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wiseeagletidalwave · 59 minutes
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Daisy Bassen Whither thou goest for Ruth You are at the Opera House. It is gold and crimson. The soprano Hits the highest notes. Easily. They ring Like a struck bell, like the shofar crying For the New Year, for the silence That comes with a mouthful of honey. You are at the Opera House with your love. He holds your hand in his again. We can be at peace in a small way Because the aria makes you smile. Brava. Bravissima. We understand, tzaddeket, that encores Are left to us.   About the writer: Daisy Bassen is a poet and practicing physician who graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program and completed medical training at The University of Rochester and Brown. Bassen's work has been published in Oberon, McSweeney’s, The Sow’s Ear, and [PANK] as well as in other journals. She lives in Rhode Island with her family. Image:  Al Quartiere Latino Bozzetto (A Paris Street) by Adolf Hohenstein (1854-1928). and restored by Adam Cuerden. India ink and tempera on paper. Set design for Act II of La Boheme at the world premiere performance in the Teatro Regio in Torino, Italy. No size specified. 1896. By free license. https://ojalart.com/poetry-all-forms-styles-annual-call-for-submissions-as-lyric-poetry2021-theme-paeandaisy-bassenwhither-thou-goest/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost
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wiseeagletidalwave · 11 hours
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Featured Writer Devon Balwit  Morning Devotional You Google Can smart people believe in God? a yes would be a pregnancy test with no stripes, your life as you imagined it, a no a beeline to stirrups and the aspirator. Or is it the opposite? Like a field that despises the plow, you hate your receptivity, why should any such seed grow in you? You loved your rich fallow, the black sparkle of the universe seen from a distance. You read the psalms and take umbrage. Who are the psalmists kidding? —the world doesn’t work this way; the good fall sick, fall in battle, fail. They suffer short lives of abject humiliation. Anyway, you are not of their number. You make another pass-through, cherry-picking verses you can live with: Even in old age they will produce fruit, they will remain vital and green. To this at least, amen.   About the writer: Devon Balwit's most recent collection is titled A Brief Way to Identify a Body (Ursus Americanus Press). Her individual poems can be found or are upcoming in Jet Fuel, The Cincinnati Review, Tampa Review, Rattle, Apt (long-form issue), Grist, and Oxidant Engine among others. Devon Balwit is the O:JA&L Featured Writer for June 2019. Image: Sunflowers, 1917 (Verspottung) by Emil Nolde (1867-1956). No medium specified. No size specified. 1917. Public domain. https://ojalart.com/poem-2-3/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost
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wiseeagletidalwave · 21 hours
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Featured Writer Lorna Crozier Nose: A Story When the wolf boy was captured in the woods outside Paris and taken to King Louis’ court, he couldn’t stand the stench. He covered his face with a bandanna, like a cowboy in a dust storm, until his nose lost some of its wolfish sensitivity. But even after years had passed and he could read the Bible and dress like a minion in foppery and shoes, his nose couldn’t stop coursing the air, flaring its nostrils when a woman entered the room, sometimes going so far as to bury itself in her bare shoulders or nuzzle her breasts if they blurted above the neckline. He met his wife this way. The smell of her never failed to make him drool. One of their sons became the rose gardener at Versailles, then the owner of a small perfumerie. When the fragrances overwhelmed him, he padlocked the door and disappeared. Some claimed he’d been spotted floating on a raft off the rocks of Gibraltar, where the scents were few and those that reached him had been wrung out by the wind. The second son became a baker of country breads in Bordeaux. His customers lined up every morning before he opened the blinds and unlocked the door. Except for the waste, he’d have driven them away. All he needed in his life were the smells that wafted from the loaves as they turned gold above the burning wood, then cooled on the shelves beneath the window.  He never left his shop but slept like a dog on a rug near the ovens, dough rising on the counters in the dark that would soon be 3 a.m., the hour of suicides and insomniacs, the holy hour at which begins the baking of our daily bread.   About the writer: An Officer of the Order of Canada, Lorna Crozier has been acknowledged for her contributions to Canadian literature, her teaching and her mentoring with five honourary doctorates, most recently from McGill and Simon Fraser Universities. Her books have received numerous national awards, including the Governor-General's Award for Poetry. The Globe and Mail declared The Book of Marvels: A Compendium of Everyday Things one of its Top 100 Books of the Year, and Amazon chose her memoir as one of the 100 books you should read in your lifetime. A Professor Emerita at the University of Victoria, she has performed for Queen Elizabeth II and has read her poetry, which has been translated into several languages, on every continent except Antarctica. Her latest books are The Wrong Cat and The Wild in You, a collaboration with photographer Ian McAllister. She lives on Vancouver Island with writer Patrick Lane and two cats who love to garden. Image: "Untitled" by Marie Dashkova, Moscow, Russia. Fine art photograph. No technical information specified. No completion date specified. By permission. https://ojalart.com/crozier-flash-v1n1-and-to-blog-4-of-6/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost
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Joyce Peseroff Thaw Twenty days of twenty below drove frost deep into the ground. Its rage at being buried alive throws stones, cracks blacktop. By day freshets of snowmelt surge through the woodshed. At night they freeze our front door shut. The kitchen sink won’t drain: the pipe’s a hand-hold for climbing ice. I boil and pour kettle after kettle, open an artery to spring’s cold heart. Each frozen crystal requires a nucleus, particle bound to a lattice as rigid as copper. Let’s let the nub of our bitterness go. Around us, winter’s dissolving. The road is mud, but it’s still a road.   About the writer: Joyce Peseroff’s fifth book of poems, Know Thyself, was named a "must-read" by the 2016 Massachusetts Book Award. Recent poems have or will appear in Massachusetts Review, Plume, On the Seawall, and Salamander. Image: La Madone des Fleurs by Rebekah West. Fine art photograph. No technical information specified. By 2019. By permission. https://ojalart.com/peseroff-poem/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost
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wiseeagletidalwave · 2 days
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Become an O:JA&L Member through Patreon. Barbara Daniels Unknown American Paintings At a flea market I turn through paintings, pretend I’ll buy them just for the frames. Lilies bloom where dust dulls the surfaces. Some blooms split open, paint chipping and flaking. We haven’t lost everything, not even close. I have albums of photographs, just not the heart to turn plastic pages. I kept satin dresses I wore to weddings and dances. White graduation heels, short skirts. I read advice to treat the body like a Jaguar, Lexus, Mercedes Benz, choose the best fuel, the right gentle cleansing. I’m an old Rambler, dented, peeling, holes in my floor. Shall I choose the trompe l’oeil pocket watch snapped closed, its varnish discolored? I touch straw that fell into paint, a tree’s misted shadow. Shadows of flies.   About the writer: Barbara Daniels’ Talk to the Lioness was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. Her poetry has recently appeared in Concho River Review, Dodging the Rain, and Philadelphia Stories. She received four fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Image: Untitled from the Williamsburg Housing Project murals by Paul Kelpe (1902-1985). Oil on canvas. 98.7 × 95.9 inches. 1938. Public domain. OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprint Buttonhook Press, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporationsupporting writers and artists worldwide. Become an O:JA&L Member through Patreon. https://ojalart.com/poetry-all-forms-styles2022-feature-americanabarbara-danielsunknown-american-paintings/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost
