Jonathan Ottke
BirdParenthesis
Ink on Paper
Response

The Garden
Kathleen Finn Jordan
Inspiration

At last we’re all back here again
The Wall encircling us safe
The birds, the rain, the flowers pose
As the artists look and wait
The brushes swish and the little paints try
To mimic our beauty and shape
Appreciation fills the air
All life is bubble and bait
The bait of breath and heart and love
The wall is warming and stonily speaks
And grays and blacks and pinks and yellows
Dance in sketchbooks these artists will keep
And so the ballet of season and hope
Begins again another year
And no matter what visits in our darkened winters
The sketchbooks have captured the beauty now here.

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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.

Jonathan Ottke
Response

Unlearn Me
By Lisa Kilhefner
Inspiration piece

Unlearn me,
please un-know me,
unsee this world
through my swollen eyes.
Unlearn the way you have to detach,
Un-run with me.
I’m un-knowable as her,
as drought-stricken soil,
as wandering feet.
I run.
I’d stay but I can’t see past my brow.
Watercolor flowers fill my memory
and fade in an instant;
promise unfulfilled,
promise of a static mind.

Unlearn my eyes, my ghost, my smolder.
Un-know this hurting hand
and skin and hair that falls
across my frown.

Unleash a seed to grow
and shine a light.
The promise is renewed.

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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.

Crow
By Robert Haydon Jones
Response

Eustace had always been a Crow. He had also always been a male Human. Part of Eustace would always dangle. When he took flight, something always glinted. It always felt good. He liked feeling so beautiful. Once, early on, he was diving and glinting and preening in the glint — going faster and faster – when, suddenly he was not alone. He was flying in perfect tandem with a companion. It filled him. He smiled – and then deep chortled for hours.

Crows were a minority and that was okay. The wild thing centered in Eustace and all Crows would never be tamed. Only Crows knew that their wild interior was independent and totally in charge. The others never suspected that the force that could suddenly propel a dozing Crow into an arching epitome of beauty suddenly capping off a reckless, exquisite dive with, say, a soothing, surprise, Immelmann Turn, was a dictator. A bad ass dictator.

Still, it was great to be a Crow! Once, Eustace attacked a heavily fortified position and traversed it left-to-right before they really saw him. Then he came all the way back, right-to-left, while they were still discussing him – their response was so tardy and so drunken that Eustace’s companions laughed and laughed and laughed. He had always known he would reverse course and come back. Of course, it was not his decision. That was scary. Very scary. Very thrilling. Very Crow.

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Jiggle Memorial
By Robert Haydon Jones
Inspiration Piece

The idea of his wife suddenly dropping dead, say, just as she was leaning over toward him to ladle out yet another helping of her delicious scrambled eggs, immediately demolished him.

She was just about to turn 80. She and Eustace had left marriages for each other 45 years back. He was a selfish, vain, mean, besotted lover. She had flung herself at him and had gotten so stinking drunk and so insanely stoned that it was literally decades before she understood what she had done.

When she finally saw it, if you had asked her if she would do it again, she would have laughed her deep guttural laugh and said, “Of course.”

Then after a short silence, she would have said, “Of course,” again because she really liked what those words did to her and to him.

Of course, the sudden, interruptive thought had crushed him completely. He had loved her unceasingly all this time, that was the awful truth. When he envisioned her cascading backwards and hitting her head hard on the floor as the stroke snuffed her out, an awful lot came with. The fire department had been good. The ambulance team had been very good. They had even pushed on a tad longer than necessary after they realized she really was gone forever.

In the next milliseconds, Eustace notified the seven children, appeared at the Services, cremated his wife and let the dust settle. Then he was alone. It was awful. All this time, she had been his faithful companion. He was a great lover only because she knew he was.

The eggs were delicious as always. She was a brilliant cook. Eustace wondered if all brilliant cooks were fabulous lovers.

He doubted it but he didn’t know. That vexed him.

Christ, he loved his wife! Maybe a lot more than she loved him! How could he ever take her for granted again? It just wouldn’t be the same if he couldn’t take her and her sweet ass for granted.

What was he going to do? Was he a great lover or not?

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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.

