Aimee Fullman

Inspiration Piece

How Barnaby Becomes a Bond Slave

Lisa Lipkind Leibow

Response

That night, after sharing a pint with a few blokes at the public house on the corner of Goswell Street and Swan Alley, Barnaby dreams he is a rat on the sidewalk. An enormous condor snatches him up, skyward, and gone. The dream so vivid, he can feel sharp talons tight around his flanks, digging into his gut. The creature soars into a storm cloud and releases its grip, sending Barnaby plummeting toward the earth. The condor flaps its great wings and flies out of sight, leaving Barnaby alone in the sky. In his dream, Barnaby doesn’t realize he can’t fly. He flails his arms and legs, expecting to glide. Instead, he finds himself tumbling through the clouds like a ship tossed by a white-capped sea.

“Give the lad another drink!” one of the blokes at the pub insisted, emptying a small flask into the pint of ale before handing it to Barnaby. “Let’s drink! To new mates.” The bloke tapped Barnaby’s tankard with his own pint of dark brew. “Swig it down in one gulp. That’s the way we do it here in Swan Alley.” The bloke raised the pint to his lips and locked eyes on Barnaby.

Barnaby, so caught up in the intensity of the bloke’s instructions, and by the sureness in his eye contact, did what he was told and downed the pint in one continuous guzzle. The tankard handle was icy in his grip. His nose pierced the foamy head on the ale. A sickly-sweet almond odor contradicted the bitter tang. The flavor transformed as it hit his lips, washed over his tongue, and slid down his gullet. First syrup followed by fermented wheat, next, briny low tide seawater and finally, pungent, warm, horse piss.

The public house is suddenly a soaring condor and Barnaby is locked in its talons like a rat. Sharp gusts, littered with hail and rain, sting his eyes and nose and mouth. The sky is black nothingness. In the darkness, he hangs limp in the condor’s clutches and all he can smell is rotten fish. He is surprised that the smell of death can become so concentrated in the vast sky.

“Let’s move him over here,” maybe it was the bloke from the pub, maybe some other chap who said this. Two burly men hoisted Barnaby by the armpits and dragged him up the gangway. Barnaby’s uncle always said the difference between Barnaby and his brother was that his brother didn’t trust anyone. Barnaby saw the good in all folks so would easily make friends and feel welcomed wherever he roamed. But it wasn’t a matter of trust. It was a matter of judgment. Iciness fills Barnaby’s lungs and spreads to his arms and his legs, to his hands and his feet, to his fingers and his toes. The chill makes his teeth chatter.

Barnaby squints in the darkness but all he can really make out are clustered pinpoints of light, which appear to be constellations. He mumbles, “North Star,” with swollen tongue, cracked lips.

He hears squawking, or is it talking? The noise is muffled and nudging at his ears from above. Rising bile begins to exert pressure against Barnaby’s stomach, rising up into his throat. A gurgling noise comes from his gut at a decibel that overwhelms both the moaning from his lips and the creaking of the floorboards as the ground beneath sways. A polluted mess erupts from his throat. There is no stopping this from happening. This is it, he thinks. This is how it ends. Barnaby’s head lolls on his neck, woozy. He struggles to open his eyes. His lids too heavy and his head too achy like his brain is too big for his skull. Where is he? He forces against the weight of his eyelids. Each time they rise and fall, he makes out translucent haze, slivers of gray soot in a muted world. Flashes of blue sky shine through triangular, mud-covered windows. In one of his last thoughts, Barnaby wonders how much had he had to drink at Swan Alley? Was the bloke from the pub sick too?

Up above the hollow darkness and the filthy windows, colors wave in the wind, sails billow from the mast of a tall ship, and their freedom taunts Barnaby.

Barnaby comes to on the wooden planks that make the lower deck floor, his head next to a puddle of his own vomit. He opens his eyes and watches a crab scuttle behind a wooden chest clad in iron. The details of his whereabouts and how long he’s been unconscious are unclear. He inhales and exhales, wiggles his toes, arches his back, and blinks his eyes a few times. He is alive, but where? He gets on all fours and then cautiously, deliberately maneuvers himself to standing position.

