Tora Estep
“The Harvest”
Preparatory thumbnail sketch, graphite on paper
Response

We Roar
By Natascha Dea Burdeinei
Inspiration piece

Rage battles disappointment; anger and frustration swirl and bubble up again. The scream I need to feel coming out of me in a pelting windstorm is shrunk down for city living as I plunge my face into a sink full of water to roar—in a postage stamp of a bathroom. Tears fall on my wet face as my girlfriends text. One, then another. From all corners of the United States. Women, wounded, ferociously enraged, grieving. Their Nation chipping away at them, their daughters, and granddaughters.

Women carry the promise of two generations inside us at birth and throughout our thirty or forty-some years of reproductive viability. And as I feel a rage rise up in me toward the white men who make up just 30% of our population in the United States and yet manage to exercise minority rule in 42 state legislatures, the House, the Senate, SCOTUS, and statewide offices across the United States* actively using this power to strip their female, Black, brown, and LGBTQ neighbors of rights and liberties, I know it isn’t just my rage.

It is the rage of the two generations of women I carried briefly before my body failed me.

It is the rage of my grandmother. My grandmother, who carried my mother and me while stationed in Germany serving in our armed forces.

It is the rage of her grandmothers who lived under the constant threat of Russian violence and genocide in the Pale of Settlement. They couldn’t have known their first-generation American granddaughter would join the US Army to fight for them during World War II.

I plunge my face back into the cold water to scream some more. The salt from my tears mixes into the water reminding me we are our life source. The bringers and birthers of all human life. Our bodies and souls are bound and gagged, raped, abused, scarred, murdered or imprisoned, and legislated because of it. And we roar. Fuck this shit.

A clap of thunder rings out overhead. The storm is here. And I will rage into it, shooting flaming arrows of fury and a soft but strong heart while speaking words bolstered by my mothers into the wind for the thirty percent.

“We’re coming for you,” the gales of wind scream as they transport my warning across the mountains, cornfields, rivers, dales, forests, hollows, and beaches of this Nation.

“We’re coming for YOU.”

“WE’RE COMING FOR YOU.”

“Now!”

* source: Reflective Democracy Campaign

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Tora Estep
“What Lies Beneath”
Oil on Canvas
Inspiration piece

Natascha Dea Burdeinei
Response

The morphine push didn’t take long.

One moment I was holding my lucid and sagacious 92-year-old uncle’s hand, explaining to him exactly what the nurses were doing to him while interjecting we love you’s. He was anxious and worried the nurses who removed his high-flow oxygen and replaced it with 2 liters of nasal cannula oxygen were trying to save him; not letting him go as he requested I give them consent to do when I arrived at his Bergen County hospital room, bags in hand, two days prior:

“Oh, honey, I’m so glad you’re here. It’s time. I need you to sign the papers.”

The next moment, he began to say something, then held up his finger in understanding as he felt the morphine. He nodded at me.

I squeezed his hand.

“I’m going to stay with you. I’ll be right here.” I kissed his forehead and laid my cellphone near his ear and pushed play on iTunes so the jazz albums I’d copied onto my laptop and synced to my phone before I left Chicago would begin.

The love of his life, who passed away during the pandemic, resurrected digitally to sing him out of this world and into the next as I sat with him, talking to him, making sure he knew how loved he was as the morphine took effect.

“It’ll be about 24 hours,” the nurse said. “Are you going to stay?”

Yes, of course, I was going to stay.

My staying genuinely surprised her, and it broke my heart a little more than the week already had. But I understood. We cared for my mother-in-law in our home for the last years of her life. I witnessed her community and loved ones disappear when her dementia progressed. Family and friends stopped coming by. “I just can’t see her like this,” they’d say as I’d gently remind them this visit is for her, not them. They’d pause and look at me as if begging me to release them from the obligation. At the end of her life, it was just my husband and I holding her hand in her bedroom, next to ours. The hospice nurse we paged, who said she could be to us in 15 minutes, hadn’t even arrived. She got stuck in traffic. It would be an hour before she walked through our front door.

“I’ll be here till the end or you kick me out,” I told his nurse.

She asked me if I needed anything and generously made up a bed for me at the foot of his bed.

“If you need something to eat or drink, go into the nurses’ break room and get it or come find me,” she said as she left the room. “I’ll be close by.”

Sleep does not come easily when you’re keeping vigil. Especially in pandemic times, when masks are required to be worn inside a patient’s hospital room.

