Jessie had worked at Meyers Auditorium for six years, by then. When she had started during her fourth year in college (it took five to finish her social sciences degree), she hadn’t planned to stay that long. It had just been a good arrangement. The job paid better than others on campus. She controlled her own schedule because crew members picked which shows they worked. But in any case, she had stayed. She didn’t regret it. She liked how physical the work was. There was equipment to push, pull, and carry. Ladders to clamber up. … Continue reading After the Magician by Stephanie Milner →
“The ceramic vase is 5 years young, a complete improvisation, based on the seed crystal of a female model saying that this session was her last, that she would be flying away. Thus I drew the flying female figure thema. This vase is from an exhibition called Deep In Shallow Thoughts. “The Bucketus Ignobilus is from an exhibition last autumn called Long Winded Short Stories, and the drawing is to be a plate in an upcoming book of drawings. The image is a double self-portrait actually lifted from the back side of … Continue reading Art by Robert Bricker →
“These drawings were done during an experimental period when I was drawing from reality and from my projected photographs (slides). I loved the idea that I could juxtapose images…like a location and geese in a pond with something floating above them. I think the images relate to poetry in that you can have a line in a poem saying one thing and then another saying something else that’s associative. It leaves a lot to your imagination.” Chica Tenney’s work explores themes of ritual, human connection, a sense of place and the evolution of … Continue reading Art by Chica Tenney →
Self Check-out Of course I have my doubts, but when no one’s looking I pretend I’m someone else: the tightrope walker, The Great Farini, crossing Niagara Falls with a man on my back. Or the veiled beekeeper squeezing the bellows of my smoker to calm the hive. I wish I could reverse time to meet the doctor who, so eager to rid my mother of scarlet fever, told her to cut her rocking horse’s mane, told her it would grow back. I’d explain how a lie rearranges the world, and in a very dangerous … Continue reading Two Poems by Charlotte Matthews →
Teresa Lewis They are raising amnesty signs along the courthouse road portraits with her missing lateral incisor filled in perhaps to make her look more like themselves perhaps taking back the tooth-for-a-tooth. In their silence I recall her singing “I need a miracle” and her voice is not empty more like a bowl with overflowing reminders of how long it’s been since I sang for anything. I will be eating artichokes when her veins drink that final cocktail devouring the heart while the maple leaves shout with their loudest colored voices, falling quietly on … Continue reading Teresa Lewis; Choosing the Nude by Lisa Ryan →
Sunday School Here’s what I’m thinking: Why does a duck need an ark? What’s a flood to a duck? The teacher says I ask too many questions. I raise my hand again, thinking if we didn’t have teachers would we ever have to raise our hands? I won’t eat tomatoes. The slices in a white bowl are like pieces of someone, Saint Somebody of the Better Boys. I might go out and play David and Goliath this afternoon. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be the giant. Everybody wants to be … Continue reading Sunday School; The Passion of Bursars by Michael Chitwood →
Rehearsal The best thing about the house I grew up in was that it sat at the edge of a small weedy lake where my mother and I would row to a raft through a thick tangle of water lilies, their white cups floating above green saucers. She would tie a rope around my chest, hold it taut and walk the edge of the raft as I flailed in the water learning to swim. Now I walk the tight perimeter of loss, love’s ligaments stretching between us as she prepares to swim out of … Continue reading Three Poems by Sharron Singleton →
“Mommy, do trees grow up out of the ground,” Waffles says, “or do they grow from the top up?” “I don’t know,” Isabelle says to her daughter. Then Isabelle takes a stab in the dark and says, “From the top.” “Do you want to know what time it is?” Waffles says, smiling. “Sure.” “Sure yes?” “Yes,” her mother says. Waffles awkwardly brings her wrist up level with her eyes, like she’s blocking the sun. She squints and studies her watch. “It’s three thirty, and ten seconds, in the p.m.” “You mean it’s half past three.” … Continue reading Treeswing by Lee Bob Black →
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