Vol. 5 Issue 17: Solstice & Equinox

Vol. 5 Issue 17 New York London Hong Kong Philippines

Solstice &

Equinox

new reader magazine March 2022 | Vol. 5 Issue 17 COVER IMAGE

NARCISSA - Kring Demeterio CREATIVE STAFF Managing Editor

: Genea Rupert

Assistant Editor

: Carl Jason Tabiolo

Writers and Production Staff

: Sarah Eroy, Jazie Pilones, Neen Arcilla, Regie Ann Vocales, Deborah Dacuno, Max Betonio

Layout Artist

: Ronel Borres

Publicists

: Tresh Eñerez, Jam Abella

Researchers

: Marjon Gonato, John Paul Vailoces, Ma. Fe Tabura, Miguel Kilantang III

CONTRIBUTORS

Hannah Grace Greer, Martha Patterson, Bill Arnott, Nnadi Samuel, Stephanie V. Sears, Kieran Rose Pilon, Sophia Ashley, Magali Sperling, Sara Milne-Flamer, Cristina Nannini, Kaitie McCann, Romana Capek, Edward Michael Supranowicz, Kring Demeterio

MARKETING AND ADVERTISING

Richard Warren richard.warren@newreadermagazine.com

SUBSCRIPTIONS

subscription@newreadermagazine.com www.newreadermagazine.com Phone: 1 800 734 7871 Fax: (914) 265 1215 Write to us: 100 Church St. Suite 800 New York, NY 10007 ISSN 2688-8181

All Rights Reserved

NataliaSinelnik

EDITOR’S NOTE

Dear Readers,

We welcome you to our first issue for the year 2022. New Reader Magazine acknowledges that the year 2021 was a challenge as much as it was for the year 2020. However, we are proud to still be presenting all the artists involved in the magazine - the weird and wonderful people who are making things happen as our purpose firmly states. Issue 17, Solstice & Equinox aims to instill to our readers that to be static and to succumb to change are often coincidental and sequenced. Akin to the theme’s title, our life is subject to a moment of being stagnated: a prerequisite for change. Only then when you find yourself rooted will there be a recollection of experiences, unpleasant or not. Consequently, much like a seed sowed and obscure to us, so will this rooted moment allow us to bloom to our intended form and purpose.

To recall, the process of “Solstice & Equinox” has indulged in working with the quirky and creative people continuously supporting the magazine with their number of contributions. From literary to visuals, they have never failed to provide us with astounding works that demand more attention which we are grateful to be a part of facilitating. This is dedicated to everyone who wishes to see the world from different artists’ perspectives. The wise. The distinct. The sentimental.

As Edgar Degas would say, “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”.

Jason Associate Editor

Contents Feature

Fiction/Non-fiction

Writer’s Corner

06

48

06

Bill Arnott’s Beat: Unexpected Beauty

MARTHA PATTERSON

BILL ARNOTT 08

66

Andrew Holman: When the light comes from the Dark

JAZIE PILONES 12

Featured Bookstores

22

The Coffers of Freedom

Odyssey in the Time of COVID CRISTINA NANNINI

56 90

The Beauty of Beginnings and Endings: A Reflection

SARAH ANN EROY 08

The View Up Above the Hill

NEEN ARCILLA

Dissociated

22

KAITIE MCCANN

Woman by the Creek

REGIE VOCALES

Peter ROMANA CAPEK

GENEA RUPERT 28

Getting Over New York

The Wisdom of Transformations with Hannah Grace Greer

Art

REGIE VOCALES

102 Edward Michael Supranowicz

30

108 Ysabela Maxine Betonio

An Artist’s Wisdom

MARTHA PATTERSON

Poetry 34

The Sharp Weight of Inheritance NNADI SAMUEL

52

06

Out of the Woods STEPHANIE V. SEARS

70

En Route (Capitol) SOPHIA ASHLEY

82

Some Leave This Way

34

SONNET MONDAL

84

48

Riddle #1 HANNAH GRACE GREER

96

Tempo MAGALI SPERLING

98

Reflections of Innocence SARA MILNE-FLAMER

70

37

98

Contributor’s Corner

rolffimages

6

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Bill Arnott’s Beat

Bill Arnott’s Beat:

Unexpected Beauty Unexpected beauty. From a highrise, cloud-scraping tower copse, nature abounds. Gulls soar, fixed-wing on thermals pumped from rooftop HVACs. Springtime settles into place, reluctantly, with every shade of green, Eire hues in streetscapes, courtyards, and boulevards, while deciduous conifers sprout tender shoots begging to be brewed in campsite tea.

From my concrete aerie a swath of ornithology, gulls now in a gang—squawking, diving—pestering a lone bald eagle flapping its broad extended juvie wings; its flightpath east to west. The local crow clan’s deep in conversation, click-purrcaws of general assembly. Two sparrows singsong back and forth, melodic two-tone music penetrating everything.

The white noise hum of traffic, long-abandoned mental illness shouts, a beep of backing trucks, and endless buzz of newbuilds being born; a tufted flicker flashes, feathers sunset orange, its flight a chain of rhythmic upbeats, child’s rendering of waves, unending rows of upper case U. Beyond, above an inlet, the duck-like flap of cormorants, their bodies darts, resembling failed supersonic Avro Arrows or a Concorde BAC. But wait, all hell has broken loose and something’s up, up here. From our tiny deck a solitary bird wings straight toward me from a distance. Maybe a pigeon, but the fuss!

Every other bird has joined the dogfight protest—dodging, bobbing, weaving. Still, the visitor gets closer. Now I see that it’s a raptor. Almost out of place, but not. Not quite. Here, in this downtown aviary, the predator swoops in, alights on a patio one floor below, a “pandemically-conscious” two metre distance. The others scream, hurl insults, while the big-eyed raptor ducks its head and watches, cautious, an overhang, our balcony, serving as a shelter.

It’s a falcon. Peregrine. Not the last thing I’d expect to see in the city CBD but rare. By the time it flies away the flock of protestors has dissipated. A few disgruntled calls and chirpy shouts leave me curious but mostly feeling good.

Whether these bursts have happened due to COVID and a slightly dampened city, I can’t say. Wildlife inching back to where it ought to be; jaguars, boars, black bears and coyotes meandering in streets around the globe. Perhaps it’s just another sign of how we’ve messed things up. Those same HVAC compressors seagulls seem to love—exuding heat for inside air-conditioned comfort, all of it confounds—

compounds our weather systems, temperatures and storms.

Some of these birds, migrators, simply stopped, residing where they are year-round. First time in twenty years of seaside running, I’ve seen swathes of shoreline paved in guano. Geese are staying put and every gosling (all named Ryan) lives, survives and grows to adulthood where they were born, with us now overrun by long necked icons. But enough from the soapbox. You can read my global warming rant in stanza-form in Califragile Magazine.

The fact remains we live in beauty. All around, abounding.

Never more than what I witnessed on a quiet statutory holiday at 6:00 a.m. I’d finished running and was cooling down, strolling home across a bridge where one lone individual was out, apart from me. A sobbing young man clambering over the midspan bridge railing, in the process of making his final decision.

Oh, I thought, this is happening. And so, with this pleasantfaced and crying man clinging to the outside of the bridge rail, I began to talk. Spanish was his language, our communication halting, one-way mostly, me to him and simply talking, lacking playbooks to refer to, just empathy and openness and a slender slice of raw, first-hand experience.

“I’m just … so … tired,” he managed to say.

To which all of us, I’m certain, can relate.

After a bit of time, uncomplicated monologue then dialogue, we knew each other. In some ways, somewhat. In other ways, completely.

While we spoke, with gradual encouragement, my new friend crawled back on to the inside of the railing. I suppose someone had made a call, because with some surprise we realized a crescent of police, all silent, patient, slowly, slowly, closed in on the two of us.

Eventually with tears and thanks our group disbanded, the young man taken to a hospital, me, I headed home for one more cry and quiet gratitude, reflecting on a world of unexpected beauty.

*** Bill Arnott is the award-winning author of Gone Viking: A Travel Saga, Gone Viking II: Beyond Boundaries, and the #1 bestseller, Bill Arnott’s Beat: Road Stories & Writers’ Tips. For his expeditions Bill’s been granted a Fellowship at London’s Royal Geographical Society. When not trekking the globe with a small pack, journal, and laughably outdated camera phone, Bill can be found on Canada’s west coast, making music and friends. @billarnott_aps

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

7

Featured Author

Andrew Holman:

When the light comes from the Dark BY: JAZIE PILONES

F

ear is an emotion that arises when we feel threatened. Is it bad? Is it good? Well, many might consider fear as a negative emotion for being the opposite of being happy, hopeful, or faithful. But fear can either be good or bad—it highly depends on how you react to it. Do you face it head on?

Or do you run away from it?

We all have experienced fear at some point in our lives and we avoid it at all costs. To say that one isn’t afraid of anything is a lie. I’ve never met someone who isn’t afraid of something, have you? Whether one is dauntless or a coward, there’s no shame in admitting what terrifies you. In fact, it’s really OKAY and normal to discuss it just like how Andrew Holman, a busy physician and father of three, confronts his children about their fears.

Young and old always find bugs alarming. Andrew’s children are no exception to that and he confronts them by asking the question, “Who’s mostly scared?” which is exactly

8

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Featured Author It is difficult to get rid of fear as it is part of life and it’s okay to feel it. It is a powerful thing and can be both good and bad depending on how one reacts. It is good when it keeps you safe, or when it pushes you forward and out of your comfort zone in order to learn something new and gain courage and confidence from it. On the contrary, it is bad when you continuously avoid and run away from it because it won’t teach you anything. It only reinforces fear, making it harder to fight, and hinders you to move towards your goals and achieve success.

how his book came to be. Who’s Mostly Scared? sees the world in a different perspective and sends a positive message to young children about their fears and how to overcome it. It teaches them about the power and importance of perception, and that sometimes, we need to realize that we are bigger than our fears.

Having had a wide experience with people everyday, Andrew thinks of the people’s “greatest fear.”

“I cannot speak for others, but as a physician, I saw the fear of isolation as overwhelming. But it’s the coping, sharing, and community (family, pets and insects) that matters.”

His advice to this is for everyone to interact even just a little. He reassures us that no one is ever alone and that we have to share and get along as best as we can.

Whatever your fears may be, let us hope that it’s something you’re willing to face and conquer so as you’d keep growing professionally and personally/individually.

Having enjoyed Who’s Mostly Scared, we wanted to know if we will still be reading more of Andrew’s amusing children’s stories, and here’s what he’s got to say.

“The first ones are for reading to your child. Later, come those droning lessons for older kids.”

It seems that Andrew’s audience and his approach in writing will be changing and growing as his children slowly journey to adulthood. He documents their memories as best as he could, preserving it for they won’t be kids forever.

Asked about what he enjoyed in writing, he jests, “Laughing to myself, even if no one else does.”

Working as a rheumatic physician and a full time dad, it’s impressive how one who is so occupied and juggles time between clinical/hospital work and daddy duties at home yet still able to have time for creative writing.

Always amused by his growing children and how they navigate through the wonders of life, Andrew delves into writing as a form of distressor and creatively writes amusing stories that make him happy. “Creative writing allows me to share equally important messages,” he said.

When asked what got his interest in writing children’s stories, he added, “This (Who’s Mostly Scared?) and the other stories were written for my three children. They often express autobiographical insight into growing up. I thought it would be nice to have something of their childhood preserved.”

Indeed, children are their parent’s world, and there’s nothing parents wouldn’t do for them. Andrew never failed to teach his children balance, practicality, kindness, and humor, and continued to share endless stories and life lessons he could offer them, preparing them for the time when they’d have to step out of their comfort zone and face the realities of life.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

9

Featured Author

Thomas M. Schuler INTVW by Neen Arcilla

The Metamorphyx Journey Our existence in this world has always been enigmatic in every manner, thus the question is: what is the purpose of our lives?

This type of topic has always piqued my interest since I have a hazy sense of what I would say, but the answer would be contingent on the person’s level of satisfaction with his or her life.

The mindset we instill in ourselves determines how we spend our life, whether we are able to achieve more or simply be pleased with what we have. Sometimes I get lost and wonder why we are wired into something that doesn’t help us progress just because we are content with our current situation. Most people are terrified of change because they fear it will not turn out well, but what if it does? We take a leap of faith in addition to being terrified. Humans are kaleidoscopically beautiful, and our minds are a mash-up of various beliefs.

Life can be complicated at times, but I know for a fact that this isn’t always the case. With the guidance we receive along the way, we can connect the dots of our questions about life. We are always changing and evolving in terms of how we view ourselves fitting into society and how we react with various situations on a daily basis. Every time we encounter a challenging problem, our lives perplex us in a manner we need to solve it, to better comprehend ourselves to be better human beings. We invest in experiences simply to understand what it is to be alive and living by turning our setbacks into victories.

Thomas M. Schuler has been helping individuals all around the globe find their passion with his own enthusiasm for life change. In his book “Metamorphyx: Embracing Life Experience, Life Change, and Life Purpose” he discusses life and how to deal with change while accepting its challenges by bringing people together to help them grow through God’s grace.

NRM: What drove you to write your own book? What was that major life experience you have encountered which led to the creation of your book?

Thomas Schuler: In a larger context, I have been a “thought leader” my entire life as evidenced throughout Metamorphyx. I like to probe “The what?” and “The why?” behind decisions and actions and discern deeper meanings and motives in life’s journey. Inspiration to write the book came in an exceedingly dry chapter of life leading into 2016. It was ushered in by a near-death experience with a pulmonary embolism—a bizarre occurrence for an accomplished triathlete.

Contemplating that experience alone on the banks of Georgia’s Chattooga River (where I formerly kayaked in a bolder stage of life!), I sensed an unmistakable movement in my soul—a puzzling directive—to erase all business and ministry commitments on my

10

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

calendar and write a book. “It’s another pivot point in life,” I told an old friend. “I don’t know anything about writing a book. But on the other hand, I don’t want my life experience to rot on the vine. We’ll see what God does with the idea.”

Our life’s setbacks may weigh us down, but we may use them to propel us forward on better days. We find brilliance in our stumbles because it is important to fail in order to move in a new direction.

We often feel that life’s purpose can only be found by working hard and figuring out how to achieve it, but the truth is that it will always find its way into our lives on the most unexpected days.

The best ideas come while we aren’t thinking about them, and we find company along the way that helps us grow because the experiences we have are better when they are shared.

NRM: How did you come up with the word Metamorphyx?

What does this represent?

Thomas Schuler: Aaahh, LOVE that question because it’s hard-wired to the message and focus of the book. There’s a lot of thought that went into that word . . . and you won’t find it in any dictionary! Metamorphyx has a similar context to the word metamorphosis—not unlike the mysterious transformation of an ungainly caterpillar into the majestic beauty of a butterfly—a creation utterly different from its original state. But Metamorphyx penetrates even deeper than that. The root word, “morphosis,” is a Greek expression found in the Bible (Romans 12:2). It means “to radically change,” to morph into something new, to be transformed! “Meta” on the other hand, speaks to the order-ofmagnitude of life change—calculated on a scale far beyond any norm. So, when knitting meta to morphosis . . . and adding a dash of author creativity to the word, Metamorphyx emerges.

Schuler created a word that will undoubtedly define readers by writing this book; by being inventive. It gave readers a glimpse into the mysteries of life, from changing to growing into a gorgeous butterfly.

NRM: What are you trying to achieve as a writer?

Thomas Schuler: In short, personal “impact” for the reader! I want my readers to embrace their life experience—as difficult or as fruitful as it may be—as part of their appointed journey of life. My yardstick for impact is Metamorphyx readers who routinely tell me through personal testimonies, reviews, and new relationships that

Featured Author the candor and boldness of Metamorphyx frees them to pursue new life change frontiers. In that context, I aim to help readers recognize “pivot points’ ‘ in their lives and contemplate their own life-changing implications as a devoted life learner.

Life experiences shape us as a person, it allows us to be the person we want to be today and for the future, we devote ourselves for the life we have and will have. Schuler will help readers change their perspective of life into something beautiful that the implications we have are indeed temporary and we should embrace change.

NRM: Did you experience a sense of pressure to finish your book “Metamorphyx: Embracing Life Experience, Life Change and Life Purpose”?

Thomas Schuler: A sense of pressure? “No!” But writing Metamorphyx required a mammoth dose of perseverance and personal discipline. Writing Metamorphyx was an entirely new venture for me, and it took nearly three years to conceive, research, edit, and publish it.

On a new adventure of that magnitude, there is always the tendency to quit. Quite candidly, there were many days when no words flowed, just a heightened sense of frustration as a blank page returned my stare. However, there is a spiritual richness and fullness in obedience to God’s call. “And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith,” (Hebrews 12:1-2).

