Issue 82, April 2024

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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 82, April 2024

Featured image for ““My Bus Worries Me,” “Voice of Yesterday Morning,” and “Strangers””
Sik Siu Siu

“My Bus Worries Me,” “Voice of Yesterday Morning,” and “Strangers”

Epicurus the Greek philosopher
tells me not to fear death.
He goes, Why should you fear death?
If you are, then death is not.

April 2024
Featured image for “Nagy Specialty Landscaping”
Neal Lipschutz

Nagy Specialty Landscaping

Six-year-old Craig insisted on wearing his t-ball jersey, a too-large purple pullover that advertised Mim’s Pharmacy out front and sported the number 8 on its back.

April 2024
Featured image for ““Mary Fleck,” “Something Out of Nothing,” and “In Rimini””
Stephen Barile

“Mary Fleck,” “Something Out of Nothing,” and “In Rimini”

Once, in another time, I traveled with my parents
In the 1951 Ford sedan to a distant part of the city.
You could call it a city, but everyone then
Referred to it only as a town.

April 2024
Featured image for “Whisper Song”
Anna Williams

Whisper Song

Miss Donna’s laugh has the unconscious sincerity that makes your throat catch and your stomach sink, like she’s just confessed something deeply personal. I picture her as a robust lady with broad shoulders and strong workers’ arms.

April 2024
Featured image for “Baker’s Wall”
Richard Schreck

Baker’s Wall

A hot string of up-moves through positions of increasing responsibility and compensation landed Charlene Posey a job interview in 2007 with Craig Baker. They sat in his office directly opposite each other in matching visitors’ chairs with seats too shallow for his six-four frame.

April 2024
Featured image for ““Pursuit,” “The Endless,” and “The Unswept Sky””
Marcia Trahan

“Pursuit,” “The Endless,” and “The Unswept Sky”

The hawk’s shadow follows me.
Some smoker’s tar coats my lungs,
all the tiny quivering sacs.

April 2024
Featured image for “A Few Notes on the Structure of a Short Story”
Sandro F. Piedrahita

A Few Notes on the Structure of a Short Story

This essay is not meant to be a work of literary criticism, but as a guide to beginning writers about structure in a short story and how they can approach it when they write.

April 2024
Featured image for “Boey’s Love Song”
Michael McQuillan

Boey’s Love Song

Solitary star’s light cleaves predawn sky. Morning’s mourning starts. Eyes fill in striking silence. Departed thumping, crunching, sipping, crackling, pouncing, yelping, woofs and wags of canine elder years seem bound within that star.

April 2024
Featured image for “Other Plans”
Gerald Lynch

Other Plans

In my room at my desk, I startle at the front door’s metallic cracking shut. It’s Monday and she’s left for work, the workaday routine of teaching high-school Biology. Without a goodbye, which she trills when happy, calls expectantly when fairly content, speaks normally when resigned to the daily grind.

April 2024
Featured image for “Dismembered”
Seth Foster

Dismembered

Fiona, nude, sweaty and spent, tries to block out the voices in her gut and in her mind screaming, don’t go back to Tucker, because he’s gonna beat you black and blue.

April 2024
Featured image for “Insight”
Byron Armstrong

Insight

I have never deified my older brother, Eddy, in the way younger siblings often worship their older counterparts. I didn’t have a desire to follow him around like a lost puppy, demanding to tag along on adolescent excursions. For one thing, he was four years my senior.

April 2024
Featured image for ““Self-Sabotage,” “Freely Drifting,” and “Blissful Anguish””
Maria Volodkevich

“Self-Sabotage,” “Freely Drifting,” and “Blissful Anguish”

Like a cross stitch
I tied down your limbs
thread by thread
preventing you from flying

April 2024
Featured image for ““No Tree,” “Saint Valentine,” and “Dead Heisenberg””
Jack D. Harvey

“No Tree,” “Saint Valentine,” and “Dead Heisenberg”

“No tree grows all the way to heaven,”
a darling end to a bible story
or Lenten play beginning
you might say;
a betrayal of trust

April 2024
Featured image for “Sense and Sensibility: Story of a Storyteller”
Tracie Adams

Sense and Sensibility: Story of a Storyteller

See the little girl sneaking out of her room, across the green shag carpet, down the creaking stairs to the second floor of the tri-level house. Ducking past the large bay window where a meager display of plants are cradled in macrame hangers…

April 2024
Featured image for “Life and Death on Cemetery Hill”
Kirk Astroth

Life and Death on Cemetery Hill

Alone, but not alone. Perched atop an exposed, wind-blown ridge in the Sonoran Desert a few miles north of the Mexican border in Arizona, the graveyard resembles a sepia tone image from the 1930s—slate gray sky, brown land.

April 2024
Featured image for “A Sunny Day”
Mara Woods

A Sunny Day

In the yard on a Tandoor clay oven, Mrs. Hassan cooked dumplings. She stared absentmindedly into the pot at the small lumps of dough that stared back at her like bulging eyes from behind a veil of rising steam.

April 2024
Featured image for “Tom’s Diner”
Alice Baburek

Tom’s Diner

Kit Bardot packed her SUV and headed out of the windy city of Chicago. She needed this break—this mini-vacation. She had planned her own way along the infamous Route 66. How far would she go? It didn’t matter. She had told her boss she was taking a much-needed leave of absence.

April 2024
Featured image for “Blueprint”
Carol Jeffers

Blueprint

The house creaked, and with a mighty groan, heaved itself out of a funk, and stood up to meet the sun simmering directly overhead. Cicadas in the yard welcomed it back with a rousing chorus, the first of countless refrains to be heard throughout the sultry day.

April 2024
Featured image for “Three Photographs”
Lawrence Bridges

Three Photographs

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

April 2024
Featured image for ““Easy to Forget,” “Sometimes,” and “the other road””
Joanne Jagoda

“Easy to Forget,” “Sometimes,” and “the other road”

It’s really easy to forget
To put it all out of your mind
That you might be living with a debt which could be called in
Any time by that unforgiving debt collector

April 2024
Featured image for “In Defense of John’s Intellect”
Millie Sparks

In Defense of John’s Intellect

I ran into his great-aunt at the gas station. We squealed with delight when we saw each other and embraced with the kind of bear-hug squeeze that left us both a little breathless.

April 2024
Featured image for “Phase Transitions”
Peter Alterman

Phase Transitions

Leaning over the kitchen counter, Allison watches the sun rise over the eastern plains of Iowa and lets her mind wander: The beginning of another week. End of summer. Beginning of fall.

April 2024
Featured image for “Henry Mercer (Also Wrote Fiction)”
Margaret Montet

Henry Mercer (Also Wrote Fiction)

Doylestown, Pennsylvania, is Shangri-La to Bucks County residents—the county seat of art, culture, and government; epicenter of county history; and home to a wide array of restaurants.

April 2024
Featured image for “¡Viva Cristo Rey!”
Sandro F. Piedrahita

¡Viva Cristo Rey!

The two brothers did not sleep that cold September night, for they knew in the morning they would both face the firing squad. One would be executed for having assassinated President-elect Alvaro Obregón, the other simply for being a priest.

April 2024