Painted Faces

Photography

By Elizabeth Akins

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Prana

Poetry
1
Show me how to breathe Prana through my teeth
Show me how to stand like the Trees
and maintain fierceness of the Beeswhile spitting honey,
Give me the strength to surrender my blossoming labors
And to mouth-feed my honey to 
Something that appears separate from Me

To breathe Art amidst a War

To leave open my doors

To allow my tears to follow their natural path, 
carrying the current

To stay afloat and send gratitude to the source of sadness, 
the Sea perpetuating the cycle of life and death,

until the Cycle remains the same, 
but becomes named by its properties of continuation,
freeing positive and negative
from their blanketed restraints

When the blackness of Death faints
and breathes new Life
Every Spring, it tells Us to sing.

Allow my Eyes to open around themselves,
again and again.

And when I must, allow me to breathe Prana
Through my Skin

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The Closing of the Dairy Queen

Poetry
By Emerson Wiens
1
The Dairy Queen on south Main has closed.
I should have ordered one more hot fudge malt.
1

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Robitussin

Poetry

By Anthony Gonzalez

Freight train 
rumbling wheels cut 
my ties to the 
other side

Welcome
with nothing
I consume
myself

Wounded mouth
Split flash
storm clouds
move past
and I’m lost
with no words
to convey
my reality

The Cast

Poetry

By Nathan Bartel

Florence, your flowers
bloom perpetual turquoise,
& the starlings come
to your fields casting
undulant rainbows
across the near-dusk.  
Cut cleverly into a drift of snow,
an inhabited house with an oaken
door, the bedclothes tucked
soundly in at the corners,
they say these hours are luckless
& the seraphic tattoos we wear
are shot through with muons  
& hold little lava back.
But I’ve seen an entire landscape fold
itself, catlike,
to embrace a day just like this,
even if it can’t feel its feet,
even if grape arbors punctuate
its wooden frame.  
The gap you left glows a little lavender.
It iridesces through the breaks.  
The breaks of osage & cedar.  
The breaks of ash & pine.  

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Hijo del Pule-Zapatos

Poetry, Short Stories

Por Nicole Eitzen

A petición de su suegra Doña Mari lavaba su cuero cabelludo con machaca de plátanos machos, una pizca de azúcar y jugo de limón. Su cabello alongado y terso se mecía, a la vez que su cuerpo voluptuoso se movía como un gusano de seda al entrar en contacto con el amor caliente como la sangre y pesado como el sol. Tito desde el hoyo entre la cocina y el baño la observaba y la alegría del albañil se palpaba en el sonido que silbaba la tortilla con manteca en el comal del señor. Señor bendito y puro como la hermana, como la ausencia de aquella crema tan cara para restregarse los puntos negros y acabar con el salpullido del interior. Doña Mari terminó de a punto su baño y mientras se alistaba en su cuarto el perro de la casa, “Borracho” se acercaba a lamerle los claveles de piernas que la señora de leches evaporadas protegía como la verruga con la que nació.

“Buenas, Doña Mari”, dijo el hijo del pule-zapatos, el joven quien con prudente arrebato había entrado a la casa de los Lucero. Tito y Doña Mari desde diferentes partes de la casa lo observaban, Tito con ojos bizcos y Doña Mari con la piel clara, usando cada quien lo suyo para ponerse presentables e ir a atenderlo con el más último detalle en modales y atención. Tito, sabiendo que la patrona se molestaría si se sentaba en el sofá, se apresuró a tomar una silla del comedor y colocarla en la sala, ágil y de movimientos que contrarrestaban con su pésimo sentido de cordialidad y humor.

Poetry Dance of Death, of Breath

Poetry
,
Take me to the Center
Words dance around Circle all day I need them. My coffee is silently sparkling
The wind is begging for my hand
Poetry is stop.
                      stop.
                              stopping time. but must there be lines of jabber

to see the space between?

Who will show us where to look?

Peel the sugary glaze off our Eyes.

And when Eye speak with my tongue,
Notice only my breath, it wears You.

My tongue, 
                 twisting, 
                              turning around the Center

a back-up dancer to our silent song.

And when we stop,
                              stop. 
                                      stopping.
We’re suddenly Home.

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What a Wonderful World

Photography

By Audra Miller

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Capturing the Moment

Drawings, Paintings & Prints

By Audra Miller

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Imagination

Digital Art

By Audra Miller 

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