Through the Window | Across the Road

THROUGH the WINDOW A C R O S S the R O A D

A collection arranged by Amy Kรถnigbauer & Beck Norman

photography poetry prose drawing

made in the early days of quarantine due to covid-19 in 2020

Susan

Front cover photograph is Krista by Amy Königbauer, back cover photograph is Erin & Harold by Beck Norman.

Their work will be labled throughout this collection with “aek” and “bn”, respectively.

aek

With love and dismay from Vermont.

All content in this collection was created and arranged in Vermont, USA.* March - July of 2020.

With abrupt seclusion

isolation

distance longing upheaval solitude and some finesse.

* Some of the content in this collection may not be suitable for children.

Zak

aek

CONTRIBUTORS Photography: amy königbauer Beck Norman

Poety & Prose: Aedan Scibner Amanda Capps E. Savitri Glenda Bissex Gräe Frechette Camille Casemier james m. frase-white Jeff Thomson Judith Janoo Karen Cygnarowicz Knayte Lander Kristina Martzke Libby Belitsos Maria Robinson Mark Brown Michael Demyan Phayvanh Luekhamhan Robyn Joy Sean Prentiss Toussaint St. Negritude William Graham

Drawing: B. Fox

i do not feel entitled to sink into the slowly swelling jealousy for things i never imagined living without when other people have to battle their lives through the thing i will never want where they have to know how the storm can hit because it has hit them

Libby Belitsos

Erin & Harold

bn

Anna

bn

Katy

bn

Sometimes I mix up “green” with “orange.” Not the colors, just the words. It’s a lifelong slip of the mind so I’m practiced at keeping it in check. It only pops out in unguarded moments, which these days are fewer and further between. Not many have witnessed this aphasic quirk. My family, old friends, my ex-husband. The other day it happened in front of my lover: Can you hand me the green—I mean the orange—one? I’m a writer with prodigious vocabulary. He did a double take.

We’ve been working here inside my house 7 days a week across two shifts. 77 of our weekly working hours don’t overlap. He’s never seen so much of me and seems bewildered and fascinated in equal measure. The other day, I yelled “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” after accidentally dripping Clorox disinfectant on a stalk of fresh [green] broccoli just moments after I’d braved the store to get it.

He looked at me like I was a stranger and slowly backed away, covering his ears.

I have a sense that my loosening (dissemblance?) is somehow increasing my mystique, expanding my penumbra in his imagination.

We’ve been in each other’s lives for 6 years; we’ve been in quarantine together for 8 weeks.

Too much of the shape of my life has been defined or dictated by men. Or by me, in deference to them.

Not this one, per se (but not *not* this one, either).

Right now one of those men is across the sea, writing me out of my story in weekly installments, “dispatches from the quarantine” in a punky online art mag. Every week his ruminations nibble right up to the edge of my existence. The plot is intact, the touchstones, the timeline, but my part is missing—I’ve been plucked from every scene. I imagine a smooth hollow where I used to be, a skate ramp where his self-fashioned narrative can catch some wind and pick up speed.

The monster in the White House is doing the same to all of us. Claiming sole authorship of a shared story and carving away every inconvenient fact, no matter how public or verifiable, that mars the narrative he’s decided he owns. His assault on our collective reality is relentless. It’s so violently genital—these men, their unwelcome force, their insistent grip on the podium.

Is there a natural law governing the flow of power?

How do we know what is seized and what is ceded?

How do we shift the scales?

Maria Robinson

Leslie

aek

Toussaint

aek

THIS IS WHERE I like climbing deep into the forests of my soul and deciding right then and whole: this is where I shall build my home and flourish as a mountain black and old.

Toussaint St. Negritude

Daniel & Gaie

bn

Nicole, Hazel, & chickens (pictured and chased) Cali, Puzzle & Jewel

bn

Heather

bn

GETTING ACQUAINTED

After the mud and flies, the ticks were a surprise. In the world before, there were no trees, just endless horizon melting into an ocean. Fleas we had, and cockroaches, along with miles of industrial sprawl slashing the Gulf Coast sky in vertical towers and billowing plumes of toxins. But ticks, nope. They burrow into flesh. I don’t even feel them. Until they move. I think it is a loose hair stuck to the inside of my shirt. But it is a tick, and then another, and another. I had come here to escape the suffocation of suburbia and suck the marrow out of life, and not to be sucked. This is a hazing. The fly infestation, the polar vortex snow in May, the outrageous property taxes, the lack of mail on Saturdays, the global pandemic, the attack of the ticks. I don’t know who is masterminding it all, but then again, I know no one here.

