Feel Fetter (Found Poem)
By Jules Rolfe
Inspiration piece

System clear.
Conversation choices
Far is the same time next year

I repeat.

We both provide choices.
The A list: When we are somehow in agreement

Falling matter in the normal way.

You are empowered by the collective.
I feel the joint in my major physical sole.
I will not back off.

May time repeat.

Feel better.

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Seth Leamer 
Time Squirrel  – Watercolor – 12″ x 16″
Response

Marla Deschenes
Untitled
Inspiration Piece

Turn the clocks back in the fall
And ponder how I am always
Chasing time
Elusive in its grip on all the moments in my life
I wish to contain with fleeting grasp
And always remember.
The sky is full of pink as the sun sets on this day.
I watch my dog’s rhythmic gait
As his nails click against the asphalt
Strewn with leaves.
The passing of time seems most obvious
As the trees go into winter sleep.
The squirrels run frantically through the suburban yards
Burying their hidden treasures.
Squirrels never worry about turning back the clocks
Or how it will be dark
Before dinner can grace the table.
Turn back the clocks
And hold fast to every moment –
Even those that begin in the sunshine
And move slowly
Into the softest dark.

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Seth Leamer
“The Nightly Visitor”
Digital artwork
Response

Her
By Jacob Kawecki
Inspiration piece

This ring
and that billowing dress
serve as a reminder to your straightness,
your deepness,
and seeing that blue gem over that blue silk
reminds me of the tragedy lying in the sky above.
On the horizon,
I see the demolition of your features,
and it only grows the contrast
of your fluorescence and my paleness,
the fundamental difference between you
and I.

You were a comet,
a yellow streak of fire,
and I was a rocky hole for humanity
to drain it’s austerity.
My bare smile contests nothing of the
fluidity with which you lived,
flowing from structure
to among the wilted leaves.
…

And every night,
you were pointing to that same star,
that pinprick of light
in the landscape of black clay.
If only that star knew the majesty of your neon smile.

Gliding through this burnt Earth,
grey and erect,
I know one thing…
I miss you.

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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.

Seth Leamer
Hidden Meanings
Watercolor/gouache
Response

Estelle
By Rebecca Biggs
Inspiration piece

She has a new name now
a Tibetan Monk softly placed it on our tongues
and then used it to call her where she needs to go.
I’ve forgotten the word
or never caught it in all the wailing,
like wind filling a long tunnel between the cliff and shore.
The meaning I remember,
effervescent foam on the lip of a wave,
exuberance not turbulence,
ebbing and flowing tossing up pieces of her life,
fingers of driftwood and shells like tiny teeth,
etching the exact spot touched by
something as intangible
as water moving over sand.
And my brother with his prayer beads
calling out the new name of his beloved.
The rock that is pounded
over and over again
so a curl of foam that glows
can feel alive for a moment.

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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.

Seth Leamer
“Respite’s Sunset”
Digital Collage
Response

Café Respite
By Kathleen Finn Jordan
Inspiration piece

Cobbled alley café tucked in
August in Georgetown lazy feel
For years we imagined in quiet and din
A stop at Leopold- a pastry, a meal
And so it happened an afternoon free
In a staycation pause with time to spend
And after a swim, a telephone call
It was off to the café at the canal’s rough end.

How strange I was thinking in Austrian mood
As I read during day “the Lady in Gold”
Embedded in Vienna as the characters danced
After seeing the movie- the story now told
In great depth Master Klimt and the lovely Adele
In Austrian magic before the great fall
And now to eat schnitzel In the Leopold café
Brought the book and the times in a great wild recall.

Rain was predicted but we challenged the call
And sat out on the terrace with the lush waterfall
As Crepe Myrtles breezed down we sat in content
And schnitzel and wine saw an afternoon spent.
We love the same food and agree on the wine
We inhale unique places and the feel’s quite divine
We talked as birds tripped near the table to find
The crumbs of the sacchertorte, the sweet fruit of the vine.

But once home the sky darkened and a footnote was planned
Watermelon martinis a recipe new
Long glasses and colors that screamed of the summer
Though the watermelon surprised in a deep yellow hue

It’s the moments in life that create the true joy
Excitement, surprise, and the will to soar high
And the friends that share dreams and convention be dammed
To live full and live free ‘til the moment we die.

