We at The Unconventional Courier wish to thank to extremely talented and diligent artist and illustrator, Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad for her fantastic cover art for this issue, "The Land Remembers." You can follow Oormila on Twitter: @oormilaprahlad Instagram:
Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is an Indian Australian artist, poet, and improv pianist, who serves as an editor for Authora Australis.
Her poetry and art have been published in various print and online journals and anthologies including Parentheses Journal, Pareidolia Literary, and Oyster River Pages, and on the covers of Amsterdam Quarterly yearbook, Pithead Chapel, Two Thirds North, and Stonecoast Review.
Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and her art multiple times for the Best of the Net. She is the author of three poetry micro-chapbooks published by Origami Poems Project. She lives and works in Sydney on the traditional lands of the Eora Nation. Find her @oormilaprahlad and www.instagram.com/oormila paintings
"The Art Exhibit" is about an elderly couple who spend the day at an art exhibit of impressionist painters whose work was forgotten. The story explores things of beauty, the passage of time, and the quiet desires of human nature.
A woman ponders on a decision she made in her youth.
By Laura Cooney
A woman ponders on what it means to be "tone deaf."
By Babatunde Adesokan
By Devika
(Twitter:
@maddi sellers)“The principle of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.”
―Jerzy KosinskiIt was in the paper, and that is why we went.
On the front page, it read: The Forgotten Impressionists 19th century art from 1860 to 1910. Rare colorful Impressionist art by forgotten painters whose work was nearly lost to time. The exhibit is on Sunday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on 10th Street.
It was early fall. Late enough though that every leaf had changed to a soft amber and rust.
Already they'd begun to scatter themselves upon the earth as the wind swept through the trees bringing with it the familiar autumn chill. It's days like these I find comfort in. With a stillness, a calmness, that you know something beautiful is always bound to follow.
In my case, it was the art exhibit.
I rose early that morning, earlier than I usually do. Pushing back the heavy quilt and covers, I slipped into my robe and could see the curtains were partly drawn. Outside a misty rain fell, and I knew I would take the umbrella; the black one I always used in the fall; patterns such as these I kept close to me.
Downstairs Simon was making coffee and buttering a piece of soft white bread when he turned to me. "Ah, you’re up," he said, setting a cup of coffee and a plate with bread on the table. "Breakfast, and then we can get ready to go."
I took a sip of the dark coffee, hot and bitter and a stark contrast to the cream colored mug it was in.
"Thank you," I said, and when he sat beside me, I kissed him on the cheek, and he smiled at me. A smile I'd seen thousands of times. The left corner of his mouth pulled up slightly higher than the right, and his eyes crinkling with happiness.
How I'd seen this face change. From the young man he was, a friend at first, to the man I'd married who'd grown old with me. His brown hair had turned grey as mine had, he'd given up teaching to write a book, and I'd given up sculpting to be an Art History professor; my hands did not move the same as they once did with clay.
So you see, time had moved on along with us, taking our hands and guiding us right where we needed to be. We'd changed, but there is beauty in change. Just as the seasons do with the turning of the years. There had been no resistance as we didn’t feel we needed to. The beginning is just as beautiful as the now.
My thoughts slipped away like rising steam from the cup. So instead, I sipped my coffee and watched Simon read the paper by golden lamplight, the drizzling rain against the window the only sound in our cottage.
We left the house at 9 a.m. as it was only a ten minute walk to the exhibit.
Outside, cold air pressed against us as we huddled underneath the umbrella, and I linked my arm around Simon's and drew him closer. When we walked, our shoulders touched, and I thought about how warm it felt and how I was happier than I had been in a long time.
Not that I was not happy with Simon or my life. Yet, when something new occurs, and the weather is just right, your heart beats a little faster because it is special; it is special because it is not the everyday. For what your heart has been yearning for has come true, even if you never spoke it aloud.
That was today. It was this walk in the rain on a grey stone path littered with fallen wet leaves and the wind in the trees a gentle whisper; the morning air with that particular scent that when breathed in, cools everything inside you, and what escapes is a sigh of relief.