That Bible verse was taped to the corner of my computer for three years; I took inspiration from it regularly.

There is a sort of pressure that we generally feel whenever we accomplish something significant because we want it to be perfect, but not with Schuler. It only takes a little persistence and personal discipline for him to stretch his wings and offer his knowledge to the readers. When the days aren’t flowing, he pushes himself to be creative.

Our achievements in life will always be determined by how hard we worked for them.

NRM: What are your favorite lines in the book?

Please tell us why.

Thomas Schuler: “We are each capable of becoming something tomorrow that today we are not!”

This is one of the great truths of the Metamorphyx Journey; it remains the hope and inspiration of all men and women. On a personal level, this is our God-enabled capacity to grow in our faith, renew our minds, transform our character, become more compassionate and generous, and to be forgiven for reckless chapters of life.

That empowers each of us to build a new future after calamitous decisions, devastating circumstances, and crushing defeats.

“Nothing in life prepares a parent for the death of their child. It hammers a sharp and sudden spike into the heart. But today, in a new chapter of life . . . Vanessa’s

death opened pathways [I] never imagined.” Such is the Metamorphyx Journey. It’s the story of reconciling the preposterous notion that our relationship with God sometimes pivots on his willingness to wound us deeply because he loves so intensely.”

My six-year-old daughter’s death forever and permanently changed my family’s trajectory in life. For many months, we struggled to survive; my marriage and faith hung by a perilous thread. But God used this tragedy in a miraculous way. It was the pivot point that led to a fifteen-year work in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. Today, there is a school there that is dedicated to my daughter and boasts of eight hundred students.

“I still have a visceral reaction to the notion of victimhood. I’ve been through enough of life to know that wearing that title is a choice—or, worse, a self-imposed proclamation about one’s life. Victimhood . . . doesn’t embrace change. It’s a death knell to life purpose, poisoning the mind, contributing to learned helplessness, and scuttling initiative.”

This is a foundational tenet of the Metamorphyx Journey.

Embracing life’s purpose rejects the curse of victimhood. Instead, it chooses a pathway of faith and healing.

“When trials or tragedy find their way into your life, will you move toward God or run from him? ‘A crisis of belief is not a calamity in your life [says Henry Blackaby] . . . but a turning point where you must make a decision. You must decide what you truly believe about God.’’ No one can ever “practice” enough for a devastating life event. But a foundational grounding in the essentials of life-giving faith can be crucial when flipped upside-down in the rapids of life. As a former kayaker, I subscribe wholeheartedly to a key life experience premise; practice riding your kayak of life in a swimming pool before tackling Class 5 rapids. Know too, that frigid river water will still “snatch your breath away. Survival, though, depends on calmly executing a wellpracticed writing technique, not punching out of the boat.”

“When [Horatio] Spafford wrote the poem, It Is Well With My Soul, he had lost nearly everything he valued in life— his only son to illness, his business holdings in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and his four daughters to a shipping disaster in the Atlantic Ocean. Yet, miraculously, it was well with his soul. That should make one think: what does it take for it to be well with our souls?”

This is the question that Metamorphyx: Embracing Life Experience, Life Change, and Life Purpose answers. One must read the book to discover it.

In order for readers to obtain a greater understanding of the meaning of life, transformation, and purpose, Thomas M. Schuler will transport them to another world where life is recreated. A revival of faith in God to help your spirit become stronger, as well as accepting and reconciling your own failures with true healing from within.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

11

Featured

Fiction Addiction Address: 1175 Woods Crossing Rd #2, Greenville, SC 29607 Owner: Jill Hendrix

J

ill Hendrix founded Fiction Addiction in May 2001 in Greenville, SC. Jill grew up in Greenville, graduated magna cum laude from Yale University with a B.A. in history, and then moved to Brooklyn, NY, where she briefly worked for St. Martin’s Press as an editorial assistant.

She then worked for Juno Online Services and a series of internet startups. When the dot-com crash came she decided to move back home and open Fiction Addiction.

Fiction Addiction began as a used bookstore. It carried only fiction for approximately 3 days before Jill listened to her customers’ requests and loosened her strictures. By 2009, the store had converted to an inventory of new books and started the popular Book Your Lunch author event series.

The store has moved 3 times over its 20 years of existence.

When the store was closed to the public for 2 weeks during the COVID-19 outbreak in April 2020, we moved three doors down into our current space, which is a cozy 1,000 square feet. We are now offering a Patreon membership, hosting Virtual Events, and offering curbside pickup, but no matter how crazy the world gets our mission remains to discover and recommend books we feel are worth our customers’ time to read.

12

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Bookstores

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

13

Featured

Downtown Books and Art Gallery Address: 414 W 6th St. San Pedro, CA 90731 Owner: Mike Rivero & Ksenia Smirnoff

D

owntown Books and Art Gallery, located in the historic Downtown San Pedro Art District CA, is a lovely book store. They also have a custom framing, matting business with a dedicated Art Gallery that has shown great artists like Conrad Buff, Norman Styles Chamberlain, and Clara Tice. Downtown Books and Art Gallery has one of the best collections of antiquarian books in Los Angeles and a great collection of books in Spanish. One of their specialties is great American authors like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Henry Miller, and of course the legendary LA and San Pedro poet Charles Bukowski.

Until 1983, this location was home to The Giant Bookstore which held events, book signings, and poetry readings, in fact, Charles Bukowski used to hang out here and he did a poetry reading in this exact location on August 23, 1983.

Downtown Books and Art Gallery is owned and operated by Mike Rivero and Ksenia Smirnoff. Mike Rivero has been at this current location for over twenty years. Mike is a painter who studied under Michael Dancer and Neil Nagy in the early 1990s. His Cuban Band Calle 6 has been performing Cuban Music in the South Bay for many years.

Before going into business with Mike, Ksenia Smirnoff was one of his bookstore customers. Ksenia specializes in children’s literature and Russian literature. She manages the bookstore and she hosts many events such as book signings and poetry readings as well as their legendary Wednesday Night Film Group where she shows and discusses many classic films of all genres.

14

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Bookstores

Shades of Pemberley

Address: 126 N. Broad St. Albertville, AL 35950 Owner: Brandi Atchison

S

hades of Pemberley is a new and used bookstore that was 5 years in the making before it finally opened. I was working on it and desperately wanting to press forward with it, but God kept saying “not yet”. Then, one day, in late October 2017 I received a phone call from a lady who owned a building in a city called Jasper - it’s about 80 miles away.

A man she had rented the building to had opened a used bookstore then left it. She was trying to find someone to take the books. I immediately jumped on the offer. We opened our doors for business on Dec 19, 2017 When God says it’s time, he will provide the way. Since opening, we have more than doubled the inventory of new and used books. We feature a local authors wall, that we proudly display Alabama authors’ books on, which has grown tremendously since opening.

The response from the community has been nothing short of wonderful. We are looking forward to a long and prosperous future here in our hometown.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

15

Featured Author

Jeff Thiele INTVW by Sarah Anne

Author Jeff Thiele uses writing as a kind of meditation. His goal is to share a little bit of himself with his readers while also providing a fresh perspective on their lives. One summer off from college, he began journaling, which evolved into the creation of a story, and thus his novel was born.

NRM got the opportunity to speak with Jeff about his inspiration, his opinion on the societal role of a writer, and his creative process while writing The Golden Nugget.

NRM: When did you realize you wanted to be a writer? Who or what inspired your style in writing or the identity you portray as a writer?

JEFF THIELE: I have never consciously decided I was going to be a writer in fact I don’t feel I have invested the time in the craft to deserve that title but I have always felt I could express myself well through writing and to my surprise have come up with some material that I thought might be worthy of publishing and that others may be interested in. I can’t recall any real inspiration from one source that inspired my style of writing and the only identity I’m trying to portray through my writing is myself and my feelings as pure as I can.

NRM: What was your creative process in writing The Golden Nugget? How would this relate to the theme Solstice and Equinox?

JEFF THIELE: My creative process was very simple in writing “The Golden Nugget”. I began a journal during a summer off from college as I was told it was good for aspiring authors to

16

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

keep a journal as a writing practice. At the time there was not much happening in my life which made the journal writing slow and tedious so I started writing a story. I was told you should write whatever came to mind so this is what I did and the first thing that came to mind(I must have been really bored) was the nursery rhyme “Jack and Jill”. Maybe you’ve heard it, it starts like this “Jack and Jill went up the hill to get a pale of water” that morphed into “Every day Peter went to a stream nearby his cottage to get water for his family. You see, Peter had a well, but it had gone dry.” Those are the first lines of the story and I continued on from there.

If I were to use my creative process to write on the themes “Solstice and Equinox” I would take the subjects starting with “Solstice” and just start writing.

The “Summer Solstice” was upon us the sun reaching its highest point in the sky and drawing my attention to the lofty dreams I had within. At some point, I had to realize my life could go no other direction but up. I had seen my lowest point, my “Winter Solstice” when life had lost its luster and my motivation and will were sapped from within. Out of this pit, I had to drag myself step by step, one part of me kicking and screaming all the way not wanting to face the world again. But day by day it became easier.

As I forced myself to live again I knew I was done with backward steps and to achieve this “Summer Solstice” in my life my dreams had to be my guide taking me from the mundane lows and time wasted on the transient and temporal to time spent and given to

Featured Author

the life I was created to live achieving the purpose I was placed here for. I had a part to play as does every man, woman, and child plucked from eternity and placed on this spinning globe and it was non-negotiable. I now knew I only need believe and as I beheld this light providing all to every living thing freely and without judgment, extinguishing the darkness and flooding us with the light of its love, belief welled up within me. At once I realized this “Summer Solstice” represented my life taken to its highest level, shedding light on those around me without judgment, giving myself freely and without limit to all, and loving completely and with no shame until my last breath was given to eternity. And this was my “Summer Solstice”.

That was my creative process in motion. I “just start writing” then go back and read what I’ve written to see what changes need to be made and what I can improve on until I’m satisfied it conveys to the reader what I want it to, in the way I want it to and flows smoothly from idea to idea. The high of this process is the flow of ideas as I’m writing. It is satisfying to be able to convey these ideas to the reader in a manner they would find worthy of reading and hopefully enrich them in some way giving them something positive to take with them into their world. If there is a low I guess it would be in the re-writing/editing process trying to get everything exactly the way I want it. It can be mentally exhausting at times after reading something over and over again trying to come up with the right words in the right succession to make it flow the way I want it to. But when I find what I’m looking for and I’m satisfied with the work I’ve done it is also very rewarding.

NRM: What, in your opinion, is a writer’s role in society in relation to the message you want to relay in your book?

JEFF THIELE: I cannot speak for anyone but myself but my goal in writing is to give my readers something of myself, to hopefully give them a new perspective on their life or motivations, that they would walk away from my work not just having been entertained but believing in something better with a positive feeling they could carry into their daily world that would hopefully improve theirs and the lives of others around them in some way.

NRM: Are you working on something else right now? Share it with us.

JEFF THIELE: I am not currently working on a concrete project but writing is a form of meditation for me so not necessarily every day but when I feel the need or am motivated by a new idea I work on these ideas or write on a theme as I did earlier with the “Summer Solstice” just to keep the creative process flowing and stay in practice but also to stay in touch with myself as a form of meditation.

NRM: What message would you like to relay to your readers?

JEFF THIELE: The message I would like to relay to my readers is simple. Love yourself. You are on this planet for a reason, giving up is never an option. You have something that no single other beings can bring to this planet and the burden and the honor are on you alone.

Be as great as you want to be but in the end, remember all you really need to be is you because you are the miracle!

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

17

Featured Author Literary Work

Rodney H. Dorsey INTVW by Max Betonio

To predict the trajectory of life is impossible; tomorrow is never sure. Our present is only but a ripple effect of our yesterday. These contemplations plague the minds of the young and cynical. I, personally, cannot help but worry about what’s to come. I often find myself disheartened by the world around me, the opportunities I seem to miss, and the unfairness of life itself. This is also because of the amount of information I digest on a daily basis, one of the drawbacks of living in a hyperaware digital age. This jaded mindset can only dampen one’s spirit. Nonetheless, despite all this lack of hopefulness, we cannot allow ourselves to be fazed with such intrusive thoughts.

One thing we can always count on is wisdom from those who are more mature than us. Life should be about shifting perspectives and growth after all. For those who lived in a different generation, we can always look upon their experience and knowledge.

Rodney H. Dorsey is one of the extraordinary people to have lived a life we could all learn from. He writes a compelling journey about his life in his book “Will Nasa Remember Me”. Here, he narrates his life through a humble and honest perspective as one of the first AfricanAmericans to work in NASA. NRM: What compelled you to write your story? Do you think that writing has given you some kind of peace in your life?

Rodney Dorsey: Writing for me was no compulsion. It never was. My autobiography lets me review, and recall my life from an indigent and untaught beginning, through an aggrandizement of learning, of travels, through a time of war, concluding with the intrigues of 40 years within the Apollo and Space Shuttle mission control centers, all within the shadows of the initial American/Russian space race drama,” “There is a secret solace of denoting that we were the only “Negro-Men” to work directly on the Apollo flights during the inception of Negroes to the Infancy of America’s first Orbital Space program.”

There is a certain peace that comes with writing. It allows a deep philosophical introspection into our experiences.

Through writing, we are able to look back on seemingly

18

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

insignificant events that unknowingly shape the character we have today. Dorsey says that these intricacies, complexities, and memories he had written during his time admiring the sunset have compelled him to write his story.

Of course, we cannot deny that pain, hardship, and setbacks are necessary for human life. Dorsey has had his fair share of challenges to overcome before he had his successful career. In his book, he talks about struggles with his family and how he had to endure the consequences of their actions. On top of that, he did not have any proper schooling. This affected his ability to learn and created an educational void.

NRM: Aside from being academically unprepared, what other challenges did you overcome at NASA? Rodney Dorsey: An uninformed and socially isolatedbackward family engenders an ignorance overall, leading to a fear of the novel: of people, of business, the social environment, and later, the aeronautical challenge and of the complexity of the unknowns. These many failings had to be realized, then mitigated or mastered to remain at NASA. But despite all this Dorsey was able to make his way to NASA after serving in the Vietnam-American War and traveling around the world. One should note that NASA is one of the most prestigious work environments in the world and with only military and travel experience, Dorsey faced this challenge head-on. He allowed his practical skills and knowledge to benefit him during this time.

Imagine being a simple boy from a simple town with a simple mind never thinking that the contributions he makes in his lifetime would benefit the world. We could look at the stars and ponder the expanse of the galaxies. How seemingly insignificant our lives are and how little impact we truly have.

In cosmology, it deals with the context of human existence in the universe. In a sense, this proves that life is meaningful. But not everyone can find meaning.

Featured Author Poetry

NRM: In cosmology, we deal with the context of human existence in the universe. What has made this human life meaningful to you?

Rodney Dorsey: My ventures, an existence from Nowhere to Now, and through divinity, has led me to a successful transition from the Then to Now. But still questionable and meaningful, and a part of this life are these quotes: “I shall pass this way but once”, and this unanswered question remains, “does man relate to the entirety of the Universe ?.”

Can these questions be answered within my lifetime?”

Even after all the accomplishments, this author has found ways to be grounded in reality.

NRM: Your book inspires many readers especially those of simple or underprivileged backgrounds? Are there any other words of encouragement you’d like to share with them?

Rodney Dorsey: I have never met an unsuccessful Negro with a BA/BS degree, stay the course. Any job elicits a sense of pride, doing whatever, and we all need one…”

Who you are, where you come from, or the level of privilege you possess is only a percentage of your humanity. What’s important is to be an active participant in life. To be alive is to be intentional about living. It is about allowing ourselves to stumble but even more so about lifting ourselves up.

NRM: You have lived a successful and distinguished career. What keeps you grounded as a person?

Rodney Dorsey: I can speak for only myself, as life for everyone is difficult, with a differing gift and frailty for each of us. For minorities with only a high school diploma who wants success, I followed these rules on page 159 of my autobiography: “In life, you have a long walk to make and one step of that walk is a job. Sometimes a job is on the other side of that racial divide. Cross that racial divide, let it not be there, why even whisper about black this, white that, you’re almost there. Become self-educated, taught, and instructed on the job very quickly. Will Rogers said, “I never met a man I didn’t like,” and Rodney King spoke just as well, “can we all get along?” then you can think that way too. You need first to finish high school, as there are few jobs that you literally cannot do. And after you have secured your first complex, lifetime job, simply think to yourself, it wasn’t easy, it wasn’t promised, now who can I help.