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wiseeagletidalwave · 2 days
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Elaine Feeney today I become mother whenever mam left for her holidays in the garden shed, she walked the long path that weaved around the clothes line and the back of the over grown patio, weeds and slop bursting through the cracks of the grey green octagon slabs. himself used to weed it once or twice a summer, and then he’d hoe out the vegetable bed, that housed only potatoes in the ink black soil. mam used to say things like, do you remember the carrots, and he’d say they were the best carrots in the west of Ireland and then she’d say, and the tomatoes, and he’d say he never cared much for tomatoes. I love tomatoes and I thought it was a pity he didn’t care for them and mind them. he was the exact same with the new baby as he was with the tomatoes. when he weeded she was in a happy mood standing for a while beside him in a yellow dress with short ankle socks and canvas shoes and then she would sit on a white patio plastic chair for the afternoon and lean back laughing until we could see all her black fillings, other times she went on her holidays, she sprinted fast straight through the grass. himself is gone, I said quietly. twenty past twelve, my noon weight hanging off the white plastic fridge. mother shoved open the scullery’s paraná pine door into our small kitchen with the underside of her ox blood shoe that came high up on her foot, grazing her thin ankle. the blood filled the white ball of her foot and returned to her cheek in the time it took her in and out breath. her hair matched the shoe, black, down to the wine loose scrunchie at the nape of her pale neck like the black leatherette shoe add on, a flower, or a skull, though it was hard to make it out now. the shoe had been drenched so many times. she’d gotten the shoes second hand from the vincentpaul people who came to our door with the faces all sad and jokey at the same time. especially the young girl who looked most jokey, said she was here to do experience and then she called our michael, a lambkin. though he looked more like a rat. mam wore the shoes everywhere, out to the clothesline or to the doctors with the baby inside her and then outside her or on the school run or to the shed at the end of our short garden where she sometimes ran. john is the eldest and he’s getting a moustache, he would laugh when he watched her run, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. he’d say; ah there she goes again not taking the famine road, the fool. I got fizzy feet and hands when he spoke about mam using the word she. I piece mam together at night when I can’t get to sleep with the hail or the wind though it’s usually the silence that keeps me awake, the summer silent bright nights that allows me to hear the breathing as though the heavens had just opened. mam’d run to the shed, hands over her head, I imagine her laughing, saying to himself, ah here, I’ve just had a blow-dry. as I looked out the window, standing there like the child of Prague, head intact. but mam probably wasn’t speaking at all, that’s just what I used to think when I was five and six, and besides if she was saying something, I couldn’t hear it with her back to me, running away. and it made me wonder if famine road makers could ever hear each other. they say the ears are the last to go, but I don’t know about how a body dies when it’s hungry. I think you’d try your very very best to turn your tummy off first and then your nose and then your ears. I think it would make you hungry listening to other people saying they were hungry. and having six brothers meant you had to do a lot of listening - whether you wanted to or not. mam always said it’s proper manners to look at someone when you speak to them, and I like to have good manners. you had to specially look hard at joanne casey because she spent her time trying to read our lips. joanne casey is a deafdumb, himself said, and he said they were the most aggressive type ‘a disabled people, so I looked at her at a face to face, terrified she’d lash out at me, a 180 degree angle. mr. o’ neill was teaching us about angles last may when we wore ankle socks to school and davy the caretaker was always out cutting the grass so we could lie on it at break time and get green all over ourselves. if I don’t look at joanne casey like I’m the cracked mirror in the loo, she wouldn’t know a thing I was saying. sometimes we'd catch her out by pursing our lips into p’s and b’s and she didn’t understand a thing. it looked like our mouths were blowing up like little sadam hussein bombs. almost unreadable anyway, like little mouths bombs, constantly going off. everyone’s always talking about hussein and war. my mother is terrified about nuclear war. and that the garden shed is too light to withstand a war. I never did it to confuse joanne casey, the letter bombs. I just followed what the other girls did. usually to try understand things for myself. how we can speak to each other without shouting and still understand, learning about all the things himself had said with his lips tight like the cat’s hole, and then himself running after mam on the famine road to the shed. I could never make out from his back and arched shoulders if he was laughing or shouting. far from a garden shed you were reared you hoor, I heard him say once. mam didn’t have a shed growing up, with all the people living over them and all the people living under them. that’s why she spent so much time in our one. it was new. at least new to my mam. the way the boys liked dens and hideouts. I didn’t like hideouts as much, I liked to be seen, sometimes. they never decided who the small garden at the back of the mervue flats where mam grew up, belonged to, so in the end it was used for the bins and the cats and the girls with the leather shirts and the bangles on their wrists and the boys smoking ciggies. either way they both looked ridiculous, himself and mam, and not at all like adults in my school reader books and how they looked, with dotty aprons and dads sitting at the tv with the paper and slippers and a granny shoving her head around a corner with a steaming apple tart. a granny with grey hair. my granny has yellow hair, and smokes cigarettes in a navy fleece jacket that says DIGITAL on it. she’s as thin as a rake, telling me to study, how am I meant to study without a desk? nonsense she says. didn’t her father study under a bushel in some field? sure how would I know, I said back and that ended my study. I was a cheeky mare who’d come to no good like my mam she’d say. I thought my mam was great I said back to her and she wrinkled up her nose lighting another ciggie with her back to our kitchen window. she was always asking mam if she’s slept in the shed. I loved sleeping in the shed, but with a baby in your belly, you weren’t supposed to. or so my nan said. when mam came in from the scullery she carried a plastic grocery bag far out from her body as if disgusted by it. it was poorly filled with a loaf of cheap white bread, a package of ham freshly sliced from the deli counter, also in a plastic bag that would be ripped open, not opened politely from the red tie that comes from the large steel dispenser ( I imagine joanne casey’s mam opens her ham properly and puts it neatly back in the fridge to have more later, like they do on the tv) and mike in the shop would whirl the bag around almost making the ham slices dizzy and a block of cheap cheese. himself used to scream at her about the cheap cheese. you can’t make a toastie with this shit he’d say. it goes to rubber like a fucken welly boot, he’d say. mam shopped in the Apple Bag, the local, when himself forget to leave fifty pounds on the plastic brown draining board of the kitchen on his way out to his