Jennifer Fendya
“motherfatherdaughter”
Mixed media collage
Response

Full Cold Moon
By Donna JT Smith
Inspiration piece

.
Full Cold Moon

bewraps my shoulders;

Coolness for

these inner smolders.
.

Short the days,

and night be-lingers;

All slip through

my phantom fingers.
.

But still I

tiptoe through the days

Reflecting

wax to waning phase.
.

Full Cold Moon

returns to smile,

Becalming through

another trial.

___________________________________________

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Donna JT Smith
Inspiration piece

Red Roses
By Jennifer Fendya
Response

I don’t like red roses
well, I don’t like getting them
from men and I never
know what to say if
I do. I assume they think

red roses are the ultimate
sign of passion, love or maybe
deep abiding commitment but
they just make me feel dead
inside or troubled and

I start to feel like crying, picturing
myself in my coffin, arms folded
across my chest, bad lipstick smeared
across my once chapped lips. So I
keep looking down at the roses and

try not to think about crushed
red velvet, the kind in old
theaters and movie houses and
the church I grew up in and
say “how beautiful” wondering if

I’ll quell the impulse to throw them
out long before they wither.

___________________________________________

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Ray Sharp

Response

Jennifer Fendya

Inspiration

After the Flood

I wake up at 6 AM to the sound of rain

and think, “I’m not in Houston.” My day

will be, as yesterday was, filled with

the ordinariness of my life, the familiarity

of small choices, the occasional siren going

past my office window, Ken’s assistant

across the hall clearing her throat

in that repetitive way, the sound of

the photocopier churning out details of

wills, estates and trusts.

I’ll do my work and drive home musing

over how to spend my evening. I’ll suppose

I should stop for groceries, make my lunch

for tomorrow (TGIF!), pay some bills online,

take a long walk and put off housecleaning

for the weekend. But that’s all conjecture,

some future that may turn out quite differently.

So I lie here and sense the coming of fall,

the change in the angle of sunlight

I can’t see on this cloudy day. I listen to

the kid next door revving his engine as he

backs into the garage, and I wish there was

someone else here to get up before me

to turn on the coffee. I regret last night’s

3^rd glass of chianti, or the 4^th, and your

uncensored text message, and I wonder

“Who plans for 50 inches of rain but Noah?”

——————————————————
Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Jennifer Fendya — “tugged-tied truths” – pencil on paper

Response

Ray Sharp 

Inspiration

To Resist

We are tugged
by the polemics of push and pull

As if truth itself could be tied midpoint on a rope
between two lines named Mine, and No, Mine.

But the rope is just a two-dimensional model
of our 3-D reality, four if you consider time

As the mountain does. It only knows
to stand tall under the weight of snow and ice

And the slow wearing away of wind and water,
to resist.

——————————————————
Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Jennifer Fendya — Lake Zurich Pastoral

Inspiration

Ray Sharp

Response

Under the Garden Bridge

It’s a cygnet, she said,
when I called it a duckling,
and still I think it might become
a mallard, not a swan, but

here’s the thing about
art – it lives apart from time,
and one could even say
it’s not a bird in a pond

swimming over beer cans,
but just patterns of color
and light like Monet saw
blurred through double cataracts

and daubed on canvases
big as life. I thought of Monet
when I searched for images
of ducklings and learned that

they’re light enough to walk
on lily pads, which reminded me
of the paintings of Les Nymphéas
at Giverny which I saw displayed,

as the artist intended, all around
me on the walls of the two
specially constructed oval galleries
at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris.

Look at the pattern of blue
and green, the way light dances
on the surface of the water
and imagine, as cygnet turns

to swan, every can becoming
a lily pad and every bottle
a fish that swims into its own life
and time beyond this view we share.

——————————————————
Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Ray Sharp — Ice Storm

Inspiration

Jennifer Fendya

Response

I’ve been dreaming of flying again,

of pushing clouds over a frozen lake,

down to where trees along the shoreline

stick out their bony ribs, into the cold air

and stand tall to be counted

among the chosen.

As I pass by, my fingers reach out

to graze their toppling crowns and

smooth their worried, furrowed brows.

What can I grant these hold-outs

from another era, a lost kingdom,

huddled on the banks, stripped bare

of their majesty? Crystalline coats

to see them through to green.

I’ve been dreaming of flying again.

——————————————————
Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Ray Sharp
Inspiration piece

(the) hunger 162
By Jennifer Fendya
Response

eyes flicker up-screen

enough to blush,

unmistakable.

love, pull back!

the audience, the crowd

sadly rules

time spent. “well,

speak for all,”

say our hearts.

the crowd has

wiped us off the map.

the audience

chokes, quiet, and

returns for the anthem

out of respect,

every screen now

separated by

viewers’ heads. poor

us.

i know

the anthem.

i make

sure to contain

the crowd.

we have each other

for no one.

——————————————————
Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Sandy Coleman
Response

Limen
By Jennifer Fendya
Inspiration piece

Those glimpsing moments as light

grows, when caneware walls begin

a slight glow and my feet, restless

at night, too eager, poke bare noses

out into chill air and scurry

back under downy blankets.

My palanquin, my bier, borne

solemnly through dreamland last night,

now a messy nest of sheets, pages

crushed and buried beneath my feet

when I turned to run from a grizzly

roaring up suddenly in my path.

Now, day, and its light insists on

day-time things, my feet, poised to march

   To-the-tooth-brush! To-the-tea-pot!

day-dream of darting almost

unnoticed, back under a blanket

of twigs and soft leaves.

I turn to look over my alarm.

My feet, suspended a moment, find

slippers and I fall into reverie, hoping

for a moment to glimpse a bear

and tomorrow morning’s light.

—————————————

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Sandy Coleman
Inspiration piece

Trance Music
By Jennifer Fendya
Response

I hold negative space in high

regard…totally, he sighed as

he felt the thrumming pull him

away from their constellation,

his voice elongated and finely

crystalline, like sugar spun into

swirled bouffants of pale sound

cloud, wispy and collapsible

on the tongue.

She perceived it? immersed her

self in it? was engulfed? No.

Floating eyes closed in the starbed

there was no differentiation of her

self from any thing. Only excitation,

only resonance. In the deep of

darkness, there literally is no

thing to see, so how could any

thing be the matter??

But open your eyes oh! and then

so many decisions to be made

continuously: here a particle,

there a wave, an am and am not,

like cats and dogs, like apples and

oranges; too many ruptures

and rifts recycled, breaches and

sectionings rebirthed one

generation to the next and

the next and…

Can’t a body at rest just remain

at rest? she breathed into the electro-

luminescence. Are there no laws

to prevent all the unnecessary

interference? Aren’t there municipal

ordinances against random noise?

Why can’t we just hang together in

this awesome Great Silence?

From his vantage point she was

a centripetal force constraining

him to this circular arrangement,

ad infinitum. Within their invisibly-

tethered dance, repercussions

lit up the cosmos, morphing and

snaking into sex and pulsating moral

outrage into heartfulness.

Eyelids fluttering closed again

like the delicate wings of Monarchs,

she surfed the milky waves

— light beaming, sound streaming —

the tribes and precincts she’d

inhabited dematerialized. In this

incorporate state, at least, they

were virtually free.

 ________________________________________________________

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it.  Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.