He looks up through the glass panes in the ceiling. Who would imagine such a barrier? He once dreamed of sailing away. He imagined the salty air nourishing his lips, making his skin feel as if the promise of morning dew – as if anything – were possible. But here he finds himself, inexplicably free of the land. Yet, he feels suffocated and feeble, the whole world beyond his grasp.

Above him on the upper deck, the sail stretches taught with the force of the wind. The masts of the tall ship tower above, piercing a lone fluffy white cloud in the clear blue sky. The colors wave above – flags of red, yellow, black, and blue.

The upper deck of the London Tall Ship is wrapped in golden rope and filigree. The bow of the ship is adorned with a five-pointed star set in a wreath. The sun obstructs the lettering of the company name so that only “CUT,” “K,” and “LON” are visible. He lets his mind churn on these symbols. Searching for meaning in a meaningless vision is a waste of time. He knows it.

Julia Trimboli

Basement Specimens

oil on canvas, 2012

Inspiration Piece

FOND OF FAUNA:Webisode #2

By Lisa Lipkind Leibow

Response

Hello to all of my YouTube fans out there. Welcome to the second webisode of my new nature series, “Fond of Fauna.” I’m hoping all five viewers of the first video in my series will let their friends and followers know what a great show I’ve got going here. I feel really good about the footage of the beaver lodge exposed by the County’s removal of the poor creatures’ dam in the creek that runs behind my house. I’m so glad you stuck with me. If I were you, I’m not sure I would have kept watching with all of the commotion – all of that barking through my explanation of the beavers’ progress to rebuild the dam in order to re-submerge their lodge. Don’t get me wrong. I love animals. Hence, the name of this series: “Fond of Fauna.” And my neighbor’s Chihuahua is cute and all, but why she has to impose her Monica Seles tennis-grunt imitation on the world day and night is beyond me. I’m not the only one who hates the sound of that dog’s bark. Everyone in the neighborhood is constantly bugging the trendy snob who carries the yappy pooch around like a fashion accessory to, “Hush that dog.” The pup finally stopped barking a few days ago. So, I figured this was the time to film webisode number two and ensure a cleaner soundtrack.

Ok. Last time, I was able to take a pretty close look at a beaver habitat with you. Again, sorry I couldn’t show you the actual beavers. It’s really hard to get a live beaver to hold still long enough for you to measure its teeth or feel the texture of its mud flap tail. You have to admit, though seeing the now-dried-out lodge and newly chewed-on trees was pretty cool.

In today’s webisode, I’m exploring one way to examine animals more closely. In fact, I have a collection of specimens that I’ve preserved in jars here. Most of the stuff needed to build a collection like this doesn’t cost a thing. This little guy here is in an empty spicy salsa jar. Isn’t he cute? This one has been in a jar formerly used for sour pickles and this one is in an old grape jelly jar. A lot of the jelly jars weren’t suitable because my Mom always seems to buy the ones that have pictures of Snoopy or Bart Simpson printed right on the glass. If it’s on a label I can soak it off. But that paint is near-impossible to remove. It doesn’t really matter what kind of stuff once filled the jars. It does matter that you wash the jars really well first. So. That’s why the jars are cost effective.

The critters are free too. Not free, meaning released from bondage. Well, duh! I’m sealing them in jars! What I mean is, free without charge. In the interest of full disclosure, I admit that one time I paid Kyle Coleman to give me his dead Beta fish instead of flushing it down the toilet. Other than that, I haven’t paid a dime for any of the specimens. The Beta? Where is it now? Let’s see, here. It’s hard to find individual specimens when I don’t have them all lined up on a shelf in my room like I used to before my mother forced me to get rid of them. You should have seen her standing on a chair like those ladies in the movies who see a mouse in the house. “It’s creepy! Get them out.” Did I sound like her? Whenever I try to mimic her voice it always comes out too nasal. Oh well, she doesn’t know it but I didn’t get rid of them. I have them in this box over here. I know I’m out of frame but I’ll be back in just a moment. I know it’s here somewhere. The Beta fish was in an old baby food jar I took from the recycling bin across the street. Aha! Here it is. Let me hold it up to the camera so you can take a closer look. This beauty with the fancy purple and magenta fins is the only one that required me to shell out cash.

