FALL / WINTER
2021
issue
#03
TREES, BUFFY DAVIS
CONTENTS POETRY Audrey Colasanti . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Season’s End 11 Ashley Lawrence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Colorado 12 Ken Harmon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Confession 15 Grief 24 Jeffrey G. Moss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Two Poems 19 Jocelyn Ulevicus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Language of Flowers 20 Do Not Be Afraid to Make Something Beautiful 23 Laurie Rosenblatt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Made Your Point 25 Joyce Meyers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Morning Moon 27 Linda Hughes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . At the Edge 28 Corinna Board . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bird of Paradise 32 Kelly R. Samuels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What the Bird Can See 33 Eswen Allison Hart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Room 202, Ester Lee Motel 35 Walt McLaughlin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . First Light 36 Hugh Hughes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Backscatter 39 Radha Marcum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Desire Path 40 Kiran Dhaliwal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Awakening to Fall 42 Sam Sharp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Origins 43 J. P. White . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Naked 46 Black Dog Under the Persimmon 50 K. L. Johnston . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Below Zero 49 Luke Levi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Five Haiku 53 Karina Borowicz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fur 54 Elaine T. Stockdale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Haiku 57 Ellen Rowland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Haiku 58 Kathleen Wakefield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Day After Day 63 Anne Leigh Parrish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Snow Country 64 Mary Anna Scenga Kruch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Meditation: Midwinter 67
PROSE Jason Goldsmith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Actias Luna 16 Waverly Woldemichael . . . . . . . . . The Dreams of Flowers in Captivity 30
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FA L L / W I N T E R
2021
ISSUE
#03
ISSN: 2693-5864 (Online) ISSN: 2693-5856 (Print) ©2021 Humana Obscura, an imprint of Bri Bruce Productions. All Rights Reserved. All rights to all original artwork, photography, and written works belongs to the respective owners as stated in the attributions. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and publisher. Founding Editor-in-Chief BRI BRUCE Front Cover: Ghost Glaciers by Retura Claar Back Cover: Frozen Echoes by Vanessa Pejovic
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ART
ABOUT HUMANA OBSCURA
Retura Claar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ghost Glaciers FRONT COVER Buffy Davis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Trees 2 Pink Persuasion #2 13 Derrick Breidenthal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Round Bales 9 Old Highway 41 Drifting 55 Camp 59 Ice 65 Sharon Becker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spring Illusion 10 Katya Belena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bone Dreams of Marrow 14 Theodore Tollefson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Treetops 18 Night Phase 1 37 Jocelyn Ulevicus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Climbing 21 Bryan Stewart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GairLoch Part II: Turbulent 22 Crashing 34 Painted Spruce 51 Steve Fay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Geese Before Sunset 26 Cornstubble Deer 29 Denise Granger Kerbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dominion 38 Daryl Farmer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sunset, Iceland 44 M. C. Reardon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Water, Lostine River 38 Nicoline Franziska . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Migration IV 48 Tiffany Wong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Way Home 52 Vian Borchert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Snowy Countryside 56 Vanessa Pejovic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Silver Linings 61 Land Marks 66 M. Russek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fine Cracks Holding Together 62 Vanessa Pejovic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frozen Echoes BACK COVER
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Humana Obscura is an independent literary magazine that seeks to publish the best of new, emerging, and established writers and artists in what we like to call the “nature space.” As our name suggests—”obscured human”—we focus on poetry, short prose, and art where the human element is concealed but not entirely absent, aiming to revive the genre of nature-centric creative work in today’s modern world. Humana Obscura’s mission is to publish and promote the best nature-focused work of today’s voices and talents, seeking work that is unexpected, real, evocative, yet subtle, with strong imagery and sense of place. The publication’s intention is to inspire readers and enrich their lives while providing an inclusive space for elevating the voices and creative work of its contributors. Founded in 2020, Humana Obscura is published online and in print twice yearly, and features work by artists and writers from around the world.
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SUBMISSIONS
SUBSCRIBE TO
humana obscura ONLINE AT www.humanaobscura.com
Humana Obscura accepts poetry, prose and short fiction, and art. Submissions are considered on a rolling basis and can be sent through the publication’s online submission manager at www.humanaobscura.com/submit. INQUIRIES For questions regarding submissions, or for general inquiries, please contact: editor@humanaobscura.com CONNECT Twitter: @humanaobscura Instagram: @humanaobscura
Humana Obscura is made possible in part by a team of volunteer editors and readers. Sincerest thanks for your efforts and contributions.
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featured contributors COVER ARTIST RETURA CLAAR Retura Claar is a designer, visual artist and emerging writer based in San Francisco. Her work explores color, form, and texture inspired by mountain ranges and deserts across the West. Mediums such as film photography and illustration are utilized to document her travels in the backcountry and little moments of joy in the city. She’s showed illustrations in Denver, Colorado and has had poetry previously published in Humana Obscura. Connect with her on Instagram @returaclaar.
FEATURED ARTIST DERRICK BREIDENTHAL Derrick Breidenthal’s paintings have been showcased throughout the US and abroad. His art is heavily influenced by rural America. His paintings are confident depictions of atmospheric spaces that balance an interesting line between familiar scenes and specific events. His painting methods enhance the perfection of a dream, as well as hold up to the roughness of reality. In 2021, Derrick debuted a solo museum exhibition covering over five years of his Nocturnal oil paintings. See more of his work at www.breidenthalart.com.
