Indiana Voice Journal

Indiana Voice Journal "The Final Issue" #41

noreply@blogger.com (Indiana Voice) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:16:00 +0000

Artwork by Janine Pickett

Indiana Voice Journal is now closed. It has been an honor to work with all of you to help promote the literary arts throughout the world for the past four years. Thank you for all your support. It has truly been a pleasure getting to know all of you! Please enjoy our final issue, and feel free to browse some of our past issues at your convenience. ~Janine Pickett, Founding Editor

~In this Issue~

POETRY

Poetry by Andrew Hubbard: "Granny Neauville"

Three Poems by Marc Livanos: “Another Night”, “Taming the Beast” and “In-sanity”

Three Poems by Chuck Von Nordheim: "Self Portrait #7", "Self Portrait #2" and "Self Portrait #3"

A Short Poetic Film by Derek Quint: "Someplace"

Three Poems by Duane Vorhees: "The Poet", "Mean Time", and "All History is Prophecy."

Three Poems by George Freek: "When death Comes", "A Wedding Anniversary" and "Weariness"

Two Poems by Jon Bennett: "Pops" and "The Recordist"

Three Poems by James Croal Jackson: : "Become Whole With Yourself", "End of Relationship (Winter)" and "Two Workouts"

Three Poems by Joseph Buehler: "Bikes", "Bees", and "Breakfast"

Three Poems by Karen Ankers: "Beneath", "Dandelion Woman", and "And We Begin"

Three Poems by Kevin R. Farrell Jr.: "It Is", "Give Me a reason;I'll Decline to Reiterate the Facts", and " Free as a House Cat"

Three Poems by Marianne Lyon: "Tin Cup", "Oh, I’m a Dog " and "Hosanna"

Three Poems by Michael Lee Johnson: "Leonard Cohen My Friend", "Restless Hawk" and "Lorie"

Three Poems by Neil Ellman: " Ascension of Polka Dots on the Trees", "Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity", and "Symphonic Poem -- Fine Day"

A Poem by Sarah M. Prindle: "The Autumn Season"

Three Poems by Ted McCarthy: "Just Before the First Bird Sings", "Lake Stones", and "Requiem"

Three Poems by Joan Leotta: "Monet's Hens", "Light on the Seine" and "Haiku on the Same Theme"

A Poem by Joyce Zephyrin: "A Question"

CREATIVE NONFICTION/ESSAY

Essay/Memoir by Kit Carlson: "Sometimes the Dead Do Talk"

Essay by Tylyn K. Johnson: "Transcendence of Abstract Expressionism"

Essay by Tom Sheehan: "Viola's Place or The Shoe in the Wall"

FICTION

Fiction by Gary Roberts: "Embracing Life"

Fiction by Philip Brown: "Authority"

VISUAL ART

Visual Art by Mario Loprete

Poetry by Andrew Hubbard: "Granny Neauville"

noreply@blogger.com (Indiana Voice) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:14:00 +0000

Andrew Hubbard recently moved back to Indiana after ten years in Houston, Texas. He has had five books published, including, most recently, his first book of poetry, "Things That Get You," which was produced by Interactive Press. He was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2015. His new book, The Divining Rod, is available at: http://ipoz.biz/portfolio-single/the-divining-rod/

Granny Neauville

They call me a witch,

Mostly because I’m old and ugly

And I live out of the way

In an abandoned cabin

That used to be somebody’s hunting camp.

I guess the bent back

With a little twist

Makes me witchy too.

And the cane.

If I was a real witch

You bet I could straighten up

And throw the cane in the fire.

And I could stop the roof leak

That I swear follows me

Around the cabin to wherever

I set my cot when there’s heavy rain.

And I’d ride a broomstick

My, that would be fun.

And the boys who win a dare

By throwing rocks at me

I’d stop ‘em up so bad

They’d cry tryin’ to go toilet.

But I ain’t a witch

Not in the regular use of the word.

I’m an herb doctor.

My granny taught me

When I was a little girl.

She said, “I know every herb

In the woods, and what I don’t know

Ain’t knowledge, it’s book-learnin.’”

She said, “There’s an herb

For every ailment of man and woman

Because God wants us to be happy

And you can’t be happy if you’re sick.”

Once when I was about seven, I said,

“Why didn’t God just make us

So we couldn’t get sick?”

She was quiet a long time

And then she said,

“Because God don’t work that way.

Don’t you be questioning God’s ways.”

Then she was quiet again a long time.

I thought she was praying for me

Cause I said something wrong,

But now I think

My question vexed her

And she was trying to work it out.

She died before her time

Of the wasting disease

And now it’s only me

Left with the knowledge.

Sometimes it troubles me

There’s no one to come after.

It’s lonely, but I consider

It’s part of God’s plan

And not for me to understand.

So it’s just me,

Me and the herbs.

(Granny called them “yarbs”

But I got the modern pronouncing.)

Some I hang in bunches to dry

Some I steep, or boil

If I need to hurry things along

And some I lays in the sun

For them to get their strength.

I don’t go to people

Even though the only other herb lady I knowed

Went door to door with her wares.

She was older and more bent than me

And they found her dead one day

In the middle of a dirt road.

They was afraid of her

And buried her at the crossroads

So her spirit couldn’t rise.

No, people come to me.

Almost every day somebody comes

With their complaint, sometimes

It’s pain or nightmares,

Or a guilty conscience

(And I cain’t do nothin’ for that),

But by far most of the time

It’s about love or sex,

And I’m blessed if I can tell the difference.

With things like that I can help.

At least I think I can.

I give them what I can

And they pay me if they can.

If they don’t come back

Does it mean they was fixed?

Or does it mean they wasn’t fixed?

I almost never know.

This can’t go on forever.

I’m real tired,

And there are days

I can’t get out of bed.

I’ve got a horror

Of being buried unmarked

At some crossroads

So I’ve writ out a paper

About what to do with me

And where I’ve got a little silver hid.

It won’t be long now.

And I’ve got the pride to say

I never hurt nobody

Only tried to help.

I just wish there was somebody

To carry the knowledge on.

I hate to see it all lost.

MAY 2018

~Andrew Hubbard

Three Poems by Marc Livanos: “Another Night”, “Taming the Beast” and “In-sanity”

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:14:00 +0000

Marc Livanos lives in Florida and has had poetry published in Straylight Magazine, POEM, Sheepshead Review, Glass Mountain’s Shards, Old Red Kimono, Ship of Fools, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Song of the San Joaquin Quarterly, Toasted Cheese Literary Journal and other journals.

iStock

Another Night

Terror seeps a chill so deep
your bones ache.
You wake from the caverns of sleep
to ice water flowing over your body.

Damp freezing sheets enshrouded
as in a blanket of snow
make every limb shiver
against your will.

Muscles spasm so violently,
the headboard beats in rhythm.
Your breathing can’t keep up
with your heart beat.

Panic builds till your skull
threatens to explode from your head.
Even the room’s dark shadows
undulate toward you.

Great voids of nothingness
reach out to devour you.
And no matter how hard you try,
they slither over the bed’s edge

ready to descend upon you
weaving a cocoon of evil.
And as light’s rays flicker out,
the screaming begins.

Deep and primal
with the same agony
and pain of a child
expelled from its womb.

You are one with
the grating shrieks,
throbbing, shooting pain,
thunder behind your eyes.

Caressing your face, it whispers -
Made in Hell, raised in fire
taught by pain,
you are mine.

This kind of terror
doesn’t like to lose.
I know. It’s mine.
It pursues me at night.

When those black fingers of shadows
transverse the last specs of light
touching me in my last moments
of consciousness, I scream out -

Why’s this happening to me?
Why does it have to be me!

Taming the Beast

Pain, grief, despair,
dreadfulness, distress
led to loss of control.

Endless clutter
showcased the suffocating
rubble of my life.

The harder I worked
the deeper I sank
trapped in quicksand.

Worsening back pain
eventually led
to drop foot.

Desperate, I needed
to escape and flung
myself far afield.

One day, I inhaled the toxicity
till nothing was left
and saw joy too was there.

Cleansing breaths gave perspective
and an unfettered mind
provided a certain calmness.

Knowing peace was everywhere,
I tuned my heart and mind
to its soothing current.
The trickle turned to a stream.
I re-learned to navigate
the rapids of life.

I turned inside out
to find peace within.

In-sanity

Despair, grief,
pain, distress,
dreadfulness
all led me far afield.

Losing my grip on reality,
insanity gained a foothold
with searing white-hot pains
and soundless screams.

Incessant compulsions
skewed my perspective,
spewed vengeance and
bequeathed no discernible reality.

Everyone stared,
distrust swarmed
and then -
They become the threat.

