Perspective
By Jennifer S. Brewer
Acrylic on canvas with stretcher bars, 15″x30″
Painted using Jen Grow’s poem (below) as inspiration

Broken Umbrella, the Spokes No Longer in Unison
By Jen Grow

Spoke one: Anonymous is walking in the pouring rain when no one is around.

Spoke two: My voice is the sound of someone drowning.

Spoke three: I had a dream we almost died and therefore I might think that this particular moment of stillness is all there is.

Spoke four (self-conscious narrator): Look, here’s a woman skimming through the rain with a hideously broken umbrella, points turned upward, bent at wrong angles, collecting the rain in small pools instead of shedding it.

Spoke five:  Imagine: a bird seeing this world as something whole, a place to find food and visit for bugs.

Spoke six (in a humble voice): This could be a life, if only I let myself grow large enough. My sight would be changed.

Spoke seven: I wish I could move like a flag, curl and twist with grace in the wind, flow and be shaped and speak in silence.

Spoke five (again): Watch this from above as if you are a large swelling mass of crows that some might call God.

Spoke one: My cells remember the days the sun is a different color.

Spoke eight (finally): When it rains the whole neighborhood is quiet. Sometimes it feels like prayer and sometimes it feels like the problem to escape. Alley dogs are bitter about being unpetted and wet.

Spoke six: The rest of life is always so much larger than me.

——————————————————-

Succulent Tango
By Jennifer S. Brewer
Acrylic on canvas with stretcher bars, 22″x28″
Inspiration Piece provided to Jen Grow

Untitled
By Jen Grow

In some part of the world, it’s always night.

In Mexico, for example, Claudio has four daughters  to support, so he is here, cutting tile in Lee’s bathroom. Claudio sends the money back home for his family. He laughs a lot and smiles, maybe because he doesn’t understand what we are saying; maybe because  he is lonely. Claudio tells us he wants more children. He tells Lee his wife has diabetes and no longer wants to make love. In this way, we see slivers of his life. We fill in the rest.

One fact is this: Claudio hasn’t been home to Mexico to see his family in several years.  But he speaks of his daughters as if they see each other every day. “How long has it been?” I ask too loudly. “Tiempo,” he says to me to explain his word for time. “Tiempo,” I repeat as if I understand this  philosophical idea, this version of time that’s separate from days and years and allows everything to exist right now. I think it’s profound, but Lee says we probably didn’t understand each other.

Lee has conversations with Claudio over sandwiches at lunch, their words a tangle of Spanish and English augmented by hand signals. What they say, and what they think they’re saying, are not the same.

This is about perspective.
Also truth.

Lee and I go to a gallery where there are trees and ladders, a man with hickies, and a pile of rolled up newspaper that looks like coral. Lee sees teeth and I see a fish. Teeth, he says and I say, no, a row of corn. Or a smirking duck. Then we leave the gallery and duck down the street at dusk to hear music that is not music. Improvised, experimental. First there are chords of colored light that are beautiful, then there is just noise. Men trying earnestly not to keep a beat. We get tired and go home.

Night exists and it doesn’t, simultaneously.
We don’t know where to put the lamp on the bedside table because we have different ideas of where it should go.

We see things differently because we see things differently.

Lee says, ‘You know how light can be both particle and wave?’ I say, ‘Yes, but only because I have memorized that fact. It means nothing to me. It means the same as ‘chairs are purple.’ ‘Chairs are purple and blue,’ Lee explains. (When actually my chairs are just stained wood.)

He says, ‘In the very structure of things there is the scientific fact of both. Everything is both. The building blocks of life contain both.” What is another word for both?  Particle and wave. Teeth and corn. A man bent over on his knees cutting tile, dreaming of his daughters. These imaginings, light and dark.

Everything is something else. And it is itself. We dream, and always it is night somewhere in the world.

Jewels at the Bottom of A Well
By Dawn Doran
Mixed media
Painted using Amy Moffitt’s poem (below) as inspiration

Untitled
By Amy Moffitt

Memory can be very cruel.

I will never forget
your skin –soft, rose petal soft–
my white hand ghost-like, skeletal
against the warm, deep brown.

And I will never forget how
people turned to stare as
we walked down the streets
of Montego Bay.
Dark faces, curious, admiring you.

Your thick, black hair
and the glittering black eyes
like jewels at the bottom of a well
constantly asking the question
constantly turning away from me
just when I needed the answer the most.

And Indian mothers with
angry eyes and disbelieving faces
–mouths open just slightly, or
twisted in a frown–
who watched us walking
through suburban markets.

I will never forget
the night by the water
with the full moon
and no one else around.

I will never forget when you told me
“You glow”
as we laid together at night.

I wanted
to reach across fences
and rip down brick walls
with my bare, white hands.
I can work hard.
I can do this.