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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.

Seth Leamer
“Mylar Dirge”
Digital
Response

Elm Street
By Amy Souza
Inspiration piece

This is what it’s like, boy, so keep your eyes open.

Where did that voice come from? Sounds like Mr. Woodhouse, but it can’t be; he’s dead. Been so a long time.

The wind is fierce, but I can’t feel it. The trees are moving, swaying, and inside them a face peers out at me. We don’t need words—it knows I’m here and I know it’s here, spying on us. I tell it through my thoughts, That’s not polite.

Gray slate everywhere I look, smooth and cold, immersed with secrets. I see the beginning—roots and seeds deep underground, and the soil, cool, comforting.

The Costas walk ahead of me on the path, and I hurry to catch up. They don’t acknowledge my hello, step right through me when I rush in front of them. Mrs. Costa is worried about their son. She wants to bring him to a doctor, but Mr. Costa says no, the stigma, then they decide to cook out for supper. I crave a hot dog, black and blistered from too much time on the grill.

A little girl, alone, stands near the stone wall bordering Five Acres, a caricature in a gown that flows to her ankles, her hair tied in a blue bow.

A rabbit hops up and starts to chatter. It expects me to understand. In the distance, a Mylar balloon shines in the air, tethered by a thin string but climbing higher and higher. I walk toward it and arrive at a stone the color of cantaloupe that stands up to my armpits. The dirt around the stone is freshly dug. The earth looks raw and clean. The balloon swishes overheard and I spy the creature among the trees keeping its eye on me. The Costas pass by again, not talking. The crunch of their sneakers on loose stones.

Above me, the balloon crinkles. I look up at it, then down to the stone in front of me. In its smooth surface I see myself, the way I look in pictures. I’m etched into the orange stone. The Mylar balloon starts falling fast toward the ground. My chest tightens and words appear in front of me, letter by letter: Steve, we miss you always.

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artist is strictly prohibited.

Waiting  — RESPONSE
by Seth Leamer
(Oil on Canvas)

Waiting  — INSPIRATION
by Brenna Crotty

That there man, there’s something wrong with him.

I been workin’ my whole life on them cars at home, so I know when somethin’s broken and it’s him. A man coughs into his collar like that, he’s hiding somethin’. That’s real sick, there. Can’t even keep from coughin’ in a crowded room that’s got kids in it. There’s nothin’ wrong with me.

He’s two chairs away so I turn up the collar on my coat and turn my back to him so I’m facing my wife instead, who looks right at home here in this waiting room with her hair still died brown and sprayed up into a beehive on her head. Like we’re goin’ to the theater or somethin’. I can’t breathe this air too well in here. It’s like the inside of a can of paint.

Lights are too bright and the room is too small. Twelve people waitin’ in a room with fourteen chairs. That woman behind the desk don’t look no better off than me. Kinda dumpy and with that hair not even warshed. I bet she’s lookin’ at us and wonderin’ what we got. I ain’t the one coughin’, though. Since when do a swollen liver have anything to do with the prostate? It’s just from the beer.

Hell, I don’t even have lights this bright in the garage with all them cars. They’re what give you cancer, I bet.

I don’t like this waiting room. Don’t like magazines, and the only other things around are them colored wood blocks for little kids on the patch of carpet. Smells like that chemical cleaner’s been sprayed on everything, and I know what that means. It means people been sick in this room and they’re spreadin’ it to the rest of us, who ain’t even here for a reason. I try not to touch anything when I shift in my seat and fold my arms over my chest. The chairs ain’t big enough neither and the movement makes me need to piss again but I know it won’t be no use to try so I just sit in my seat.

“Laura May,” I say to my wife, but she’s listenin’ to some lady talk about her kid who’s got leukemia. They’ve been talkin’ like the kid ain’t there and neither am I.

“Ben’s been so brave, but we have to keep coming back for treatment and he just hates it here. God, I don’t blame him a bit.” Nice-looking woman, like my Laura May forty years ago, all smiling even when she looks like she’s hurtin’. Makes smiling look like weight liftin’. The kid don’t even fit in his clothes, he’s so thin. Bald head like my brother Clay had after chemo. Big eyes and just sittin’ there on the floor, watchin’ his ma talk about him.