Marc Livanos

Three Poems by Chuck Von Nordheim: "Self Portrait #7", "Self Portrait #2" and "Self Portrait #3"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:14:00 +0000

A northern Los Angeles County denizen, Chuck Von Nordheim lives where the land shifts from chaparral to desert. An Honorable discharge recipient, he marches with Iraq Veterans Against the War. A Grateful Dead devotee, he endorses the healing power of tie-dye. An MFA graduate, his work appears in Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors Volume 5, Hapax Literary Review, and Cacti Fur.

www.freeimages.com

Self Portrait #7

The Glass Menagerie mirrors me.
Like Tom, I fled a tyrant parent
as soon as I schemed an escape.
We used different models of exit hatch—
The Merchant Marine lacked tech geek allure,
so I swapped my bad sitch for an Air Force hitch—
but both involved dress up ever so butch.

Like Tom, I too possessed a sister
lamed with a trembling sadness that I
left penned in the familial force field.
No gentlemen callers did I deliver
who could do rescue by the magic
of marriage metamorphosis.
But I watched the parade of proxies
for Jim, youth ministers who sold
self-improvement through the Jesus plan
with a spearmint-scented eagerness
akin to Mister O’Connor’s hymns
praising the joys of public speaking.

Unlike Laura, no prior polio foiled
my sister’s steps and no lobotomy
would decelerate her tortured thoughts.
Vodka and Paxil severed her
unicorn horn without surgery.

Gender flipping our blood intimate
enemy from Amanda to Mandy
gives the triangle we lived its three sides.
Like Mrs. Wingfield, Dad had a barbed
tongue that flensed away all self-esteem.
But he possessed a second villain
power as well, pulpy, pudge hands
skilled at evading any defense
against his incestuous caresses.

He touched her and touched her and touched her.

Only murder could have stopped his
sins and I feared what the law would
do to a father killer.
Across forty years I still hear them.
His grunts. Her screams. I had to go.

Like Tom, I’m savvy to the fact
the time and place made a dual
getaway an infeasible stunt.
But knowledge does not stop the self-
Indictment. Shrive me, Sis. Blow your
candles out, blow your candles out.

Self Portrait #2

His bald gleam
blinds my logic.
His denture glare
sears my desire.
Via a daydream
escape pod I flee
the in-law inquisitor,
seeking a wormhole
route to the alternate
universe of pleasant dinners.
But the flesh tractor
beam of his sick tongue
nevertheless energizes,
returning me to the fray.
I combat ion
cannons of cash
autocracy with photon
torpedoes of leftwing scorn.
Interstellar charts
place this battle site
in the Denny’s sector
near the coordinates
commonly called
Hemet, California.

Self Portrait #3

His monthly quota of drills
done, the airman undertakes
personal camouflage attempts
by means of mind mask
removals done in
reasonable round
trip vision quests near
Edwards Air Force Base.

He lets Mojave
sands erase ego as he
merges with Death Valley.
He lets chemical-kissed
waters submerge self as he
merges with the Salton Sea.
These late afternoon
dissociative
sheddings of personhood
soothe his soul far more
than a chilled Corona,
the only mental relief
valve warriors were allowed.

Due to its sunset
charm, plus its drive-time
accessibility,
Oceanside Pier earns
classification
in the young troop’s burnt
out brain as number
one psychic fusion
destination.
He embeds there now:

He raises cloth lids,
pale strips of muslin,
that had barred vision
past greasy seafood
restaurant windows.
Froth-topped breakers
caress tar-decked legs.
Camera-necklaced
visitors walk up
his spine of warped wood.
Fishermen lean out
from his railed navel.

Much better this dream
than daytime nightmares
consisting of rehearsed
atrocities
against conscripted
peasant brothers who
differ from the young
airman in no way
except in whose orders
they must obey

Chuck Von Nordheim

A Short Poetic Film by Derek Quint: "Someplace"

noreply@blogger.com (Indiana Voice) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:13:00 +0000

A current independent filmmaker and former illustrator, Derek Quint began creating at an early age and hasn't stopped since. He is busy working on a number of different endeavors (more than he probably should be) and is based in Chicago.

Addovolt Productions is an independent film production company led by writer-director Derek Quint. We do everything from short films and music videos to documentaries and features. Quint's work has been described as "art house", "captivating", "mesmerizing", "spirited", and "wonderfully entertaining". His projects have been featured on Film Threat, The Critic's Word, The Gothic Imagination, Dark Matter Zine, Horror Cult Films (UK), Big Gay Horror Fan, Punk Globe, Metal Underground, Creepy Pasta, Legends of America, Art Reveal Magazine, Buzz Magazine, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Radio One, the News-Herald, After Ellen, and the CreateSpace blog (an Amazon Group company) among other publications.

Our time at Addovolt is spent, mainly, on bringing our own films and documentaries to fruition although we occasionally collaborate with other production companies and fulfill commissioned works on a case-by-case basis. Freedom of approach and content continually drives us. We enjoy exploring the avant-garde, tackling unusual subject matter, and taking experimental approaches to filmmaking.

Although we love all kinds of films and filmmakers, we really love the work of John Waters, Werner Herzog, Frederico Fellini, F.W. Murnau, Aleksandr Ptushko, Sophie Muller, Lee Daniels, Kenneth Anger, Ryan Murphy, Floria Sigismondi, Gregg Araki, Guy Maddin, David Lynch, Ken Russell, Baz Luhrmann, Tim Burton, George Romero, Tobe Hooper, Sophia Coppola, Maya Deren, Mel Brooks, Walt Disney, and Quentin Tarantino.

Please view our Featured Project (one of our more recent ventures) and be sure to visit our Upcoming Projects page to see what we're working on at the moment.

~Derek Quint

Three Poems by Duane Vorhees: "The Poet", "Mean Time", and "All History is Prophecy."

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:13:00 +0000

Duane Vorhees was born in Germantown, Ohio, near the Indiana border. He moved to nearby Farmersville when he was 10 and spent his adolescence there -- or, rather, his adolescence spent him! After high school he briefly attended "The" Ohio State University before graduating from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio with a degree in American Studies. And then, predictably enough, he left Ohio for good (or bad, of course, depending on one's preference). He has spent most of his life abroad, mainly teaching in Korea and Japan for the marvelously redundantly named University of Maryland University College. Now he is happily retired in Khon Kaen, Thailand, where he publishes a daily creative arts magazine, duanespoetree.blogspot.com.

Photo by David Allen

The Poet

Come. Find me in some brick and vinyl inn
when your soul is frozen in hard winter,
lost in vast fastnesses of dark hinterland.
I’m the one with dirk and violin.

Look for me when you need swans or lions
to lead you through strange varied habitats of being –
saved relieved smitten bereft –
with pygmy verse uttered by a giant.

Mean Time

tarot decks
can’t change their spots
they just relax
until they’re dealt,
lots cast by Rome’s guards
(start with Fool
and hang a god,
or end with World
and find a fraud)

news in type
bears no promise
save of strike
and head lined gore;
these nameless infamous
of our world
take no more from us
than what we give to whores
(lord what a hooker time is)

ink of scribe
has no memory
unless petrified
in blood and stone;
history is the mystery
of mud and bones
(how many of me, me, me
have died or grown
since yesterday)

All History is Prophecy

Blind men at dusk predict
the next day will bring light.

No past dies completely.
its bone cements my wall,
and its ash congregates
in these porcelain dolls.

All prophecy
is history –
bounty or blight.

All of our tomorrows
are mysteries today.
Yes, “the future looks bright”
--there’s too much glare to see
the soonest cloud bringing
the silver and the stain.

I’m in Hiroshima, just waiting for the plane.

Duane Vorhees

Three Poems by George Freek: "When death Comes", "A Wedding Anniversary" and "Weariness"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:13:00 +0000

George Freek is a poet/playwright living in Belvidere, IL. His poetry has recently appeared in 'Carcinogenic Poetry'; 'The Tipton Poetry Review'; 'The Adelaide Review'; and 'Big Windows Review'. His plays are published by Playscripts, Inc.; Lazy Bee Scripts; and Off The Wall Plays.

The poems here were inspired by classical Chinese poets.

Liao Dynasty (907-1125) tomb mural

When Death Comes
(After Mei Yao Chen)

Winters grip is relentless.
An icy wind cracks the frozen trees.
Their once colorful leaves
are buried under a foot of snow.
Everything speaks of solitude
and loneliness. For centuries,
men have felt the way I do now,
but knowing that doesn’t help.
With a sharp, surgical blade,
my guts have been removed.
I can feel the hole it made.
I take no interest in combing my hair,
or tying my worn out shoes.
I gaze at the moon and the stars.
In their far off world,
they look safe and secure.
But they, too, are fragile at best.

A Wedding Anniversary
(After Mei Yao Chen)

I open my windows
to let in the spring air.
Birds have returned.
Almost overnight, flowers
are suddenly there.
The sun rises slowly,
like a woman climbing
from her bed. Was it
like that the day we wed?
The wind is a harp
singing in the trees.
I have invited friends
to drink some wine,
and celebrate our wedding,
as we did, wife,
when you were still alive.

