Autumn Surge
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Woven Tale Publishing Š copyright 2013 ISSN: 2333-2387
The Woven Tale Press
Vol.III #5
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. http://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. http://michaeldickel.info
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR: FICTION: Kelly Garriott Waite Her work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Science Monitor, Thunderbird Stories Project, Volume One, Valley Living, The Center for a New American Dream and in the on-line magazine, Tales From a Small Planet. Her fiction has been published in The Rose and Thorn Journal (Memory, Misplaced), in Front Row Lit (The Fullness of the Moon) and in Idea Gems Magazine (No Map and No Directions). Her works in progress have been included in the Third Sunday Blog Carnival: The Contours of a Man’s Heart and Wheezy Hart. She is the author of Downriver and The Loneliness Stories, both available through Amazon
FLASH FICTION EDITOR: T.K. Young: US-based writer; author of the flash fiction collection When We’re Afraid, and currently finalizing the upcoming “pre-dystopian” science fiction novel Chawlgirl Rising for publication. He posts original work, writing tips, news and contests at www.flashfictionblog.com. ARTS EDITOR: 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. http://www.sethapter.com PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR: 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. http://susantuttlephotography.com
ASSISTANT EDITORS: Dyane Forde Author of forthcoming Rise of the Papilion Trilogy: The Purple Morrow (Book 1) http://droppedpebbles.wordpress.com Lisa A. Kramer, Ph.D Freelance writer, editor, theatre director, and arts educator. She has published non-fiction articles in theater journals, as well articles aimed at young people for Listen Magazine. Her fiction is included in Theme-Thology: Invasion published by HDWPBooks. com. She is the director of a writers’ workshop From Stage to Page: Using Creative Dramatics to Inspire Writing. http://www.lisaakramer.com
Our staff is an eclectic mix of editors with keen eyes for the striking. So beware–they may be culling your own site for those gems deserving to be unearthed and spotlit in The Woven Tale Press.
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, humorous, and offbeat. The Woven Tale Press mission is to grow Web traffic to noteworthy writers and artists–contributors are credited with interactive Urls. Click on an Url to learn more about a contributor. If there is a “Featured!” button, it will link you back to a special feature on The Woven Tale Press site. To submit and become a Press member, go to: http://thewoventalepress.net
This issue of The Woven Tale Press is dedicated to my mother – My best friend. My mentor. My biggest advocate in all my own creative endeavors:
Elizabeth Sloan Tyler September 9,1918 - April 16, 2015
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My mother was an artist as many of you are whom we represent in The Woven Tale Press. Her reverence towards nature, in all its wonders and nuances of light and shadow, she evoked in her painting. Mom.You have left me heartbroken. But I know where to seek you: in the all the moods of the sky. Because every time I look up and see the sky in all its changing colors, I hear you exclaim: “Oh just look at that! You have to look!�
Editor-in-Chief
http://www.awriterweavesatale.com
My mother, Elizabeth Sloan Tyler, was my greatest teacher – the one who taught me how to "see." And then how to translate that seeing, to recreate reality into the transcendent of one's own unique statement. Here she is at work on her own "statement," which was always the canvas. Which she really did work – with brushes and palette knives, but also textures, sand, seaweed, and her bare hands. She worked those paintings until she got her statement exactly right. Until she had said what she needed to say.
As 10
con
an honorable closure on her life as an artist, this issue
ncludes with her final solo exhibition.
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http://garyjinn.blogspot.com
The Bellow Brief Tonight, this winter scarf is again wrapped around me head. Tonight, I am walking slowly through a wind and a storm, not wanting to go anywhere, yet on the move no matter. Chicago is never New York, but New York can sometimes be like Chicago, with this incessant, blinding wind. Careening around corners, high-flying things, updrafts and wind-whirl, all manner of things being tossed about. The mind itself is like a utensil at times like these tossed about too, swirled with bloody opinions of a hundred different shades. The corner? I should know where to turn, but don’t. Face it, gents and ladies, sui generis, I am authentically lost and just won’t look up, just won’t look up at all.
