “Bradbury’s butterflies”

Translated from Russian, Blizniuk’s poetry is imbued with concrete images that place you within their parameters, and yet the abstract moves ever so closely to a Universe of billions where “someone has torn out a wire from the cable of the humanity.”

November 2017
Featured image for ““Prairie Summer”, “La Sabranenque” and “Leaves””
Sabrina L'Heureux

“Prairie Summer”, “La Sabranenque” and “Leaves”

This is not easy, this telling a story through images that don’t miss a beat in the poetic line, and to tell it so completely, as L’Heureux “La Sabtranenque” and “Leaves” do through the perspective of “I” and the consistency in voice and mood.

November 2017
Featured image for ““The Raven and the Stone”, “Tea for the Taxman” and “Dolphin Song””
Rollin Jewett

“The Raven and the Stone”, “Tea for the Taxman” and “Dolphin Song”

To read “thee” and “thou” and “ne’er” and “‘tis” in “The Raven and the Stone” and “Dolphin Song” is like returning to the world of poetry in the 18th century. In Jewett’s hands, this poetic composition is simultaneously playful and dramatic.

November 2017
Featured image for ““Like Oleander”, “Navigating Silence” and “Tiresias, the Seer (a poem in 9 Tankas)””
Effie Pasagiannis

“Like Oleander”, “Navigating Silence” and “Tiresias, the Seer (a poem in 9 Tankas)”

Read Pasagiannis poems quietly, as they offer you an opening to the ethereal and spiritual and mysterious. Each poem breathes its own poetic nuance in form and content, but they gather the difference in “Navigating Silence”: “just listen.”

November 2017
Featured image for ““The Bats in the Willow”, “Revenant Gloam” and “I Cannot Make Permanent Things””
Melissa Mulvihill

“The Bats in the Willow”, “Revenant Gloam” and “I Cannot Make Permanent Things”

Bats, the revenant gloam, and impermanence are the subjects of Mulvihill’s poetry here. Yes, their commonality may not be obvious, but Mulviill’s storytelling marks her poetry—personal and unequivocally forthright. Her voice is her truth.

November 2017
Featured image for ““The Dedekind Cut”, “Triangles Reconstructed: Dad’s Last Hospitalization, Son Caught In The Middle” and “Laundromat 1, 2, 3…9””
Gerard Sarnat

“The Dedekind Cut”, “Triangles Reconstructed: Dad’s Last Hospitalization, Son Caught In The Middle” and “Laundromat 1, 2, 3…9”

Ever heard of the “Dedekind Cut?” Sarnat explains the second part as the “partitioning of philosophical arguments,” and goes on to reveal an ironic vulnerability in “Triangles Reconstructed: Dad’s Last Hospitalization . . . .”

November 2017
Featured image for ““Frankenstein, I love you”, “For Shilpa” and “Ash Wednesday””
Natalia Zvereva

“Frankenstein, I love you”, “For Shilpa” and “Ash Wednesday”

Reading Zvereva’s poetry is like entering a lush garden of words that find meaning in their juxtaposition, and the senses dominate while reason takes a back seat, if only for a little while. Feeling pulls you toward the understanding and not knowing.

October 2017
Featured image for ““The Millenials”, “he is no surprise” and “a Boxer’s beginning, at the end””
Komal Keshran

“The Millenials”, “he is no surprise” and “a Boxer’s beginning, at the end”

Mindful of the philosophical and spiritual, Keshran gives readers an option: they can read at the surface of his poetry or they can move like “the current of the river” and choose “to seek what lies beyond this earth.” There is magic here.

October 2017
Featured image for ““Tiger Swallowtail”, “Bulbpulse” and “Flamingo””
Henry Stanton

“Tiger Swallowtail”, “Bulbpulse” and “Flamingo”

Stanton’s poetry pulls beyond the words on the page. Is it a search for the “suchness” of things, the true self, the true reality? The poet refuses to be trapped in his corporeality to divine the “whatness” of self: “Tathāgata will be my next child.”

October 2017
Featured image for ““We Are, We Were”, “Think Tragedy, Feel Comedy” and “Are we equal yet?””
Samuel Griffin

“We Are, We Were”, “Think Tragedy, Feel Comedy” and “Are we equal yet?”