Being an integral part of Black History is important in these modern times. We are thankful that stories like Dorsey’s have come to light. Representation from people of color and other ethnic backgrounds is crucial in empowering the next generation of leaders. Accounts like these bring hope to the silenced and oppressed.

NRM: How important is “representation” (from people of color and other ethnic backgrounds) in film, literature, and media to you? Do you think that the present generation is doing this justice?

Rodney Dorsey: When I was young, Negroes were on few television programs, no commercials, having limited political input from a minorities’ perspective. Today, these needed perspectives are in abundance, covering everything from racism, entertainment, politics, and sports, to name only a few.

Dorsey continues to inspire many readers from underprivileged and different cultural backgrounds.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

19

Literary Work

20

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Fiction

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

21

Artist Profile

The Coffers of Freedom BY: GENEA RUPERT

22

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Feature

C

reativity is innate in humanity. I cannot comprehend a world where creativity doesn’t exist; from the system that binds us to the moral ascendancy that weaves our individuality, we are undeniably entangled by creativity. Yet, there are circumstances in life that disects our priorities and most of the time those circumstances cut us from creating; being our true selves.

“All children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.” -Pablo Picasso Humans long to express themselves. In this vast universe, where we are merely specs of reality and time, we long to be heard and that brings us back to our basic individual creativity. Creativeness will always try to leak out of us. From the clothes we wear, the shoes we buy, to the food we choose to eat; how we go about our daily lives; our routines. Eventually, our creativity unravels even in the most unlikely manner and events.

Kring Demetrio, a freelance illustrator from the Philippines, shares to NRM her beginnings starting from the halls of her great grand uncle’s folkloric museum to the relentless industry of creatives.

Kring imparts to us the journey of being an artist and returning to where we—the free thinkers and dreamers—truly belong. We belong to art. Always has been.

NRM: Where and when did your creative journey start?

How did it contribute to you as a grown artist now or how did that moment give you an impact? Does it have the same impact/effect on you now?

Kring Demetrio: Drawing has been my earliest interest and it was easily nurtured by my mother by being my first teacher. One of the strongest experiences that gave impact to my work even till the present is my first visit to my great grand uncle’s folkloric museum where my mother was briefly an archivist and my father was part of the archaeological team in their expeditions. Besides the old bones and coffins of our pre-colonial ancestors, there was a space within the museum dedicated to local artists who portrayed popular local myths and legends in various styles. One of them was a close-up portrait of an aswang, a vampiric creature who eats the livers of their victims.

Instead of embedding fear in my young mind, the picture only stirred curiosity in me. There was something raw and powerful in that image that I still try to recreate in my illustrations. It had a strong identity in its style and carried a blunt honesty in its lines and color. It did not look polished in my memory, it looked like the artist decided to nonchalantly scribble without a plan onto the canvas—and this aspect was what attracted me to the picture.

With chaos within its lines, the portrait emitted raw energy that seemed to connect to older forces as mysterious as the subject.

In that image,

“I saw freedom in creation and I discovered I wanted to do the same.”

NRM: How does your creative process work in terms of giving everyday scenarios and common concepts a fresh and unique perspective? How do you cope with art block?

Kring Demetrio: I found that assigning narratives is the best way to elevate common concepts. A story will always interest an audience and also provide the necessary elements to further explore the world of the image one is creating.

However, in an art block, narratives don’t usually work well to spark motivation. Like blockages, sometimes it’s all about looking for an alternate route. When one creative channel is unable to produce work, briefly going through an indirect route may help whether it is learning a language, a sport, diving into gardening, or a newly discovered passion in theater music—any activity that piques your interest can also inspire you create with it, eventually sparking the motivation to draw. If there is a stall in your momentum, the only way forward is to keep creating with whatever tools you have at hand. That is why it is always imperative that artists nurture various interests beyond their main body of work.

NRM: In your online portfolio, you described “DUNGO” as a representation of a woman feeling a softness, home, and growth. Can you share with us your inspiration in creating this along with your two other contributed artworks: NARCISSA and GREEN? Does this somehow reflect a beginning and an ending (Solstice and Equinox)?

Kring Demetrio: DUNGO is a piece inspired by Davey Langit’s song with the same name as it is created as its single cover. The song is about a nourishing love, a love that comforts and helps them grow. I figured that it would be best to portray a version of Thumbelina. Yes, Thumbelina, a woman born out of a flower— and this aspect of the tale seems best to demonstrate that feeling of nourishment and comfort from love.

Both NARCISSA and GREEN depict a cycle of life and death.

Narcissa drowns in her shallow vanity so ephemeral beauty sprouts from her death. It was inspired by the old Greek myth of Narcissus. Green depicts a dead and forgotten statue in the roots of the tree underneath the rot but flowers and moss grow from him. In the aftermath of typhoon Odette hitting Cebu late last year, I saw how people coped with loss--the daily scenes of survival was what inspired the creation of the piece. So yes, one can say that these images depict the cusp between ending and a new beginning.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

23

Artist Profile

24

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Feature

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

25

Artist Profile

NRM: What were your aspirations as an artist when you began your artistic journey and how is it going so far?

What expectation vs reality moments came to you and how did you strive further?

Kring Demetrio: Years before illustration, I was into manga and animation and so I aspired to become an animation artist. But as I grew older, I realized that the options that may lead me there are unavailable from where I lived. So, I busied myself reading about the old masters and art history instead. While I was studying my bachelor’s course, I’d spend time in the library perusing through every art book I found. It helped that I also found a group of artists who taught techniques and gave critiques to my work.

When I eventually had the means to move to a larger city, I was finally able to start my career as a children’s book illustrator. That was the moment I decided I wanted to illustrate books. I began to crave the romanticism of opening a page and seeing my art in it just like the library books I used to read. But what I thought was a short learning experience, took more than four years to improve.

Practice will only work if one has the interest to do it. So, it took some time to find my voice in illustration. Deciding to do freelance full-time would then become the hardest decision I had to make.

Having no real network in the industry, I didn’t know how to start getting work. So, again, I read and studied the careers of my favorite illustrators and learned that putting my work out in the right places gives me a small opportunity to be seen by clients.

So I created a website and pretended I knew what I was doing.

I eventually landed my first big work and stumbled so many times in that area—I didn’t even know how to make an invoice! When I finally had the resources to get online classes from prominent artists in the industry, it was there that I learned everything else— from composition to styles, managing client work to emailing art directors, and polishing my portfolio. With so few options, it took more than seven years to learn all the things I could have learned from a degree in Illustration abroad.

NRM: With who and what you are as an artist now, where do you stand in your journey: beginning, middle, end? How do you want to inspire others to continue creating? Do you have any advice or words of inspiration?

Kring Demetrio: No matter how many years I have been working in the illustration industry, it will always feel like I’ve only just started. There are still so many pathways to explore and I haven’t even finished looking thoroughly at one.

“I hope that through my artistic journey, I’d be able to inspire younger artists to keep following their own creative stories. To the artists thinking of giving up on art mostly because of the algorithm or the minimal audience; keep being creative. The only way to shield yourself from that kind of frustration is to enjoy the work you do yourself.”

The numbers shouldn’t matter. Have your friends as clients, take small art commissions if necessary, have a different work on the side to support your art career; create a space where bad algorithms and discouraging voices can’t reach you. The more you create, the more you become better at it. However, if you feel the need to take a rest from the grind, take your time and recuperate. It is equally important to take care of yourself as well as your work. Find the time to take yourself away from work and rest.

Besides continuing practice, never forget to keep learning. No matter how good one can get, there’s always room to learn and apply new and better things. However, avoid equating the constant hustle to creative growth. Growth is slow and mindful, the grind is just a consistent barrage of results in varying degrees.

Remember to analyze and critique your work. Without being aware of what went wrong or right with the previous piece, it will be difficult to be better for the next piece.

And lastly, enjoy and trust the process.

As I go forward with my career, I realized that the pace I’m taking in my career depends on the resources I have and it may take forever to get where I want to be. But I am willing to traverse that long journey as long as I am happy with the work that I’m doing.

It doesn’t matter if it takes a hundred years as long as I still enjoy drawing for myself.

26

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

“Enjoy discovering new techniques and trying new styles. Your art grows as you grow, be free to explore it wherever you want it to go.”

Feature

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

27

Contributor’s Corner

Wisdom of Transformations The

Hannah Grace Greer with

By: Regie Vocales

The world is no stranger to phases and changes. Seasons change, people change. Systems and traditions shift within centuries and millennia. But even if changes are happening all around us, very few are only able to grasp and live by the wisdom behind them—and NRM has found one who did.

Hannah Grace Greer, as a child, once aspired to become a singer until the challenges of adolescence overshadowed her.

At fifteen, her passion took a turn towards writing poems, and poetry welcomed her with opportunities. She began joining poetry clubs in high school that led her to decide to take creative writing as her major.

Hannah was in love with singing and had thought about competing, but the shift to poetry was rather easy and bound.

“When I think on how I came into poetry, I know that for me it was because poetry in its form is most tied to song(s)... (poetry) awakened a passion that is a lot more life-sustaining and fulfilling than the act of singing ever was for me.”

Hannah’s writing is mostly influenced by Romanticism, also taking inspiration from fairytales, Greek and Celtic mythology, music, and spirituality. Although she has been pouring her creative juices into poetry, her style does not stray far away from her first love of singing.

“My writing inclination can vary from poem to poem, but generally it has been referred to as bardic, which is a good way to say that I like my poems to act as stories or glimpses that you would find in larger stories.”

28

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

When the pandemic hit the globe and plagued the streets, Hannah’s time for writing became more constricted since staying at home and multiple house chores also required her attention, which can be draining at times. As a student, Hannah has already been juggling her time between schoolwork and self-expression, and the lockdown has made it more of a stretch. Added to it is having to heal from a car accident and the occasional migraine and fatigue.

But given the setbacks and time constraints of quarantine, Hannah is not one to back down, and she has incredible advice for those who are experiencing creative blocks: “My biggest advice would be to go somewhere you don’t spend most of your time in/at or maybe even somewhere you’ve never been. I find that if I ever get stuck, I can go outside, and that can immensely help the writing process.”

She also recommends using other media such as Fine Art America, Google Images, YouTube, and many others to revitalize creative flow.

Three of Hannah’s most valued works are featured here in NRM: Angel’s Outpost, The Creation of the Sea, and Riddle #1.

For Hannah, Angel’s Outpost has likely the most interesting origin.

Poetry

“On my drive back home on the Pennsylvania turnpike some time ago, I spotted a dark wood building dating to about the 1800s, an outpost for travelers, and I got the title for the poem that day. About a month or two later, I sat down, the poem (was) not premeditated, and somehow found this 15th century Georgian Hymn music (432 Hz) on YouTube and the poem just flowed from the music to me, and then was edited sometime later.”

Creation of the Sea is Hannah’s first prose poetry after stumbling upon a mermaid-themed playlist one day.

“I remember being really delighted with how it came out because it (was a) completely unexpected poem.” she muses.

Her third poem, Riddle #1, is inspired by Old English riddles.

“I ended up really enjoying inhabiting the persona and the voice of the riddle whilst attempting to provide a balance between hint, imagery, and engagement.” Hannah currently has six riddles, and Riddle #1 is a close tie for her favorite.

“If it’s good, although good is a subjective word, I would encourage those undergoing their own solstice/equinox to embrace it. If it’s not so good, I would encourage those to keep looking onward to see the light yet to come. And then when the world is shifted right again, to think on what to take from the experience.”

Hannah is focused on continuing to write and grow to improve in every work. She’s interested in witnessing different music compositions change the way poems are formed and rhythmed. She’s also exploring fiction to create her own fullfledged myths.

Currently, Hannah is working on her poetry chapbook A Hero’s Journey which is modeled from the different stages of the hero’s journey by Joseph Campbell. “The poems are a mix of imaginative, mythic, and memoir-like. Angels’ Outpost is (the fourth) in the collection, and I hope to get more of those poems published soon.”

On the topic of solstice and equinox, Hannah shares to NRM her insight: “Solstice and equinox are events of transformation.

Maybe these transformations are slight or maybe they even get hindered, but the possibility of transformation and of something awakening is what makes these events so important to us.”

For Hannah, solstice and equinox symbolize the life that covers us with an enchanted umbrella over our heads so we can see our own trials under, and art, as a medium, visualizes it in which we can get a clearer view of ourselves and the world.

Symbolically in her life, Hannah’s solstice and equinox came when she went android for a year and was shaped by the experience and came home seeing things from a different light. She was able to see life from the outside looking in and began to value fewer but healthier relationships rather than multiple acquaintances.

Hannah imparts advice to people also undergoing their own period of solstice and equinox:

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

29

Contributor’s Corner

30

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Non-Fiction Fiction

An Artist’s Wisdom MARTHA PATTERSON ABOUT HER For some artists, a background of joyful vision or disheartening experience may be a strong foundation for one to pursue art.

However, for Martha, it is purely a familial matter. Growing up in Newton, Massachusetts, she attributes her artistic quality to her mother’s encouragement.

“I need to be creative - always. It’s in my blood. My Mom was like that. Without it I’m not happy. There’s that old cliche “art is a rat,” but I love it anyway.”

Admirable and unique, art is an essential thing for Martha which she draws happiness from. Although debunked, that theory of seventy percent of one’s intelligence inherited from the mother may apply to Martha. Coincidentally, we may try to identify qualities that are similar to our parents’; an experience that’s gratifying or possibly an indirect way of holding our parents accountable. Nevertheless, it must be comforting for her to have a supporting character to identify with.

Now 65, She is no stranger to guilty pleasures like cigarette smoking.

“I’m all right but I do have the bad habit of cigarette smoking. I quit once but took it up again.”

Her habit seems imaginable as cigarette smoking is commonly associated with writers, inexplicably. With no intention of promoting it, a cigarette is enjoyable for smokers—minding their own business and definitely aware. Lifted and lit, a stick allows one for a quiet time where thoughts, together with the smoke, wafts gently.

“I listen to the radio (music and news) and sometimes do needlework for a hobby. It’s very labor-intensive but soothing and the finished work can be beautiful.”

For pastime, she resorts to relatable things such as listening to the radio. Music makes one succumb to the playful rhythm and results in us being taken aback by its relatable lyrics.

Like her, it comes normally to stumble upon news when you meander on the radio from station to station or by your own

volition. Another relatable hobby of hers, especially for people who enjoy staying at home and enjoying a simple and soothing task, is needlework. Free from worry and anxiety, needlework is satisfyingly undemanding yet creative.

ON NEW YORK AND CAREER “ Manhattan was bold, busy, energizing, sometimes violent, and full of crazy talent.”

Passionate and pure, Getting Over New York shares with us the hardships that she went through. Broadway, as she describes it, is a different animal. A wild, savage land feeding off aspiring talents wanting to make a mark. A variety of productions, plays, and music projecting a certain allure to which artists are fascinated. Countless opportunities combined with uncertainty, she reflects on how the competition was unforgiving there.

“They’ve all done worthwhile creative work before arriving there; they’re just trying to prove it again and make a living at it. And most fail, simply because there are so many others there trying to do the same thing.”

Art, when pursued as an occupation, is an irony to its personal and unique characteristics. To be acknowledged demands a distinct touch from the artist only to result in the possibility of failure from doing the same thing with others alike.

“Don’t give up unless you get too burned out to continue.”

Over time she felt her health failing and struggling with it made her resort to leaving New York, eventually. However, she shares with us her wisdom on weighing passion versus health. Remembering the experience, she always thought that she would have been an actress or singer-songwriter had she not left New York. A career is not worth it if it means losing more of you than feeling fulfilled. She encourages those in the performing career to keep at it, but a phase of being burned out is a sufficient reason to go otherwise.

“My existence is once again satisfying, with the rewards of recognition for my work and the sense of a possible creative and artistic mission.”

Art is unconstrained. Moving out from New York, allowed her to re-dedicate her purpose for art and is now finally at peace as she comfortably describes. A career goes a long way and fulfills the necessities of an individual. However, dedicating art to places free from comparison allows it to be more rewarding for the artist. One is immersed into the rich experience of the artist’s touch by solely looking at art’s ability to express. Simply dedicating it to one place will diminish this value for expression.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

31

Literary Work

32

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

33

Literary Work

antonevmeshkin

34

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

The Sharp Weight of Inheritance NNADI SAMUEL “I do not know if hurt is my birthright” — Jason B. Crawford knuckle withholds an English suffering, clenched in fierce strain. my unsheathed hands, hurled spacelike, knifing a worship. there are times my loin becomes a violation of religion: object to be cast out. times agony was in vogue— how we put ourselves to torture. here, my rib aligns to a wounded score arrowed by grace, like endnotes. gravity lifts anguish towards the mouth. a prayer undone. teeth tightening a default sorrow, gnashed in the way a plectrum to my vein spew blues, when honed afresh.

we run out of anguish & grief, fisting a rhythm out of wrath.