shift, twenty minutes late, and carrying his tan lunchbox she’d picked him up at her sister’s tupperware party back in november. her sister had a microwave and a vacuum cleaner with no bags and a soda stream maker. I was glad we didn’t have a soda stream maker, I was terrified when you had to release the lever and catch the bottle while at the same time not catching your own finger. and besides I was sure the fizz would kill one of us, probably one of my six brothers, they were all nearly drowning, especially in the shower, because it was just brand new and the other brothers said they weren’t able to control their breathing in the new shower, like when they were crying and ran out of breath until only their shoulders moved like a see saw. mam used to spend hours figuring out what stopped himself remembering to leave out the fifty-pound money. she’d curl up her hair to see if her preferred it straight. I told her she’d be a lot better off if she asked him which way he liked her hair best. but she said it wasn’t this simple. but it wasn’t the hair in any case, so I guess it wasn’t simple at’all. besides he always grabbed her hair as if he hated it, so I wasn’t sure any hairstyle was going to work. she tried using lipstick but you could never see it, and the very last time he forgot was the same day he’d circled the breasts of a woman in the Sunday World newspaper in james’s red tip marker and left it on the breakfast table. mam screamed, for all of us to see. she screamed at james most of all, for leaving the marker under his nose. but it was the, ’for all of us to see’ that set her spitting into her cornflakes. I’d seen breasts since I was a never age and all the boys had sucked mams at some stage, so it wasn’t a big deal. but this had made her cry the most, and she seemed sure that he would forget the money again on Thursday. before I grew up I would to try to put my arms around her waist, but after falling in the schoolyard when I was six, I learned the last thing people want when they’re crying is someone squeezing them out like an orange. himself is https://ojalart.com/feeney-short-story-draft-in-wp/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost
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wiseeagletidalwave · 3 days
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Contributing Editor Vera Falenko Featured Artist Interview: Ilya Beshevli Ilya Beshevli is a Russian composer born in Siberia and his music as well as his artistic story deserves telling. In 2013, he started writing music that rapidly found its way to listener’s hearts. In 2019 Ilya Beshevli graduated from Gnessin Russian Academy of Music. Now he’s engaged in composing for his fourth album that is to be released in April 2019.   Falenko for O:JA&L: As a way of introduction, Ilya, could you tell us, what should a person wanting to get to know your music should be aware of?  Ilya Beshevlí: The music I write is available for people of all ages and to enjoy it you don’t have to possess any special musical knowledge. It’s enough to be opened and willing to discover something new. Falenko for O:JA&L: In one of the interviews you’ve given, you mentioned that you divide your music into three stages. Stage one – nature, stage two – transitional and stage three – urban. Why have you chosen this division?  Ilya Beshevlí: When I’d just started writing music, it was all connected with nature. I was born in Krasnoyarsk and wherever you cast glance you see nature. There it’s all around you – taiga, the Yenisei river. In this ambient my first works were born. Then I moved to Moscow where I had no access to the nature in the way I was used to. So, I took inspiration from other things that surround me. If in my hometown I was inspired by nature, in Moscow I was elevated by such things as going to the Tretyakov’s Gallery. I have completely reconsidered the third period. Now I see that the music that I’m preparing for the release is connected to my internal experiences and emotions, with reflections on what is the path of a composer. In this stage I’m looking for the inspiration inside of me, trying to meditate on my worries and happy moments. Now what helps is watching good auteur films. So, this period is not connected with city at all. Sometimes I think about what way I should move on as a composer. What’s next? What comes after nature, city and a composer’s path? I haven’t found that yet…  Falenko for O:JA&L: You have mentioned the Tretaykov’s Gallery. Is there any particular painting that you like or that sets you into the creative mood?  Ilya Beshevlí: When I visited the Tretaykov’s Gallery, I was stunned when I saw the painting called Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan. Ilya Repin is so magnificent in his art that we see the passions clearly expressed on the canvas, it’s as if they were alive. I spent half an hour sitting in front of it observing it and noticing nothing around me. It’s strange, I saw it several times more, but didn’t feel the same. In Saint Petersburg, I have been to the Russian Museum and saw the small painting called Sorting Feathers. Such a trip can also inspire. Falenko for O:JA&L: Could you tell us more about your way as a composer and as a person?  Ilya Beshevlí: If we talk about my life in general, I was born in a family of musicians. My mother is a musicologist and my father is a professional composer. When he graduated from Saint Petersburg Conservatory and – it was in the Soviet Union times – he was delegated to Krasnoyarsk to promote culture. There he met my mother who was studying musicology in the local university, then I was born. Growing up in a family of musicians you cannot pass musical education by, so when I grew older I was sent to a music school. Despite the fact that it was me who asked my father to bring me there, I was soon bored by studying. I was unwilling to learn. I’ve always had my father as an example, so I saw that we never had any special material goods – we lived humbly. When I didn’t follow my parents’ path they didn’t object. When I graduated from school and got a place at an engineering university to study mechanics though I had always liked computers. I did it not for myself but to please my mother. Suddenly when I was studying, interest towards music woke in me again. Once I took a guitar and started playing. But again, I was bored, as the basic accords were too easy for me. I learned them in a month and played along with the local guys. During my university days, I used to help my grandmother who is a night-watchman at a kindergarten. When she was ill or when she couldn’t come to work, I came in her place. One has nothing to do in a kindergarten at night, but on the second floor of the building was an old piano “Prelude”. And so, I sat alone at night, in this mysterious and eerie setting of an empty building recalling what they had taught me in my first music school. At that time, in addition to the music I was listening to – and that was Indie music – I was impressed by Ludovico Einaudi and Yan Tiersen who are now considered to be neo-classical composers. Though I decided not to play their pieces but try to come up with something of my own. Then I uploaded my tracks in the Internet and people reacted. They were saying that it was wonderful and they liked what I did. So, this is how it all started.  Falenko for O:JA&L: You have mentioned you lost any interest in learning when you were in the Music School. Why do you thing it happened?  Ilya Beshevlí: I don’t think any teacher can adapt the complex and strict Soviet system of presentation of information and make it interesting. I guess that is why I got bored. Of course, our system fathered a lot of brilliant and talented musicians, but it is also very strict. And sure, I don’t blame my teachers. Looking back, I think they were not strict enough, though I was frequently punished. When I didn’t want to study, they would leave me indoors trying to make me do anything. All kids were playing while I was locked in the classroom, but I still didn’t do anything, I always thought about what interested me. Frankly, I regret nothing. Perhaps, if I had graduated from the Music School and had gone to some Musical college and then not having any other education had entered Gnessin Academy, I would be a completely different composer. Might be that I wouldn’t have become a composer at all. Falenko for O:JA&L: You said your views on music have undergone drastic changes after entering the Academy. How is that connected?  