The Woven Tale Press
Vol.III #12
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Sandra Tyler Author of Blue Glass, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and After Lydia, both published by Harcourt Brace; awarded BA from Amherst College and MFA in Writing from Columbia University; professor of creative writing on both the undergraduate and graduate levels, including at Columbia University, (NY), Wesleyan University (CT), and Manhattanvill College, (NY); served as assistant editor at Ploughshares and The Paris Review literary magazines, and production freelancer for Glamour, Self, and Vogue magazines; freelance editor; Stony Brook University’s national annual fiction contest judge; a 2013 BlogHer.com Voices of the Year. www.awriterweavesatale.com
ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Michael Dickel, Ph.D. A poet, fiction writer, essayist, photographer and digital artist, Dr. Dickel holds degrees in psychology, creative writing, and English literature. He has taught college, university writing and literature courses for nearly 25 years; served as the director of the Student Writing Center at the University of Minnesota and the Macalester Academic Excellence Center at Macalester College (St. Paul, MN). He co-edited Voices Israel Volume 36 (2010). His work has appeared in literary journals, anthologies, art books, and online for over 20 years, including in:THIS Literary Magazine, Eclectic Flash, Cartier Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Sketchbook, Emerging Visions Visionary Art eZine, and Poetry Midwest. His latest book of poems is Midwest / Mid-East: March 2012 Poetry Tour. www.michaeldickel.info
ARTS EDITORS: Seth Apter Mixed-media artist, instructor, author and designer. His artwork has been widely exhibited, and represented in numerous books, independent zines, and national magazines. He is the voice behind The Pulse, a series of international, collaborative projects, the basis of his two books The Pulse of Mixed Media: Secrets and Passions of 100 Artists Revealed and The Mixed-Media Artist: Art Tips, Tricks, Secrets and Dreams From Over 40 Amazing Artists, both published by North Light Books. He is the artist behind two workshop DVDs: Easy Mixed Media Surface Techniques and Easy Mixed Media Techniques for the Art Journal. www.sethapter.com Donald Kolberg Sculptor, painter, art marketer and writer. His artwork has been exhibited throughout the U.S. in museums and galleries with his current representation at the Parker Art Gallery in St. Simons, Ga. He has been featured in an NBC short documentary and numerous print and zine publications. He is founder of ArtCore an international newsletter, and continues to be active in art groups presenting classes on marketing and art techniques including workshops on creating Strappo’s, a dry transfer acrylic monotype. A graduate of California State University, Los Angeles, his master work was continued at Otis Art Institute. Additionally he produced Periscope Up an independent television production for a Pennsylvania PBS station. His artwork has been included in the publication ‘Sculpture and Design with Recycled Glass’. Additional artwork and information can be viewed at www.DonaldKolberg.com PHOTOGRAPHY EDITORS: Susan Tuttle Award-winning iPhoneographer and DSLR photographer. She is the author of three instruction-based books (published in the US and abroad by F+W Media, North Light Books) on digital art with Photoshop, mobile photography and DSLR photography, and mixed-media art. Her fourth book, Art of Everyday Photography: Move Toward Manual and Make Creative Photos (about DSLR photography and mobile photography) was recently released by North Light Books and has been a best-seller in its category on Amazon. She is currently the Technical Advisor for Somerset Digital Studio Magazine. www.susantuttlephotography.com Charlotte Thompson Conceptual photographer and owner of Digital Art Transparency Overlays. Besides designing book covers, her works are in individual collections both in the U.S. and abroad, including Denmark, Sweden, Australia, and Korea. She has shown her photography at Photo Contemporary, OPF Gallery One, Raleigh Studios, and in a Hollywood exhibitions. www.opfgalleryone.com/artists/charlotte-thompson LITERARY EDITOR: Jo Ely Graduate of Oxford University with a degree in English; author of Festivals and Art for Everyone published by Collins and Longman; reviewer for the Empathy Library founded by writer and cultural historian Roman Krznaric, and curated by poet Sophia Blackwell; shortlisted for the Fish International Short Story competition. Her first novel, Stone Seeds, will be published by Urbane Publications, spring 2016. jo-ely.co.uk
Woven Tale Publishing Š copyright 2015 Reproduction in whole or part is prohibited, except by permission of the publisher.
