Tag Archives: art

SCOTT BURAU: Off-Season

Artistic, Submissions, , ,

The coffee shop’s packed with laptops and sketchbooks. A sculptor argues loudly about grants. Outside, tourists take selfies. We work here because rent’s cheaper off-season and nobody asks what you do for “real money.” O’Neill drank at this bar. Millay wrote upstairs. We’re trying to finish before the check comes.

Scott Burau is a writer and artist living between Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Key West, Florida. He attended a small Quaker college outside Philadelphia and grew up in Oklahoma. His work is forthcoming in Full Mood and fourteen poems.

DEBORAH TAPPER: Sakura

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

Crowds swarm among blossoming cherry trees. Taking pictures, trampling fallen flowers—ignoring the aspiring poet who composes beneath their branches.

Hopeful koi surface,
mistaking floating petals
for drowned dragonflies.

Winds strip every tree overnight, faded blooms smothering the lake. He drifts with them, dreams and poems erased by uncaring water.

Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.

JAMES SCHWARTZ: The Belle Isle Bard

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

Raffaello Romanelli’s statuary on Belle Isle connects the Old World to today, bridging Dante Alighieri to Detroit city.

For nearly a century the monument of the great poet has gazed stonily at beach‐goers as Motown mixed with techno and summer sunshine turned to winter snows, between occasional community restoration.

James Schwartz is a Detroit based poet and author of various poetry collections including The Literary Party: Growing Up Gay and Amish in America and most recently Big Island Beatnik. See more at literaryparty.blogspot.com.

BOB THURBER: Spooky Trick or Inspiring Treat?

Adventure, Amusing, Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

In the hereafter and evermore a group of deceased literary artists obtained permission to haunt on Halloween with the stipulation their disturbances be directed only at living writers. The ghosts wailed. A whooshing wind boosted their warbling hum. Blaring bursts of clamor transported an unembellished staccato rhythm layered with ambiguity.

Bob Thurber is the author of six books. Regarded as a master of Flash and Micro Fiction, his work has appeared in Esquire and other magazines, been anthologized 60 times, received a long list of awards, and been utilized in schools and colleges throughout the world. He resides in Massachusetts. Visit his website at BobThurber.net.

LILIAN POMEROY EDMONDS: The Power of Touch

Artistic, Submissions, Top Stories, , , , , ,

The woman strokes century-old, burgundy-colored poems on crumbling letterhead to time-travel. Memories magically appear. She is five years old standing behind her beloved grandmother, watching while the poet writes. The child wants to be old too, an author, like her idol. Not a lost ghost visiting from the distant future.

Former journalist and technical writer Lilian Pomeroy Edmonds is working on a poetry anthology with braided essays inspired by her grandmother’s poems written from 1899-1932. You can browse her work on Substack at wavingfromadistance.substack.com.

STEVEN HOLDING: Sketched From Memory

Artistic, Submissions, , , , ,

Paper, barely white, ashen like your complexion, faded charcoal shading, smudged not erased.

Each time, it looks a little less like you.

You seldom model, but were you here, I’d place a page upon your face, trace the outline of a smile.

Instead, I pierce the surface with sharpened lead.

Steven Holding lives in the United Kingdom. His story TURNING A TRICK appears in the collection BLOODLUST from Black Hare Press. You can follow his work at stevenholding.co.uk.

ALEXA YASMIN FERRER: Dishwasher

Artistic, Submissions, Top Stories, , , , , , ,

All of her friends are engaged to men with insurance and stock portfolios. You’re next! they demand.

Alone, in places that are clean and beautiful, she outlines the novel she’d like to write. She looks at her chipped nails and the drafts in her notes. She just wants a dishwasher.

Alexa is intense, takes things personally, has never gotten over anything, and is editor of The Miami Native.

TANISHQ KALRA: Lost in the Spotlight

Artistic, Submissions, , , ,

You killed him.
Who?
Yourself!
What do you mean?
Shaped by applause, lost in the spotlight. Creativity replaced by business, happiness by validation.
I don’t understand.
Do you remember who you were, before the world told you who to be?
No.
Then bring him back, before it’s late.
Who?
Yourself!

Tanishq Kalra is an Indian writer who loves telling stories and writing poetry. He started writing in high school and recently published his poetry book, “Collection of a Novice Wordsmith.” His stories and poems are simple and powerful, which connect with the readers on a deep level.

JOANNA NORLAND: The Story of My Friend Has Been Posted

Amusing, Submissions, , , , ,

My friend, Bob, has posted a fifty-word marvel.
With a deft flick of his crisp wit, he has lassoed a universe.
I cherish the accolades he garners as if they were my own.
After all, did I not urge him to submit?
Bloody Bob. I curse the day we met.

Joanna Norland is grateful to Clive James for his deliciously unapologetic poem, “The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered.” It gave her the courage to acknowledge the absurdity of her own paradoxical predicament.

STEPHEN TILDEN: Knife’s Edge

Artistic, Submissions, Top Stories, , ,

I write each piece as if making a knife. I grind it into shape, polish the surfaces, maybe cut some fancy scrollwork into the sides, and then hone the blade edge with a precise discernment, enabling its power to slice the topic so thin as to be transparent to all.

Stephen Tilden is retired in Brooklyn and carries this knife wherever he goes.