Not long and we saw the sign for the exhibit when the trees above us parted and, in white painted letters against deep blue, it read: Art for the Lost: Forgotten Impressionists-today only
Inside the old red brick building was warm and clean, with pale walls and polished dark wood floors. It smelled of lavender and had the distinct scent that old things have, perhaps something close to what memories might be like if one could describe them.
On the walls, paintings hung in ornate gold and brown frames, a contrast to the vivid canvases that held bright colors of green and yellow, pink and red. It was as if we had walked into a walled garden frozen in time. There were not many people this early, just a few aimlessly walking around and others holding themselves still at a piece as they carefully looked it over.
The Unconventional Courier December 2022 The Art Exhibit by Maddison Sellers
"Ready?" Simon asked me, and I nodded my head once to him. Indeed I was. It felt much like a gift to look at this forgotten art, look at the colors and strokes and subjects, and press it all into my mind to form a solid thing I could always hold on to.
Simon pulled me forward, and I listened to our shoes click lightly on the floor as the warm lighting of the room created a glossy look to everything. Where once were crisp edges now became hazy, and the brightness of the world dulled to a softness brilliantly decorated in colors from long ago.
The first piece we stopped at was a watercolor, Two Roses, by Zacharie Astruc.
"It's lovely," I mused, "A pity people forgot about it."
"And yet here we are admiring it," Simon said; he had a love for the forgotten things of the world.
"And I do love roses."
"Indeed you do.” He said softly and looked at the painting again. “It's rather like us, do you think? The two of us, the two roses."
"You've always been a romantic," I teased him, and he intertwined our fingers as we moved on.
The next piece I was familiar with. Epinay Sur Orge, 1884, oil on canvas by Armand Guillaumin, whose paintings inspired the greats like Pissarro and Cézanne, but have all nearly disappeared as no one seemed to care for his.
"You know this one," he said and smiled at me.
I nodded, pleased at the sight of it. "I like this one; the house has a beautiful warmth to it, the sky in light blue and cream. It's a vibrant contrast to the dark trees, which blur to a dark blue at the edges."
"Perhaps we could look for a print and hang it in the office by the navy chair?" He suggested.
"Ah, I quite agree," I said, with a flash of excitement. "The blue of the painting and the blue of the chair. I can already see our cat there in the late evenings admiring it."
"Curled in her blanket."
"Listening to you read aloud Charles Lamb's Shakespeare," and he let out a little laugh at my words.
"You are very right, my dear." He replied smiling and pulling us to the right as we continued.
The next piece we saw was In the Fields Around London, by Giuseppe De Nittis, a date unknown but still included because his life was during this artistic period. His few paintings are mostly lost to time, for it is always a thief, but what was left behind is worth treasuring.
"What do you think?" I asked him and watched as he tilted his head a little to study the red flower fields and the brightness of the umbrella as if to portray the sun casting shadows upon the women and children.
"I think..." and hesitated before he said, "I think his use of color is skillful, and there is a remarkable attention to detail."
I smiled to myself at his attempt of analysis and looked at the faces of the people, a redness to them, a clarity where they felt defined, and yet you could blink, and they would blur all together again in even and small strokes of oil paint.
"I like the shadow of the tree," I said, "you see there," and pointed to the large dark shadow covering them, "I like the contrast of the cool tones there. The woman with a blue hat and a child with a black one." He listened attentively to my words, and I continued, "then the background with richer and warmer tones of bright red and yellow flowers."
"You are as color attentive as he is detail attentive."
"We are artists," I said knowingly, "We must all be obsessive about something, or else we have nothing to hold onto."
"Too true."
"Come on," I said, and again we continued through this labyrinth of fine art. The faint sound the umbrella made as it tapped against the wood followed us and mixed with the hushed voices of the people that went from piece to piece.
I looked carefully at them all now. With their long dark coats, some with raindrops still yet to dry on them. A woman passed me leaving behind the smell of jasmine and clementines. A mother held the hand of a little girl whose bright red shoes looked like drops of red paint when she walked. A young man carried a grey notebook opened to a page with scribbles done in soft pencil. A couple leaned close to one another to speak quietly, heavy in a discussion.
I watched, and as we walked past them all, I felt a pull of the yesterday. How keenly familiar this all was.