ISSN 2469-5475 (print) ISSN 2333-2387 (online)
Editor’s Note: The Woven Tale Press is a monthly culling of the creative Web, exhibiting the artful and innovative. Enjoy here an eclectic mix of the literary, visual arts, photography, sculpture, and the offbeat. The Woven Tale Press mission is to grow Web traffic to noteworthy writers and artists–contributors are credited with interactive Urls back to their sites. Click on a name in the bar at the top of the page to learn more about a contributor. To submit or become a Press member, go to: thewoventalepress.net
Contents Boissonnault, Nathalie 2 Cooke , Melissa
37
Innes, Kate
45
Evans, Garth
55
Kocher, William
49
Kote, Josef
17
McGrail, James McMonagle, Alan Philip, Leila
Skillicorn, David
33
27
55 11
Nathalie Boissonnault
“M
Interférences Sonores mixed media on canvas 36” x 30”t
y current work takes its inspiration
from the crossroads between the imagined and reality where numerous probabilities meet. Fed by profound introspection, the action takes place in the unconscious mind. A convergence develops between my pretences, my doubts, my ideas and my ambitions.”
1
Hope II mixed media on canvas 48” x 36”
2
Nous Irons de Port en Port mixed media on canvas 48” x 36”
3
Les Règles de Base mixed media on canvas 30” x 36”t
“B
y placing a figure in direct relation with an object or an animal of uncertain function, this playful universe becomes a place of exchange, a metaphorical mirror where the world of ambivalence is reflected. There, power and fragility, lucidity and innocence mix.” 4
Nous Étions Différents mixed media on canvas 18” x 36”
5
“F
avouring symbolism from the beginning, in each of my works I express an idea, not immutable, a result of being conscious of the evolution of my own perception. This idea is subjective, since the object is never considered strictly as an object but as a sign perceived by the subject. The image therefore becomes a point of departure, never the point of arrival. Between the strange and the familiar, an internal dialogue is created that sends the viewer back to his or her own fiction, and therefore gives the work a very personal meaning.�
6
Mon Petit et Fragile Univers mixe media on canvas 40” x 40”
7
Sirène Archéenne mixed media on canvas 30” x 24”
8
Sans Patrie et Sans Papier mixed media on canvas 36” x 30”
My Little Universe mixed media on canvas 36” x 36”
9
Dénominateur Commun mixed media on canvas 48” x 36”
10
David Skillicorn
“A
fter attaching folds of fabric
to canvas, each painting is meticulously layered with up to fifty glazes of oil paint, often hand-rubbed in, to create a deep luminous finish. My intent is to create subtle, resonate, atmospheric moods in this work.”
Adagio XXXIII oil and fabric on canvas board 24” x 24”
11
Adagio VIII oil and fabric on canvas 40” x 40”
12
Adagio XXXVIII oil and fabric on canvas 24” x 24”
13
Adagio XIX oil and fabric on canvas 48” x 48”
“A
dagio, the musical direction
for players to perform slowly, gracefully, with ease, is the spirit in which these paintings have been created, and might also suggest an approach to experiencing them as well.”
14
Adagio XXX oil and fabric on canvas board 24” x 24”
Adagio XXXVI oil and fabric on canvas 24”x 24”
15
Adagio XLIII oil and fabric on canvas 24” x 24”
16
Josef Kote
Divine acrylic on linen 30” x 30”
17
Don’t Wake Me Up acrylic on linen 30” x 30”
18
Sweet Thoughts acrylic on linen 24” x 36”
“
Th e paintings of J. Kote are symphonies of light and color.