WEARINESS
(After Tu Fu)

I’ve grown weary of snow,
of looking at dead trees,
weary of the moon,
which looks as if
it has a mortal disease.
Crows sit in branches
gazing at my bones.
I am now alone.
My friends have left me.
My wife is dead.
I watch the sun set
on my dilapidated home.
I stare down a road,
which leads nowhere,
and sink into my bed.

George Freek

Two Poems by Jon Bennett: "Pops" and "The Recordist"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:13:00 +0000

Jon Bennett writes and plays music in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood. You can find more of his work on Pandora and Spotify, or by connecting with him at www.facebook.com/jon.bennett.967. He's been published in numerous journals including Duane's PoeTree and Indiana Voice Journal.

Flickr/ Eli Duke

Pops

Pops lost his strength
and he lost his mean.
Now, hands in his lap,
he waits for a blanket.
“Where you going?” he asks his boy,
now grown.
The boy/man looks
down at him
gives him the blanket
and imagines the heart transplant
misfiring in Pops’ chest.
“Fishing.”
“Where at?”
“Perch.”
Pops thinks of fish hooks
and the operating table
and his mean old hands
curled like petals
under the blanket.
“Perch,” says Pops,
“those poor, damn
little fish.”

The Recordist

The Recordist
need not speak.
If communication
is required
he’ll project the record
back at us.
But the recordist
is selective
in his playback.
Over time,
one may come to understand,
“It’s better to stay quiet
when the Recordist
is around!”
Over time
one may even become
a Recordist
oneself.

Jon Bennett

Three Poems by James Croal Jackson: : "Become Whole With Yourself", "End of Relationship (Winter)" and "Two Workouts"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:12:00 +0000

James Croal Jackson is the author of The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017). His poetry has appeared in Columbia Journal, Rattle, Hobart, FLAPPERHOUSE, and elsewhere. He edits The Mantle from Columbus, Ohio. Find him at jimjakk.com and @jimjakk.

Source: http://www.google.com/imgres?

Become Whole With Yourself

A cave, a raven horse-
hoofed sunlit human. Your journey
to know you forward: yourself
tar. Orange toward opening.
Darkness, fire, form,
wing.

End of Relationship (Winter)

I demand forever with flurry and tempest
my voice scorched except you tell me where
to bury our ice because I dug it up with
a shovel the cemetery in our driveway
our kitchen our bedroom chiseled away
because it’s too cold to melt

Two Workouts

Sara exercises to a fitness video on her laptop
at the kitchen table I eat chocolate chip cookies

the dog gets too close the moment she kicks air
he walks to a window to study his reflection I inhale

as Sara does then the dog stares back exhales my reflection
consuming me but soon my body how my feet are bare

on coffin wood and Sara throws punches while dough
collapses in my fingers before I move grease to mouth

yes yes YES alongside the workout instructor to techno
beats a pitch of butter sugar flour down my gullet

I have accomplished an entire row from the baking pan
Sara says that’s enough but she’s just on a water break

many minutes into this an eternity away from ending
she says her stomach hurts and I get it, mine too

James Coral Jackson

Three Poems by Joseph Buehler: "Bikes", "Bees", and "Breakfast"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:12:00 +0000

Joseph Buehler has published poetry in ArLiJo, Nine Mile Magazine, H.C.E. Review in Dublin, Ireland, Sentinel Literary Quarterly in London, U.K., Futures Trading, Green Hills Literary Lantern and other literary magazines. He was a finalist for the Adelaide Voices Literary Award in February 2018. He resides in Georgia with his wife Trish.

Photo by Irene Lasus from Pexels

Bikes

I believe it was my Uncle Harvey, all those years ago, who first
put me on a bike. He probably ran alongside as I pedaled to make
sure I didn’t fall off.

Later on, on the farm, I would trudge up a steep hill by our farmhouse,
dragging along the bike I had then, nothing fancy about it, just a plain
boy’s bike, and then pedal downhill as fast as I could, the wind flying
in my face, bushes and trees zipping by. I repeated the ride over and
over again. When you’re a kid, you never think much about falling off.

The hill separated our farm from Bob’s. After Word War Two, Bob
brought home to Michigan a pretty Australian bride, and, one day, my
mother and I (I believe my step-father was out farming his field, maybe
plowing or something) were invited to watch the coronation of Elizabeth
ll on the wife’s black and white t.v.

We watched as the archbishop placed the heavy jeweled crown atop the
young queen’s head as she sat on her ornate throne in the glorious looking
cathedral.

The Australian war bride was, of course, a loyal subject of the queen so
this was a once in a lifetime ceremony for her (and all the world) to see and
not to be missed and, in her kindness, she had invited my mother and I to
attend the telecast.

So now, after all the intervening years, I still remember the steep hill, the
bike, Bob and his wife, my then young mother and the black and white
telecast of the queen’s coronation and the heavy looking crown and the
two scepters that the queen held, one in each hand, and, I suppose, there
must have been long shining key-less trumpets nearby blaring cacophonously.

Bees

Seven or eight
small yellow and black
honey bees flattened themselves (one
at a time over time) to burrow through
holes in our red colored
hummingbird feeder.

They were intoxicated by its
sweet seductive sugar water.

They gorged themselves full
and then struggled to escape,
but they could not squeeze back
through the feeder holes again
to freedom. So they slowly and
quietly suffocated to death.

Breakfast

I crack two pads of butter
into the small black skillet and
turn the burner up and begin
cutting in the left over half of a baked potato.

I add two eggs and start scrambling them with a
fork and add more butter, holding the skillet with a
frayed pot holder. Then I

remember the half onion in the bottom of the
fridge and cut small white wedges of it into the mix
with a serrated steak knife.

I keep stirring it with a fork, adding salt and pepper
until it’s finished. Then I turn the burner off and start
pushing it onto a plate, finally scraping off the burnt part
from the bottom of the skillet.

I put the skillet into the sink and fill it with cold water and
take the upside down plastic bottle of mostly used catsup and
spray it onto the hot scrambled mess and add a little more
salt and pepper.

I take the plate and my coffee cup into the silent living room and
put them on the tray on the ottoman, thinking about you at work and
sit back on the easy chair and say a brief prayer and turn on the t.v. and
slide my fork into the still hot food for the first bite.

Joseph Buehler

Three Poems by Karen Ankers: "Beneath", "Dandelion Woman", and "And We Begin"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:12:00 +0000

Karen Ankers is a poet, playwright and novelist, who lives in Anglesey, an island in Wales, Great Britain. Her poetry collection, One Word At A Time, described by poet/performer Laura Taylor as “a collection that shines with honesty and integrity”, was published last year. Her one-act plays have been performed in the UK, America, Australia and Malaysia. Her first novel, The Crossing Place, published in January 2018 by Stepping Stones Publishing, is currently being described as “gripping”, “compelling”, “captivating” and “brilliant”.

Beneath

you wrapped your love plainly
no garlanded words
no brightly ribbonned tight bound tales

no surprises
no disguises

used to darkness brightly wrapped
I opened you slowly
carefully
wary of what might lie beneath
edges torn by time and change

and found
nothing
I had not
already
seen

Dandelion Woman

I’m a dandelion woman
too bright to be ignored
too gaudy to be hidden

sunbrave I offer
a smile to brighten
dusty roadsides
ordered gardens
filthy pavements
broken buildings

I grow
in the cracks you want to forget
in places where nothing else can live
and I watch as you choose
not to see me

I spring back golden
when you pluck me from my place
while the others
the weaker ones
the pretty ones
the gentle softpetalled useless ones
nurtured and nourished
nod and smile
as they watch me die

I will grow again
roots bound safe in clinging soil
hide from your heavy shadow steps
while I dance with worms around your poison

And We Begin

a place beyond the need to need you
is the breathless space between your arms
where words are crushed by swollen lips
and tongues twist truth to tell a tighter tale

in this new world there is no light
only the honest darkness of the moment we connect
no room for clumsy words like guilt or me
no bonds beyond the clinging of our hands

trust without time to build a story
want that is answered with a kiss
love becomes a word to breathe by
the lives that led us both to this
have served their purpose
told their tale
run their course
had their time
done their thing
left their sting
in the hearts of those we leave behind

Karen Ankers

Three Poems by Kevin R. Farrell Jr.: "It Is", "Give Me a reason;I'll Decline to Reiterate the Facts", and " Free as a House Cat"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:12:00 +0000

Kevin R. Farrell, Jr is an artist, poet, and educator whose works attempt to capture life from the vantage point of someone in the backseat of a stolen car running on fumes. His poems are a play on words in the form of political, satirical, surrealist, tongue in cheek rants that often border on stream of consciousness ramblings that are a last ditch effort at taking it all in before we get taken out. For more information regarding Kevin's work please contact:http://kfarrelljrart.wixsite.com/kfarrelljrart.

