visual art
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Poetry: “Address To Myself Across Decades”, Featuring Image: “Days Catch”
Address To Myself Across Decades Stricken as you were with silence—the fall-out from that troubled Celtic island— you were dumb, voice held as if in solitary confinement. Language languished. I remember you taking flight from Dublin, fleeing the dole, the lone twenty-four old you were. You heaved that great bag, the huge heft…
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Poetry: “gamma-aminobutyric acid or GABA”, Featuring Image: “Friend in Me”
gamma-aminobutyric acid or GABA worry is another love, to worry is to love sweet talismans of take care / be well not enough to guard against metal sharpened teeth biting down on inner cheeks, salted salivary shame flowing down through lips. my mother’s love is worried cuticles, scorched forearms forcing a plastic lid…
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Poetry: “Swallow a Beginning”, Featuring Image: “Samedi 01.12.2019, Toulouse”
Swallow a Beginning I have a death wish. I wish death upon those who wish me ill and look through my cellular walls, decide I am a nucleus weakened from the world’s arsenal of surveillance. Do you see me through impact ending life blood on your phone screen? Do you feel it…
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You Invited Me on a Picnic – Vivian Imperiale
It was time to go. I walked outside to wait for you. You were picking me up for a picnic and I was delighted I’d be with you. You didn’t talk about your AIDS diagnosis — mysterious letters I didn’t comprehend. What was that, anyway? Instead you were just you, which was everything — the…
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Little Girl Growing Up – Megan Brown
In hot suburban Florida in an old, sandy bungalow my father used to measure my height on the doorframe If we left the honey out roaches would come a bee drove his stinger into my arm— that kind of summer visit my baby brother— learning to talk my father tuning in to area news amid…
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Seventeen – Fernando Rosal Gonzalez
Seventeen glasses, full to the brim – coffee, orange juice, milk, some water to drink. They took so long to finish their breakfast, Not that they wanted them to last. Seventeen kisses, or sighs from Dad and Mom; Don’t be late, come home by five o’clock. Let’s plan tonight for our weekend getaway, or maybe…
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Spirals – Erika Dyquisto
Spirals enthrall her. She draws them in notebooks, coil upon coil, twisting glyphs about the page. She sports a tattoo choker. In this she finds comfort and beauty. A loving vine about her neck turns her morning glory blue. She re-enacts vestigial memories of a liquid time: An umbilical cord slowly constricts; her heart languishes…
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Rejecting Dirges – Carla Schick
(Elegy for Tede) How you danced with rainbow scarves one in your hand, the other draped across your bare shoulders You made a tutu from violet shorts curtsied for the camera your red lipstick never fades. You wrote the lyrics of your disease Desire still trembling from fingertips caress of a sunflower on your cheek…
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Of Waves and Wind – R. Shawntez Jackson
Currents move unselfishly. Lapping at the shores of our consciousness Repainting memories now faded from strained expectations but it is a gift A taste of what true love is a healing of the heartaches measured in the waves watch as the sea moves in conjunction with the wind they are kind lovers to one another like…
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The Church of Buenos Aires – Christopher Williams
Jeremiah lied every night. After prayer circle the youth group would discuss what concrete steps they’d taken to establishing their church here, in Buenos Aires. And every night Jeremiah, who would’ve spent most of the day walking aimlessly around the metropolis, lied. He said that he’d witnessed to a drunk in Bosques de Palermo, or…
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