Issue 93, March 2025

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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 93, March 2025

Featured image for “Interesting and Clever, Smiled At and Seen”
Benjamin Clabault

Interesting and Clever, Smiled At and Seen

The doctors had given us no reason to expect the baby early — so on August 2nd, 2024, I followed my normal post-dinner routine. I washed the dishes. I fed the fish. And then I sat at my desk to compose the next day’s plan…

March 2025
Featured image for “Golden Aphrodite”
Tamara Tovey

Golden Aphrodite

“Lion,” Artemis chokes out. She needs an excuse. “I want to check on Quill. My porcupine friend. He’s worried about me. Give me a moment to find him.”
Up she leaps, striding through the forest’s thickness, her pace accelerating as fast as her pounding heart, refusing memory with every panting breath.

March 2025
Featured image for “Cinema, Painting, Literature”
Peter J. Dellolio

Cinema, Painting, Literature

Much of my writing, in fiction and poetry, has been deeply influenced by the imagery of painting and cinema. I have always been very much attracted to the ways in which language can create visualizations of things, people, and events.

March 2025
Featured image for “Death Beyond Innocence”
Baxter Mitchell-Knight

Death Beyond Innocence

Exactly three weeks, six days, seven hours, and forty-two minutes before his sixth birthday, Nathan Front announced to his mother that he was going to die. They had ground to a halt on the road that overlooked the coastline.

March 2025
Featured image for ““UAV,” “a boat tows a floating billboard,” and “Week 20””
Paul Zammit

“UAV,” “a boat tows a floating billboard,” and “Week 20”

O phalanx of clouds,
formed against your own shadow,
diorama of the maxim that armies,
like lovers, come in pairs—
promulgate now in bulleted wisps,
conformist’s dark room dripping in chemical
& negative & clothes-pinned evidence

March 2025
Featured image for “Ambuscade”
Karli Applestein

Ambuscade

The clicking of my boots was the only thing keeping me sane. It acted as a metronome counting the steps until all of the anticipation flashed before me. The concrete had been freshly paved, and yet I felt bumps in my path. My shoulders ached and became full of anxiety as I approached the door. I held the book under my right arm; it was my dominant and lucky one.

March 2025
Featured image for “Aftermath”
Sandra Kolankiewicz

Aftermath

People have commented how stoic I was about my brother’s death, how graceful all the sons were about losing the third in line, but most of them don’t realize we were born with genes for fatalism that had been switched on for generations. On both sides of my family before the emigration here, our ancestors knew little but stress, war, and hard work.

March 2025
Featured image for “Demolishing Barriers, Building Bridges”
Toni Palombi

Demolishing Barriers, Building Bridges

Father Maurice lives alone on a quiet street where early twentieth-century cottages sit tucked behind white picket fences. A statue of a Cambodian King sits on the living room windowsill, gazing towards us with an expression that is hard to read: it could be serenity, it could be aloofness.

March 2025
Featured image for “Make Eden Great Again: Wellness, Purity and Trump”
Mariah Geiger

Make Eden Great Again: Wellness, Purity and Trump

Since Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to run the Department of Health and Human Services, many journalists have swiftly denounced his views, backing up their statements with scientific studies to combat his misinforming the public. The effect of these denouncements is that his ideas are so obviously false and dangerous.

March 2025
Featured image for ““Snake in Our Midst,” ” House of Mirrors,” and “Entwined””
Louise Moises

“Snake in Our Midst,” ” House of Mirrors,” and “Entwined”

on the sunbaked
patio, a little girl,
discovers a snake
sunning itself
on a boulder
she runs into
the house
jubilantly reports
the presence…

March 2025
Featured image for “Side Effects”
Linda Heller

Side Effects

On April 26th, 1949, Selma Stern married the wrong man, a circumstance she compulsively complained about, as though Morris Wort, an otherwise infuriately passive individual had grabbed her by the arm, dragged to City Hall, and forced a judge to unite them before her fiancé, a demigod stuck in traffic, could intervene.

March 2025
Featured image for “The Kindness”
Henry Lewis

The Kindness

The wind was from the northeast. A cold wind blowing light and steady with the predictability of winter coming on. It was late October. You knew winter was coming hard and there was no escaping it. You just had to bear it.
The man was in his early fifties and needed a shave, the stubble just showing on his cheeks. His broad face and blinking eyes were set to the wind and had a curious look of detachment.