For the others, I’m just lucky, I guess. It’s amazing what you can find. This one here – chipmunk road kill. I’m amazed at how fluffy its fur has stayed. And this bird flew into the picture window in the family room. It’s a robin redbreast. Only, for some reason the red feathers have faded. I’m a little disappointed with the color loss but other than that it looks the same as the day it crashed. I waited a couple hours before picking it up. I wanted to make sure it didn’t just knock itself temporarily unconscious. Once it started drawing flies, I was pretty sure it was dead. I put it in a Ziploc bag and stuck it in the freezer until I was ready to preserve it. See this lizard. Believe it or not, this lizard drowned in my old plastic kiddie pool. It was just floating in the water. I have no idea how it got in there in the first place. Although, I did see some muddy tracks that looked surprisingly like Chihuahua paw prints leading to the side of the pool with the little slide. I imagined the yappy dog giving the newt a ride, opening its snout to make that horrible tennis-player release grunt, causing the amphibian to slip down the slide into the water. Perhaps the dog skittered to and fro, yipping and woofing, too small or too frightened to leap into the water to fetch the darn thing. Who knows? All I know is when I got there, the lizard was ready for the jelly jar full of alcohol.

Most of the time I don’t even have to pay for the alcohol. My sister buys it in bulk for the body-piercing business she runs out of our garage. She has to rub the stuff on an earlobe or nose, nipple or bellybutton before she shoots it with the piercing gun. She wipes down the gun too, because it’s the only way to clean a plastic gun. There are cases of gallon jugs of ethyl alcohol in the corner of the garage. She barely misses a pickle jarful of alcohol here and there. It’s not like I find a new specimen every day. It takes a while to build a collection like this – weeks, months, years.

How long have I been working on it? I guess a couple of months. I’m trying to perfect the process. I want to be ready for that Chihuahua.

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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.

Everything New Is Old Again
By Lisa Leibow
Response

By Lisa Lipkind Leibow

Creamed corn and baked chicken chases Lysol into her nostrils as she slows her motorized scooter to a halt at the entrance to the dining hall. The first opening she notices is at the far side of the nurse-made clique of doddering senescent elders who swallow bottom lips and stare into space. Elizabeth scans the crowded room for an opening.

***

Friday was pizza day and the only day Libby bought school lunch instead of brown bagging it. However, rectangles of bread with tomato hunks and cheese gobs didn’t stop her from gagging at the lingering stench of yesterday’s mud-colored drool-drenched chipped beef and mashed potatoes that looked more like the paste Mrs. Kent dolloped onto cardboard squares for art class.

***

Unable to stand the Bingo ladies’ caddy gossip, Elizabeth shuns the table by the window, where pink sunset transforms blue hair to purple. Likewise, the guys at the corner table make her hair stand on end and prickle her neck.

***

The popular kids sat together and guarded their territory at the table near the exit. They taunted nonconformists, tripping, or knocking lunch trays to the floor or snorting like a pig while creeping behind one pubescent junior high student or another – bookish girls with head gears, pimples, and fuzz peeking out over knee socks because their parents refused to let them shave legs until they reached high school.

***

Echoes of the guys’ whooping, while a stewardess in movie night’s showing of Airplane blew the inflatable autopilot. One of the blue-haired gossips removed dentures and motioned come hither with a coy wink. It was laughable. Even tonsil hockey couldn’t get those geezers’ shriveled parts to firm up.