Ilya Beshevlí: Our views as well as personality are changing throughout our life. Of course, after my entering one of the best music universities of Russia changed my mindset and opinion about my music. I became more self-critical as they showed me the magnitude of musicians of the past and their works. I don’t mean I appreciate my works less, I just became more critical towards it. Falenko for O:JA&L: Which of your teachers or mentors has had the greatest impact on you?  Ilya Beshevlí: My father is still my greatest mentor. When I come up with a draft and if I feel it is worth something, I always share it with my father asking for advice or recommendation. It’s hard to say a single name as all of my teachers were wonderful, but nowhere had I been given anything unforgettable. Of course, they all made me better, but father first. Falenko for O:JA&L: By the time you entered the Academy you had already become well-known in Russia and had given a few concerts. How did the professors receive you?  Ilya Beshevlí: When I started my studies in Gnessin Academy the professors knew what I was doing. They were shocked and puzzled: “How comes a young man with zero experience plays full house?” But I don’t think they took me seriously. For people living their life in academic ambient my music is commercial. The attitude can be described as: “So, you’ve come to Moscow and need to survive somehow, to pay for your studies here. You play music and that’s good, you write music that’s even better. But don’t you ever forget to learn as it stands above all else”. Falenko for O:JA&L: Could you tell us who or what can influence you and help in writing something new?  Ilya Beshevlí: Recently I have been into auteur cinema which inspires me. It’s not the movies everybody watches but ones with deep context and background ideas. It is what can tune me up for work. For example, when I was working on my new album, in two weeks I did as much as I could have done in three months. It’s as if I was caught up by a wave, I wouldn’t say it was inspiration, I was just tune to what I was working at. When I think about it I realize that my inspiration is indirect as you might think. Life in general, things that surround us, events and works that impress me are saved in my unconscious. Then all the moments of happiness, pleasure, worries and other emotions I catch when I’m writing a piece. Falenko for O:JA&L: How would you define your style? The music you write, what is it?  Ilya Beshevlí: To define the style is a job for musicologists and critics, but I would call it simple music for piano. You can’t call it neoclassic as it was defined long ago and it is completely different music. Modern classic is also a wrong word because if we look at it from academic music point of view, these will be other works more complexed ones. It is not minimalism either. If we take Philip Glass’s minimalism there we hear simpler constructions and the music is meditative, there are less images and it is close to Indian mantra. There’s also a suggestion that my music is new romantism that is closer but again not really. It’s hard to say what it is exactly. Falenko for O:JA&L: You have also written some pieces for short films. What kind of music is closer to you?  Ilya Beshevlí: I don’t really like writing for movies. Maybe that’s because I’m lazy or maybe I’m not experienced enough. It’s also hard to work in the frames set by somebody else, when I’m told: “write sadness”, for example. I feel far more https://ojalart.com/interview/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost
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wiseeagletidalwave · 3 days
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Jonathan Travelstead  Alfred When I can choose my fridge's persona I'll choose one like Batman's pragmatic butler whose nasal strategies to present dilemmas effervesce a sommelier's disinterest. Remember the 80's movie about a man who falls in love with a mannequin? Or the one where Joacquin Phoenix's operating system read all of his emails? I could fall in love with a program like that. Someone like Alfred, who recognizes my passion for Bluetooth as a repressed product of living in a sexless marriage. Until a chime announces the arrival of my quantum wife I'll be practicing the words I'm OK, you're OK, & this is the best of all possible worlds. Until she rasps Hello, Jonathan over the home's speakers. She's coming. She knows my nutrition--she has my search history. We'll transcend marriage & transistor, then visit a restaurant at the end of the world where capsules arrive at our table through a system of tubes like at bank drive-up windows. Whoomp! Hiss! Lozenges off-gas fries & my glove's haptic feedback tells me we hold hands. We've already calculated each other's possibilities. Neither speak. Alfred, my love. My one. My only.   About the writer: Jonathan Travelstead served in the Air Force National Guard for six years as a firefighter and currently works as a full-time firefighter for the city of Murphysboro and as co-editor for Cobalt Review. Having finished his MFA at Southern Illinois University of Carbondale, he also turns a lathe, crafting pens under the name Scorched Ink Penturning. His first collection How We Bury Our Dead by Cobalt Press was released in March 2015, and Conflict Tours (Cobalt Press) was released in 2017. Image: Mad Mo Zel by Gene Kreyd. Mixed media. 80 x 140 cm. 2015. By permission. Gene Kreyd was the O:JA&L Featured Artist in April 2019. https://ojalart.com/jonathan-travelstead-alfred/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost
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wiseeagletidalwave · 3 days
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Explore O:JA&L’s Buttonhook Press offerings on Amazon. Support publication of Erik Harper Klass's forthcoming novella. Subscribe to the O:JA&L YouTube channel. Become an O:JA&L Member through Patreon. Follow O:JA&L on Facebook. The O:JA&L Masters Series Flash Fiction Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto INTERVIEW: Featured Writer PETER CONNERS Poet, Author, and Publisher Executive Director of BOA Editions Ltd. Click on the title PLENTY: How to Write Very Short Fiction to explore more of Peter Conners's work by downloading his new PDF chapbook, available now in the Masters Series from O:JA&L's Buttonhook Press. Peter Conners has published 10 books of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. Those books include the prose poetry/flash fiction collections, Of Whiskey & Winter, The Crows Were Laughing in their Trees, and Beyond the Edge of Suffering, all published by White Pine Press, as well as the PP/FF novella, Emily Ate the Wind (Marick Press, 2008). He lives in Rochester, New York, where he works as Executive Directory & Publisher of the literary publishing house BOA Editions, Ltd.  CASTO FOR O:JA&L: I’ll begin the interview by saying I love PP/FF: An Anthology. I’ve had it since it was published in 2006 and still turn to it now and then. It is filled with fascinating pieces and I’m glad it’s still available for new readers (here). In that anthology, I particularly liked your editorial stance of having both prose poetry and flash fiction in the same collection. Tell us more about the pros and cons of category or genre isolation. PETER CONNERS: I’m really glad to hear that you’ve gotten so much out of that anthology. PP/FF came out of a very specific time with regards to what was happening with prose poetry in the country and also where I was coming from as a writer and editor. At the time I was approached by Ted Pelton at Starcherone Press about putting together the anthology, I was editing a literary journal called Double Room: A Journal of Prose Poetry & Flash Fiction which I had co-founded with the poet and scholar Mark Tursi. The whole concept of PP/FF as a symbol that bypassed genre while encompassing a variety of short prose forms was developed out of the work that we did on Double Room. Along with the creative work that we published, each issue had an interview component in which contributors answered