Artifact Nouveau Fall/Spring 2020 VOLUME 5 ISSUE 4

ARTIFACT NOUVEAU

FA L L / S P R I N G 2 0 2 0 VO LU M E 5 I S S U E 4

A Writers’ Guild Publication

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By Pascal Bernardon unsplash.com/@pbernardon

Letter from the Co-Editor in Chief Dear Readers, Artifact Nouveau is a magazine published by the San Joaquin Delta College’s Writer’s Guild. To many, Artifact Nouveau is more than just a magazine but is a collection of works representative of the Stockton community and other works from all over the world. It is also an initiative that unites students towards the goal of promoting art and literature. Even with the challenges that the past year brought, our conviction and commitment towards art and culture remains ignited.

I would like to thank Ronald Godoy, our previous Editor in Chief, for guiding and teaching me to be the current Editor in Chief and for teaching me how to edit Artifact Nouveau for the last three years. I would also like to thank Jared Schmerer for being the co-editor in chief, who led the editorial team by my side because there would not be Artifact Nouveau without them. Each had its own challenges, especially during this pandemic.

Every editor poured their heart and soul into this magazine, and I want to thank them for their effort. I would also like to thank our advisor, Professor Gabrielle Myers, for supporting both Artifact Nouveau and the Writers’ Guild. Her guidance has been vital for us to continue publishing this magazine during those difficult times.

Thank you to the contributors of this issue who bring purpose, diversity, and humanity into Artifact Nouveau.

Alicia Alonso

Letter from the Co-Editor in Chief Dear Readers, It is no easy feat to produce such a work as this, and it takes an entire team; of both editors and artists alike. From the poets who paint their dreams and passions through words and language, to the ever-evolving category of artists that express the ineffable through the visual; Artifact Nouveau is a contribution of all of them.

A collection of concepts and constructs; and a cesspool of artistic expression, and poetic envisioning; that is what this magazine is, and what it has always been. Without the presence of the many artists spread amongst these pages, this magazine couldn’t exist; for it is they who breathe the life into the lifeless, and into this magazine.

So much thanks is in order to all of the previous professors, poets, persons, and artists that have guided us to this point, and helped bring Artifact into fruition. I’d like to especially thank my entire team of editors for their continued support and contributions to this extremely difficult issue of Artifact Nouveau. This pandemic has been a great struggle for us all, and has greatly decreased our ability to work alongside one another; but together, as a team, we’ve managed to work through our struggles and publish this issue despite these trying times. Without further ado, I am proud to present to you Volume 5 and Issue 4 of Artifact Nouveau.

Jared Schmerer

By Jon Tyson unsplash.com/@jontyson

Table of Contents Tagetes

by Rebecca Beardsall....................................1 Ocean inside her

By Rebecca Beardsall.............. .....................1 Tomato Pie

by Rebecca Beardsall....................................2 Skim The Scum

by Joe Meyers................................................ 4 Buried in Fog

by Nilotpal Sarmah.......................................6 Αναγέννηση

by Ryan C. Aran..............................................7 The Moods of a Puddle

By Colm Fitzgerald.......................................8 Spiders on Goodrich Avenue

by Zach Murphy.............................................9 Presentment

by Carl Scharwath.......................................11 Aftermath of a Fiery Crash Inside My Head

By Dargan M. Ware.......................................12 Listen to the Yawns

By Ivan Peledov.............................................13 Wasted Talent

By Harris Coverley.......................................14 A Taste for Cocaine

By DS Maolalaí..............................................15 Small Family, Big Dry

by John Grey..................................................16 For the Sake of

By Edward Lee...............................................17 Scatology

By Carson Pytell...........................................18 The Kitchen

By Ziaul Moid Khan.......................................20

Hometown Memories

by Joe Meyers.................................................21 After The Break Up, Which Happened by Text

By Juleigh Howard-Hobson..........................22 Pathways Exploration

by Carl Scharwath........................................23 OCD Count to Three

by Chandler Myers.......................................24 Your Extended Throat

by Margarita Serafimova.............................25 Fall

by Alicia Alonso............................................26 Anchors, Far Away

By Dargan M. Ware.......................................28 Skunk Eating Snake

By Mark G. Hammerschick............................30 To Slow the Clocks

By Colm Fitzgerald.......................................31 The Bird Above

By Edward Lee...............................................33 Post-Punk Semi-Platonic Love Song

By Dargan M. Ware.......................................34 To a Child

By Cherie Wilkerson....................................35 Names

By Ivan Peledov............................................36 The Old Tracks

by Nolo Segundo..........................................37 Jean Rhys

by Abigail George.........................................39 Coping with the Familar and Traditional

by Alan Cohen...............................................41 Jukin and Jazzin on St. Charles Boulevard

By Mark G. Hammerschick...........................42

Fog

By Alicia Alonso.........................................43 Lyrics Inside My Memories

by James G. Piatt.........................................44 Erosion

by Joe Meyers..............................................45 Anti you

By Juleigh Howard-Hobson........................46 Black Starlight

By Carl Scharwath.....................................48 Éros kai thánatos

by Colm Fitzgerald.....................................49 Fixing Fixation

By Ryan C. Aran............................................50 These Things

by Holly Day.................................................55 Space’s Magnus Opus

by Nicole Felkins........................................56 Up On The U.P.

by Brian C. Felder.......................................57 Trying to Be

By Holly Day................................................58 The Fallen Outlook

By Allison M Palmer...................................59 The Window

By Alicia Alonso..........................................61 2:00 A.M or Dawn

by Scott Laudati..........................................65 Monday and Tuesday

By Holly Day................................................67 Skeleton Meets Bust

By Ava Sharahy............................................69 Oily Skin

By Timothy Fab-Eme....................................73 I Like a Little Lie

By Timothy Fab-Eme....................................74 Epitaph in Your head

By Timothy Fab-Eme....................................75 Self-defense

By Timothy Fab-Eme....................................77

A Poetry Collection

By Rebecca Beardsall

Tagetes Marigold musk mashed and mingled into unique prints. Grooves -clearly me, most certainly you.

Finger tips linger over orange and yellow moments germinated in Dixie cups resting on church windowsills. Renewal in manure these leafy linguists licking sunlight long after it left the May sky. Touch grace with me down here amongst tagetes we dutifully brought home to Mother. Come close to the petals, fodder for slugs and landing pads for ladybugs. The lowly marigold remembers you; misses us in the moments of May. Ocean Inside Her Myrtle carries the ocean insider her. Each morning in teal waves of the duvet, she sings the song of sea to me. She starts with a gentle hum, calling ocean to the room. Rising higher and louder rumbles arrive. Thunderous sea fills her. We witness crashing surf in her reverberations. I lean into her chest, resting my head, to feel a rush of the sea meeting the land. Myrtle’s song spans genera- 1

tions. Linage links rolling waves to her ancestors, who received the song from a sea goddess. They have kept the goddess song on the land ever since.

Their sea song and the ocean are never to meet.

Only at a distance do the melodies echo back to each other. What might happen if they mingled remains a mystery.

Tomato Pie Pies are part of my Pennsylvania-German heri. Funny cake. Cheese pie. Afternoons tage. Shoo-fly. with Mom rolling dough. Her floury hands running over wooden pin. Draping circular mixtures of flour, fat, and water over pie plates. Paring knife creating perfect circles. Her fingers form the edge in beautiful, rolling triangles as she spins the pie plate with her palm. A crust, the most overlooked part of the pie as people gaze into center, is where the baker leaves their mark. I can’t master the precise pie crust edge no matter how many times Mom shows me. The delicate way she gathers dough to peak, just so, between her thumb and forefinger. There is no art to my design quick uneven pinches form my edge. Haphazard squishes of dough, uneven -- fitting within the margins, but not completely-- is who I am.