They are lyrically stunning and romantic, edgy and current. Kote achieves this delicate balance of seemingly contradictory qualities through his complete mastery of technique and through years of experimenting to find his own unique style. With the lightness of a true master’s hand, he combines classic academic and abstract elements, fusing these, literally letting them run into each other with dripping rivulets of riveting colors and light: by using his signature drip effect along the bottom. Kote’s trademarks are his bold brushwork, and sweeping strokes of vibrant colors applied–more often than not–with a pallet knife while other areas of the canvas are left monochromatic and devoid of detail, creating a negative space that lets the eye drift to infinity. The results are paintings that tremble in stillness with energy and light.” – Diana Pinck Art and Travel Writer 25A magazine
20
Gracefully Divine acrylic on linen 30” x 30”
Missing You acrylic on linen 30” x 30”
21
Over You acrylic on linen 30” x 30”
22
Cold Spring Harbor acrylic on linen 40” x 30”
23
Gentle Whisper acrylic on linen 48” x 48”
24
L.A. Dunton acrylic on linen 48” x 48”
25
Remembering the Light acrylic on linen 48” x 48”
26
Alan McMonagle
Bleeding Boy
T
he summer my mother died Heff became my best friend. His name was Heffernan, that’s why he was called Heff. Heff could tell you what song was number one the week you were born and do the Rubik’s cube in fifty-three seconds. He had a pool table in his bedroom. He was tall and great at telling jokes. For much of that summer the last things I was in the mood for were jokes but when Heff told one I laughed. He played basketball too. That’s where we first met – at the courts.
A few weeks after becoming best friends we made a list each of our favourite women. After wading through photographs of pop singers and supermodels in magazines, after countless close studies of girls who bounced around our neighbourhood, we confined our selections to mothers living along our road. This was Heff’s idea. This was a list that hadn’t been made before, he said. In our friendship, as well as being the joke teller, he was the ideas man. Very quickly we both had a top five. We differed on numbers two, three and four, but we agreed on number one. Mrs. Cassidy.
Mrs. Cassidy was gorgeous. She was young for a mother, had brown hair that curved into her neck, her lips were moist and plump. She wore singlets with glittery writing and short denim skirts. She had a tattoo on her right shoulder.
27
Her husband was a car salesman and looked like a toad. “What is she doing with him?” Heff demanded to know. The way he asked it I thought he wouldn’t sleep until he was given an answer that satisfied him. It was a question that had no answer and my friend agonized restlessly.
Shortly after I began calling for Heff, Mrs. Cassidy smiled at me when we passed each other in the street. It was a lovely smile, friendly and kind, and her lips pouted just before the smile, as though she was considering whether or not I deserved one. I wanted to stop and have a conversation with her. Get to know her a little better. See what sort of a personality she had. But I knew I would be tongue-tied.
I said nothing to Heff about my encounter. I wanted to keep the vision of that smile all for myself, and assemble an entire personality around it. Usually, if you said a girl had a good personality that was code for saying she looked like the back of a tractor. That was Heff’s phrase. He had one for every occasion. But after receiving that smile from Mrs Cassidy I knew the codebook could be torn up. Her smile, and the obvious things about her, made her the perfect woman. That was another thing Heff had going that summer. According to Heff, to be perfect a woman had to have three things. A good face. A good body. And a good personality. “He drives a hard bargain,” my father said when I told him Heff’s terms. “You haven’t seen Mrs Cassidy recently,” I whispered, which was true – that summer he had barely set foot outside the door of our house.
At night I lay awake and thought of Heff and his lists and Mrs. Cassidy and her smile. Then I thought of my mother. She had always been making lists. She’d had a useless memory, so she used to buy yellow notepads that had a sticky strip on one side. On these notes she would write her lists and then stick them to the fridge door or the kitchen wall, wherever there was space. She wrote lists of little things she had to do. Pay the ESB. Order oil. Pick up a Walsh’s loaf, which my father and I quickly devoured. One time she forgot to bring home the Walsh’s loaf. She had stopped off at a telephone box to make a call and she had left the loaf behind her. At the time, a notorious member of the IRA was being held in the town barracks before being sent up north. Release him or there’ll be trouble a message had been phoned in. And when my mother remembered where she had left her Walsh’s loaf and returned to pick it up, the phone box was surrounded by soldiers with guns. Meantime, two members of the bomb squad were kneeling just outside the phone-box and were prodding the Walsh’s loaf with long metal wands. We often laughed about that. Her big list was a list of places she wanted to see before she died. The Grand Canyon. The Great Wall of China. Berlin. She wrote it all down, said she was going to cross off each item one by one after she got to see it. I kept her list. I had it in my top drawer. I thought that maybe some day I’d get to one or two of these places. Then I could cross them off.