FEATURED POET LUKE LEVI Luke Levi graduated from Texas State University with a BBA in finance. He lives in the Texas Hill Country, and many of his poems are about animals and other natural elements in the region. His poems can be found or are forthcoming in Presence, Akitsu Quarterly, Autumn Moon Haiku Journal, Wales Haiku Journal, Failed Haiku, Trash Panda Haiku, Cold Moon Haiku Journal, and elsewhere. Follow him on Instagram @lukelevipoet.
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INSIDE THE FRONT COVER TREES, BUFFY DAVIS BUFFY DAVIS is starting the second act of her life through the lens of her camera and an interest in the alternative photography processes from cyanotype, a historic process from 1842 where photography is developed in a cyan blue tone, digital intentional camera movemen (where photographs look like abstract paintings), glitch photography, deconstructing photographs, and digital manipulation of her work adding unique color hues giving an other worldly look to landscapes. Davis has a photography love of botanical, landscape, and items with lots of contrast and imperfections which makes for beautiful photographs.
ON THE BACK COVER FROZEN ECHOES, VANESSA PEJOVIC VANESSA PEJOVIC is a photographer living and working in southwestern Ontario, Canada. She’s drawn to the shapes, tones, and moods of the natural world. Self-taught, Pejovic enjoys wandering her neighborhoods, practicing the art of noticing. Follow her on Instagram @vanessa.pejovic.
ABOUT THE EDITOR BRI BRUCE (B. L. Bruce) is an award-winning poet and Pushcart Prize nominee once deemed the “heiress of Mary Oliver.” With a bachelor’s degree in literature and creative writing from the University of California at Santa Cruz, her work has appeared in dozens of anthologies and literary publications, including The Wayfarer Journal, Canary, Northwind Magazine, The Soundings Review, The Monterey Poetry Review, and the American Haiku Society’s Frogpond Journal, among many others. Bruce is the recipient of the Ina Coolbrith Memorial Poetry Prize and the PushPen Press Pendant Prize for Poetry, as well as the author of four books: The Weight of Snow, 28 Days of Solitude, The Starling’s Song, and Measures. In addition to writing, Bruce is a painter and photographer, with work that has been featured in The Sun Magazine, Near Window, and others. Follow her on Twitter @the_poesis and on Instagram @thepoesis.
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ROUND BALES, DERRICK BREIDENTHAL Oil on Panel, 30” x 40’’
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SPRING ILLUSION, SHARON BECKER SHARON BECKER is a photographer, mixed media artist, and occasional writer. She incorporates her love of nature into composite and digitally manipulated images. She explores the relationship of the environment to human emotions. She is intrigued with how the lives of flowers and trees parallel the stages of our lives, and how our past experiences color our views of our present and future. She recently concluded an international solo exhibition, “Wish You Were Here”, including 22 original images. Becker shares her time between Connecticut, Colorado, and New York City.
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SEASON’S END AUDREY COLASANTI
All around, the grasses sway copper and flax, warm and honeyed; a thousand phantom cicadas zither their wings in vibrating song. The tips of the nodding sedge have turned pink, the timothy and heather to pewter and tin. The air, filled with the scent of dust rising, sticky in the heat. Grasshoppers dart across bristly plumes, clicking their heels— the rhythmic hum and buzz of summer’s end— bees and bees sucking at the triumph of it all.
AUDREY COLASANTI has been a closet-poet until recently, writing often but not confidant enough to submit her work for review. Under the encouragement and tutelage of poet Danez Smith, Colasanti has finished a muchanticipated manuscript, which will be published by The Black Spring Press Group/UK in 2022.
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THE COLORADO ASHLEY LAWRENCE
I was a rock in your river left to drown in the bed
ASHLEY LAWRENCE holds a BS in geology from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. She is a geologist in Grand Junction, Colorado. She works as a permit writer for the State of Colorado and lives on a peach orchard.
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PINK PERSUASION #2, BUFFY DAVIS FALL/WINTER 2021 ISSUE 3
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BONE DREAMS OF MARROW, KATYA BELENA Earth Pigments on Cold-pressed Watercolor Paper, 8’’ x 8’’
KATYA BELENA is a Nevada-based abstract artist exploring the liminal and dream-like qualities of our inner and outer world. She is interested in that which is just on the tip of one’s tongue before it slips away in a thoughtless moment, as well as what bones and leaves and bees dream about. She is often found walking her two greyhounds or painting away in her Reno-based art studio.
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CONFESSION KEN HARMON This parting was as inevitable as the sprout from the acorn beneath the heavy detritus of the autumn shed upon the forest floor. That moment the ash of you fell from my fingers back to the earth. At the base of an apple tree in West Virginia, among the poison ivy and dandelion, the soil swallowed the seed of you—silt and bone, the remnants of us, fodder for the grub worms, fertilizer for fibrous roots of trees.
Like a serpent rubbing its ropy body against stone, these words, the skin my guilt needs to shed, turning me inside out to make way for something new. This isn’t how I expected to bring you home.
