ISSUE 22 - DECEMBER 2020

CONTENTS

Ange Mlinko: “Having faith in one’s craft is a way to survive the world.”

Fanny Howe: “Someone did a study of poets, and most of them who are doing well now went to good universities and grew up with money—inherited money. But no one would dare have a conversation about that.”

Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young: “The other option is to accept that this economy of favors cannot be undone without a dramatic rethinking of how poets are supported, valued, and ultimately understood to be excellent, which would require creating new metrics for evaluation.”

Charlotte Mew: “The darkness of a room is dead, the unlit night of the open moor and the seashore is a living darkness; the forest darkness, always stirred by elusive voices, is like no other—an enchanted dark.” 

Mairead Case: “My work is rooted in the way I felt listening to songs through headphones as a teenager. When you listen, you know the sound is separate from your body because it vibrates it. And if something feels better afterward, or clearer or lusher or even just temporarily palliated, even just different, you could begin to trust that the outside world might bring good. It might hold you sensibly, sometimes. And then, you can hold it.”       

I. A. Richards: “Metre adds to all the variously fated expectancies which make up rhythm a definite temporal pattern and its effect is not due to our perceiving a pattern in something outside us, but to our becoming patterned ourselves. With every beat of the metre a tide of anticipation in us turns and swings, setting up as it does extraordinarily extensive reverberations. We shall never understand metre so long as we ask, Why does temporal pattern so excite us? and fail to realize that the pattern itself is a vast cyclic agitation spreading all over the body, a tide of excitement pouring through the channels of the mind.”

    

Abraham Wugters, Queen Christina (1661)

ISSUE 22 - DECEMBER 2020 - CONTENTS

POETRY

ART

GILLIAN EBERSOLE woozy KATIE JOHNSTON untitled SARAH NEAL The very grateful cliff GAIL THOMAS Marriage at 63 MARY MUSSMAN Apparently Irrational Beliefs COURTNEY HARLER Goya H. MARTIN Hibernation JEANNE SCHEPER Shard SUBHAGA CRYSTAL BACON Transitory: A Catalog of Trans Murders NORA ROSE TOMAS Lilaced TRENNA SHARPE This Is Only The Beginning BECK GUERRA CARTER Ode to Butch Girls FELICIA ROSE Voyeur JULIA MCCONNELL June Valentine

AGNES GOODSIR Girl on couch (1915) KATIE JOHNSTON Self-Portrait (2019) VALYNTINA GRENIER Tambourines and Elephants (2020) CLARA SIPPRELL Marguerite Thompson Zorach (1940) PETER HUJAR Susan Sontag (1966) ROSA BONHEUR Wild Cat (1850) ROMAINE BROOKS Portrait (c. 1894) ANNA KLUMPKE Rosa Bonheur (1898) GERDA WEGENER Lili Elbe (c. 1928) JOAN SNYDER Rose Garden (2010) THE DAUGHTERS OF BILITIS The Ladder (1957) ELLEN DAY HALE Self-Portrait (1885) ABRAHAM WUGTERS Queen Christina (1661) MRS TURNER OF HALIFAX Anne Lister (1822)

Gillian Ebersole

woozy

inspired by Raquel de Alderete

she said I was like the wind. my life is a string and I wanted to kiss her knees to pass the time. I 

wanted to stop speaking my declarations as if they were questions. when she sat on her desk we 

were both reeling. it takes more than a bottle of tito’s to fix a dead fish and an unmade bed. 

please hold me, I’m sorry. please hold me, we will trade small notebooks in the second of 

darkness before the bathroom light turns on. I want to be like your cassette collection or at least 

in your car long enough to drive the length of the pacific coast with you. I want burnt blankets 

and weighted mornings and the space between your bed and the garden. I regret every 

unknocked door. between capital and lowercase letters I try to decipher your flannel – just tell 

me to go. it would be easier, really. 

as if this were a postcard, breathe in my faded perfume and rip it up. 

link to video

---

Gillian Ebersole is a poet, dance critic, and researcher, as well as a dancer and choreographer. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Loyola Marymount University with a dual degree in Dance and English. Performed on stages in Los Angeles, Denver, and Paris, her choreographic work merges her love for language and movement. She is a staff writer for the London-based arts collective Bachtrack, as well as a guest columnist at LA Dance Chronicle. Her poetry has been published by Attic Salt, Pomona Valley Review, MAYDAY Magazine, and Weasel Press. Her forthcoming debut chapbook, The Water Between Us, won the Charlotte Mew Prize and will be published by Headmistress Press in 2021. 