But for all I was willing to give up
Bharat Mata loved you first
and America –to you– is a place for plunder,
not for love.

In the end, you never told anyone about me,
and the walls are standing still
despite my bloodied hands.

——————————————————-

Untitled
By Dawn Doran
Pencil on paper
Inspiration Piece provided to Amy Moffitt

Untitled
By Amy Moffitt

I was once mistaken for an Irish gypsy
outside St. Mary of the Angels
in Bayswater, London.
I wondered why Father Stuart ignored me as he passed.
He laughed when he realized it later.

I liked the idea.
It seemed to explain why I’d
always watched airplanes with longing,
and found myself staring out windows,
straining to see beyond my vision’s true reach.

But in truth, any freedom has a hidden slavery.
In Oxford, the only gypsies begging were women
–sometimes holding babies–
seemingly tethered to the same spot on the sidewalk
with one hand cupped in front of them.

And back in America, we are free to consume,
our credit lines are IV lines
pumping life into a crepuscular system
as we kill other countries in our search for more fuel.

And in my apartment, I circle alone
from bedroom, to kitchen, to desk,
like a blackbird tied to a branch
by itself
watching the sparrows fly away.

The Photo
By Jim Doran
Pen and ink
Drawn using Jewel Beth Davis’s story (below) as inspiration

What Happened With Cousin Deb?
By Jewel Beth Davis

Debby came to stay with us this weekend and I’m so excited. She’s never come for a sleepover before. Mom and Dad brought just the two of us to the Gardens in the middle of Boston. The boys had to stay home, ha! The Gardens are right next to the Boston Commons and near Filenes’ Basement where my mom takes me to shop. We like to ride the train in. And Filenes’ Basement has the best soft serve ice cream in the world. I get it with jimmies in a white paper cone. It’s so cold it gives me a headache. This time, Daddy drove us in his big blue Chevy. There’s an art show in the Gardens and we’re there to see it. I love looking at paintings. I am dying to run my fingers over the little mounds on the oil paintings but I don’t. Sometimes, you can still sniff the paint smells. It’s one of those smells that I like and hate at the same time, like skunk or gasoline.  You can almost smell the colors. I don’t say this to Cousin Deb because I don’t think she’d get it. She giggles a lot. Wait! Debby, look over there. The swans. Their necks are long and white, like the peaks of the soft serve vanilla at Filenes. They seem to float on the water, not in it. It’s summer but still has that spring smell: the dirt, the grass and dandelions, the buttercups, especially the clover. There’s a little man near the ticket booth selling caramel corn and cotton candy. He tries to sell stuff to people who pass. Mommy, can we buy some? Can we? I taste the buttery melty flavor of the caramel corn. Debby, let’s share. We each get one and I give Debby half my caramel corn and she gives me half her cotton candy. The super-sweet taste of the cotton candy sits on my tongue and prickles my nose. I squinch my eyes and press my lips, waiting for the sugar crystals to melt. We buy tickets for the Swan Boats. It’s a whole $.25 apiece. Come on with us, Daddy. You can smoke later. He squishes the Pall Mall cigarette under his shiny black leather loafers with tassels. I take his big hand and we walk by the smashed cigarette lying at the end of the grass where it becomes pebbly. Daddy jingles coins in the pockets of his grey pleated pants as he walks. He wears Old Spice Aftershave and I could smell him forever. Mom wants to take a picture of us and asks Deb and me to stand near the paintings of the Gloucester seashore where she and Deb’s mom, my Auntie Sonya, went to camp. Auntie Ruta, too. They’re sisters. I wish I had a sister. Maybe Deb could be my sister. Don’t tell her, but I don’t really want to take a picture with Deb because she’s got a lot of blubber. I feel bad. I’m real skinny. I take ballet. Mom snaps a picture with her Brownie Flash camera of the two of us in our Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouses and stupid cardigans she made us bring in case it turns cold. It’s broiling out. The wool is scratchy on my arms and shoulders. It makes me all sweaty. At least my hair is off my neck in a ponytail. Deb never grows a ponytail. I wonder why. I wonder why I’m so skinny and she’s so fat. I wonder why she never comes for the weekend again and leaves early. Did I say something?
*
I stare at the picture of Deb and me, both eleven years old. I wonder why I’ve carried it in my wallet for so many years.  I see that it’s a photo of young me but I don’t recognize it as a younger version of the me I am now. I am facing the camera with my duck feet turned way out. Not a ballerina pose but the natural outcome of so many years of dance. I am long and bony, not lean. For all my grace onstage, I look awkward in my body, coltish. I am taller than Deb and look far more confident. She is turned away from me and from the camera. She is in the photo but not committed to being there. She only partially looks at my mother through the camera. She has a cap of coarse, dark curly hair. My hair is long and shiny but pulled back so severely, it stretches my face backwards. And those awful cardigans we’re wearing around our necks on this gorgeous June day, attached by the top button- horrible. Shorts and cardigans, oxymoronic. And no place to stick them as the temperatures climbed higher. What’s funny is I see that Deb was not nearly as fat as I’d always thought her then, just plump, like one of Ma’s matzoh balls. She doesn’t look happy. Not quite smiling. Why didn’t she want to be there? Was it me? Was she just homesick? I pray that I never said anything disparaging. After that day, she went home and was never my friend again, though still a cousin. What did I lose that day?