Kevin R. Farrell Jr.

It Is

A thin layer of dust,

a fan with one blade.

A heart on the nightstand,

a broken watch and some change.

The window is open, but there isn't a breeze.

The room is on fire, he wipes the sweat from his brain.

He's scared of his dreams.

He gives the right amount of fucks,

and couldn't care less.

He's not sure if this is the before or the after.

It's okay to be frightened.

I mean you should be, because I think this about you.

Or a character based upon you.

Either way, the only way to write someone off is to write about them.

Are you as relieved as I am?

Give me a reason; I'll decline to reiterate the facts

There's this dude who lives underground,

rides the F all day,

a bit of a drifter, but seems to have his shit together.

I really like what he has to say, it's as if he's speaking right to me,

so in him I have found belief.

The message is bulletproof, as long as you wear a vest.

Some of us have written a book to capture all that he is,

was, and will be,

to, and for us all.

I believe in his words and I feel you should seek refuge in what he has to say.

Meet me by the third rail,

tonight we become followers of the one and only truth.

Accept him into your heart;

your mind, body, and soul will follow suit.

Rejoice!

There is hope after all.

Take a stand, give it a chance.

We're rotten, no longer rotting,

dead is dead,

life is long,

we've been crawling towards death since birth,

and that's the short end of it.

You will know where I stand by the shadow I cast.

I'm not full of all that you lack,

I've just patched the holes

and made light of all that was black.

Free as a House Cat

Firsthand accounts of second hand embarrassment,

bear witness to double crossers and well-wishers.

Devout non-believers curse heavens non-existence,

this serial depressive sleepwalks across my furrowed brow.

You wait and you watch,

check the time,

cross and uncross your legs,

crack your knuckles,

count the number of people you can count on.

The pointer shouldn't be used,

the middle tells the truth,

the ring finger either is or isn't,

the pinky waits for tea,

the thumb is texting,

fishing for compliments,

shooting drunks in a barrel.

Ego trips,

acid baths,

good riddance to bad karma.

God's smirk,

the devil's grin,

ghosts are merely angels without wings.

We'll be here before,

remind me then.

Kevin R. Farrell Jr.

Three Poems by Marianne Lyon: "Tin Cup", "Oh, I’m a Dog " and "Hosanna"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:11:00 +0000

Marianne Lyon has been a music teacher for 43 years. After teaching in Hong Kong, she returned to the Napa Valley and has been published in various literary magazines and reviews including Ravens Perch, TWJM Magazine, Earth Daughters and Indiana Voice Journal. She was nominated for the Pushcart prize in 2017. She is a member of the California Writers Club and an Adjunct Professor at Touro University in California.

Tin Cup

Begin to notice
a braid of women
like a to-do list
trudging to village water spigot
yellow plastic containers
balance on turbaned heads
I follow them into their deep story

Begin to observe
hollow stares like burnt-out fires
eyes meet not others crumpled faces
glares cling to far horizon

Begin to consider
what is crowded out of them
Is every-day pilgrimage
to promised-land’s rusted pipe
all their thoughts can hold?

Begin to swallow
my pompous acumens
accusing their poverty
philosophizing that suffering
is one valid means
that can put us in touch
Who am I to judge?

Begin to hear
what they do not say
when breeze carries her soft humming
to baby hung on back and
ahead avid kid bounces smile-face
unbridled spoon rattles tin-cup-drum

Begin to understand
tap-a-tap-tap, tap-a-tap-tapping
doesn’t add despair to her ledger
before, dog-tired shuffling
now her stride sighs, matches cup’s
syncopated language
that metallic music
could be courageous salve
for her bleeding wounds.
But, who am I to judge?

Oh, I’m a Dog *

He gazes from a distance
takes in everything
missing nothing I do
I untie him
he twirls, innocent
tongue hangs a dance
tail conducts the band
slip on his leash
we begin evening stroll—
salve for my leaden soul
letting go
of wanting my day
to be written
another way
his body becomes tense—
a spring
surroundings seethe
nocturnal creatures
scurry out of mounded holes
he stops as if listening
to evening breeze
I stand there, gaze at him
like he’s on stage
ad libbing his essence-soliloquy
watching his comic “dogness”
watching him dialogue with
his textured world—
a candid sniff
wild dig at curious root
intimate lick of my shin
pulls gentle on leash
he owns me
luxuriates in play-filled now
while my nows often seem
shaped, shadowed
Oh, to be a dog
joyful energy snaking
out like heat waves
he yelps for me to get a move on
not growling:
“I wish I was a cat.”

*Excerpt from The Divine Dance by Richard Rohr

Hosanna

Dirt artery snakes ragged through village
mud shacks teeter from nudging hot
outside they perch on wash basins
splattered plastic chairs
window sills

Passing jeep snatches their glare
hollow stares follow makeshift scooters,
humped children carry water
looks radiate equal measure of
horror and hungry sorrow.

My brain starts to scatter, jump fences
hopeless faces dissolve like soap left in bath
portraits appear, each crazy frame glitters
snatches of transformation

He droops with sadness
like coming back from burying the dead.
Limps to village Acacia tree, plucks a leaf
clutches chest like a fire flames inside

Another speaks silence big and fat
tears a leaf from low branch, greedily another.
She staggers in familiar dance of despair
then suddenly legs lift into wild jig

More gather like knots around Acacia
winged arms lift sacred leaves
begin to sway polished and elastic
begin to unravel lives of want
begin to undam a wealth of joy

Marianne Lyon

Three Poems by Michael Lee Johnson: "Leonard Cohen My Friend", "Restless Hawk" and "Lorie"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:11:00 +0000

Michael Lee Johnson is a poet, freelance writer, amateur photographer, and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois. He has been published in publications in 36 countries and edits and publishes 10 different poetry sites. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net. Watch his poetry videos on YouTube at:https://www.youtube.com/user/poetrymanusa/videos. He is the Editor-in-chief of the anthology, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze" and "Dandelion in a Vase of Roses" which are available on Amazon.

Vector Art

Leonard Cohen My Friend

Death is a bitch and a whore
comes with hat on or off,
Jewish, Christian or lover years ago called Nancy.
Death is a passport, a left behind baggage note.
My leverage sinks, I see you pass human.
These my fears, your fright, being broke, old-royalties stole Suzanne.
Now branches, extended limbs, point outward nowhere-
doors Montreal collapse tomb, dance with me,
end perfume love, a few dead flowers.

Restless Hawk

The angels of wings are always in flight
be the devil or archangel Michael.
I'm a hawk, I'm a night owl night
barroom flights, fighter,
seeing eyes that eye me contact,
not blind, a rhythm of sensuality.
I take my shower, deep breath,
scrub good off my skin, breathe
in the single night, air alone.
These shadows highway unknown
Jesus crosses my night path
Jesus crosses my sky early morn
with a paintbrush, a rainbow
and a promise when
I wake a new dream begins.
Single life is a barroom bitch.

Lorie

Lorie, you want to see me clearly
through this joy of my naked body
avoiding the sweat of my emotions,
just breathing on my neck
rubbing this baseline of my groin-
will not find us here again.
Go away, leave me thinking
louder than your breath-
body moves quietly
in a lazy sway of indifference.

Michael Lee Johnson

Three Poems by Neil Ellman: " Ascension of Polka Dots on the Trees", "Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity", and "Symphonic Poem -- Fine Day"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:11:00 +0000

Neil Ellman is a poet from New Jersey. He has published more than 1,500 poems, most of which are based on modern art, in print and online journals, anthologies and chapbooks throughout the world. He has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and twice for Best of the Net.attached poems for Each of these ekphrastic poems are written in response to a work of contemporary Japanese art.

Yayoi Kusama)

Ascension of Polka Dots on the Trees
(after the installation by Yayoi Kusama)

In every polka dot a thousand more
each containing multitudes
each a mute and simple speck
and each aspiring to ascend to more
than it could ever realize
and live among the trees
as if they were the trees themselves.

Such arrogance to believe
that they could breathe the morning air
and be as one with living trees
when they are nothing more
than polka dots with delusions
they are more.

Yayoi Kusama

Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity
(after the artwork of by Yayoi Kusama)

What follows then?—
a new eternity
born from the fragments
of bone and stars
dark matter and light
as if the first
had never been
and like a newborn child
with soft skin and hope
for a more perfect eternal life
than the one that passed;
or the old
reshuffled, sanitized
and renamed
but much the same
with its fondness
for catastrophe and war?