***

Libby treaded the long way to avoid getting anywhere near the in-crowd’s table, trying to avoid bringing attention to herself. As she walked, she overheard the buzz of child’s play and adult escapes colliding – invitations to smoke packs of Malboro’s under the slide at the playground and boastful claims of sneaking schnapps to spike McDonald’s milkshakes. Hell, if she could get stoned it could help her escape from the drudgery of having to study Latin and Sewing. It might also make the awful brassiere her mother forced her to wear more bearable. Trussed turkeys headed for four hundred and fifty degree ovens must feel more comfortable than Libby felt with her breasts hoisted up by this contraption.

That’s the moment it all began. Libby thought nothing of the first sneeze or two from the boy at the cool kids’ table, whose pompadour matched the fur on her next-door neighbor’s golden lab. By the fourth sneeze, she realized he was faking it – not a sneeze at all. The yellow-haired boy raised a long, lanky arm, stretching a grimy index finger in Libby’s direction, with a loud, “Stuffy,” masquerading as a sneeze – one sneezed insult at first, from a boy in the back of the cafeteria. In an instant, and for the first time all day, Libby forgot about the physical discomfort from the band of her cross-your-heart digging into her ribcage. The pain disappeared the same way smashing a thumb with a hammer makes one forget about one’s headache. Before Libby knew it, all populars followed like lemmings. At the bus stop, in home room, and at lockers between classes, slick-haired boys with plaid shirts and saddle shoes and in-crowd, flat-chested girls with pearl-trimmed sweater sets pointed at her chest, accusing her of stuffing her bra. She hunched over in her assigned seat, trying to concave her chest.

***

Elizabeth hadn’t noticed it before, but the seatbelt on her scooter digs into her spleen. If she still had a gallbladder, appendix, or uterus, it would dig into them too. Her heart thuds in her ears a sound that in her youth meant she was running in the zone, but now, coupled with her dry throat and muddled brain, signifies fear. There’s nobody here for her. She’s wound up in this place full of people, yet she’s utterly alone between worlds. Geriatrics may be old, but they were as immature as pubescent pimple-faces. She might as well spend her twilight in the company of satellite radio. It could tune in both CNN and “Burns and Allen.”

***

She glued her eyes to the tip of her pen, which she zigzagged to and fro to draw horizontal lines, short at first, growing longer with each zig, drawing tiny funnel clouds on her paper grocery bag book cover. The images mirrored the whirling winds in Libby’s soul, clearing away the cruel and ridiculous comments as if the tornadoes were centrifuge. All the while the jeers echoed. “Who grows boobs overnight?” asked the yellow haired boy?“ Maybe they’re her brother’s gym socks,” said a ponytailed girl with a hot pink silk scarf knotted at her neck.”

Libby tried to ignore them, but her twister doodles had begun to swirl inside her lungs, fetching letters, words, and nonsensical phrases from her gut. The mixed-up alphabet spilled from pen to book cover, making her head spin. 

She mumbled under her breath at first, “What do they know,” and “Someday they’ll be jealous,” and “what the hell are they talking about?” 

When the yellow pompadour started prancing back and forth, pinching his shirt and pulling to mime pointy boobs, the tornado touched down.

Libby shoved the kid and bellowed, ”If I were going to stuff my bra, don’t you think I’d do a better job!”

***

Elizabeth wheels to spot between blue-haired gossips and shriveled men. She’s taken so long to choose a seat that dinner’s almost over. A liver-spotted man with a comb over joins her and places tapioca pudding in front of her. “Your favorite,” he says.

Elizabeth meets his eyes. They’re green with a cloudy cataract on the left.

She reaches for his hand. “Thanks.”

Charisse Cecil
Unperceptive Glances
Collage/Acrylic, 8 x 10 inches
Inspiration

New Eyes
By Lisa Lipkind Leibow
Response

Get ready

to see the world through
new eyes. Get ready to shed
senses and notions like a snake slithers from its skin.
Get ready to taste the bitter, the salty, and the sweet.
Not a third eye, but compound eyes – infinite views
of surroundings.