Mrs. Cassidy’s first name was Maria. She lived next door to Heff. If it was sunny she stripped into a yellow bikini and sunbathed in a fulllength deck chair in her back garden. Sometimes she wore a white bikini. I liked the white bikini. Heff liked the yellow. We disagreed on some things and bikini colour was one of them. Because we were best friends our disagreement didn’t come between us. “Let’s go and look at our favourite woman,” Heff would say if a little tension crept in to our discussions. He always knew how to resolve things.
Maria Cassidy had brown skin. It was smooth and lovely and watching her from Heff’s bedroom window was both great fun and painful. I ached when I looked down at Maria Cassidy. She was the most beautiful thing. She wore sunglasses, and made herself a fizzy drink with a straw and set it down on the grass beside her. From time to time, she reached an arm over, grabbed her drink, brought it to her plump lips and sipped through the straw. She rubbed sun-tan lotion all over her arms and legs. Her legs went on forever. The sunglasses made her mysterious. “I’m going to throw myself into that chair and rub my face all over it,” Heff said as soon as Maria Cassidy got up and went inside. I hadn’t reached that far. I was still with her smile. It had stayed with me after passing her on the street. And I continued to think of it as I passed her house on my way home at night. It was quiet in our house that summer. My father sat up late. He watched news reports, sometimes a late film. Often he sat by the open fireplace holding his head in his hands. I found it harder and harder to talk to him. It was always late when I came home from Heff’s house and I hoped my father would be in bed by the time I got in. But he was almost always still up.
28
As I lay in bed I said her name into the darkness. Maria Cassidy. I thought her name was very exotic. I pictured her on a yacht somewhere, lying out on deck in her white bikini, clear blue waters shimmering, that lucky sun gazing down on her all day. Making her smile.
After a while I tried to think of my mother’s smile. It wasn’t as vivid as Maria Cassidy’s and the pain that came was different to the pain I felt when I thought of Maria Cassidy. As more summer nights passed, thoughts of my mother and the pain that came with those thoughts began to fade. At first I thought this was a good thing. Then her smile began to fade and I wasn’t so sure. When Maria Cassidy took some time off from sunbathing Heff and I watched Kevin Ford’s driving tricks. He drove a Honda and it had a souped-up engine, go-fast stripes and spoilers. We sat down on the curb and watched his performance. Little Stephen Cassidy and his sister Ciara sat down beside us and watched too. They were always together, running up and down our road, chasing Mrs. Redihan’s dog, sometimes crossing the road one after the other, and making for the muck hole at the top of the grassy bank. Ciara was always first across the road, and Stephen always followed her. “He looks just like his mother. He’s going to have a great time when he’s older,” Heff said about Stephen. Behind the steering wheel of his Honda, Kev-
29
in Ford was soon busy. He revved and spun around and skidded and reversed and did another handbrake spin around. Eventually, Maria Cassidy or one of the other mothers came out on to the road and told Kevin Ford to take his loud car somewhere else. This made Kevin mad. You could see him grimacing behind his steering wheel, his grip on it tightening, and he revved his engine until it reached the point of no return and he sped away, the Honda’s exhaust coughing out a black cloud of smoke which spread a suffocating stench through the air. After watching Maria Cassidy in her back garden the entire show was a real let down.