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Lessons
I learned all I ever knew from Frank O’Hara : the unsettled and the dumbstruck walking a Fourth turn, a University Place seat at some funky bar. men who hack meat hunks over on Gansevoort were not the same ones who slice finely on Lex or Park. Those are all different things. As Lincol once said to a waiter in a bad DC restaurant, re his beverage and turning it back : ‘If this is tea, b me coffee. If this is coffee, I’ll have tea.’ A few things do come to mind - I never expecte live this long; I never asked for a charmed life; a extent extents of my injuries have never been kn At least with Lincoln - bad coffee notwithstandi they knew why he died. But Frank O’Hara, that dithyramb triumphalist always chasing men and boys, he wrote from another position, and was killed by a beach buggy on a Fire Island midnigh beachfront, run down accidentally like a dog and the whole writing world did cry about.
e Avenue The t Street xington ln efusing bring
ed to and the nown. ing -
d
Commingled Compatriots I know they’re standing out there at the curb with cigarettes in their mouths talking sports : the new guy playing one position or another for a team in a season that hasn’t even started yet. Whenever we reach the opener, it’s always Spring, like taxes. How do you want to mark your time? Over at the park, that little spring with the free water is always running - always, no matter what, running. People come with their containers and fill their supply up. I know I do it. Just in the last few years, and the South Asians here now, there are always coins in the drain basin - mostly dimes and nickels. Those who hope for coin-wishes are probably the same who pray to Gods and Goddesses of fire and love. Good fortune. It’s pretty overwhelming - that one would throw money down to somehow placate a God to granting a wish - or something like that. I can never figure these things out. Don’t they ever realize it’s all self-generated - the wish, the hope, the God and the solutions? Try it with anything else, see what you get. So, this line of demarcation is marked by words - make the difference yours, one spring or another - how many of them overlap before we’re dead and gone? I have eyes like a warrior, just watching things, looking for the offender, watching to see what must be defended. One way or the other, I’ll get it eventually. Coins, great God, or no coins accepted. I don’t know.
ht 2
http://davidrubello.com/Site/Welcome.html
The morning graphite drawings
Boy 3
Feather and Rock
“
These drawings began several years ago because of a power failure. In the dark, too early for bed, I decided to do some drawing without having anything particular in mind to work from. I lit a candle and used a ball point pen on used computer paper. The drawings emerged with a certain rhythm and unforced energy. Seeing them again in the morning, I found drawing in this state of mind freed me from having to start with a subject. 4 – David Rubello
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Arrow Target #3
Arrow and a Knife
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Christmas Oranges 6
“Photograms
were first started at the birth of photography by Fox Talbot who placed fronds on a light-sensitive paper and exposed them to the sun.
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FIFX
I began my own photograms by making a flexible aluminum piece that allowed me to shift it into multiple forms. One day I took it into the darkroom and made multiple exposures, changing the flex form and, at the same time, using the light from the enlarger to make one photogram. I enjoyed the results enough to continue. As each one is new, I titled them New Life Forms. I invented names by making a collage of words cut out from magazines or newspapers. – David Rubello
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Blasgam
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Gamz
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Twisor 7
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http://www.emiledillonart.com/Home.html
Acrylics
Duane Reade Acrylic on Canvas
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“M
y art is based on my past and present
environments.
Having grown up in the city, at one time I wanted to be a architect, but later decided against it. I now paint the buildings and street scenes that I love so much. Cities are forever changing and I want to record those changes. – Emile Dillon II
”
The Three Cokes Acrylic on Canvas
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Last Spac Acrylic
ces Remaining c on Canvas
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M&Ms Acrylic on Canvas
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Still Ten Cents Acrylic on Canvas
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https://kushalthepoet.wordpress.com
I used to draw, but then I couldn’t draw a “ particular fantasy house, because my skill wouldn’t allow for it. Hence I began to write. My first tongue was Bengali and it was not until I grew up when I learned literary English.
“
Home, They Whisper The Flaming Cage Not speaking of the flaming cages does not rescue me when at night a blazing mare enters into my stable sleep, gallops through the staddles. Even the jolt of awakening, airing to the morning pane, watching one lark lurking from the neighbor’s recess do not give me any solace.
After dark, the plastic sacks hush the drainage, and raise the water, and the ripples whisper, soon your father will home. Until then the wall holds the family in three framesa photo of a bottle in place of the man, of one paper-boat in the middle for the child, and of a sealed envelope for the woman.
I shake you, say, Heard the rattle? Smelt the fire, flesh? There, you wrap me, there. Yes. There. A flaming cage.
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Both poems originally published at https://iamnotasilentpoet.wordpress.com
I stopped draw“ing. And then I
discovered the magic of charcoal and dry dust pastel. Now I work mostly digitally. On my android phone. With an app called Sketcher. With my fingers. I draw mostly faces, but without looking at the screen. I write to tell the stories inside those faces. My poems are what my art cannot convey.