There is an infinity
of possibilities—
too many eternities
from which to choose
each, like a snowflake,
different from the next,
but it is as certain
as obliteration came
that it had left just one
to resurrect
all time and space
and that we, Adams and Eves,
will bear witness
again and then again
and there will be no choice in it

Symphonic Poem—Fine Day
(after the painting by Saturo Hashegama)

It is a perfect day
to hear the music of the wind
violins gently playing songs on gentler leaves
and chimes mimicking the sound of birds
as if they were birds themselves
a fine day, indeed, to feel the ground
beneath your feet, giving but unyielding,
and clouds changing as we watch
as does the universe itself
a fine day to know the universe
as if it knows your name.

Neil Ellman

A Poem by Sarah M. Prindle: "The Autumn Season"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:11:00 +0000

Sarah M. Prindle received an Associate's Degree in English two years ago. Since then She's been working on getting short stories and poems accepted. She has been published in several magazines, including "Better than Starbucks Magazine", "Poetry Quarterly", and "Pale Ghosts Magazine".

Claudia Meyer iStock

The Autumn Season

As autumn dawns
against a sapphire sky
leaves turn gold
then reddish-brown
and curl
around the edges.
As snow drifts in
the leaves fall;
whirling and
twirling
then landing
on brittle grass.
Autumn’s arrival
heralds a time
of bare branches
sleeping bears
hibernation
of nature
and life.
Autumn
leads to winter,
winter
leads to spring.
The color green
vanishes
but is reborn
as life awakens
again.

Sarah M. Prindle

Three Poems by Ted McCarthy: "Just Before the First Bird Sings", "Lake Stones", and "Requiem"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:10:00 +0000

Ted Mc Carthy is a poet and translator living in Clones, Ireland. His work has appeared in magazines in Ireland, the UK, Germany, the USA, Canada and Australia. He has had two collections published, "November Wedding", and "Beverly Downs".

His work can be found on www.tedmccarthyspoetry.weebly.com

iStock

Just Before the First Bird Sings

Just before the first bird sings
shadows move; that disturbance of air
becomes a circling of bats
round a loosened slate. Day breaks
with its million tiny turbulences,
the life and death rustling
which pause when we walk past:
only behind glass
does stillness at this hour
lack balance. Elsewhere, instinct
runs smoothly through nerve and sinew,
nowhere else is there a going back,
an attempt to sleep – what years
of struggle, what endeavour
to make natural this altered state!

Lake Stones

Abandoned by water
lake stones that stubbed our toes
lie small and shrunk on the shore,
the colour of old skin.

I remember their gold
darkening as the shelf dipped
to where a spring shocked
and warned off children and the timid,

where going further was a stepping
into air, and how in panic
feet searched like claws
for the comfort of their strangeness,
their roundness slimed with weed.

Now they lie, warmed for the first time
since the last Ice Age.

In one spot, puddles, a gouging out.
A field away, a half-wall.

Requiem

In this age of sentimental
atheism, where septuagenarian rock stars
crank up unearthly decibels,
there must be a heaven for old guitars –
not collector’s items; the discards
whose strings grow rusty, pegs arthritic,
those unloved whose warped necks
were a beginner’s purgatory.

Again no more than the sum
of their elements, they wait for the room
to fall, the floor to crumble,
the drum of rain to pool
around their silence. Pity
the music they never got a chance
to make; boys who have long since
run to fat can still dream,
conjuring illusions along the air,
troubling their thinning hair,

but here nothing, a scratching of mice,
perhaps. Someone has missed
them, then forgotten. Don’t step across;
lift them, blow away the dust
with a mute tenderness.

Ted McCarthy

Three Poems by Joan Leotta: "Monet's Hens", "Light on the Seine" and "Haiku on the Same Theme"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:10:00 +0000

Joan Leotta is a poet, playwright, author and story performer who lives in Calabash , NC. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry and Prose Postcards, North Carolina's Pinesong, Whispers, Visual Verse, and the Ekphrastic review. Her newest blog entries reveal what editors of short story magazines want writers to know at www.joanleotta.wordpress.com. Her chapbook, Languid Lusciousness with Lemon, was described in the December 2017 issue of Indiana Voice Journal.

You can download a mini-chapbook of her poems at:
https://www.origamipoems.com/files/Books%20/2016/Joan_Leotta_-_Dancing_Under_The_Moon_2016R.pdf.

Giverny.com

Monet’s Hens

Pecking about the paint box garden

Rosy red hens stand out among the

Whites and yellows,

Hide themselves amid the

Sturdy reds, violets,

Waiting for Monet to open the

gate to follow him across the road

to the water garden where they

can feast upon new varieties

of six-legged prey, clucking

among themselves over

waterlily beauty as they strut

across the green Japanese bridge—

until Monet chases them back

to their house-side coop.

Light on the Seine

Sun's rays playing,

on Seine’s surface
delighted Monet’s eye,
unlocked the power of his brush,
to decipher, share light’s secrets.

Haiku on same theme

Sunlight played on river
Seine’s ripples as Monet
revealed their secrets

Joan Leotta

A Poem by Joyce Zephyrin: "A Question"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:10:00 +0000

Joyce Zephyrin is a member of The Last Stanza Poetry Association, the Poetry Society of Indiana, and AFSPS. She is a Hoosier poet, published in Hanover College’s "Hill Thoughts" and the Indiana Voice Journal. Her book of poems, "Shadows on the Land," is available on Amazon. Joyce has worked for many years in libraries, has been a newspaper correspondent, and has also written magazine articles on life in Indiana.

A Question

I am much inclined to think of oddities
Gypsies, pixies, -- even little ditties
But what I want to ask is this:
If the Anglo Saxons had won in 1066
Would our speech now be affected?
Many Anglo Saxon words are now rejected
While we now say “reconnoiter” and “garage”
“Cavalcade,” “marinade” and even “mirage”
If they had won in 1066
Would we instead have then been led
To a different kind of speech?
Would “usual” then be gelwunelic?
Would Elizabeth II, “famous ruler” of our day
Be deemed secean wolde?
Heaven’s name could well be wolenum
And “great courage” known as fremedon.
Leoma or scima could define “a ray of light”
While geweald could be the word for “power and might.”
Surely we’d be speaking a muscular tongue:
The fate of our language on history hung!

Joyce Zephyrin and Peppermint

Essay/Memoir by Kit Carlson: "Sometimes the Dead Do Talk"

noreply@blogger.com (Indiana Voice) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:10:00 +0000

I am an Episcopal priest and author of the recent "Speaking Our Faith:Equipping the Next Generations to Tell the Old, Old Story" (Church Publishing 2018). I have been published recently in Anglican Theological Review and Section 8 Magazine. I recently attended the Kenyon Writers' Workshop, studying under Afaa M. Weaver.

Sometimes the Dead Do Speak

My mother spoke to me the other night. Not really my mother – she’s been dead for four years. And it wasn’t really speaking – I didn’t hear voices, or even feel a sense of her presence.

But my mother spoke to me the other night.

I was wandering around our cottage late at night. It is the closest place we have to a family home. My parents spent the last years of their lives downsizing into smaller and smaller dwellings. House to a condo. Condo to a senior living apartment. And eventually, my mother spent her last days in the back bedroom of my sister’s house. There was no family home to sell or clean out or cry over when they died.

But there is this cottage in Michigan, in the Copper Country of the Upper Peninsula. My mother built it after she inherited some money, and she filled it with artifacts and antiques from auctions and attics, many of them with little notes she taped to the backs so that later, we would know who gave them to her, or what they meant. The cottage is her final masterwork, and we’ve never changed a thing. We’re still likely to open a drawer and find a shopping list in my dad’s handwriting, or a post-it note with directions on how to change the water filter.

Since my parents died, I have never “felt” them watching over me or being spiritually available. But when I go to the cottage, I feel very close to them. It’s like going home.

On this particular night, my husband had gone to bed early. I was wandering around the living room turning out lights, when I began complaining to my mother. She was a good person to complain to, because she was anxious and obsessively worried about everybody else in the world and their lives and their happiness and their troubles. I used to say she would never be able to die unless there was one split-second instant in her life when all three of her daughters were trauma-free. Then at last she could crawl into her coffin and close the lid.

It almost worked out like that, too--our lives were fairly stable when she died.

But that hadn’t lasted long, and now the family was all an uproar. One sister was getting divorced and her children were imploding. My own daughter had eloped—eloped, for heaven’s sake--at the end of her freshman year of college. I had no idea why one relationship was crumbling, while another had to be solidified right now. So, I decided to take it to the Queen Worrier.

I looked at an old black-and-white picture of my mother, aged about twenty-two, that sits on my father’s oaken roll-top desk. “Listen, Mom. Wherever you are, you need to help this family,” I said to her photo. “Can’t you sort these people out? What is happening? Can’t you offer some advice or something here? You--of all people--should want to fix this insanity. If you’re out there in the afterlife, then do something.”

