. . .
The journey from the head to hand is perilous and lined with bodies. It is the road on which nearly everyone who wants to write—and many of the people who do write—get lost… Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words… I never learned how to take the beautiful thing in my imagination and put it on paper without feeling I killed it along the way. I did, however, learn how to weather the death, and I learned how to forgive myself for it.
Anne Patchett
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Art is my taste for freedom. I drown day and day until I pick up my paintbrush once again. So, somehow, I can tell myself that you’re not stuck in this room and that the canvas is the key.
Nina Salvadoré
“Angel in the Desert” by Karen Sides
The act of creating is stepping into my real self…it is purest freedom.
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Seabed or ocean floor? When mining the depths, what is the difference?
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I sink into every part of my existence
To keep peeling back bark
Under the moonlight when the trace of your body walks away
Both of us hear our hearts beating
Telling a story that was written once
about you and I
And the joining of lives that could never be
“Bark Skin” by Jocelyn Hernandez
“Aphrodite” by Nikki Russian
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One November evening Grandmother
introduces me to Venus.
She points west
through box elder branches
spider-webbing star shine. The planet brags
above the horizon. She says its name
as if it belongs to her, as if
she is sowing a piece
in my hands.
We inhale its brilliance while
the quarter moon delights
with a slice of white. Make no mistake—
Love is light.
“Before Magellan Mapping Mission” by Maurine Haltiner
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My ancestors knew.
That to give of yourself
was the best way, the only way, perhaps,
to survive.
“Babcia” by Maria Krol-Sinclair