Under normal circumstances, I would remedy the social isolation with outings to libraries and museums, community events and parks, or else strike up conversations with random strangers (who are always obliging if not charming). In lieu of such options, and given that: I have not left this cockeyed old farm house since we moved here seven weeks ago; my husband is over two thousand miles away; my children find me as amusing as assembling a two-tone, thousand-piece puzzle (one of which sits framed out with its center hollow and its innards spewed about the counter), and as I have mastered the rare art of cleaning ancient radiators (of which there are four), I have taken to nicknaming and profiling the neighbors passing by the crooked windows of my new home.

Wind-Breaker-Marcia hurries by swinging her arms, stiffly held at full length, her chin tucked, her eyes on the road, as if she knows something about the path that I don’t. Which, surely, she does. It must be fascinating.

Perhaps she’s a geologist tracking the shifting sediments of Winooski soil in the Kingdom. I bet she could tell me all about frost heaves, a completely foreign concept to my Texan brain. I imagine she dotes on an eighteen-year-old Siamese cat named Chester Reginald the Third whose medical directives require Marcia to administer a plethora of medications at precise intervals every day. This is why she rushes to squeeze in her daily walk, fueled by the horrifying losses of C.R. the First and C.R. the Second (may they rest in peace). I waved once. The first time she approached, my heart fluttered and I forgot not to be Southern, and I waved wildly, smiled too broadly, exclaiming a “hello!” to which she replied with a fiercer stare at her feet. She walks on the opposite side of the road from my house now. This is merely a coincidence.

The Clan is a marvelous motley group in hoodies and graphic t-shirts with names of bands they never listen to (but I did), clustered and clucking like the chickens we can’t get yet, shuffling across the road in wild, haphazard movements. Most likely, they compare recipes for Poutine (a mysterious concoction I am convinced is prepared only in Canada on the second full moon of Winter). Their forays into the outdoors are rare, owing to the demand for a full quorum of players for the nightly video game competition which awards prizes in the form of Amazon gift cards and subscriptions to obscure magazines full of articles that reveal hidden warp zones and access codes to difficult levels. The members of The Clan all have slightly over-developed thumbs and pointer fingers. I know because I have planted myself by the window, watching just for such details. This is normal, acceptable behavior, I tell myself.

Rusty is a lean man in his fifties, who seems familiar though he isn’t; who walks like a day-dreaming adolescent; sometimes is accompanied by a dog entirely too small to be called a dog; nods in my direction (he senses my presence behind the curtains), and usually has at least one hand in a jean pocket. I imagine he smokes cheap cigarettes and whittles wooden animals, like loons or badgers. He most likely majored in Romantic Poetry before he lost faith in women and became a mechanic instead. He can sometimes be overheard voicing the praises of the multitude of beauteous forms in the intricacies of engines, or singing along with Van Morrison B-sides. Rusty probably knows a secret formula for tick repellent and would scribble it down for anyone who asked. Which I won’t, because that is something a Flat Lander would do.

And then there are John and Yoko, a couple in their mid-seventies, who probably conceived twin girls at Woodstock (they named them Janis and Joan), and are hunched not so much from age but from copious amounts of love-making. They hold hands as they walk by, and collect cans thrown out by careless motorists. They eat organic kale grown hydroponically alongside other nutritional, medicinal plants inside their kitchen which is festooned with prayer flags, tapestries and hand-woven baskets crafted from locally sourced willows. They never go to bed mad, and have never spent more than three nights apart in the last fifty-seven years. I wonder if the bastards know how much they make me miss my husband. Then I worry if they have masks, or a way to get food or prescriptions filled.

I feel guilty for calling them bastards.

Not one of these neighbors knows my name. I am referred to as the Texan, or the crazy lady who stopped in the middle of the road to have a conversation with a beaver (it was being elusive and non-responsive so it was extremely one-sided). They probably think I have the virus (which I don’t), and that I’m lonely and riddled with parasites. More likely, they do not think of me at all.

Ellen & Leslie

aek

Amanda Capps

Alex, Cameron, Carrie & George

aek

Henry, Josephine & Adrian

aek

Henry

aek

Daryl

aek

BREATHE After another day in isolation, a day where family and community shrink smaller in practice, the little girl startles in the middle of this March night calling, Papa, and when I arrive, she whines, My lips hurt. Moments later, My tummy hurts. She demands I sleep beside her, hands weaved together like the smallest nucleus as she struggles to decline into sleep, which takes over an hour, and as she finally fades, her mind no longer kneading over COVID, corona, isolation, and self-distancing—all concepts her mama and I try to whisper about but these words are now of little girl’s tongue—her breathing becomes a ghost of a wisp, shallow and beautiful and as I listen to the music of it, I cannot help but nightmare-imagine to another state so many stay-in-place orders away to my brother’s bedroom where I must imagine—since we cannot actually visit for fear of contracting this crowned sickness —to the few words he uttered yesterday morning when I called after hearing the news, he rasped, It’s so hard to breathe.