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By Dr. Helge H. Paulsen 3

Skim The Scum

By Joe Meyers

Well, we run; we run; we run After snowballs and cotton, graceful Like toothpicks scattered across Ancient warped floors.

What’s the last short sweet song heard Before weight crosses the sky?

Is there taste in the last note Choked between eroded teeth, Saliva And bubbles?

I can’t figure if the water is Thick and murky because I need that To float, Or if you need it To be compelled To look further.

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By Anthony Richichi 5

Buried in Fog

By Nilotpal Sarmah

There is no suffocation, no claustrophobic torment of premature burial, And no deathly blackness to incite a worm invasion!

Just the vapour-threaded bond between skin and chill in all its translucent glory.

Fierce is the battle between hope and despair.

Embalmed by the cerebral battlefield’s leftover grime, I bury myself in this ghostly sea.

The shovel of wintry beauty stands like an ironic tombstone.

As the musing spirit wakes up to its wishful lust, The grave desecration will begin!

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Αναγέννηση

By Ryan C. Aran

Snow drops no longer as snowdrops’ dew.

Squallish skies weep and bellow thunder Whilst bluebells shake in the wake of spring.

The lilacs’ short breath reigns true, That of which every white lie lacks.

Blushful petals unfold into a bashful peony.

Tulips kiss the sunlight upon its return, When black irises dilate before my own.

Nature’s garden cascades into prim rows As the last primrose falls into place.

By Anthony Richichi 7

By Giulia May unsplash.com/@giuliamay

The Moods of a Puddle

By Colm Fitzgerald

On cold concrete, I stood alone, Dark gray skies in front of home, The rain was soft, too soft to see, As droplets danced all over me.

The washed beauty of rainy nights, Damp clothes and warm street lights, Lights that fell down with the rain, Reflecting back such love and pain.

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Spiders on Goodrich Avenue

By Zach Murphy

A fine mist lingered as Dao went for an early morning run on Goodrich Avenue. The only problem about running before the sunrise is that she was the first person to brush into all the spiderwebs that formed overnight. It isn’t a particularly comfortable feeling — sticky strings clinging to your face when you’re going full speed.

Dao didn’t fault the spiders, though. In fact, she admired their ways. How did they spin such stunning works of intricate beauty?

On the way back to her small art studio full of vivid acrylic paintings and meticulous clay sculptures, Dao noticed that one of her shoes became untied. After tying the laces in a tightly crafted knot, Dao popped back up and gazed upon an imposing mansion. The thing looked more like a castle than a home. Ambitious vines sprawled across the bricks, as if wanting to smother the enormous structure into oblivion. Dao stood there and wondered how much it would cost just to heat the inside of the place, especially if the people living there had cold hearts.

Just then, an elderly man who was wearing a painfully obvious wig and a bitter scowl on his face poked his head outside of the lumbering front door 9

and yelled “Do you have a problem, miss?”

“No,” Dao answered, quietly.

“Then why are you standing there staring at my house?” the old man asked.

Dao paused.

“It’s ugly,” she said.

Dao sped off with a satisfied smirk on her face. I am a spider, she thought to herself.

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Presentment

By Carl Scharwath I Thinking is a narcotic A time lapse fabricated Screening out the real world Of an internal crusade.

II Gracefully broken But beautifully existing In a verse of muteness Searching for completion.

III I am one minute Away from myself To rid thought-possessions And find my treasures.

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Aftermath of a Fiery Crash Inside My Head

By Dargan M. Ware

My hell is filled with crumpled, jumbled paper schemes.

Fantastic, phantasmic ideas could learn to soar upon the broken wings of ornithopter dreams, ride the distant updrafts where sunlight ever gleams if only they could just get off the ground before my hell is filled with crumpled, jumbled paper schemes.

Crashed paper planes condemned to die in untold reams flexible, flappable, disjointed, unrestored upon the broken wings of ornithopter dreams, feathers drifting, spilling out from mental seams falling empty, sliced and nibbled to their core.

My hell is filled with crumpled paper schemes.

Rise, rise my phoenix-feathered mind, be what you seem grow high on ill-begotten words, fiery carnivore, upon the broken wings of ornithopter dreams.

I cannot seem to sift the palatable cream from the endless flood of junk my mind’s devoured my hell is filled with crumpled, jumbled paper schemes upon the broken wings of ornithopter dreams.

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Listen to the Yawns

By Ivan Peledov

In the morning outer space is shallow like the eyes of the dead.

Water is silent. No one remembers the habits of the totems.

Giant ragdolls hide on the roofs, and magpies destroy the melodies dear to the liquid ears of failed sailors.

By Anthony Richichi

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By Brennan Hilliard

Wasted Talent

By Harris Coverley

She used to write one line poems in glass on the floor knowing that after a night of heavy drinking I’d walk through them barefoot without reading them.

Ow. 14

A Taste for Cocaine

By DS Maolalaí

friends come together - history like glue on a vase knocked over. strange how long journeys to far locations don’t change people the way they bash the surfaces of cars. and Cian has been in Australia a year now, with a girlfriend and a pretty good job, and somehow he comes back and things are the same as they were, if you discount a new taste for cocaine. but the thing is, he hasn’t changed otherwise, and even the drugs just emphasize his personality. we sit in the bar on D’Olier looking at O’Connell bridge - see the northside open like a funnel for history and laugh as he talks about things and remembers things which happened. we consider rounds, discount them, buy drinks for ourselves. nothing much has happened nothing ever does. one year to another birds fly south and north. they nest in the same places. do shits on the same cars.

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Small Family, Big Dry

By John Grey

Another summer drought, air unwashed and unfed and sniffing around the outside faucets.

Field’s more tanned than the bodies that are out in it, cursing out that hard-knuckled sky.

Kids want to go to the lake, loll about shirtless, dip their toes in the shrinking water.

The old man wants the lake to come to him.

Mother prays to the distant sheet lightning.

Grandpa mutters how it was much worse when he was a boy.

The neighbor’s moved off his land.

He’s tired of being target practice for the sun.

For now, the family stays together.

Poverty’s like glue.

It takes its time melting.

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For the Sake of

By Edward Lee

Let the night take me, suddenly, unexpectedly, tonight or fifty years from now, so I need never see the grief of my loved ones as they watch me collapse into broken shadows in some bright hospital bed, the remainder of my life rubber stamped in months by some doctor finding a lump or a mole, or a discrepancy in my thickening blood, or one of the hundreds of ways a life can turn on itself.

Simply put, let me go without anyone knowing I am going, especially myself, yes, especially myself, comfortable in the near-universal deception that I will live one day longer than forever.

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Scatology

By Carson Pytell

Television melts my brain because I let it, and no one’s around to see fault in it.

Tobacco blesses my lungs and my heart; I have no dependents to depend on for health.

Drinking passes the time lovely, lively As one can be drunk and alone and accompanied By softer thoughts than would be without it.

I concoct my own thematics of the books I read As no club comes to tell me otherwise.

Alone I am a genius, I swear, I promise I think like a titan of thought: “We are not unique in that we are,” “God was absolutely not man’s greatest idea When you consider Prince Hamlet or King Lear.”

No one can tell me I’m not brilliant, And thereby I am. I am Homer of my own Odyssey.

I am captain of my entire ocean,

I am me all the time because I can be, I am the eye and swirls of my own storm.

My only complaint, my one displeasure: I don’t know which side of the bed to sleep on.