Agnes Goodsir

Agnes Goodsir, Girl on couch (1915)

Katie Johnston

untitled 

I don’t know who I am—despite effort,

rooted in this; like black dirt, like leaves,

rotting into it as the deep

brown of their eyes burning into me.

Thinking, now, of the times I was with them:

sitting on the floor in the back

of their roommate’s van, thinking,

I don’t know who I am, I don’t know who I am, wanting

to hold on to something—to brush their hand, if only

accidentally; feel something else but the carpeted floor,

but the lingerings of summer sand—knock combat boots

together because we’re sitting too close and I want noise and I’ve lost track

of feeling. I’ve dreamt of them here—written; hopeless disparity, grounded in

self-asserted contention, saying, I’ll never write anything

better than them—because of their sole existence: the

constellations on their golden cheeks speaking more words

than I could ever muster out of me, making me think of

purple asteroids crashing into us and glittering fire as

oceans boil and the ground cracking as volcanoes erupt

and we drown in glass-ash, twinkling like diamonds

that could never be harvested.

---

Katie Johnston is a creative writing undergraduate at Columbia College Chicago. She has been an editor for the Columbia Poetry Review, Hair Trigger Magazine, and Mulberry Literary. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hair Trigger, Hoxie Gorge Review, and her essay “The Barriers Faced by Female Writers” was published on the Fountainhead Press website and won the Excellence Award at the Student Writers’ Showcase.

Katie Johnston

Katie Johnston, Self-Portrait (2019)

Sarah Neal

The very grateful cliff

I was rockfilled I was      grateful caving

near headwaters    Sweetest kitty

of the gorge I was river      so pretty the days

of making nature there      The very grateful cliff

My underside pretty hurt      where you went

to medicine      Couldn’t say      Critical I went flying

out the little dog door

---

Sarah Neal received her MFA in Poetry Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in North American Review, Stone Highway Review, The Ilanot Review, Anthem Journal, Muzzle, Almost Five Quarterly, Wilde, Sinister Wisdom, Wicked Alice, ROAR and elsewhere. Her chapbook Speak So It Anchors You was published in 2016. She resides in the shadow of the Catalina mountains on the Tohono O'odham tribal lands now Tucson, Arizona with her dog Poe, 2 fish and endless hauntings.

Valyntina Grenier

Valyntina Grenier Tambourines and Elephants (2020)

"Tambourines and Elephants is one in a series of mixed media drawings I began in the early days of the pandemic; the title is taken from the song Looking Out My Back Door by Credence Clearwater Revival."

Gail Thomas

Marriage at 63

I did not expect to stand

in this garden, tongues 

of orchids circling our necks, 

or speak vows before grandchildren

who led your old dog to walk

between us. 

With children grown, loves

buried, mother and father gone,

our bodies maps of countries

whose names have been changed, 

we counted a bone-yard 

of losses.

Compost simmered under

snow all winter—egg shells,

pits and parings, tufts of hair and ash—

to fertilize what remains. 

And now, this yes,

steady as late night coals, 

glowing and banked. 

link to video

---

Gail Thomas’ books are Odd Mercy, Waving Back, No Simple Wilderness, and Finding the Bear. Her poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies. Among her awards are the Charlotte Mew Prize from Headmistress Press, the Narrative Poetry Prize from Naugatuck River Review, and the Massachusetts Center for the Book’s “Must Read.” She is a teacher and editor who lives in Northampton, MA, with her wife and poetry loving therapy dog. 

Clara Sipprell

Clara Sipprell, Marguerite Thompson Zorach (1940)

Mary Mussman

Apparently Irrational Beliefs

Irrational for me 

to believe in the longevity of staying with you,

but I believe in it. 

We are on a walk. When we separate

to let a lamppost pass between us

I say bread and butter so we won’t quarrel.

I am uncertain 

about the truth of this charm.

We disagree anyway. Small things,

like about the taste of rosewater

or how your quietness means you are upset

although you say you are not.