"What are you thinking, Mary?" Simon asked me, "You have that look when you are thinking intensely of something."
I knew how easily he could read my face, every emotion was written clearly in my grey eyes, but of course, it was only something he could do. Everyone else never seemed to understand my words or thoughts, not even how my gaze fell.
"Tell me," he probed, and I turned my head a little to the left to look at him.
"You are very nosy. You know that, don't you?" I said, and he shrugged his shoulders a little as if to say he couldn't help himself.
"Besides my nosiness, what were you thinking about?" And I could tell he wouldn't let this go.
I sighed a little before saying, "I was thinking how familiar all this felt to me."
"I see. Well, we do have many memories in art galleries and exhibits."
"Yes, but..." My words trailed off.
"Yes?"
Maddison Sellers is a reader for the Chestnut Review and the Chariot Press and has an AA degree from Tacoma Community College. She has had one poem published in the college literary and art magazine, Trillium.
You can find her on Twitter at @maddi sellers
(Twitter: @vicklbennett Website: creative-shadows.com)
I want to try it to see what it's like and see what my stuff looks like when I take it from inception to completion.
The author is disabled herself, and is sensitive to the issues involved, though they concern a different disability. But as human nature is various, a character like this could easily exist; therefore, she ask humor and tolerance be the guides in interpreting this character portrait.
I’d wanted to be ahead of the game, was always in a hurry, first to grow up, then to have advanced placement for college, any sort of acceleration I could get, nothing was too fast. My relatives joked that I’d been born with wheels instead of feet. This was an old fashioned joke, ignoring how many people in the world were born without feet, or were at some point in their lives forced to get around with wheelchairs, so I just put on what my mother referred to as my “smug and superior” face, and said nothing. It was like that other old joke applied to my sister, who talked incessantly, that the doctor stuck her with a phonograph needle when she was born. This wasn’t as negative a joke as the one applied to me, because it was simply out of date; most people didn’t keep turntables anymore, and those survivalists and retro fans who did were not known in our circle. My sister and I got along all right: I ignored her when she talked too much, and she rolled her eyes at me when I was in a hurry.
It was summer after graduation. Haste had aided in the writing of papers rather than manifesting itself in obvious signs of disorder. Then, the accident happened. I still didn’t know how to drive, had never taken the time to learn since there wasn’t to be a car at my disposal. Everywhere there’d been a transit system ready to take me up for a small fare, though I was always tired of waiting at stops and impatient as most lethargic riders weren’t.
I’d snibbed a ride home with a guy I knew slightly, a friend of a friend, so I wasn’t expecting him to present problems. I didn’t see anything wrong with him at first, because all the windows were rolled down when we pulled out from my dorm, my stuff loaded up with his in the back seat. Maybe the candy wrappers and potato chip bags in the floor should’ve warned me, but who blames a guy in college for being a slob with his own car? You just don’t date him or marry him.
As we went along, though, I began to smell a certain familiar niff clinging to his clothes. He was driving okay, fast, which was fine with me. I was in a hurry. But when he pulled out a packet of rolling papers from one plaid work shirt pocket and a bag of weed from the other, all expertly while driving, looking down from the road to aid in rolling, I felt a certain lack of ease.
“Do you have to do that now?” I asked, as his foot pressed the gas at the same rate, a speed I’d enjoyed but now was nervous about. I knew how many accidents there’d been near campus involving drivers who were high, as the campus police obligingly broadcast figures on a flashing billboard with a warning each week. The billboard was hard to avoid, mounted on the main street through campus.
“Don’t grip up, I’m a good driver; I know what I’m doing.” He started to toke, and then turned to me. “You want some?” he asked, holding out the thick joint he’d made.
I faced him, irritated, preparing to scold and demand that he put it away, and he grinned crookedly, like he thought he was a sexy rock star, and patted my thigh with the back of his hand that was still holding the joint. It was while we were warring glances that we accelerated, crossed into the far lane and ran straight into an oncoming vehicle. When I came to after a week in the hospital, I was told he was dead; I had lost the use of my legs. My dependable legs, that had taken me so fast, to so many places.