Last night, I spoke to my cousin Lenny on the phone and she brought Deb up again. Lenny always says the same thing. “Deb almost never calls me though her house is on the same street here in Boca. And I just can’t warm up to her. She’s so closed, Julie. She hardly says anything when we’re together. You know me, Julie. I can get anyone to talk but not Cousin Deb.”

“I know, Lenny. I know,” I say. “But she talks a blue streak with her friends. I’ve seen her.”

“Why doesn’t she like us? I just don’t get it,” Lenny says for the zillionth time.

There’s something false about the colors in the photo. Not quite the right colors. Too intense. The green of the grass is jarring. Like out of a crayon box instead of life. Like the artist is confused.

——————————————————-

Eve of Saint Frida
By Jim Doran
Pen and ink colored in Photoshop, 8″X5″
Inspiration Piece provided to Jewel Beth Davis

She’s the One
By Jewel Beth Davis

Hey, all you cheeky bastards down there. Pay attention. Yes, you skeletons. With hats and without. Nice feathers by the way. Yes, you too. With the drinks, the guitars and the cucarachas. This is the Antichrist speaking, so listen up. Hey you with the tambourine, I’m talking to you. Stop dancing. Stop it right now. Stop the music. … Yes, that is what I said. The Antichrist. The Evil One. The Destroyer. Yes, really.

Look, pretty soon, I’m going to set in motion the Final Battle. The End of Days is coming and you’d better be ready. Now stop running around leering and grinning, because we have some serious annihilation to do. No I’m not kidding. When? Soon. How soon? Really really soon. No, I cannot tell you when. Because I have double secret plans and I can’t give them away. Why? Because Christ might find out about them. Then he’d have a leg up, if you follow my metaphor.

You want to know what happens after The End? Nothing happens. It’s The End. No, I guess there’s not much to look forward to but isn’t that the point? I don’t know; everything’s gone, like a blank slate. Well, it’s something like a black hole, according to my conversations with Stephen Hawking.

And for those of you Doubting Debbies who didn’t believe this would ever really happen, you’d better start prepping your Air Raid Shelters with extra water, batteries, and canned goods because this is practically a done deal. Oh, and any personal care items you think you’ll need, because we are in this for the long haul. How long? As long as it takes, that’s how long. Well, we won’t know until it’s over. This is not something you can predict. I know Nostradamus did it but he didn’t get everything on the money. He made some pretty significant errors. And I never said it was going to be at the Millennium. A bunch of crazy cultists made that up. No, not Scientologists, but I must say they’ve been very supportive of my efforts. Thanks, guys, you make my job easier.

What? I’m a woman? So what’s your point? So what if the Bible said the Anti Christ was supposed to be male. It turns out that I’m it. I don’t know. It was a lottery and I got chosen. Yes. A female Antichrist. Believe me, I am really evil. I’m a bad-assed bitch. I do have the balls! Most women have bigger balls than men, especially when it comes to ending things. Men always leave it to women to end relationships because they don’t want to be the Bad Guy. Same with ending the world. They’ll leave this to us too, and it’s a good thing they do, because we’re the ones who create life in the midst of great pain and suffering. Who better than a woman to destroy life in the midst of great pain and suffering? Besides, if I didn’t know what I was doing, I wouldn’t be the one sitting up here on this horse; you would. But you’re not and I am. So are we good? …Okay, so it’s not a horse. It’s a flying praying mantis. But it’s really evil-looking and scary, isn’t it? No, it’s not all that comfortable to ride but the saddle helps a little.

No, I’m not proving anything. Forget it. No way. Look, I’m powerful, sophisticated and charismatic. I’m very likable and spiritual, and I have a deep desire to end the world. What more could you want? Are you nuts? What’s wrong with my hair? My hair is fabulous. I have long black dreads; what could be better than that? It worked for Braveheart in Scotland. Okay, the turban is slightly Carmen Miranda but it symbolizes the fruit of my womb in the negative. That we’ll no longer be fruitful and multiply. Get it?

The Trident? Well, it’s a metaphor for the Holy Trinity and its destruction. No more Father, Son and Holy Ghost. All will be destroyed by the All Powerful Woman. The Antichrista. And it’s about damn time. Well, I realize women are supposed to be the creators not destroyers, but it’s ironic, don’t you think? I love irony. It’s surprising, you know—a new wrinkle. Well, you were surprised.

