Street Talk

Insouciance by Laura Marello

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Photo of royal penguin with its chick
 

I just wrote a new book of poems called Celestial Navigation. One of my favorite stanzas says: Penguins man the caps, huddle against the wind, sheltering downy chicks flaunting their deep insouciance their paradoxical grittiness. For a while now, revising the book, I have thought I should look up “insouciance” because I am not really sure I know what it means. So, I look it up: definition: casual lack of concern; indifference. synonyms: nonchalance, unconcern, lack of concern, indifference, heedlessness, relaxedness, calm, calmness, equanimity, coolness, composure, casualness, ease, easygoing attitude, airiness, carefreeness, frivolousness, carelessness; informal, … Continue reading Insouciance by Laura Marello →

Poetry

The Only Version by Michael Olenick

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A tram speeding down a blurred narrow street
 

The only version of us that remains are the nightly replicas that appear randomly as my sole consolation prize. Last night we visited a country that was a cross between Costa Rica and Switzerland. After a walk through the banana forests of Zurich, we could not remember where the car was parked, and as we searched, the streets got narrower and narrower and through a sunlit slash at the end of the road we saw our children on a passing tram. They were somehow older than us, and were trying to brush Lindt off a … Continue reading The Only Version by Michael Olenick →

Street Talk

“Minimalist” Photos of Ricardo Elisiário

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  Photography for me started as a hobbyist’s yearning for perfectionism and how to depict it using one of the simplest formats—the photograph—rather than any real try at becoming a professional. Over five years ago, Instagram and an inexpensive smartphone paved my way into this realm of scenes, colors and shapes. Mostly my most private bliss when capturing the moments led me to continue and eventually get my first and only DSLR, the beginner’s Nikon D3300 and its standard kit lens. And although as a photographer it’s difficult to rely exclusively on the art in … Continue reading “Minimalist” Photos of Ricardo Elisiário →

Art

Tomer Peretz’s “Incomplete” Works

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Artist Tomer Peretz painting Abraham Licoln
 

I’m a Los Angeles-based conceptual artist and painter. I was born in Jerusalem, Israel. Although my parents did not have any special interest in the arts and never painted, I started painting in childhood, wandering away in my mind, mostly in school while the teacher was talking. Being an athlete was much cooler than being an artist so I didn’t show my work much. I stopped painting when I enlisted in 2000 in the Israeli army which is mandatory. After four and a half years in the army, I traveled to South America for a … Continue reading Tomer Peretz’s “Incomplete” Works →

Street Talk

Learning to Limit Deathbed Regrets by Susan Kille

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Cross-stitched pair of lungs
 

Have you heard what dying people are said to regret? Working too much. Spending too little time with family and friends. Not speaking up when someone is out of line. Postponing joy. These are real regrets. I know this. In late August four summers ago, I was preparing to die. I was in an ICU where the force of high-flow oxygen reminded me of standing on a cliff in Ireland being firehosed by wind that travels unimpeded across the Atlantic. Pulmonary fibrosis triggered by mold secretly lurking behind the drywall of our Brooklyn brownstone caused … Continue reading Learning to Limit Deathbed Regrets by Susan Kille →

Essay/Memoir

What We Forget by Tom Coates

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Picture of American flag overlooking river
 

I remember the moment I knew my grandmother’s mind was slipping away. My cousin leaned in to give her a kiss and say goodnight. “Goodnight, Dahh-ling,” she replied as only she could, and then, to no one in particular, “Who was that?” Granted, the woman had nine kids and eighteen grandchildren, and she may have had a rum punch or two, but still, it struck me. Two years later, a few days before Christmas, I sat with her on a bench under a blanket and a blue winter sky in the field behind the old Virginia … Continue reading What We Forget by Tom Coates →

Poetry

Dead Men Missing Women by Nate Braeuer

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Man and Woman from the knees down, striped cat between them.
 

Men in oiled slacks come shuffling down the mount in droves. Combed in purple milk the sky rolls up like bad reception                                       quaking clear from gaveled hits. Dead to hover sun-gray deserts. Hardened skins that settle in the darker crease of echoed canyons.              Dusting fields in phantom scrimmage.              Threading creeks up meadow’s twilight.              Wingtips rippling through the surface. … Continue reading Dead Men Missing Women by Nate Braeuer →

Street Talk

A Challenge is a Challenge is a Challenge by Martha Woodroof

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Child staring up tall staircase
 

  To me, being alive means dealing with one challenge after another—some glorious, others not so much. My current, decidedly inglorious challenge is having chemotherapy for metastatic cancer. I think of chemo as Paleolithic, micro-inch cavepeople marching around my cancerous body, brandishing clubs and whacking every cell in sight. There’s one! Healthy? Malignant? Who cares? Whack! Among the whacked healthy cells were the ones that hold onto hair. After the first chemo session, I went from having what one friend described as “long hippy hair” to being all-but-bald. So being who I am—a determined realist—I … Continue reading A Challenge is a Challenge is a Challenge by Martha Woodroof →

Poetry

Alan’s Odyssey by Sharon Hostler

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Photo looking out over fields
 

69 Killed on Eastern Jet in a Crash near Charlotte New York Times,September 12, 1974 Like Odysseus, you sail the ocean in howling winds. No arm chair academic in corduroys, you are my red-bearded oceanographer in foul weather neoprene. Like Odysseus, challenged by Poseidon, far from the home fires of Ithaca, you, too, are tempted to taste the water nymph’s petals, but unlike Odysseus, you do not fall out, drugged and dreaming. Like Penelope with sulking Telemachus, I have little ones and sick patients. But, I have no need to pass the shuttle. No need … Continue reading Alan’s Odyssey by Sharon Hostler →

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