Sean Prentiss

BLOODROOT It’s really you! My god what a fantastic discovery.

So grounded in knowing It honestly surprises me, the sense of being held Now, when I haven’t hugged in so many weeks You are my hug The sun shines and the wind whispers your smile cracks open Then when it rains and the wind sighs you swath you heads in white, dozens of small flags signaling surrender to the downpour Ballet arms deep green hearts to hold each other closer You are the teacher I’ve been needing and you are the embrace I have been craving for within myself It is, really, almost overwhelming The sense of being held Of being able to hold myself.

It has been too many weeks since I’ve hugged my best friend.

Too many weeks since I’ve hugged a stranger.

At least I know as long as there isn’t rain tomorrow, I’ll see your smiling face Yellow teeth and a white hat, green jacket half zipped.

Gräe Frechette

WHERE Aboard/Docked: The Ship with Love in It Date:18 APR 2020 Place: familiar I am: scratching, as to persuade away my mounting urge to attempt drinking and gulping the air Screaming my breath into empty bottles and hucking them out to where the ‘gulls float, if only the wind would stop brushing across my face so fast, then I could ask the salt to purify my lungs on its way by.

Repeatedly: I run my feet and hands through the sand, as to forget the looming impulse to cut open my chest and cram as much marine matter into the heart cavity as I could.

Try to banish the craving to be a sand doll, seaweed for hair and a seashell suit.

Pearls and glass smoothed by the current, Lodged: into every crevice of my new body like limpets.

Letting: the opal foam crash into me colliding with this body I breathe deeper here than anywhere I’ve ever been, so this is no doubt why I can listen Here: closer than anywhere else Love: Here louder than I remember Loving anyone Except Maybe You. Crash together like a whitecap Please: let us be wet sand, holding the imprint of each other until something heavier comes along.

Signed: A Beached Ocean Fairy

Michael

bn

Kyle, Noel & Mia

bn

Susan

bn

1. I reclaim to do lists by envisioning a future in which they have all been completed, and the ones lost to time are meant to be so for their completion is a magick I do not need.

2. I breathe in, and exhaling realizing my breath beat is the only anchor I have to existence, holding my place along with all of creation.

3. The butterflies in my heart at the thought of the void, at the thought of myself being a tiny part of a big big universe.

4. Clothes swaying in the wind.

5. Hips swaying like the consequence of heart beat.

6. I’ve missed poetry like a mother who can’t accept the love of her own children.

7. The sweat lines of my palm reflect the sun’s light to me and I can look at it.

8. I accept the love of my children.

9. I accept the love of the world’s children.

10. No one complains of the grass’s morning hair, yet her only brush is air and soot.

11. Everything you hate is your most tender heart-broken-est of loves.

12. Making love to my shadow. Listening, asking what she wants, needs. Giving what I am comfortable giving. Telling her what I want and need. Readying myself for the helix of pleasure : love and hate.

13.

Kristina Martzke

Beloved Seeker, Sometimes a succulent will kill non-harmoniously placed leaves in order to grow stronger, symbiotically positioned parts of itself. Only the succulent knows who to kill.

There’s fire inside of you so strong it holds the secrets of life and death.

You can do anything you want if you don’t want to badly enough.

They say shoot for the stars, but they never specify what one is shooting. Fantasize of the divine weapon you will choose to hunt down the gods with. Arrow tips dipped in menstrual blood? Jumping off the bridge in your dream to gain lucidity? Brainstorm the gates of Hades.

Mini samosas are best enjoyed when viewed as heavenly intervention.

During your hunt for the gods, you may have come upon the realization that the hunt is futile. Either it is an impossible chase or a trick question. Celebrate this realization with a fine wine. Once you are good and drunken, resume the hunt, but trust that it’s futility is essential to it’s divinity and proceed knowing you are blessed for continuing.

Kristina Martzke

Diane

aek

Debbie

aek

Johnny, Lindsay, Knayte, Jaya, Khalil & Jahana

aek

Jesse

aek

Serena & Jesse

aek

Xav

aek

QUARANTINE ANSWERING Help me define anything. Would it be called laterally productive to stay in bed all day? Would I make a cute mouse in a house in a copy of a million those read to their children and kept on a shelf for years passing us a way.

Are we all going to become dust eventually? I hope to god it’s an event. Or should I pray to god? I pray to the space between one sound meeting another, but I’ve never really liked percussion. Have you lived with a drummer?

I met someone over the moon. On our first date we tried to imagine what it would look like to throw dirt on dust, and looked up instead. He told me color doesn’t exist without light. It was like a torch.