My relatives blamed him, didn’t go to his funeral, and if they scolded at all, didn’t scold me, but were rotten with a sick sympathy, which I’d seen them display with others in wheelchairs. But I was forced to take stock; at that point, I had an unreasonable but final sense of completion. It’d been my mistake to ride with a stranger rather than with a friend. Now, I really did have wheels instead of feet. I hate myself for blaming myself, and I’m in therapy now to deal with it. You should see me fly down the sidewalk when I’m late for my appointments.
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The Unconventional Courier December 2022 A Sense of Completion by Victoria Leigh Bennett
Victoria Leigh Bennett, (she/her). Greater Boston, MA area, born WV. B.A., Cornell U., M.A. & Ph.D., U. of Toronto, English & Theater.
In Print: "Poems from the Northeast," 2021. OOP but available on website along w/9 novels (free reads), "Scenes de la Vie Americaine (en Paris)," [in English], 2022.
From Aug. 2021 Dec. 2022, Victoria will have published at least 27 times in: Roi Faineant Literary Press, The UnconCourier, Fevers of the Mind Poetry & Art, Barzakh Magazine, Amphora Magazine, The Alien Buddha Press, The Madrigal Press, Discretionary Love, Winning Writers, Cult of Clio. She has been accepted with 4 works for Bullshit Literary Magazine for 4/21/23.
Victoria is the organizer along with Alex Guenther & Dave Garbutt of the poets' collective @PoetsonThursday, up each Thursday on Twitter. Victoria is ocularly and emotionally disabled.
You can follow Victoria on:
Website: creative shadows.com: "Come for the shadows, stay for the read." Twitter: @vicklbennett
Body language and tone of voice ― not words are our most powerful assessment tools.
― Christopher VossI’m tone deaf. That’s what she tells me every time I open my mouth to sing. It’s the noise, see. She can’t bear it. And so my relationship with music develops strangely. The Beatles with my dad, musical theatre with my gran, The Beautiful South, played loud and drunken at 2am keeping the house awake. DON’T PLAY THAT TO ME if I don’t feel like it, or I’ll likely murder you. Somehow I miss out on the seam of gold that runs through the universe.
I feel big things when music plays and then I forget. It’s like dreaming. If I’m drunk, it’s the type of feeling that makes you text and delete? Every fibre of your being is on fire. You FEEL until the music hasn’t just entered your ears it’s now pouring from your body via your nostrils, fingertips and eyelashes.
Today, I’ve had a shocker at work, but the strangest and most empowering day for any female against a weedy little man. I feel stronger than I’ve felt in ages. It’s not just been a long day, it’s been a long 4 months. Music has pervaded this period, soulful, romantic, heartbreaking and wishful. I’m sick of it. I want to go apocalyptic and listen to absolute noise, music so jarring it cuts. But I go somewhere in between.
The lights are strobing, bold triangles of light to silvery flashes, the effect is mesmerising. There is a ‘roar’ of timpani drum, who knew, and the band are vigorous.
It’s music that’s meant to make you feel and it does. It’s immersive: light, video, sound. The band are Public Service Broadcasting, start with Everest.
As the lights strobe, chords play frenzied and blended.
The bridge.
Light and sound, thought and something. It screams in my ear. It’s not the music, it’s my brain. Something has hit home. The organ has had a moment to process, the one its needed for a quarter of the year and it tells me I am strong, you’re the one that’s waiting on him. He needs to stop being a child.
I can’t explain how it’s the music that brings me to my full power. Because as I’ve already explained. I can never remember, like drunk sex. Amazing, but… what?
It was you, you showed me that there is no such thing as tone deaf. You opened a door, then the next one and then slammed them both in my face just as the music finally got hot.
It was you, at the crescendo who kicked whatever it was between us into the tall grass and while you might spend a while looking for it in the wrong place. The universe and its music have started to sing to me again.
You’re wrong, Lights flicker, You break my heart. How big is a drum kit? The music ascends. I don’t want this anymore, There is a key change and the beat changes. Static. And begin again. You won’t wait for me? Well, pal, it’s me waiting. Grow up, won’t you?
Drum roll. You won’t wait for me? You don’t, fucking, have to. I’m dancing along here quite the thing, taking back my power, until you see the light.