KEN HARMON lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, and is an Associate Professor of English at Johnson and Wales University where he teaches literature and writing. He has been the editor of West Trade Review since 2009 and edited its prior incarnation, Encore, from 2005 to 2008. His criticism and poetry have appeared in Montana Mouthful, Sanskrit, The Spectator, and Creative Loafing, among others. When he’s not obsessed with words, he loves listening to waterfalls, climbing mountains, and exploring the outdoors. FALL/WINTER 2021 ISSUE 3
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ACTIAS LUNA JASON GOLDSMITH
I press through chest-high brush, where spills of poison ivy crowd the trail, and hitch my pack in the sticky, Indiana summer. It’s the kind of unflagging heat that tassels corn and flowers soybeans. I’m soaked in sweat. By the time the trail bottoms out, I’ve grown so accustomed to the mosquitos and gnats that I no longer bother swatting them away. The undergrowth is thick with ferns. Heal-all and daisy fleabane arc toward the few shafts of light that filter through the canopy. I reach a shingled creek, walk through shallow pools skimmed by dragonflies. A small, gray toad the size of a coin flings itself across my path. I turn to go, but am pinned in place. There, just above that clump of wild ginger—a shimmer, pale amidst the wood’s green mosaic. A luna moth clings to the back of a leaf. I creep closer, slowly raise my camera. The leaf partially obscures the moth. I reach out, hoping not to disturb it, twist the leaf-stem. The moth swings like a pendulum. I refocus. The camera shutter whirs. I am struck by the sheer perplexity of it, this moth that is larger than my hand even with my fingers splayed wide: the elegant symmetry of antenna, like small golden ferns; its uncanny, crescent-edged eyespots; its elongated hindwing tails that curl like ribbons or banners. The exquisite pale green. Celadon. Porcelain. Moonlit. Luminous, yet fading. Always fading. As a child, I collected stamps and coins as well
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as other less conventional objects: cigarette butts, bottle caps, and the occasional dead bird, before my parents found me out. This habit has endured for half a century. My office is cluttered with curios and keepsakes: abandoned sparrows’ nests, a beaver’s skull, a slender twist of driftwood, flakes of copper from the abandoned quarries in Coniston, a section of birch delaminating at its growth rings where a white fungus has settled. Everyday relics, each one announces its insistent, material thingness. The moth, too, whispers an earthy and beautiful truth just beyond comprehension, and in that moment, I know that I must have it. It has not moved; it must be dead, I tell myself. I bend the branch. And the branch breaks. (Such a small thing.) And suddenly I bear its weight. Like other giant silk moths, Actias luna is nocturnal, sleeping through the day camouflaged from predators. It is rare to see an adult in its natural environment. Emerging from chrysalis, it lives for little more than a week, during which it is all heat and desire. It will not eat. It will not drink. It has vestigial mouthparts and lacks a digestive system. The luna moth exists for one reason. To mate and die. I don’t know any of this, of course. I only know my need. Would I display it in a bell jar? Or secure it in a tightly closed box? Could I preserve it from
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decay? Pure, ethereal, fugitive. Every tremor worries me it will fly off. When the right forewing slides back, I tell myself— it is only the breeze. I gently press the wing forward (downy fur chalks my finger), and the left one mirrors it. Then the right leg kicks, and the absurd hope that my life would be richer once I owned a dead moth fades. I inhale, suddenly grateful for this tremor and pulse. I cannot explain the change. There are worlds, I realize, between desire and need. There is something more beautiful than possession.
JASON GOLDSMITH is an artist, educator, and writer, and is Associate Professor of English and program director of the Visiting Writers Series at Butler University in Indianapolis. His work has appeared in River Teeth and Grasmere.
The moth’s wings tremble. (There is no breeze.) I shunt it to a nearby leaf, where the moth attaches to the underside of a fern and leaves me at the center of myself once more. After I make camp in a small clearing, after I have pitched my tent and gathered wood for a fire, I walk to the creek bed to turn over rocks. Stones speak to me of a time beyond human scale. They bear its shaping in their very forms. I scan the floor, flipping river-tumbled histories of red and grey and brown to find the one that is different from all these others. This is a prelude. Soon, I will stop searching. When I do, I will find it in the toad, or the heal-all, or the mosquito. In my own salt and sweat. There is nothing so rare that it is not everywhere for the taking.
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TREETOPS, THEODORE TOLLEFSON
THEODORE TOLLEFSON is an award-winning photographer whose images have toured the United States. He blends an aesthetic interest in the natural world with a technical interest in unusual lenses that help to isolate subjects against painterly fields of color. Regardless of equipment, his work invites meditation on nature’s cyclical, evanescent beauty and tenacious resilience. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he started posting nature photographs on Instagram that help his followers contemplate nature and to invite viewers to meditate on The Good—as he is learning to find it.
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TWO POEMS JEFFREY G. MOSS
CROCUSES Jewels strewn on a snowy hill, sapphires flickering in sharp afternoon light.
AUTUMN The soft slant of daybreak sifts through skeletal limbs; the sweet scent of autumn decay
JEFFREY G. MOSS was born and bred in Brooklyn, USA. After 32 years guiding 13-14 year olds in crafting their worlds, he is finally following some of his own writer’s advice. He has had pieces in Bending Genres, Minnow Literary Magazine, Nailpolish Stories, and work forthcoming in SPACEONSPACE and HOOT.
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THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS JOCELYN ULEVICUS
Several years ago might as well have been yesterday, a moment ago / there are two kinds of nostalgia marking the hunt, thorny and nourishing / I cut the paper into slim petals inside the memory of being born / I wanted to be born again, in the hazy April light, the last time you really held me, maybe you even loved me a little, it hurts to be loved so little / the language of flowers is to love something / unanswered in the night.