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By Pascal Bernardon unsplash.com/@pbernardon

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The Kitchen

By Ziaul Moid Khan

Thus she spends her whole life, Preparing lunches and dinners; Brunches and refreshments; My own mother is one of those, So tragic are their tales, That they wake up and sleep, With washing utensils bleak; Preparing tea for guests, family; Surfs and detergents spoil their Whole palmistry, aside they coil In a corner with weeping eyes, Cursing the fateful day of ties; Thus they spend their lives Chopping onions and frying Cauliflowers, she’s faintly crying.

Marriage opens the life mystery, Then everything is just a history.

Ever complaining and repenting, Still to husbands just favoring; With grey hair and wrinkled cheeks, My mother sits in the kitchen, And prepares for family, a chicken…

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Hometown Memories

By Joe Meyers

I miss cool slow streets where trees Knuckle their way beneath sidewalks Spreading cement slabs For grass Anthills And gum wrappers.

I miss how time waits for shadows To tug themselves across roads, The pride of weathered roofs, The shrug of man made things.

It will do Till tombstones poke like nails Into sorry light feet That becomes the dance Carried on tunes in taverns Weighted with heavy headed men Holding beer gone flat While worn nickles fall Through pockets of silence.

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After The Break Up, Which Happened by Text

By Juleigh Howard-Hobson

Tears come on aisle four. And there’s more behind Them. We broke up. I’m crying. People stare.

I pretend to look for something. I mind Their glances, even though I shouldn’t care Anymore what anyone thinks, I know I’m falling apart. Still, I set my face.

I smile. I force fake pleasantries to go Forth through my lips. Blink back tears. Retrace My steps and continue shopping. All lies-Everything I’m doing-- done merely to Deflect attention away from what I’d Really rather do. What I’d rather do Is just run away, find somewhere that I Can hole up in, drink rat poison and die.

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Pathways Exploration

By Carl Scharwath

I explore this path meandering bare foot in childhood with innocence and a new confidence.

Anticipating what lies beyond maturing hills in the soil opulent with hope. Emancipated hearts of deep canyons embracing errant dreams every newborn breeze from somewhere.

This path is intimate Its turns and crevices beckon towards humble oaks and rocky cliffs.

Dormant meadows provoke in a late summers sun cooled in twilight. Stars impregnate the semi-darkness, enlightening the way to middle life.

Do I know this path?

Should I speak to the people?

Wandering past acknowledgements Most do not see the great loads they carry. They do not hear as we share our burdens burned in sunsets. The path is aged in wear. We will not need much when we reach the end.

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OCD Count to Three

By Chandler Myers

OCD count to three Then do it again OCD count to three Then do it again OCD count to three Then do it again If I do it right the OCD will go away If I do it right the OCD will go away If I do it right the OCD will go away Why isn’t it gone It must be bogus I know these thoughts are not real but they feel real I need to focus Don’t give in to the compulsions Don’t give in to the compulsions Don’t give in to the…

WAIT That’s OCD That’s OCD That’s…

STOP IT These thoughts aren’t real They feel real They do no good These thoughts are bogus Focus These thoughts aren’t real 24

Your Extended Throat

By Margarita Serafimova

Under your pale skin, veins, sinews.

I am on the outside.

By Alexander Jawfox IG: @jawfox.photography 25

By Penny Wilton unsplash.com/@pen28

Fall

By Alicia Alonso

Plucked from the tree Floating in the wind, I flee Alone to decay

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By Jon Tyson unsplash.com/@jontyson

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Anchors, Far Away

By Dargan M. Ware

Anchors, Far Away I Morning’s mist drifts thin upon the Severn; wisps of vanilla cotton candy bob before the bow.

The baritone bellow of a barge horn swallows the coxswain’s careful cadence.

The scull slices toward shore, where I stand shielding my eyes from a rare glimpse of dawn and trying to rub the jetlag from my temples.

The flawless form of my brother’s arms, whipping the oar through the water from seat three, reminds me that I was once the jock of the family, and of so many things I could never do.

II The regimented splendor of the midshipmen’s graduation entropies into celebratory c h a o s.

A white- capped sea swirls and froths, laps exuberantly at the base of spit-polished marble halls.

I congratulate my brother Robert, the man I feel

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I met this morning, who couldn’t possibly be the same Bobby from that delta rice field, a sharecropper’s son skinny as a cypress knee.

Could he have dreamed of the open sea poling a plywood boat through Deep Bank Slough?

III That night at the Rockfish, the celebrants mingle with regulars more likely to march in protest, than to the halls of Montezuma.

The singer is one of them: Jordan Page calls forth a million tons of rain to cleanse the contradictions from his city, but contradictions and a slight drizzle linger, for Robert and his mates have no quarrel with anyone tonight, and the locals are content to let the music speak for them and enjoy their Sam Adams, lucky sons of liberty.

IV The debates I imagined at the bar settle in the back of my mind, as Robert leads me through Annapolis, meandering along the narrow roads behind the buildings that face the harbor, then finally becoming Bobby again as we speak of rice fields and relatives, delta weather and duck hunts, and finally of duty.

We come to a square where we can see the sea and pause before a statue of Alex Haley.

I tell him how proud his whole family is, but I wonder if he has enslaved himself to earn that pride.

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Skunk Eating Snake

By Mark G. Hammerschick

Shall we dance?

We twirl in the twilight amongst dry, arid crevices how I twirl and slither skither and skatter in scented words of my own design.

Biting deep into your neck of calloused catharsis I angle into a Euclidean descent repeatedly shredding your leather head which hisses, twists and gasps in this frigid Mississippi dawn cradled in the armpit of dead delta dreams.

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To Slow the Clocks

By Colm Fitzgerald

Stood above a dying man, A casualty of war, The watchmaker’s son Unsheathes his father’s sword.

Staring into bloodshot eyes, He knows what he must do, See suffering end On someone nearly through.

A burden he must carry, He’d hope for much the same, If sides changed and he Were fighting off the pain.

But, before the blade would pierce, The man reached out his hand, In it, a locket, Heart shaped- covered in sand.

The man gave his head a shake, Calm in the face of death, The locket dropped down as the steel stole his breath.

In its silver shell did lie A woman, smiling bright, He closed the locket by pressing very tight.

Lost in mind, he thought of love, Back home where he would go, Where his heart was kept and time moved rather slow.

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By Omid Armin IG: itsomidarmin

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The Bird Above

By Edward Lee

I could only see the bird because it was darker than the night I woke in, the repetitive song of its turning wings the noise that woke me from a dream I could not remember but vaguely knew contained oceans of pale skin.

It hovered above me, like a hummingbird designed by a man without light, its black eyes pouring down upon me, my soul twisting like a mutated bone as it felt itself weighed and found wanting, but before such judgment could give way to solid punishment, the bird of dark disappeared, and I lay there for the remainder of the night, wondering if it might return, wanting to know it as morning light illuminated the room.

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Post-Punk Semi-Platonic Love Song

By Dargan M. Ware

We were just out of college, possessed of almost nothing but a raspy, angry freedom that sounded like Sleater-Kinney and smelled of clove cigarettes.

Stoned in someone’s basement, in the suburbs of Atlanta, dressed like a drunken hypothesis of the Pacific Northwest, you asked if I’d ever been in love.

I thought we were there, or nearly so, but you were never one for platitudes so I rambled on about the first time I read Sartre, and that semester sophomore year when I followed around a gay philosophy grad student, knowing I’d never swing that way, but expanding my definitions, trying to give you the broadest answer.

You nuzzled into the open chest of my flannel shirt, your head on my heart and your fingers running along the inside of my knee and whispered “me neither.”

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To a Child

By Cherie Wilkerson

How do I wash thee?