I untuck my palm, rummaging for a tender torture, an ache sufficient to match my hardship. still, my loin hymns an awful song. my rib, strung into a French harp. accident seems the rawest kind of harmony: weight— injured into hemorrhage.

‘I long to be damaged way out of the ordinary.’ look how we phrase a casualty shuttling in between violence & voice. the ghastly lyric: a killer tune. rough decibel smashed onto our jawline. the neat chaos, outsending after-susurrations. a wounded melody. no one born of reed should suffer this long, fisting a rhythm out of wrath.

Nnadi Samuel (he/him/his) holds a B.A. in English & literature from the University of Benin. His works have been previously published/forthcoming in Suburban Review, Seventh Wave Magazine, NativeSkin lit Magazine, North Dakota Quarterly, Quarterly West, FIYAH, Fantasy Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, The Capilano Review, Contemporary Verse 2, Gutter Magazine, Carte Blanche, Trampset, Beestung Magazine, The Elephant Magazine & elsewhere. Winner of the Miracle Monocle Award for Ambitious Student Writers 2021(University of Louisville), Lakefly Poetry Contest 2021 (Wisconsin), the International Human Right Arts Festival Award 2021, and Canadian Open Drawer contest 2020. He got an honorable mention for the 2021 Betty L. Yu and Jin C.Yu Creative Writing Prize(College Category). He is the author of “Reopening of Wounds” & “Subject Lessons” (forthcoming). He reads for U-Right Magazine. He tweets @Samuelsamba10.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

35

Literary Work

When I say “I long to be Damaged” I mean, way out of the Ordinary NNADI SAMUEL I command this body to lose luster, for me to be tainted with wrath. punishment that I am— dismantling empathy in vows, to harbor a lesser pain. answerable to only the pleasure of my aching.

I am boundless with dark grief. you’d know how my woe torches, how my sorrow laps flame: a reddish resistance towards whatever twirls supplication into sore throat, dragging my mutant breath, till my ducts are slacked.

I bear my deadliest darkness like a reliquary. a bright agony knives my collarbone. in your spare time, say a prayer for this ruin,

36

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

this relic, this rare accident of mud & breath, knocked down by the craze of living.

I too own my wound in the elegance of a long stain. here, the stretchmark. here, the hurt shaped into a ligature— the way ache cling onto the body, the body onto ache.

I tarnish my skin to mold blisters. if this cost me damage, I consent to the torment that is my upbringing.

I’ve guarded this suffering my whole life. this body shouldn’t be a yardstick for misfortune. won’t you pardon me, if I say I lack the fire to lamp my way through the next minute?

Poetry

cassettebleue

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

37

Literary Work

cassettebleue

38

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

The Business of Dialects NNADI SAMUEL The way my tongue believes in this silence scrapes blue for the sky to pitch with colours. stars brittle in rust, I loved my stature to one fattening near.

I lost my taste to the pain of dialects, & warm my voice like faint gratitude on the lips of clime. a sigh brews me close to my father. first time to see my old man choke in his tea, & spill it’s crumbs like endnotes on a wild magazine of milk. our roof shrinks with last shots of rain, & the war lures me to sleep. in my dreams, I made shrapnels with the chumbled snow.

I lay on my belly to soak the bite & tongue distance— the length of my father’s feet.

I catch my breath in the middle of a shell, where silence steals the echoes from me.

I reek of sibilants, the tone of my father. softness made of rustles, to weave sullen deprived words.

I chirp the sediments on my lips to know the business of dialects, & trade them on my skin like a lost groove.

I am pressed to this rhythm, this song that shreds me to bed. from the note, I sustain a shrill. to halt is to hurt my father’s dream.

I stir a distance, to rob me of my siblings. in the blank, I pride my father’s vision.

I sting my son, & ditch my tongue into a boiled trap to have all the bites in different folds. antivenoms shouldn’t rub us off this bliss, this dialect seared to our tongues like brimstones. our race lay close to their legs, & make sprinting this way. we are silent with our breaths, yet our trackwalk read miles.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

39

Literary Work

giorgiorossi73

40

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

Oral Prosthetics for Mouthing a Requiem NNADI SAMUEL In lieu of a detailed backwash & camo flatulence, the scout cork their cheeks. tongue, unfurled as cartridge spilling bullet notes. a gruesome battalion, summoned to shoulder guns as refrain.

I hush & I’m neat for a soldier.

I love my puff of air.

I love my chest to heave the new mantra at break-time, & crash like some software.

war is old testament. so I weave my lung into a fervent Lamentation, gaslight it to chorus its own dirge in high pitch:

I’m always forgetful with mid stanzas. their ejectives, pushing me to mess the next syllable on jawline, & name it a velar plus— to boast our morale, shred the norm

a ricochet blent in some tonic sol-fa, ranked in the hierarchy of G major. our lieutenant lips— a seizured vibrato. their acoustic positioning, aimless as a scattergun. and we’re paid this way: to bruise our tongue on soft palate, with native remorse nudging our cheeks— phoneme gassed to birth a pregnant surge that sits on G clef to mourn our dead lots. the colonial feel of it, taking chains through our brave gums. it doesn’t stop the escape of breeze slithering from the caves of our mouth, whitewashed with a dental sponge.

holding them in the most vulnerable way, wet ripe for fresh orders. my hand thunderstruck into a salute. you become part of the military by being parcel of the time bomb that climaxes your labial region. duct, drenched in E-flat. to obey a clarion call is to answer to a certain breathlessness. in no distant time, mics will be added to our badge.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

41

Literary Work

elzeva

42

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

Surrender NNADI SAMUEL “We go where there is love, to the river.

I pull her under four times, until we are rivered” — Natalie Diaz surrender— yet another verb I do not partake in. & when I do my grief sets with the sun; waning in bronze delight. praise happiness for its gift of colours. here, we quit on rhythm. here, I resign to memorizing your walk pace. how you roam. legs sashaying for lyrics: a blood-soft orison. and on christianing the wound, I praise my tough loin— deathless to life’s quick blow. praise all the ways I taught it to rot, how to wear away.

To think I spent a lifetime, rehearsing what death looks like across border. perhaps, happiness is fashionable. perhaps, it is ‘joy going their third round on our black skin: the last lap, knowing us through a fluent migration. post colonial, we landlock the nearby sea. fold our skin into boats like origamis: a tortuous art. what’s there to quit, when we’re right here, afloat & wind vulnerable to storm-dialect in tepid and furious language. my immigrant voice, still relying on note books to orate forth sentences & mid salutations. the ‘goodevrin’ ‘goodevrin’, ragged everywhere across my catchphrase.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

43

Literary Work

karakotsya

44

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

Etymology of Tap Dance as a Manual for Break-ups NNADI SAMUEL Say I come to a halt, understand I’m deity-bound to this nagging sound rooting for my calmness. whatever her loud threats are, understand I ain’t stopping.

there’s bound to be something about flexibility that hijacks grief, dodges dinner, could slack in a second & that’s it: a fleeting prowess.

I begin this derby with dust, with the thickness of hoofs wounding the atmosphere: my riot drunk steps.

I shouldn’t be the harbinger of this roaming havoc

the ache longs to know me badly, and I bare out my ruptured nerves to it. what way to explain the imbalance of want.

dear lord. if we must be tethered, it must be now. the high and low octaves, spanning eight degrees round my ghetto waist.

I double over with loss, reward my indecency with each track manipulated by God’s roving hands. my choreographer thinks: no one ever lazarused a dance step till zeal makes the Jesus-move.

Oh! how passion suffers us, when it can’t place us in demand.

& allow pain consume the bloody lecture gushing from me: a homework of bones, wound-fascinated in giving hurt quite the shit show.

I’m enslaved to whoever steals the breath from my lungs on hearing her walk steps. a bursting sugar-rush. my sweetheart, knifing the diabetes from afar. we die whatever bonds us together, trash our love deals on the floor— like expired contracts.

I am not one to exaggerate a crime scene. but for now, I barely trust this dagger of a wife.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

45

Literary Work

46

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Fiction

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

47

Literary Work

maridein

48

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Non-Fiction

GETTING OVER NEW YORK a memoir Martha Patterson

B

ig, cosmopolitan, cities can be exciting places to live but they can present a danger to one’s psyche. So can the pursuit of fame. I’d lived in London, with its blocks of green gardens in almost every neighborhood and friendly pubs for lunch or drinks at night; I’d lived in San Francisco, surrounded by brown hills and boasting the beautiful San Francisco Bay, on which I sailed once with a young businessman who invited me; and I was originally from Massachusetts, which had apple orchards and fields of pumpkins in the autumn as well as proximity to surrounding New England, with its gorgeous leaves turning orange and gold in the fall and the pleasure of eating lobster on the shore in Maine during the summer.

But New York City was a different animal - it had riotous taxicabs crowding the streets, skyscrapers, loads of fashion-conscious boutiques, and citizens who couldn’t care less about how loudly they expressed themselves while walking down Broadway. Manhattan was bold, busy, energizing, sometimes violent, and full of crazy talent. It was

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

49

Literary Work filled with ambitious businessmen, retailers, and artists, and it was glamorous. The chaos was not without a price: four times while living there I was robbed or had my pockets picked, and the homeless occupied every street corner in the 1980s. I felt surrounded by the world at large.

By the time I was 34, I’d had many day jobs, including being a legal secretary, handling reception at The Bottom Line nightclub, administrative work at an Off-Off-Broadway theatre, I’d recorded a demo of songs I’d written, and I’d appeared as a leading lady in a few plays. But New York was aggressive and competitive – it seemed as if everyone I knew went there to become successful, if not as an actor or musician, then at least something else, and I was no different.

I didn’t succeed. My life there involved endless worry about money and the desperate feeling that I’d never make my mark.

Everyone in the performing arts in New York thinks they’re talented and many of them are. They’ve all done worthwhile creative work before arriving there; they’re just trying to prove it again and make a living at it. And most fail, simply because there are so many others there trying to do the same thing.

It used to nearly kill me dwelling on why some people “make it” in show business and some don’t. Was it just a matter of being in the right place at the right time, or sticking around long enough, or was it having connections, or was it a question of sheer ability? I’d known many actors and musicians who were if anything more talented than me, but none of us were getting anywhere. We were puttering around performing on the fringes of the entertainment industry but always doing other things for income. And that wasn’t why we were in show biz. So when I left New York I thought my dreams were unfulfilled.

I became depressed and paranoid over a love-affairturned-sour and harassment from a boss. I felt incompetent at everything and afraid of people I met. I started imagining people were talking about me, even newscasters on the radio and TV. Later in the hospital it was explained to me by a psychiatrist that I’d descended into psychosis.

One night in a state of extreme distress I walked to an Upper West Side church – though any religious building, even a temple or synagogue, would have done. Even though I’d never been terribly religious, I was looking for faith, for God, for any kind of “salvation.” I was surprised these parishioners were having a service in the evening. Several dozen of them sat scattered among the pews and were listening intently to a preacher. In my fright I sat next to a man who looked to me like the Devil – he had sweat pouring down his face, since it was a hot summer night, and what resembled an evil grin. But I was lonely and desperate and thought maybe there I’d find an answer to my mental and emotional pain.

After the service the minister asked if anyone wanted to speak. I did. I walked towards the altar and the members asked who I was, if I had family. I said, “Yes,” but I thought one of them had a gun, because he kept one arm behind his back, and, fearful, I imagined I was going to be murdered. I began screaming.

50

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

These religious New Yorkers gathered in a circle around me, chanted and said a prayer, then asked if I wanted to go out for hamburgers with them. I was so scared I said no, that I was a vegetarian, and besides, I didn’t know these people at all. They were strangers. I walked home feeling like an idiot and told a friend who approached me at my apartment building about the experience. We went for a walk around the block, but I still felt foolish and afraid. Shortly after that I attempted suicide by cutting my arteries with a razor blade and wound up on a psychiatric ward. I was bewildered and couldn’t understand what had happened to my prior life, which had always seemed freer from worry than it was now. When I was discharged from the hospital I returned to life in my apartment but began thinking about moving home to my parents’.

But it would be hard giving up on dreams. The week before I left Manhattan, I walked up Fifth Avenue staring up one last time at the skyscrapers that I loved and for which New York is so famous. A street vendor asked, “Did you just arrive in the city?” She’d noticed the impression the tall buildings made on me.

“No,” I answered. “I’ve lived here for ten years.”

She shrugged nonchalantly and returned to minding her cartful of jewelry and scarves. I felt heartbroken, but thought I had little choice but to move. I could barely make sense of the world, what people said to me and what the meaning of everything was. Like many despairing homeless people, even though I did have a roof over my head, I’d lost my mind.

In the end it was the Sun, or more likely some semblance of my forgotten God, that tossed me out of New York. It was Memorial Day. I’d been listening to the radio but thought the announcer, who was playing a composition by Giuseppe Verdi and said in English his name would be Joseph Green, was talking about colors to me personally. Green seemed to represent envy, red love, yellow the appearance of Christ, and white mean purity. Every color people wore on the street seemed to me to have special significance -- and the words of the innocent radio announcer gave me the creeps.

Tormented by my demons, I left my apartment and walked towards Central Park, feeling pulled as though by a rope tied to my waist. I came upon kids playing softball in the Sheep Meadow, and stopped to watch for a while.

Then I wandered off and came upon a black man, a Jamaican with scars on his face, who was smoking a joint.

Sitting down on the bench with him, I asked if I could have a hit. I’d never smoked pot much – it made me paranoid in college – but I was looking for a friend, a kindred spirit, and this man’s casual and relaxed attitude calmed me for a few minutes. After a while I asked if he’d like to come back to my apartment. I was lonely and only wanted companionship. He agreed and began walking down the nearby path with me, but suddenly stopped in his tracks.

“You pay me,” he said. I looked at him, wondering what he meant.

“What?” I said. The man was fierce and furious when he repeated himself.

Non-Fiction “You pay me.”

He shocked me. He looked bitter and angry. I realized he must think I was a hooker looking for a way to make quick money, and I fell onto a nearby bench and collapsed. What happened next was excruciating. Suddenly I felt disembodied, like a brain only, with no other self-hood, and I thought I was gazing into what seemed like the very personage of God. Feeling as if my head had been split in half by an axe, I received from above two distinct messages: that “God builds things,” and “the Devil is dumb and hurts people without even realizing it.” And moments later I absorbed the meaning that they are one and the same. I had always wondered what God was, and thought I’d been given the answer, the truth, in spades, because I felt my brain had been ruptured by a Godlike blow to my skull.

Finally I came to, and the Jamaican man had disappeared.

Vastly relieved, I walked to Central Park West, weak in the knees, and collapsed against a lamppost. As I tried to stand again, a woman passed and asked if I was all right. But then, frightened of me herself, she turned away quickly and walked on. I managed to stand, then ran back to my building, screaming at the top of my lungs the name of a trustworthy and ethical man I’d loved in college and had never forgotten.

He had been true in intention, and well-meaning, and politically on the left, and I’d always held his values in high regard. His name burst from my lips because I felt so abandoned and he’d always been kind and motivated by justice. And I arrived at my apartment, peeling off my clothes and curling up in bed.

I wasn’t to see Kevin again for many years, but his memory kept me company in my isolation and fear.

That was it. I moved.

But I was miserable back in Massachusetts, and despite what New York City had cost me, I missed my old neighborhood. I felt a little calmer being around my family, but the old Greek-American diners on every block where I used to pick up coffee to go, the lightning speed of city traffic, the tall buildings and exuberance and vitality of New York, were all missing from my life. My parents tried to be sympathetic, but were worried and impatient that I didn’t find work right away.

I was not fit psychologically to work for anyone. Paranoid, I locked myself in my bedroom and listened to music. One day my parents picked the locks off my door to gain entrance. I was so angry at this invasion that I picked up a small shovel for ashes that was next to the Franklin stove in my room and struck my father on the backside with it. He in turn was so mad, he grabbed me by the wrists – he was easily twice my size – and threw me on my back onto the floor. I was frightened by his ferocious strength and couldn’t believe his rage. So my distress continued. My mother tried to stay calm. After this episode I was hospitalized a few more times.

I kept wondering in futility what life was all about – peace of mind, God, justice, poverty, the arts, ambition, success, and my quest for stardom, which was elusive and probably not meant to happen, and which I thought now, in Massachusetts, certainly never would.