It’s a good thing I still have my hands and feet because this trident would be tough to hang onto without any musculature. Especially when riding the mantis. Balancing on this thing is iffy as it is. And he gets very prickly if I suddenly have to grab onto his antennae to steady myself. They crack easily. And I still get the heebie-jeebies when the wind passes through the bones of my forearms. Being the Antichrist isn’t as straightforward as it may seem. Or as black or white. There are a lot of subtleties I have to consider. This long robe for instance isn’t all that pragmatic for this kind of endeavor.

All that aside, it is time to start making obeisance to false gods. Well, I don’t know. Like for instance, Dolce and Gabbana. Jimmy Choo. Paris Hilton maybe. Crack. Smack. The X rated video games. Right wing organized religion. Those will do for a start. This is all about preparation for the Final Days and the Great Battle. I’m just saying, get ready. I’ll let you know when I put the next phase of The Plan into action. I’ll hook you up through my I Phone as long as we’re in a WiFi Zone. And keep a positive attitude that the end will come. You just have to believe. Yes, sure, for the time being, you can return to your revelry and debauchery. That’s always good practice for The End.

Layered Life
By Cristal Guderjahn
Acrylic on canvas
Painted using Amy Souza’s story (below) as inspiration

Warrior
By Cristal Guderjahn
Acrylic on canvas
Painted using Amy Souza’s story (below) as inspiration

Herbert and The Shoeshine Boy
by Amy Souza

With the brushing and the rubbing and the moving from foot to foot, the shoeshine boy loses his place in history. But his customer…

It was a warm day, or maybe cool, on the cusp of spring or fall, circa olden times. The man, let’s settle on Herbert, decides to stop on his way to or from work so his wingtips shine. He wants to impress a new boss or his father or the girl he loves who’s playing coy. His heart swells with ambition or lust, but he is a simple man of simple means and a shine is all he can afford. He feels certain, though, that he will or won’t attain the greatness he does or does not deserve. He’s not quite as destitute as the boy at his feet, although perhaps it is true that he’s more so.

His hair—brown or blonde or auburn—is cut in the style of the day. Short, crisp. Made to sit neatly under a hat. He wishes his hair to be tousled. When he run his fingers through it he imagines the touch of the girl who will soon love him.

Once, as a boy, he’d overheard his mother and sister, Carol, two days before Carol’s wedding, talking in the kitchen, not even in whispers. (They mustn’t have known he was there, figured him to be out delivering papers or shooting marbles or doing what young boys do.) He liked the sound of the women’s voices when they spoke to each other, so different than when they talked to him (like a child!) or his father (like an idiot). To each other they spoke in tones both confident and free, though certainly young Herbert couldn’t have expressed it as such or did and was ridiculed.

His father no longer lived with them, or maybe so. The man had beaten his children or loved them, perhaps both. The house, in the family for three generations or two, was always alive with sounds and smells. Or it might have been quiet, still, Hector a lonely child with Carol, years his senior, his only sibling. Mother resented her time spent in the kitchen, sulked about it or relished her role as nurturer, inviting neighborhood children in to play while she baked mincemeat pies and sweet, airy breads.

On that day when Herbert played eavesdropper, he listened first to the lilt of their voices until, like toffee to teeth or flies to paper, the words and their meaning stuck and Herbert felt his face flush.

“It can be enjoyed,” his mother was saying. “But it’s like your grandmother told me: Expect nothing from this life and you will sometimes be pleasantly surprised to receive something.”

“But what does it feel like?” Carol asked, and their mother released a world weary sigh.

The room fell silent, awaiting an answer, and the boy slipped out of the house undetected or his mother heard a rustling in the parlor and whooped young Herbert’s behind. The whole scene remains with him, or went missing that afternoon.

Now an adult, Herbert lives in the city, a small one or large, maybe medium-sized, the city where he grew up or close anyway or thousands of miles from home. He enjoys this new life or curses it every day upon waking. He takes pleasure in small things like a buttered croissant first thing or pines only for what he cannot have: a house on the water or a beautiful bride or a job in which he orders other men around or works diligently on important projects and is praised for his attention to detail and insightful, well-written reports.

He’s traveled these city streets safely for many years or has been mugged in an alleyway at night while drunk or completely sober, just out to clear his head.

But Herbert loves it here, longs for a small town, aches to venture west like a modern day gold rusher. He reads the paper, pays no attention to the news, rallies for causes, remains in the shadows. People love him or hate him; he has many friends, spends too much time alone, is held in high regard or overlooked by everyone.

Or we turn the page of the picture book and dream of Herbert at night, coloring into his black-and-white life.