Laura May looks over her knees at that kid like he’s one of hers. We got so many grandkids, but she’d always take another’n if she could.

“Hi there, Ben, you are such a big boy! My name is Laura, it’s so nice to meet you.”

All kids are three years old to Laura May, even this’n, who’s probably seven. Laura May adjusts all them rings on her fingers so the diamonds are straight up. Bought her one for every anniversary. She keeps the rest of ‘em lined up in a drawer, in their boxes, and looks at ‘em in the morning but never wears ‘em.

“I like that ring,” the kid says, pointing. Never mind he’s a stranger and we’re an hour and a half from home, she just twists the damn thing off her finger and hands it to him. The one with the rubies on either side of the diamond. The one that cost me a month’s pay at the garage. The one that I gave her for our 25th anniversary.

“Well here, you play with it, I don’t mind.”

“Laura May,” I say. “Come on, now, look where we are.” Those chemicals and them bright lights are hurtin’ my head and I can hear that man coughing and makin’ us all sick. I feel like I need to warsh my hands.

“You hush, Charlie, he’s not gonna hurt it.” She turns back to the tired woman in the hard chair. “My Charlie, it’s his liver, it’s all swollen. My oldest daughter, Jenna, here, see, this is her and her kids, she thinks we should get it checked out because I guess it might really be his prostate.”

Laura May keeps up that nattering and she’s gonna drive that woman right up the wall. Tellin’ everybody why I’m here, like it matters. It ain’t cancer. M’brother Clay had cancer from all them cigarettes for so many years and the cancer just ate him up. I watched it happen, and it wasn’t like this, which is just needin’ to piss all the time and sometimes havin’ blood in it. Day he come back from the hospital with his head all shaved under his hat I stopped smoking and never needed to since, so now I’ll just stop drinkin’ beer and that’ll be the end of that.

That kid is swirlin’ the ring on his pinky finger like a hula hoop. His eyes are bigger’n his head and he’s got no eyebrows. Skin like a Kleenex and all the bones in his skull comin’ through it. He looks at the ring for a sec and then pops it in his mouth and starts suckin’ on it.

“Hey there!” I say, ‘fore I can think about it. “Cut that out!” I’m just thinkin’ about his spit on it and the way my pa beat me once for puttin’ a whole mess of nightshade in my mouth like some fool, thinkin’ they was salmon berries or somethin’. How scared I was, not of him, but the look on his face, not knowin’ what I did and the way he opened my mouth with his thumb on my chin and put his other thumb inside my mouth to sweep out the berries. He tasted like dirt and sweat and the horse he used for plowin’ and I’d never been that close to him before. No one else but me knows that anymore about my pa and how close he was to me ‘fore he beat me. Pretty soon no one will know it at all. All that stuff that’s just me’ll be gone except them rings I gave to Laura May, and she’ll probably give them away. She don’t like fancy things.

Them lights are hurtin’ my eyes and makin’ em sting and that man to my left is coughin’ into his coat and Laura May and the woman are starin’ at me like they didn’t see me before.

“He’s gonna choke on it,” I say, and the kid spits the ring out, pttttb into his hand, with a trail of spit leading up to his mouth. No one says nothin’, and the kid’s just offering me this ring on his hand like it’s some great gift on a silver platter.

“That’s okay,” I say, ‘cuz his eyes are so big, or somethin’. Like one of them baby deer that gets crunched by a truck and then staggers off to the side of the road ‘cuz it don’t got enough sense to die right away. “You keep that. You give it to some girl you like when you get old enough.”

Kid just sits there with his hand out. Then his ma is talking about how they couldn’t possibly do that and Laura May is speechless for once in the 58 years we been married.

I’m feelin’ shifty again so I turn in my seat and suddenly I’m facin’ the guy who was coughing. He looks up and he’s young, years younger’n me and he looks okay actually, not real sick at all. He looks like he might smile at me but his face won’t work right for it. I know how that feels so I just give him a little nod and wait for the doctor to call my name.

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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.