Yet, sleep is a must. Decisions have to be made that require presence and a focused mind. I tossed and turned for hours, finally falling asleep but bolting out of bed every time his breathing changed or the nurse came in to check on him.

The moon was full and massive that night. Glancing outside his hospital room window, I saw two deer in a patch of grass near the now empty visitor’s parking lot, illuminated by that massive moon. The kind of moon Shanley wrote about. I described it aloud as my uncle slept and his body slowed down, with just enough morphine and oxygen attached to him to keep him comfortable.

He turned 92 the day after I arrived. We celebrated over frozen custard, his chosen last meal. From Rita’s, because I couldn’t get Coney Island’s frozen custard to him quickly enough. We called his loved ones. Shared stories. He gave me a list of writers to read.

“Have you read Rushdie?” he asked, “dear God, I hope he doesn’t die.” The news of his stabbing shocked us both as CNN shouted it from the television mounted from the ceiling in his hospital room. It never shut off. As if hospitals aren’t loud and sad enough without a cacophony of talking heads weighing in on the atrocities of the day.

“I have read Rushdie,” I assure him, “but I’ll reread him. It’s been a while,” his head nods in approval.

I told him about the time I saw Vanessa Redgrave commune with Tennessee Williams’s spirit in the middle of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, as they etched Williams’s name into their Poet’s Corner, and how holy that moment felt; he told me about the time he worked with Tennessee Williams and how closely connected the sacred and profane are on stage.

Profane, he said, like his aging body hooked up to hospital equipment. His hands and arms were black and blue as if someone had painted them in ink, tentacles of IVs coming out of his body.

“Honey, I’m sorry I’m not the life of the party right now. Do you need anything? Go get a coffee. I’ll take a rest while you do that, then we’ll talk about the war.”

The war. The Korean War. He was drafted.

He was an explosives specialist working in an armory in Alabama. After the war, he’d parlay his time there into expertise in pyrotechnics on stage productions.

I signed the consent papers to remove him from oxygen the morning after his birthday, after checking in to make sure he’d spoken with everyone and said everything he’d needed to say.

He had.

I told him I believed his beloved was waiting for him to join her. A newly ordained minister raised Episcopalian like he was, I still feel like I am playing dress-up in religious matters.

When he was still lucid, he told me he hoped that would be the case, but wasn’t sure heaven existed. To be honest, I don’t know if heaven exists either, at least not in the way it’s described in many churches and movies. But I’ve witnessed enough dying and death to know that love enters the rooms of those who loved in this world. Love enters in their last days, hours, minutes, and seconds from some invisible plane and is visible in their countenance and peace. Surely that is heaven.

They pronounced him dead at 2:52 am on my fifth night in town. I’d stepped out of the room while he still had a strong heartbeat. Suddenly, his heart rate crashed, and he took his last breath. As if he was waiting for me to go get a cup of coffee. He was gone and pronounced in mere minutes.

I reentered the room and told him and his beloved I loved them and I understood his choosing to go alone. I said a prayer and held his lifeless hand. As the nurse came back in to undress and clean his body, I removed his glasses, unclasped his watch, and smoothed his hair. I gathered the pictures surrounding him.

Five minutes later, I was outside in the shockingly warm night air with a Patient Belonging Bag filled with the items he loved and wanted close to him as he left this world. The stars were shining, and I was sobbing. I will never get used to a soul being there one minute and not the next.

Somehow, though, I was certain he was fine wherever his soul was now.

I made a mental note to reread Rushdie, and I yelled into the northern night sky: “Don’t you die, too!”

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Jay Young Gerard
Response

Regret to Desire
By Lisa Nielsen
Inspiration piece

I keep measuring beats but the song is the same

The water under the bridge is dark,‎
a brooding season of overthinking
catches me at a time when
my heart was eager to undermine me,‎
turn me to jello, ‎
carry me away to your hotel, ‎
where I would wait, ‎
each time the band rolled in

But, this face to face, ‎
a disappointing confirmation of what ‎
lingered between the lines of your late night txts;‎
those things you left out when you said your life is complicated.‎

I knew, but I was curious:‎
Was I willing to ‎
slide past regret to desire ‎
without holding a memory?‎

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Jay Young Gerard
“Contusa”
Inspiration piece

I‎ Felt Something, For A Minute
By Lisa Nielsen
Response

Me half smiling, layering out my scars like pinafores,‎
You leave your fingerprints on me. Go ahead,‎
let the world think I am being held hostage

Meandering from table to table, many shots of bourbon in
gaiety on full blast –‎
You’re here to celebrate the prize