Well, my friend, there’s always the B side.
And if you don’t?
Laura Cooney is a writer from Edinburgh with work in Vine Leaves Press, Roi Faineant and The Voidzine She has work forthcoming in Heartbalm and Kobayaashi Studios.
Found on Twitter @lozzawriting and https://www.lozzawriting.com.
When she isn’t doing lots of writing you’ll find her with her children at the sea. There will be ice cream!
skewered view of the world decades of medication shape the landscape every view jaded and confused by misleading pharmaceutical mixtures of unknown cocktails impossible ingredients with strange names and stranger origins from manufactured faraway places altering, changing and manipulating sucking every profit out of delirium the falsity of it all, the blank bleak falsity medication to blank minds and swell bank balances
write blank cheques to blank canvass the fog of unknowing hollow cavities of lives vacuum of emotions this antidepressant dream stultifying and stupefying deadening and dulling weakening resistances calming thoughts with pillow over mouth holding reality down
soften and silence the world simplify, sugar coat with spoonful’s of sugar to make the world go down such simple easy visions complexity and confusion eased like quicksand into the bath of unknowing soak, soothe, numb don’t think, don’t ever think slip into sleep lullabies weep
The Unconventional
Courier
Angels turn inwards wings implode with crossed arms and broken hearts deep thoughts and deeper sighs what has the world become? What has the world become?
Dark desires fly whilst goodness drops to knees shredded with hopeless dreams torso feels like concrete despair cement fuelled lungs writhe with misery aching longing limbs exhausted by it all:
Aeolian winds blow harsh tonight moaning and sighing sounds eroding and demanding weakens even soundest hearts.
The weary world won't miss you sleep, sleep, eternal sleep. Torrential rain gutters flood. See the universe in your reflection in the window of wind and storm look beyond and see the trees statuesque and all knowing blowing against the winds of time survive, survive, survive the mantra to it all.
All our strength wistfully sings new harmonies: grow trees for tomorrow you won't see lay roots for other people's children focus on a fervid future you will not be a part of fashion dreams for others in the shadows look forward not back. Build roots for others longing life maybe they might take the paths you failed to travel be the person you could have beenshield and protect them, try and try again even as the eternal footman shuffles still time to create, construct and hope initiate the world you wish you'd lived.
We / could be so much more / we should be. The impossible happens every day / our potential limitless.
The infinite in this moment / now is everything.
We are magicians / dreamers miracles in our hands / silhouettes of trees / the promise we must / seize.
In the stillness / of the night sounds / heightened
by silence.
We hear / angels wings / whispering wondrous / things.
To be lost / in this hour the most amazing / flower of opportunities of this miraculous / enchanted vibrant / world are ours / to hold alone.
Three Poems by Peter Devonald
Peter Devonald (he/him) is poet in residence at Haus a rest, columnist for Culture/ Arts and Heart Of Heatons poetry winner. 55 poems published / forthcoming in 2022 including Artist's Responding to..., Forget-Me-Not Press, Dwell Time Press, Greenhouse, Dear Politicians: Ecopoetry, RIVISTA, Suburban Witchcraft, Sixpence Society, ArtLove02, Dirigible Balloon, Shallot, Spoonie, Substantially Unlimited: Stigma, Bolton Breakdown and Wishbone Words.
Manchester based, Peter runs monthly poetry challenges for Heaton/ Cheadle/ Didsbury Post.
5 group shows including Tender Stems, Chronically Online Culturable Layered Onion.