Luckily, the sun continued to shine. Every day was hotter than the one before. “I am going to melt if this weather continues,” said Mrs. Redihan who lived next door to my father and me, and she tugged at the cardigan she was wearing. “Let her melt,” Heff said. “The world can continue without the removal of that cardigan.” Other mothers along our road made the most of the rising temperatures. One or two of them put on bathing suits. Some paraded about in bikinis. Heff said he’d run away from home if his mother pulled a stunt like that. Either that or he was going to find a gun and shoot himself. Between throwing himself out of bedroom windows and now all this gun talk he was becoming very fatalistic. I didn’t think his mother was that bad. There were so many different shapes. Heff and I responded to most of them. They all looked wonderful in that everything-is-new way, and with each passing day Heff and I happily noted the appearance of a new bikini along our road.
“
He was lying on the road, not moving, blood was seeping out from the underside of his head.”
Deep down, however, we both knew that none of them would ever be able to compete with Maria Cassidy. During that hot summer of mothers in bikinis, suntan lotion and neverending legs she kept one step ahead.
When she lay on her stomach, reached her arms around and untied the straps of her bikini top – the yellow one – Heff had to leave his bedroom window and go into the bathroom. I stayed at the window, staring down at her, and concentrated on her shoulders. They looked delicate and strong. The ends of her hair touched them. I wanted to touch them too. I said as much to Heff when he emerged, redfaced, from the bathroom. For a few minutes he stared intensely down at her. Unusually for him he didn’t say a word, and I thought to myself, this is it, out the window he goes. But he didn’t jump. Instead, he became hot and bothered once again, and made another trip to the bathroom. “To think that slimy toad gets to crawl all over her,” Heff said when we sat out on the curb to
cool off and saw Mr. Cassidy come home from a day selling cars. We didn’t really cool off, though, we never did. But, after one of our sessions with Maria Cassidy, we needed some time out of doors. “Is Longshaw still your number two?” I asked him. “Yeah. Her face isn’t great, but she has a good body.” “Brady is my number two.”
“She has a good personality. Her face is pleasant, but I’m not sure about the rest. Have a look at Longshaw. She’s in a bikini this week – well, half of her is.” We stopped talking then. Kevin Ford’s Honda growled past us, skidded and spun around, narrowly avoiding Mrs. Redihan’s dog. Mrs. Redihan came out of her house and shook a fist at Kevin Ford’s Honda. Behind his steering wheel Kevin rolled his eyes. Heff and I stood up, and headed back to Heff’s bedroom until the sun went down. After it got dark Heff and I played pool and a card game Heff had invented. From time to time, he put me on stopwatch duty while he
30
scrambled his Rubik’s cube and then tried to beat his record. As he potted balls he asked me to give him some dates so that he could make sure he knew what song had been number one. “The 22nd of November 1960,” I gave him.
“It’s Now Or Never, Elvis Presley,” he answered without a pause for thought. “The 7th of September 1970,” I gave him.
“Tears Of A Clown, Smoky Robinson and The Miracles,” he said. “The 10th of August 1977.”
“I Feel Love, Donna Summer.” “June First 1983.”
“That’s too recent. Give me a hard one. Wait, isn’t that the date your mother – “
He didn’t finish the sentence. Instead, he moved straight on to one of his jokes, one he had already told, one I had laughed loudly at. I laughed loudly again this time – so loudly that Heff’s mother woke up and shooed me out of there. When I was walking home from Heff’s, I saw a squad car outside Kevin Ford’s house. Lots of people were milling about in the front garden, drinking and smoking. A couple were groping each other in the back seat of Kevin’s Honda. On his doorstep two guards were talking to Kevin who was waving his arms and shaking 31
his head vigorously. Those in the garden were loud and the guards were telling them to clear off. I continued on my way home. I was in no mood for a party. Further on, I saw Mrs. Redihan at her window, her curtain drawn back. She let it fall back into place as I passed by. Then I walked into my own house.
He was in the kitchen, sitting at the table, silent, alone. I didn’t know what to say to him. Didn’t know if I should sit with him. Put an arm around his shoulder. I thought I wanted to, but something else stopped me, some hidden force that made me feel any movement towards him would require a stepping outside of myself, and a passage through unsafe territory. I left him to his thoughts and went upstairs. In my room I stared out through the window, at the calm warm night. I tried to make out patterns in the stars. At some point, I heard the roar of Kevin Ford’s Honda escaping into the night. And I lay down in my bed, thought of Maria Cassidy’s smile and waited for sleep.