A mouse or a few live in my house. There have been a few moments in my life when all I see are animals, dead: a bird had hit a window of McDonald’s right by the door. A squirrel flat on its front next to a stop sign. Two mice in my laundry room, different days.

An inch worm saunters the crown on top the head of a man I now love. The worm inched around the head of a sunflower, what we could only imagine the sun looks like. We pause time. Like the greatest gift the earth could ask for, and she did over and over again. When asked why he loves me, in other words he said, “You keep showing up.” I got a new phone and almost dropped it in a river on a walk with him. This feels different than others. I used to want to throw my phone in a river. You can make yourself up, but you can’t make yourself fall in love.

I thought I had always been in love with the word without. I do still love the word chamomile. As a poet, I never know.

A jar of marbles counts the amount of people I’ve met who believe they do. How many times have I heard the word uncertainty. Oh honey, I lost a cat to the woods.

When everyone was younger, everyone was easier. Sometimes I hear people say I was easy when they might’ve meant a good kid. Who hasn’t met a child as an adult? I know folks who don’t want to have their own children. Everyone has their own reasons. You know, disco is forever. I have friends who love tarot. After speaking to a few today, I pulled three cards and cleaned my fridge. I moved some things around. My houseplants haven’t killed me yet. There’s nothing against the oxford comma, it’s just that I tend to co-depend. Once I fell out of a love so deep with a man who loved the sea, I had to move across the country to try to find enough land. Is this what it must be like for a baby bird? I ask the sky for everything and then I turn on a faucet to fill my hands. I could never really imagine what it feels like to be homeless, but I have been my own parent for most of my life.

I miss my mom the most. To her, I sing about you all the time. By you, I also mean us because I am there.

My heart is a full and crowded sidewalk. I always get by.

More than once I’ve been told our height is our wingspan. Every line is a title to something. If only I could make a circle around each and everyone of you, like a song.

Karen Cygnarowicz

Winter is quiet. Then comes spring. Even if I were blind to the changes in light and in the colors of fields and trees, I would hear spring: the bristley “conkeree” of redwings, the sweet trill of song sparrows, and the goldfinches’ mewing. The endless ribbon of sound as the stream rushes downhill over rocks. How can there be such a vast reservoir of water in the hills? The rumble of wind tossing tree tops. And the startling blasts of motorcycles, released from winter captivity.

Peepers. In chorus they weave a continuous fabric of sound--brassy, metallic, textured but without pattern. Chaos. No rhythm. Singly their call is a sharp, straight needle of high-pitched sound. Together, each seemingly singing in their own rhythm, without entraining, the straight sounds bend, curl, as though the sound waves reshaped, tangled with one another, generating a rapid electric buzzing. On and on they go, unwearied, like a machine. Because of the limitations of my ears, how much of their chorus can I not hear? And what does it sound like to them? What does it feel like through their skins, sending and receiving the peeps?

Glenda Bissex May 2 & 3 2020

Jamie & Kiley

bn

Jeff & Au Dog

bn

James & Jack

bn

THROUGH THE WARDROBE Letter to my grandson The phoebe sings beneath the eaves.

Last spring’s robins you watched fledge, flit in just-hoed spinach rows, their chestnut and honey roused by turned dirt, wind sighing through pines on the hillside.

Lupine reseeded in paths we lopped and walked, baffled hedges scented with bee balm, dandelion blossoms, grape hyacinth.

No Grandpa didn’t pass from this virus.

I’m sanding the floors of my yellow house, oak I discovered under four layers of linoleum, the first barn red with white roses of polio, the next whispering green of measles, a cracked beige layer with tiny vines of diphtheria, whooping cough a loud violet shaded with blue— we planted cedars, not fences, watched islands disappear into mist.

When can I visit, you ask, my germs aren’t bad.

Your breath a couplet, my ache a refrain. I record another chapter of Prince Caspian for you, Kumquat, chestnut eyes, lids lifted like the coats inside the wardrobe to this uncharted world.

Judith Janoo

MY SON, 4, STEPS OUTSIDE “Just when I came outside it was very quiet.

The only noise was this…

Except the only one was the trees.

It was the trees.”

WORKING FROM MY GRANDFATHER’S CHAIR I am here. This poem is me.

Not my thoughts, my dreams, my fears.

Me. It is broken.

Incomplete.

It has edges that creak.

And perhaps, if sun water and wind conspire to lift ink to song, it has hope

GRAVEL This edge between ridge and sky wind and calm gust and rest breath and exhalation sun’s caress beside the high cemetary hill between towns moment outside in an era of isolation.