Featured Poetic Map of Reading. 50+ film awards, former mentor Peter Ustinov Awards (iemmys) and Children’s Bafta nominated. www.scriptfirst.com
Y0u can find him at: Instagram @peterdevonald Twitter @petedevonald
(Twitter: @tunde_adesokan
Instagram: @toondayatkins Facebook: tunde.w.adesokan)
—Situationetik
AfterStuartMcpherson—
Situationetik /orthewaymysoul/ensconceditself/inacapsuleof ethics/&echoesofsituations/thatcannotbeundone//hummeinto apoem/Iwillframeyouintoanancientline/thatmurmurates/ throughstrangeverses//Likeauniverbation/icollocateintoasingle word/swarmingirretrievablytomakemeaning//Theflightoffof birds/theapproachingfeetthatstartle/thesoundsofcrickets/the rustleoflovers'bodies/thelivercookingmelatoninforbedtimelove/ whilelovers'heartsflower/relentlesslyacrossoragainst/thepullof themoon//Theburdenofknowledge/thatsinksus/deep/intoeach other/intothisswarmofeverything/ofhowmicrobesinsideyou/ buildyou/ofhowmuscledeffortsofyours/waslovingtothefabric ofmyskin/deniedorbenign/rhymingwiththebreathofthenight breeze/towardsoragainstthescalable/ofimpendingcatastrophe//
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The Unconventional Courier
33
Two Poems by Babatunde Waliyullah Adesokan
where burdens hunch our back where stars vanish from our hopes where lovers morph into liars & debtors beggar creditors into recovery prayers. where a man becomes a bad loan to a story that crumbles again to bury him
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Two Poems by Babatunde Waliyullah Adesokan
Babatunde Waliyullah Adesokan (Toonday) writes from Oyo State, Nigeria. He works with Firstbank.
He is a lover of poetry; a lover of everything that breathes poetry. His works appeared / forthcoming in Pangolin Review, Wales Haiku, Ethel-Zine, Shallowtales Review, Stillwater Review, RoadRunnerReview, Lucent Dreaming etc.
Twitter:@tunde adesokan
Instagram: @toondayatkins
Facebook: tunde.w.adesokan
To think of my daily routine is perhaps a routine itself
With charades of rituals and slow nights. Lavenders blooming and being still :momentary with a gasp in air- throttling through windowpanes there is music and lights snow as if a thunder is sleeping, a sharp fingernail obstructing vision.
Visions that corrugate over time.
I have no where else to sleep often but my empty lawn with meteors and stars imitating God- like figures.
I have nowhere to run. Not a single shade. No eye. No ear.
Everything walks into a sad oblivion- my daily routine is more of a body ache.
{ patterns and brackets} {breaking into temporal sand}
Devika Mathur resides in India and is a published poet, writer, and editor. Her works have been published in Outlook India, The Alipore Post, Madras Courier, Modern Literature, Two Drops Of Ink, Dying Dahlia Review, Pif Magazine, Spillwords, Duane's Poetree, Piker Press, Mojave heart review, Whisper and the Roar amongst others.
She writes for https://myvaliantsoulsblog.wordpress.com/ and recently published her book "Crimson Skins". Her five poems were also published in the Sunday Mornings River anthology recently.
You can find her on Instagram at @my.valiant.soul.
Things which were not lost on me by Jay Rafferty
When I was little there was a bathroom in a house by the sea. It’s probably still there. When you lay in the tub there was nothing in sight that would betray the last century had happened. No shining modern designs, no high pressure faucet or light ringed mirror. The water was always lukewarm and heavy. All that could be heard in that room through the cracks in the skylight pane was the gluttonous black sea, gorging itself on the shale cliffs.
II.
Saw some sheep, dead and stacked in a horsebox today like people frozen, limbs straight and taut, in a lorry back left too long unattended. Life never leaving, life left in metal boxes. Livestock lost in iron coffins, stretch hearses, the Cóiste Bodhar by another name, sans the careful coachman. But theirs? Just as thoughtless with a head on his shoulders.
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Unconventional Courier
Things which were not lost on me by Jay Rafferty
III.
Dreamt the other night of the sun spinning between wisps of white cloud and grey smoke, a raving celestial dreidel in irregular, infinite, laboured orbits and of foals whining in my head like the children of Fatima singing. Knocked the wind out of me. Could barely speak, could barely breathe, struggling against my flesh, trying, failing, knowing I’d be misheard or gasping for, grasping for life’s coattails.
Of the dozen piglets born to the sow in the third pig house maybe half survived long enough to suckle from their penned in mother.
The unlucky few met fate well before the frying pan. Fright, stillbirth, crushed under the mother’s hoof or blubber and her not maternal enough to notice, let alone grieve. She nursed what was left and they, for that kindness, steered clear of her hind legs. Three piglets made it to adulthood and the abattoir.