And that’s when my mother spoke. Not out loud. Not like she was even in the room. I didn’t hear her voice. But a statement appeared in my head, and I knew it was Mom:

“I lived my life and it’s over. Parts of it were hard, and parts were good, but it was my life to live, and now I’m done. Your sister has her own life to live. Your daughter has her own life to live. You have to live your own life, too. I’m done.”

And for a moment, I caught a glimpse of what heaven must be like for my mother. For a woman who was so wracked with worry and anxiety about everything–-well then, heaven, for Mom, must include this great healing of all her fears and fusions. To be free from trying to fix everyone, no longer needing to micromanage everybody’s relationships. To love, but not be responsible. “To care and not to care,” as T.S. Eliot said.

She was right, of course. I can’t live my sister’s life, or my daughter’s life, or anybody’s life but my own, and that is work enough for an entire lifetime. But I still had to get the last word in.

“Well it’s a good thing you’re already dead, Mom,” I said. “Because all this nonsense would kill you.”

~Kit Carlson

Essay by Tylyn K. Johnson: "Transcendence of Abstract Expressionism"

noreply@blogger.com (Indiana Voice) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:09:00 +0000

A socially-conscious writer from Indianapolis, Tylyn K. Johnson has published a short story in Severance Publications' “Depravity” anthology, and other works of prose and poetry in "Reverberations," a Shortridge High School literary journal sponsored by Butler University. He has also had a winning essay published by the Adlai Stevenson Center on Democracy, and other essays published by the NUHA Foundation.

Number 8 by Jackson Pollock 1949 Courtesy of WikiArt

Transcendence of Abstract Expressionism

It was the 1940s, the Great Depression had recently ended and tensions were rising as World War 2 begins. An art style more shocking than Surrealism would throw the center of the art world from Paris to New York. Abstract expressionism is admirable because the artworks are created by the artists’ instinct and the viewers’ perception. I came to this conclusion after reading various articles on Abstract Expressionism and by observing and recording my own observations of certain, eye-catching artworks. Then, I asked others their observations of the exact same works. The abstract paintings I observed in my unofficial studies were: Jackson Pollock, Untitled, ca. 1948-4

Jackson Pollock, Untitled, ca. 1948-49
Lee Krasner, Night Creatures, 1965
Elaine de Kooning, Juarez, 1958
Mira Lisa Schiratis, Winter Time.

Abstract Expressionism is also known as “Action Painting,” implying that the act of painting was as important as the result itself. While the artist is making the artwork, they are also deciding to turn the painting into something beyond a painting, an event, into whatever they or the viewer wishes to see. “What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event,” Harold Rosenberg. The artist chooses to create with their instincts, not with any specified technique. The artists do not emphasize the technique or the result; they focus on the journey and the message(s) of the result. Instead of accentuating the traditionally perceived “beauty” of other types of developing works, Abstract Expressionists looked to create more of a sublime beauty, one founded after increased study of the works and/or their messages. However, the artists’ message is reduced without the people that study them, the viewers.

The viewers perceive and interpret the artworks artists create, from before Baroque to beyond Abstract Expressionism; the viewers have studied and assigned meanings to various parts of art. Like two snowflakes, no two people see the same thing the exact same way, especially in perception and interpretation. The far-from-exact survey I conducted using the four aforementioned paintings demonstrated that every viewer sees the abstract artworks differently, even on a miniscule level.

Results of Artwork Perception Survey
Winter Time	Untitled	Night Creatures	Juarez
Creature squeezed together Number eight Infinity Flowers releasing rain Kittens Burning transformer Fast-moving birds eye view of trees Face Smeared flowers in watercolor	Globe and body Carnival run by dogs Shadow figures People dancing in hula-hoops Hooded reapers with scythes Blood Various animals (Birds, unicorn, etc.) String people Zombie apocalypse Poorly drawn people Couple taking pictures while dancing in the moonlight 3 beings in bad weather	Fox w/ innumerous tails Anguished faces in a lost world Blood A story of death Dead souls Roses Organism(s) (Babies, goat, fox) Mixture of body parts Screaming people Bugs Ghosts Clouds	Hybrid creature Bees exiting a sac Beautiful bird Australia Howl’s Moon Castle (Anime) Devil Red-eyed bird Deformed beasts Person(s) riding a beast
* So my interpretations come from the same person * A few interpretations were similar; this is not noted within the table

This chart provides the data proving part of my thesis correct; no one views an artwork the exact same way. In the conducting of this survey, I surveyed 9 people, including myself, who were all kept from knowing any information about the artworks themselves, as well as from knowing the opinions of others. This chart documents all of the responses I received from the surveyed; I simplified the chart to an extent, since a few responses were very similar, differing on a very miniscule level. This data’s importance is in seeing how very different people saw the exact same artworks with different ideas. For example, in Winter Time, I had some say that there was an eight in the picture, yet others said it was an infinity symbol on its side. Yet, in Night Creatures, many saw appendages and animals, some seeing the same, others seeing differently. These miniscule similarities and differences in perception help to define Abstract Expressionism at it’s finest works created not only by the artists’ intuition but also by the varied perception of its viewers, who give life to the works through their reactions to it.

Perception and interpretation are often subconscious actions, becoming conscious only when the viewer forces it. But what if the work pushes itself onto the viewer? Perception doesn’t start and end with the senses; likewise, interpretation doesn’t start and end with the mind, they are both combinations of each. Abstract Expressionism utilizes this by producing shocking works; yet, they incorporate the very subconscious mind of the artists. In order to create these great works, the artists don’t completely plan a certain form, they simply go with the flow and create as they see fit and feel, with a heavy focus on the sublime message(s). The viewers are the other partner of the duo that scrutinize the artworks, perceiving and interpreting these works in ways that the artists may have never even planned. Of course, the original messages are found and understood, but the newly perceived ideas of these works are that which inspires its uniqueness, agreement on the meanings are not very easy to come by.

~Tylyn K. Johnson

Essay by Tom Sheehan: "Viola's Place or The Shoe in the Wall"

noreply@blogger.com (Indiana Voice) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:09:00 +0000

Sheehan, in his 91st year, has published 36 books and multiple works in Rosebud, Literally Stories, Linnet’s Wings,Serving House Journal, Copperfield Review, Literary Orphans, Eastlit, Frontier Tales, Western Online, Literary Yard, Rope & Wire Western Magazine, Indiana Voice Journal, Green Silk Journal, Faith-Hope-and-Fiction, etc. He has received 33 Pushcart nominations and 5 Best of Net nominations with one winner, and other awards. Newest books are Beside the Broken Trail, Between Mountain and River and Catch a Wagon to the Stars with 4 in publishers’ queues, including Jock Poems for Proper Bostonians and Alone with the Good Graces and The Keating Script. He served in the 31st Infantry in Korea 1951-52, and graduated from Boston College 1956. His most recent reading was about the First Iron Works in America for The Saugus Historical Society. He has read for 17 years at Out Loud Open Mic in Melrose, MA.

Viola’s Place or The Shoe in the Wall

Day closed in around me, and the night that followed, reverie and recompense fighting for equal space, or so it seemed, for hours on end. I had come down the road for about 30 miles, my car loaded with a good assemblage of scrap wood from packing crates, the heft and feel of each piece hanging on my fingertips, like echoes on the rebound; you know, the kind that refuse to let you sleep, wondering what tree in what forest a man with a purring chain saw in his hand had figured to be good enough for cutting. Their images were locked up tight for me: I had cut wood in the state forest for six years at that point and tree selection had never bothered me, winter warmth with odds had grabbed me from slumber, working with my saw, the split logs in stacks growing each day in measurable cords.

The wood I was salvaging this time was for a complete re-do of our kitchen, much of it as requested by the lady of the house: "More cabinets, more shelving for dishware, food stuffs in their containers, countertop for work, a little more character for a room in this house erected in 1742, a real Colonial." She knew what she wanted and I knew I would get it done, as cheaply as I could; you know, most expenses to be spared, or something like that.

With ideas in mind, I had already torn down a wall, moved the rear door, opened space under stairs for a washing machine, positioned the dryer out of the way between rooms, to make one composite room running the full house, about 32 feet long, that's its whole length. It would be kitchen, den, TV room, with a place for my computer, home base for home hours upon hours, pre-dawn often running into thick darkness; when it's to be done, there's no time like now!

The ceiling became a new adventure when a true woodsman, Paul Jodoin, showed me how to mark a 4"x6" beam as a hand-hewn piece, adding a touch of texture, the whole length of 10 of them. How? Rig an old wringer washing machine with a rolling cutter that would chew at a beam as it was passed over the spinning blade of the rig, chewing odd cuts on one face of a beam at a time as if it had been hewn by an ax in the hands of an old logger. Each beam came authentic, old, passed over by time, hanging above me with a sense of pride and accomplishment, old as the hills, as can be said.