The road between the houses, our home, truest picture of this time

Mark Brown

Matthew, Rosie & Karli

aek

Sienna, Sam & Stella

aek

Thomas, Robyn & Lloyd

aek

Bernie & Thomas

aek

<<Huh... huh... hmm... huh... huh...>> I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, what is that? What is that noise? That humming and hawing, what is that?

Well, that’s the sound you hear most waking hours when you are in living in quarantine with your father who has a condition called interstitial lung disease.

Let me just speak for myself, it is the sound I hear. I’ve been here for about two months now. Of course, he hears this sound more than I do.

They say there’s no cure for interstitial lung disease, and they don’t say a whole lot else about it, but that it’s basically like having shards of glass in your lung tissue.

In his lung tissue.

My father was born with spina bifida a degenerative bone disease, and due to this he has lived with chronic pain in his feet, legs and back his entire life. His feet are crunched up and it is difficult to walk.

He has also had open heart surgery, pulmonary embolisms, the list goes on. Suffice to say he is immune vulnerable. << hu-hmm... hmm... hu-hmm ... HMM... hmm... huh huh huh... hmm>> My Dad hums bass patterns as he reaches for each breath. I’m not actually sure if he realizes he’s doing this. But he’s been a musician all his life. Isn’t it strange, what stays with us in life as we age, and what falls away.

What decays. Ain’t life strange.

He has started wearing oxygen every day. Then three of the drivers who deliver his oxygen tanks came down with the covid. So the delivery for this week was canceled.

I mean, what do you do?

Well, if you’re my father, you decide to drive the car around the block, that’s what you do. Make sure the battery isn’t dead. It’s an older vehicle after all.

I looked at the clock right before the phone rang. 4:44pm.

It ended up being a head on collision. The cars were totaled but would you believe, he was ok, and they were ok. He did have a scratch.

But there’s no such thing as, “going back to normal.” Not now. Not any more. Not after this. Just marching forward.

Into the fog.

Living with someone who struggles for every breath really makes me think again and then again about the transience of time that we’re allotted here on earth. They say no one comes or leaves a moment too late or too soon.

I think what I’m learning about life is that it’s messy. So are family ties, matters of the heart, and death too. I don’t know, just love it if and while you can and wear a seatbelt, I guess. Hum a tune. Oh! Wash your (my) hands. And be grateful for every step and every breath.

E. Savitri

Jack, Matthew & Balin

bn

Erin, George, Theo, Eli & Félix

bn

Matt, Jasper, & Nicole

bn

Stephanie, Tim, Sophie & Davey Crockett

bn

GRATEFUL I am grateful for the dirty dishes Who are simple; direct And move my hands But let my mind wander I am grateful for touch My daughterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hands Her strong body, steady breath Quizzical eyes asking, asking I am grateful for bossy chickens, Perching on the porch And laying warm delicate eggs Every day I am grateful for my loverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hands On my belly When I awake at two am, wondering What happens next?

I am grateful for the air And the sky in the morning When all is quiet And the stillness seems natural I am grateful I can feel this That I can taste the spring in the air I am grateful We can grow

Aedan Scribner

AN EXCPERT FROM DARYL What we have here is a room built from scraps of memories of yellow walls. That’s mostly what I remember of my first childhood bedroom- it was yellow. So I decided this would all be yellow. I remember my dad singing my bonnie lies over the ocean while holding me in a rocking chair. He would replace Bonnie with the names of my older siblings.

But this television was actually in the room over the garage- my brother’s bedroom. If you got really close to it you could feel its static like it was fur. This desk didn’t actually come until later when my bedroom was purple and in a different house and built into the side of an epic bunk bed where I would write spy novels and island romances about men named “lance.” So it was exactly like this or like this really at all.

But it was yellow. And my dad did hold me.

When I was younger Mom cooked dinner in our teflon pans while dad would drink a coke out of the glass he kept in the freezer sitting in his rocking chair next to the woodstove watching Jim Cramer.

He would return to that same position with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream while mom cleaned up after dinner. She still cleaned up after dinner with Brian too.

You know what, that thing I just said about my dad sitting in the living room while my mom cleaned up after dinner- it’s not quite right.

We didn’t have the woodstove or a television or those rocking chairs in the living room until after mom left. My dad would watch Jim Cramer in their bedroom and you could hear Jim Cramer screaming all the way down into the kitchen.

My friends taught me to cook my meals in a cast iron pan.They taught me the rules of cast iron care which would turn into a major point of contention in most homes I’ve lived in since.

The cast iron pan was made in England in 1707 by Abaham Darby. He made the first cast iron bridge too. So England named a rose after him.