March 2025
Featured image for “The Gilded Cage”
David Kennedy

The Gilded Cage

The sun blazed down upon Cave Hill Cemetery, bathing the graves of the fallen with tribute for their ultimate sacrifice. John Marshall Harlan stood among an impatient crowd. He knew some of the men interred here, who had departed their sweet Kentucky homes, their beloved creeks and valleys, for the sake of the indivisible Union, and from time to time he would visit their graves.

March 2025
Featured image for “The Coughing Was Me”
Linda S. Gunther

The Coughing Was Me

We made the London West End theatre reservation last year in 2023. As soon as we knew we’d be flying to NYC in Spring 2024 and taking a transatlantic cruise to Iceland and then onto Europe, we had booked the play in London’s West End, A Long Day’s Journey into Night.

March 2025
Featured image for ““Origins All the Time,” “Two Faces,” and “Arguing Again””
Matthew Freeman

“Origins All the Time,” “Two Faces,” and “Arguing Again”

I’m so sorry you don’t have the vision
I have. Like when Lesbia
showed me the new Cure cassette in ‘92
I was able to pick out
what would be the most popular songs
in two seconds.

March 2025
Featured image for “The Story of a Girl Who Lives in the City That Sparkles”
Mark Knego

The Story of a Girl Who Lives in the City That Sparkles

Waves of people swarm the sidewalks like the waves in the nearby ocean, and it is always hot. Shoppers, families, delivery boys, phone addicts, lost souls, tourists, girls of the night clearly in their early mornings and more. They all look the same…

March 2025
Featured image for “Rival of the Sun”
Sandro F. Piedrahita

Rival of the Sun

When Antonio was around nine years old, shortly after his father’s murder, the young boy discovered not only that he was a child of sin, but also that God would be a mighty rival for the attention of his mother. For the rest of his life, Antonio would remember the macabre scene of his father Arsenio’s rotting body…

March 2025
Featured image for “Final Acts,  A Novel”
Joseph Allen Boone

Final Acts, A Novel

David Abbott was the last person the citizenry of Centerville expected to commit suicide, much less in broad daylight and by such unsightly means, his broken and bloody corpse splayed on impact from its five-story fall onto the sidewalk in front of the Playhouse Cinema.

March 2025
Featured image for ““Shades of Red,” ” Indigo, Turmeric,” and “Out of Nowhere””
Holly Willis

“Shades of Red,” ” Indigo, Turmeric,” and “Out of Nowhere”

color
came to me suddenly
not blood, but red, reddish
and burning. Only

at first abrupt,
like a punch line, a
jawbone or
hallway carved

March 2025
Featured image for “Therefore I Am”
Ryan Nachnani

Therefore I Am

I compel myself to think, even if every stream of thought seems to pool only into misery.
I’ve had too much time on my hands since we arrived in Rexdale — settled down in a barren basement where I thought our dreams would take form.

March 2025
Featured image for ““The Sky a Flawless Blue,” “When your Muse has Left the Building,” and “My Own Little Beast””
Joanne Jagoda

“The Sky a Flawless Blue,” “When your Muse has Left the Building,” and “My Own Little Beast”

The sky, a flawless blue,
the kind of California day,
that gets under your skin.
Scaffolds holding up the heavens
stretching against celestial infinity.
Is there a placeholder for me
in that expanse?

March 2025
Featured image for “Who Could Ask For Anything More?”
Peggi McCarthy

Who Could Ask For Anything More?

Howard’s wife was talking about the yard again, before his breakfast, that back forty he’d bought when the Fishers moved away. She didn’t want him to clear it, said she’d spotted some special flower. Weed, more likely. Fond of wasteland, Fay was – stumps and berries.

March 2025
Featured image for “You’re Not My Next Thought”
Kelly Nusz

You’re Not My Next Thought

Back in the spring, when the thawed warmth of early morning felt new through the concrete lattice of the parking garage, Eddie and Margaret would not have been so free in their intolerance of Marshall, or so close that handholding felt natural. In the spring they were just becoming accustomed to the others’ short stops, hard turns, and personal music preferences.

March 2025
Featured image for ““I am the Tortoise,” “Greenland Isn’t Green,” and “Eating at Al Capone’s Soup Kitchen””
Robert Eugene Rubino

“I am the Tortoise,” “Greenland Isn’t Green,” and “Eating at Al Capone’s Soup Kitchen”

Flamingoes all pink and proud
at the Junior Museum & Zoo.
Kids & grandparents all aflutter
flocking to public feeding time
in a fluff-and-strut club of cute.

March 2025