” – Kushal Poddar 18
After A Storm
Oh the skill involv skirting a fallen fle And the deaf hear to listen to the con guardian crow drif to sad caws. Imag the blindness I ne its displaced wing eyes. Later when my daughte asks if we can hav angels even if it never snows here a hushed sigh. W long to make som Because it looks w We spray talc on lie, flap our hands the crow caws. On From The Book A Animals
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https://kushalthep
m
Breaks Open A Nest
ved in edgling. rt one needs nstant fting down gine eed for gs, unbloomed
er ve fallen
e, I give her Why do you mething fallen? well, she says. the floor, s and hear nce. Twice. A Place For Your Ghost
poet.wordpress.com
Kafka Dreamed Of Paprika
He dreamed of paprika for nights. Nice, hot, sun-dried on some flat roof. Grounded to haze, to the crux of the color, to the hue of some long summer and falling for a distant niece. He dreamed of becoming one pinch held between a bride’s thumb and index for his family and husband every day and two pinches on those month’s opening nights when her man returns drunken, colorful, frustrated and lovably cruel. He dreamed himself into paprika in a glass jar. His mother left one on the bottom shelf of desire.
The Invertebrate Do not mix your moth and your fire. Turn your glass to cage its flutter. The ceiling fan chops the stillness in air that becomes the wind, breeze. Rust on rust, gurgles the tab. I hear a muffled scream in its stream. Later, a choked invertebrate shows up between the basin’s teeth. I shall release you, moth. I shall stand on my peeling-away porch and see you wave back. Oh such joy. Can I afford to bear it? Your freedom depends on the answer.
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https://kushalthepoet.word
dpress.com
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td
http://www.riccardomantero.com
i slip o t “I like ff crow es o plac tra n w o -kn well h th p a r og phot ard
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A Chiapas Girl is Preparing Tortillas
– Ricc r Mante
into and wded and , s k ac
�
hem.
ria do Ma ro
The Lord of the Ropes 24
Between the Sacred and Profane 25
Antelope Canyon, Page, Arizona, AZ, Light Beam
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“the art of photography is the combina and instinct. The first one can be learn practicing. The second one, the so-call over time. Both components should no moment with the camera in hand, but mu
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Last Ho
ation of two main components: technique nt – reading, documenting, studying, led “eye,” can be developed and refined ot be exercised always in the precise ust be considered continuously.” – Riccardo Maria Mantero
ope
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https://jomazelis.wordpress.com
“Black and white negatives, once so precious
and vital, so vulnerable and unique, now can seem outlandish; the relics of an antediluvian life, like dinosaurs and crinolines and black-and-white TV sets.
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Once upon a time, in a land long ago and far, far away, it was a slightly unique thing to turn the camera on oneself.
The negatives are trapped in Plato’s cave, they are formless shadows, shrunken toy theaters where tiny unreadable puppets cavort and perform in long forgotten and inexplicable plays… Then a digital scanner is put to use and the photographer works through the store of old negatives, revisiting that lost country where he or she once stood in a room, on the street or on a mountain top, and lifted the camera to his eye and pressed the shutter. – Jo Mazelis
”
Taken early one morning around 1981, at the Barbican Centre where I used to work in the library. Everything is new and crisp even – arguably – the shadows.
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I’m not sure why I decided to take a self-portrait of the back of my head, but I did, and strangely both of these shots work. At the time I was annoyed, once the film was developed, to see that the dress label is showing in some of the pictures. Otherwise I find these pictures have a pleasing lyricism.
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When I looked at this image as a negative, I thought the friend it showed had tipped the overhead light so that his face was flooded with light, but actually he must have done the opposite so that his upper body and, crucially, his face is in darkness. He has erased himself. My friend. Gone now. Dead. Lost in the darkness he created in this photograph. This process of scanning negatives of pictures I never printed is at times quite emotional for me; while these are “just photographs,” for me they are a journey into my history – sometimes they aren’t even good or particularly interesting images, but often they are far more laden with emotion than I will admit. 32
Ghost train and shadows.
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Thinking in monochrome and in particular, the graphic qualities of any given image, was a necessary preoccupation, so the shadow of this tree seemingly transplanted into an unnatural place was duly recorded but then forgotten about. Because the scene was so banal – sleepy yet uptight suburbia with its mock Tudor pretensions – I think I dismissed this image as average – a mere trick of the light, not in keeping with my photographic practice (which I kept changing my mind about anyway).
