Updated: Feb 1
Covid Color
Leonis
Zinnias
Covid Color #2
Fly 2
Cynthia Yatchman is a Seattle based artist and art instructor. She shows extensively in the PaciNic Northwest. Past shows have included Seattle University, the Tacoma and Seattle Convention Centers and the Pacific Science Center. Her art is housed in numerous public and private collections.
Updated: Jan 31
Greek Myths Are Overrated
Aren’t you sick of Greek myths? So removed
from reality. Sick of Oedipus killing his father again
and again on his way to Thebes. Sick of therapists
telling us we want to marry our mother, therapists
who obviously have never met our mother.
What of Odysseus killing the suitors, all bloody 108
of them, manipulated by Penelope weaving her ridiculous
shroud to look like a loyal wife. But sleeping with Telemachus.
Or Heracles slaughtering lions and hydras, bulls and boars.
Doesn’t he have anything better to do? We yawn.
But here’s the thing. We really do need you Ariadne.
Are you still sleeping on Naxos, dreaming of Theseus
who left you behind, who never really cared,
more concerned with the bloody head of the Minotaur
tucked under his shoulder, hastening back to Athens,
too stuffed with heady success to change the sail,
to think of his father, to think of you who risked your life.
Wake Ariadne! We have lost the red thread to guide us,
the ball of yarn that leads out of the labyrinth
of lies, deception, duplicity and betrayal.
Let us stumble toward dawn’s rising light,
our tangled hearts unknotting.
Partly Cloudy with a Chance of Dementia
My daughter says my mind is sliding
words lost at sea, snagged in seaweed
tangled in silt
the round thing you put your supper on
I have post its on my fuzzy night shoes
my favorite red fruit, the photo
of my sister, or maybe my aunt
pills from my daughter dissolve on my tongue
post its on top of post its, no idea
which is the right one and what on earth
[no break]
is calamander doing on my desk
living in the shadow of the valley of lost words
but where was I going with all this? oh yes,
she (Lucy? Layla?) says no more bourbon
but I hide it somewhere, ha!
but look! there is toilet paper
floating into the harbor
followed by persimmon and potato peeler
I scoop them up in the thing with holes
dry them off and take them home
yet still fewer and fewer words
until I walk out of this watery world
under spinning stars and
a yellow saucer in the sky
Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.
Updated: Jan 31
Rocco, Patron Saint of Pestilence
You do the Monday crossword, cheating frequently
because your mind works in no way
you recognize. It is a machine with oiled
buttons. You used to run
to catch the 6. Fuck
athletically. You took everything
for granted. Strength is a lie
that makes you fall in love
with life, then crumbles,
revealing paper bones, flayed
myelin, clotted milk. Remember
how easy it used to be? Hunger,
sweat, song, the unfathomable luxury
of pounding your body like asphalt.
Sickness is how we touch God, stickily,
salted by fever, brainworm
pop becoming prayer – I’m a slave
for you – that baby voice gasping
to the beat like lust is a virus
attacking the lungs.
Now you’re paying
attention. Now look
how grateful you are.
In the Dream, I Go Back to Cincinnati
Graeters is wallpapered in stripes. Barbie pink, hospital white. Alps of ice cream under gleaming sneeze glass. Every customer here remembers me. That’s the girl who won the spelling bee. Who cried on the bus. Wore the wrong jeans. Wrote the names of her tormentors on the soles of her Converse. Mary Anne. Petra. Lynn. I walked over them all day long. Hard to know the villain in any story where all the characters are little girls. I await my scoop of mint chip. Outside, the sun melts joggers and their obedient dogs. The waitress approaches in her striped apron. Cosmic-egg pink, sclera white. I can’t be sure but I think she’s the one who fed me a sympathetic cigarette in the stairwell outside the theater building the day the girls dismembered me and threw my meat to hungry pigs. She invites me to a party. I must have gone because there it all is on Instagram. The DJ in his fedora, the backyard transformed to an exotic petting zoo. Red velvet cake a blood clot on my chin. I look bad in all the pictures. I’d always thought people hated me for me. What a relief to know it’s my face they despise.
Sera Gamble's poems have appeared in journals such as Harpur Palate, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Bodega Magazine and Sky Island Journal. She also writes for film and television. Sera is a first-generation American living in Los Angeles.