The diverse views bounce around, adjusting
lenses, competing for lead vantage point.
The stubborn might speak their mind and then wait in
the wings for the next turn to talk. These points of view listen.
They pay attention to every voice.
Respect opinions.

Jumbled ideas sail around inside
like long locks whipping in the wind.
To philosopher’s eyes, dawn’s colors present new
questions why and the need to search for meaning.
Artist’s eyes see magenta,
tangerine, and gold hues filling the skies.

Sunset inspires poet’s metaphors
of passionate kisses like fiery daybreak’s
crimson rhapsodies.
Dancer watches the sun climb above
the horizon. She sways hips, swings arms, and leaps.
Interludes for tenor sax and piano play
in the Musician’s mind when she watches the sunrise.

The Journalist reports the facts – the who, what,
when, where, why – giving an accurate account.
Astronomer sees Earth rotate on its axis
and orbit around the star
in the center of a solar system in a vast universe.
Chemist spots hydrogen, helium, oxygen, and more.

Anthropologist considers how members of
ancient cultures regarded dawn. He examines clues from
millennia-old customs
and cultures.
No more jostling of infinite
viewpoints. You’re primed to envision with open heart, mind, and eyes.

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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.

Sukia Sikorski

Twin Souls Tempera

Inspiration piece

The Instant

By Lisa Lipkind Leibow

Response

The morning after sixth grade graduation, I struggled to stretch closed a blouse that buttoned fine the week before. Crap! I growled in the mirror at newly sprouted breasts and grabbed a hooded sweatshirt. That’s the instant the twinkling confetti-like excitement surrounding the first day of camp transformed to a giant squid the color of fire-roasted red peppers – the slimy ones my mother insisted were delicious.

Before I knew it, I stood in the Sea Stars Cabin, eyeing the springs supporting the top bunk mattress. If I lay on my stomach – the way I like to sleep, any camper who took the bottom bed, could rest on her back, stare up, and giggle at the mounded impressions. No wonder the camp chose coral reef-themed bunk-names, because I was drowning in the ocean. Suffocating, my lungs felt the color of a blue-ringed octopus as I spread my sleeping bag onto the bottom bunk. The risk of slumbering beneath a bed wetter trumped the humiliation of having strangers discover there was a woman bursting from my little-girl frame.

Before I heard anything, a shadow blocked the window, chilling my sun-warmed cheek. I hugged a pillow to my chest, guarding against the clatter of my bunkmates, who piled in with duffels filled with flashlights, beach towels, and bathing suits – bathing suits! Blue and gasping, I scooted into the corner, bleeding tears. Hoping to find a tissue, I clawed at my open bag finding only a Ziploc filled with toothpaste, insect repellent, and 3-in-1 shampoo-soap-conditioner.  Clutching lanky arms around legs stuffed under a baggy t-shirt, I disappeared like the octopus, warding against enemies.

That’s the instant she bounded in, grabbed a bikini from her cubby, and sat on the bottom bunk next to me – completely disregarding my camouflage. “There you are!”

“Me?” I sniffled. When snot bubbled on my upper lip, I swiped my nose, cringing at the trail along my sleeve.

Whipping off her t-shirt, she stood right in front of me, tying bikini-top neck-strings and cupping Lycra triangles over nectarine-sized breasts. Turning her back to me, she held the bottom outside corners between fingers and thumbs. “Tie this.”

“Okay.” I stared down, realizing my crab apple-sized protrusions weren’t monsters needing to hide in the shadows. Before looping the strings across her back, I drew my shoulder blades together and sucked in my stomach.

Bikini top secured, she placed her hands on my shoulders and turned me toward the cubbies. “Hurry! Get your suit. First day of camp cannon ball-fest awaits us.”

That’s the instant I found my best friend. I pulled on my one-piece, without caring that it showed off my curves and ran with her to the pond. Octopus tentacles transformed to tinsel in the air as we broke free. We took to the sky like twin souls, hugging our knees. We landed – splash-splash.

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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.