The temperatures climbed higher and higher. More and more mothers started wearing bathing suits. Some of those already in bathing suits graduated into bikinis. While those in bikinis to begin with padded proudly up and down our road, their brown bodies glinting in the golden
Irish Writer Alan McMonagle’s second collection of short stories Psychotic Episodes is published by Arlen House.
light. Even Mrs. Redihan succumbed. She made a very bold move going straight from her cardigan into a bikini, by-passing the bathing suit stage. She had a very good body. So good that I thought she might give Maria Cassidy a run for her money. Someone is going to need to hear about this, I told myself, and at once I headed for Heff’s house.
was already out of his car, the driver’s door was swung open and he was standing beside the bonnet of his car, his hands clasped behind his head. Oh-oh, I thought, he’s hit the dog. Sure enough Mrs. Redihan appeared moments later. Then Maria Cassidy rushed past us, out onto the road. I looked after her. Then I heard Mrs. Redihan’s dog barking. It was moving swiftly down the grassy bank towards the scene. CiWhen I called for him he was busy scrambling ara Cassidy was right behind. I looked from his cube. He had broken the fifty seconds barri- Ciara back to Kevin Ford’s Honda. Then I heard er and was talking about entering the national Maria Cassidy’s scream, and I started to move Rubik’s cube contest. closer. “I am going to make a name for myself,” he said, tossing his solved cube from one hand to the other. “Then women will be throwing themselves at me.” He had also heard about Kevin Ford’s party and the guards. “It was Redihan who called them,” he said. “She really has it in for Ford.”
He was lying on the road, not moving, blood was seeping out from the underside of his head. Maria slumped down on the road and with both arms gripped her boy and halfraised him off the ground. She was crying now, and little Stephen’s blood was spreading across her brown skin, smearing her white bikini. “Oh, I almost forgot,” I said. “She’s in a bikini to- Closer and closer to her she clutched her boy, day. Redihan, I mean. She has a very good body. as though doing so could somehow restore the precious little life. And the pain of that moment You should go take a look.” suddenly reached me. Waves of dizziness arOn our way back towards Redihan’s house, we rived, and I had to sit down on the curb before I fell. And I sat there and watched Mrs. Cassidy passed Kevin Ford behind the steering wheel of his Honda, revving like he never had before. cradle her lifeless boy, gently rock him back and forth. And I wanted her to hold me that He was fuming. Mrs. Cassidy was on her way way. I wanted to be her bleeding boy. back inside her house. I could tell she had just told Kevin Ford to take his Honda elsewhere. Heff and I walked on as he skidded away. A couple of seconds later we heard Kevin’s car screech to a halt. When we turned around he
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Me Owly digital art
James McGrail
“S
ometimes it is hard to explain to someone who is only a piano player (for example), that maybe a synthesizer can express your music in a new way of expression. In art, there are so many different forms of expression. and digital art is just another great way of communicating you work.� Universal Juggling digital art
34
Living on the Edge digital art
35
Pacman Grave digital art
36
Melissa Cooke
Benjamins (Get a Job) graphite on paper 30� x 30�
S
pecializing in graphite on paper,
Cooke in her work investigates the relationship between photography, performance and drawing in portraiture. Cooke is represented by Koplin Del Rio in Los Angeles, California. Her drawings have been exhibited at venues nationwide, including the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, the Oceanside Museum of Contemporary Art, The Baker Museum, Yellowstone Art Museum, The Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, The Museum of Wisconsin Art, The National Arts Club, and numerous galleries and colleges.
Bushwick Claw Machine graphite on paper 50” x 50”
38
Dandelion Hair graphite on paper 50� x 50�
39
C
Bushwick Guest Book graphite on paper 22” x 22”
ooke’s drawings are made by dusting thin layers of graphite onto paper with a dry brush. The softness of the graphite provides a smooth surface that can be augmented by erasing in details and textures. No pencils are used in the work, allowing the surface to glow without the shine of heavy pencil marks. Illusion dissolves into brushwork and the honesty of the material.
