Volume 7, Issue 1
CONTEST WINNER: CREATIVE NON-FICTION
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The writer’s glossarian palate—tasting, savoring, relishing the play of words—draws ever deeper on writing’s myriad of subtle affects, circulating from cardiological to semiological palpability and back again; the pulse riding the causeway of meaning — from its rhythmic point of origin in the heart ( ! ) to the language-conjuring labyrinth in the head, passing through its byzantine network of pathways, coursing its way down through the nerves of the arm, out toward the writer’s pen there suspended in a finely molded grip of prehensile muscle and bone. The pulsation of meaning is exfoliated at last, dispatched to writing’s distant, desiccated meridian of ink and paper. Here, the final stage is realized in the tracing of static lines, skeletons of ink or graphite laid to rest on the page. The fossils lie dormant, waiting to be stumbled upon by an inquiring reader of late who may, along with them, become meaningfully (re)awakened. Such an awakening may be experienced as a euphoric opening—or perhaps only a gentle quiver—in time.
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POETRY
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I crave brain burning sun’s plasma
redolent of sugar clarify caramel, mind’s sweet magma, cools to ripen, fruit, leaves a film of creative ideas, as juice, a slight slime on the skin which persists through the broil of weather trudging fertile soil. [READ FULL WORK]
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FICTION
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At a banquet in ancient Greece, the subject is beauty, what is it? An ascent, a ladder, a diversion, a husk, an initiation, a vision beyond flesh, a quickening. Attendees to the drinking party deem it is not absurdity, not denial, it is the final revelation, oneness as grasp or embrace. A lasso thrown, aimed at beauty’s byte by the philosopher king Plato. Luca does not need another quilt, beauty that it may be. Alma will insist she keep it for guests, gratitude, luck. Alma has cherished quilt gifts of her own. A punch purple and jade green quilt from her mother’s trip to Chile. A red Navajo quilt with white spider woman crosses from Santa Fe. A gift from her father for a summer she spent on Nantucket. It now belongs to Wolf, her retriever. Alma contemplates the sublime and the fruitful.
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Customized illustrations for all published pieces provided by Evgenia Barsheva.