Edition No. 7 / Winter 2020/2021

This issue has been a bit longer in the making than we intended, but that’s ok. We’ve made it into 2021, a new year, a fresh start. In the US, we have the potential to shift our political and social landscape to better acknowledge our humanity; make our world a kinder, more equitable, more hospitable, and healthy place to be. We can refocus our energy to care about and for each other in ways we’ve almost forgotten.

Your art, your words, your attention as you read do some of this crucial work. When we create and share we get a little brighter. 2020 was an incredibly challenging year and we undoubtedly have more to come. But last year gave us a chance to recognize what’s going wrong, see what needs to be fixed, and focus our energy on making things better for all of us. You may be grieving or recovering or healing, but if you’re reading this, you made it. As our cover art from Edward Lee reminds us, we made it through.

Sending light,
Laura, Mary, and Leslie

About the Artist:

Bio: Edward Lee is an artist and writer from Ireland. His paintings and photography have been exhibited widely, while his poetry, short stories, non-fiction have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen and Smiths Knoll. He is currently working on two photography collections: ‘Lying Down With The Dead’ and ‘There Is A Beauty In Broken Things’. He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Lewis Milne, Orson Carroll, Blinded Architect, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy. His blog/website can be found at https://edwardmlee.wordpress.com

Artist’s statement: I usually work with oil paints, but of late, due to various reasons, I have been creating digital paintings using Adobe Illustrator and Procreate. In my art I try to encapsulate the world as I see it and the emotions I experience in that seeing. I believe a painting, especially an abstract work, should allow the viewer to add their own experiences and emotions to it, in effect reshaping the painting for themselves.

Shirley Hilton – Poem

Yuan Changming – Poems

Dave Gregory – Queen Firefly (fiction)

Milly Brown White – Poem

Renato Barucco – The Suitcase Game (fiction)

Miriam Sagan – Poem

D. M. Kerr – Becoming the Heat (fiction)

Gordon Lewis – Art

Paul David Adkins – Poems

Kyle Brandon Lee – Poem

Terry Sanville – Come In Mars Rover (fiction)

Stanley Toledo – Poem