Metaphysics pervades Griffin’s poetry, as the references to Newton, Heraclitus, Isaac, and Spinoza’s famous Deus sive Natura are instructive. Pay attention to the titles: “We Are, We Were,” “Think Tragedy, Feel Comedy,” and “Are We Equal Yet?”

October 2017
Featured image for ““Dark Sun”, “confessing” and “nag, stone””
Frank Heather

“Dark Sun”, “confessing” and “nag, stone”

An existential fear of unknowing in Heather’s poems is made most explicit in “Dark Sun,” but it is also present in “nag, stone” and “confessing,” irrespective of the irony. Named: “this terror towards time” and “the swirling chaotic mystery of my past.”

October 2017
Featured image for ““Drowning”, “Forms” and “Odysseus””
Theresa Ryder

“Drowning”, “Forms” and “Odysseus”

The transient nature of life is nowhere more keenly perceived as in Ryder’s poem “Forms.” The irony is obvious: “When I die the world will stop spinning,” and then this: “I will be a form, a shape, a number, a colour, a sound.” A transitory traveller.

October 2017
Featured image for “My Three Sons”
g emil reutter

My Three Sons

Their mother is proud and calls them her famous sons on television no less. Except: Billy and Danny are videotaped stripping the renovated church, whereas Jacob absconds with the wad of cash leaving his brothers to pay for the crime.

October 2017
Featured image for “Deathbed Wedding”
Robin Vigfusson

Deathbed Wedding

After her mother’s death, Gretchen gets a call from Miguel inviting her to retrieve her mother’s possessions. When she visits, she notices new wallpaper and a Persian rug. But she sees something else—an unexpected insight into her mother’s next life.

October 2017
Featured image for “The Foxhole in the Front Yard”
John Sarmiento

The Foxhole in the Front Yard

Gen chased insurgents, rode Humvees across Iraq, peeled walls with the .50 caliber machine gun. Once when he got back home he grabbed his pregnant wife Karen to dig a foxhole in the front yard and she wants mangoes in the morning.

October 2017
Featured image for “A  Tale or Two”
James Ewen

A Tale or Two

Around a tiki bar in Ecuador, visitors from Germany, Canada, Texas, and California recount their travelogues, holding forth for hours on end. And then there is the reticent Scotsman who sees a new tale beginning—in the surf’s retreating tide.

October 2017
Featured image for “Signs”
Macy DeBosier

Signs

Mark Krainin disappeared ten years ago. Signs went up: Tommy Luna, Dorothy Copewell, Andrea Whitman, Justin Kint, and Edith Maynard. Ash Denton talks to them and everyone thinks he has lost his mind. And then it happens.

October 2017
Featured image for “Fake Names”
Daniel Bartkowiak

Fake Names

Adenocarcinoma lines his lungs; not what Richard wants to hear. He plays the tape of his father on the ledge, in the air, plunging seven floors down. Richard wonders if he himself had “always been falling and only now looked down.”

October 2017
Featured image for “Moonlight”
Mie Astrup Jensen

Moonlight

On a blank page a poetic story is told about the woman who finds her light in the moon amid the darkness and solitude; who opens like a flower; who is timeless and makes your heart beat faster. You want to hold her and never let her go. Who is she?

October 2017
Featured image for “Motherhood, Ambition”
Claire Robbins

Motherhood, Ambition

Robbins didn’t know herself before she was a mother at twenty, but she was determined to know herself as an adult. This is her story about the tension between motherhood and ambition, and how she didn’t allow ambition to lose.

October 2017
Featured image for “A Creative Interrogation of Ishion Hutchinson’s “Homage: Vallejo””
Eli Makovetsky

A Creative Interrogation of Ishion Hutchinson’s “Homage: Vallejo”

Follow Makovetsky’s exegesis of Ishion Hutchinson’s poem “Homage: Vallejo” and you are in a world of awareness in which Hutchinson uses Vallejo’s lens to talk about “being born black in a racist America”—one of Makovetsky’s many insights.

October 2017