Seth Leamer
Still Still Life
Inspiration Piece

Faceless Independence
by Jules Rolfe
Response

Daddy, I thought you created me to be small.
A small and faceless doll
to serve masters who only craved my silence.

Daddy, you created me to suffer
To stuff my light deep,
as if light itself was a mortal sin.

Daddy, when you lost your voice
You told me I was wrong.
You created me to shine.
To go so far from home, that I became your sun.

Daddy you said you created me
to go further, be better, burn brighter.
You created me not to be you.

Daddy, now that you are gone,
I see the part of me that is you.
And the parts that are not you and more.
I am faceless and
this light will not be silenced.

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Brian MacDonald
Inspiration

Unfortunate
by Jules Rolfe
Response

It’s unfortunate you say
that the rain is dripping down the window
crowding the sound of the waves on the beach
ad we can’t go outside and play

It’s unfortunate you say
that we don’t at least have raincoats
with hoods or rubber boots
to keep our feet dry

It’s unfortunate you say
that we don’t have enough money
and this rainy weekend in a smoked-in hotel room
with the no smoking sign on the door is our only beach day

It’s unfortunate you say
that you don’t have enough time to stay
until Monday and delight in the sun and full moon
and feel the sand between your toes

And I look at you and say
You can meet me outside with your hair
stuck to your head and your clothes a wet mess
I’ll be outside dancing between the rain drops

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Amy Souza
“Found”
Inspiration piece

On the Wings of a Wish
By Jules Rolfe
Response

When you a wish on the glowing candles of your birthday cake,
on a dandelion puff, on a shooting star,
or on that first star you see tonight,
the wish takes wings to fly about and come true
Why are they secrets? Why won’t they come true if we share?

These whispered dreams echoed in silence
are telling a child to stop asking for help to tie his shoes
then kicking him for taking too long to get it right
or ripping the laces from his hands and gloating about how easily and fast
your nimble adult fingers have completed the task so impossible for a boy.
He becomes the adult who hides away, too afraid to do something new
or to fail with witnesses to his shame or to cry out in frustration.
So he kicks a child for not being fast and nimble enough to tie shoes

What would happen if we whisper our dreams out loud and wrote them down?
What if we raised our chins to the sky and shouted our wishes
to all the ears and the stars who would listen while
we puffed out cheeks and blew those candles and dandelion puffs?

What kind of wings would our shouted-out-loud wishes have?
They would multiply from single mosquito wings buzzing in our ears
to the swooping grace of double dragonfly wings high in the afternoon pine
and dipping low across the pond’s joyful reflection of the sky.
A new fairy would be born for every ear that hears a wish.

New wings of a wish would become the long-flighted albatross,
then the grace of a vulture gliding on the wind,
and the patience of blue heron’s hunt.
Some wishes would walk across the arctic as the arms of a penguin
frozen by the dawn that never comes and warmed by the sun that never sets.

Can you see it? Can you see? How the wings of our breath,
how the dance of the flame, how a scatter of dandelions,
how the light on a star all become our truth.

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Sukia
Response

Following the Ground Ivy
Jules Rolfe
Inspiration piece

She’s taken over our backyard
Like we’ve grown into our souls
running under the foundation of the grass
until She binds so tightly to the thatch
She strangles the green growth above it

She has moments of beauty in the spring
Her purple blooms almost as enchanting
as summer’s clovers and sunflowers
I follow Her
Two three, four, five, six, seven feet
through the grass’s underbelly
thinking about whatever there is to think

She’ll listen as long as I follow
Prying up her double pronged anchors
I just follow and marvel at the pattern
She weaves and tangles through my fingers
The hours lose themselves
in this tag of thought and listen

She almost never shows me her roots
My fingers covered in slugs’ passage
My nails caked in dirt
I don’t stop until the snot flies from my nose,
Until I’ve thought all there is to think

The ground ivy comes back—
Her personal invitation to listen
through the nameless
Until She tells me there is no such thing.

She’s wound Her way to patience
Under the surface of the perfect green grass

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Totem
By Jules Rolfe
Response

Tears have the same salt as seawater
When I ride among the trains and bees and buses
listening to the clack-n-clack
dizzying myself to yellow-black-yellow of watching
the track and the road rush by,
I swim with the whales

When I fly high through the sea of the sky
and shoot past the moon bearing North home–to the stars,
I am the flash of the bluebird in winters’ weeds
Hidden in the stillness of the road side

When I drift through the stream of shoppers
thinking Consume! Consume! Consume!
I am the little fry letting the river carry me
to quiet waters among the tree roots

When I am high in the swirl of pigment and words
living in the brush stroke, carved by shadow
living in the forgiveness of unforgiving code,
I am the mythical dragon curling ’round itself like a lover

I let go. My hair flying behind
battering my face and slapping my sides
the wind branding my cheeks pink and
closing my ears to all other sound
I lift my arms and float, following the path of a feather
and return to the totem

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Peach Pit Bridges
By KJ Hannah Greenberg
Response

Stacking bits, pits of our lost decade’s
Nights spent wondering on preserving
Memories, can’t bring that time again.

Those truths of husks, shells, glumes,
Such leftover recollections augment,
Strengthen few abandoned moments.