At the river we consider the ice disc 

and read cold astrology in the flaws on its edges.

The material is exactly

its meaning. Ice circles are fatidic.

I know that I believe this, but only have 

faith that you believe it too, 

that you are not just playing along.

---

Mary Mussman is a poet and literary researcher interested in the semiotics of queer experience. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The White Review, wildness, fields, and elsewhere. She lives and works on unceded Ohlone homelands in Berkeley, California.

Peter Hujar

Peter Hujar, Susan Sontag (1966)

Courtney Harler

Goya

I grow weary of justifying my literature

The surveys tell us that this period began here and ended there

That this theme is appropriate for this time

That this philosophy is predominant

That this is the political climate that creates this work

That this work is important because it captures the age

But literature is not just philosophy or politics; it’s art

Literature is like Goya’s Las majas vestida y desnuda

On my left, a white flowing gown

On my right, naked splendor

Complete with pubic trail from navel to crotch

Full breasts, spaced widely and falling naturally

Small waist, round hips, chunky thighs, knobby knees

It seemed to me she blushed more clothed than naked, but why?

I don’t think history or philosophy or politics can answer that question

Literature is also like a can of Goya’s frijoles negros

I make a sort of Cuban meal that I would call art

I layer rice and beans with chicken and peppers

Yellow rice, black beans, red and green bell peppers

The sheer vibrancy of the colors makes me salivate

When I look at my plate, do I need to analyze it?

No

I just need to eat it

And sometimes, I just need to devour my literature

link to video

---

Courtney Harler is a freelance writer, editor, and educator based in Las Vegas, Nevada. She holds an MFA from Sierra Nevada University and an MA from Eastern Washington University. Courtney has been honored by fellowships from Writing By Writers, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and Nevada Arts Council. Courtney's work—which includes poems, flash fictions, short stories, literary criticisms, craft essays, book reviews, author interviews, creative nonfictions, and hybrid pieces—has been published worldwide. Links to her publications and other related awards can be found here.

Rosa Bonheur

Rosa Bonheur, Wild Cat (1850)

H. Martin

Hibernation

One evening this October, I’ll take your face

between my hands. 

The summer heat will have only just burnt off again

abate again at bay again 

into the hibernation that started me squirming 

to feel the heat between your thighs. We lean back:

Hasbro hourglass on its side. Drip of salt

water at the tip of my nose.

I’ll cordon off my plot

in the Chelsea garden, pull, at last, the garlic 

bulbs, twist fibrous braids, and hang from the rafters,

forgive the grasses and any weeds,

sweep the perimeter, turn 

the soil once more 

and lie again in wait with you.

Another Summer spent swimming in lakes

because (cosmic joke)

you never learned how to tread water.

But we burnt paths in the arresting snow:

a restless sleep. 

---

H. Martin is a poet and adult educator from Massachusetts. She currently lives with her partner in New York, where she studies poetics. Recent work has focused on issues relating to ecology, queerness, borders, and class. 

Romaine Brooks

Romaine Brooks (c. 1894)

Jeanne Scheper

Shard

The beach glass announces “HE”

Fragmented remains of celebrated masculinity

Commercial detritus worn away 

washed smooth 

forming a male pronoun

between the fingers

triangles of green-blue glass 

wearing a skirt

She stared down at the sand

frowned at the glass 

its short text

triangular form

a lens on gender incongruity

a glass skirt that read “HE”

Nearby a carnival wheel spinning fortunes 

a tarot girl in the curl

buoyant blue with without a tail

scales resting on mussels near shale 

shrouded in sea foam

the waves lap

on the shore standing 

without sail

saving his skirt

white billowing aloft

raw eggs exposed

to the elements

and Gull girls circle the cliffs

flying stiff in formation

descending encircling

beaks cocked

purposefully ready to steal

his raw elements exposed 

eggs in the sea breeze

But they came for another

wings lifted 

cushioning the mythological form

dripping salt slick 

with seaweed

an elevator of feathers rises up

with sea girl’s weight just

clearing the cloudless sky

coveting her laughter 

they steal her seal form away

from undeserving eyes

exposing human flesh

to its gendered susceptibility  

And still

back on the beach

the skirted glass announces, “HE”

the ocean world taunting earthly forms of masculinity.

