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.

I woke up to my grandmother whispering to me: “It’s over. She’s passed.” Like a puppet on strings, I got up and forced myself to send the work assignment I had been working on before the frenzy of organizing a funeral began. A calm sky was lazily rising, as if nothing had happened. In the distance, the roosters were alerting the villagers that it was time to wake up. Their crowing, accompanied by the incessant barking of neighbors’ dogs, was the most precise alarm possible.
It wouldn’t take long until the first horse-drawn wagons passed by on their way to the fields. It was Sunday, but a few sinners would be seduced by the iridescent vineyards and the large corn or alfalfa fields.

A short talk on pain?
No, no. I don’t think so.
Let’s change the subject.
Let’s deflect our attention.
Besides, what is there to say?

We were already deep in the Amazonian rainforest, in the borderland between Peru and Brazil, based in a camp somewhere along an unnamed tributary of another tributary of the Rio Javari that marks the border, and that morning we rose early to travel by canoe yet deeper into the forest. Local hunter Alejandro had encountered a large adult anaconda and was willing to take us there.

Jasper looked up at the clear, starlit, advent sky. A sharp north easterly had blown away the relentless gloom of the past fortnight and he gladly breathed in the nipping December air. He thought of the fingerless gloves he’d left behind at the church after rehearsal the previous evening. He would miss them this morning and considered for a moment passing the vicarage to see if they could be retrieved.

January 6, 2021, marked a pivotal moment in American history, serving as a wake-up call and a profound division. The shocking scenes of rioters breaching the Capitol stirred a visceral reaction across the nation. While the vast majority of Americans were horrified by the chaos, the interpretations of that day have since diverged sharply.

There’s life on other planets, and we’re fighting again.

Not so much fighting each other, me and Hazel, but rather the hundred little obstacles we confront daily in the world: electric bills, uninsured vehicles, the price of groceries—it’s a love language in itself that we’re each willing to be the other’s proxy for all these petty aggravations.

When the need for this routine is exhausted, from my phone I will play serious, dramatic music like Vivaldi or some Dies Irae thundering, and we will each see how long we can continue arguing. It’s become a playlist of losing first-smirks.

They eye me as I walk towards them. But I must be so worn in appearance that all see I pose no threat, I am no bandit. And that appearance of mine must be very sorry indeed, for I have known bandits, and they are most ragged in face, tattered in clothing, and thin in frame. It helps that I come along an open road and alone. But degradation works in one’s favor at times.
One stands near the road, attempting to press an old rusty hoop onto a dilapidated and splaying barrel. Beside him a young girl, perhaps seven years of age, carrying her baby sister on her hip. When I greet them, a few others come around.

After 24 years of being a nun, Juliette (name changed) left the convent. It was 1986. Juliette’s spiritual longing – unsatiated by the convent – was as strong as ever. So three years later, when she met Brendan, a charming, charismatic, striking man who ran spiritual workshops drawing on the wisdom of the world’s greatest traditions, she took notice.

My cellphone dinged — it was an Instagram reel from my sister, Glynn. I opened the link and glamorous 1950s movie star Cyd Charisse filled my screen, dancing ecstatically in a shimmering yellow dress, surrounded by perfectly synchronized dancers.

I often imagine if people were to ask me what I was feeling the day Zeus came to me, I doubt they would anticipate my reply. I prayed, not to Zeus, not to Hades, not to Apollo, nor Poseidon or any other god. No, I prayed to Hera.

Alice couldn’t remember her dream, but the thought that lingered after waking shook her. She had nothing to give him.

She had fallen asleep on the couch, not easily or accidentally, had forced herself to sleep, exhausted herself with praying and reciting the memorized routes that would take them to their new home. She pictured the highlighted maps from AAA with her eyes closed, stacked in the glove compartment in the order they would need them.

There were still pieces of the dream, but she disregarded them…. It was still so early that her young siblings had not yet jumped out of bed to come raid the stockings or shake the presents that they would open after breakfast.

this too shall end.
This too shall end.
This too shall end—
from a place in the basement corner bedroom
beneath boarded-up windows in the back of the house
where she hid from the noise of an Alaskan summer solstice
of driftwood bleaching, refused to watch the harbor pier

Walking back to the squad car carrying two fresh wrapped pastrami sandwiches, my heart is pounding and hands sweating, the growl in my stomach doesn’t drown out the voice in my head that scolds me, “See. You should have listened to your old man, you idiot.”

It took me three years to read your letter. Back in 2018, when I didn’t really understand the process, I thought ‘pen sketch’ meant an artist’s drawing of the sperm donor. I didn’t look at it as I didn’t want to see you. Not then. I didn’t want to choose a donor based on looks and I didn’t want to identify a stranger on the faces of my prospective children. Later, when I joined groups for donor assisted families, I discovered – by chance when reading a Facebook post – that the so called ‘pen sketch’ was not a picture, it was a letter.

When Othello first arrived, my grandmother declared that he should be called Prince, but she soon changed her mind and named him after the Moor who killed his wife Desdemona because he was sure that she had betrayed him. When I asked her why she had changed the dog’s name to Othello, she responded that it was an appropriate name because his hair was black as vicuñas wool and because he was fiercely jealous.

willed by the rain
washing over me.
slow at first,
it filled the bank.
drowning in emotions
I built a dam.

Romania is a different culture
It has high mountains
Low valleys
And Roma wandering the roads
Byways and small lax villages.

Blessed Margaret of Castello was a blind, hunchbacked dwarf whose aristocratic parents could barely stand the sight of her. Born in Metola, Italy, in 1287, she spent her childhood isolated from the world because her parents found her so repulsive that when she was six years old, they had a small cell built in the forest next to their chapel and locked Margaret away like a lunatic.

What now?
Rose.
Rose was the only person I trusted, the only one who was kind to me that day. I went for a long walk and wound up at a quiet park where bushes exploded with red and yellow flowers reaching for the sky. Too late, I noticed three guys closing in behind. The last thing I remember was the smell of their sweat and the red mud caked on their boots.

As sticky as syrup-soaked gruel
eyes closed with dreamy leftovers
eyes closed tightly as if seamstresses
sewed those viscous visions inward.

Elonda stared out of her window, squeezing her face into the entire frame, and her breath began to fog up the dew-struck glass. She quickly used her sleeve to wipe away a near perfect circle. The winter was visible again.

You are cold,
to my palm,
to my cheek,
cold to my tongue.