MARRIED TO A FIBER ARTIST MARRIED TO JOANN’S

by Dick Altman

A farewell to a beloved emporium that ralllied the
artistic spirits of generations

Your quilting ideas
all begin humble
enough—with a visit
to the base of Joann’s
multi-hued tree,
whose fruit feeds
your artistic passions,
blooming eventually,
perhaps months later,
into fabric canvases,
selected for eyes
of a dozen countries
or more.
 
You don’t create
for the prize.
Your true love,
a love since
childhood,
is breathing life
into your imaginings,
using a paint brush
of needle and thread,
and blossoms
of fabric culled
from Joann’s
garden
of visual delights,
almost beyond
number.
 
Nothing,
it seems,
lies beyond
your reach.
A portrait
of a distant cousin,
wounded
in America’s
Civil War.
Raised arms
whose fingers
transmute
into a ululation
of flames,
recalling conflict
in the Middle East.
A storm at sea,
whose
three dimensional
sea gulls,
appear to rise
off the canvas,
as they
weave themselves
amid waves
seeking to touch
the clouds.
 
I often stand
in wonder—
I who struggle
to turn a patchwork
of words
into a caress of lines—
as you sketch
your ideas into being,
with a sureness,
I could never wring
from a first draft.
You call Joann’s
your bazaar
of inspiration.
I call it
a spinning wheel
of miracles.

Storm at Sea—Dance of the Gulls by Holly Altman

 
Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, NM, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Landing Zone, Cathexis Northwest Press, Humana Obscura, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The Ravens Perch, Beyond Words, The New Verse News, Wingless Dreamer, Blueline, Sky Island Journal, and others here and abroad.  His work also appears in the first edition of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry published by the New Mexico Museum Press.  Pushcart Prize nominee and poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has authored some 250 poems, published on four continents.

SHELTERING

by Brooke Herter James

“Parakeet” by Kees van Dongen,ca. 1910, oil on canvas, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Still life  day 28
here in Vermont
a solitary junco
half black
half white
sitting on the branch
half white
half black
against a backdrop of pond
black—rimmed with white—
thank goodness for
the small red barn
in the lower right corner
of the scene

I imagine painting
over this canvas
apple blossoms
puffy clouds   a woman
in the foreground
faded yellow robe
leaning out her second
story window
to hang blue towels
and flowered sheets
on one end of a
never-vanishing cord
that travels from this hillside
to Milan   then Barcelona
Wuhan   Jerusalem   Sydney
Seattle  New Orleans  New York

An endless clothesline
adorned  with the fabric
of the world billowing
outwards   music spilling
from all those unshuttered
windows   wafts of coffee
baked bread   squeals of children
running down hallways
pinging marbles on bare floors
dogs barking
I imagine painting
parakeets in wooden cages
singing while we wait


Brooke Herter James is a poet and children’s book author living in Vermont.

FOURTH ASTRONAUT

by Rick Mullin

Painting by Alan Bean, the fourth astronaut (Apollo 12) to have walked on the moon. He died on May 26, 2018. 

“I think of myself not as an astronaut who paints,
 but as an artist who was once an astronaut” —Alan Bean, Apollo


His name connoting photosynthesis
in pods on earth, he traveled to the moon
and stood in fields of cobalt dust and darkness.
No one saw it in his way—the dune
of oxidates, the earthrise glinting fire
on the helmet of his mate. The silent night.
He gathered specimens of stone and scraps
of wreckage from an unmanned satellite.
He worked for seven hours, drawing maps
in his imagination to a higher
landscape in a timeless super 8
depicting the recurrent astral mystery.
The dream. While others met a common fate
in business, he resolved on painting history,
unpacking samples to a canvas of desire.

Rick Mullin's newest poetry collection is Transom.