Let me count the ways I wash you with a soft flannel rag that you keep trying to suck I wash you in a tub of sudsy water nestled in the kitchen sink I wash you with a tongue-moistened finger for that spot on your cheek I wash you with a bucket of warm water to shower sand from your feet I wash you with a long garden hose to chill a summer day I will wash you with tears when you grow up and go away

By Dan-Cristian Pădureț unsplash.com/@paduretdancristian

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By Mohamed Nohassi instagram.com/mnohassi

Names

By Ivan Peledov

My ancestors sold medical insurance to spiders and pines, ate railroad bridges over diffident brooks and shit on rambunctious clouds; so what?

I don’t even know their names.

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The Old Tracks

By Nolo Segundo

In my town and only 90 feet from my house Run a pair of old tracks, Railroad tracks older Than my house, even Older than me, and I Am become old, very, Very old, like a tree Whose branches Betray it with Every strong wind And fall to ground Leaving less and Less of the tree.

I used to walk in Between those Carefully laid Iron rails, stepping On the worn wood Of the old ties as Though they were Made of glass….

I walked the length Of my small town, I walked the world.

I walked where Passenger trains Carried lives and

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Their once warm, Now cooling dreams And I was part of Each life, now gone To ether and mist, And so too my Lonely soul will Ride those rails One bright day.

Still, a freight train Comes by once or Even twice a week, And I thrill to hear Its wailing horn as it cries out for a forgotten glory, and the ground still shakes a bit as the old train lumbers slowly by my house and I wait a holy wait For the music of Its rumbling and The cry of its old Heart as a young Engineer pulls the Whistle and sees Not that he is Driving eternity.

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Jean Rhys

By Abigail George

I think of the divided self of Jean Rhys in Dominica, her invisible self in London, and the depth, scope, scale of her writing: What was achievable in her lifetime is achievable now, the winter’s tale of Jean Rhys, and her tragedy of errors, of losing a child, and her failed marriages. She was a gifted writer, and much parallels can be drawn between her neuroses, feelings of alienation, and her identity as feminist thinker, writer of the first wave. She recovered as I recovered. Relapsed as I did. You’ve become Anais Nin, the good skull and the patriotic leaf. May the dog’s bite kiss you. The closer I get to understanding the sign and symbol of God, the further I feel from existing. I am so strange and so different. Family are always letting go of me. I think of the ergonomics of war, poverty, dirt and dust. The grit of it. The enormity of the reunion of it all.

I think of the philosophy of Gus Ferguson, the composer Moses Molelekwa, the poets Kyle Allan, and Allan Kolski Horwitz. I think of the archives of the wetlands all but disappearing from view. The ship’s maintenance of the rip tide channelling itself into surf. Paris is the ice lady found in an asylum drinking a cocktail that matches her fingernails. She is the darting gecko. She is the declining age of winter. She is the September issue. She is the image of muscled cobblestone street, the flowing sea from 39

another era, the flame, the pondering flame of trust. Of course, it hurts that you walked away from me. You are European now. I want to be happy, but I’m not. Liberty is sighing. My health is being analysed over and over again.

And I fall to the response of you, sibling. The idea, of you. The health of your cries and anxieties. Your brain is not my brain. Your being is not my being. Your whole is not mine. I think of my first mental breakdown. I think of my second ever-lasting survivor movement. How it just latched onto me and like the periodic table, bilateral symmetry, mitochondria, amoeba, it never let me go. I too am guilty of over-thinking in the moment.

I want the divine propaganda of the miracle. I want the torment in the sideways glance. I want not to hurt anymore. You knocked me down to the dark, dark edge. To the river’s edge at nightfall. I like living in the past with its voodoo rays and morality clauses, its mind made of new dawn fades flesh and bone that will be torn apart eventually by the capacity and anxiety of death. Madness in my case. I know how to stay healthy now in this red atmosphere with its bright lights, its beaches where sand and sea are a loose fit. I think of others social inclusion and then I think of loneliness, because this is a complicated planet. This is a lonely universe. And I am falling in love in bursts with my own resourcefulness. Rhys’ voice.

The voice of social inter-dependence and class-nesting.

She is as significant as Richard Rive. Brink. Mxolisi Nyezwa.

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Coping with the Familiar and Traditional

By Alan Cohen

With time More has been said And there is less to say Seeing a thing—say an apple You can exhaust The words for it quickly Not just for the thing itself But also for Its meaning in the world The models for its expression Shelved above and about us Like leaves on trees Pend heavily Soon to be the slippery floor We walk on

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Jukin and Jazzin on St. Charles Boulevard

By Mark G. Hammerschick

The note flips like an acrobat nailed to the highwire careening headlessly deep, dark, damp into absent corners of a smoke filled joint.

Bump and grind, wind and find the high point of C sharp, B flat, E minor – these notes I mean are not refined crunching, crashing, jumping, winding wide.

Keep the beat discreet Mr. Lafitte.

Trumpets squeal like slaughterhouse pigs.

Trombones elongate elevating erect members in crowded rooms of musk scented men.

Saxophones drone like jet engines desperately needing fuel.

How this sound fuels desire competing with the wretched whines of streetcars scratching St. Charles boulevard.

Pastel women swim upstream casting torn nets of fishnet hose posing, posturing, pleading as they lead tethered beasts across the River Styx.

Though moons may come and moons may go in the jukin jazz joint only the notes still blow scattered in shattered heaps of cheap wine stale whiskey and gin lives lived lean in the soul of New Orleans.

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Fog

By Alicia Alonso

White covering mist Blanketing a silent road Under the moonlight

By Milan Popovic IG: @itsmiki5

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By Sudhith Xavier sudhithxavier.in

Lyrics Inside My Memories

By James G. Piatt

The moon’s silver beams gleamed across illusionary stones, and fallen iambic limbs, which had hindered my lyrical progress, and then the night’s candlewicks in the sky lightened my path, and forgotten poems for which I had searched flashed into my mind from inside my memories.

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Erosion

By Joe Meyers

I raced up this mountain, Once.

Sloshed through creeks, Kicked pine cones, Twisted through thin air and sharp fact.

I bled.

And now I look through my window, Past rolling land parted with tired fence, To a slight greyness, And there sits my mountain, Posing.

So less changed than I. I should probably buy curtains, But my breath against the pane, As I lean to quiet, Is distraction enough.

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Anti-You

By Juleigh Howard-Hobson

You think because you tracked me down that You are entitled to know who I’ve since Become? Facebook Twitter Google me…what You can’t do is catch up with me, evince Anything but disgust in me, or make Me want to go back in time to where I Left you. I don’t care about you. Mistake My words at your leisure. I don’t care why You want to reconnect. I don’t wonder How your life’s going, I don’t think about Our past or you, not in particular Anyway. Go on, leave me alone. Pout In emails, texts, messages and say you’re Crushed that I’m not responding. Whatever.

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By Laura Adai unsplash.com/@lauraadaiphoto

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Black Starlight

By Carl Scharwath

DreamingI shall embrace through collapsing cities her sweet madness- beautiful as snow that by starlight star which is melting away!

Witheringher dark flowerlike cheek slipping of worlds on a journey, down the lingering black river To the evening zephyr in each soft corner Studded.

Black where heaven is sleeping, streaked by the heavy waves embroidered with black moss her great veils rising mount in my soul yet endless.

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Éros kai thánatos

By Colm Fitzgerald

A yellow rose, slightly wilted, It’s fragile blossom barely tilted; A thorny stem held firmly palmed, As blood run slowly down my arm.

The petals peel away and spin, Far out of sight, into the wind.

Soon the rose will be no more, Laid to rest on grassy floor, At the base of sturdy oak, Arms stained and cheeks soaked.

I stayed away for days until, Peaking out my windowsill, I’d hoped to see it laying there, Undisturbed by turbulent air, But, to my solemn dismay, I’ve yet to see it since that day.

I would bare such heinous costs, To revel again in love before loss.