Jonathan Ottke

Spring Moondance

Ink on Paper

Response

Raining Paint
Kathleen Finn Jordan

Inspiration

It’s raining paint
on this dark February day
As social media splashes me
with photos of sea, dolphins, art and news
Friends on voyages, earth made simple
Warnings percuss the lyric notes of a new poet
Living in new dimension
at fingertips other worlds
and fantasies made real
Just noise or
nubile inspiration
I turn away as
The paints glow palette deep
in the dark corner of the room
They call to me…….
It’s raining paint
on this dark day in February.

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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.

“Contra Fear”
Jonathan Ottke
Bricks, threads, silver beads mourning dove feathers
Response

Contra-Frost
By Diane Mayr
Inspiration piece

Stone
wood
wire
brick
ever
higher
ever
stronger.
Fear’s
the
real
fence
precluding
every
neighbor.

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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.

Amy Moffitt

Inspiration piece

Jonathan Ottke

Response

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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.

Jonathan Ottke
“Memories”
Response

Bottles
By Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
Inspiration piece

In my mind I keep a cupboard
full of bottles on a painted shelf
Each one holds a memory.
I made these bottles by myself.

Today a red-winged blackbird
stole my heart as he flashed by
so I opened up a bottle
to his orange flash and to the sky.

I mixed the bird with berries
to create a Snip of June.
and placed this Summer bottle
near a gleaming Vial of Moon.

I treasure these small bottles.
See, a person cannot know
when she will need Old Moonlight
or to taste a Bite of Snow.

I made a Laughter Bottle.
I have bottled Grandpa’s Kiss.
So I can visit memories
and moments that I miss.

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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.

Jonathan Ottke
“Banana and Two Nectarines on a Plate”
Brush Markers on Paper
Response

First Stop
By Jewel Beth Davis
Inspiration piece

Our first tour date is in a tiny town in the middle of England. The theatre is a small gem. About 100 to 150 seats, built in the fifties. A tiny working lighting booth perches in the back. The stage is proscenium and about half the width of a Broadway stage. An old red velvet curtain opens in the middle. It looks worn and well loved with a few threadbare spots. Spacious wings connect to stairs down to a dressing room and green room. The entire place is comfortable and welcoming.

1972. Our touring theatre company, New England College Theatre in England is made up of actors from the theatre departments of both University of New Hampshire and New England College. It is the company’s maiden tour and the future depends on how well we are received in the small towns and large cities of Great Britain, Wales, and Scotland.

Once we’ve settled in, our director, Wheel, asks the actors to move backstage to prepare for a tech rehearsal of three of the American one-acts in our repertoire: It’s Called the Sugar Plum, Cop-Out, and Next. Wheel is balding though he is only twenty-three, with longish wavy hair. He’s also my boyfriend. He is a trained mime, a gifted character actor, and has a mobile face and body. He can sometimes be mercurial but is a sweet, kind man by nature, which makes him a great choice for tour director.

Zeke is running lights and directing the set placement of the minimalist scenery we have transported in the van. As always, he has made the performance all about lights and scenery and is driving Wheel mad with his demands.

“Zeke,” Wheel says, “I understand this is your priority but we have to start running the show. We only have a limited amount of time.”

“Well, it should be your priority too if you don’t want our first performance to look like some kind of schlock community theatre piece,” Zeke says. He is tall and swarthy and the previous summer, he amputated two of his fingers on a band saw in the UNH shop. He barely seemed to notice when it occurred and was back in the shop in twenty-four hours.

The four of us wait backstage. Besides me, there is Bean, who is my best friend and college roommate, Lanny, a handsome teddy bear from Connecticut, and lovable Chip, who makes a habit of getting himself in trouble with his loose cannon mouth and behavior. His father is a big deal purveyor of real estate in NY City and Chip has never had to worry about practical things like rent or food. We’ve set up our props on the prop table; checked out the dressing room and green room; and hung up our costumes downstairs and backstage. We are fast running out of things to do so we listen at the curtain to Wheel and Zeke bickering, with Gustave, the props master, mediating in a half-hearted effort. Gustave does not like conflict. Zeke has the spotlight aimed at center stage and Wheel wants it blacked out so we can begin the rehearsal.

Chip takes a hank of blond hair and tucks it behind his ear. Immediately, it falls back into his face.