JOCELYN ULEVICUS is an artist and writer with work forthcoming or published in magazines such as Cathexis NW, The Free State Review, The Petigru Review, Blue Mesa Review, No Contact Mag, The Santa Ana Review, Dewdrop, and elsewhere. Working from a female speculative perspective, themes of nature and the unseen, and exit and entry are dominantly present in her work. She resides in Amsterdam and is currently working on her first book of poems. You can contact her on Instagram at @beautystills or via her website: www.jocelynulevicus.com.
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CLIMBING, JOCELYN ULEVICUS Acrylic Ink and Acrylic Paint on Linen, 60cm X 80cm
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GAIRLOCH PART III: TURBULENT, BRYAN STEWART
BRYAN STEWART is a self-taught artist based on Oakville, Ontario, Canada, whose practice is based on observation and transformation of the normal to the noteworthy. Using both digital and film photography, Stewart’s wideranging subjects and styles are tied together by an overarching curiosity to notice, experiment, and share. In his latest work, impressionistic and abstract photography are used as a means of interpretation and expression, to create images that do not exist in the real world.
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DO NOT BE AFRAID TO MAKE SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL JOCELYN ULEVICUS
I. Pleasure—is—not what you think—to be looked at—the tonic of forgiveness—the elegance of space—the meaning we search for—not the buildings, not the body—but what is absent—within reach—the gaps left by the secrets of others—where the dandelions grow—with—persistence—life will name what it wants from us—keep looking—as arbitrary and perfect as a vine-ripened tomato—and as ugly as dirt on the knees—constructing happiness.
II. Have you ever seen / the way the light—and the illusion of color—changes / as you near the water—as the scent of salt enters the body and the body empties into the salt—into the air, into the water—as if the body were in the soul and not / the other way around.
III. While making coffee, I hear the kitten shoot across the kitchen floor, hopping up onto the windowsill to watch the pigeons roost / pecking away at the seeds I left for them—whole kernels of corn, dried peas, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, tiny ochre-colored seeds I have no names for / & as if aligned with the perpetual movement of nature, I plunged my nose into the bag of coffee beans, savoring the smokey scent— now is lasting, now, now, now.
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GRIEF KEN HARMON
One might think that the weight of grief becomes familiar like the heft of stone in hand, like fingers across its coarse, cold texture, that it would become the temporary torment of stubbing one’s toe on the thick root of an old tree, but it’s not. I’m like a hungry dog that finds a spring fledgling, scampering about the grass, who scoops it up in his mouth and holds it under his tongue afraid to chew.
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YOU MADE YOUR POINT LAURIE ROSENBLATT
Seventy-mile-per-hour gusts howled and drove sand like pea-shot against the windows the night before we buried you. The vixen clacked and keened, reminding me I’d forgotten your ashes in the back of the SUV. I turned to face into the winged-wind, a flock of furious petrels.
LAURIE ROSENBLATT is the author of In Case, a poetry collection published by Pecan Grove Press. She has two chapbooks, Blue (University of Toledo Press) and A Trapdoor, A Rupture, Something With Kinks (Finishing Line Press). Gallery NAGA in Boston, Massachusetts, published her collaboration with painter Richard Raiselis. She holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and serves as co-editor of LEON Literary Review. Her poems have appeared in The Common, New Ohio Review, Salamander, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and other journals.
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GEESE BEFORE SUNSET, STEVE FAY
STEVE FAY has been practicing photography since the early 1970s, almost as long as he has been creative writing. A photo of his has also appeared in the literary journal Every Pigeon. His poetry is forthcoming this winter in The Comstock Review. He lives in Fulton County, Illinois. JOYCE MEYERS practiced law in Philadelphia for nearly three decades. Her poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, Atlanta Review, Slant, Iodine Poetry Journal, and Common Ground Review, among others. In 2014 she won the Atlanta Review International Poetry Competition, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her collections include The Way Back (Kelsay Books 2017) and two chapbooks, Shapes of Love (Finishing Line Press, 2010) and Wild Mushrooms (Plan B Press, 2007).
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MORNING MOON JOYCE MEYERS
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention. . . - Mary Oliver, “A Summer Day”
Early spring, just after dawn, above the sun-tipped trees a full moon’s mountain-marbled face, not pale but radiant against a soft blue sky as if it loved its cushioned bed too much to leave when night was done but stayed to watch the vee of geese stretching their long black necks over the gilded trees. Had I not raised the shade at just that moment or stayed in bed a bit I would have missed it. And, yes, it would have mattered. These are the moments that bind me to this earth, teach and keep reminding me to love what’s precious because it passes, to let the joy hang for an instant as the moon hangs in the morning sky then gently fades away.
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AT THE EDGE LINDA HUGHES
She steps out at the edge of the grove to graze where the grass is sweetest. Small against the stand of tall oaks and palms. Her tawny shape sketched against evening’s deep greens. Ghostly in the diminishing light, hide powdered with dust, she lowers her head to the grass. The sound of her foraging floats softly on the still air. She moves calmly, though predators prowl in the darkness behind her. Lifts her head, looks to the forest then back. Her haunches quiver. All day she has heard the sound of a new danger as machinery becomes familiar and close. Next year where will she hide her fawns?
LINDA HUGHES holds a BA in advertising and journalism, and worked as a photojournalist for the Sun Herald in Florida, a Pulitzer Prize winning news publication. Her poetry has been published in Plainsongs, Abstract Contemporary Expressions, OVS, The Critical Pass Review, Mangrove Review, Art Alliance Broadsides, Drunk Monkeys, Blacktop Passages, American Journal of Nursing’s Art of Nursing, and others. She grew up on a farm in Oklahoma and now lives in Florida with her husband, three cats, and wildlife that wanders out of the jungle.