After a while I did find a job but was deeply dissatisfied with my new life and the job was unpleasant, with unsympathetic co-workers and tiresome responsibilities. I still missed the old excitement and color of New York.

In the end, after my mother died, I went to grad school for a Master’s degree. This turned my life around, because I became a writer. I studied Performing Arts Education with money my mother had left me, thinking I’d use my theatre knowledge to teach high school, but realized while getting the degree that I really didn’t want to teach. I began writing in earnest – mainly plays, for which I ended up getting many productions around the U.S. and in Europe. I was ecstatic that I’d found new vitality and purpose in my life. For money I worked busily in publishing sales for seven years and dated a few men who were disappointments to me because they seemed unsophisticated and not worldly.

But by then I had already become an author, had had numerous successes around the world, and was published in more than fifteen anthologies with other types of writing: essays, poetry, short fiction. Life was turning out better than I’d dreamed with my new-found creative career, and I felt proud at last because of accolades and occasional payment from publishers. I won a $10,000 grant from the Dramatists’ Guild Fund and several other substantial grants as well, awards given to struggling writers.

I also read a lot during the next few years. I read the short stories of Irish author William Trevor, the exciting action novels of British writer Ian Fleming, the domestic comedies of Jane Austen, and countless nonfiction articles on medicine and new discoveries about science that I discovered in periodicals.

Psychiatric medicine became interesting to me because I had experience with it as a patient. New discoveries in the field are constantly being made and there seems almost limitless hope for people who suffer as I had.

It began to seem as if happiness was possible -- it had seemed unattainable for so long -- and today I am finally content in Boston, which may not have all the chaotic vibrancy of New York City, but which is tame and civilized and feels at last like home. I’ve recovered, with the help of school, meds, good doctors, and loyal and caring friends and family. And I’ve found that giving up a performing career was in reality a blessing, not a curse, and brought other skills and talents into my life in a way I’d never before imagined possible.

My existence is once again satisfying, with the rewards of recognition for my work and the sense of a possible creative and artistic mission. Finally, I’ve found peace.

Martha Patterson’s 27-story collection “Small Acts of Magic” was published this fall by Finishing Line Press. Her plays have been produced in 21 states and eight countries. Other writing has been published by Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, Smith & Kraus, the Sheepshead Review, the Afro-Hispanic Review, Silver Birch Press, Syndrome Magazine, the Pointed Circle journal, and others. She has two degrees in Theatre, from Mount Holyoke College and Emerson College. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and loves being surrounded by her books, radio, and laptop.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

51

Literary Work

KVgrafik

52

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

Out of the Woods STEPHANIE V. SEARS The tree line slow-motions green same as those boreal eyes that oversee the turpentine forest lined afar with fur and howls sweeping north to the pole.

A long swelling aria across my wood front I heard it….. how he is far.

A rending of nature’s endless gesture.

A strategic muteness of fallen trunks in crosses….in rafts of safeguard.

My caterpillar zeal towards some type of faith between moon, moss, a rampage of awe.

The slow, rocky, R’d syllables from his toffee voice of artic cold a fluxing mutter between silences unfolds his love like a napkin.

Now fire ignites among my brooding trees.

Their council radars between us. Outreaching.

Subterranean ligaments search up and down the edge of the field for a passage.

I must try to get back to him… as if in nature’s school, only pines apart, in the smell of plumbago point pencils and book pages glazed with bear fat.

The burn of a sudden alliance at the fir line….

Our belief, steadfast.

Stephanie V Sears is a French and American ethnologist (Doctorate EHESS, Paris 1993), free-lance journalist, essayist, and poet whose poetry recently appeared in The Deronda Review, The Comstock Review, The Mystic Blue Review, The Big Windows Review, Indefinite Space, The Plum Tree Tavern, Literary Yard, Clementine Unbound, Anti Heroine Chic, DASH, The Dawn Treader, Dodging the Rain, Amethyst Review, The Non-Conformist Magazine, SORTES, Short-listed in 2009 for a Pushcart Prize. Her first book of poetry: ‘The Strange Travels of Svinhilde Wilson’ was published by Adelaide Book in 2020.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

53

Literary Work

Dmitriev Mikhail

54

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

Cupola STEPHANIE V. SEARS Clouds strain outside like rowboats against a winter’s cobalt.

Inside the church swells into a different outside just keeping beyond reach.

Cupola, incubator of heavens, through arched windows up there, emphasizes sunlight.

In the circle’s epicenter, a soft flutter of wings magnetized by the rays.

An angelic uplifting of space snubs gravity.

Unusual geometries cast off from some drawing board.

Disembodied vision conjures flight, though the body hesitates below. when dusk’s bruise shows again, and the eyes strain again through the dark

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

55

Literary Work

shotsstudio

56

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Fiction

DISSOCIATED Kaitie McCann

I

am clinging on to my existence at the intersection of who I am, who I was, who I think I am, who they think I am, who you think I am, who I will be… and the song that is playing is Fur Elise, the tinkling of piano coarse on my sensitive ears.

My calloused fingertips slip ever so slightly on the rocky edge of “okay” and I instinctively look down. I see you standing there, below me, on solid ground. How can mirrors work so that I may look in and see anything other than my own face?

Your hair has a cowlick in the crown that I’ve never felt before, not even when I’ve run my hands through each strand, paying close attention to the way they lay across the left side of your face. Or was it the right?

Your hands are gesturing in a way that I’ve never noticed before. Since when do you paint your nails black and use them to tell stories about people you claim to love?

I’m grasping for this jagged edge but unable to take my eyes off of the clothes I’ve never seen you wear. The makeup I never saw you buy. The hair you never told me you dyed.

Despite my aching heart and the growing pebble in my chest there are chasms blossoming between us and your edges become faded and confused.

You and I are creating a supernova in this space between us and nothing can stop it, not even my hand which I have risked to let go to reach below myself and stretch towards the stranger I cannot help but gravitate towards.

You don’t look up and you never will but I cannot stop reaching and grasping and falling apart.

I try to see you but you are no longer there to catch me.

So who will catch me?

I hit the ground with a deafening thud where you once stood. Your shoe prints barely visible but definitely there. I am hurt but not broken, only through my own self-preservation. A single foot down at a time and I am standing where you were. I can almost feel you, if I knew what that felt like.

The sun is staring into my face and screaming at me. Get it together. Look up. So I do. Above me, a cliff. And the tiniest figure, dangling by a single hand. What a strange place to test your life. What a strange figure, to be all alone on a cliff, out here of all places.

I see their hand stretching further and further towards the ground where I stand, like they found a wormhole in that single spot to reach through and grab me. I feel fear. There is no other feeling like this that a stranger so fearless could see me and grab hold. Take me to the edge of the cliff, closing this chasm I have created between us. I must run from them.

I stop just a second long enough to see them hit the ground. Does it make me a bad person that I feel no remorse?

I run.

You changed since I stopped loving you.

Kaitie McCann is a new writer who is soon going to graduate from Shippensburg University with a bachelor’s degree in English with a concentration in writing. She has been previously published twice: Stained Glass, a flash fiction piece published in Shippensburg University’s journal of arts, The Reflector; and Conceit, another flash fiction published in Shippensburg University’s art and prose chapbook, The Spawning Pool.

You’ve changed since I stopped loving you.

Does my finger slip or do I let go? I fall either way and my heart bursts open like a glass bottle full of bees and I become the chasm between us.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

57

Literary Work Corner Contributor’s

58

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry Fiction

Under the Floorboards of a House in the City KIERAN ROSE PILON you’d think I have a deathwish with the way I want to count these bones together, ribs against ribs, ulnas intertwinedcan we be tender in our decomposition? can you lie beside me, replace whatever ghost yearns to wrap its arms around me? this longing bursts through my sternum, fingers grasping for a hint of you. we’re all dying, flickering out or fading away, so give me some semblance of comfort and sit beside me in the dark.

Kieran Rose Pilon is a genderqueer college student from St. Paul, Minnesota. He currently studies creative writing and theater arts at Century College. When he’s not writing, acting, or in class, he’s probably watching horror movies, excitedly analyzing fiction with friends, or drawing pictures of his cats: Jimmy, Olive, Ianto, and Teddie.

Sergey Golenko

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

59

Literary Work

rolffimages

60

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

Molotov, Not Mixed KIERAN ROSE PILON i. let me say this first: i am broken with burning. i have burned so many buildings, chucked cocktails of rum and rag into the broken windows because the splinters looked like teeth in the moonlight. do you remember moonlight? the way it reflected off of half-empty plastic cups, my back as i hunched over and tried not to spill my guts? i’d spilled them to you before, so many times, after the first building burned to the ground. i burned it for you, baby, just for you, because i wanted to take a chance on love that wouldn’t leave my throat tasting like pennies. turns out it tastes worse, tastes like hard lemonade spit up into the toilet: sharp and acidic, with just the slightest tinge of sweet.

ii. i smashed the gin bottle when you left. i ached sour, an iconoclast, but what am i if not a thing that breaks glass and leaves it to rot in its sparkling shame? but i kept the polaroids. you said they weren’t good, pawned them off on me as we sat in bed. i never told you that i cherished everything you touched, the flick of your wrist, the way your fingerprints were the first on the shining film. i’m good at burning: paper; buildings; meat on the stove, picked at with hesitant fingers. but i haven’t burned those.

iii. i burn you everywhere i go nowadays, say how i want you to rot yourself hollow, how i want your lover to gut you like a fish. and these curses feel so right on my tongue, hot and heavy like fresh blood, that you’d think they were there all along, right below the surface, like if you’d have peeled back my skin on one of those summer days you’d see something screaming, wreathed in fire. like if you’d listened under my i love yous you would’ve heard my tongue going up in flame. here’s the truth, darling boy: i want you to burn so badly i don’t know what to do with myself.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

61

Literary Work

liyavihola

62

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

Something Thought, Left Unsaid KIERAN ROSE PILON When I call, he’s half-silent, all pauses and beats.

Says he means it.

Says he cuts his tongue so nobody will see.

He tells me he might break tonight, tells me I’m his soulmate, tells me I’m his light, tells me like it won’t carve out my heart, leave it bleeding on the bathroom floor.

And the point of this poem isn’t to say I’m in love, it’s not to stand on a soapbox and sing.

It’s just to say that sliced-up tongues can still be deafening.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

63

Literary Work

64

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

65

Literary Work

Odyssey in the Time of COVID CRISTINA NANNINI

66

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

“This journey was an odyssey!”

When I made this emphatic declaration, my mother chuckled and affectionately called me a drama queen. I certainly don’t blame her; I am Italian after all, and everyone knows Italians adore dramatic deliveries and over-the-top gesturing. Yet, fully aware of what it takes to be deserving of the above label, I must insist I still find the metaphor fitting.

I wasn’t returning from a ten-year-long war, the gods weren’t hindering me, and I certainly didn’t face nightmarish monsters the likes of Scylla. “Then what was so wearisome about your experience?” you ask. It’s a valid question, and I’d love to answer with a clear-cut exposition worthy of being

Non-Fiction published in some academic paper. But the truth is I’m not entirely sure myself.

I could argue that while his journey was fraught with dangers, Ulysses and his destination were separated by just 565 nautical miles—almost one-tenth of the approximately 6,000 miles I had to cross to get home. (For those who are about to counter I had twenty-first-century technology on my side, I remind you that dear Ulysses was gifted divine artifacts, among which was the magic wind.) In my favor, I’d also like to appeal to the fact I was traveling at the time of a COVID-19 outbreak—and isn’t there something undeniably epic about that? Most of all, though, I was leaving home to visit home, a paradoxical phrase that aptly describes the soul-splitting experience of thousands in the year of our Lord 2021.

Anyway, I’m not here to put up some sophist argument to convince you of the woes of my travel and draw a parallel with classical Greek literature. (I can’t even talk myself out of snacking after dinner, so good luck with that.) No, no, I’m just here to tell a story, a curious anecdote of crossing country borders during a pandemic. So buckle up and stick with me a little longer, if you like.

Where do I begin, though? Figuring the ideal starting point of a tale always involves a lot of head scratching on my part.

There was once a silly little girl who craved affirmation so badly that she went out looking for it on the opposite side of the world.

No, scratch that. Too far back and lacks the edge to keep people interested anyway. My troubles began on the fateful day of the flight—when, as I awaited judgment at the foot of the check-in counter, I was denied boarding.

Maybe. It starts in the middle of the action and grabs attention; then again, I’m not trying to write some exciting, action-packed story, and we’d like to avoid being anticlimactic. Rejected.

March 11, 2020. The WHO declares the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic; a cumbersome pall weaved from fear and confusion falls over the world, and my way home gets blocked off indefinitely.

Yeah, I think I’ll go with that if it’s alright with you.

March 11, 2020. The WHO declares the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic; a cumbersome pall weaved from fear and confusion falls over the world, and my way home gets blocked off indefinitely. The entry (and consequent reentry) ban in Japan only happened in April, but by March, it already felt like an ineluctable fate. Lamenting the distance from my family at a time when people fought for their lives in reanimation chambers and died by the thousands every day seems petty, but the human flesh is made of selfish cells and bones of egoistic matter.

From inside the claustrophobic walls of my house, I watched the number of contagions and deaths

rise staggeringly to impossible heights. The death toll announcement was my constant companion; it was there when I woke up with my good morning coffee and before I prepared for yet another sleepless night in bed. It got worse as the pandemic took over Italy. Then my hazy stomachclenching fears for faceless and nameless people around the world transformed into concrete and lucid horror for the fate of my family and friends. My grandparents, especially, were at the center of my concerns. My grandpa already had emphysema, and my grandma had gone through a bad case of pneumonia just the previous year. My indefatigable, anxious brain kept supplying unwelcome yet vivid images of my grandma inadvertently brushing her fingers over a contaminated pack of pasta at some (at least in my mind) apocalyptic-looking supermarket, among other equally haunting scenarios.

While I’m quite sure epidemic-triggered psychosis has been quite common these past two years, I couldn’t pin all my problems on the ever-expanding blameful disaster that was the COVID-19 pandemic. My troubled mind had been playing tricks on me for a few years, just like a “raggedy” car that decides a neck-breaking downhill slope is the best place for the brakes to stop working. Well, it turns out that an unmedicated mental condition left to fester is only going to get worse, especially during a looming pandemic. Figures.

Funnily enough, it was my unkempt mind that handed me a ticket home, exactly one year and a half after the onset of COVID-19. Neglecting my issues finally caused me to cross a fatidic line and step into that apathetic, albeit unbearable, depression’s territory where you can’t bring yourself to leave the house or even pay your daily visit to the shower—the last bit having enough shock value to finally push me to seek help. (But I’m digressing; we’re not here to discuss my mental condition.) A long story short, my psychiatrist suggested some time off work. Maybe a visit to my family could do me good, he said—a delightful proposal that I immediately seized.

The doctor’s order was essential for me to venture back home. While the Japanese government had kindly lifted the reentry ban for foreign residents on September 1, 2020, they still required a fourteen-day quarantine upon arrival, which would have inevitably sucked up all my paid leave at work. Sick leave allowed me to bypass the problem, with the minor inconvenience that I needed to survive two whole months with no salary.

So August 2021 came around, and there I was, [not so] ready to leave. The odious blob of anxiety that dangles down my neck everywhere I go kept feeding my exhausted mind with catastrophic pictures of doom, and I could only march into the airport thanks to my husband’s sturdy support (and because I was armed with a pack of Tavors, the anxious person’s Graal).

Little did I know that leaving was the easy part; returning, as I’d soon find out, was going to be the real chore. Then again, the ominous strip of paper the immigration official wordlessly slid in my passport should have warned me of what was to come. It said, “The government disapproves of all unnecessary travels abroad.” A peremptory statement that encapsulated Japan’s view on people daring to leave the country.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

67

Literary Work As you might imagine, I was a weathered traveler, and fear of a plane wreck was the farthest thing from my mind. I had gone through too many security checks, nibbled at too many stale airplane meals, and nursed too many stiff necks after napping on uncomfortable seats for that to be even remotely present on my mind. No, my go-to worries were of a more morbose nature. For every surface I had to touch, my mind would conjure up an overly detailed and uselessly graphic feature film on par with the most ambitious apocalyptic horror flicks. My hands, now contaminated, would smear the virus on a patch of my trousers, or my wallet, or my iPhone (the variables were endless), a place I would inadvertently touch in passing before stuffing my face with food or sticking a finger in my eye, thus condemning myself to be a vehicle of contagion, no more than an inconvenience for an on-paper healthy 30-something, but a potential death warrant to my elderly grandparents.

Consumed by foreboding visions of the future, unwelcome gifts of my overactive imagination, I boarded the plane, which was nowhere near as empty as I had hoped.