About a hundred years later a billiard manufacturer offered a $10,000 prize for a replacement material for ivory. Up until then, billiard balls had been made of ivory harvested from the tusks of elephants and this was devastating the elephant population.

That’s why John Wesley Hyatt invented one of the first plastics-celluloid.

But in order to use this plastic he had to figure out a way to mold the plastic. This brought the casting process into the modern era in a major way becoming a tool for mass production. This was the birth of plastic injection molding.

About 4000 years before that in the indus valley civilization the lost wax casting process made the oldest bronze sculpture that we know of. It is called “Dancing Girl” and is thought to be a sculpture of a girl no older than fifteen.

When I was just about fifteen I remember the first time I had a boy in my bed. All of the other make outs in movie theaters and on park benches were nothing compared to this.

After he left, my best friend came over and I made her lay in all the positions again with me -showing her exactly how he had held me this way and that way, one arm here and the other arm under me there, our legs wrapped just so. I don’t know how many more times after that I would make her reenact every different position with me until I didn’t think it was necessary anymore.

Where do we keep the feeling of another body curved into ours? Is it located within its namesakethe spoon? Or is it saved in our bodies. Add it to the list of the mysteries of matter and memory.

The earliest mention of the spoon is found in the Book of Exodus. Moses goes to the spoon-maker, Bezalel of Egypt for help casting spoons in gold, silver, and brass for the Tabernacle. Ancient Egyptian spoons were cast in the form of handled dishes with a cover and spout.

The wide scale production of tableware in England after 1650 brought table etiquette with it.

Silversmiths were required to stamp their name, the place and date of manufacture into their pieces. It became custom that English families of the upper class would pass silver spoons onto their heirs. From this tradition the saying came “He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.”

I found a mold at a thrift store last summer. The mold is made of plaster and it makes a pair of hands. These hands attach to arms that attach to a body that make a doll. I chose to only buy the hand molds which now feels pretty morbid like I dismembered this unmade doll. It’s kind of like divorced parents. If parents are two parts of the many different molds that you are formed in like a doll- you can’t be held like that again when the molds don’t fit together anymore or when a part is missing.

On this side of this mold in exact typed print the name Daryl is stamped into the plaster. I don’t know if the mold was made by Daryl, or if the mold makes Daryl, or if the mold is Daryl. This mold would make the little hands of a little doll that another set of little hands were meant to hold and handle and carry and comfort.

I have a collection of Daryl’s little broken fingers. Meanwhile I’ve never broken a bone. I’ve never had a cast. But my dad was a radiologist and he used to steal plaster gauze wraps from the hospital so that we could make masks of our faces. I would lay on the bathroom floor on a towel while my dad would lattice wet strips of plaster gauze across my face.

Camille Casemier

Isabel & Willoughby

aek

Gräe

aek

Brendan & Susan

aek

Susan

aek

COVID-19 TOOK DAD THE BOYS did not know their world would go inside outside upside down in a flash their Father preached his sermon last in wordless farewell that preaches every day invisible fear lurks still in throaty cough, unwashed hands unopened door, unslept bed preys in dark day and light night a holy spirit inside out upside down disappearing into funeral smoke under dirt, silent spirit sky hope forever gone whispered in the hopeful ear to meet on the other side closed eyes would never open theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d shed their last tears burning in seeing eyes left behind or died dry silently inside the unseen red spiked golf ball later happy hour will be found in bars in flesh felt and fluid flow spasms of release, revenge desperation blackbird hope faith a raven and a crow flying on the wings of fate to keep the fear & sorrow away away

away

james m. frase-white

PANDEMIC IN SPRINGTIME March I awoke on top of a mountain of sadness With no place to go but down the vista was splendid and it cut, like roads winding through a valley of naked limbs Farmland smeared together through my prism of tears This is all one long run on sentence Driving down from the mountain along the edge of a jagged scream I stay within the lines and I don’t dare veer Not even for the deer Not even to stop as I pass by a pen of spring lambs Pulling with their tongues the last of last summer’s hay April What business is grass, to stain this already strained world To live so close to the earth, the warmth of the worms’ work gives you life How is Spring never closed for business? Why am I angry at air?

Feel punished for breathing, for singing?

All I crave between days of snow and silence Is to inhale the tang of manure as it lofts downwind from the fields.

May Robins fatten up, red bellies bursting with grub The trading post of my life Fills and empties with homemade bread, seeds, masks The economies of connection banked with coins of despair and dubloons of hope, A taming of the wildness within, And a need to be seen New tulips sway in the breeze Holding a scent I cannot yet consume.