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CORNSTUBBLE DEER, STEVE FAY
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THE DREAMS OF FLOWERS IN CAPTIVITY WAVERLY WOLDEMICHAEL
Indoors and arranged in a vase, a bouquet of bird of paradise flowers are the beau ideal of refined elegance: large, green leaves as broad and ribbed as a banana leaf interspersed with long-tapered stems that flare into blossoms of deep greens with a jolt of pink, a streak of vermillion, and finish in a striking, pointed beak. Orange frills and a single purple scepter adorn the flower top like a crest of sharp feathers. As if wrested from untamed wilds, birds of paradise refuse to be subdued even in captivity. They burst defiantly from their ceramic container on the table. Despite their frequent appearance in our kitchen, each bloom feels beautiful and rare. Their regal nature is officially catalogued. Strelitzia reginae—an English naturalist bestowed this specific epithet to the flower in honor of the queen, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Still, I question whether the birds of paradise accept this designation. In their world, is there any anthropic compliment that can be paid to them? When they dream in our garden, perhaps they do not aspire to royalty but to exist outside of our hierarchies and taxonomies, a life outside of human contours. Driving up to my family’s suburban California house, I can barely distinguish it from its beige, stucco neighbors. Only our abounding bushes of bird of paradise flowers in the front yard remind me I’m home. They used to strike
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as indecent in my childhood. Outdoors, the very growth of the bird of paradise bush is untamed. It’s a chaotic plant: leaves point in different directions, orange buds protrude like aggressive heads on long necks, launching themselves forward in the breeze. There’s a part of me that never liked these flowers, untamed and savage, a visual acknowledgement of my family’s eccentricity, tropical in the suburb, brazen when asked to be discreet. We, one of the few families with African heritage, with itinerant tendencies, and who valued the currency of experience in the capital of materialism. I look now at our birds of paradise bushes, jutting out among our sundry plants, with wonder. I question if they have historical memories. Do these exotic flowers know that once they reigned in a dense jungle, growing in field of tall stalks in the African Cape, a thousand dots of orange ruffled heads peering in all directions. Do they scorn or commune with other domesticated varieties in our garden? Do they pass judgement on our avocado tree captured from Central America compliantly producing fistfuls of ripe fruit, and do they sympathize with our red-blossoming Hibiscus, kidnapped from Hawaii, an orange stigma sticking out like a tongue? Do they defer to our ancestral cycads with branches of hard, green leaves sprouting from their
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crowns, memories of their noble past as a once dominant species? Once cut, birds of paradise are transformed. Confined in our vase, I imagine how the birds of paradise speak to the other non-human life. They must feel a disgust, perhaps tinged with envy, of our docile eight-pound poodle, a creature so altered by humans, she possesses no memory of life outdoors. They look on, perched above the teacup dog who sleeps sprawled on the couch belly up (even in her dreams, she cannot fathom danger). While entering our house comes at a high cost for the flowers, only passing through the doorway once beheaded, static, life draining out of them. The birds of paradise, I sense, dream of flight.
WAVERLY WOLDEMICHAEL is an EritreanAmerican writer based in California, and a student of migration and integration. She’s currently working on a long fiction project related to migrant crossings in the Mediterranean.
In childhood, I envied the restraint in the roses of our neighbors down the street, the sophistication of the gravel and stone garden next-door, and the simple suburban tradition of an unadorned green lawn—a deceptive projection of abundance, verdant grass that siphons gallons of clean water from our parched land. Twenty-five years ago, when my parents moved into our house, empty and brand new, they must have looked at the garden and fantasized a different vision.
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BIRD OF PARADISE CORINNA BOARD
The forest echoes your song: reverberating, air dense with longing. Anticipation grows beneath the canopy of murmuring trees. Listen to the leaves: they hold your name in their sap, a secret untold until it begins: plumes splayed in an aurora on the makeshift stage, your dance a reminder of the strange things we do for love.
CORINNA BOARD lives in the UK in a small village in the Cotswolds, and currently works in Oxford where she teaches English as an additional language. She rediscovered poetry writing during the pandemic and can be found on Instagram @parole_de_reveuse.
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WHAT THE BIRD CAN SEE KELLY R. SAMUELS
The green hedge is not just of one green. And, so, into the northernmost corner where we would call it hunter or emerald, if we could see what it sees. I’d mix the palette and work away until the oil dried and say blue when you said gray—something of the sky over the marsh, those drives home. Green of moss, the vibrant bamboo. Chatter and rustling as the bird builds its nest. And then, still.
KELLY R. SAMUELS is the author of the full-length collection All the Time in the World (Kelsay Books) and two chapbooks: Words Some of Us Rarely Use and Zeena/Zenobia Speaks. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee with work appearing in The Massachusetts Review, RHINO, The Carolina Quarterly, The Pinch, and Salt Hill. She lives in the Upper Midwest.
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CRASHING, BRYAN STEWART
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ROOM
202 , ESTER LEE MOTEL
ESWEN ALLISON HART
Is it the ocean or the highway that I hear the traffic of waves the engine of eons the moon pulling on water the tide in and out I am not asleep though I’ve lain here for hours my mind listening my mind wandering alert and awake polishing each thought like a stone
ESWEN ALLISON HART is a native of Oregon and has lived in Central Oregon, the Willamette Valley, and Portland, and spent fourteen years on a small island in San Juan County, Washington State. In addition to poetry, she writes lyric nonfiction and history, and has an MA in architecture and an MFA. Her work has previously appeared in The Sun, 1859: The Oregon Magazine, The Journal of Vernacular Architecture, and Three Sheets Northwest.