---

Jeanne Scheper is a Baltimore ex-pat living uncannily in Southern California—a lover of libraries, books, bookstores, and small presses. Scheper shares a passion for archives, activism, and zine-making with students at the University of California, Irvine. Past creative work includes scripts for the shadow performance group Cave Dogs (New Paltz, NY), poems in Shattered Wig (Baltimore, MD), activist posters, and a variety of short creative non-fiction pieces, reflecting on experiences of space, race, cities, and ideas of security, most recently about living for a year in Pretoria, South Africa. 

Anna Klumpke

Anna Klumpke, Rosa Bonheur (1898)

Subhaga Crystal Bacon

Transitory: A Catalog of Trans Murders in the First Seven and a Half Months of 2020 

            an Acrostic for Justice

Just driving a taxi in Oklahoma was deadly for Dustin Parker, 25.

Using the women’s bathroom, Alexa, homeless in Puerto Rico—

social media killed her. Yampi Mendez Arocho’s profile: Humility Prevails—

taken at 25. Monika Diamond, honoring LBGTQ mothers through the 

International Mother of the Year Pageant: 34, North Carolina.

Caught with a stolen wig, in Harlem, Lexi, with her big heart, loved 

everyone she met. Johanna Metzger, who taught herself to play

just about any instrument, stabbed in Maryland. Selena Angelique Vasquez

using vacation time to visit her friend Layla Peraez Sanchez in Puerto Rico, both

stabbed like Alexa, and Yampi, and then Penelope, in the Baymon Correctional Center, 

time done for unnamed crime. Nina Pop, in Missouri, 28, stabbed in her apartment. 

I love myself now . . .  looking at the pictures before I transitioned, Hella Jae O’Reagan, 

cutting hair at the barbershop where she worked; stabbed. 20 years old in Texas.

Evening, May 27, Tallahassee, cops said Stop moving, n—-r, ending Tony McDade.

June 9, Rem’mie Fells, pulled from the Schuykill, legless; she lived her truth so loud

u could hear her a mile away.  An 18 year old boy and 14 year old girl with an adult man

shot Riah Milton, home health worker, 25 in Ohio. Jayne Thompson, shot by police,

troubled in her transition in Colorado. Bail was refused for an 18 year old student

in Chicago, who went home with Selena Reyes-Hernandez, and learning she was trans

came back later mad as hell, and shot her nine times. Brayla Stone, 17, Arkansas,

evidence of hate crime absent, was left in a car by another teen charged with a prior death.

Just an hour ago, arrested while I’m writing, the man who killed Merci Mack, 22, Dallas, 

unless she release a video of them together, shot her multiple times. One of five found dead

since the start of July: Shaki Peters, 32, Amite, Louisiana; Bree Black, 27, July 3, shot

too. Summer Taylor, white, non-binary killed after a car drove into a crowd of protestors 

in Seattle, Washington, on July 4 at the Black Femme March, not yet ruled a homicide, be-

cause driving a car into a group of protestors, on Independence Day, is apparently 

excusable or—what? Manslaughter?—binary loophole that says: not woman, not murder.

link to video

---

Subhaga Crystal Bacon is the author of two volumes of poetry, Blue Hunger, 2020 from Methow Press, and Elegy with a Glass of Whisky, BOA Editions, 2004. A cis-gender, Queer identified woman, she lives, writes, and teaches on the east slope of the North Cascade Mountains in Twisp, WA. Her recent work appears in the Bombay Review, the River Heron Review, Humana Obscura, and Plum Recruit.

Gerda Wegener

Gerda Wegener, Lili Elbe (c. 1928)

Nora Rose Tomas

Lilaced

Lilac the garden, not the same as me.

The holy china, baby blue adorn

forget me not for death of space — my space 

The giving up of past to hold the hand

of God. This God, my God, reside amongst 

the china. Smash the china, break the hold

of God. He takes tremendous space. Oh God. 

Lilac, the shrub, she speaks to God for me 

she says, she’s stuck against the laundry. Shut herself 

in bitter dish-rag Heaven only to find alone. 

---

Nora Rose Tomas is an interdisciplinary writer living in New York City. She is currently an MFA candidate at Columbia University. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Mantis, Small Orange, Rogue Agent, and The Observer, among others. You can follow her on Instagram @dr_sappho.