Phayvanh Luekhamhan

Gwen

bn

Maggie & Carol

bn

Guy & Angela

bn

Julie & Robert

bn

Schikoy, Michael, & Koda (and ducks and chickens)

bn

Mila & Greg

bn

Xavier, Martin & Nikki

bn

FASHION-FORWARD a sweater is snagged on an unhammered nail tired of standing still???????? move forward and watch it will unravel-string, string, string (used to be a sweater) no, actually. donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t move. stay very still. stay still and be warm.

YOU HAVE A LUXURY LAYER, damnit! what did I just tell you? (a sweater is still snagged on an unhammered nail) Wanted: a hammer scissors new sweater the old sweater, but not snagged on this unhammered nail

Knayte Lander

PIECES IN THE DARK terrified, turning on the lights but every sound is just the wind a piece of bread goes a very long way and there's more of this than you'd expect could be here for... a hundred years or more? could be making masterpieces deep down in the hole nobody sees a whole cavern is piling up with thoughts of us together you, me, the rest of them stay here just for a while longer push those cheeks into a sweet little smile while you hold your head in someone else's hands something's being offered and I want to touch it not so sure if it's for sale wondering if there's been much of a change around here and if the belt would even fit when it comes back on

Knayte Lander

At first I could barely hear it.

I preferred muffling it’s voice with to-do lists and agendas, covering all the blank spaces with anything but listening to that sound The whimper of my grief.

It sometimes shows up as anger or short responses, quickly regretted as soon as they are released, fearing an addition to my mind’s tally of regrets, lists of painful mistakes, the lists that never stop growing, spitting out in long ribbons like receipts, as long as my brain continues thinking I do not want to harbor regret, but how do we live and learn without a little grit in our creases?

And if I refuse to give it space, it will expand and push the edges anyway until the world requires me to STOP and listen.

Do you hear it too?

My grief.

The whimper has become a wail and it wants the floor.

So I will pick myself up off this floor and I will rub my grief ’s hair tell her it’s okay I am listening now and I am grateful for her vulnerability, showing me that feeling my feelings, instead of explaining them into something more comfortable, is sometimes what it takes to move forward with strength.

Robyn Joy

As if filled with helium Some lift you above the terrain A weather balloon A hot air ballon A Zeppelin!

Oh the humanity...

Others can be gathered To take you on Curious George’s accidental flight Some get lost and float away to sea Stuck in a tree On the roof of an Applebee’s And some have no weight at all Numerous and benign Shifting clutter As you crawl and scrape the surface Some are like small beach stones Heavier and heavier in your pockets The big ones Unannounced Just roll over and crush you Paralyzed attempts to fill a boulder with helium A life’s work breaking stones and tying them to balloons

Jeff Thomson

Lisa & Kieth

bn

Steve & Heather

bn

Arlene, Sean, Sarah, Winter & Kristin

bn

WAITING AT THE DOOR You and I have aged since we last touched tenderly, During those magical days when lovers walked through open doors.

Your smooth caramel skin now is creased Like a bundled-up shirt.

Your luminescent eyes have dimmed Like stars from distant galaxies.

I recall your intoxicating aroma, like a mountain meadow.

But I fear your fragrance has grown stale.

Yet, in spite of timeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s indignities, I long for your singular embrace.

My longing coils inside me like a jungle cat.

Fling wide your door, Let me spring into your arms.

William Graham

REVELATIONS If ever there was a day a week several months if there was ever a place in time where all you could ever be is yourself would that ever be enough?

If all you could ever be is yourself would that ever be enough?

If you couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be the worker the desk worker the customer service worker the beloved worker the dutiful worker the tired worker the abused worker the approved worker the awarded worker the well paid worker the liked worker the unseen worker the uncared for worker the neglected worker the local worker the required worker the unpaid worker the broken worker the poorly paid worker the demanded worker if you couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be anything beyond your own front door if for maybe forever if you couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t ever be anything but yourself would that ever be enough?

Toussaint St. Negritude

Evan

aek

Day 21: 33y/o SWM in this business for a catamount yet romance is paramount. I’m swift with a wrestler’s hips and a final vocab. stay up all night like some idiot with mostly favorable reviews. was once called “just a good time” by a girl from Bay Ridge. I told her I was allergic to cats and slept on the uptown train ride home. and you? no shoes in the house but caffeinated and stoned like pizza and tequila to my heart. anything spicy I’ll probably try it. that goes for more than food and drink but I do a lot of that too. three glass jars of homemade sauce. really into potato chips this quarantine. how do you feel about Zoom and mutual masturbation? it’s like Netflix and chill only from six feet away. please don’t be “so bored.” write me a letter send me a picture I’ll cut you a lock of my hair. dial the Center for Agriculture in Woodbury. 8024725840 Call Me!! cats OK - purr.

