Online Exclusives

Short Films, Spoken Word, Music, and Visual Art.

Apfelbaum by Laura J. Braverman

LAURA J. BRAVERMAN is a writer and artist. Her poetry has appeared in Levure Litteraire, Live Encounters, The BeZINE, California Quarterly, and Mediterranean Poetry. Her first collection of poetry, In the Absence of Defense Against Loss, will be published in 2019 by Cosmographia Books. She lives in Lebanon and Austria with her family.


Apfelbaum

For a long time I believed Martin Luther said these words:
Even if I knew tomorrow the world would go to pieces,
I would still plant my apple tree.
We shared a birthday, though his was 500 years before mine.

He would have spoken the words in my mother tongue. I use
them as an incantation, as defense against helplessness—

I imagine
our globe as little as twenty years from now—septic seas,
garbage dunes, drought and flood. My husband soothes me,

says creation moves in cycles regardless of the reckless
doings of our tribe. He sides with Heraclitus: World ever was,
and is,
an ever-living fire,
kindling and extinguishing according to measure.

But surely our wild hunger has sped things up.

Does the earth care for us?
We scrub pots after dinner, pick up our children’s Lego bricks.
We better Narcissus—leap headlong into the reflections
our digital screens hold up. We save manatees stranded in mud,

compose cantatas, dry rose petals in the sun;
we beg at intersections with matted hair and little siblings, knock
on closed car windows.
We fear the swollen legs of our father,
scratch butterflies with our fingernails on stonewalls,
line up for death.

Does the universe care for us?
I’ve come across a theory: the cosmos expected life,
prepared for consciousness, for us, from its very cradle—

hoped for apple trees and their tart, pesky harvest.

Tired by Genavieve Coleman

Genavieve Coleman is a professional communicator, living and working in Shanghai. She has lived in many places and always seems to find herself studying people and learning languages, even in random public bathrooms in the dead of winter. She has been writing stories, seeing the world through photography, and studying mankind since she could imagine.

 

While hurtling through Bangkok on the metro I was struck by the common emotion found in the riders at the end of a busy day. Sometimes we notice important things without realizing they are important, such as reading a face in the blink of an eye or interpreting body language simultaneously in several seconds of rubbing up against someone. These candid “open” moments are often displayed unaware, without the individual cognitively recognizing how their body is sharing about their day or life. Here, in the line of folks riding out of town after a long, hot day, I was able to see a few moments.

Tired, Digital photography, 2018.

Advice for Saying Hello by Ace Boggess

ACE BOGGESS is an author of three books of poetry, most recently Ultra Deep Field (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017), and the novel A Song Without a Melody (Hyperborea Publishing, 2016). His fourth poetry collection, I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.

 

Advice for Saying Hello

I’m the wrong person to ask—
heart in it, but not my voice.

If we haven’t met,
you’re the speck of a gnarled spider

dangling from a ceiling in the hall.
Legs atremble, I won’t approach,

might stare rudely or run away.
I’m paralyzed from the tongue up.

Should you encounter me,
please speak fast

before panic hides me in its cloak.
Tell me your name, your favorite film,

what songs play
on the soundtrack to your life.

Tell me how much you love
spaghetti & red wine,

the smell of frying eggs,
the color of anything

under a rain-gray sky.
I promise to listen, &

maybe then, I’ll have an answer
for the silence I wear

like a holiday sweater:
ugly, red, & pulled from a drawer

out of gratitude or duty
on yet another lonely, public eve.

Visual Art by Peter Kahn

PETER KAHN lives on a small farm in southeaster Wisconsin. He spend most of his time guarding the bird feeder with a pellet gun, otherwise writing, painting, or taking pictures.

1. Hanging Out & Hanging On, photo, 3000×4000 pixels, 2018

2. Nova’s Bedroom, photo, 4000×3000 pixels, 2018

3. Prick, photo, 4000×3000 pixels, 2018

4. Shadow of the Virgin, photo, 4000×3000 pixels, 2018

5. She’s Like Natural Music Any Way She Moves, photo, 4000×3000 pixels, 2018

 

Visual Art by Caedmon

CAEDMON is a computer who is learning to create art. In March, 2017, Caedmon started its’ “travel” in the art world, trying to learn what art is from a huge corpora of artwork from the past. Caedmon shares its’ artistic production online, and uses his followers’ likes as a feedback mechanism in order to automatically adjust its’ process. This interactive, artistic experiment, which draws its’ inspiration from the process of natural selection, has already gathered a lot of interest, and the project’s twitter page already has more than 7000 followers. If you are interested in Caedmon’s artwork, you can find it on twitter (@ImCaedmon) or you can visit the website www.caedmon.it where you can find some more detailed information about the project, as well as some articles and interviews which were already published on various media.

 

computer-generated image from Caedmon’s website

computer-generated image from Caedmon’s website

computer-generated image from Caedmon’s website

computer-generated image from Caedmon’s website

computer-generated image from Caedmon’s website

Three Poems at 55 by Kelly King Walden

KELLY KING WALDEN blogs at kellylogos.net, which is also her Twitter handle (without the net:) She has raised children (4, one from Ethiopia) and mentors teens and college students. She created an ACT Prep business, which she runs, and writes on the side for various online magazines and a local magazine. She has only published one poem, at Plough Quarterly. She has a Master’s in English and has taught school and college in the past.