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FIRST LIGHT WALT MCLAUGHLIN
Awake before robins, I catch a glimmer of light bleaching the dark blue night, brightening slowly, slowly before that fiery orb crests the ridge. Someday I will forego all action, all thought, and simply watch the whole show. Then the mystic in me will know all there is to know.
WALT MCLAUGHLIN is a philosopher of wildness who writes about the natural world, being human, and his backcountry excursions. His work has appeared in Blueline, Conservationist, Cream City Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, and many other periodicals. He has over a dozen books in print, including a hiking narrative, The Allure of Deep Woods, a book of verse, A Hungry Happiness, and a collection of personal essays, Cultivating the Wildness Within. He regularly blogs at woodswanderer.com, and is the driving force behind the small press Wood Thrush Books.
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NIGHT PHASE 1, THEODORE TOLLEFSON FALL/WINTER 2021 ISSUE 3
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DOMINION, DENISE GRANGER KERBS Acrylic on Canvas
DENISE GRANGER KERBS is a California artist who was self-taught from the age of 12 until she went to college at age 44. She earned a BA in art and received her California teaching credential in art one year later. She was always eager to learn and work with many different mediums because of their unique tones, textures, and processes. Denise is a full-time artist, workshop instructor, and teacher at her studio where learning is reciprocal. She is inspired by the story found in the details of every subject, be it told through realism or abstraction.
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BACKSCATTER HUGH HUGHES
They talk of alpenglow, as if it’s solely reserved for the tops of mountains, but have they ever seen the dried, browning husks of the canary island palm in the last light of a smog ridden day, or what about the rusted breast of a seasoned robin, as it leaches from the sunset? Then there’s the confounding image of a blue-green ocean, either reflecting or absorbing the sinking light from the west, making me unsure how a mirror works. Still, I pitch my head forward, concerning myself with nothing else, but the practiced blush of dusk, feeling all too known, and all too right.
HUGH HUGHES is a writer and poet, focusing on both free verse and micro-poetry. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is the president of a non-profit social enterprise that supports women transitioning into permanent housing. When he is not working on poetry or his first high fantasy novel series, he can be found hiking, gardening, or drawing maps and landscapes of the fictional world he created. Hugh holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hope International University.
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DESIRE PATH RADHA MARCUM
In mapping, they call it a desire path. This morning we see it simpler, the illicit trail bent into otherwise untracked grass between this and that hunger (this and that hideaway), divots gouged in the field’s uniform growth, crossed and crossed by animal pacing. Is it harmful, samsara? It doesn’t seem much but it adds up—our over and over bypass of mud hole or thistle patch, the rivulet stream that would make a mess of us in our madness to get over it, to get some, to get there— to cut straight to where we are simply more desired—all of it going after all, in the end.
RADHA MARCUM’s poetry collection, Bloodline, received the 2018 New Mexico Book Award in Poetry. She is a graduate of Bennington College and the University of Washington, Seattle, where she held the Klepser Fellowship in Poetry. Her poems have appeared widely, including in FIELD, West Branch, Pleiades, Gulf Coast, Iris, Chelsea, The Bellingham Review, Poetry Northwest, and The Taos Journal of International Art and Poetry. She lives in Colorado where she teaches at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop.
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OLD HIGHWAY, DERRICK BREIDENTHAL Oil on Panel, 12’’ x 12’’
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AWAKENING TO FALL KIRAN DHALIWAL
Autumn writes poems about herself. The way she lights fire through summer. Turning all that’s green to: gold ochre, raw sienna, venetian red, cinnabar, gamboge, burnt orange, realgar. Everything pointing to the sky is changing. Everything down here is staring up at her against the bright cobalt blue. How she comes in haste. All at once, it’s falling. She covers the ground and bares the bones of the once lush conifers. Breathing becomes more refreshing, gratitude condensates in the cold. She is not a narcissist, she does not need attention. But how do you ignore a fury like that? Besides, a storm like that has no business being modest.
KIRAN DHALIWAL (she/they) is a Squamish-based writer currently pursuing her BA in art history at UBC. Her writing has been featured in yolk, Contrast, Tone: a collaborative zine by Current Symposium and Zine Club, printed by Moniker Press, and was Room Magazine’s 2017 Poetry Contest’s honourable mention. She has also shared her poetry at Sikh Heritage Month BC. Her work focuses on her growth as a Sikh settler born on the unceded Coast Salish Territory of the Skwxwúmesh (Squamish People).
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ORIGINS SAM SHARP
Sitting in grass native to Indiana below a Japanese maple tree while fires in Oregon muddle the sunset. A doe kicks up from the thicket in front of her spotted fawn born in Spring, conceived by Fall, prepared for winter. We are stillness in motion. Even clouds are immigrants hoping to settle into rain.
SAM SHARP is a writer and outdoor story-hunter living in northeast Ohio. He holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies from Kent State University and is currently enjoying his first break from school in seventeen years. He is the recipient of the Thomas Freeman Nature Writing Award, and his poems have been published in several places.
