Editors' Notes

Maria Damon and Michelle Greenblatt
Jim Leftwich and Michelle Greenblatt
Sheila E. Murphy and Michelle Greenblatt

A Visual Conversation on Michelle Greenblatt's ASHES AND SEEDS with Stephen Harrison, Monika Mori | MOO, Jonathan Penton and Michelle Greenblatt

Letters for Michelle: with work by Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Jeffrey Side, Larry Goodell, mark hartenbach, Charles J. Butler, Alexandria Bryan and Brian Kovich

Visual Poetry by Reed Altemus
Poetry by Glen Armstrong
Poetry by Lana Bella
A Eulogic Poem by John M. Bennett
Elegic Poetry by John M. Bennett
Poetry by Wendy Taylor Carlisle
A Eulogy by Vincent A. Cellucci
Poetry by Vincent A. Cellucci
Poetry by Joel Chace
A Spoken Word Poem and Visual Art by K.R. Copeland
A Eulogy by Alan Fyfe
Poetry by Win Harms
Poetry by Carolyn Hembree
Poetry by Cindy Hochman
A Eulogy by Steffen Horstmann
A Eulogic Poem by Dylan Krieger
An Elegic Poem by Dylan Krieger
Visual Art by Donna Kuhn
Poetry by Louise Landes Levi
Poetry by Jim Lineberger
Poetry by Dennis Mahagin
Poetry by Peter Marra
A Eulogy by Frankie Metro
A Song by Alexis Moon and Jonathan Penton
Poetry by Jay Passer
A Eulogy by Jonathan Penton
Visual Poetry by Anne Elezabeth Pluto and Bryson Dean-Gauthier
Visual Art by Marthe Reed
A Eulogy by Gabriel Ricard
Poetry by Alison Ross
A Short Movie by Bernd Sauermann
Poetry by Christopher Shipman
A Spoken Word Poem by Larissa Shmailo
A Eulogic Poem by Jay Sizemore
Elegic Poetry by Jay Sizemore
Poetry by Felino A. Soriano
Visual Art by Jamie Stoneman
Poetry by Ray Succre
Poetry by Yuriy Tarnawsky
A Song by Marc Vincenz


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Three Poems by Lana Bella

Universal Carving

The midnight train departed from Hampton Court
station. He went on murmuring through the signaled
horns. Held between a light-struck hooves of the air
and shadowed carriage. And half-devoured under an
English blasting rain. "It's actually quite docile for this
time of year, darling", he said. I'd always known he
liked the soggy cold, for his eyes were stained deep
of teal-slate orbs. I snuck a glance towards the beyond
sky. An infinite dark, peppered with hurrying trees and
spray. At the sheer edge of horizon, the armored jaw of
the wind was lopping off the moon about its neck with a
fine cutlass, draining nearly the ashy gold. The torrent
swept wide its watery bone, plunging down the metal roof
then gutting through the graveled earth. A liquid violence.
Yet nothing more than a mutual universal carving. Where
the depths of chaos pillaged outside and soaring notes of
passion caressed within. And never was there a more curious
state than being caved inside an intimate skin of a lover and
that of the cleaving pulses of rain.




Small Things Loom Large

You climb the hard steps
up to the top,
crowding with jolly tourists
as the sun bleeds gold into
the smooth-cut rocks
like ice-veins in a bourbon glass.
A boy darts forward in a
blinding haze of shadow scissoring
through the mass,
an avalanche of impish haste with
tossing laughs and flopping hair.
Looms large as he turns past you,
yet smaller than a mite.
And wings through the air his bony
legs,
mounting still the graveled stairs.
kicking up the dry refuse,
while you pant at the edge of the
centermost step with a sharp
glut of envy.
Drained and temporary, you must
press on,
humbled in the confession you are
simply
a trivial, splay
speck in the wind.
Just through the casual lenses of
the passerby,
small things loom large.




The House of Wrinkled Bones

Outside, the air is crisp with wrinkled bones,
while the violet hours
slowly discard its poorly dressed skin
over the starved body
before slinking atop the frosty ground;
when the crescent moon
slopes saffron rays upon a lone woman
in a house, gnarls of bordered evergreens.
Inside, long white drapes
sweep the brown-carpeted floor
as she sits by a squeaky window with its chipping paint
worn down from years of famished termites and rain-rot,
waiting there,
reeling in her foamed suspension
for the visiting ghost to
roll out of its pockmarked void at the chimes
of midnight bells.
Dung-smoke knits the sleeping cold a wisp of pale sweater,
slightly puckered where the skirting tears,
when it lurks beneath the gold-crocheted chair
wrought with ivory roses and cat's eye stitch
the woman stirs.
Eyes shift, nose sniffs the flowing scent, tongue darts
to taste the turning air
then she leans out,
with clawed whisper of
cold fingertips,
reaches over to stroke
the low-hanging stumps,
smooths back the sloppy curls of its silvered mane
grasps the unfurled hands
and sways against the caressed notes of
a carved out mandolin.



Lana BellaLana Bella has a diverse work of poetry and flash fiction anthologized, published and forthcoming with more than eighty journals, including Aurorean Poetry, Chiron Review, Contrary Magazine, elsewhere, Poetry Quarterly, and Featured Artist with Quail Bell Magazine, among others. She resides in the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam with her novelist husband and two frolicsome imps. facebook.com/NiaAllenPoe




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