Editorial Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 Letter from the Editor: A Call for Peace by Tracy Granzyk s we launch the 14th Issue of Please See Me, our theme of "Acceptance" resonates more deeply than ever, intersecting profoundly with a pressing global need for peace. In these pages, our writers, poets, and artists explore acceptance, and lack of the same, through health-related narratives that touch the lives of vulnerable populations and the caregivers who dedicate ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 Caterpillars and Tire Swings by Ervin Brown hen I was six, there was a woman named Barbara whose house I went to every day for an entire summer. She was a learning aid for autistic kids who were language-deficient. The only thing I remember about my time there was the caterpillars in her backyard, of which there were hundreds. I often played in the grass and watched them ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #14: Acceptance April 15th, 2024 Letter from the Poetry Editor: The Power of Acceptance by Steve Granzyk he poems in this issue include several of the common human conditions that test our emotional resilience, our ability to achieve the peace that acceptance brings. These poets write smartly and sensitively in acknowledging that our suffering can lie beyond the powers of medical science, a result of the debt due our innate mortality. They also show ...
Read MoreArt Issue #14: Acceptance April 15th, 2024 Artist’s Statement by An Viaznikova A Red Lollipop (Cover) by An Viaznikova Your New Mask by An Viaznikova A Snail Out of Its Comfort Zone by An Viaznikova bout the Series The theme of the invisible side touches on different aspects of human experience, such as consciousness, emotion, memory, identity, death and transcendence. It's a kind of metaphor for what we tend to hide from others and from ourselves. The invisible side is ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 Paging Dr. Tactless by Scott Schaible awoke in a parched, druggy haze, sunlight crashing through the blinds like a scene out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Hospital. I was in a hospital. OK. I squinted and rubbed the crust from the corners of my eyes, vaguely noticing there was an IV tube in my arm. Flowers and balloons filled the room. How did all this get ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 One Photograph by Stephanie Provenzale-Furino y great grandmother cut herself out of photographs. Grainy black and white family photos from the 1930s and 1940s show a headless body next to her children. She hated her face I’ve been told. She hated her face enough to excise herself from her children’s history. Sometimes a sharp deletion with metal scissors. Sometimes a visceral rip of paper with her fingertips. There ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 Jake by Paul Rosenblatt hortly after my 83rd birthday I moved to a mammoth, seven-story red brick senior citizen housing complex occupying a city block in a gritty part of town. It’s a place for elders who need help or soon will need help with daily living, anything from occasional hot meals and once a week cleaning of one’s little apartment to around-the-clock intensive nursing. I’m relatively healthy for ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 Proctor Two by Rachel Paz Ruggera pring was boiling over into summer, the week I was in the mental hospital. Two police officers escorted me to the cruiser and spoke through the opaque divider separating me from where they sat up front. The one driving had a stutter and walked beside me with a crooked gait. In the passenger’s seat sat another officer with thin, dark hair, Asian ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 Caring for the Heart by Jen Lailey t is New Year’s day , and I am snowshoeing on our trails wearing my red Atlas snowshoes. I ba-dump, ba-dump along. It has been a hard year and I feel the weight of it. When I get back to the house, I think I feel a small stirring of gratitude and write “snowshoes” on a piece of paper, fold it, ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 At the Heart of It by Alice Ranjan y aunt is on stage at the Kennedy Center in Washington-DC, wearing a golden headdress and a fuchsia silk garment that is secured with an elaborate golden belt around her waist. She presses her thumbs against their respective palms, arches her four other fingers and wrists backwards towards her upper arms, and raises both arms outwards like the wings of ...
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