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Fixing Fixation

By Ryan C. Aran

The day itself had left, and the roads were darken-

ing, only to be illuminated by traffic signals and the occasional street lamp. The mall had closed, but I had convinced my mother to take us to Macy’s. I figured it was as good a place as any since my mother could browse the shop’s goods and I could walk around for a change of pace rather than sit idly as I usually would. Surprisingly, I was the one who found anything of value there, at least, valuable to me. On the second floor amidst the collection of winter and autumn-themed kitchenware sat a fox. Of course, it wasn’t an actual fox; otherwise, I’d be telling you how I managed to keep a fox as a pet. No, it was a smiling little fox mug complete with a curled tail handle and a cozy scarf that wrapped around its chubby neck.

More accurately, it would have been complete if not for a few nicks on the surface devoid of paint. My mother had questioned if the fox was worth getting at all seeing the damage it had endured, but that was the charm of the piece in my eyes. Enthusiastically, I went up to the register and got the vulpine vessel without a second thought despite my mother having doubts. In all honesty, the selling point for me wasn’t that the critterly cup was cute; I found it compelling because it was broken. The fox is a fragmented representation of my own brokenness, one I have long sought to make whole again. When I could not, 50

I resorted to piece together other splintered souls.

I see the world through a broken lens. Through

those lens, I often find the flaws of people, and I long to fix them. I am attracted to the broken as much as they are to me, for I have accepted that I am a broken being who would rather make a mend to others before making amends with himself. Because of my habit, I am considered by many as a guide or counselor; however, I could never believe myself to be a therapist. I am merely a reprieve from the chaos that plagues them, a bedlam which I may lay to rest my disarray. It is okay to care about another, but I have gone about the process wrongly. It is wrong to pick apart someone flaw-by-flaw as a deconstruction of his or her identity. Furthermore, it is not feasible to care for another when I am wholly indifferent to myself. The shortfall of how I have gone about my ways is that I try to find problems in others where there are none as I choose to ignore the problems present before myself. I am a bird with a broken wing, yet I attempt to re-build another’s nest. I am bound to fall should I keep descending down this path.

Notably, it is a path of my choosing. I must recog-

nize that I cannot live for others nor can I do the disservice of stripping them of the burdens they need to face.

What I have long failed to understand is this: Anything broken cannot be un-broken. There will always lay a 51

reminder of the damage that once was. A bone that was once fractured will recuperate by building up its walls.

Perhaps that is why it becomes difficult to get through to people who have been hurt before: To them, we are an infection trying to breach past their defenses. After all, is it not common courtesy to respect personal space? Yet, we intrude upon it in search of a host who may be able to grant us intimacy at his or her expense. In a similar light, cacti have adapted to their harsh environments by growing spines for protection in addition to storing water to compensate for the heat. Is this not different from when a person wells up with emotion due to having to hold in so much in the face of neverending beratement or disapproval? Understandably so, his or her experiences may also result in a prickly demeanor and an outspoken attitude out of fear of being shut out or silenced yet again.

While painful memories cannot be erased, new

memories can be formed on the foundation the original memory had set. Foolishly, I once believed I could change people. I cannot. At best, I may become a memory that motivates them to change. As such, I am bound to be obscured by new, hopefully better, memories as I myself become a passing thought. I would gladly accept this fate if it meant they need not linger with me, something I do far too often. Ultimately, people in our memories don’t remain exactly as how we remembered them; we are

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all memories in motion, creating impressions on others while redefining who we think ourselves to be. Contrarily, at my best, I am my own person rather than anyone’s playback. Unlike my past incarnations, I am able to move forward as a person who can focus on fixing himself. I have taken up the mantle. Therefore, I must be the one to uncover who I will become.

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By Girl with Red Hat IG: @girlwithredhat

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These Things

By Holly Day

My husband says he hates this house And its rough edges And the bad memories I don’t know what he’s talking about.

At dinner, I give pointed lectures to our daughter About how you get from life what you put into it How if you think the world is shit, your world will be shit.

My husband doesn’t seem to know I’m talking to him And tells our daughter maybe she should smile every once in a while Not be such a sourpuss.

My husband says he hates this life Doesn’t know what he did to deserve A wife like me A family like ours A house like this I tell him he must have really fucked up in his last life This is the shit-end of karma.

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Space’s Magnus Opus

By Nicole Felkins

It is speeding up and slowing down.

Producing some life and taking others away.

Some big, some little, some aware and some unaware.

I am aware of the fact that I am aware.

Cogito ergo sum.

Perhaps one of the universe’s intended gifts Was to create a specimen that could admire its work.

For this lush world is space’s magnus opus.

And had I created such a viridescent oasis, Where I could breathe life into stillness, I, too, would have animated the minds of beings.

Who would be able to cherish my work To ensure this marbled orb is everlasting.

But our lack of piety betrayed Gaia’s work.

For when our wetlands and rivers go dry, And our oceans are spewing steam, Our descendants will speak of a Garden of Eden.

That once was and is no more; Spoken of only in our lore.

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Up On The U.P.

By Brian C. Felder

Standing at the Iroquois Light, I watch Lake Superior pound the shoreline as a man might his woman if she liked her sex rough.

In and out, harder and faster, as the wind rises to the occasion, pushing the water up the beach before me in a frothy climax upon the sand.

I feel I have invaded the earth’s privacy, but I cannot take my eyes from the beauty of it.

By Lilawa lilawa.com

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By Fotografierende fotografierend.com

Trying to Be

By Holly Day

As the years pass, I have grown more aware of all of the things I seem unable to write about love, for one thing. I don’t know how to write anything convincing about love.

As my children grow up and my husband gets older I grow more and more resigned to the things I can’t feel love, especially, I don’t think I know what it is.

If I sit and analyze my heart I’m uncomfortably aware of this pantomime of caring my fake day-to-day. This is something I can write about: my shortcomings as a human.

The things I haven’t done.

All of my lies.

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The Fallen Outlook

By Allison M Palmer

We found a few indications of life, there in the thick undergrowth of oak and sumac, hints that someone had tried to coax existence from the land, an advance the hillside resisted. Not long ago, people lived in this canyon, silent in the camouflage of desert plants and coolness, a gift of the season.

It was autumn at the time of our encounter, the restraint preceding winter, an appropriate season to hike and survey. With patience, we engaged the hour with barely a nod of recognition, one careful step after another. Slowly, we entered a homeless encampment, where muddy clothes, a greeting card and a prayer engraved on a placard sat in the company of drug paraphernalia, a home of displacement, compete with props and a story of things to come.

As we hiked, sunlight failed the wet ground before us, dank things becoming more pronounced in the moment, as afternoon invoked the coming night.

The complication of things is tangible at such times, as the landscape reveals contours, the contents of life coming slowly into view; here, desperation remains lodged within each alcove, unchallenged by street-level traffic and the noise of urban sprawl. And within this growth of chill and shadow, the day will vanish.

The canyon will remain as someone’s difficult night, a person we have yet to see here, in the warmth 59

of earlier hours. But that narrative will unfold much later, after our departure from the land. For now, we cut branch barriers, pulling them to one side and then the other. Curious, we advance with care and speculate about those who shelter here, in the hollows where no covering abides, and only the strongest or most depraved intentions persist. How many people entertained a fallen outlook in this canyon, just prior to hearing our footfalls on tree roots and rocky ground?

2.

Up the hillside, scattered with feces and broken glass, a storm drain now declares the day; paint markings betray their maker’s hope, a bid for defiant immortality, graffiti in a canyon unshielded by nighttime hours, fit for morning light and no more.

Such dispersions of atmosphere and texture, no painter would attempt, not even for a dream, unless the artist had once visited this region, perhaps even living here for a time.

The fallen outlook of life is quiet and still upon a land otherwise loud with so many intentions.