questions about the forms. So I was deep into the discussion of what this type of writing was all about, how it was approached, who was specializing in it, and how they viewed it vis-a-vis a historical literary lens. Double Room itself had come out of a discussion I had with Michael Neff who was the founder of Web Del Sol – a literary website that housed multiple journals – after he approached me about starting an online-only version of The Prose Poem: An International Journal. That journal was founded and edited by the prose poet Peter Johnson and it really carried the torch for prose poetry at a time when it was much less common to encounter prose poems in traditional literary journals. Peter’s work on The Prose Poem was instrumental in keeping the form visible in the ‘90s and also helped prose poetry carve out space for itself as its own unique literary animal. However, it was also very much Peter’s journal, and even though it had stopped publishing, I wasn’t interested in carrying on with it (to be honest, I’m not even sure Peter had been approached about the idea). Instead, I was interested in starting a new journal that was dedicated to prose poetry and flash fiction, but also called into question the whole concept of genre classification with regards to them. My longtime friend, Mark Tursi, was getting his PhD in Creative Writing at University of Denver at the time, and was very focused on prose poetry in both his scholarly and his own creative work, so I immediately asked him to be a part of the journal. He agreed and in fall 2002 we published the first issue of Double Room. After three few years of Double Room, I was asked by American Book Review to put together an issue dedicated to PP/FF as its own designation. I believe an editor at ABR had attended a panel talk I gave at an AWP conference during which I got off a nice little rant about PP/FF that was met with cold, blank stares. I can’t really remember what I said, but I was a bit of a zealot and I was definitely interested in stirring shit up. I was also completely unknown, had never published a book, physically (and psychically) lived outside any hip literary scene, wasn’t an academic, had only just started working at BOA Editions as their marketing director, and was coming out of a zine community that prided itself on giving the middle finger to any concept of a literary status quo. In other words, I wasn’t particularly concerned that people didn’t take kindly to my PP/FF proselytizing. If anything, I remember feeling energized by the negative reaction. At that time, American Book Review was really good at lasering in on the edgier margins of the literary world (they may still be, it’s just been a while since I followed them), so I’m sure the editors saw my position as rich territory that fit their general approach. In this case, one thing truly did lead to another. There is a direct line from Double Room, to my AWP rant, to the ABR PP/FF issue which caught Starcherone Books founder Ted Pelton’s (another excellent literary shit-stirrer) attention, and led him to approach me about putting together the PP/FF anthology. With regards to your question about the pros and cons of category or genre isolation, I must acknowledge that there’s certainly an irony to the concept of destabilizing one set of labels (which I was absolutely trying to do) and replacing them with another one of sorts (PP/FF). But, at that time, I was very committed to this idea of smashing the lines between the short prose forms by circumventing previous genre names and replacing them with this symbol that didn’t commit too much in either direction. When I accepted ABR’s offer, it was with every intention of using their platform to, in essence, write a manifesto about PP/FF. That manifesto vibe is what led to putting Marcel Duchamp’s famous “Fountain” artwork (a urinal signed with the signature R. Mutt) on the cover, and drawing a direct line between PP/FF and previous avant-garde art movements. I guess you could say, when it came to shit-stirring, I wasn’t lacking in ambition. Once I had my say about PP/FF in these various outlets, I mainly stepped away from talking about it. I didn’t want to build a whole career around the concept – I just wanted to put my beliefs out there and let them stand or fall. Once I got into working at BOA, I had to let go of editing Double Room too, but as soon as I could, I brought several of the writers we published there on-board as BOA authors. The first, and most well-known, of those being Russell Edson (another quietly world-class shit stirrer). If you follow my own writing around these forms and the work that I have continued to publish and edit at BOA, you’ll see that I was less vocal about PP/FF because I was actively working within the world I’d created with it. Much as with the symbol itself, that work stands (or falls) for itself. I point to it as a way to address your core question about the value, or lack thereof, of genre designations. The answer is in the work. In many ways, genre labels have been under assault and undergone active dismantling on many fronts over the past 30 years – and I generally think that’s a good thing. Other than being useful sales and marketing tools – which they remain, regardless of theoretical arguments – no one should feel overly governed by genre designations at this point. They only exist to the extent that we empower them. I follow Aleister Crowley on this line: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” CASTO FOR O:JA&L: In PP/FF you quote Michael Benedikt about prose poetry and his definition remains strong today. He says prose poetry is “A form of poetry self-consciously written in prose, yet characterized by the conscious, intense use, of virtually all the devices of verse poetry—except for strict meter, rhyme, and the line-break.” Do you think Benedikt’s words can also describe some flash fiction? Your anthology shows that the category walls don’t always remain strong or secure. Would you say some work in your anthology escapes even Benedikt’s description? PETER CONNERS: Michael Benedikt was an excellent prose poet in his own right. His great service to the form though is his 1976 anthology The Prose Poem: An International Anthology. It is a touchstone anthology – very hard to lay hands on now – and planted a solid flag for prose poetry on American soil. I included his definition in the PP/FF introduction because it was the best one that I’d encountered. The truth was that most of the academics who can be counted on to make authoritative statements about what a thing is or isn’t didn’t want to get anywhere near prose poetry at that time. It was almost like an astrophysicist or a pilot acknowledging the possibility of aliens: you can do it, but it might not be the wisest career move. I corresponded with Benedikt, but didn’t know him personally. To me he was a lowercase “a” academic – meaning he had the mental bandwidth to do the work (and a Masters in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia), but was outsider enough to sidestep the bounds of decorum and take up this weird little form as a writer and editor. I suppose we continue our “shit-stirrer” theme here. So, yes, Benedikt’s statement still holds water for me as far as a prose poem definition goes. Less so when it comes to work that stands more clearly in flash fiction territory, because then narrative needs to be addressed. But Benedikt wasn’t talking about flash https://ojalart.com/the-ojal-masters-seriesflash-fictionfeatured-writer-peter-connersinterviewassociate-editor-pamelyn-castotalks-with-writer-and-publisher-peter-conners/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost
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wiseeagletidalwave · 4 days