As anyone suffering from anxiety will be able to confirm, the annoying penchant for catastrophizing does nothing to boost your providence. While your attention is riveted by remote, smoky what-ifs, you get screwed by the most obvious possibilities, which totally went unnoticed right under your nose. This is how my self-devouring maniacal tendencies ended up ignoring the ongoing Olympic Games and, consequently, a bunch of strapping athletes waiting to go back home.

All things considered, my half-packed flight shared with the returning Italian team was uneventful. I didn’t even have to drop one of my Tavor tablets to make it through the journey.

The real odyssey, as I previewed earlier on, was yet to come.

My time in Italy flew by. One moment, I landed in a dimly lit emptied-out airport one August evening; the next, I was packing my bags, exchanging teary goodbyes with my friends, and dreading the incumbent reality slap that would return me to my duties and responsibilities.

In bright daylight, the airport looked almost unchanged from the times before COVID-19. If you tried hard enough, you could blot out the giant temperature control machine and the paper masks covering people’s faces. Then again, a little more difficult to brush off were the locked-down entrances in the middle of the terminal—only two of the automatic doors were working, one to enter and one to exit.

I gathered up my resolution together with my bags, wiped my moist eyes, and strode inside the airport, ready to leave.

The scenery was familiar if not comforting, and I went through the usual well-rehearsed motions as I waited in line. Then, at the check-in counter, a tired Alitalia employee burst my commiserative bubble by flinging at me the news I wasn’t boarding any flight that day. And poof! Just like that, the weight of sleepless nights spent obsessing over my imminent departure and emotional days during which I ached at the

68

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

sight of even the plainest object in the house came crashing down on me. All of a sudden, it was as if someone had turned up the volume in the room, and with a hissing screech, the airport’s noise assailed my ears—the vociferous children who rolled on the filthy linoleum floor as their parents checked in (clearly unfazed by not only COVID-19 but any bacterial threat known to man), the angry Japanese businessman who whispered thunderously on his phone, and the mechanical beeping of the conveyor belt that laboriously transported everyone’s baggage away (but my own).

Sounds weren’t the only perceptions flying off the charts.

Gravity seemed to pull me down with new-found force, to the point I had to clutch my bags’ handle, clinging on for dear life, to resist the urge to plonk down to the floor, scream at the top of my lungs, and wail, starting a tantrum right there in the middle of the terminal. Luckily for me, my mum was lucid enough for both of us. She steered me around the airport as she made sure beyond absolute doubt that we were out of cards to play and, once that was confirmed, changed the flight date to the following week.

But what exactly did I do to be denied boarding, you’ll ask? Well, I flunked my COVID-19 test. No, I didn’t test positive; I just got the wrong one. PCR-RT, LAMP, TMA, CLEIA, TRC, the world of COVID testing is vast and confusing, and I ended up taking one of the few tests rejected by the Japanese government. Who could have told a wrong code, was to be the beginning of my odyssey?

When the first wave of shock retreated, I was left feeling embarrassed. I knew my tendency to put off whatever felt potentially anxiety-inducing was to blame. I hadn’t checked well enough because the going-back business was an unsavory thought. How was I going to announce my extended stay to all my friends and family without looking like the fool I was?

Then again, I realized this mishap actually brought me closer to Ulysses, or at least his crew. If I had demonstrated how inept I was at checking out regulations, my ancient Greek counterparts had likewise failed big time at following instructions—I mean, they had been told explicitly not to open the bag of winds and not to eat the sacred cattle. I was left to figure everything out on my own.

Feeling raw and exposed, I let my mum tug me back toward the car and tuck me safely in the back seat. I wanted to apologize to my parents, who now had to waste another day driving to Rome and back, but I was too stupefied to talk. On their part, they were cheery, eager to justify the mistake as something perfectly reasonable, and intent on looking at the silver lining— namely, that I could stay home one week longer. Half an hour and a double-filling chocolate croissant later, I began feeling tethered to my skin again and could start seeing sense in what they kept telling me. I broke the news to my friends, who were happy enough not to rub salt on the wound and only focused on how good it was to have me for a little longer. It might be superfluous to say, but I enjoyed the extra time I landed.

When the time to leave came again, I felt strange. Disrobed

Non-Fiction

of the jittery anxiety that accompanies any big endeavor (you see, now that the worst had happened, what was there to fear?), I was eerily calm, a sensation so foreign to me it was unsettling. Everything looked and sounded so clear, like when you finally wash your grimy glasses and observe the world through limpid lenses for the first time in a long time.

The lingering nostalgia in leaving again, the sour reminder I wouldn’t be back for a year or more, the clamorous thought that perhaps I didn’t have any reason to remain in Japan anymore—they all raged inside my brain, no longer shushed by nerve and worries; they were my sirens’ song, and I craved to have my earplugs back on.

Together with my mum, I marched into the terminal, joined the short line winding in front of the check-in counter, and readied my documentation (this time, I knew, immaculate).

The lady at the reception was kind and good-humored, characteristics that I appreciated even more considering her company was going through an ugly bankruptcy. She took my bags and wished me a good flight. Like that, the sails were unfurled, and the cargo was loaded, the ship ready to be released onto the open sea.

Saying goodbye to my parents was an awful business at the best of times, and my new heightened sensitivity made it all the more detestable. Reluctantly, I peeled myself off my mum’s arms and dove back into the white tide of masks washing inside the departure gate. I got my green pass checked, took my hand baggage apart and walked through the metal detector, navigated long stark corridors, and finally got to passport control. “Where are you going?”

The policeman asked me a routine question he had to ask a thousand times a day. “I’m going home to Japan,” I replied, causing the usual bout of curiosity from my interlocutor, and a novel unprecedented bitterness spreading in my mouth.

Leaving home for home, then setting off again to go from home to home—again, and again, and again.

The wait for the boarding call was the same as usual, but there was a distinctive otherness wafting through the gray halls of the airport. Although the number of passengers had been dwindling, the place was neither desolate nor empty. A sea of assorted passengers filled the duty-free shops, the galleries connecting the gates, and the lounge. It wasn’t a physical change; it was more of a glaring lack of energy and noise.

What the airport was missing was the hustle and bustle, the buzzing vitality of people eager to embark on a journey, the ringing chit-chats of phone calls and gleeful conversations, the industrious rhapsody of businessmen’s keyboard clicking.

Everybody sat in silence, quietly waiting for their turn to get on the plane, or wordlessly roamed the shops for some last-minute souvenirs. The profoundly un-Italian demureness weirded me out, and I hurried to call my mum to fill the deafened atmosphere until take-off.

The uncanny quiet followed me inside the plane, where I got to claim all the four seats on my row—incontestable proof of the meager times experienced by airlines. The

airplane rolled on the heated tarmac, soared, and sailed the sky as the flight assistants distributed water bottles and disappeared. Normally, I would have browsed the limited movie selection for something to see or read a book, but this ride wasn’t like others. So I donned my earbuds and put on some music, then I lay down across the hard, poking seats in a futile attempt to make myself more comfortable.

In my ears, Elton John sang that he was still standing (I wished I could keep saying the same for myself), I made the Beatles repeat they wanted to hold my hand three or four times, and I dreamed of following Bob Dylan’s tambourine man on a magic journey. Had I known Purple Mountains back then, I’d have listened to “All My Happiness Is Gone” on a loop until the notes seeped into my neurons and the lyrics welded with my synapses. Unfortunately, I was still one month away from discovering that song.

When the plane landed at Narita International Airport twelve hours later, we were catapulted into what by all rights looked like a futuristic space station border control. The airport had been remodeled into a bureaucratic maze, divided into a gauntlet of checkpoint rooms you had to clear to proceed.

A tad bit intimidating but also an outstanding demonstration of Japanese people’s formidable organization skills. In a pale imitation of Ulysses recounting his tales to the Phaeacians, I had to give a precise account of where I had been, what I had done, and where I was bound to. Unlike Ulysses, though, I had to supply official documents where I declared (to my knowledge) not to be contagious nor to have been in contact with contagious people.

Room after room, document control after document control, the impression of floating through some liminal space, not quite in and not quite out, intensified. I was required to sign a written pledge where I swore to adhere to quarantine rules, was retested for COVID-19, and waited with trepidation for the results in a dead-silent waiting room. Airport personnel and security guards steered well away from us but stood vigilant at the corners in their protective lemon-yellow gowns, their eyes following us as we shuffled to the exit. When I stepped out into the arrival lobby, ghostly traces of in-betweenness still lingered on my clothes. Not even docking safely in my husband’s arms washed me clean of them.

In the subsequent fourteen days I spent under house arrest, held on probation for COVID crimes, the exhaustion dissipated and the jet lag eased away, but the sensation of drifting directionless at high sea remained. I was home, and yet I was not, and I held the conviction I never truly would be.

It had been that way for a while; only now, I knew. My odyssey had just begun.

Cristina Nannini is a travel product designer for Matsukawa Tourism Organization, a local DMO. She graduated in International Studies from Siena University in Italy and has lived in Japan for the past ten years.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

69

Literary Work

Bakhur Nick

70

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

En Route (Capitol) SOPHIA ASHLEY The beauty feels ghastly— riding en route to a capital punishment from your dead end. that in the chaos you mistake the word capitol for grave, knowing Grave is an inflection of a name once lived though, we do not know the house to acknowledge. so we liken it to a loanword, to whatever language that permits the rubbing of harsh surfaces: tyre to asphalt— becoming corpse. but this shouldn’t be just a murder poem or metaphor for slavery. It should be about this brake, failing mid-transit & the awful terror of this town calling you a problem it would kill to resolve without trace, as the blood polluted sky: a violent slaughter you think, while pedaling down unaccompanied. since what is racism, if not having whites you cut off. what beheads this moment, if not the wind. & what is noun in motion if not you strapped amuck seatbelt, evading death traps to find your negro skin & half American blood drifting far apart, as a branch calls you to space from a prison yard screaming it’s own innocence. see, how the pedestrian wake of leaves you bypass daily is only a drop in the ocean of thirst that keeps sending you down this mournful alley, repeatedly. blood ready as a wounded hound, regardless of how often you feed each lively hole in your midriff, to find it staring back thirsty like no one ever shoved hate down its lung. like, no one has ever took law into their hands, lashing at the little white you bring. this much use of violence. you ask yourself, what color kneels on the other for pleasure? as you ride enroute to your capital punishment from a dead-end, way too burdened to suggest the chaos ahead.

Sophia. N. Ashley (she/they) are writers of poetry. They have their works previously published in NativeSkin lit Magazine, Wondrous Real Magazine, The Capilano Review & elsewhere. They are the author of “Dumb Mandate”(unpublished). On Instagram, they are @sophiaashley631.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

71

Literary Work

Crime, Having to Repeat Itself SOPHIA ASHLEY A teenager housed a bullet in his midriff at Pennsylvania, the night before our prom. months after, his brother housed more in every part of his torso. a coyote teethes on the blood, dragging the animal of his body down the crumbled stairwell. somewhere, a bench of ghost concludes: ‘if an officer flags a car in motion, you strike the pedal down to a neighborhood. there’s something about witness that terrifies them. surveillance cameras, the listening dog lonely as a sadist. the gun says my body lacks the spark to cause a controversy, no matter how I polish my immediate hands or accent. no matter how often I wear my name with the purpose of not living through the next minute. the urge— to be creative with dying. our roof hoards the last shoot of hail. summer came, erasing one-third of the tortured ice. the frozen perimeter of our cottage, ratted out by heat— the way it warms up to a mortgage. the snow keeps mounting like white debts. we retain the roof, even as heat stalks a ruptured part.

I praise the other spot for it’s resilience, for being wide enough to harbor life in this dying summer. I overstate, when I say one-third.

I never took likely to figures, never took amnesia seriously. still, I forgot the fine detail of all our frozen food melted down by heat. gambling never spurs me. the only risk I can barely afford is myself. but, I bet summer wiped out the ice— careful without trace.

As the month an officer erased a part our surname, at the slightest provocation.

I need history to repeat itself, for this poem to sparkle. gaslight me with a loaded controversy.

72

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

Jorm S

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

73

Literary Work

tomnamon

74

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

Street Cred SOPHIA ASHLEY a truck crashes into this body, and springs back thanks to roguery & her bestial appellations. for whatever teethes us to this land as reasons— a boy sheds his canine on my trunk. thanks to necklace & it’s byzant aggression. the CPR donor meets me mouth-for-mouth, asking after a consciousness lying in her state. God! I’m not conscious of my language Lord! see my people lying-in-state. see the dead fetus accompanied in it’s wake. the hate keeps revamping corners for us to die in. anywhere from this spot is an affront. we’re snipers away from the colonist’s verb & everything goes south with this cold vocabulary, including pregnancy. the messy contractions. her male pair, inactive as grammar blooms brightly from his tongue— an oral projectile. it’s tip, sharp as a heartburn. eight years of parentless ordering brings me to speed with the outcome of a lad playing Nazareth for his country. how his mother Marys & remarries, time and time again.

A cop, unmindful of how I’m wired bumps into me and witnesses a wound thick as his badge. no hot-chases this time. just grief weighing grief by the number of bullets they’ve outpaced. violence is iron fonts trailing black skins to their first sport.

I bet, Kenyans never saw this one coming.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

75

Literary Work

Monologue with my Teenage Dogsitter SOPHIA ASHLEY The while I nose around in the same breath with my keeper, for me is work. yet, I’m Idle as a lawn. the bone which I seek is mine.

I yank seraphim off my teeth, and grace whitens in there like a bad bleach.

I am ghosted to him, till my skin collide with colours. at dusk, my lids are moon-eyed: a white manner of approach.

I lay still and belt my voice round the dog year.

I’m worth seven more barking days than his scattergun.

somewhere close to his softness, I attend a wilding.

I scratch till I leak heavily.

I have five more seconds to bleed.

a leash pulls me close to him, & it hurts like slavery.

I have the handcuff scars for proof. my greed buys into his driver’s seat. getting to town, I am awful as brined persimmon.

I outpace the German Shepherds, regardless of my black race.

I sniff negritude. dump my furs like sheared heritage in the parking lot, leaving follicles for contact trace. no one comes for me.

I wail in fierce pitch to imitate him.

I avoid language, claw-ready carving out glyphs from the rabid soil.

I cannot graze the occasion of dialects.

76

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

I wrestle a rottweiler. my teeth, agreeable on it’s flesh as jam.

I am his troublesome gadget in the grand scheme of things. the pink reptile in between my tongue is nobody’s plaything. you’d know me as the proverbial sting, shuddering, sonic lash & every other sibilant nature withholds from me, till I grieve in all the letters I cannot vouch for.

I bloat with a lone dizziness, howling to space. calm rests in between like an early astronaut.

I’m an almost discovered globe. my rage, brightened as stars.

I am in the yesternight of your world, dear readers & your mistakes sits wisely in my palm.

Poetry

hypnocreative

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

77

Literary Work

78

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

Aye! Gulorbo SOPHIA ASHLEY cooling off in Father’s Peugeot, our ear catches the town cry of friendship from teenage lungs. aye! the one with malnourished dread yells.

Gulorbo, his friend retorts, amidst fondling of palms. their big mighty paws, woven together as men. fingers snapping like they were warding off misfortune, and there, the sonic boom surrounds their immediate joints. the next minute had their turned backs in different destinations.

Father consults me, with a grin unspooling his mid 90s rascality from the lower teeth.

You gatz know this wan, Junior. aye! Gulorbo. e geh meaning? he beckoned, still tongue-soaked in the wild pool of naiveness.

Yea. Good-luck bro, I chew on each word till it comes clean as buttered bones. dis go bi veri tait frends dem, he chirped, nearly brought down by the kindness learnt from what his church instinct perceived as riffraffs. aye! Gulorbo, we echoed in turns, subsequently chipping the rough slang into every conversation. aye! I yell, fine-tuning the foulness of each note.

Gulorbo! he beckons, after the first pause. his retort hounded by the rustling of nitrogen bubbles. aye! Gulorbo, we say to each other amidst crash course & mock exams, as though a cheat made potent by how its concealed. yet the teenagers did it right there, in the open space & the world watched.

karakotsya

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

79

Contributor’s Corner

80

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Fiction

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

81

Contributor’s Corner

82

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Fiction

Some Leave This Way SONNET MONDAL There were voices outside, splashing like the persistent tail of a cyclone.

Air pulled thoughts through windows like sands pull waves on a beach.

And as flashes of lightning tore the walls of rain, candles flickered.

A tiny bird waited on a window shed to hatch. It held on to tomorrow.

Morning showed up. A murmuration covered the sky, but day never dawned inside the egg.

If there were stories waiting to be told they died with their longing to be heard.