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The Window

By Alicia Alonso

Day 1 It has only been a week since daddy saved me from that man wearing a strange coat. Daddy swore he would never let anything like that happen again. I remember, he grabbed my hand and squeezed tightly, muttering in a low voice, “Keep your head down”.

Daddy loves me with all his heart, but sometimes I wonder if he is a bit protective. Since last week, he has kept me inside my room. My room is small and cramped, decorated with a small bed, drawer, and desk. The window facing outside is the only indicator of whether it was night or day. Daddy gave me toys to play, despite my protests of being twelve.

Twelve-year-old girls do not play with plush toys.

Regardless, I think I will go to sleep to pass time.

Day 2 I look outside the window of my room, watching my friends approach the door. My father answers, shaking his head and sending them away. A few moments later, he opens the door to my room after walking upstairs. “Were my friends here?” I ask, watching as he brings me grapes and crust less sandwiches, something I preferred when I was three. “Yes, but they really ought to stay inside.” He told me. His eyes were filled with worry as he looks at me. “It is extremely dangerous out there. Men creeping at every corner to take a young girl for himself.” “How long do I have to stay here?” I ask, as he pulls out some clothing from my drawers. “Just until it is safe outside.” He promises. “When will that be?” I ask, 61

feeling my heart sink to my stomach as he answers, “Not any time soon.”

Day 3 When I wake up, I find that my clothes, a light pink dress, were already set out for me. I go to my drawers, grabbing a black t-shirt and a pair of jeans. They were my usual attire, so I put those on instead. Daddy knocks soon after, then enters once I call him to come in. He carried a tray of utensils, and a glass of milk and pancakes.” I brought you breakfast”.

He smiles until he sees me in my t-shirt and jeans.

“Thank you, daddy. You can put it down on my dresser.” I say, pointing at the furniture. He does as I say, frowning at me the entire time. He walks toward the door, then carefully turns back to me. “Sweetie, don’t you like your new dresses?” “Honestly, daddy, they’re a bit too young for me.” I reply, causing his eyes to darken. “You are my little girl. I just want to keep you safe.” He says. I do not press the issue further, and continue staring outside the window, listening to the wind outside.

Day 4 I am starting to grow irritated, and tired of seeing all the same four walls that seem to shrink. It is suffocating me, but I did not want to look outside my window because I knew it was not safe. That is what daddy told me. He said I wanted to stay inside, and so I do. If only that stupid window was not mocking me. I approach that window to the outside world, looking into the streets filled with people and their mocking faces. They laugh at me. A sudden burst of anger consumes me, and I see nothing but red. I throw myself at the window, pounding, and screaming at those that enjoy the freedom, simply given to them. I continue my fit of rage until my door swings 62

open and my father asks, “What are you doing?” His voice is strained. He attempts to comfort me, but I know I saw those faces outside.

Day 5 I tried looking away from the window, so that I could avoid the smiling faces, mocking me. One face, as white as a bed sheet flew toward ne from the window. The face was daddy’s! I jump away, falling flat on my back and quickly tried to crawl away, but the face kept coming toward me, laughing. I screamed and cried, begging for it to go away, to leave me alone but it continued to approach me. It floated closely, inches from my face, and whispered how helpless I am, that I would be stuck here forever. I felt tears falling down my cheek. When daddy left me my breakfast, I took the knife and hid it under my bed for my own protection.

Day 6 All I could hear are those voices, telling me to look outside and watch those mocking faces. They laughed at me. Then the door to the room opens. It was one of those wide-deep smiling faces, coming toward me, coming to attack me. I grabbed my hidden knife under my bed and lunge toward those mocking faces. I swiped my weapon, aiming for the eyes of the face.

The face screams in agony, begging for me to stop.

It sounded like daddy, but I continue to attack it.

The voices grow louder and louder, laughing at me. I do not stop until I hear the gurgle of the voices and then, complete silence. I look down at my attacker, a man, who I could not identify from his swollen face.

I refuse to leave my room. Those faces are still out there. I can sense them.

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By Anthony Richichi

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2:00 A.M. or Dawn

By Scott Laudati

You look over at her sleeping sometimes and wonder is this the last one?

Bags still packed clothes unwashed mattress still on the floor, a leftover from the last tenant who lived with nothing stable.

And when I lay on that mattress my first nights in New York I knew in my heart that love was just a relic from centuries covered by dust, and there was nothing left of me to exhume those centuries or at least find someone who still believed.

But then you’re there.

And you realize you’ve been there for weeks now.

And you ask yourself when it happened.

Was it the night a bartender recognized you and put a black marker through the bottom of the tab?

Maybe.

Or the night you choked out a taxi driver who refused to drive her back to Manhattan?

Where have the years gone?

It was winter i think.

I remember her boot prints in the first snow.

The barista who put a shot in our coffee for an extra dollar.

The subway kid playing Crocodile Rock on a clarinet.

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And how our boss didn’t come to work that day because a snow plow hit his car so none of us did anything and I forgot for a while that people are inherently bad.

You look over at her sleeping sometimes and you know you’ve gotten old.

You don’t talk to the bartenders anymore.

You don’t go anywhere with a line.

You don’t feel so bad about kids in cages.

You look back and realize you made all the wrong friends.

Dated all the wrong girls.

Said I love you to all the wrong people.

And it makes you exhausted but it never makes you fall asleep.

You think about all the hearts you’ve been handed and how they all came with a curse.

Except this one.

This one is still easy.

We are not the same but we are simple.

Like the amen after an arduous homily, you can bow your head and be thankful.

For the first time asking nothing from anyone.

For the first time happy you’re here instead of anywhere else.

And if you’re afraid nothing will ever be new again just remember the last time you were free and how you spent it all praying to be found.

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Monday and Tuesday

By Holly Day

The day I decide to wash the dishes is the day the crows decide to fill the back yard terrified, perhaps, of the end of the winter, or maybe driven out of hiding by this false spring, following the rabbits and squirrels and field mice.

Because of this, I don’t get anything done, because this flock of crows is something that needs my full attention, their clucking and hopping and great fluttering of wings are all things that need to be cataloged in my memory to hold me over until the end of winter.

The day I decide to finally run the vacuum is the same day that my cat discovers the most perfect ray of sunshine spilling in an arc right into the middle of the living room floor.

He stretches out on his back, languid in the sun, smile on his face as though he knows, he just knows, I will never do anything to disturb his unexpected joy.

There are so many things I could do with my day If only these things would let me go.

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By Eve Maier evemaier.wixsite.com/foto

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Skeleton Meets Bust

By Ava Sharahy

Miss Gray’s room was cluttered to a fault, and it wasn’t just because of the kids. Even after school hours, I would watch her misplace spelling quizzes she had to grade behind the cubbies, or spill pen ink all over some poor kid’s paper-mache volcano. So, of course she’d have all of her supplies in one classroom: we were just switched out depending on the lesson.

Take science, for example. She would wheel me on my stand from the back of the classroom, and take her peacock feather (she thought it was less harsh than a ruler, plus the kids would always scream with laughter when she tickled my bones with it) to point to different parts of me. She points up, the kids yell skull. She points down, the kids yell tibia. She will then end the lesson with a particularly off-key version of “Hands, Fingers, Knees, and Toes” with the kids, and then wheel me to the back of the class, right between the cubbies and the shelf containing jars of glitter and craft paper for art class.

I like helping the kids, and they seem to like me, except for Emma C. (not Emma L. or Emma T.), because she always cries and has to go to the nurse when it’s time to bring me out. Science isn’t always my favorite lesson, though. Ever since he came into class, music has been my favorite time of the school day.