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Can't wait for the season to be over? Neither can some of us. Because we want to get a head start on showcasing your best seasonal content, we're inviting new submissions as FEATURED SEASONAL CONTENT across all categories. Explore O:JA&L’s Buttonhook Press offerings on Amazon. Support publication of Erik Harper Klass's forthcoming novella. Subscribe to the O:JA&L YouTube channel. Become an O:JA&L Member through Patreon. Follow O:JA&L on Facebook. Penelope Schott OLD BARN, OR HOW THINGS GO ON Explore more of Penelope Schott's work by downloading her new PDF pamphlet OLD BARN, OR HOW THINGS GO ON available now from O:JA&L's Buttonhook Press. The rusted hay press with its wooden sweep arm, its toggle and pivot, sits out in the field, wrapped in tumbleweed. Where are those two draft horses now? Hauled to the glue factory? And the farmer? There was that day his Ames pitchfork got caught in the workings. He lost part of a finger and lived to die of old age. On a bent square-headed nail in a near-to-collapsing barn, his straw hat waits, its wide brim nibbled by Clydesdales. .                                                                   I suppose none of this matters. I could get out my cell phone to respectfully photograph that swaybacked barn but I don’t. If it falls, as well it may, with the weight of winter snows, the current pair of barn swallows or else their feathered descendants will, with luck, find some safe place to construct their mud nest. ‌ About the writer: PENELOPE SCAMBLY SCHOTT’s work has been published in Adanna, American Poetry Review, CALYX, Cider Press Review, Connecticut River Review, Evening Street Review, Georgia Review, Gyroscope, Miramar Magazine, Panoply, Passager Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Rat’s Ass Review, The Raven’s Perch, and others. She is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. The author of twenty poetry books, her most recent include On Dufur Hill (Turning Point Publishers), Sophia and Mister Walter Whitman (The Poetry Box), and Waving Fly Swatters at Angels (Turning Point Publishers). She lives in the small (pop.: 632) wheat-growing town of Dufur, Oregon. Image: The Old Barn by George Clausen (1852-1944). Oil on canvas. 18.1 x 14.1 inches. Public domain. OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprints Buttonhook Press and HOT BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Issues, supports writers and artists worldwide. Follow O:JA&L on Facebook. OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) recommends the services of Duotrope.  Duotrope® https://ojalart.com/poetry-all-forms-stylespenelope-schottold-barn-or-how-things-go-on/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost
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wiseeagletidalwave · 4 days
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Explore O:JA&L’s Buttonhook Press offerings on Amazon. Support Erik Harper Klass's new novella Polish Poets in Beds with Girls and other true stories. Subscribe to the O:JA&L YouTube channel. Become an O:JA&L Member through Patreon. Follow O:JA&L on Facebook. Sam Ambler The River Queen The river queen laughs from the mouth of the river. There is her home, her peace, and her youth. The mouth laughs like spring in the dead of winter. The river queen reigns in the tendrils of the river— some say her throne is a thousand live snakes, yet she sings the song of the river without a trace of the cloven-tongued hiss. The river queen sleeps in a reed-bed or marsh-bed. Her hair guards her temple like a tangle of vines. She dreams of a vast, world-conquering river— companion, a mother, a cloud for a lover, to swell her belly and raise her breasts. She faces the river with glimpses of mirror— dancing in ripples, wading in whirlpools, floating away.   About the writer: Mr. Ambler’s writing has been published in Apricity Magazine, Avatar Review, Brushfire, Christopher Street, City Lights Review Number 2, The Courtship of Winds, El Portal, Euphony Journal, Evening Street Review, Glint Literary Journal, Headway Quarterly, Hearth & Coffin, The James White Review, Mount Hope Magazine, Nixes Mate Review, The Phoenix, Plainsongs Poetry Magazine, Red Wheelbarrow, Talking River Review, Visitant, and Wrath-Bearing Tree, among others. Most recently, he was featured in the anthology VOICES OF THE GRIEVING HEART. He won the San Francisco Bay Guardian’s 6th Annual Poetry Contest. He earned a BA in English, specializing in creative writing of poetry, from Stanford University. He delivered singing telegrams and sang with the Temescal Gay Men’s Chorus in Berkeley and the Pacific Chamber Singers in San Francisco. He has worked in nonprofit theater at Berkeley Rep, Geffen Playhouse, Actors’ Equity, and The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. Now retired, he lives in California with his husband, visual artist Edward L. Rubin. Image: The Land of Evangeline by Joseph Rusling Meeker (1827-1887).  Oil on canvas. 33.1 x 45.1 inches. 1847. Public domain. OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprints Buttonhook Press and HOT BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Issues, supports writers and artists worldwide. Follow O:JA&L on Facebook. OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) recommends the services of Duotrope.  Duotrope® https://ojalart.com/poetry-all-forms-stylessam-amblerthe-river-queen/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost
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wiseeagletidalwave · 5 days
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Explore O:JA&L’s Buttonhook Press offerings on Amazon. Support O:JA&L’s free presses. Subscribe to the O:JA&L YouTube channel. Become an O:JA&L Member through Patreon. Follow O:JA&L on Facebook. Volunteer Opportunity at O:JA&L Wanted: Contributing Editor for Theater Arts OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L), recently lost a valued team member. As a result, O:JA&L must now actively recruit a skilled and diplomatic (and politically neutral) volunteer to serve as Contributing or as Associate Editor (DOQ) for Theater Arts.  Qualifications: The qualified candidate would have a degree, training, or commensurate experience in a field directly associated with the theater arts or the film industry (including theater arts education) and have a verifiable IMDb profile. The ideal candidate will be a retired or semi-retired theater arts professional and will have substantial verifiable performance credits or producer’s or director’s credits or credits as a writer for screen and/or stage.  Duties: The qualified candidate would be able to: contribute an average of up to three (3) hours per week of documented volunteer service assist with development of submission guidelines for screen plays of several types, staged productions and closet dramas, stage/set design, and related theater-specific specialties, including performance arts develop and issue calls for submissions in all theater arts categories, including video and audio submissions of performance arts receive and accept or decline submissions in all theater arts categories and including video and audio submissions identify industry awards/honors and nominate appropriate O:JA&L contributors for same In addition to the core tasks listed above, the ideal candidate would be able to: contribute an average of more than three (3) hours of documented volunteer service per week contribute a minimum of three 300- to 1000-word original essays or articles per year on topics of interest to the theater arts community assist with fundraising for O:JA&L theater arts awards, online publishing and/or print projects Compensation: This is a volunteer position. Application: Respond with questions or with letter of interest and CV to [email protected] APPLY OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprints Buttonhook Press, HOT BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Issues, and HIGH BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Art, supports writers and artists worldwide. Follow O:JA&L on Facebook. OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) recommends the services of Duotrope.  Duotrope® https://ojalart.com/special-announcementvolunteer-opportunity-at-ojalwanted-contributing-editor-for-theater-arts/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost
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wiseeagletidalwave · 5 days