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SUNSET, ICELAND, DARYL FARMER
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DARYL FARMER is the author of Bicycling Beyond the Divide, a nonfiction narrative that chronicles a bicycle ride across the U.S. West, and Where We Land, a collection of short fiction. His recent work has appeared in a variety of literary journals including Ploughshares, Talking River Review, and Terrain.org, and has had photographs published in Deluge and 1966. He is currently an associate professor at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks where he teaches creative writing in the MFA program and is also on faculty at the University of Alaska-Anchorage Low-Residency MFA program. Additionally, he is a graduate of the Rocky Mountain School of Photography. FALL/WINTER 2021 ISSUE 3
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NAKED J. P. WHITE
When I lay down in the Iao stream, the cold held me under and the clouds carried me to the extinct volcano. Without opening my eyes, I saw the many ruptures and returns of my life and it was good enough, this ligature, this valley, this body, naked and floating.
J.P. WHITE has published essays, articles, fiction, reviews, interviews, and poetry in over 150 publications including The Nation, The New Republic, The Gettysburg Review, American Poetry Review, North American Review, The Georgia Review, Southern Review, and Poetry (Chicago). He is the author of five books of poems and a novel, Every Boat Turns South. Learn more at www.jpwhitebooks.net
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WATER, LOSTINE RIVER, M. C. REARDON
M.C. REARDON is a fourth generation Oregonian, a visual artist, and poet currently residing in Portland, Oregon. Textures, colors, words, and beauty wander throughout her imagery and poetry, offering natural wisdom. Her work is an expression of intuitive connection with nature, recognizing that humanity may benefit from remembering that nature does not live in the boundaries that humans do, but within the vast landscape that we have built our homes upon. Her images and writings have been exhibited internationally, in various publications, and in galleries and private collections.
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MIGRATION IV, NICOLINE FRANZISKA Oil on Canvas, 23.7” x 47.25”
NICOLINE FRANZISKA is a multi-disciplinary artist from Toronto living and working in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from Parsons, The New School for Design, in 2019 with a BFA in fine arts. With a primary focus in oil painting and pastel drawings, her process-based work investigates relationships between two-dimensional surface, line, form, and how these moving elements can be composed to indicate narrative.
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BELOW ZERO K. L. JOHNSTON
The finest thing about this grey season is the cardinal fluttering in the blooming camellia. Red bird and red blooms upon evergreen, bold to be so brilliant despite this miserable weather. He fluffs his feathers, gathers light, holds the warmth, perching bright-eyed, an exclamation point of certainty among chill defiant flowers anticipating spring.
K. L. JOHNSTON first published at the age of sixteen and has been writing ever since, mostly non-fiction and poetry. She is not an academic poet but has been published in numerous small literary magazines, from Kudzu in the 1970s to her most recent work in Time of Singing and Wild Roof Journal. While wrangling seven children to adulthood, she stumbled into a career as a dealer in art and antiques from which she is gleefully retired. Her other interests include horticulture, historical research, and photography.
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BLACK DOG UNDER THE PERSIMMON J. P. WHITE
You could say the ladder resting against the trunk has always been ready to hoist someone to fetch fruit from the tangled upper limbs. You could say the persimmon will live as long as the picker, then it too must fall or rot from within after carrying so much autumn. The black dog however will always be here sleeping in the sun, the dog that everyone has seen and no one can say where it came from, that dog with no name. Black dog, orange globe, ladder in the cloud.
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PAINTED SPRUCE, BRYAN STEWART
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THE WAY HOME, TIFFANY WONG China Ink, Earth Pigments, Natural Inks, and Embroidery on Raw Canvas, 24” x 36” TIFFANY WONG is an emerging artist who blends textile art and painting to make emotive abstract compositions. She is the daughter of Hong Kong immigrants and grew up in Montreal where she is currently based. She uses inks and stains that she makes from organic matter and paints mixed with natural earth pigments. Tiffany’s art practice is constantly evolving as she continues to research more natural, traditional ways that she can make art against our rapidly declining planet. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal and she is the mother of two young boys. In 2018, she was awarded the Prix de Relève at Mtl en Arts in Montreal. In 2020, her work has also appeared in the fall edition of House and Garden. Her work is collected in homes across Canada and the USA.
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FIVE HAIKU LUKE LEVI
autumn— rain on ice-lined windows like dripping candle wax
soft as a kiss rain patting the window
only one sound wide black wings flapping above the live oak
so fragile are the beautiful things withered flowers
how softly the rain falls on the oak hills
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FUR KARINA BOROWICZ
The fox bursts out of the bushes and runs by. Just a moment, enough for my eye to know its fur is something like the color of clay: earth-gray, a reddish tinge toward the hips. Then it’s gone— although the dry leaves on the ground are still crackling as if hiding a low, spreading fire— and my eyes are closed, buried suddenly by a new color that has no name.
KARINA BOROWICZ is the author of Rosetta (Ex Ophidia, 2021), Proof (Codhill Press, 2014), and The Bees Are Waiting (Marick Press, 2011). A French bilingual volume of new and selected works, Tomates de septembre, was published by Cheyne-éditeur in 2020. Her work has appeared widely in journals, anthologies, and other media, including Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and National Public Radio’s Writer’s Almanac and The Slowdown.