Progress, as it always arrives with hard labor, had to work through occasional obstacles, a rugged hand-fashioned real Colonial nail as stubborn as a deck of cards or an MP on duty or the mailman on his rounds, a board or beam wearing its age too well, now and then a most rugged hand-made spike standing in the way of progress, and eventually, significantly, full of messages, pleas, declarations, perhaps the hopes of a father, came exposed an antinganting (a musical name for a good luck charm) of a girl's high button shoe, one side of its sole worn to a frazzle as if it had been dragged through a torturous life, and which was now found nailed to an overhead beam above one window, hidden from early view, tucked away forever.

I am positive it was a builder's plea for his daughter's cure, a lucky hope nailed in place to bless a new house, a cry for her cure, a wish for happiness for a child suffering long-duress. I knew then as now the shivers of a father at prayers. It seems the caliber of them never changes no matter the curse or the comfort befalls those you love.

The diligence stayed with me, and with it the progress and completion of the whole task, which did not get celebrated with a glass of wine or cold mug of beer, but the last piece of border Formica on the edge of the 10-foot countertop, a tricky dodge on its own for a not-so-far-travelled journeyman; but it's still in place hanging by its sticky fingernails, so to speak. There's no counting the pounds of dough poured and pounded and fashioned into place, how many pizza layers or crusts have been spread in their varied formats by the chief cook of the room, what cakes or pies began and ended there.

But for the longest time that child's shoe kept returning to my thoughts, how she might have won a foot race by graceful default of friends, how many she might have lost with taunts in the air instead of cheers, how a father or mother might have suffered for her in silence or prayer.

I shared some part of small miseries.

I studied the shoe sitting on a shelf above my bench in the cellar, a contest of attraction from the year 1742 when the house was built. It sat alone, as if by choice, in dimness, half light of early dawn, at a reaching edge of moonlight from behind a cloud softened by its light seeping in a low window. Going down stairs into that lonely working spot, it was the first object to reach my eyes; heading up, snapping the light switch off, it was the last thing I saw, and what I carried away with me.

The haunting was real. Her sounds were real. At times I'd hear her pleas, another time her short laughter on those rare occasions when she might have found humor, it too often lost, too often aimed at herself.

Once, in my reading, the word compartmentalization leaped surely but clumsily off the page, waiting my assimilation, or a lost image waiting on recovery. Ideas, we all are aware of, have springboards of their own design and implementation. All they call for is attention.

I looked at remnants of the wood, realizing I had some still piled up in the cellar, scrap, odd ends, corners, slabs, you name it, at hand the residue of a completed task. I hardly ever threw anything away that had a minute, an hour, a whole month or more left in its service. Now it worked on me, the spans of it, plans of it at some order of formalization, basically it assumed a framework of captured emotions. It was a miracle how it climbed out of its darkness, how it stretched yet its fingers, how I caught it like ball in a wide curve off the pitcher's mound.

Pieces fell into my hands, or my fingers pulled a piece from the lower part of a pile. Partially stained, a few of them caught my eye in a hurry, a name rose from a far corner. I heard her being called home, called to a house or cabin built by the man who built this house, who nailed her wounded shoe above one window in the kitchen, nailed so it would never be seen but do the thing, the deed, the hope that an antinganting called on, that tokens did, or good luck charms at their best. I heard him call out her name, not insistently but containing enough softness to secure her attention. "Viola," said he, sweet as an instrument, as sweet as a chord, as soft as a finger touching one's own brow in the search for an answer, a solution, an echo lost in the thinking.

"Viola," he whispered, faint, fading, agreeing that her shoe could be placed elsewhere.

I would not let that shoe sit alone again, would not let it be unshared, unaccompanied, would have its friends and companions. 12 x 24 it would be, enclosed in glass it would be, its side depths at 2 1/2 inches, deep enough for the shoe and deep enough for its company. I planned on 5 or 6 compartments.

I'm a pack rat, a collector of things connected or colored or emblematic of conditions, standings, resolves, responsibilities. I found my father's Marine Corps medallions, the Corps insignia, an award medal for an honor of some sort (the reason long gone), my Combat Badge from the Korean War 1951-1952, my Army dog tags carrying my identification ( Army serial number, my blood type, my religion), two gold miniature footballs awarded from Saugus High School football competition, and last but not least the single souvenir I had slipped into my dungaree pockets at the site of the First Iron Works in America, that I can see from my den window, a matchlock pistol recovered from under one third of a waterwheel found near-rotted under Central Street. The road had been rerouted for the reconstruction effort. I had worked on the site from1948-1950, and summers of 1952-56 when I graduated from Boston College after separation from the Army.

I placed Viola's shoe in a compartment by itself, toes pointing right, high button laces rising four or so inches above the worn heel and worn sole, a place of her own, foot first. but not alone.

Below Viola's section I added old square nails pulled from walls of my own kitchen/den construction, a few hinges, a door latch, each piece signifying an era of the house.

In the bottom section split in two, I placed a collection of colored marbles/Aggies I had dug up from gardening work about the grounds of the house, even digging up the driveway for the Iron Works archeologist looking for the passage of a water canal that powered the bellows of the furnace fires.

It was completed in a matter of days, with glass inserts placed over each compartment, Viola's place, the name steady now in its calling, no limp, no pain, no more suffering, a child at rest ... forever.

~Tom Sheehan

Fiction by Gary Roberts: "Embracing Life"

noreply@blogger.com (Indiana Voice) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:09:00 +0000

Gary Roberts is originally from Michigan but is now living in Buellton California. He has been writing off and on since he was seventeen. He has had short stories published in The Lutheren Journal, and Indiana Voice Journal.

EMBRACING LIFE

It was on a Tuesday, August of 73’, more than a year after graduating from high school, when the inevitable finally took place. It was a mid-afternoon not unlike any other, which did not work in my favor. I was sprawled kitty-corner on my bed. I was observing Gilligan foul up another rescue on my portable black-and-white Sony. I could hear my mom coming up the hall and there was a certain cadence to her steps, a certain force with which they came into contact with the tile floor. It was the recognizable sound of an angry woman with marching orders.

She appeared in my doorway with hands on hips. My eyes followed hers as she began to scrutinize.

There was the pile of dirty clothes on the floor and another hanging over the back of the desk chair. There was the bowl of half-eaten Fruit Loops which had been on the bedside table for about four days. A black banana peel straddled the edge of it, and it floated on the fermenting milk in the remaining soggy cereal. There were the uneven stacks of MAD magazine in various locations. There was the torn window shade which I had promised to repair months earlier and which let in a sliver of brightness from the outside world, giving the premises a stark, medieval atmosphere.

“I won’t even bother with the white glove test,” she murmured as she turned her attention to me in my ragged boxers, then briefly to Gilligan, then back to me.

Her lips tightened as she inquired if I had given Community College any more thought. Or trade school.

I hadn’t.

Had I checked into any of the job opportunities she had recently informed me of that were lurking in the local want ads?

I hadn’t.

Had I done anything at all since graduating that showed even a trace of maturity or responsibility?

I thought hard. I hadn’t.

There were five or six seconds of painful silence before she threw up her arms with a quick, seemingly involuntary jerk and the eruption commenced. The overriding theme was how enough was enough and how I should start to take more pride in myself. She was tired of the sight of me eating Cheetos and watching reruns on the used TV that she and my father never should have bought me. I was a young man now and it was time to take stock. “Do you even know what you want out of life?” she implored, making a dramatic, sweeping gesture with her hand.

I considered for a few seconds, then against my better judgment answered honestly, “Cheetos and reruns.” She nearly slapped me.

The exchange was curt and short-lived after that. My mom went back to her household chores and I, endeavoring to make a statement, kicked my feet up over the footboard of my bed and took a four-hour nap. It was a restless sleep because I knew in my gut that she had retreated from battle too quickly, too easily. She must have been waiting for reinforcements. My dad would arrive from work soon and the two would join forces and the ugliness would resume.

I tiptoed out the front door for a mind-clearing walk. Though Fremont Hills was a fair sized town within an hour I had covered many of its tree-lined neighborhoods, obscure side streets and even a couple of pungent back alleys. As I wandered aimlessly I tossed around my mom’s caustic rant in my head and pondered how much worse my dad would give me when I returned home. I could hear him now. “Are you going to spend the rest of your life lying on your bed in the fetal position!?”

The sun was dipping towards the horizon and it occurred to me that I was doing nothing more than stalling for time. “Go back and face the music,” I admonished myself. I then realized how far I had hiked, to the southern outskirts of town, when a familiar brick structure came into view as did its’ faded, blue block letters… A-L-L-I-S-O-N E-L-E-M-E-N-T-A-R-Y S-C-H-O-O-L

I hadn’t been back since I graduated and I couldn’t resist taking a sentimental tour around the old playground. It expanded out about fifty yards from the rear of the building. I reminisced about all those after lunch recesses. It was always a half hour of high-spirited mayhem.

