Poetry Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31st, 2020 Saving Sylvia by Laurinda Lind Saving Sylvia First, assume the au pair there on time. Then, peel back past your problems to their base: naming them enables joy. Next, armed with yourself, stubbornly stay and stay, go incandescent with your staying, don’t be lady anybody. Ladies lay their heads down in ovens. Seize Lazarus out of his biblehole and set him begging bootless with daddy, barefoot in the seasons. Shove the guilty lovers down the stairs. The fiery eye, that’s ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31st, 2020 The Fall by Aubrey Zahn The Fall Every September, Persephone pretends she won’t go back to Hell, and yet descends from Grace, and graceless rails and digs her nails into the face of Mount Olympus, raw, compelled— and yet aware that as a god herself she’s held to higher standards, she is held above the fire and can never tell a soul except in select soundbites that suggest she’s in control above all else, professional—her role remains that she maintains composure so as ...
Read MoreArt Issue #4: Hope March 31, 2020 March 31, 2020 Artist’s Statement by Peter Marshall Bright Rays by Peter Marshall he photograph “Bright Rays” came about because I was wanting to take a gently uplifting image to match my poem of the same name which is about moving on from loss as a caregiver. Skies around Dundee are often a glorious sight as it has the geography to make it the sunniest place in Scotland.Peter Marshall was ...
Read MoreArt Issue #4: Hope March 31, 2020 March 31, 2020 Artist’s Statement by Alan Bern Stairs to Light by Alan Bern tairs to Light was photographed while I was on vacation with my wife in Italy: in the beautiful Umbrian town of Bevagna in the Romanesque church of San Silvestro (1195). We love Romanesque architecture for its weight and simplicity—quiet for welcome mediation. In walking through I noticed the light coming through the windows that were made ...
Read MoreArt Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31, 2020 Artist’s Statement by Richard Wu After Soft Rains by Richard Wu Iris by Richard Wu Lift Me Up by Richard Wu Smile by Richard Wu he theme of hope runs through every drawing in this mixed-media collection by Richard Wu. “After Soft Rains” (color pencil): This work depicts a puddle in the midst of some abandoned ruins, with the puddle being the only part of the artwork that has color. The ...
Read MoreArt Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31, 2020 Artist’s Statement by Amy Oestreicher Singing Tree of Trust by Amy Oestreicher created “Singing Tree” during one of the most difficult periods in my life. In 2010, after a seemingly successful surgery, I took a trip to California, only to be air-vacced back to Yale Hospital in the middle of the night because my wound had burst and I had suddenly developed several fistulas. I spent ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31st, 2020 A Morning Lesson by Preeti Shah A Morning Lesson The first winter without father I am watching the chai on the stove as cardamom and garam masala sputter and kiss metal. I pour a glass for Maa and me, breaking hundreds of buttery layers of my crisp and crackling laccha paratha, dipping crust into my steaming teacup to find iridescent pools of glazed ghee swirling at the surface. From the chair beside me, the blessed scent ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31st, 2020 Two Poems by Vincent Casaregola The Life of the Ball Turret Gunner After Randall Jarrell’s “Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” The sound of his anxious breath, labored in the tightening mask, seems his whole fearful world in this moment encircled by the dark. He cannot remember where he is. Then his eyes open revealing not the glass and metal cage that once had trapped and sheltered him, but this somber, grey-white room, filled with ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31st, 2020 Two Poems by Wilda Morris meditation at the cancer care center breath still we surrender to light endure doubt dark++chaos meditate on suffering rebirth++ balance touch peace create a new path Wilda Morris reads “meditation at the cancer care center”: Embracing the Dead I. A Native American drums his grandfather’s spirit to heal his soul from years of boarding school where he was punished for speaking his native tongue, whipped for telling traditional tales, abused by a priest. II. Brazilian natives keep skulls in their homes, light cigarettes ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #4: Hope March 31st, 2020 March 31st, 2020 A Pony Named Pixie by Allison Oesterle wo sets of eyes stare up from the page. One of them is my own, or at least the 13-year-old version of me. The other set belongs to a pony who is surely long dead, preserved only in memory and countless photographs pasted into albums or stuffed into books. I still find them from time to time, tucked away ...
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