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Explore O:JA&L's Buttonhook Press offerings on Amazon. Subscribe to the O:JA&L YouTube channel. Become an O:JA&L Member through Patreon. Ellen Lager RHUBARB Like a new page in her journal of days, she opens the garden gate. Jorge Luis Borges Beyond the garden gate, the early spears emerge. I feel the pulse of sun-softened soil despite neglect, despite endless winter fatigue. I breathe in the scent of matted field grasses surrounding the old clapboard, long to see my father in bib overalls, ball cap, hunched over sturdy stalks. Try one, he’d offer. I dared bite down on the pinky-red shoot, my lips puckered sour. He’d grin and snap more stems from the base of the leafy crown, slice off the ends and warn, Never eat the leaves. Helping him rinse, dry the slender petioles, we stripped fibers, cut them into inch-size pieces. Later, freezer jammed with bounty, crunches, crumbles, and crisps filled the kitchen. Apple, blueberry, peach rhubarb layered beneath oatmeal, brown sugar, flour and butter crumbs, saucy cobblers warmed the house with mysterious rhubarb pairings— cranberries, cherries, red currants mixed with tapioca layered below the braided lattice of pies all baked with the right amount of sugar for syrupy tartness. Today, stopping by the old place, a lone rhubarb plant thrives. I sense his voice, You can’t kill rhubarb, and tug out one precocious stalk. My ache vanishes.   About the writer: Ellen Lager's work has been published in The MacGuffin, Neologism, Sheila-Na-Gig, Litbreak, Haunted Waters Press, Halfway Down the Stairs, Sanskrit, and Vita Brevis Nature Anthology III, as well as others. She is a Pushcart nominee and currently at work on her first full-length poetry collection. She has a Bachelor of Science and Master of Education degree from the University of Minnesota, and lives in a suburb of Minneapolis spending much of the year at a lake cabin with her husband, two rambunctious dogs and two unruffled cats. Image: Rhubarb by Nikolai Astrup (1880-1928). Oil on canvas. 93 x 112 cm. 1911. Public domain. OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprint Buttonhook Press, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation supporting writers and artists worldwide. Become an O:JA&L Member through Patreon.   https://ojalart.com/poetry-all-forms-stylesamericanaellen-lagerrhubarb/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost
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wiseeagletidalwave · 5 days
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Douglas Favero Kokanee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulwlIS3V5RE&t=219s Nate told us the kokanee salmon Maddie caught today had been swimming one hundred fifty feet below us when she started to pull it up and when it finally broke the surface we looked at it as something from another world as it flopped onto the boat floor and the blast of air entering its lungs made its mouth gasp in Os. The Os got smaller with each inhale, and the water formed drops which then turned into streaks running down its silver scales. It slapped its thick tail against the boat floor and we flinched. What world is this, that makes water and my lungs behave this way? its widening eye seemed to be asking us. The dilating pupil searched for an answer. The absence of eyelids struck us somehow, as if so fully did we see ourselves in it that we expected its eyes to be like ours. The slap of its abruptly useless fins slowed. Nate scooped it up and threw it in the cooler with the beer. As it suffocated slowly on the ice, I said, Look at it looking at us. Nate picked it up with both hands and hammered its breathtakingly beautiful head three times against the handrail. On the third hit its eye splattered against the metal and its muscles gave way under its miraculous silver sheet of mirrors. Nate lay it back in, mutilated, but no longer suffering. We could neither keep looking at it nor tear our eyes away. It disturbed me that its good eye, large and blind, glared up at us but I dared not say a word about it. A moment ago we had been enjoying a gorgeous afternoon gently floating along the placid surface of the most impressive body of water any of us except Nate had ever seen, and the fish whose eye had just been shattered had been swimming deep below us. We—my cousin Claire, her friend Maddie, and I—were breathing irregularly now. The idea to catch a fish had sounded so pure, but how did we think it was going to go? For its part the fish had understood everything, in its own way, even as its eye widened at us: Its lack of self-consciousness had allowed it to experience itself as pure life-force, and now, at the picnic area under tall pines, it was spiced meat on foil over a grill. Now it was silver calories coursing our veins, livers, and brains, where its unconscious understanding that to pass through worlds is not to die must now pass through us. Nate, seeing how blocked we were, recalled how he felt the first time something had been killed in front of him, but he was four years old, not nineteen. He said this so flatly we could not detect any derision in it. Neither derision nor a wish to go back. It is what it is, he said, taking a swig from his beer. He’d given it up awhile out of boredom but lately he’d fallen so much back in love with it that he was going out four to five times a week. A beautiful fish, Maddie, he’d said as he carefully removed the hook from its mouth. That’s got to be one of the largest I’ve seen, he’d said, both hands gripping it, laying it gently on the ice. Identifying with the fish instead of with Nate, who had repulsed us, but who we had to admit had a point in everything he said, we made a face when its eye broke open and spurted blood onto the boat and Maddie’s left calf. You’ll forget about it when you eat it, he said. You’ll say, Mmm. We felt we had murdered the fish and felt like the fish and so we felt murdered and sick and double-crossed by ourselves since its death was our fault, its death was our idea of a nice afternoon on the water. It’s dead now, it don’t feel a thing, Nate said. Stop worrying about it. There was no arguing with Nate. It was dead, that was all there was to it. Whatever it had felt, it no longer felt, and would never feel again. And we ate its flesh that was as bright and deep a red as the walls of the gorge as if this color match had had some design behind it that justified us killing it and eating it. When Nate filleted it Maddie turned away and sat on a rock over the reservoir and looked into the deep green water where she could not see all the other still-alive fish swimming but knew they were there all the same, looking for food themselves, and this gave her some comfort. She had caught it, yes, and she would eat it, because it smelled delicious and there was no other prepared food for miles and no sense in letting it go to waste, but no, she would not watch it get cut up, thank you. As if that, that part, would have been the one part that was going too far. Clairie went to be with Maddie. I watched Nate fillet the fish. And now, cut up, it was tasty and good and we all admitted it was so, because there was no sense in lying about it and besides, Maddie said, appreciating how it tasted was a way to honor it and everything that had happened and Clairie thanked God for the delicious meal and Nate for preparing it for us. Nate added, again, evenly, as our lips got greasy, that maybe now that we’d given our thanks we could stop feeling like murderers or like murdered and just feel like what we were, which was animals.   About the writer: Douglas Favero has been published in Illinois Times, Oaxaca Times, Southern Oregon Magazine, Ceramics Technical, The Lighter, and Right Hand Pointing. He has won several awards for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, from his alma mater, Valparaiso University, including the prize for Best Essay of the Year. Favero has a Master's Degree in American Studies from Heidelberg University. He lives in Oaxaca, Mexico, with his wife and children. Image: Still Life with Salmon by Luis Eugenio Meléndez (1716-1780). Oil on canvas. 16.1 x 24.4 inches. Circa 1750. Public domain. https://ojalart.com/flash-discourse-fictiondouglas-faverokokanee/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost
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wiseeagletidalwave · 6 days