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http://www.wmazziotti.com
Offset Grid Acrylic on Canvas Board
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Inset White Grid in Geometric Landscape Acryic on Canvas Board 36
Grid in Red Acrylic on Canvas Board
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White Grid on Brown Ground Acrylic on Canvas
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Orange Grid in Geometric Landscape
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Emergin Grid Acrylic on Linen 40
http://www.leanneradojkovich.com
ed!
Featur
d r i b g n i m m Hu
id five words a s ’t n d a h e .W n. ked like Liam o lo e h e d of the garde s n u e a c e e th b e to c n n o w , do this guy from the party y a w I had sex with a im h d r when I le e been a nutv a h ld u to one anothe o c e ed. “H as Liam had nd Karen ask y ie k fr n y la m , y ” u ? g s u g un little dangero st a pissed yo ju s a w e h “Wasn’t that a , y ll e walked. ea h R n ” e r. h w re t e a rd o u b ke a case. An axe-m e he rocked li id w o s rs e ld ou tly crackers h g li s been, with sh ly n o s a ew lash, a heartospitalized. H e h y s e a n w a e s h a l re fu ti eau ied Liam befo aid I was as b s e H . I almost marr in e m etness drew his being. to in d e lt e then. The swe m d a nly ingbird that h y, there was o ll a burst, a humm tu c A . y a d one om,” he said eir fire-rim.” ro th e e th e s in n a le c p o “I ir. o many pe t staring into a a c a s “There are to a e s n He’d gone te down me and him. be, crouched ro rd a w e th in nd him hiding u fo I n e h w e bulanc I called an am sing gown. s s in re d y m in g He was alway . g sobbin in il e c e th g to me with in bed watchin rn y tu la ’d e e h h d d e n it a is and e, when I v d stroke his h I’ eep . ft le r For a long tim e v e n I’d ess would sw n if li s e v a , lo n e io tl it n s e o g of the same p that a feeling n io s s re p x e t such a swee through me. ay home.
w I’d cry all the
, his knuckles
ee-through was almost s
ight. His skin e w g in s lo s a iam w as tent poles. rp Meanwhile, L a h s s e n o b k e is chee urse, open th “N , grew huge, h e m to id a ds weet eyes, an s e s o th h it w lanced up e.” One day he g mmingbird fre u h e th t le to av ien dow, we hed ginally publish riin Ow
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North & South
April 2014
A Cat’s Hear
t
Things I’d gro wn used to no longer exist: m our motel visit y heart, big a s; the you at th s a cat when e end of “I lov our eyes met; e you”. That morning I caught you lo oking at your grave,” you s hands. “Some aid. “Don’t be one just walk so dramatic,” check out a 6 ed on my I laughed, as 11 that contro we drove dow l had patched n the Valley to through. We walked pa st scabby flax es simmering half-hidden b with cicadas a y bamboo. Th nd glimpsed a e caravan shim leaves. caravan mered behind the bamboo’s light-filled “Police!” you announced. A rustle, the le aves silvered . BOOM Glass everyw here. I saw yo u crumple on to the grass a s I fell. I went back to work as soon as I could – y ou needed m ore time. I started walk ing like you, y our heavy-tre boasting in th aded slow wa e bar afterwa lk with should rds, like you d in. ers back, beg id, about hun an ting crims and bringing them Only I knew y ou’d also nipp ed home duri That’s part of ng the day to what made m kiss your wife e love you, an and babies. d also why I’v e drawn in my claws.
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In Memory of
Elizabeth Sloan Tyle
In 2008, she was awarded Top Honors from the Guild H NY. The reward was a solo exhibition held in October 20 no longer had the strength to p 43
er,
Abstract Expressionist: “In constant awareness of
all the variables of season, weather, and time of day,
I try to interpret nature’s luminosity; through the
translucent layering of color and the fusing of shapes in my work,
I strive to evoke
the atmospheric rather than realistic character of landscape.
My paintings
are constantly changing, as my aim is to express the
poetry of place, individual to
that particular environment.”
Hall Museum, East Hampton, 010, her last show before she paint. 44
After Glow
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Summer Peak
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Dune Shadow
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Ocean Light
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Summer Heat
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October Moon
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Fire in the Sky
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Winter Sun
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Storm Light
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Ocean Dance
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After 55
r the Storm 56
Novembe
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er Dunes
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Me with my mother, her grandsons, and my husband, in front of one of her paintings at her Guild Hall exhibition
My gr
one of their g in ir m d a s n o ys paintings ’s r e th o m d n ra
Me with my mother at her Guild Hall awards ceremony in 2008
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Tryptich By Elizabeth Sloan Tyler