Is this better than being a rapturous side piece?‎
Getting to mingle and nod at those appreciative glances,‎
Half smile again, let them guess

This will never be a bloodletting of my soul, it’s not that, ‎
it’s not anything so dramatic, this is a trickle down to-do, ‎
brooding though I may be, I feel safer here than the streets, ‎
with just enough adoration and resentment

Once upon a time I was an elongated grin for picture day, ‎
wearing that magenta pantsuit with the chiffon collar, ‎
I could have felt glamorous, but that wasn’t your way

Hairbrush to my face when I wouldn’t sit still,‎
still hoping that today would be different

Memory makes its grand entrance again,‎
whispering “ready or not”. ‎

I tried so hard to get you love me

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Amy Souza
Response

Grief Is
Part I
By Ash Martins
Inspiration piece

Time slows down,
stops entirely,
then somehow starts again in the moments you transition from this life to your next

Grief is
so
unbelievably
heavy

It weighs a million invisible pounds

My shoulders sag under the weight of it
I am a crumpled heap on the floor,
clutching a photo of you like it’s one last hug

My heart pounds from the shock of it
Hell, maybe I’m dying, too

My world is instantly darker without your light in it
Things will never be the same — of this, I am sure

How could you do this to me?

I now know that
grief is
visceral,
primal,
sacred

It is bewildering,
lonely,
sorrowful

It is inexplicable,
surreal,
unique

It is selfless
and selfish

It is holding on
and letting go

It is unspoken
and shared

It is pitiful
and brave

It is love, shape shifting

Grief is joy drowning in tears

It is choked laughter sputtering for air

It is holding your breath while awaiting confirmation of news you somehow already know

It is the time before and the time after

It is learning to recalibrate my entire future to account for your absence

It is wracking my entire soul in search of yours in this plane of existence and coming up empty-handed

It is seeing your life flash before my eyes in a split second,
and knowing that your story is bookended by the finality of this moment

It is a gaping tear in my time-space continuum that I believe can never heal,
but later learn will be stitched back together—
one minute,
one hour,
one day at a time

And I feel certain I will never forgive you for being human,
but later learn that I will honor your humanity instead of resenting it

I wish your death wasn’t the last thing you taught me about living,
but as my mom, was there any other way?

Though I can’t really thank you now, I’ll do everything I can to make you proud

Y’know, in case there’s a chance you’re out there somewhere in the stars looking down on me

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Jonathan Ottke
“Two Stars have a conversation”
Inspiration piece

Orion’s Boote
By Gary Hewitt
Response

“I am the brightest.”

Alnilam raised a nebulous eye at the unwarranted disturbance. Who the hell invited this loudmouth to her party? She sipped from a fluted glass filled with neutron olives and shimmering mercury. She supposed her guest had a certain appeal but preferred partners strong but silent.

He leapt up on stage, and to her horror sang a selection of ancient songs from a million light years away. Did he not have his own material? He paused for atomic breath after the sixth song and Alnilam offered a tiny golf clap.

“Very good Arcturus, but your delivery needs to tone down an octave or two. I fancy they could hear you in Andromeda.”

“I should hope so too,” he roared. He readied himself for a new rendition. Alnilam took hold of his arm and spiralled him to a cosmic couch.

“Please, you have a strong voice, but I’ve had a long day intercepting a few unwanted comets. I’d rather settle down for light conversation if you don’t mind.”

Arcturus scratched his mighty beard. He loved action, excitement and tried to recall the last time anyone asked him for a polite chat. Alnilam glided to her own oasis and patted the cushion in invitation. Arcturus hurled his mass into the chair expecting a hint of fusion. Alnilam switched her gaze to the barman and ordered two specials.

“So, Arcturus, what brings you over to our constellation? You’re a long way from Bootes.”

“Lady, I need a change of scenery. Don’t get me wrong I love it in dear old Bootes and the crowd are great company but I need something different. I do pretty much anything I like out there and they love me for it, it’s time though for me to share the love if you catch my drift.”

Rigel stared at the odd couple. Alnilam waved him away when he asked if all was well.

“Forgive my brother, he’s a bit overbearing but his core is in the right place. Anyway, I do understand your wanderlust but should you not be looking after your family?”

“Oh, don’t worry about them,” he snorted, “They’ve got everything they need. When I left they were playing planetball, was a scream, I can tell you.”

Alnilam looked over the dull shoulder of the bright star admiring the delicate recital of poetry of Bellatrix. She doubted if Arcturus ever read a sonnet, let alone write one.

“Is that all you do all day, play games?”