Michael Demyan

Day 24: according to an article in this Playboy compendium—a book compiling the magazine’s “best” of it’s first 50 years—Prozac spent the Nineties deep-sixing the libidos of men across America and I would have to imagine anywhere else in the world that had ready access to both Prozac and Playboy. not that I consider globally flaccid genitalia often. the book was a gift passed on from a friend’s father and to be used for collage purposes: it now serves several purposes. “Prozac spent the Nineties” as if it were a sentient being with nothing better to do for the century’s final decade other than swinging limp dick through the upper middle class of white yuppie America. I’m sure Playboy was available worldwide for the most part. my assuredness surely comes from my systemic ignorance. was it translated for those who are in it “for the articles” and cheeky cartoons? I thought it had folded but turns out I had just been blinded by the internet these past ten years. it hasn’t, however it did recently move away from full nude photography. was that before or after Hugh Hefner died? that’s a question I am not entering into my web browser, though it would possibly qualify as the most benign search I have made in the the past several weeks. hard to believe he would have been on Prozac, then again maybe that’s how he survived it all as long as he did. hard to believe anyone now. pretty gross on both ends. second childishness. screaming for no particular reason. Playboy’s last stapled issue was in 1985 and featured Madonna on the cover —that’s from memory. in a 1991 Rolling Stone interview Madonna said she liked to receive head for a day and a half. I couldn’t believe it I had to pull the car right over and started doing pushups. in 1991 I was four years old and Madonna was a great age. Joan Severance appeared on the 1990 Holiday Issue cover, Donna Edmondson was a virgin in 1988, and Naomi Campbell emptied all of the milk from the refrigerator and all I could think of was that Kanye West song. make it cry come on holy shit—that one. I really admire the art of tasteful nude photography and am interested in creating shots somewhere between golden age Playboy and Robert Mapplethorpe. why quit drinking when you could write hungover stoned and caffeine like this? it is 8am. I’d crush a pizza right now. tonight for sure. someone I loved once said that this is a great age to be caffeinated and stoned and I couldn’t agree more. the article focused on the loss of libido as one of the silent side-effects of Prozac but was it just a thing in the Nineties? do side-effects often announce themselves with such brazen fanfare and panache? I didn’t read the article, but a small footnote in the corner of a page with some artwork satirizing Dali’s The Persistence of Memory. it replaced time with medicine. Dali once apologized to a woman for his inability to enter her, claiming he loved his wife too much to do so. I cut out the melting pill capsule and laid it on the tree branch in a collage featuring Cate Blanchett like a vampire film dressed in a hot black jacket. she was even hot as Bob Dylan and I would have totally thrown down on that. would it be possible for someone obtain Prozac now—today? is it still being made? maybe it’s over-thecounter? I’ll make Jeff Bezos a trillionaire if he can send it overnight. imagine a life without my libido—living like the castrati in 16th Century Rome all grape vine and laurels. just think of how much I’d accomplish.

Michael Demyan

Kell

aek

Day 45a: Beck arrived in cowboy boots and flannel climbed onto rotten picnic table in steady rain with red umbrella and Nikon camera but what lens I’m not sure backlit in greyscale film of cloud gloom and lake water in late April near red brick fire pit scarcely used last summer (soon to be used or unused by someone else come June) I’m dressed all in black sweater & yellow knit hat hand made by dear friend in Cabot on the hill small cat and typewriter and motorcycle as props because I do all my own stunts and my tricks are tired “it’s not raining enough” possible end of photo shoot Day 45b: Beck climbs onto rotten picnic table cowboy boots and flannel with Nikon camera of course I forgot to ask about the lens it started raining pretty good I suppose she forgoes the umbrella for exposure I’m dry on stone patio beneath eaves with Campari spritzer the last bit of everything from six week collage binge chanting meditation and yoga first thing in morning her left leg postholes through the table-rot she apologizes and I ask why—it isn’t my table end of photoshoot

Michael Demyan

drawings by B. Fox

Thank you.

Black Lives Matter.

This collection was created on Abenaki land.

EVERYONE WILL CHEER! Soon We will know We will know ourselves And reunite with our closest friends Even though we were unaware That we had grown and grown apart Soon Our love will have a place to go A real connection will be made

into a Like a baseball mitt People will cheer!

Everyone will cheer!

Because there are no opposing teams You will see yourself As you truly are And as the person you long to be You will see yourself Because you wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need to hide You can speak and listen And it will all make sense Love will find you, exactly where you are

Knayte Lander

W O D N I W e h t H G U OR H T D A O R eht S S O R C A

yhpargotohp y rteop esorp gniward

eht ni edam fo syad ylrae ot eud enitnarauq 0 2 0 2 ni 91-divoc

namroN kceB & reuabginรถK ymA yb degnarra noitcelloc A