Glancing back yields no newborn suns,
Guarantees no former joys will, perhaps,
Eclipse today, then, linger, elsewise stay.

Nursery songs remain standing, hanging
‘round this parent’s head, lodging solid
Rinds, reordering, and blighting bygones.

Today, you’re married, set with child.
I suck, thus, at piled seeds, arils, hulls,
Gleaning fruit from stone, once more.

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Hip Hop Music among the Branches
By KJ Hannah Greenberg
Inspiration piece

They played hip hop among the branches.
The birds did. Winging sometimes skyward,
With child-like people voices, worlds above
Puppies, fathers, pretzel venders, taffy fears.

Complexity gets confounded facing down simple things.
Little, caramel-colored lions, boxed homes, Rocks placed
At right angles, feathery bed clothes, mints, night lights,
Find proud guns, sleet, medallions, pain, nearly unfathomable.

Cold containment merely pulls back from heart-felt doors,
Exploring, privately, dirty blinds, grayed wallpaper,
Pigeon flight marked by broken windows, dumpster cats,
Elderly scholars sans podiums, plus drunk street fighters.

Most popcorn bands sing kernel songs, share bubble gum
Harmonies where debt builds, spirits droop, homicide reigns.
Knee-deep in hay, creative sorts tend toward hopelessness,
Old agon finds men struggling to levitate, expand, espouse.

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Jules Rolfe
Giving Hands
Inspiration piece

Lake Effect
Barbara Bever
Response

The cold broom of Canada’s winter sweeps across Lake Erie and dumps a dustbin of powdery snow on the southern shore. Weathered, match-stick fences strive to keep the beach road passable for the heavy-laden woman braving the bitter day. Her white-whiskered Labrador snuffles the fluffy depths in search of a burrowing winter hare. It’s not the woman’s thick coat that keeps her warm today, but rather the flotsam and jetsam of her life bobbing upon the shore of memory.

She recalls the toddler in a tulip-shaped sun bonnet sitting on a faded cotton bedspread that once blanketed a grandmother’s wedding bed. She’s sipping icy Kool-Aid from a waxy paper cup and nibbling on a sandy Sunbeam sandwich. Silver dollar poplars rustle restlessly above weather-beaten picnic tables hosting families frying eggs and bacon on summer Sundays. Sea gulls screech overhead as children squeal at the water’s edge, toes testing the memory of the artic waters of winter. Plastic sand pails, shovels and castle molds litter the beach with their bright color. Yet her memories easily disintegrate like forgotten toys left to the harsh summer sun and brittle winter winds.

She once read a story about bright yellow rubber ducks that broke free of their container ship and traveled round the world. She, too, escaped this place of her birth in search of distant lands, washing up in rocky ports and welcoming harbors. But the travel took its toll on her and those ducks. Over time, the ducks become nothing but round little pellets of faded glory on the sands of Alaska, Hawaii, or Scotland. Nothing is left of her own brilliance and beauty. But unlike the remnants of the ducks, she will not remain on the coast of life forever. When her ashes are strewn into the body of water from which she came, all trace of her will be gone.

The old dog noses her thick glove and urges her back to the warmth of the hearth. She turns away from beach as a gray cloud passes over the winter sun. The snow crunches under her thick boots as they head home.

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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.

Jules Rolfe
Inspiration Piece

Blue
KJ Hannah Greenberg
Response

Blue’s
Maritime stars,
Maybe, sand dollars,
In concert, spin quickly,
Dance oceanic stirrings, swirl, whisk,
Churn waves, undulate ‘til calmer waters
Lull, successfully, such diverse pulses.
Those sines, cosines vie inside
Fields of tangents,
Diagram aqua’s
Convolution.

Cycles’
Liquid bubbles,
Globules, almost substance,
Corroborate fishy locals, amid
Turtles, squids, also cetaceans’ breathing,
Chasing deep neighborhoods’ gill-bearing fiends around.
Meanwhile, short-snouted swimmers snipe, engulf,
Swallow up their friends.
Seas lack heroes;
Food chains
Govern.

Love’s
Passing similarity,
Suggests certain complications,
Carries dreadful sacrificing, defeat,
Washes out self-confidence, dims fidelity,
Negates facts even as wet surfaces renew.
Diverse species breed from troubles,
Ooze sludgy, obscure potentials,
Emerge considered optimisms,
Feed, multiply,
Mend.

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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.

Jules Rolfe
Despair
Response

So, Sometimes We Fail
KJ Hannah Greenberg
Inspiration Piece

So, sometimes we fail.
Legs, like unfortunate umbrellas,
Open where hands miss railings,
Weddings, walls, other supports.

Instead, mud, gravel, urban waste,
Fills our landings.
Betrayal makes upside down
Experiences predicate gains.

Whereas shell plus gristle disappoint,
Certain categorizings, picked apart,
Bring along growth opportunities
(Especially if bookended by despair).

Commitments fold. Knees hurt.
Friends essentially disappear.
Puddles populate our paths
Bankruptcy, infidelity chime.

Spinach moments, so it’s said,
Build character, develop strengths.
Yet, heartburn, too, causes flushing.
Calls up yesterday’s buffet.

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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.