Two Poems by Diane DeCillis

house in hills with trees
 

Agnostic   In the bath a spider crawls along the ledge. It’s tiny enough that it doesn’t scare this arachnophobe. Isn’t that the way fear works, the smaller the threat the less a reason to run? Unlike the huge, or maybe average wolf spider that cornered me in the kitchen. In a panic I reached for Easy Off, sprayed the hirsute carapace into an igloo of chemical foam. Drenched, seemingly undaunted, the fizzy white dome skittered across the linoleum toward me, and I fled, as if from Godzilla. But here in my tub this little … Continue reading Two Poems by Diane DeCillis

Full Circle – Recent Works by Frankie Slaughter


 

    Frankie Slaughter is a mixed media artist living in Richmond, Va. She works with a variety of materials including fabric, paper, encaustic and porcelain. She previously designed one-of-a-kind jackets, jewelry and accessories.   I collect bits of papers from my travels and beyond: gold leaf funerary papers, old dress pattern papers, newspapers written in Hindi, Thai and Chinese, and notes and doodles from my sketchpads. Over 15 years of living in Hong Kong, I was drawn to the nuances of the culture: I learned basic Cantonese, traveled extensively, and collected beads and ethnic … Continue reading Full Circle – Recent Works by Frankie Slaughter

Late-August Mass Transit Railway (MTR) by James Ellis

MTR station hallway
 

  The city’s Central district is different in the early morning, just after sunlight usually appears: near empty streets, no black skirt suits, few voices. Today, damp bundles just delivered to the newspaper vendors cover the sidewalk and tobacco smoke hovers heavily in a steady monsoon drizzle. My old dimming eyesight smooths out the vendors’ features—softer noses, subtler chins. Flaws fade into blurs. Down two flights of stairs, I descend into an almost empty Central Station, bathing in one of Mozart’s perky piano melodies. A human din will soon drown out the pleasant music. Hong … Continue reading Late-August Mass Transit Railway (MTR) by James Ellis

The Storm Before the Calm

Sold sign in front of a house
 

I’ve forgotten how hard moving is. Not just the organizing and packing but the time spent in small details; the time spent on the phone and mad-dash trips to the store for tape and bubble wrap. My husband and I have lived in our current house for just over ten years. We had moved to Harrisonburg as an escape from Washington DC, where our work commutes into northern Virginia were beginning to feel impossible. Not wanting to prolong the move by taking the time to buy a house, we rented. And on moving day we … Continue reading The Storm Before the Calm

Three Dances by Kate Bennis

Woman dancing
 

  I wrote these poems to capture and preserve real events. They depict shifts from isolation and loss to connection and love—the dance of relationships in unexpected places, with unexpected dance partners. I witnessed two men, so clearly from different worlds, collapse together in a moment of grief and compassion. The second poem tells the story of a friend’s struggle to remember who is familiar and who is foreign, as early onset dementia takes hold. And the third shows the dance of freedom that comes from the structure of love and belonging. —Kate Bennis   … Continue reading Three Dances by Kate Bennis

Common Stingray by Carol Was

stingray
 

Common Stingray                     Dasyatis pastinaca In the infinite silence    of her velvety skin, she roams          through moon water at night, scours coastal shallows, glides    around the Mediterranean,          Norway, Canary Islands— fluid creature soaring,    foraging chink snails,          snapper biscuits, spiny shrimp, undulating    in and out of waves.          She is a wave— primordial, flexing spine    and filament, overlapping,          ruffling her flexible body— a pectoral fin disk, graceful    as gull wings in watery air.          Diamond-shaped, she resembles a stealth fighter,    almost alien, yet magical—          all flesh, fiber, cartilage, onyx eyes peering through    sand when she buries          herself in … Continue reading Common Stingray by Carol Was

Freedom Works for Robert Strini

Dialogue, photos, paint, wood, 10'x7'
 

  Freedom. Freedom to explore. Freedom to express one’s self. Freedom to communicate your conscience. Artist Robert Strini has been answering the call for over 40 years. “The biggest key in my life was when my father said to me, ‘I don’t care what you do or how much money you make, as long as you love what you do,’” says the son of a country Italian butcher who loved his trade. Strini’s father also took his young son to lectures on the power of positive thinking. His mother was a generous-hearted, hands-on homemaker. Given … Continue reading Freedom Works for Robert Strini

Push Back, Breathe, Repeat: A Brief Bio by Erika Raskin

The word RESIST
 

I recognize that I may be a tad more sensitive to the prospect of police state behavior than the average Jo but I come by this extra helping of unease naturally. Because of his liberal politics my dad, Marcus Raskin, earned a permanent spot on J. Edgar Hoover’s radar. Bigly. Dad was the frequent object of surveillance and dirty tricks. (He even had his own covert agent assigned to him when he worked as an adviser in the White House—something I discovered in college when I accidentally dated a guy whose father was that agent.) … Continue reading Push Back, Breathe, Repeat: A Brief Bio by Erika Raskin

Fuzzball and the Quakers by Lassiter Williams

Woman under branches
 

They are called Quakers because the spirit, which is in all beings, begins to move and demands a voice. They quake where they sit, on their plain wooden benches, until that which is in their hearts is spoken aloud to the Meeting. Very often what they have to share is a question or a confirmation of the notion of peace and they stand to speak in the hopes of a self and a world free of violence. My parents joined a Friends Meeting when I was three years old. My younger brother and sister are … Continue reading Fuzzball and the Quakers by Lassiter Williams

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