——————————————————-

River 6
By Cristal Guderjahn
Acrylic on canvas
Inspiration Piece provided to Amy Souza

Pollywogs
By Amy Souza

Tails in constant motion, like the chaos of creation.
They swiggle and swim
upstream,
downstream,
in circles,
going nowhere.

Huddled at the bottom of the narrow gulley where they’d hatched,
they form an inky carpet that pulses with unconscious intention.

Until one day a face appears.
Tiny lungs.
A foot, a leg, then
two,
three,
four.
The tail, useless,
falls away.

And so its purpose, the pollywog’s,
is to survive in order to die,
to trade itself in for the

new better being.

Inheritance
By Lynne Heiser
Acrylic on board, 15″X20″
Painted using Joanne Lozar Glenn’s poem (below) as inspiration

For Becca
By Joanne Lozar Glenn

Maybe you knew her as “Paula”—
her language our only heirloom, the one inheritance
we could claim. I called her grandma.
She called me puella punce—good girl—
as we picked chamomile from her garden,
and my mother canned peaches in the upstairs kitchen.

Finding the tiny daisies became a game.
She held her apron out from her waist
like an upside down parachute.
I laid the stems onto the white cotton.
When we’d snatched them all,
Grandma gathered the corners of her apron in one hand.
The other she laid on my shoulder,
guiding me under the shade trees toward her kitchen,
my Mary Janes soft on the slate sidewalk,
her black lace-ups softer still, like an old nun’s.

As she poured boiling water to steep the tea
I dragged a chair to the refrigerator,
climbed up, up, up, toes pressing, fingers pulling.
Stretched all the way through my armpits,
I tipped and rolled a button box heavy with copper pennies
toward me, mine to spend as I pleased.

Today I am older than my mother was then.
Grandchildren, none of them mine, bring her kisses,
dandelions, tears. In the evenings, when it is quiet,
I sip chamomile tea at my kitchen table,
study news photos of women from Grandma’s homeland.
The photographer offers no words, only faces—
hair wrapped in babushkas, eyes dark and unflinching,
like Grandma’s on the holy card, like my mother’s in the Communion photo.
One woman pulls a shawl around her shoulders. Another holds a child.

Yesterday, dear niece, you cuddled next to me, my body a pillow
for your heart. I remembered Grandma, the plane of my face
against her aproned belly, the scent of her wooden pantry shelves
piled high with Mason jars, coffee tins, sacks of flour, nutmeg, cloves.
I craved first words, the crooning of ancestors—
dober dan [good day], luka nuce [good night]—
the sound of my name riding the currents of your breath.

——————————————————-

Julie’s Reverie
By Lynn Elizabeth Heiser
Mixed media collage on paper, 24″X18″
Inspiration Piece provided to Joanne Lozar Glenn

Julie’s Reverie
By Joanne Lozar Glenn

I. Spring

She is in Palermo. There is a boy. They exchange rings beside the frescoed retaining wall.

Be my princess bride, he teases when they tour the castle. They kiss. For a moment their foreheads touch, then shyness overtakes them and they tilt away, eyes downcast. She imagines their children—three boys, sturdy like the arches in the piazza. She imagines gardens full of poppies, celebrations staged on ivy-covered stone terraces surrounded by family and by tables laden with bowls of risotto and platters piled high with eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, bread.

They wander toward the Vucirria market, where old men sell olives and drink homemade artichoke wine. She wants a photograph but her camera is broken. Later, at the trattoria, she spills her glass on the damask tablecloth, her stomach somersaulting at her sudden recall of last night’s ride on the boy’s Vespa, her arms around his waist, the wind pushing the sea air into her eyes until they begin to water.

She practices conjuring his face from memory. The image emerges as from a mist, his features lazily rearranging themselves the way clouds come together into knights and dragons, the way she always sees patterns in the crazing of ancient castle ruins. The sky darkens, the red sun slips to earth, the wind shifts—or does she imagine that, too?

She opens her eyes, remembers the tree looming between where they’d sat in the trattoria and the piazza’s three arches. The three have become a group of one and two. She takes the tree’s single barren branch as a metaphor or an omen—she’s not sure which. Her lips part, then come together. She decides she is determined to try more flavors of gelato. The market has closed, the streets hold only empty boxes and discarded fruit rinds. She leaves tomorrow, alone, for Rome, where bougainvilleas spill from balconies.