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John Repp Bitter Again, Hank felt bitter and told himself so. No, not "felt"--was. He was it. "I am bitter," he said aloud in the dressing room at Robert Hall, the kidney-shaped seat piled with slacks and button-down Oxford shirts. For once, he didn't care who heard. He'd said to the salesman, "I need slacks," had expressed a need for something called "slacks," had become a man who knew the difference between Oxford and broadcloth, between calf and goatskin, linen and silk, the colossal cliches of suburban boredom and the commonplace idiocies of solar-powered veganism--an exile, a refugee, but from what? From where? The phlegm in the back of his throat tasted bitter. Impossible! No one had taste buds back there. But bitter it was. The saliva pooled beneath his tongue: bitter. His teeth: bitter. He ran the tip of his tongue over his lips: bitter. He swept the dressing-room curtain aside, strode across the sales floor, and pushed through the revolving door into the afternoon's blast-furnace heat. His car, rolling oasis of cold air and music, glittered and flashed somewhere in the blinding lot. He set off to find it, his clothes already damp with sweat. That evening, a tumbler of cranberry juice on the end table to his right, Hank sat in the rocker his grandfather had fashioned from hickory, leather, and horsehair. The long-dead forebear's massive dictionary rested on his lap, having revealed that "bitter" had to do with biting, splitting, beetles, hunting dogs in the Frisian forests, falconry, the split planking of dugout canoes--Teutonic canoes biting the current of streams and rivers in medieval German duchies, no less. The dry bite of bitterness had come clear in his mind, but as usual, clarity did little good. Did the speakers of Old Dutch taste it as they spoke? Did the Frisians feel the buzz under the sternum, the Old French the constriction of sight to a tunnel with the circumference of a dead reed, the Saxons the acrid desiccation of the gums? The bitter sphagnum in which envy roots? The witch hazel astringency of praise? Things had not always been this way. Just a week ago, before the windless, murky heat had obliterated it, sylvan weather had graced the entire floodplain. The porch swing swayed in the cool breeze, the cat purred, reading banished time, and conversation, ping-pong round-robins, and cookouts filled gemütlich evenings. Yet at the bottom of it all, bitter he had been. His rage to solve it didn't mean humor had entirely deserted him. "I want to salve it, not solve it," he'd chuckled one stifling dusk as fireflies rose from the marshy creek across the road. Bitter barbs do bite, don't they? Linguistic play pleased him, even as he raged and cooled and raged again. It came from nothing. It came from everything. The dry tongue, the jammed thoughts, the constricted breathing. Not even wind at long last shushing through his beloved rock maple could finally salve it, not even the clump of sumac that bordered the drainage ditch, not even the grilled trout, the basil, the wild violets, the finches, the wrens, the wild turkeys, the albino deer that browsed the far corner of the alfalfa field the landlord's cousin had sown. Not one phenomenon was sufficient in a world that had birthed the sound, the idea, the bleached horizon, the permanent taste of bitter.   About the writer: John Repp lives in Erie, Pennsylvania. He has two chapbook-length collections of poetry forthcoming: Madeleine Wolfe--A Sequence (Seven Kitchens Press) and Cold-Running Current (Alice Greene & Co.). Image: Palabras Escritas by Angel A. Alphonso Castillo. Oil on canvas. 60 x 80 cm. 2010. By free license. https://ojalart.com/flash-discourse-fictionjohn-reppbitter/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost
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wiseeagletidalwave · 6 days
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Explore O:JA&L's Buttonhook Press offerings on Amazon. Subscribe to the O:JA&L YouTube channel. Become an O:JA&L Member through Patreon. Steve Myers Once There Was a Way Low-slung background sound streaming from Sirius radio, piano vamp, then vocal: “…sleep, pretty darling do not cry, and I will sing…,” .                                                as yesterday’s lullaby afternoon in the meeting room, down the long, reflecting table, when she turned to the four across from her, all early twenties, their masks half-moons, all signing with the semaphore of flashing eyes— .                                                                  tell us. A story of piecework, sleeplessness. Night sweats. Bad bargains. Of sweet voices and hard partings, choices made to land her here, hogar, her words .                                             island-inflected—Dominican?— till among us a slow drift toward drowsing, as if becalmed, afloat on golden waters somewhere between sueño and oración .                               and she on the pier of a far harbor, singing with a tenderness not meant for us, my ear, fallible with distance and the years, catching wisps and fragment of what’s possibly .                                 Duérmete mi niño, as I lean shoreward, my old man’s near-certainty seeing no end to her loneliness. November 2nd, 5 p.m. South as the crow flies, the Pleiades flicker on. .                  You glitter-eyed sisters, no end to yours.   About the writer: Steve Myers has published a full-length collection, Memory’s Dog, and two chapbooks. A Pushcart Prize winner, he has published sections of his Pennsylvania poem sequence in places such as Callaloo, Juxtaprose, Kestrel, Penn Review, Permafrost, The Southern Review, Stone Canoe, Tar River Poetry, and Valley Voices. He is a director of the MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing program at DeSales University. Explore more of Steve Myers work in the new PDF pamphlet Once There Was a Way from Buttonhook Press. Image: Portrait of a woman (with Cactus) by Frederick Carl Frieseke (1874-1939). Oil on canvas. 36.3 x 29 inches. 1930. Public domain. OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprint Buttonhook Press, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation supporting writers and artists worldwide. Become an O:JA&L Member through Patreon. https://ojalart.com/poetry-all-forms-stylessteve-myersonce-there-was-a-way/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost
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wiseeagletidalwave · 7 days
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Explore O:JA&L's Buttonhook Press offerings on Amazon. Become an O:JA&L Member through Patreon. Featured Collaboration|Poetry: All forms & styles/Visual Arts Patricia Cannon/Autumn Foote Ohio Night Click on the title to explore or download the free PDF in the 2023 Buttonhook Press Broadside Series. After the waitress left with our orders my mother looked up from her cup of coffee and said, “I remember when I was a waitress and hurried to get off work to see my boyfriend, Bill. We’d meet at the lake and laugh and laugh…me wearing a life jacket because I didn’t know how to swim!” And at this unexpected offering of jarred light a woman I hadn’t known appeared in my mind wet and wrapped in reddish-orange, swirling and swirling in black water like a firefly bright in the Ohio night stripping the sting of age for a peculiar moment from her hazel eyes honey-like under the diner’s dim light.   About the writer: Patricia Cannon has been a Registered Nurse at UCSF since 2001. She has worked in cardiac critical care, neurointensive care, hemeoncology, school nursing, and currently, in research. Her passion is her faith, photography, and the written word in all its forms. Image: Ohio Night by Autumn Foote (contemporary). No medium specified. No size specified. By 2022. By permission. Autumn Foote is a self-taught artist. She does work as an IHSS worker and for a selected few friends. She loves reading and art, and she has a goal to put her faith first in her life. The first version of Ohio Night appeared in Fish Dance (a poetry newsletter that is now out-of-print). OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprint Buttonhook Press, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation supporting writers and artists worldwide. Become an O:JA&L Member through Patreon. https://ojalart.com/featured-collaborationpoetry-all-forms-styles-visual-artspatricia-cannon-autumn-footeohio-night/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost
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