It’s a bitterly cold All Souls’ night. We forgot to leave a lit candle out to bring the lost home again. In the main hall, near the front room there’s something like rose or lavender water perspiring in the air. A fog but thinner. A permeable vale an empty pale scent that reminds me of nothing but a home in vigil or a marble form, lounging, wilting, petrified, dead.
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Things which were not lost on me by Jay Rafferty
Jay Rafferty is a redhead, an uncle and an eejit. He is the Poetry Editor for Sage Cigarettes Magazine and a guest lecturer on Contemporary Poetry and Irish Literature. His debut poetry chapbook, Holy Things, was published in March by The Broken Spine and his follow up chapbook, Strange Magic, came out in June of 2022 with Alien Buddha Press.
You can read his work in several journals including Wine Cellar Press, HOWL New Irish Writing and Daily Drunk Magazine. When not losing games of pool he, sometimes, writes stuff.
You can find him on Twitter @Atlas snow and Instagram @SimplyRedInTheHead.
So many things to put into your body or offer up to someone else’s body, & all the ways to drink: sip, slurp, swallow, swill. Merlot goes with meat, right? Tomorrow, maybe chardonnay. Tomorrow, whips & chains or beer on tap in the back room of a hustler’s bar. Nobody told you by your age there would be berryflavored hard seltzers, fruity moonshine in a jar, zero sugar lemonade because one must
The Unconventional Courier
Three Poems by Ace Boggess
maintain that figure, right?
Your hand squeezes the glass, thumb running circles on its curve as you stare into reddish purple & see your reflection in its center, a ghost in the dark that grins.
Big space. Vacant hour safe from virus. We wore 3-D glasses & were elsewhere, travelling amongst sorcerers & violent fantasia. We sat still so as not to disturb the actors who believed they lived their roles.
Finished typing a short story about the strange interconnections of people who never know they’re living lives both a little shady & divine.
I guess I think too much about divided natures: mine, Harry Haller’s in Steppenwolf, the president’s as he tries to do right by his son although placed in an awkward position because, as Jerry Garcia said in an interview once, I’m, you know, into drugs, you know.
Not done with the story, I need to edit, close any wormholes in my cosmic mumbo jumbo about everyday folks who feel off-kilter walking around, having sex with strangers, getting themselves into knife fights. When I wrote it, I understood what the story’s about,
but now I’m not so sure. I’ll think about it more today while I’m off to pick up my mother’s meds at the drugstore, the type of place where I once (or twice) loosed my other side, a surgeon singing children’s songs while cutting holes in skin.
Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including Escape Envy (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021), I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, and The Prisoners. His writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, Mid American Review, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble. His seventh collection, Tell Us How to Live, is forthcoming in 2024 from Fernwood Press.
Follow him on Twitter @AceBoggess.
Is writing escapism to you? Discuss!
Victoria Leigh Bennett:
Hi, sorry, I don't have much of an interesting answer for this one.
Basically, I think most writers "escape" from something through their writing, whether it be a tough life, a life that's been too easy, some form of disability or prejudice, the neighbors next door, the water bill's being so high every month, having to go to the PTA and drink tepid Kool Aid with bored parents because they're a teacher who's by the end of the evening feeling not only equally bored, but desperate enough to need some form of weapon to apply to themselves or others, but only feels competent with handling deadly words you get the picture.
But the escape at least a good writer achieves is more than an escape for the reader; it is often a challenge to the status quo the reader or some others of whom the reader is aware suffer equally from with the writer, and thus it makes for community.
Real "escapism," meaning cheap fiction that's just good to while away the time is probably of no real use to the reader other than that, and only aids the writer to line his or her pockets. Copiously sometimes, but to my mind, that's not worthwhile writing, though most writers wish writing paid more, and it would be a lie to say otherwise.
Of the writers who write utopias and dream worlds, I suppose they may be fantasizing along with their readers, but even good writers in those categories let the reader "achieve orgasm" first, to state it metaphorically and perhaps boldly.
Only the maladept write purely self serving fantasies.
Yes, I think writing is often a type of escapism, especially if you're writing for yourself. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, unless you are using it to avoid real life problems. If you do that, it becomes a form of procrastination. In certain cases, it can even worsen your real life struggles, since you're avoiding them for weeks, months, or even years at an end.
