‘An Accusation Of Betrayal’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

An Accusation Of Betrayal
A poem about the fire at Winter Street Studios, December 20th, 2022

Here stands what’s left to cherish – If it still has any worth?
An accusation of betrayal, a death and then - no birth.
I find no consolation - the grave was not the goal.
Two second flight, a long goodnight.
The price more than the toll.
Fire uncontrollable, the same as boiling hate.
Once the flame is lit – there’s no manning the gate.
And we, we had no part in it, like many stories told.
Anger, once unleashed, consumes more than it’s owed.
This accusation of Betrayal - it didn’t take its leave-
It lingers in the Artist souls and in the canvas weave.

Toria Hill is a living, working artist who works in Acrylics and Mixed media at her studio inside the Winter Street Studios in Houston Texas. In December of 2022 another artist, filled with anger about what he perceived as a betrayal, set a bomb off inside the building and this fire consumed the entire building which held the life work of over 100 artist - including Toria Hill. Although she is not a poet, she had onn piece that, although damaged by smoke, survided the fire. In her pain, anger and loss she scribbled these words across the canvas. It lives to day to remind us all what a spark of anger can do. It is her only publicly diplayed poem today. www.toriahill.art / IG: toriahill.gallery FB: @toriahill.art

‘ON THE CAMPUS LAWN’, ‘DEFINITIVE’ & ‘MIDNIGHT THOUGHTS ON BEING A GOOD DAUGHTER’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

ON THE CAMPUS LAWN

Under the green shade of a massive Maple
a twenty-foot poster of an aborted fetus
blocks out the picturesque views of spring.
This display of disembodied flesh
split open, meant to shock us
out of our young adultness.
The consequences of a human stain
irreverently hung.
That poor, unlived life
is what they want us to feel.
Shame is soft tissues, unsown,
in technicolor mega-vision.
Shock those Baby Bodies,
crushed in the political machine;
the shiny temporal intoxication
of co-ed independence.
The big consequences
of our lived lives, condensed
into thousands of copulating moments,
our millions of uncensored collisions hang,
with all their cellular baggage
in the spring air.
But even with all that,
we do not engage.
We ignore those giant posters on the campus lawn.
We carry on with our lives, unshocked;
bound for the tasks ahead,
the afternoon yawning away
beneath the green shade of a massive Maple.

DEFINITIVE

tension lifts and is also lifted
digging between the gaps of the old ways
language gave us gendered rules
embedded in bits of colonialized turf
they were dug up- fenced off-
turned into a private golf course
my lowercase i with its little severed head
is cracked away at the putting green
the divots of grass get strewn about
he him and she her grow wild in the lost rough
but time and space cannot be borrowed
and everything returns to junk eventually
we sing
i me mine i me mine i me mine
until it hurts and the words sound like gibberish
their thoughts float unsubstantiated,
all the articles escape into the atmosphere
they are at the north pole drilling the core
you are at the south pole observing emperors

MIDNIGHT THOUGHTS ON BEING A GOOD DAUGHTER

Tonight, she infiltrates my dreams
with that little sting of irritation from her presence.
She compliments my blouse
But only in that step-motherly way
that makes me want to tear it off.
That tension between us runs in circles
churning over hot, unspoken words
Holding us all the way through
to an end that never comes.
What I want to say feels cruel
to her now frail body,
she could never hear me then,
and now those words are lost to time.
That teen self
full of snark and exasperation-
has deflated
into a mature, understanding adult.
Still, I want to smash all the angel figurines
In the downstairs bathroom.
I want to tell her cancer to go to hell.
I want not to read the long letter she’s sent me-
her life story-
typed in italics and printed on lavender paper
with her signature curled out on the end page.
I want to be annoyed
at her full-bodied boasts
about vitamins,
or the tiny bags of almond powder
in the freezer
about how she’s never been bored before,
or what her higher-self says during her meditations.
I want not to watch her grow weaker
I want not to wonder how much time she has left.
Tonight, she infiltrates my dreams.
And I say out loud: “This is not my fault!”
“I’m not a bad daughter.”
I’m annoyed at the conversation we will never have.
The messy soup of feelings,
which boils too hot and cools too quickly.

Hannah Behrens is a poet, freelance writer, and writing coach. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado. She is a native of Boulder, Colorado, and has lived in the Netherlands since 2016.