Joan Snyder

Joan Snyder, Rose Garden (2010)

Trenna Sharpe

This Is Only The Beginning

of the last great love poem on earth

so Hannah let me sing

your name through the blue distance

of the Sequatchie Valley.

My heart, the Cumberland Plateau.

Your love, a summer thunder rolling in.

Hannah, take my hand

and step into the steam rising

off these worn mountains

these hunkering doorstops of Appalachia.

Hannah, the people of this valley are a shimmer

above the four-lane, an oil-slick scent

The prayer in the upraised arms

of a skinny boned kid yelling

Hey, watch’is!

and driving off a cliff.

A plunking tune playing

from the jewelry box of his ribs

hooked on a tree all summer

til winter

come to show us its bones.

---

Trenna Sharpe grew up in Tennessee. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in WMN.Zine, Homology, Five:2:One Mag, The Tangerine, and others. She has an MFA in Poetry from the Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She's currently working on a series of poems addressed to the comedian Hannah Gadsby. 

The Daughters of Bilitis

The Daughters of Bilitis, The Ladder (1957)

Beck Guerra Carter

Ode to Butch Girls

I love a dyke in a flight suit. Or in

overalls. People don't think butch girls

are into other butch girls. But I can get

very into other butch girls. I can get down

with your baggy pants and boxers. I love

a babe in a ballcap or a snapback. I want

to run my fingers through your cropped 

curls and over your skull. I want to taste 

the metal in your ear when my mouth 

finds it in the dark. How big is your carabiner?

Do you carry a backpack, like, everywhere?

You can carry me anywhere. Show me

your biceps. Show me your skateboard.

Show me your favorite scene from The L Word,

I'll show you mine.

---

Beck Guerra Carter is a queer poet from Austin, Texas. She is currently an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Texas State University. She has been published in Persona and Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast. Beck currently resides in San Marcos with a tiny dachshund named Cookie. Her pronouns are she/they.

Ellen Day Hale

Ellen Day Hale, Self-Portrait (1885)

Felicia Rose

Voyeur

Dawn, hidden beneath a canopy

of black starry sky,

sleeps in her chamber

under a sconce

of silvery moon.

I watch from my window 

as the chambermaid

slips into the room

snuffs out the candelabra 

of stars

and slowly, sensually parts

that thick black chiffon.

Ah, the cleavage 

of two soft mountains

shaped by a corset

of snow.

The unfurling of pink and blue garters

of light.  

Dawn, an amorous lover, 

shifts to the chambermaid’s touch,

sheds her pale satin sash

and bares a shadowy marsh.

---

Felicia Rose has published in The Westchester Review, The Dandelion Review, Mother Earth News, The Way to My Heart: An Anthology of Food-Related Romance, The Sun, and elsewhere. A New York City native, she is now returning home after a spell in the Intermountain West. 

Abraham Wugters

Abraham Wugters, Queen Christina (1661)

Julia McConnell

June Valentine

My heart sings the grackle’s song

not pretty

but insistent

always hungry

picking tiny raspberry fools

out of brambles.

It is June

already summer berries grunt

daylilies begin their orange buckle

the season hobnobbing with decay.

Sirenita,

sunlight is untouchable

but it touches you

your skin, your hair

a tincture of flame.

I thought I would be there by now

in the treacle sponge

of green 

you call home.

My heart a rhubarb mess

dropped on the pavement

ants licking the sweet syrup.

The solstice approaches.

Every day we are given

more light.

Every day I try

to stay awake.

Every day I hear you 

humming 

elsewhere

you the blue robin’s egg

I carry in my pocket.

You say you are too old.

I say summer is short

long as firework’s flare 

a shiver of light 

blooming and dissolving 

against night’s endless sky.

On the ground

faces lift

with pleasure.

link to video

---

Julia McConnell is a lesbian  poet and a librarian. Her chapbook, Against the Blue, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016. Her work has appeared in MockingHeart Review, THIS LAND, All Roads Will Lead You Home, Blood and Thunder, and many anthologies. Originally from Oklahoma, Julia lives in Seattle with her Jack Russell Terrier, Molly Marlova Magdalena McConnell. 

Mrs Turner of Halifax

Mrs Turner of Halifax, Anne Lister (1822)