visual art
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Sweep – Y Lowy
to closely monitor your working liquids and to have found his voice glassy and unbearable and to have left the room to cry in the hallway and to have found someone already there, crying. it’s just that you thought the flood had already come so long ago and now it’s the aftershock, all reels and…
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Baja – Helen Head
“Awake?” Katie calls. A beam of light sweeps over me and I give a thumbs up. Ready. It’s 4:45AM, mildly chilly. There are 5 million stars in the sky, and I think I can see them all. I reach out of my sleeping bag, pull the plug on my sleeping pad and drop to the…
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Billy and Johnny (Just What You Do) – Bill Lautner
Billy and Johnny They were the best of friends They grew up in the hills of Tennessee Every fall when the leaves turned red, some brown They’d play ball together in the fields, in the barn. That’s just what you did after all. Billy and Johnny They were very much the same They both grew…
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A Fire of Snow – Brian Michael Barbeito
Quiet was the forest way, and the snow would sometimes erupt like a summer fire for an unseen wind that had gathered it suddenly and brought it up like magic. Then there would be just Pines and old Oaks, the frozen pond small but present, or a winter bird going here or there. But, mostly…
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Hubris – Jennifer Peloso
Try as I might, I can’t cut Hope out of me. I take scissors and snip off my fingers like a little girl mangling her paper dolls. And I find that it satisfies the tyrant in me. I pluck off my hair, too, One by one, from my head To test the follicles, extracting the…
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Making Bread for Those Who Imagine They Quite Possibly Could – Faith Hanna
Over two-decades of cooking has taught me that a lot can go wrong with simple recipes. Most cookbooks don’t include plans B, C, and Z. Take bread for example. Investment-prone people can convert practically any phase of bread– sums of unintegrated ingredients, doughy masses, steamy loaves, culinary innovations, or spoiled goods – into a feast’s…
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Untitled – Simeon Otyrba
Regardless of the value I feel in fluidity, often when without direction, I wish I had more form. I imagine I would erect myself and propel towards anything but the washing-away. Do away with the drifting, the push and pull, the blur of environmental embrace. To be a form for form’s sake. But the form…
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Cutting Back – Keith Trottier
Robert’s mother hobbled into the kitchen. When had that started? The lively woman he had known as a child was visibly ravaged by time. Her bottle blonde hair that had once been so full sat deflated in shoulder length curls, her muddy roots bleeding into the fading bronze bleach. Her green eyes had become tiny…
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IN DEFENSE OF A SEDENTARY LIFESTYLE – Roberta Moore
Whenever I get the urge to exercise, I just lay down and it goes away. Unlike most people I know, I hate exercise; it’s exhausting and it’s boring. What’s the point of running nowhere? When I get in a swimming pool to cool off on a hot day, I float on my back watching the…
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A journal excerpt: Too Gay to Pray Sometimes – Christine Alicea Gaan
Growing up I avoided birthday parties, so I didn’t have to play 7 minutes in heaven with Victor or so I didn’t have to pretend I was excited to kiss Evans during spin the bottle; but mostly so that no one would see my accidental smile when the bottle landed on Michelle, and everyone screamed,…
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