II. 20 years later

Ahh, so this is the one. Italy. I remember now. Where you and that boy exchanged rings. He showed you the poppies in Palermo, you prepared a feast of bread and olive oil, pesce and pasta. One night under a balmy, star-filled sky, the waves a soft susurra on the stony coast, the cliffs fortresses illumined by moonlight, you decided your life was like those three arches in the piazza, a simple metaphor: live in past, present, or future. You had to choose. You couldn’t let that tree of memory, that tree of forgetting, come between you and what you wanted then. That seductive, sturdy trunk—its white bark glistening in the fading light, its singular limb offering a metaphor you could live with. No leaves, no progeny from this branch. You’d be no one’s ancestor, just a pilgrim passing through. You didn’t count on changing your mind. You didn’t count on Time torquing the muscles in your back, tightening the sinews in your leg, stiffening the joints in your fingers and toes. Now carpe diem sounds like mockery. What are you to do with this day anyway, the hours already lost, the archways already dark, lovers tilting away like windmills in the breeze? And the one you denied, you never even imagined its face. You didn’t want to love something that you thought could only cause regrets, remind you of dreams deferred, make you hungry for things you could not control. You are like the fleur de lis, born in one country, but finding some sense of home in others. You must have a thousand more like this one—Greece, Australia, Mexico, coves and beaches, markets and harbors, groves and forests. What now, here in middle age where past and future converge? You always traveled light, ever since those gypsies scared you on the boat to Santorini. What, then, these abandoned possibilities, like so much chopped wood, corded, seasoned, but not allowed to burn?

By Michele Hoben
Inspiration Piece provided to Ashley Seitz Kramer

One Learns To Stare Out
The Window, Not Down The Aisle
By Ashley Seitz Kramer

The woman on the bus wants the darker side left out.
When the 55 sails past her stop, her heart is sailcloth.
These waters are strange and cold, but here she is
swimming Clifton Boulevard in a red dress.
How expensive and foolish! How unexpected!
The woman on the bus wants to overestimate her cigarette and all it ashes into.
Today she aims for Emerald City, for a swell of good green,
a field of Forsythia, sunlight wedged in
like a newspaper between seats. The woman on the bus
can smell her own wanting. Her body
balances one thin life, barely.
She chooses a hoop for a house and lives there, inside it,
pressing her hands to the rim each evening. Each window
has to be eaten through. Each door fallen across.
The woman on the bus recalls the woman on the bus
and means me, of course.
She offers me money for one stick of gum and I shake off her coin.
She offers again. That’s silly, I say.
Don’t mean to be beggin’ she says.
I know.

Patchwork Air
By Paula Lantz
Painted using Leyla Sarigol’s poem (below) as inspiration

compilation I: urban wind suite 08
by leylâ sarıgöl

brooklyn

Cling. Cling. A staccato chime.
Wind blows across Borinquen carrying the downbeat.
Coming in on the 5th and 6th. On 2nd, then 1st.
Latin horns. Hip hop drive.
One from the left. The other from the right.
Meeting in the middle of a one way street—
A fusion of sounds, of cultures, of races… of people.

grey

Living vicariously off secondhand smoke…
Partaking in the sensual.
The old familiar smell of Gram’s cigarette.

A white puff fleeting carelessly.

Carrying a taste infused with the patchwork air
left hanging above the street
after a day in the life of thousands has emitted its exhaust
and left the few who remain to stride grounded on pavement
as a breeze wafts in with a heaviness that seems to cleanse the day.

foodie*

I am @ I & Connecticut.
I am among people who languish in the richness of their palettes.
The breeze lifts me as I crawl to rest my head in the cradle of my boot.

——————————————————-

Figure in Lavender
By Paula Lantz
Inspiration piece provided to Leyla Sarigol

lavender
by leylâ sarıgöl

Lying here, I am surrounded by darkness.
So tight the fit that in it, I am drawn to myself.
Like a blanket it tries to cover me. Seeks to warm me.
Yet I am cold.

Or, am I?

Well. At times…

You gaze at me wondering. And, I do the same.
Searching for a way to pull it together.
And, I am at peace with that.

Or, am I?

Alone in the calm, I feel a pulse. Visceral.
I am reminded of…strength.

I am.

Untitled
By Brian MacDonald
Made using Caroline Crawford’s poem (below) as inspiration

Fido
By Caroline Crawford

He’s faithful,
Meaning he sticks around where he knows he’ll be fed.
He sleeps in the same place every night.
He goes for a walk. Looks for something new to sniff.
Returns home without thinking about where home is. He knows the route by instinct.
Or, more likely, by memory.

He doesn’t say much.
Sometimes you see his eyes looking far away.
But you say his name, ask him what he’s thinking about,
And he looks surprised, and then benignly indifferent.
Then he settles down and takes a nap.

Dogs don’t drive.
So if it weren’t for his ability with the car keys
The way he can put the Ford in gear and head out
To the hardware store, the diner, the golf course, the errand
that could take 10 minutes and instead takes a good part of the afternoon
It might be easy to forget that he isn’t
A canine
Bred for a purpose
Although that purpose may have be lost in the generations before him.
So now he wants to hunt, and point, and retrieve and return
Although he doesn’t know exactly why.