Perhaps because of the twilight hour, I didn’t notice until I was 5 yards from the swing set that there was a body on the middle swing. It was a female body and she seemed to be crying. I was about to begin an awkward 180 degree turn when she said, “Pay no attention to the neurotic girl behind the curtain.” Then she dabbed her eyes and let out kind of a half laugh half sob.

Tentatively, I sat in the swing to her left. There was something vaguely familiar about her. She had one of those peaches and cream faces with dark bangs and a bit of a cleft chin. Her conservative green dress seemed incongruent under the circumstances but complemented her pretty figure.

“Matt Colburn” I said, holding out my hand.

“Betsy Rogers,” she responded, shaking it.

I asked if we had been fellow inmates as I pointed toward the school.

“I think you were a grade below me,” she said, wiping her still moist cheeks. “I remember seeing you in the hallway. You had an overbite back then and wore turtlenecks a lot.”

I was slightly mortified by her recollection. There was an immediate lull in the conversation as we both swung lazily, somewhat in unison, our shoes scraping the dirt below us. Eventually, we engaged in some forced small talk about ‘the old days’ but it was clear our hearts weren’t in it. When she passively asked what I was up to now, I cringed. I hemmed and hawed then acknowledged my motivational issues and said something ridiculous about my wheels being stuck in the mud. I told her my parents were waiting to broach this very subject with me when I returned home.

When I threw the same question back at her she hesitated and smiled weakly. Then she spoke of things like Bible studies and seminars and fundraising and being mentored and learning the Swahili language. As it turned out, for the last year she had been preparing to become, of all things, a missionary. In exactly fourteen days she was scheduled to board an airplane to Africa.

She held it together when she talked about the spiritual and humanitarian good she hoped to do, especially teaching the gospel and sharing the good news about Jesus. But her voice wavered when she brought up her parents who feared for her but who had given her their blessing. She was going to miss them terribly, as she would miss her friends, as she would miss Fremont Hills. She confessed to struggling with severe second thoughts as she started shedding tears uncontrollably.

It was truly uncomfortable when she became too emotional to speak. I guessed the ball was in my court but I could only sit helplessly trying to think of something to say.

It wasn’t until it became excruciating that unanticipated, almost involuntary dialogue somehow spilled from my mouth. “If I’m hearing you correctly,” I observed, “you’re considering passing up the opportunity to do something you very much want to do, something you were probably meant to do, something you’ve worked very hard for in which you will be serving God and serving mankind. If I were you I‘d be having second thoughts about having second thoughts.”

I didn’t know where that came from. I didn’t talk like that. I didn’t think like that. But to my unrefined ears, it actually sounded reasonable, even profound.

She choked back her breakdown but when she didn’t respond to my words of wisdom I figured it was all for naught. There was nothing but dead air until she slowly turned her head in my direction. She was composed and she uttered two seemingly heartfelt words. “Thank you.”

I wasn’t sure what this meant as far as her getting on that plane in two weeks but I decided to take credit for at least giving her something to contemplate. I was taken aback when she suddenly got up from her swing and hugged me very tight. She whispered in my ear, “I have a feeling God is going to get your wheels turning …and when he does there’ll be no stopping you.”

We ended up talking for hours and I didn’t start back home until about 10:30. I knew my parents would be furious, but it also struck me that I strangely no longer dreaded facing them and the inevitable discussion about my potential for embracing life.

~Gary Roberts

Fiction by Philip Brown: "Authority"

noreply@blogger.com (Indiana Voice) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:09:00 +0000

Phillip Brown is a frequent contributor to Indiana Voice Journal.

Authority

Stocker came out of the woods doing 60. I complained too fast. Stocker, high on heroine; I wondered if he even heard me. The bumpy ride made the jeep ambulance rattle in the back where the stretchers were. I was the medic on the passenger side. A cloud of dust enclosed us as the jeep-ambulance sped out into the short grass of the field. I spit out the open side of the ambulance.

Stocker shifted down and headed up over the rise to the left, and then down into the level area where the creek snaked through. Slowing to a crawl I hopped out and ran into the water. I grabbed the West Point cadet by the back of the shirt and dragged him to shore. His lips purplish-blue; he was in heat stroke.

Dragging him to shore I dropped him face down. The front edge of his light blue helmet bit into the sand. With all the force I could muster I slugged him in the back. The side his heart was on. He took a breath. Saved me cardiac compressions.

I raised my right arm and whirled my index finger in tight circles. That was the signal for my driver to call a chopper. If the cadet’s lips hadn’t been purplish-blue I would have saved the chopper-boys a trip. Didn’t seem two minutes and the helicopter arrived. Those boys wasted no time flying into training sights at Ft. Benning. Serving one or more tours in Vietnam, stateside landings were cakewalks. It made a big difference the enemy shooting at you.

The casualty loaded onto the floor of the chopper the crew chief saluted me. Even though lower in rank, his salute meant job-well-done. Casualty laid-out in specified manner; designated area secured off; that sort of thing. Medics were held in high esteem. Once you fell from grace, it was hard to win back the confidence of the troops.

They came out of nowhere. Two West Point captains. Light blue helmets.

“What the hell are you doing, medic?”

I turned around.

“Stand at attention, soldier.”

I came to attention. My mind raced.

“Medic,” the captain said. “You evacuated our cadet?”

“Sir, he was in …”

“I don’t care what he was in!”

“We have our own medics who flew in with us this morning.”

My evacuating the fallen cadet made the two West Point officers look bad. Their responsibility was to make sure cadets took their salt tablets. A blot on their record could mean the difference staying a glorified major or promoted to Colonel.

“Just who the hell …” the captain started again. He turned to look at something in the distance. My eyes also went to the top of the rise where Stocker and I had come down. It was the Colonel. His jeep was coming toward us.

The Colonel’s jeep pulled up. The distance between us and him was misgauged by his driver. The driver stepped on the brakes too hard. It pushed the Colonel forward against his seat belt. The Colonel always took a substandard soldier and worked with him.

The Colonel: Medal of Honor recipient; from the streets of Chicago, found a home in the army. Learned to read in his twenties. A black man who taught Sunday school at main post. Politicians and Pentagon brass flew in to have lunch with him. Play golf.

The Colonel got out of his jeep and walked over to us. He came to stand perpendicular to the captions. The space to my left was empty.

“Alright,” the colonel said. “What’s going on here, Baunn?”

I noticed the Colonel addressed his words to me. Not the captains.

The captain interrupted, “Sir, this medic …”

Colonel raised his arm like it’s not your turn, captain!

“Brown,” the Colonel said. “You’re standing at attention?”

“Captain—ordered it, sir.”

“Stand at ease, son.”

“Yes, sir.”

I feared for the captains then.

“Sir,” the West Point officer interrupted again. “We have here…” The sound of his words faded as the Colonel got a certain look on his face. I imagined it was the one he had when the President put the Medal of Honor ribbon around his neck. That look was directed at me now

Then I noticed the Colonel did a right face and took a step into the empty space beside me. A simple maneuver in the physical world; but one that made an indelible imprint upon my soul.

In the ensuing years I would commit my life to Jesus Christ. When Satan would attack me with that you are a good person-stuff, I would say it says in Jeremiah 17:9 that the heart is desperately wicked and depraved; and who can understand it. Satan would congratulate me on my humility; and being open to the knowledge that there were many ways to God. Then I would remember the Colonel that day when he took that step to stand beside me, and told the captains that if he ever saw them around here again, they would deal with him.

The Bible says that Jesus shed His blood for the forgiveness of the sins of the world. That He is the only way to God. But like the every-Sunday-in-church person Satan is, he will ultimately ask you the question philosophers down through the ages ask, “By who’s—authority?”

When I got back to the barracks all my gear was packed up, and the Lieutenant said I was going to Officer Candidate School.

~Phillip Brown

Visual Art by Mario Loprete

noreply@blogger.com (Indiana Voice) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 08:00:00 +0000

Artist Statement:

“My work focuses on research and documentation of the world of hip hop. This philosophy of life now is no longer relegated to just u.s.a. boundaries, but rather it can be found at any latitude.

I use as a support of my new works the concrete, as I find it is the link between my project and hip hop. concrete as the Internet has cleared all geographical boundaries, it's a material created by the ancient Romans, but today it's modernity and contemporarity indicator.”

b-boy oil on canvas 60x90cm

b-boy oil on concrete 80cm x 100cm

fabri fibra oil on concrete diameter 25cm

j-ax oil on concrete 20 x 30 cm

MARIO LOPRETE club dogo oil on concrete 40 cm x 120 cm

untitled oil on concrete 30 x 40 each

To learn more about Mario Loprete please visit the following links:

https://it-it.facebook.com/mario.loprete.5

www.marioloprete.com

https://www.instagram.com/marioloprete/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mario-loprete-7aa22529