“Hey, did I ever tell you about the time my father brought me to his exclusive club for lunch in New York City,” Chip says. “I ordered a tuna sandwich and they brought me a piece of bread, a piece of lettuce, and the entire can of tuna, without the can.”

“Yeah,” Lanny says. “You told us, only about ten times.” Lanny’s family owns a chocolate factory in Connecticut that’s known for its chocolate Easter bunnies.

Chip laughs and his laugh sounds slightly pornographic.

“I have an idea.” Three pairs of brown eyes meet then shift to Chip’s blue eyes. “It’ll break up the monotony,” he says.

“What is it?” Bean says. She is not one for risk-taking without knowing what she’ll be doing and the consequences.

“You’ll see,” Chip says. “It’s funny. When I give you the signal, you and Jewel pull each side of the curtain open so the spotlight hits me.”

“But what is it? I’m not doing it unless you tell me what it is,” insists Bean.

“Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. It’s called fruit salad. Do you know what that is?”

Lanny collapses into paroxysms of belly laughs. Bean and I are flummoxed. We look at each other with scrunched eyebrows and questioning glances.

“No,” I say. “Never heard of it.” Lanny’s laughter is verging on the hysterical.

“But what the hell,” I say. “I am so bored.”

“We’d better not get in trouble for this,” Bean says.

“I’m the only one who could get in trouble but I won’t. You’ll see. It’s just fun,” says Chip.

It is a real sign of our nerves that Bean or I would agree to do something without knowing what it is. But here we are, in a new country at the outset of a great adventure. So we position ourselves on either side of the curtain opening, placing our fingers near the split in preparation. It is now pitch black backstage and we can make out that Chip is moving around between us but we can’t tell what he is doing.

“Quit giggling,” Chip tells Lanny. “You’ll wreck the whole thing.” Lanny shuts up and moves to the side of the stage where he won’t be seen.

“Okay,” Chip whispers. “Now!”

Bean and I move the curtains to the side and then we see. Chip has dropped his jeans and his boxers to the floor and is completely naked from the waist down. He is skewered in the spotlight. His back is to the audience and he has pushed all his male parts through his legs to the back.

“FRUIT SALAD!” he says.

Bean gasps. I am shocked into silence. Lanny is laughing uncontrollably. Both Zeke and Gustave are shouting and laughing. It is very telling that the guys are laughing and the women are not.. Wheel, however, is not laughing. His face resembles the Old Man in the Mountain in New Hampshire, very near to where he’s from. His amber eyes look like they’re burning. He is absolutely still, like a leopard ready to pounce. Then, in an instant, he leaps up onto the stage, spins Chip around, grabs him by his shirt collar with one hand, and shakes him violently.

“Are you out of your effin’ mind?” Shake, shake, shake.

I can’t peel my eyes off the appendages swaying back and forth.

“Do you know what you’ve done?” Shake, shake, shake. “Do you know what would have happened if one of our hosts walked in here right now?” Shake, shake. Chip giggles, from nerves, I think.

“We would have been done before we even started. We would have completely humiliated Rich and Cope.” He is referring to our theatre professors who put the tour together. He continues to shake Chip until I think I can hear marbles in Chip’s brain rolling around and smacking into each other. “If you ever pull something like this again, you’ll be catapulted onto the next plane back to the states. Do you hear me? Now pull up your pants and get backstage, you disgusting piece of sh-t.” Wheel runs his hand through his hair. His face is streaked with angry color.

In all the years I’ve been with Wheel, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him angry like this. I don’t think I’ve seen him angry at all. Chip disappears backstage faster than I thought possible, hopping and jumping in the process of pulling up his pants and boxers. Lanny has also made himself invisible. Then Wheel turns the full force of his anger like a tractor beam onto Bean and me. We are pulled into the force of his eyes boring into us.

“I cannot believe the two of you would sanction such irresponsible behavior. And not only sanction it but take part in this fiasco. I’m really disappointed.”

“But we didn’t know what…” I try to tell him. He holds up one hand, turns his back on us, walks into the audience, and orders Zeke to start the black out. Zeke complies without argument.