A faithful companion
If faithful means
Present.

But watch him run in his dreams
Hear him bark and whimper while he sleeps.
He wants to be off leash for good.

He knows his name and answers your call.
He’ll show up if you say, “Come.”
He’ll stay if you say, “Stay.”
And he’ll go if you say, “Go,”
But he might not look back over his shoulder
As he walks away.

——————————————————-

Untitled Baby on Table
By Brian MacDonald
Inspiration piece provided to Caroline Crawford

Sol
By Caroline Crawford

Asher flexed his fingers as he prepared to retie his tie. It was a new one that Sophie had bought him for tonight, suggesting that the departmental party celebrating his appointment as the Hartson Endowed Chair of the physics department would be a good time for him to dress a little more… what was that ridiculous term she’d used? Metrosexually?

He wrapped the thick, smooth dark purple silk around his neck again–it hadn’t knotted right the first time–and wondered what kind of statement about his sexuality could possibly be relayed from a tie.  A metrosexual sounded like a man who got aroused from riding the subway. He was just a typical heterosexual whose ability to score a second wife 20 years younger and 20 times more attractive than his first he chalked up to his wit, his intelligence and his still-flat abs, not his ability to choose a tie.

Sophie walked back into their bedroom, her long legs encased in tight black jeans, a bright pink sweater stretched taut across her narrow shoulders. She was twisting her dark hair up with one hand.

“Asher, you look totally cool,” she said, smiling. “Just great.”

Asher looked back in the mirror. His thick white hair grazed the collar of his dark gray shirt (part of the metrosexual ensemble), but when he grinned at himself he agreed that, for 52, he could still claim a shred of cool. He was still fit, and stood up straight. But damn, he was tired.

That he could blame on Solomon, though.

“What time is Kate coming?” Asher asked. If the sitter was late, he’d be late to his own award party which would be second only to being late to his wedding. Or his funeral.

“Kate?” asked Sophie. “Kate’s not coming. We’re bringing Sol with us.” Sophie spoke so matter-of-factly that Asher wondered for a minute if he’d somehow known this all along.

But, no. Why would he be bringing his four-month-old son to the home of the dean of the school of science? Sol was a baby. Babies don’t belong at academic parties. It was almost 7 o’clock already, and that was Sol’s supposed bedtime, although the way he carried on for hours on end each night, he certainly didn’t seem to know it.

Besides, Lia was going to be there, smiling at her father’s success. With her husband. And she was pregnant. He didn’t need to make clearer what was already obvious to everyone–that, yes, he was old enough to be Sophie’s father, that he would soon have a grandchild just a little younger than his new son.

His long-time colleagues knew that anyway. They remembered Barbara, and while none of them seemed surprised or sorry when he announced their parting, neither did they seem surprised or pleased when Sophie had eagerly assumed her title. He’d not said much about her pregnancy and the invasion of plastic toys and things that played music at unexpected moments that has taken over his formerly quiet, orderly home. He just stopped offering up his den for cigar night.

“Sophie, really…? Isn’t Sol staying here?”

“No,” she said, matter-of-factly. “What’s the problem?”

“It’s just… “ He looked at Sol. “He’s not going to have fun. There won’t be any other kids there.”

“He’s a baby. He’s your baby. Don’t worry about it.”

Asher was quiet on the ride to Jeff’s house, while Sophie sang to Sol about a baby beluga in the deep blue sea and Sol blew raspberries at the reflection of himself in mirror attached to his car seat. Who can resist looking at a baby? Even when Asher was delivering a speech that was meant to sum up his 25 years of teaching. What if Sol started crying ?

“Sophie, how long do you think you and Sol will want to stay? What I mean is, do you think you might want to leave early, and I can get a ride back with… Richard?”

“Asher, don’t worry. Just drive.”

“No problem, no problem,” he said, trying to put a carefree tone in his voice. The moment he parked the car and swung his legs out the door, Richard, his department chair, approached with an outstretched hand, his lanky wife, Jean, moving quietly behind him with a half smile and a full glass of something dark and potent in her hand.

“Asher. Sophie. Ah, you brought Sol,” she said.

“Sophie did,” said Asher. “She said babies love parties.”

Jean smiled vaguely. “After all, whose party is this?”

“Exactly,” said Asher.

He headed into the party a few strides ahead of Sophie, who wore Sol in a sling so that he, and indeed she, resembled a kangaroo. He sank into the welcoming sea of colleagues and only now and again raised his head to see Sophie and her joey, who had barely moved from the entrance.

“Asher, we’d like you to speak in just a moment,” said Richard. “Of course,” he replied, hoping he sounded modest while instead his pride swelled the starched pique of his steel gray shirt.  But at that moment, Sophie handed him Sol.