Sunlight dappling the leaves paused and wavered.

rolffimages

Sonnet Mondal is an Indian poet, editor, and author of An Afternoon in my Mind (Copper Coin, 2022), Karmic Chanting (Copper Coin, 2018), and Ink & Line (Dhauli Books, 2018). Founder director of Chair Poetry Evenings - Kolkata’s International Poetry Festival, Mondal serves as managing editor of Verseville. His recent works have appeared in the Harper’s Bazaar, Virginia Quarterly Review, Words Without Borders, Singing in the Dark (Penguin Random House), Luvina magazine (University of Guadalajara, Mexico), Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi), Short Edition-Michigan State University Libraries, Kyoto Journal, Potomac Review, Mascara Literary Review, and Honest Ulsterman among others. His works have been translated into Hindi, Bengali, Italian, Chinese, Turkish, Slovak, Macedonian, French, Russian, Slovenian, Hungarian, and Arabic.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

83

Literary Work

84

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

Riddle #1 HANNA GRACE GREER I am a force that opens locked doors A key created from emotional toil Like seeds, I take time to grow I am like the sea, uncontrollable Crashing waves over an unexpecting shore I cannot be tempered by human thought Reason can never touch my knot Within some, I burn life-long In others, only a short burst of energy

Hannah Grace Greer is a poet originally from Grantham, Pennsylvania.

She is currently studying to achieve a BA in English & Creative Writing from the University of Iowa. You can find her @hannahggpoetry on Twitter and Instagram.

shotsstudio

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

85

Literary Work

86

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

The Creation of the Sea HANNA GRACE GREER I stare into the water shining a deep cobalt under the surrounding flickering candlelight. The gentle brushes of water, moving calmly, soothe me as I lift my right foot to dip into the ancient pool. As my toes touch the surface, I feel the coolness breathe a different kind of life into my skin. I untense, place one hand on top of the other, and follow the water’s call, diving deep into the depths. My body becomes submerged.

My ears become quieted. My heart sounding as if it’s echoing across the entire world instead of merely within my skin. As my fingertips graze the bottom of the pool, its roughness feeling smooth, my tears become pearls. Their iridescence shining even within the darkness. The pearls drip from the corners of my eyes and scattered across the pool’s floor. Once my sorrow is exhausted, my body becomes salt and my soul in its expansive grief, the sea.

max5799

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

87

Literary Work

max5799

88

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

The Angels’ Outpost HANNA GRACE GREER Every ten thousand miles An Outpost lies in wait Standing tall with gilded pillars Successfully touching the heavens Guarding death and destiny To cast shadow away The Outposts stand veiled Far away from mortal eyes Able to be summoned with need Made present and disguised Anywhere in the Outpost’s territory When it’s needed or called In the land of Mankind, The Outpost can become anything An inn, another road, a gas station, a hospital Once not needed, it disappears and reforms If many are in need at once?

It adapts into more than one In the land of the Spirit, The Outpost is the Angels’ Auxiliary From where they’re deployed To step in disguised, invisible, or within dream To aide in matters important Or seemingly inconsequential When the Outpost interferes, There is naught to fear For the Angels will ride and fly Your lifeline will burn bright Shielded from all sides

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

89

Literary Work

tongdee

90

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Fiction

PETER Romana Capek

D

onald hung up the phone in the kitchen and said matter-of-factly, “Peter Hermann went down with his plane in the Gulf of Mexico.” Claire looked at him puzzled, not being able to react for a few seconds.

She was waiting for more details, but experience had taught her that if she wanted to learn more about anything that Donald crammed into a single sentence, she had to follow up with her own inquiry.

“When did it happen?” Claire asked in disbelief, looking at Donald’s unemotional face.

“I guess a week ago. George didn’t know for sure.”

George kept in touch with Donald and Peter after their college graduation. Donald, on the other hand, was happy to hear from George but seldom called him, and they both lost track of Peter after he had moved to New Orleans.

“To where did he fly?” Claire insisted on more details.

“From New Orleans to Florida,” Donald answered, laconically turning his back to Claire and heading toward the family room. For him their conversation was over.

He stretched out on the sofa, lit his cigarette, and turned on the television. He watched three reruns daily without getting bored. Claire sometimes joined him while correcting her students’ tests. She did not need to look at the screen because she knew the sequence of images by listening to dialogues that she remembered from having seen the same programs multiple times. They would sit in silence because most conversational topics she wanted to pursue Donald would ignore. He would have an expression of annoyance on his face, a clear sign that he was not interested in talking.

He would continue staring at the TV and chain-smoking his Kent cigarettes. When Claire would finish correcting tests, she would leave the family room without Donald noticing her absence. She often wondered if he had lost all interest in her.

The only interruption that he allowed for was her description of the following day’s dinner. He wanted to know which cut of meat or fish she bought and how she would prepare it, warning her not to overcook it. Claire would reassure him that the meat would not be too dry, using the same recycled sentences that he wanted to hear.

“I’ll make sure to take the roast out of the oven fifteen minutes earlier than the last time” or “I will leave the salmon almost raw, don’t worry. If you don’t want to eat the salmon, I can pan-sear tuna instead.”

Whenever Claire was planning to try a new recipe, Donald would request a detailed explanation pertinent to its ingredients and spices as well as a rationale as to why some of them she could omit because he did not like them. Claire would lose her patience, and their initially calm conversation would escalate into loud verbal exchanges, she claiming to know how to cook and he challenging her assertion. Gradually she became tired of those confrontations and of cooking, which she once used to enjoy. The absurdity of their fights lay in the fact that while eating everything on his plate, Donald continued to fuss about what was missing in a particular dish that would make it better. Claire would listen to him complaining between bites but didn’t react anymore because she knew that contradicting him would lead to another fight, and she was tired of that as well. He was indifferent to vegetables, potatoes, and rice, and skipped salads. Bread and meat were his favorite foods. There were only a handful of dishes they both liked.

Eager to find more information related to Peter’s death, Claire rushed to her computer, hoping to find more details about it in the local newspaper. Donald’s emotional detachment from the whole event didn’t surprise her, but her own lack of empathy stunned her. Her once easily triggered emotions were missing. She realized that her curiosity over the particulars of Peter’s disappearance in the deep of the Gulf of Mexico eroded her feelings of a loss, and admitting it made her sad because she became aware that her indifference equaled that of Donald’s. The newspaper reported that the Cessna circled aimlessly above the Gulf, and a Coast Guard plane was unable to help the pilot who seemed unconscious. They could not see him well through the fogged windows of his plane.

The Cessna continued to circle until it used up all the fuel, and then it plunged into the sea. The plane and the pilot’s body were never found. There were no other passengers in the plane, and the police notified Peter’s wife and his three adult children about his passing.

Claire reentered the family room and relayed the content of the article to Donald. He looked at her irritated because she had cut into watching one of his three programs. When she stopped talking, he made no comment and continued to gaze at the TV. Claire returned to her study resentful. She felt this prevalent emotion after each attempt to revive some kind of communication between them. She thought that perhaps reciprocal annoyance was the only feeling left in their marriage.

Peter’s bizarre death raised more questions. Claire felt an urgency to understand his unexpected passing, which represented an anticlimactic ending to the successful professional and private life he led. She found an old photo album with several pictures of Peter the last time they had

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

91

Literary Work seen him. One of them featured him at the wheel of his speedboat and cruising across one of Mississippi’s canals.

He had the broad smile of a content man. The photo also showed Claire’s and Donald’s children, eight and two years old, sitting on their father’s lap, and him holding them tightly as if to protect them from falling into the water while Peter was increasing the speed of the boat. The happy picture reflected the good relationship that Claire and Donald enjoyed at that time. They hardly ever fought and lived as any young, passionate couple that was planning its future.

They visited Peter because he had offered a partnership job to Donald. They wanted to see if they would like to live in the South. Donald considered the position but after they saw the area, they both decided that he should not accept it. The salary was good, but the town where they would be living was too small, the humidity and the heat were oppressive during the long Louisiana summers, and the pesky mosquitoes flew everywhere. Regardless of the circumstances, Claire and Donald enjoyed their trip. One day when Peter was at work, they cruised on a steamboat on the Mississippi River and strolled on Bourbon Street. In one restaurant, they ordered raw oysters thinking that they would be tastier than those they could buy back home. They couldn’t eat them because they were too large and flavorless. That evening, Peter brought home several pounds of boiled crawfish bought from a local fisherman. He covered the large kitchen table with a newspaper and spread the crawfish across it. They all picked the meat out of the shell and ate it with still warm white bread.

Claire remembered her sticky and smelly hands after their dinner was over.

She found another photo of Peter taken near a small lake. Claire recalled that she, Donald, and a group of their friends gathered there on one Sunday. The picture showed Peter staying near the muddy looking water with his right arm reaching the top of his head and pressing down his thick, dark hair. He was short with a stocky build, and the photo revealed his hairy chest. He looked relaxed and happy. Claire thought that he was the handsomest of all the other men at that picnic.

She stared at those two pictures for a long time, and sadness began to surface along with other memories of him.

Peter, his first wife, Greta, and Donald were high school friends, and they remained close throughout college in spite of their belonging to different social circles. Greta grew up in a politically affluent family, Peter enjoyed the wealth generated from a successful family business, and Donald’s background was intellectual and financially modest. Peter and Greta dated since their teenage years and married after graduating from college. When Claire married Donald, after a few months of dating, she became a part of their group. Their frequent gatherings evolved around barbecues in summer and playing cards in winter. They all had stressful jobs, small children, and mortgages to pay. Spending time together meant leaving daily challenges behind, and just enjoying the moment. The food and drinks were always plentiful, and conversational topics

92

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

were trivial. They would laugh, making fun of each other and of themselves because they knew their strong and weak points.

Donald was chubby his whole life and unable to stay on any diet, Greta tried to achieve a more svelte figure, and Claire was longing for designers’ clothes that she could not afford. Peter was soft spoken and a master in telling dirty jokes without sounding vulgar. The women would roll on the floor and cry from laughing even before he would reach the punch line.

Claire also remembered Peter’s love of cars. During his marriage to Greta, he owned an older Jensen, in addition to two other cars. He took the Jensen apart and scattered its pieces throughout their garage. He used most of his free time learning about them and trying to reassemble the car.

Greta felt more and more left out of Peter’s life because he was becoming increasingly reclusive. He also liked speed.

After their divorce, he moved to Louisiana, and as soon as he became wealthy, he bought his first small plane. What Claire found intriguing in Peter’s character was the contrast between his mentality of a simple man who wore cheap clothes and was able to eat leftover bean soup for several days and his need to buy luxury vehicles of transportation. She didn’t consider him a snob, just a boy-man with a large collection of expensive toys. Peter never reached Greta’s expectations to become sophisticated and a member of an exclusive country club. He preferred his garage, grilled pork chops, and a cold Budweiser. After having failed to reconcile their differences, they divorced after twenty years of togetherness. They both remarried and relocated to different parts of the country.

Claire and Donald’s friendship with them was over. They only had one brief encounter with Greta several years later during which she introduced her new, much older husband.

At first, Claire didn’t understand how such a close friendship could dissolve in a matter of a few months. She finally concluded that it must have run its course. Altered needs and hopes in people’s lives intensify their desire to change. In order to feel new again, they have to leave behind all that reminds them of their past, both good and bad.

“Peter and Greta were able to do it because their shared history wasn’t enough to keep them together,” she mused.

Claire’s connection to her past was strong and often resurfaced in the present. It would haunt her, tie her down, make her both sad and angry, and at times she could not shake it off for days. Old grievances would upset her such as her mother’s failure to send birthday cards to her only two grandchildren, and her father’s continuous reference to Donald as “that one of yours,” instead of calling him by his name. He never accepted Donald into the family, and his hatred of him grew over the years. Claire’s parents died when they were in their nineties, and she hoped that with them being gone, she would mellow and forgive them their self-righteousness, narrow-mindedness, and egotism. She was not able to do it.

Furthermore, when someone would only mention her parents, it would trigger an avalanche of bitterness overpowering her, and her past would become more alive than her present.

Fiction Donald’s relationship with his past was opposite to Claire’s remembrance of it. He lived in the present without ruminating about his past. People, events, and circumstances glided by him as if being invisible. They did not touch him in any way at that deep level when emotions become so raw that they paralyze mind and body and lead to an all-consuming numbness. Either he was not able to feel that way or he simply chose not to.

Claire returned the album on the shelf and began to rationalize the circumstances of Peter’s death.

“Why did he fly to Florida and why was he alone in the plane? He was recently married to his third wife, much younger than he was. I remember George telling this to Donald after having received the wedding invitation several months earlier. It could have been a vacation,” Claire guessed.

“Why did he lose control of the plane?” she wondered.

“He was an experienced pilot with many flights under his belt.”

Clare recalled one instance, though, when Peter invited Donald and her to join him and Greta for a long weekend in Florida. A friend of his who owned an eight-seat jet would fly them there. Donald was hesitant because he was never comfortable in any size aircraft and had never been in a small one. Claire supported his decision to decline the offer, and Peter and Greta cancelled it at the last minute. Our common instincts saved us from a probable death because Peter’s friend had to crash land on an empty field because of a sudden storm. Those who flew with him were lucky to survive and suffered only minor injuries.

“I don’t understand why the windows fogged up. The investigation concluded that there was no pressure in the cabin. How did that happen?” Claire pondered, not knowing anything about aeronautics.

“Why was Peter motionless? Was he unconscious or dead? Did he have a heart attack? If it was a heart attack, what caused it, stress or cardiovascular disease, perhaps both?”

Anxiety could have been a factor. Donald found out from George that Peter was under investigation for possible business-related fraud. Claire was incredulous: “Fraud? I don’t believe it. He seemed to be such an honest man, hard working.”

A doubt crept into Claire’s rationale. “Perhaps his appetite for self-indulgence demanded increasingly more funds to sustain it?”

“Did he crave mundane trophies from cars to opulent homes and fancy vacations just to showcase his professional success?” Claire asked herself.

“I don’t think so. Having it all, he thought, would make him happy just as it did his tireless reassembling of the Jensen. The dismantled car became a metaphor of his life falling apart and his need to put it back together. Working on the Jensen enabled him to escape into another reality that promised an emotional fulfillment and harmony he longed for,” Claire concluded.

Claire recognized who Peter really was – a lonely, unhappy, and possibly corrupted man. He was accumulating frivolous objects to mask his insecurity and to fill a gaping hole inside of him. By moving from one relationship to another, from one expensive hobby to a new one, he desperately tried to flee from his self-made, chaotic existence in order to reach his inner peace. Claire finally understood what happened in that plane. She imagined Peter leaning back in his pilot seat, relaxed, looking at the clear sky above him and the blue sea below, enjoying the perpetual motion of the Cessna that reminded him of a merry-go-round and the humming sound of the engine soothing him like a lullaby. His body felt weightless and free, detached from the perilous circumstances it was in. He was not afraid or panicky. He just sat there and waited for the inevitable. Claire figured out that Peter must have purposely depressurized the cabin, knowing that this would make him unconscious before his plane would take a dive into the sea.

Her vision of Peter’s death was a fitting end for his life.

It had all the attributes that he loved - excitement, novelty, and daring. She imagined that in those last moments of his consciousness, he thought of his life in terms of speed and an escape. His death was tragic, unforeseeable, and remained unsolved. However, Claire was sure that his body lay undisturbed somewhere on the seabed, and she hoped that no one would ever find it.

“Peter’s final resting place was of his choosing,” she concluded.

Romana Capek-Habekovic was born in Zagreb, Croatia. She received her PhD from the University of Michigan where she taught Italian language, literature, and cultural courses. She published Insieme and A vicenda! programs for intermediate Italian. Her articles on twentieth-century Italian authors appeared in many scholarly publications. She is interested in a study of diverse culinary traditions and Italian contemporary cinema. She likes to hike, swim, and spend summers in Croatia.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

93

Literary Work

94

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

95

Literary Work

antonevmeshkin

96

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

Tempo MAGALI SPERLING Dawn.

Specks of light on treetops reveal shooting leaves like hair on shaved heads – pointy and fresh.

Dangling buds are earrings on the once naked bark.

I abandon my watch and tell the time by the call of birds, the shadows on the ground, the wrinkles on my face.

Morning.

We share the bathroom mirror.

In her reflected image, I recognize the blooming breasts, the broader curves of her torso.

She ties her hair in a pony tail and hands me the blush case.

A tinge of color heightens my smile.

Where was I when she emerged?

Dusk.

The house is quiet. There is no music but I follow the rhythm of the wind.

A solitary linden tree shows me how to dance while rooted and standing tall.