‘Mushak’ & ‘Ode to the Banal’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

MUSHAK

Rain and wind lashed the windows
while Stan Getz blew warm gusts
of tender samba over us
You spoke about Etheridge’s drum
and how he ran off at 16 to join the army and escape Paducah
Mark began playing the drum
as you plucked the kalimba
and sang preverbal cosmic incantations
channeling the fourth dimension
And now the feast:
haddock with thyme and lemon
and a basket of rich black Lithuanian rye
Our ersatz glasses filled with
Bordeau that Andy brought
And the last of David’s Irish whiskey
David: whose earthly remains sit
in a box near your door with the words
‘Going home’ and an image of a seagull soaring
In friendship and communion we gathered at your table
covered with lovingkindness, art, books and candles
You spoke softly of those who’d gone to the faraway country
from this aching planet of sorrow and war—
Then Mark saw the mouse
darting shyly from a crevice
Perhaps he wished to join us
for it must be lonely huddling in dark, drafty spaces
avoiding cats, and traps and poison
Always unwelcome and feared
Perhaps this was Mushak, Lord Ganesha’s vehicle,
called the great ‘remover of obstacles’
whom he rides across the heavens
I promised to order you a Havahart trap
and release your Mushak in Lynn Woods
and you smiled and began singing
a lullaby in French about a mouse
that you used to sing to your daughter – un petit souris verte
We polished off the whiskey and the Bordeau
You brought out the key lime pie and strawberries
And then we cleared the table.

TIME IS AN EMOTION

In this place—
time is an emotion
In this room—
time is not wasted
It is cherished and anticipated
Here clocks are vestigial, meaningless machines
Here time is non-linear
Here time is a lie
Mother, your universe is 125-square-feet
This room is your harbor
Your next port is eternity
We know the latitude and longitude of our hearts
Mother, not too long ago
We were rich with time
Our faces were smooth
Our steps were strong and decisive
If we didn’t talk to one another
for a week or even a month
It wasn’t a problem
No feelings were hurt
No assumptions were made
Now when we sit together
I am full of questions
hungry for details
Now your voice is full of ashes and
I imprint your every word and gesture
into the rich dark soil of memory
Time is an emotion
like no other
in the heart’s lexicon.

Linda Werbner is a Salem, MA-based writer and therapist. When she isn't cooking eggplant parm in her garret, she enjoys picking her banjo and making quilts for friends and family.

‘Curbed Curiosity’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Curbed Curiosity

I worked in Manhattan for one summer.
Every day during lunch,
I’d buy myself a hotdog from the corner,
Walk further down to where nobody was,
and I’d sit on the curb and eat.
Mouth full and hands full,
I’d stare at the building across the street.
White bricks, and a red door
with an OPEN sign on it.
Graffiti sat cloaked over the bricks as hundreds of people
walked passed it.
Sometimes, I would show up to the curb and the graffiti
would be gone. If I looked closely, I could still see it.
I guess over time, stuff like that never goes away.
Someone almost went in it once,
I was hoping they did.

It was the weirdest thing,
one Monday I sat on the curb
and the building was gone.
It took me a good 10 minutes to realize
that something wasn’t right with this picture.
I was bored, and I didn’t know why,
until I realized. My curiosity got the best of me
and I went back to the hotdog stand after
I proudly scarfed down two.
“Another one?”
“No thank you, I have a question. What happened
to that building across the street? They got rid of it? What was it?”

“Yea, they came on Saturday.” He said.
“It was some sort of museum. It's a shame,
nobody knew about it.”

Pasquale Gee is a 30 year old writer from Brooklyn New York. After posting his writing anonymously online, and it going viral, he decided to publish his first poetry book in 2022, and his second in 2023. Instagram : @pasqualegee_

‘THIS IS MY DAY’, ‘BOBOLINKO AT SOMEWHAT SWEET SIXTEEN’ & ‘NEPTUNE’S HIPPOCAMP’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

THIS IS MY DAY

The sun gets a little too familiar
with me as I’m trying hard to wake up.
His persistent hand on my arm feels warm.
I trudge downstairs, put on coffee, cat fur
on my grandmother’s 1918 cup.
Weather.com says prepare for a storm
around five. Prepare what? Have a party?
Right now I must go to work. I’m not free
to take off, get on a plane, and smell roses
in Naples. My car smells like Burger King.
I warble along with “Draggin’ The Line”
and almost hit a dog. A hawk poses
on a billboard for a church. Everything
turns foggy. My car stalls on an incline.

BOBOLINKO AT SOMEWHAT SWEET SIXTEEN

You were my first.
Was I yours?
You said I was. Maybe
you were being discreet,
even then, at sweet sixteen,
when we stole Mary Jane candy
from Ben Franklin’s which we
ate naked.

NEPTUNE’S HIPPOCAMP

A comet hit Proteus, birthing you.
I could walk across you in just one day,
small as you are, a dark world, hard to view.
A comet hit Proteus, birthing you,
Hippocamp, half fish, half horse, not a true
picture of you, secret of the skyway.
A comet hit Proteus, birthing you.
I could walk across you in just one day.

Kenneth Pobo (he/him) is the author of twenty-one chapbooks and nine full-length collections. Recent books include Bend of Quiet (Blue Light Press), Loplop in a Red City (Circling Rivers), Lilac And Sawdust (Meadowlark Press) and Gold Bracelet in a Cave: Aunt Stokesia (Ethel Press). His work has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Asheville Literary Review, Nimrod, Mudfish, Hawaii Review, and elsewhere. @KenPobo