Miss Gray brought him to class one day, when the kids were learning about classical music. She called him Beethoven, but the kids called him Mr. B because they couldn’t pronounce his full name. I liked Beethoven, though, and I could only imagine the way it would step from my tongue if I had one: Bey-Toe-Ven. Three syllables, skipping from one tooth to the next, all be69

fore spilling from my jaw as I imagined what I would say next to him. Admittedly, I was first struck by his appearance: I had never seen anything that only existed from the shoulders upwards, but he didn’t need a body to strike me silent. His face, hardened by the clean curve of gray plastic wrinkles, traced from his jawline to his forehead, was framed by the sculpted curls in his hair.

Emma C. cried again when she saw him, because she said he looked mean. I wish I could have disagreed with her, because he didn’t choose to look this way. None of us do, but the living never seem to understand that.

That’s the other reason I grew to love him, because of the game I began to play with myself. Curious about him, I began using the days to count everything that linked him to me. I played this after school hours, when him and I could be alone together without the shrill screams of the kids in class or outside during recess. It was also a comfort, of course: the kids had parents they would run up to after school to take them home. The classroom was my home, I supposed, but with Beethoven in class by the globe collection, I had someone to go home to.

Every night in the classroom, when the moon peeked through the curtains to peer at Beethoven, I used the light to observe him. Playing the game the first night, I knew we were made of the same material, and I wondered how it would feel to run the bones of my fingers through the plastic of his hair, tracing a nail down his sculpted jawline. The next night, I saw that our mouths were melted or screwed closed, and I thought of carrying him outside, and watching him taste the tart sweetness of the cranberry juice boxes that the kids always said were too sour. All of these nights of the game showed me that we were human, but not quite. I had the illusion of what was underneath the living, naked without plastic muscle or flesh, and he looked human. Yet, his eyes 70

remained stagnant, pupils missing from them, but it was almost a comfort. Kids grow up and change, and I see new students year after year. Beethoven would stay the same, and I knew he would never have to leave.

There was one night, of course, when I took some time off from playing the game, and imagined opening my mouth to speak to him.

“Are you playing the game?” I would say to him. I couldn’t imagine a response from him, so I continued wondering what I could say to him. “Do you see me too?”

Over time, it became a comfort to think of us as a love story. Of course, we weren’t like the princes and princesses that Miss Gray would read about to the class during storytime. Otherwise, I would have picked up Beethoven, jumped out of the window, and ridden off into the sunset on the class pet, Harold the Hamster, disregarding the smell of his cage.

We had to be a love story, though, because I had to hear Miss Gray on the phone with her friends after school, and try not to seeth as she complained about another failed date. I had to watch Tommy pull Laura’s pigtails until she cried, then be forced to hear Miss Gray tell Laura that he hurt her because he liked her. I had to witness pairs of parents pick up children over the years, then overhear those parents screaming in the car at each other, until only one of the pair picked up their child from now on. Everyday I watched the living take love as a joke, when at night after playing the game, I prayed to the moon to just let me move one finger. I didn’t have to speak, run, or even walk: just the mobility of one finger, just enough to crawl across the room, climb the shelves where Beethoven was perched, and use that finger to trace from the stress lines on his forehead, down his hairline, all the way to the cleft on his chin. Perhaps I would fall, and my bones would scatter across the rug for Miss Gray to re-assemble in the morning. Yet, I would 71

feel the cold touch of his plastic from my cranium to the phalanges.

I needed this to be a love story, because in all my time playing the game, he never let me know if he was the same as me, or if he even thought anything at all. There were nights when the moon didn’t shine where I wondered if he was only like how he was perceived by the living: a hunk of plastic, nothing going on up there. We were made of the same material, the same stillness, the same silence, yet how could someone as beautiful and familiar as him be made just like me?

Tonight though, the moon is out, and I know this is a love story. Otherwise, all I could ever be was alone.

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Oily Skin

By Timothy Fab-Eme

Pimples paint my oily skin, sometimes they burst like bombs stifling the swifts and shrimps and shrews on my forehead; I hide my blemished face in a mask of sobriquets.

You call me oil-rich, friend, and smirk as sycophants do; you spell my name backward hiding these blebs in lies that grow fatter every day.

I’m a waif, I only salivate as strangers scoop away the fish and the meat in the pepper soup pot.

I do not wane alone, earth, too, fades with me; the ozone layer convicts you.

True, these blackheads belittle me spilling loss into my heart; they have smashed my self-esteem.

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I Like a Little Lie

By Timothy Fab-Eme

Joy is preserved in a loss and life becomes my puppet whenever your pupils pound my heart— a pinch of flattery nourishes me; this mirror mimics all my tricks when I query how I am it laughs and laughs and laughs it calls me another name: fake.

I flung it like a jetsam let it tumble with its truths.

Buoy me up, boy, inflate me fashion me beyond what I am patch my holey pride, tell me this dyed hairpiece, these pinned lashes these coated lips, this cross-legged walk these pasted nails, these pumped buttocks these padded breasts, this heel-up height are natural as your mother tongue; I am beautiful, I should be and this is all the woman: I, I like a little lie.

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Epitaph in Your Head

By Timothy Fab-Eme

On this bed of final thoughts I lift my limp limbs like a worn out phallus after sex, trying to slow throes’ inevitable call.

I laughed at you, not Earth, when you knelt and felt my ribs and sang the hearse’s song; child, don’t ever cry for me, life’s poetry best created in solitude— an oeuvre when tomorrow never comes.

The birth we celebrate is death.

I was pushed into this world like excrement that passed its time, and I chirped like a cricket rubbing its wings in the night for this Earth, my child, is a picture drawn by a drunk who travels beyond us, creating all the things God forgot to make; not the one I beautifully drew in my mother’s little boundless world.

And pushed into this wild woods whose fruits are the simple diseases the drug makers have made incurable whose rustling leaves echo into wars that keep our leaders in offices whose trunks are the ninety-nine stomachs the one-percent base its strong rooms whose roots are the divisions created to make us forget humanity...

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but amid the murk, my child, there were the midway extra times your mother made paradise with a smile and her sting renewed me; now the finches and the thrushes sweetly sing me, an old child, to sleep the final sleep today.

And if you must eulogize me let me live in your inside; please don’t make me a monument or create mementos that flatter life, for nature’s foul elements cut down the giant statues that glorify self; and always reckon that an epitaph in your head is itself eternity.

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Self-defense

By Timothy Fab-Eme

I feel you do not know, I know you do not feel that your blaring bugles bother me.

I stoop like a bruised elephant, untouched by stethoscopes in torn trousers with empty pens in leaking roofs; I am a starving cat waiting for leftovers in your diamond bowls, but you rise urinating inside them, turn the dishes upside down, push me aside and walk into your death factories, look outside and snarl like mountain lion about to pounce, splurging trillions every year on weaponry; and when I tense your impulses you say it is for self-defense.

Earth is in your little palm, an egg you toss at will and crack it in your jest; when will you small man understand that war had always conceived war?

Greed, indeed, is the enriched uranium and subjugation, the nuclear reactor now and each fission dissolves our bonds and man is becoming beast again; you claim it is for self-defense.

Our peace meetings now are jamborees— New York cannot hide her guilt, her swelling stomach is a sword tattooed on the Holy Father’s head, a good museum for bad people 77

to exhibit all the sins Satan could not commit for the Almighty; the big fist always grabs the spoils and cleanses its feral fingers in the waters spurting forth from veins of playthings in the playgrounds.

I know you do not feel, I feel you do not know that you, too, have the sarcoma; O warmakers, you are the craftsmen that destroy pens and produce guns and daily formulate new crime methods, and when I paint your psychosis you cry it is for self-defense.