40
Close Smile graphite on paper 22” x 22”
41
Hello, Lionel graphite on paper 22” x 22”
No Place Like Home graphite on paper 22” x 22”
42
Eyes graphite on paper 50” x 38”
43
NYC Trash (Dirty Unicorn) graphite on paper 22” x 22”
44
Kate Innes
Leverets Huddled in a form, midfield, their only protection from hawk and fox is immobility and earth brown fur. Wide eyes can see the approach of their doe or death equally well. They are too small yet to learn how to dodge and run; how to make their hearts pump power into legs, stretched to launch the arrow of precarious life. The hare bursts from the grass, runs, switchback, tangling her scent trail. The form is not a nest; she suckles them sitting up. Ear tips twitch. Nose dilates.
It may be a distant buzzard’s call; the stink of a vixen in the wind. The leverets are still, perhaps they sleep, briefly reassured and full. She will go now, before they wake, to run before the talon, tooth and wheel.
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Fishing Shallow, lapping water pulls and warps the shadow of a boy, braced before the morning with a rod. His toes grip the silver weathered boards of the dock. The lake is quiet, except for the creak of rope and the virgin drop of the weighted hook when he casts. Soon the cry comes - Caught one! On a hair’s width, the bent rod reels it in: a middling fish, fighting the air. The boy is smiling, saying - Hold still! Running his wetted hand down the sharp fin pricks, he holds it up, face to face. The fish pants, staring.
The barb has pierced the pale cartilage around the eye and cannot be unhooked. He puts it in the bucket for a breather - where it flick-flacks, tangling the line. Bigger hands are called for, while the boy pleads – Can’t you see we’re trying to help you?
The hook must come out the way it went in. The open mouth of desire disgorges the bait of temptation. Quickly slipped back in the bucket, the fish fans its gills, and a small puff of blood disperses On his knees, the boy watches - saying nothing.
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Red breast He pricked my conscience in winter weather, with his cocked black ice eye aimed at me. Ticking like a lookout waiting for the drop. Chest swollen with downy air, hunger-thin legs of sinew, taloned-strong.
I once heard his voice in a small room. He perched on a teacup by a window open to the Spring, and his notes were melting ice, coloured glass, beaten gold. Go-between, hopping on the cold dead days, almost tamed, landing on graves for worms, here is seed for your breast, your eyes, your song.
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Constellation For Michael
I am ten or twelve in a canoe on a Canadian lake. It is night. Below me, a few metres of liquid blackness, with its water spiders and snakes, its sharp schist islands, above me the endless depth of space, with it’s own archipelagos. Everyday on that island I filled a bucket with lake water and ladled it into cups with a battered tin dipper. So I only recognised one place on that foreign sky map, the Big Dipper, made from seven stars of Ursa Major.
I imagined it was full of nothingness, scooped from the void, carefully balanced in a strong and steady hand. But since then I’ve seen it rotate and stand on end, spilling darkness in a precise and careless arc, reflecting this earth’s tilt and spin. Apparently from England it looks like a plough, not a dipper. These stars would coalesce and disperse from any universal perspective, but for you they will always furrow the galaxies where star seeds grow. For me it marks my place. I am the part of the universe from which it is a dipper overflowing with space.
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William Kocher
Ocean oil on board 6” x 12”
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No Tanager Tonight oil on board 6” x 12”
50
Spring oil on board 6” x 12”
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“I
use direct observation
and memory to make paintings that are a communication with nature and the senses–including the past, the present, and the future.�
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October Morning oil on board 8” x 12”
Gold and Silver oil on board 6” x 12”
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Water Rising
Four Zuccini Twist of hand and the slim batons crack free, only to slip from my grasp, white clouds cut loose August heat.
Down at the pond a flurry just under water, while here in the hot dirt four zucchini, green zeppelins untethered now, the surprising weight of them lifting my basket.