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DRIFTING, DERRICK BREIDENTHAL Oil on Panel, 24” x 36”
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SNOWY COUNTRYSIDE, VIAN BORCHERT Acrylic on Canvas, 24” x 24”
VIAN BORCHERT is an established artist who has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions within the US and internationally. Vian is a Notable Alumni from the Corcoran George Washington University, Washington, DC. V. Borchert exhibits in key galleries in major cities such as NYC, LA, DC, Berlin. Borchert had her artwork exhibited in prestigious places such as “Art Basel Miami Beach” at Spectrum Miami, 1stdibs Design Center in Chelsea, NYC. Borchert’s art has been featured in press such as The Washington Post, ARTPIL and others. V. Borchert is an art educator teaching fine art classes in the DC area. To see more, visit www.vianborchert.com.
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HAIKU ELAINE T. STOCKDALE
there is beauty here in the white trees and white roads all leading to you
ELAINE T. STOCKDALE is an emerging poet based in Victoria, Australia. She holds a degree in sports journalism but started dabbling with poetry in late 2019. Since then, her work has been featured in numerous publications including Train River Publishing, Sunday Mornings at the River, Vagus Creatives, and RDW Poetry 365. When she is not writing, you’ll find her drinking tea and reading a book, watching a good documentary, playing guitar, or spending time with her kids and two dogs.
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HAIKU ELLEN ROWLAND
silence falling asleep— the sound of snow
sun brings out her veils sky turns alabaster then slate, then crow
single rose in bloom on the fourth of December silk and snow draping
ELLEN ROWLAND creates, concocts and forages when she’s not writing poetry inspired by the natural world and the human spirit. She is the author of Light Come Gather Me, a selection of mindfulness haiku and Everything I Thought I Knew, a collection of essays about living, learning and parenting outside the status quo. Her writing has appeared in various literary journals, both in print and online, and in several poetry anthologies. She serves as Terra Chapter Curator at Mythos Poets Society and lives off the grid on a tiny island in Greece. Connect with her on Instagram @rowland.ellen.
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CAMP, DERRICK BREIDENTHAL Oil on Panel, 20” x 28”
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SILVER LININGS, VANESSA PEJOVIC FALL/WINTER 2021 ISSUE 3
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FINE CRACKS HOLDING TOGETHER, M. RUSSEK
SKYSHORE, AMI J. SANGHVI
M. RUSSEK was born in April of 1968 in Cleveland, Ohio. M. has worked as an IT specialist, wildlife director, and editor, and took part in the 2008 economic crisis. M. Russek has won various photography and art awards, and is also a poet, teacher, editor, and essayist.
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DAY AFTER DAY KATHLEEN WAKEFIELD I walked on snowpack, on bone-cracking ice. To move was to keep living.
One afternoon the flickering green lacework of beech and wild cherry lit the folds of my brain. Inside the snow I heard the bright din of bees, the work of the meadow with its promise of honey urging me on. One April day I returned to the woods where the Spring Beauty lives close to the ground. I knelt beside the small white petals shot through with pink, ephemeral the tiny ground bee lives for, brief marriage lasting only days above earth, kept alive in the ground of winter. Soon the warblers would arrive in this place of their passing through, elusive, the ones I couldn’t yet name flitting high in the trees: Blackburnian, Nashville, Magnolia. I want to put their songs in my throat. KATHLEEN WAKEFIELD has published two books of poetry, Notations on the Visible World (2000), which won the 1999 Anhinga Prize for Poetry, and Grip, Give and Sway (Silver Birch Press, 2016). Her poems have appeared in such journals as the Beloit Poetry Journal, Image, The Georgia Review, Midwest Quarterly, Poetry, Rattle, River Styx, Sewanee Review, and Shenandoah. Wakefield has taught creative writing at the Eastman School of Music and as a poet-in-the-schools.
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SNOW COUNTRY ANNE LEIGH PARRISH
inside a house with blue walls one shuts out the world to make a palace of the heart ice clads dust & floats to earth eases a hard line, softens an edge in certain light drifts are tinged with blue the color of the season isn’t white or gray just this gentle hue carried within us like a piece of sky waiting for spring
ANNE LEIGH PARRISH is an award-winning writer with two new titles coming from Unsolicited Press: the moon won’t be dared, a poetry collection (October 2021), and an open door, a novel (October 2022). Her latest novel, a winter night, released in March 2021 from Unsolicited Press, is the most recent installment in her popular Dugan Family story. She is the author of seven other books and lives in the South Sound Region of Washington State. Find her online at her website, Twitter, Facebook, Medium, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Goodreads.
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ICE, DERRICK BREIDENTHAL OIL ON PANEL, 30” X 40”
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LAND MARKS, VANESSA PEJOVIC
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MEDITATION: MIDWINTER MARY ANNA SCENGA KRUCH
The thaw was unexpected: brilliant sun amid crisp blue sky through maple’s lone branches and our sharp sense of loss. Mom would have begun to watch for robins as the ground gave a little, revealing remnants of drowsy lawn. Ice shimmered on pond edges yet solid blocks held tight. Surely more snow would fall, skies would cloud gray again among the arc of red pines marking entrance to the woods. In early days, winter strolls on the farm offered ease, each snowflake a celebration; spring could take its time. Shouldn’t we now stay longer to walk along the pond and into the woods, remembering?
MARY ANNA SCENGA KRUCH is a career educator and writer. Recent publications include Wayne Literary Review, Blue Heron Review, Silver Birch Press, Humana Obscura, and a chapbook, We Draw Breath from the Same Sky (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Her first full-length collection, a hybrid memoir called Grace Notes, is forthcoming from Goldfish Press this fall.
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