My bones unlearn their habitual patterns.

With rouged cheeks, I vow to choreograph the rotations of our lives.

Magali Sperling is a Creative Writing student at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies. She also holds a PhD in English from the University of Alberta, and is currently teaching at Fleming College in Nogojiwanong/Peterborough, Ontario, where she lives with her family.

Her academic work has previously been published in journals such as Canadian Literature, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, Interfaces Brasil/Canada, and Ilha do Desterro.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

97

Literary Work

mohol

98

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

Reflections of Innocence SARA MILNE-FLAMER “Innocence ends when we are stripped of the delusion one likes oneself.” - Joan Didion Small, sweet shadows cast magic onto concrete I used to curl myself into the cracks between the houses on our street I used to giggle every time I was found while playing hide-and-go-seek Never lose that softness sweet Sara, They would all say Back when I was small enough to skip between hopscotch lines, of cynical syntax Back when I was small enough to believe in, the magic my shadow cast Never lose that softness sweet Sara, They would all say Softer fabric inclined to fray I started to unravel as I traveled beyond my city block Getting caught on institutes made of academic cliches Getting knotted in a web of fraudulent small talk I became a tangled string caught on other people’s projections, soft and fragile, dissolving into dust I became a mess of tangled reflections, of my own disgust Casting shadows of jumbled lines, of cynical syntax Wide enough that, I would have been able to fit inside its cracks Never lose that softness sweet Sara.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

99

Literary Work

cassettebleue

100

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

Meditations on Chaotic Colouring SARA MILNE-FLAMER 1) I got in trouble in second grade for colouring outside the lines.

2) Ms. D said I needed art lessons, to learn discipline.

3) I just liked how the colours looked, spread and spilt, ignoring lines confining colour.

Dear Ms. D, I’ve dedicated over a decade of my life learning to be disciplined. I have tried to steady my body into single file lines. I have devoted endless time to deeply diving into the monastic meditations of disciplined disciples. I have attended those art classes you demanded. I even got myself into one of those institutes of upperlevel conformity that breeds the disciplined and distressed. The funny thing is, 88) I did better writing mismatched lines, than over a decade of standing in them. 93) One of the wisest things I learnt while at a centre for centring oneself is that, being centred can never be achieved if you centre yourself in a circle someone else draws. 7) My art classes always ended with spilt paint,

messy abstractions of antitheses.

4) I spilt colour all over that fancy 4-year degree in conformity,

and it came out as a still life of humanity.

Dear Ms. D, I guess you were right. I still spill colour all over our unruly reality,

ignoring lines confining colour.

Sara Milne-Flamer was born in Toronto ON. She attended an art based high school there, where she developed a love of creative writing, photography, and acting. Sara is currently living in Vancouver and has just completed her undergraduate degree at UBC in interdisciplinary studies where Sara’s primary focus was psychology, combined with creative arts. Sara is working towards a career as a therapist and believes that artistic creation is an important tool in the healing process and hopes to incorporate that into her work, one day, as a therapist. At this point Sara has yet to publish her poetry but is taking the time now that her degree has finished to start submitting her work and is very excited about what her writing life will look like in the future.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

101

Literary Work Art

102

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry Digital Art

The artwork is one part of the Sweet By and By series which relates to one’s endeavor for spiritual longing.

I have always had a deep need to believe that there are deep and lasting and better things in the world and life - whether one wants to call such religion, humanity, ego ideal, or the Platonic real. And I also believe appearances cannot express our emotions, so I avoid strict representationalism, instead try to use form and color to not capture, but to allow life, to the things I feel, and by extension believe we share.

— Edward Michael Supranowicz

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

103

Literary Work Writer’s Corner

Woman By The Creek REGIE VOCALES “What do you see?”

I stare at the dark silhouette startlingly visible standing by the creek under a starless sky, looking down hard as if the water should freeze.

I can feel the warm breath of my older sister in my ear.

“There she is. The Woman by the creek.”

“And what do you think she is?” I asked my sister. “I think she’s an artist. A thinker.

She, who travels through distance in both space and thoughts. She sets herself free from worldly inhibitions. The world is full of art—the world is her canvas. She’s fearless, peculiar, and unrelenting, and now she found the creek.”

But what is it with the creek anyway?

Who is this Woman by the creek?

Some say she is a lone traveler, a tourist, a wanderer lost on her way—searching for the right path, and the path she had crossed. She does not know where she is. She lost her way, and lost herself, and now she found the creek.

Some say she is from the village on the other side.

Running from her family? From the past? Maybe she was a village thief. From her future? Maybe she was exploring.

Perhaps she was hiding from her father, who forced her to marry the chief warrior, and now she found the creek.

Some say she is a nymph, a guardian of the forest, a siren of the river banks. Yet, she has no voice. She stays by the waters as if she can mimic its song. People have been wanting to see her beauty, but no one has seen her face. No wonder her legend lived because no one died by the creek.

Some say she is a caregiver, a nurturer. She goes out to far places looking for love. She wants to take everything in and wants to take care of everything. And when she thought she had cared for all, she searched for more. She found something on the creek.

104

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

After a full echo of silence came the sun breaking at the corner of the horizon. This is it. I will be the first to account for a proper description of her.

But as the forest gathers illumination, the woman also fades. I have to act fast. As soon as I took a step on the bedrock, the woman melts into the water, like a tower crumbling to dust, a sandcastle collapsing on the beach, disintegrating and integrating herself into the stream.

The sun is high up now, but my mind still wanders about the night. Who is that Woman by the creek?

I realized my sister is no longer with me. Where could she be? She must have already left before I could notice. I brushed past branches and bushes and saw her by the area of still water, filling our tumbler for a fresh drink.

I did not come nearer, and she did not hear me either. I watch her purposely refilling our water and washing our tools.

She must be tired, yet still assures there’ll be supply for the journey home.

Poetry Fiction

“Why did you leave me?” I tried to hide my anxiety. “Sorry, I thought I just had to go and do what was needed at the time, before the bears go by the banks for a drink.” I pursed my lips.

“Did you see her face?” Probes my sister as we walk over piles of leaves. “No… I don’t think she is real.” “Yeah, that’s what the folks always say.”

But just because you can’t put a word about her existence doesn’t mean she is not real.

“What if I tell you something people didn’t get?” She sounds confident.

“What is it? Did she reveal herself to you?” Curiosity got the best of me.

“No, but a lot of people have said a lot. She’s like this, she’s like that, but none of those made sense to me. How would they know she is any of those? They haven’t even seen her that many times as I did.”

She is the stream, the rivers, the lakes, the oceans. She started civilizations and aided wars. She has flown above and became the clouds, and poured back down to give life or end it all.

She is everywhere and everything in between. She starts and ends and starts again. She ebbs and flows to maintain the balance. She is one, and all at once. She keeps us all alive.”

It dawned on me why she is inconceivable. People have seen her and talked about her a lot, but they only do it out of their own perception. People talk about her like they knew her, but not once has she ever spoken to them nor did they. She is ridiculed for not having a face… and some only see her as a commodity. Do they really know what the Woman can do?

I felt my heart ache as I watched the truth unfold in front of me. An awakening…

We walk home with a new understanding. I have no imagery of her face, but I now have the thought that she matters.

Before I can recollect myself, my sister enunciates, The creek is a woman, and the Woman is the creek.

“She is the creek. She is the water that nourishes the underground and gives life on the surface. She can be contained at the same time she can’t be. She has no bones but she can cut through the mountains. She sustains both lives of the above and below. She is soft, yet the land follows her path. She has no voice, yet all creatures gather around her. She is only one, yet she is everywhere at the same time.

ninahlupich

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

105

Literary Work

106

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

107

Literary Work Art

Artwork inspired by the beach scene from the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).

This film illustrates how painful and unpleasant memories shouldn’t stop us from living in the present. It shows how the past shapes us. Whether the experiences are good or bad, they are necessary for our growth as human beings.

108

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry Painting

Max Betonio

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

109

Writer’s Corner

110

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Reflection

The Beauty of Beginnings and Endings: A Reflection SARAH ANN EROY Beginnings are hard while endings are sad. One can’t exist without the other, but both don’t have to be associated with negativity.

Starting over is underrated. Worry and anxiety cloud our minds when we think about kick-starting anew. Secondguessing decisions, our self-doubt creeps up and we start to get cold feet. We fear the unknown; the future which results in starting something, be it a project, a relationship, or a new outlook in life.

Think of it this way: how many of us have always wanted to start over but don’t have the means to? If given the opportunity to do it, grab it. Beginning anew is a privilege.

How wonderful it would be to get a second chance and apply whatever lessons from past experiences. Without starting anything, what is left for us? We can’t just stay stagnant for the rest of our lives. Being given the chance to do a redo is somewhat being told that it is never too late to become who we really want to be.

If there is a beginning, there is always an ending. Every ending always leads to new beginnings—that’s what’s beautiful about it. Instead of getting sad about concluding something, be glad that there is a new opportunity to start a new chapter. As one door closes, another one opens, and an even better path opens, something that we deserve more.

vovalis

As Craig D. Lounsbrough said, “An end is only a beginning in disguise.” Both relate to each other, and one isn’t possible without the other. Having a new beginning takes a leap of faith the same as ending needs courage. Both need you to be brave and take control of your life, because if you won’t then who will. One should not get anxious over beginning or ending, because it’s a beautiful phase in one’s life.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

111

Writer’s Corner

The view up above the hill NEEN 135 steps up above The butterflies and beehives The smell of soil after the rain But I am lost 367 steps up above The raindrop bending a thin leaf The roots acting like forest veins The soil its flesh 941 steps up above Ahhh the city view..

The rushing wind dancing with my hair I close my eyes and I breathe 1678 steps up above I walk with the clouds beside me The sun kisses my skin The chaos disappear above 2587 steps up above I can barely walk now I drink my tea while I rest But I will live 4897 steps up above A glance to a new start, what a sight A world painted better than a paintbrush Now, I am found

112

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

nadiagutnova

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

113

Literary Work Writer’s Corner

What If NEEN What if I dream?

Will I be great like all the other legends?

What if I do?

Life is just too dark

What if all these what ifs are just all in my head?

What if, what if Is anyone there?

I need to save myself.

What if I’ll be brave?

I have to.

What if darkness will consume me?

Will there be someone who will save me?

No more what ifs.

I have to be brave.

I have to become a legend.

I have to save myself. I need to.

114

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

nikolay2

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

115

Literary Work Writer’s Corner

And suddenly NEEN And suddenly The world cast a shadow And yet you are brave now Not afraid of what will come And suddenly They close their eyes for you And yet yours a clearer view Gaze into what’s raw and real And suddenly You just know you have to start again And yet you’re unmoved Trust the process of new beginnings And suddenly All is uncertain And yet, it feels better this way And yet, it’s okay

116

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Poetry

weris7554

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

117

To-Read-List New Reader Media, a creative marketing firm working in partnership with New Reader Magazine, takes on the challenge of bookmarking emerging voices in the indie publishing world. Presented in no particular order, here’s New Reader Media’s reading list for this quarter of 2021!

An Iranian Boy and His American Dream: From Rags to Riches MAHMOOD SHAIRI In pursuit of freedom and ambition, a fourteen-year-old boy from Iran gambled with destiny and used every chance he could get to fulfill his American Dream. With great faith and determination, he rises from tribulations until he finds what his heart truly desires.

The Artifice of a Lady: A Novel of Redemption MILTON H. MARQUIS When the Berlin Wall fell, the protagonist finds herself gambling with life as she becomes the greatest asset of a mafia responsible for art thefts throughout Europe. With her seductive beauty and youth she conquers the industry where women were once prohibited to get involved.

118

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Aggie Spirit 101: Greater Love BARRY BAUERSCLAG Explore the unique traditions of Texas A&M. The book shares to us their distinct way of performing rituals in expressing their devotion.

Also, a part of the book is informing the readers the Aggieland’s way of instilling competent leadership, collaboration, tending and loving others. These traditions and goals are made to coincide with the common Christian traditions, in which the practice of both promotes healthy faith.

Who’s Mostly Scared?

DR. ANDREW J. HOLMAN The first in an anthology of short stories and poems, this book is the fruit of a father’s love for his children and the lessons they’ve taught him. A story about fears and overcoming them paired with stunning illustrations by Natalia Starikova, this might just be your child’s next favorite!

Understanding the Art of Biblical Counseling DR. SAM S. GASELA-MHLANGA This book is made to raise awareness and put importance on health, especially those who continue to face unjust treatment because of HIV/AIDS. In general, Understanding the Art of Biblical Counseling discusses the many opportunities of counseling Christians who seek counseling in making serious choices about health and life.

Moments (Fine Art Printing edition) IBRAHIM YOUSSRY Have a look at the world through the eyes of photographer Ibrahim Youssry in this carefully curated selection from his last 15 years of photography. Moments can be your next prized coffee table book or your guide and inspiration for your own photography ventures.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

119

Jesus Christ and Me JAMAL REID A brave and realistic account of Jamal Reid’s journey through life and celebration of unbending faith, Jesus Christ in Me maps a holy life and provides a spiritual tug for his readers—his brothers and sisters in Christ.

The Vedic Dharma JAMES KALOMIRIS Characterized by belief in a supreme being of many forms and natures, by the view that opposing theories are aspects of one eternal truth, by the desire for liberation from earthly evils, and by belief in reincarnation.

A religious, philosophical, and cultural tradition that developed in India with the composition of the Vedas.

Relentless: From Both Sides of the Veil TOM MADSEN This true and poignant tale about the struggles of a hurting son and the heartbreak painted on the loving parents ends on a hopeful note as they find that though he’s passed, the love and bond they’ve shared as a family can transcend the invisible veil between life and the after.

Until We Are Lost: A Novel LAO-TZU ALLAN-BLITZ How does adversity factor man’s reaction?

Left with a war-torn world, man commits to necessity. However, the story as narrated by different perspectives in different periods unfolds how man’s action of kindness and selfishness is malleable to necessity. The book questions its readers about what man is by nature in consequence to ordeals.

120

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Hawk McCoy: The Penthiads MARY KINCAID How mysterious is it to lack mystery?

A unique and cheery take on the mystery genre. Izlet Bay is a quiet and run-of-the-mill town. Coincidentally, a young boy named Hawk McCoy is a local and seeing how ordinary life can be in this town arouses him to investigate its lack of mystery.

Snook-a-Pie Gets Adopted NANCY URE DOUGLASS A convivial and informative way of introducing you to the open adoption via a Welsh Corgi puppy named Snook-a-pie.

A guide for both kids and adults in understanding adoption, get ready to get your questions answered by this fun interactive book.

Take Control Now PAMELA CLARKE NOW is the time to get up and hit that body and health goals! Your body is your best friend and protector. You have to treat it well for you can ALWAYS expect it to return the favor. Take Control Now for a healthier you.

The Elves in My House MOLLY PRICKETT Do you find losing your stuff an invoncenience?

Well, you better check your drawers again because in this book the author tells us about elves rummaging through your house. It wouldn’t be surprising to have these elves to blame once your relatives starts wondering what happened to their stuff, too. The Elves in My House is an entertaining and unique take on elves as naughty and certainly not the ones from Santa’s toy factory.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

121

A Place That I Love: A Tour Drivers Perspective of Mackinac Island WALTER KITTER In a book akin to a love letter, the author shares his admiration for Mackinac Island. Claimed to be one of Michigan’s best places, the island indulges us with man’s peak sophistication together with its natural beauty.

Living In the Now PATRICIA JEAN SMITHYMAN-ZITO Patricia Zito: a multi-faceted woman, wife, author, teacher, musician, poet, spiritual leader and humanitarian, leads a beautiful, vibrant life and recounts her authentic experience to self-enlightenment, awareness, and spiritual abundance in this journal.

A sense of purpose and self-fulfilment... This one-of-a-kind lifestory inspires its readers how is it to be... Living In The Now.

Changeling’s Return TRAVIS PIKE After getting lost in an esoteric village, ‘Morgen,’ a rising rock-and-roll star, takes a life-altering turn. In this theatre-turned-screenplay fiction novel, author Travis Pike intrigues readers with symbolism and a bird’s eye view into a musician’s mystical journey.

World’s End and the Sea Angle YANK SHI Born from the opposite sides of the world, David, an American man, and Emily, a Chinese girl, met by fate in the most unlikely place. Their love story blossoms in the most unconventional way as a time-space tunnel brought them to Stone Age Africa and the progressive Bermuda Triangle from the future.

The time periods they have been in might have ended, but not the love they have for each other.

122

|

NEW READER MAGAZINE

Non-Fiction

Helping you connect with your audience online and beyond.

NEW READER MAGAZINE

|

123