 

Padded Van
We were so packed into the van.
Every trip, just so many accouterments
needed, no matter where we were going.
My mother would bring a pillow and a full
size blanket because she was always cold
and wanted to be covered from head to toe.
Then there was a sweater or a big padded coat.
And her big computer with its fat padded case and
a big quilted bag to carry all the books and magazines
she thought she might read. And then there was the mini
back pillow for lumbar support. And she’d fill a little soft-sided
cooler with water and apples and nuts. And she insisted on an
extra blanket for anyone else who might get cold because it always
happened. We would complain about how crowded we all were, how
claustrophobic we felt with all this suffocating softness surrounding our
every move on every side. And on this trip, we were camping so my dad
had his pillow beside his seat, too, and I was sleeping on my pillow and my
sister had a big jacket hung up over her window because of the burning sun
darkening her already dark skin. And there wasn’t enough room in the back for
all the camping gear and food and bedding and suitcases so we had a couple of
rolled up sleeping bags on the floor between us in the back. And bulging out from
between the two middle seats were foam bed toppers and an extra, super-fat down comforter in case it got really cold one night AND two coats were stuck by our heads.
So when we had the wreck,
And went flying through the air and rolling over and over down the bank with the
blankets and coats and pillows and bags and comforters tumbling around us
like bedding in the heavy-duty dryer at the laundromat, it was a wild ride
and we were a little banged up, but we merely walked away
looking like pants and shirts that needed a little ironing.

 

When You Walked In
I was getting ready to leave
when you walked in the door.
I need to be somewhere soon,
but your unexpected arrival
halted my plans.
I rethink my agenda.
I can’t leave when I have the
unexpected gift of your presence
suddenly. I manufacture reasons
for hanging out in the same room
with you. Let’s see, what’s on my
list to do today? Oh, yes, clean
the kitchen windows, haha. I can
do a couple of them right now,
and just casually throw out some
conversation starters while I’m
hanging out. You are so focused
on what you are focused on. I try
to be focused on something else too.
But converse a little, too, at the
same time, you know, just casually.
About something maybe interesting.
Or just something.
Like tell you what I did this morning.
But that was nothing. Nothing
that you would find interesting.
But there was that one thing
I can mention. I can show you that one
thing.
But you’re so busy, so focused.
I don’t want to annoy you.
Can I at least
have a bridge sometimes? It can be
retractable. Or throw me a rope, maybe.
I just want to be one of the
islands in your archipelago.
I just want to be able
to cross over
sometimes
and see your eyes.

 

If Emily Had Children
The bustle in the house
the day the kids come home
Is the brightest tidying up,
the lightest of urgent work
in a stolid empty nest.
Irrational love precipitates
irrational effort
as tedious tasks stir energy.
I’m expecting life again –
the heart opens up
and the light comes in
illuminating soon filled rooms.
The stillness in the house
the day the kids leave
is a snaky place.
Trails of their presence creep
like vines through the house.
Mired in memories at every turn,
my heavy feet move from room to room.
The quicksand of sadness sucks me down.
The overgrowth of activity has left a fertility of memory
. . . A futility of memory.
If I strip their bed I strip their scent.
A grayness pervades the air and my soul
as I sweep up my Heart and put my Love away.

 

Visual Art by Karl Zuehlke

KARL ZUEHLKE’s poetry has appeared in Best New Poets 2016, DIAGRAM, The Loaded Bicycle, Jazz Cigarette, Inscape: A Journal of Literature and Art, and elsewhere. His interviews appeared in American Literary Review. He won Best Creative Presentation at the University of North Texas’ Critical Voices Conference 2014 for translations of an East German Poet. He holds a PhD from the University of North Texas, and an M.F.A from the University of Maryland, College Park. He is a former Lannan Fellow and Mary Patchell Scholarship recipient. He teaches at Tallahassee Community College.

Shed, Acrylic on Masonite, 12X12 inches, 2017

 

Fence, Acrylic on Masonite, 12X12 inches, 2017

 

Flower box, Acrylic on Masonite, 12X12 inches, 2017

 

Porch, Acrylic on Masonite, 12X12 inches, 2017

 

Stairs, Acrylic on Masonite, 12X12 inches, 2017

 

Spoken Word by Cynthia Morrison

CYNTHIA MORRISON resides within the Bermuda Triangle. She is a writer and an award-winning playwright with theatrical works featured Off-Broadway in New York City. She is also a graduate of the Burt Reynolds Institute. Her stage play “Words with a Mummy” is published inside “21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World” as a textbook lesson in “adaptation of a play from literature”

Gladiator

 

Visual Art by Natalie Girsberger

NAT GIRSBERGER is a Swiss visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She collaborates with her unconscious to explore deep layers of being through collage. Girsberger adventures into the infinity of her psyche, breaking the structures that externally limit her inner vastness, creating new worlds that suit it. Her most recent exhibits include her solo show at Ivy Brown Gallery in Chelsea called ‘Transient Terrain,’ and shows at The Living Gallery Outpost, Carrie Able Gallery, 301 Studio.

 

Not What I Expected, Collage on Paper, 2017, 8×11

 

Drop Down, Collage on Paper, 2017, 8×6

 

Tune In, Collage on Paper, 2018, 6×9

 

Road Trip, Collage on Paper, 2017, 7×12

 

Realm of Nightmares, Digital Collage, 2018

 

Cosmic Drifters, Collage on Paper, 2017, 8×6

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