April 2022 | poetry
Rub the callus
where the pencil rests
instead of the bare base
of your ring finger.
When you aren’t feeling
so much like yourself,
what is your relationship
to enough? The sea
that gives you sand, the foam
that gives you the spray
of algae floating toward river,
salt into a far off fresh?
Will you let the conches rest
with their oracles gestating
or beg they scream
bloody murder? Evenings
the pencil marks two
dimensionality like a dog
who sits and laps
at the edge of a mirage
called thirst.
At night the foam builds
without shine. If you don’t
bed a scientist, will you
never hear that
the existence of the surface is
more important than what
the surface contains
or your silence?
If dreams weren’t fluid,
they would answer
to day. Instead
they drown it.
Amy A. Whitcomb
Poetry and prose by Amy A. Whitcomb have recently appeared in Witness, Poet Lore, The Baltimore Review, Terrain.org, and other journals. She holds a Master of Science degree and a Master of Fine Arts degree, both from the University of Idaho. Her writing has been honored with a Pushcart Prize nomination and residencies with the Jentel Foundation, Playa, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. You can meet Amy at www.amyawhitcomb.com/artist.
April 2022 | poetry
appears among some clothes you are sorting
and the recipe you’d forgotten falls from
the pages of the cookbook you’re perusing
and the person who convinced herself
she must hate you for your differences
appears in a dream as a character to protect.
And the friendship once abandoned
is resumed, though only in spectral form,
in a familiar world you’ve never seen,
where garments are only imagined
to fit, and flavors are tasted
simply by reading ingredient lists,
but promises to cook it again
are never kept because it didn’t
taste that good in the first place.
Nancy Whitecar
Nancy Whitecar is a professional pianist and music teacher living in the Bay Area, California, who is making publication of her writing her third act. Her poetry has been published in “Stick Figure,” “Loud Coffee Press,” and “A&U Magazine,” which nominated her poem “Punch Line” for a Pushcart Prize. Her short stories have appeared in “The MacGuffin” and “Ember: A Journal of Luminous Things.” She’s listening to jazz or Beethoven at home when she’s not hiking and camping with her husband.
April 2022 | visual art
Hello I’m lost
Lost archive
Fabio Sassi
Fabio Sassi makes photos and acrylics using whatever is considered to have no worth by the mainstream. He often puts a quirky twist to his subjects or employs an unusual perspective that gives a new angle of view. Fabio lives in Bologna, Italy and his work can be viewed at www.fabiosassi.foliohd.com