As such, it's important to have a balance between your "real" life and your creative life. COVID 19 blurred the boundaries for many people, but constantly living inside your head can be dangerous.
To avoid that, we should create with goals in mind. Don't just endlessly daydream about your characters and stories put pen to paper and start typing! If you keep at it, you'll soon have a novel to submit to publishers.
Tete DePunk (Editor):
It can be. Shortly put, writing, like any art form, can lapse into escapism if the creator uses their craft as a means to escape reality.
While storytelling, as with writing, can help us cope with the grinding realities we deal with on a daily basis, when our story become an outlet to escape into a "dreamscape", it becomes escapism.
If you begin neglecting the integrity of the characters and the realities of their stories, and you neglect appreciating and focusing on your own priorities in actual life, you may need to step back and distance yourself from the escapism that you are forming with your own writing.
Your own perspective on life can lapse into procrastination, or maladaptive daydreaming, which can impact your physical, mental, and emotional health.
Like many things in life, moderation and the occasional reality check can prevent from this happening.
There is a Virginia Woolf quote that says, “A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in, not out.” This curtain, for the writer at least, is one where the world falls away, and instead, the writing itself becomes the only world you know. For myself, writing is like this.
When I write, the outside world and reality fade, and in the moments of writing, I may escape to another where characters are the only individuals I know, and the reality created is drawn in the way I wish it to be. I may linger there where there is no need to worry about the things I must do and think of the agonies of the world.
When I write, I am completely focused on it and nothing else. This kind of absorption is the curtain that has hung itself around me; I may live there for a moment and exist in a different world and escape this one.
The everyday ordinary things become beautiful, and all senses are heightened. Music can enhance this feeling of escape as the two twine together. I rarely write without music as it encourages this form of escapism, and most often find myself being first inspired through music. Two forms of intense creation create the bridge I must cross to write. And when I am there, I am immersed in another person’s point of view, the world narrows, and I can become careless in this escapism.
Writing is cathartic. You become your characters their problems become yours, while your own are transformed into something that transcends your daily existence. Your anxiety, your mistakes, your regret, your hopes they are not your own, but your protagonist’s, and they can wield them in infinitely more ways than you ever could.
But such power becomes addiction. You can write to escape the dilemmas of your life into a world of your choosing. If this is your primary goal, you can easily forget yourself and live through your characters.
There’s nothing wrong with living more than one life, on the contrary: it’s your superpower, and you should value it. But don’t let self indulgence overshadow your art. Write to create your best story, not your best hideout.
Teté is an unconventional writer, artist and podcaster, whose passions run gamut from comics to Soviet-era literature, to Shakespeare to scrapbooking.
She is currently working on a novel series, "70 Fierce Years", and several subsequent novel series. You can read a preview version of her novel, "70 Fierce Years" on Tapas!
Teté also co hosts/contributes to "The Nuts and Bolts of Writing Podcast".
You can find Teté on Twitter @ Punk Tete and Instagram @ Tete.DePunk.
R. N. Roveleh is a writer of prose, artist and doctor in medieval literature.
She is the author of "Lucky Wolf”, a historical novel published in 2021 and set in 10th century Scandinavia, and of a serialised anthology of short-stories published on Tapas.io, entitled "Tales from the North”.
You can follow R.N.'s works on Instagram: @helevorn bor, Twitter: @NRoveleh and Tapas : RobRoveleh.
Imelda Wei Ding Lo (a.k.a. Fortunus Games) is a multi-disciplinary writer, artist, podcaster, and game developer.
Imelda's short story, "Mephistopheles Tips His Hat," was published in the Victoria Literary Festival's 2019 short story anthology.
She has also self-published two graphic novels, "Sam in New York" and "The Book of Joel," which are currently being updated weekly on Tapas.io.
Imelda also co hosts/contributes to "The Nuts and Bolts of Writing Podcast".
You can find her on Twitter/Instagram @fortunusgames. Her website is www.fortunusgames.com.
"“You don’t write to get to the end. You write because you enjoy doing it. You write and don’t want it to end.”."
-Dustin Thao