“Asher, your turn to take the baby. I need a quick breather outside.”

Richard was turning on the microphone. Sophie had already turned her back and was walking away. He held Sol, who was smiling like a sunbeam, and, for lack of any other idea, placed him on the coffee table. “Just watch him for a minute, will you?” he asked the three teaching assistants, who looked at Sol as if he were an snapping turtle. They didn’t move.

Asher moved toward the podium and when he looked out into the crowd, he saw Sophie standing there, looking back at him. “Where’s Sol?” she mouthed.

Whose party is this? he asked himself.

“Good evening,” he began.

Aftermath
By MM Panas
Acrylic, charcoal, and Conte crayon on canvas, 24″x36″
Painted using JoAnn Moore’s poem (below) as inspiration

Fire
By JoAnn Moore
It is summer in California, and so
the woods are alive with fire.

Poems lick at my consciousness
offering solace to the memories
which will not settle.

Who am I but their medium
as words engulf me
with lines

as unmanageable as this summer’s
wildfires with fronts shifting
constantly while backfires burn

into pristine forests,
previously unexplored and dense,
filled with drought-stricken timber

ready to explode.

——————————————————-

Rainforest
By MM Panas
Acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 24″X24″
Inspiration Piece provided to JoAnn Moore

Life in a Rainforest
By JoAnn Moore

Blurred between my mother’s restrictions
and a cloudy horizon
was childhood. Everything was white
or black and no in that world;
she reveled in how all she forbid
made life colorless.
Some Saturday mornings or early
Sunday afternoons when the sun would break
free of the New England turbidity
and shine a pane-light on the living
room floor— I would sit in its ebbing
lightness, moving my face
into the bright; its diamond filled
dust not allowed to rest long
enough on my skin for coating.
Mother’s fear that even the sun
rays could make me dirty
imbued this lifelong need of intensity,
warmth and the taste of sunlight.

Tomorrow it is Fall, the Earth’s tilt
toward darkness already begun,
and in a week what would have been
your seventieth birthday. Maybe
being borne into the fading
sun instilled your perspective.
But I was a child of the fishes—
in love with glistening scales,
cacophonous tides and how even when immersed
in darkness I emerged
shimmering with beads of water
held fast, the smell of color on my skin.

Untitled
By Lisa Pimental
Painted using Dale Leffler’s poem (below) as inspiration

Mother’s Milk
By Dale Leffler
Where do I find mother’s milk?
In the specter of the morning sunrise
In the silence beneath the breaths’ rhythm
In the moment between heart beats and before my reactions
In the truth telling of who I am
In the protective embrace I give my child
In the unconditional adoration from my pet
Between the falling from left foot to right
walking quietly among the trees
In the
reflection of rain in a puddle
deposited just for gazing by me
In the thought that is not thought but inspiration
In the awe that, in spite of our differences, it is all we seek
In the virgin journal’s page, the empty canvas,
note-less staff book or empty stage.

Where do I find mothers milk?
In the silence before creativity, or service to others
In my midnight moonlight
respites
In my friend painful eyes
where hope, love, and charity lie
In thoughtless acts of kindness
In being generous of heart and word
and in the practice, in the practice, in the practice
In being tolerant of the struggles of others
and compassionate with ourselves
In the assertion that things are better
because we have the resources that we need.

Where do I find mothers milk?
In silence mostly,
In “and so it is”
In “be still and know I am”
In “let it be”
For I am the sky, thoughts but passing clouds, feelings but rain
running to the sea.
All of this manifests the source of Mother’s milk
That lays no where else but within me.

——————————————————-

Untitled
By Lisa Pimental
Temporary installation; recycled carpet tack on 10′X10′ wall
Inspiration Piece provided to Dale Leffler

Tree climbing
By Dale Leffler

Oh! this is going to be difficult. What did I get myself into here?
I wanted to let you know who I am and you give this to me.
I am touched, really, but I don’t quite know what to say.
Is this your self disclosure too, in some sacred symbolic way?

I look for meaning in the depths of my life,
a place we can relate and share that we might have in common.
Seldom do I go where it hurts, unless I feel truly safe.
Sometime my defenses put folks off, even me.

Working with material that is subtly tangible and yet concrete,
tacking examples most folks know from life up on the wall,
a stubbed toe, a bitten tongue, maybe a betrayed heart,
it shows up in the locking of the door and not answering the call.

Sitting alone, feeling the smooth coolness of my constricted forehead
ideas come to me, thoughts and images, words paintings too.
I create from what I find about me, my life incorporated, then displayed.
There it is, there I am, here we are together.

Peaks and valleys, roses and thorns, blood and tears
A relationship is born from touch me but not there
Bite marks, scratches and tenders kiss too
How can we put this together
this me and that you?