Art Issue #4: Hope March 31, 2020 March 31, 2020 Artist’s Statement by Marilyn Hallett Granzyk Trees Through Metal by Marilyn Hallett Granzyk y photographs were taken in some favorite places: Door County, Wisconsin; Maine, and our Lakeview neighborhood in Chicago. Distinctive shapes capture my attention, like the spider web, the hanging metal sculpture on a friend’s porch, and the cairns on a remote beach. I like the ease of taking photographs with my iPhone 7 while ...
Read MoreEditorial Issue #4: Hope March 31, 2020 March 31, 2020 Editor’s Note Why We Need to Elevate the Voice of Vulnerable Populations by Tracy Granzyk The Please See Me inaugural writing contest was designed to raise awareness about the issues that surround mental health and illness because the mission of our literary magazine is to give voice to those who fall into vulnerable populations and need to be heard. Our editorial team, board, and sponsoring organization all feel ...
Read MoreContest Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31st, 2020 Mental Health Awareness Writing Contest Editor's Note: Why We Need to Elevate the Voice of Vulnerable Populations NONFICTION Winner Comorbidity | Todd Richardson Runner-Up Whiteboards and Courage | Beth Burgmeyer FICTION Winner Bodies in Flight | Eren Harris Runner-Up Scrambled | Robert Kramer POETRY Winner The Fall | Aubrey Zahn Runners-Up OBSESSIVE / COMPULSIVE | Shay Alexi Saving Sylvia | Laurinda Lind
Read MoreFiction Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31st, 2020 Letter from the Fiction Editor: Things with Feathers by AM Larks mily Dickinson’s “ ‘Hope’ is a thing with feathers” was one of the first poems I ever read and loved. It captured everything that is hope. Each stanza simplified what hope is and yet made it so much more complex. Hope is small and large, it is specific and broad. This comes from the imagery that Dickinson ...
Read MoreEditorial Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31st, 2020 Letter from the Editor: Hope Begins in Darkness by Tracy Granzyk “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.” —Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird ur fourth issue’s theme of Hope, coupled with our inaugural writing contest to raise awareness of the issues ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31st, 2020 Letter from the Nonfiction Editor: The Art of Hope by Grace Jasmine his has been a strange winter. Things that I have always thought unimaginable happened—things that would be considered terrible by most of us. What started out as an amazing holiday season full of personal triumph quickly morphed into a surreal sort of madness. I was asked to be an adjunct professor speaking on musical theatre ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31st, 2020 Two Poems by Seth Grindstaff Bookends My twelve-year-old cousin said Turtle Wax should do the trick when Poppy’s hair began to thin out after chemo, as if sixty-five years of all-natural, jet-black hair were enough. Delicate, it returned for our final visit, as if to offer a comfort that only a child is bold enough to reach for—a patch of lasting faith these hands, now grown, long to feel again. With the final ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31st, 2020 Letter from the Poetry Editor: Timeworn Challenges, Timeless Remedy by Steve Granzyk Reading the entries for this issue, roughly half for the mental health contest and half for this issue’s theme of Hope, followed shortly by the emergence of the COVID-19 virus, might seem to some a daunting challenge. As always, the rewards of hearing so many authentic voices more than compensated. At some point, though, I ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31st, 2020 OBSESSIVE / COMPULSIVE by Shay Alexi OBSESSIVE / COMPULSIVE ++++ Shay Alexi reads “OBSESSIVE / COMPULSIVE”: Shay Alexi is a poet and performance artist currently based in Atlanta, GA. Their work has been featured by The Rumpus, APOGEE, and Homology Lit, amongst others. Shay is the author of Diary of a Ghost Girl from Glass Poetry Press. Header image by Marilyn Hallett Granzyk
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