W
ater Rising is an association of stunning watercolors and ha published by New Rivers Press at Minnesota State Universi watercolors, produced by the internationally known visual a were made over twelve months in his studio, which overlooks the wo CT. The poems, written by the award-winning writer, Leila Philip, beg from a Guggenheim Fellowship; each poem explores ordinary landsca insight, delight and self-awareness.
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aunting poems, ity Moorhead. The artist, Garth Evans, oods in Woodstock, gan with funding apes as a means of
all watercolors are 10� x 14�
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Signals He came at night or in the early hours, we were never sure. Always it was morning when we found the bag glowing white, his mark his gift, his signal left in the path by the road. He had his rituals, was tidy in his way, the white bag tied neatly at the top, as if it were garbage from a picnic, or a bag of clothes he meant to give away.
You would not know the bag was bursting with body parts, until a coyote or someone’s dog ripped open the white plastic, spilling out deer guts and viscera, the “lights” now rotting lungs.
True, sometimes a leg was left sticking through the top, the dainty black toes en pointe like a ballerina, but otherwise the bag held secrets. The need to show off was what scared me, Who we wondered, would bag up body parts, drive them here? Would I know him if I met him at the store?
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Each fall I’d find a deer shot and left, head bent back in the ellipse of death, tongue grey and swollen ribs half gone, chewed out by coyotes. Each day a little more would disappear until a scatter of bones, white fluff of fur were all that marked the deer.
I took the bags of deer until our neighbor said had been finding the sa white bags always by the road, neatly tied a hazard for his dogs.
Serial deer killer, we tr and walked our separa more about the need to
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this ritual dismemberment, whether it was a vendetta to change, one man’s tribute to a time before houses gnawed their way into these woods, into a man lost in the forest of his life. 58
Brancusi’s Head
On the beach I found Brancusi’s head lying on its side, Sleeping Muse, the perfect oval of a face abstracted in white stone.
Seagulls cried, raucous sails whirling in circles, the sea’s insistent roil, push and pull walking almost impossible on the heaving shore, stones rolling back and forth each ragged pulse of wave.
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Already the white stone was water earth, water, earth; as if I held a mirror of our future lives together, the way I held our son in my arms, two days old, and kissed the perfect oval of his head.
At work in his Paris studio, white light flooding in Brancusi must have been so in love with his muse he searched, chiseling with fury the rough white stone until finding her, lifted her head off her body then tilted the smooth stone face so that slight indentations of eyes, the faintest crease of mouth, birthed from his own head, she was released from time.
When I finally reached you on the beach, we looked together at Brancusi’s head, the perfect irony of water sculpting stone, our son now a sturdy boy a golden head, the strong legs bracing for each shock of wave. With each rush of water his legs disappeared and he was pulled almost toppling then struggled up his lean body, a perfect arrow sprung into the great suck until he balanced there on the moving stones, upright and shaking shouting, his triumphant fist, loving this contest each salty crash. I made a wish as if blowing candles on a cake. As if anything could prepare me for this perfect grief. The day he wakes a young man, each wave taking him farther and farther out into the beauty of his life.
And was this the final perfection Brancusi had been seeking? Defiant Zeus, Athena wave tossed and silver, Brancusi’s now forever. Secret muse, teach me to be fierce, pushed and pulled by waves: earth, water, water, earth, you have arrived just in time. White stone my talisman.
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Night Train And if I found the way would you could you, could we follow those tracks, back down along the river, whistle in the dark while the silver train cuts through night tides surging, the great memory of water returning, returning to the sea. Sit my love, the candle flickers and the moon is full, listen the crickets are at it again punching holes in the great ticket of the night their great hunger swelling again, again.
Look, summer stars brilliant as gems -while we were busy, evening slipped a ring over the hand of day. Our candle flickers now alert to any shift, a blink or toss of eye that might turn diamonds into coal.
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Lets hold our breathe and dive, or run, catch that train, silver arrow hurtling back twenty years, that night hand in ringed hand, we dashed to our car while rice flew like stars and the dark train sped fast along the river.
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