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Contributors ◊ Abigail George Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominated Abigail George is a South African author and blogger who is also the recipient of four writing grants and the writing of eight books. ◊ Alan Cohen Alan Cohen is a retired doctor, a writer, and Anita’s husband enjoying life in Eugene, Oregon ◊ Alicia Alonso Alicia is a student a CSU Stanislaus majoring in Psychology. ◊ Allison M Palmer Allison Palmer is a writer and municipal park ranger in San Diego, California. ◊ Amirah Al Wassif A freelance writer from Egypt. Amirah has published two books. Her writings have been published in multiple English literary magazines. ◊ Anthony Richichi Anthony Richichi is an award-winning painter, illustrator, and author residing in the New York Adirondacks. ◊ Ava Sharahy Ava Sharahy is a writer and student at Sarah Lawrence College ◊ Brennan Hilliard Brennan Hilliard is a student photographer from Shreveport, Louisiana. ◊ Brian C. Felder a 50-year veteran of the American poetry scene with coast-to-coast publishing credits to show for it, is delighted to be able to lay his work before the always discerning readership of Artifact Nouveau.

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◊ Carl Scharwath Art should always be about helping other artists achieve their goals ◊ Carson Pytell Carson Pytell’s books, First-Year and Trail, are now available ◊ Chandler Myers Chandler Myers is a writer and musician who enjoys the finer things in life, such as videogames, debating whether or not to eat the ninth oreo, and writing one-line bios of himself ◊ Cherie Wilkerson I’m a third-generation California native, whose work has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, as well as children’s television shows. ◊ Colm Fitzgerald A twenty year old aspiring changemaker who knows the power of the right words. ◊ Dargan Ware Dargan Ware is a novelist, poet, and consumer protection attorney from Birmingham. ◊ Diarmuid ó Maolalaí DS Maolalai’s poetry has been released in two collections, “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016) and “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019) ◊ Edward Lee Edward Lee is a widely published writer and artist. ◊ Harris Coverly A Rhysling-nominated poet, Harris Coverley lives in Manchester, England. ◊ Dr. Helge H. Paulsen Freelance acting as a publicist, author, and art photographer. www. artpromotor.com ◊ Holly Day Holly Day is a writing instructor at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis.

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◊ Ivan Peledov Ivan Peledov is a poet from Colorado ◊ James G. Piatt James earned his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University, and his doctorate from BYU ◊ Joe Meyers Joe is a graduate of the University of Montana with a B.A. in English and is now retired and living in Polson, Mt ◊ John Grey John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Soundings East, Dalhousie Review! and Connecticut River Review with work upcoming in West Trade Review, Wjllard and Maple and the MacGuffm. ◊ Juleigh Howard-Hobson Juleigh Howard-Hobson writes formal poetry and lots of it gets published. ◊ Margarita Serafimova Margarita Serafimova is an award-winning international bilingual poet. ◊ Mark Hammerschick Mark is a poet based in the Chicago area and has a BA in English from the University of Illinios at Champaign-Urbana and a BS and MBA ◊ Nicole Felkins Nicole is a middle school social studies teacher ◊ Nilotpal Sarmah I’m A nature lover and I dream of having a published collection of my poetry someday. ◊ Nolo Segundo Polo Segundo is the pen name of a 73 year old retired teacher whose book, ‘ The Enormity of Existence’ recently became available on Amazon

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◊ Rebecca Beardsall Rebecca Helm Beardsall (Ma Leheign Univeristy; MF, Western Washington University) is obsessed with time, specifically the spiral of time ◊ Ryan C. Aran I’m Ryan, a Delta College student. ◊ Scott Laudati Please stalk Scott Laudati on instagram @scottlaudati ◊ Timothy Fab-Eme Tim Fab-Eme experiments with poetic forms; he writes about exploitation, identity and the environment. ◊ Ziaul Moid Khan Ziaul Moid Khan, a speculative fiction author and a romantic poet, lives in Rajasthan with his wife Khushboo Khan and son Brahamand.

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Editorial Team Alicia Alonso - C0-Editor in Chief Alicia attends Delta College. She is currently earning her Associates degree in sociology and plans to transfer to CSU Stanislaus for her bachelor’s. In her free time, she loves to read, write, and swim.

Jared Schmerer - Co-Editor in Chief Jared is an English major and student at Delta College. He enjoys writing and hopes to transfer from Delta College in a couple semesters to achieve his Bacherlor’s degree in English Literature and become an author as well as an English teacher. He hopes to one day teach ESL in Japan.

Ronald Godoy - Invited Editor Ron is a Comparative Literature and English major at UC Berkeley. His hobbies are writing poetry and short stories, playing the guitar and flute, hiking, and going on random roadtrips.

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Lilia Esperanza - Editor Lilia is an English major at Delta College. She intends to become a writer and English teacher. In her spare time, she enjoys reading science fiction, studying mythology, and gardening.

Chandler Myers - Editor Chandler Myers is an English major at Delta College, who after solving an intricate math problem on a chalkboard in the hallway, is now the interest of many Nobel Laureates and Fields Medal winners.

Salvador Jurado - Editor Salvador is currently attending San Joaquin Delta College and working towards earning his associates degree in science. He plans to transfer to UC Davis to pursue a career in the field of medicine. In his free time, he enjoys writing, drawing and cooking.

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By Diego Sanchez IG: @ediegosanchez

Get Published in Poets’ Espresso Review Patricia Ann Mayorga invites submissions to Poets’ Espresso Review to be mailed to Patricia Mayorga at 1474 Pelem Ct., Stockton, CA 95203 or emailed to poetsespressoreview@ gmail.com. Free submissions can include poetry, artwork, and photography. All material must be appropriate for most age groups. A two to four line biography is required. Please include a photograph if possible, a return address, phone number and email address.

ADVERTISE IN ARTIFACT NOUVEAU Outside Back Cover: $100 Full Page Inside: $75 Half Page Inside: $50 Quarter Page Inside: $30 Send inquiries to artifactsjdc@gmail.com

San Joaquin Delta College Get Published in Artifact Nouveau

Artifact Nouveau is a magazine published by the SJDC Writers’ Guild. We accept literary and visual art submissions year round. All genres and mediums are welcome.

Submit to artifactsjdc@gmail.com.

Deadlines: Spring - March 1st Fall - October 15th Literary Submissions • Poem Length May Vary (limit 5 submissions) • Short Stories and Essays: Max 1500 Words (limit 2 submissions) • Accepted formats: Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx), Adobe (.PDF) Visual Submissions • Colored/Black and White • JPG Format at 300 DPI • Limit 10 submissions

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ARTIFACT NOUVEAU Volume 5 Issue 3

FRONT COVER ART

By Diego Sanchez - IG:@ediegosanchez BACK COVER ART

By Vika Aleksandrova - IG:@vicaleska

Artifact Nouveau is a publication of

works from the San Joaquin Delta College community. It celebrates the artistic and creative works of its students, faculty, alumni, and emerging writers from all around the world. It is published by the Writers’ Guild of San Joaquin Delta College. The contributors certify the works are their own. The views of these works do not reflect the opinions of the administration or trustees of Delta College.

Artifact Nouveau copyright remains with

respective authors and artists. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. ©2020 SAN JOAQUIN DELTA COLLEGE Superintendent/ President: Dr. Omid Pourzanjani Board of Trustees President of the Board: Ms. Janet Rivera Clerk: Ms. C. Jennet Stebbins Catherine Mathis, M.D. Dr. Charles Jennings Dr. Teresa Brown Mr. Steve Castellanos, FAIA

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By Victoria Poveda unsplash.com/@uvepe

https://www.deltacollege.edu/student-life/student-media/writers-guild artifactsjdc@gmail.com facebook.com/WritersGuildSJDC www.issuu.com/thewritersguildartifactnouveau