“Oh goodness, no,” he said. “I love the ladies too, I’ve never had a complaint yet either, I understand the divine feminine after all.”

He rested his hand on Alnilam’s knee. His touch red hot and matching the flushing cheeks of his unexpected company.

“I suppose you do have a certain charm, yet we’re a bit more refined here in Orion you know,” she said returning his hand to his lap.

“Ah, you’re a babe into the arts and all that. It’s not really my thing but you’d love to listen to Nekkar. You’ll have to come over and listen to her Sestinas.”

Alnilam never paid much attention to the doggerel of Nekkar. She remembered a pamphlet of this so called poetry and it did make a most useful doorstop to uninvited quasars. She thought of making her departure and to her astonishment found herself warming to the braggadocio of this brash braggart.

“Arcturus, no-one has ever called me babe before I have to say. I’m not sure whether I ought to incinerate you or kiss you.”

She caught her thoughts after her words. Arcturus leaned in close, so close she almost tasted his primordial breath. To her horror and pleasure, their lips collided and she tasted the radiance of this bright star. He wrapped his strong arms around her and she melted into a helium flash of rapture. Again and again their lips and passion merged, both lost in total delirium.

She blinked to see her brothers and sisters staring agog. She looked to the spiral staircase and led her partner to her quarters, such a wonderful change from playing checkers with Saiph, she thought.

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Rusty Lynn
The Great Spirit Is Everywhere
Inspiration piece

After Accretion
By Leslie Grollman
Response                        

Little Rover beeps to himself in Middle C
Or is it a curse-word programmed to give him dissatisfaction
at the bumpy ride he can’t feel,
or is it humanness
like the time he beeped when he set down on the planet: A Minor for awe.

……………………………….***

Difficult terrain, here
Odd-sized boulders no smaller than a ten-year-old’s head
…And just as stubborn
Crevices creep up between some of them
…Like a calving glacier
The scope of scarp, so so far

Little Rover knows only to go there
The where’s are in his coding
He keeps his word
Keeps his samples secure
His photos clear.
He has no programming for the pictographs he sees
We know them by these names:

Bodies           Mountains           Turtles
Horses      Waves (or are they birds?)
……Trees (Or cornstalks begging
………………a sun)

No name for the circle in the center,
………..with four protrusions,
………one facing north, one to the south
………one east, one west

Little Rover rolls forward, backward, round and back
again, beeping all over the musical scales
Then he stops
Then he sings, a bold voice clear as a camera lens

On earth, we gape

Some think it clever of the programmer (who insisted
she didn’t) to encode him with the song he sang.

We watched him,
………………… like a birth.

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Amy Souza
Response

August Strokes
By Kathleen Finn Jordan
Inspiration piece

Slipping into the liquid aqua glassed pool
These are the days of leisure swims
Summer season — autumn of life
The swish and swirl of silent strokes
Cut the flow and propel me on
Quiet like the fish—splash days and dunking past
Hobbled on land—this medium transforms
Returns me to the easy moves of youth
Refreshes, restores, reminds that life is gift
The wrapping ages, the ribbons dull, but
The treasure remains
August strokes …fluid, old new, transforming.

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Heather Hartman
Response

Orbit
By Amy Souza
Inspiration piece

Everywhere
is here and there
and nowhere you
can be at once

Like those signs
with seven arrows
pointing every
which way

Big town –
Small town –
The moon –

You must choose
a path
calendula
scent of the sea

Mountains don’t
move, we think
yet they’re changing
every day
so slowly we’re
tricked into
believing permanence

If you lived on a bluff
overlooking the water
you could watch
storms take shape
and blow toward shore
while rain hit sideways
against the windows

You might call that beauty
Or perhaps you’d turn away

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Jennifer Fendya
Inspiration piece

Lief
By KJ Hannah Greenberg
Response

Happiness, after all, buds when verisimilitudes and truth form
Matching pairs, when most weet of feelings become integrated,
When both straths and oceans produce generations of occupants,
Maybe, when neighbors put down arms, stop huffing, smile a little.

It’s unnecessary to achieve redress, to reckon personal needs with
The “availability” of matériel; war’s no good for anyone half sane,
Partially human. Rather than abatises or cannons, instead of mortars,
Instead of caroms, we’d best be served by food banks, hospitals, love.

Meanwhile, much gets accomplished when governments provide
Antidotes to plagues, correctives to poverty, education for denizens.
People as thankfully embrace each other as buy contraptions, in truth
(Else when shaggy dog tales abound ‘bout the Indian Ocean’s real depth).

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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.