We have no words. I feel terribly guilty to the point of nausea. My eyes meet Bean’s and she looks like she will cry at any moment. We move backstage, our heads down. I am so angry at Chip I don’t speak to him for the next twenty-four hours. Wheel had never criticized either Bean or me before. Especially about our work ethic. After this experience, there was a new sense of professionalism in the tour. We fooled around, we had fun, but we never crossed that line again. I wouldn’t say Chip became a model of good behavior; he wouldn’t have been Chip, but he never did anything to jeopardize the tour again. I imagine it took some time for Wheel to regain his trust in us but he never mentioned the occurrence again, which says a lot about him. And the England tour continued on successfully with other troupes for another twenty-five years. No one knew how close we came to failure at the first stop.

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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.

Jonathan Ottke
Response

In Remembrance of Tilly
By Mary Lucas
Inspiration piece

There are a few places from my past I visit in my mind and heart when I’m looking for warmth and safety. My grandparents yard in Michigan surrounded by an acre of garden. The kitchen in the home where I ate most of my childhood meals; a knotty pine wrapped room with a clothes washer at one end and the sink where we washed thousands of dishes at the other. And, in a genuinely special place in my heart, the back seat of Tilly.

Tilly moved to the neighborhood when I was in fourth grade. The Gallo family arrived from Ohio shortly before their moving van. Two vehicles appeared in the driveway: a late model brown station wagon with wood paneling on the side, and a bright turquoise second car. As we introduced ourselves to our new neighbors Mrs. Gallo presented her much loved car “Tilly”, making it clear that “Tilly” was a “she”. I regret there are no photos to help identify Tilly’s auto family tree. It could be a trick of memory, but I believe she was a Ford. Her small, rounded body places her birthday in the late 1930’s or 1940’s, before auto curves turned to fins on longer, leaner vehicles.

An old, bright turquoise car stood out on the street in a small, rural town in Illinois in the early 1960’s. But to fully appreciate Tilly you had to climb into her black interior. The old auto leeched old leather, dust dropped from years of shoes, boots and sandals and a strong overtone of oil. Tilly’s back seat was a rich, dark, musky atmosphere punctuated with harsh sounds of gears changing, unlike the slick automatic transmissions of the other car pool cars that carted us to school and back.

Several of us squeezed into the back seat in those days before child auto safety laws, we were transported in Tilly land. The bumps in the road were a little more pronounced than in the newer cars driven by other mothers. We slid around on the leather seat and worked to keep our stacks of books secure on our laps. It was an adventure.

The Gallo family had moved to town so Mr. Gallo could open our first full grocery store complete with a full produce section, wide array of brands and products and much lower prices than our neighborhood markets could offer. As the profits from the new store quickly piled up Mr. Gallo wanted to share the wealth with his beloved wife – he wanted to buy her a new car. I was privy to many of the conversations when he offered to buy her any car she wanted. She never looked at him when we brought up the subject; she just shook her head and mumbled “no”. We all knew she meant it.

Tilly stayed with us through grade school. Once we transitioned to middle school we could take the bus. I don’t remember what finally brought about Tilly’s end but I’m sure it came down to keeping her Mrs. Gallo’s passengers safe. One weekend Mr. and Mrs. Gallo went car shopping and a new car was placed on order. Tilly’s days were numbered.

Mr. Gallo arranged for the new car to be delivered to the house so they wouldn’t have to drive Tilly away to trade her in. All of us old car pool kids were lined up across the street as an enormous, shiny bronze station wagon swept to the curb. A man got out of the new car, quickly took Tilly’s keys from Mr. Gallo’s outstretched hand, and drove Tilly away forever.

As Tilly turned the corner at West Walnut and headed for Main Street, out of site, Mary Gallo stood sobbing uncontrollably by the driveway. Her husband put his arms around her and kept murmuring that it would be OK. “Look at your beautiful new car!” he said. “But I want my Tilly,” was her answer. I lived across the street from the Gallo’s until I was twenty one and that was the only time I saw Mrs. Gallo cry, except when her father died.

I never learned the full story of Tilly and why Mrs. Gallo was so attached to her. Yet I shared her love for the old car. I shed some tears of my own as Tilly was driven away. Throughout junior high and high school there were mornings I would look across the street to the driveway where Tilly used to sit, longing to climb into her back seat once again and ride into a simpler time.

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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.