Do you remember when I called you late one night? I needed someone to confide in and you offered to listen. A scary event had happened to me a few days prior. I was having a hard time processing it because I couldn’t believe something like this actually happened to me.
The most common question I get is how I’m doing. Fine, I say, laughing the whiskey off my breath. They know I’m lying, but they act like I’m not, and that’s all I really want. […]
The white male body that exists and speaks—and shops and wears a mask (or doesn’t)—can also wield a gun, and kneel, and kill, as Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin proved when he crushed the life out of George Floyd.[…]
Ron says men are allowed to give themselves hugs, and even to hug other men. That that’s the whole point of all those cowboy movies, and it doesn’t make you a wussy, it makes you a full-hearted man. Mom says this is one of the great things about Ron.[…]
In this collection, I ask: What can the color blue teach us? What emotional, psychological, and physiological reaction do we have when blue is allowed to speak? Because this type of art is fluid, attention must be paid to the motion of the pieces[…]
In Wordscapes, you cannot pull a jagged tooth from a lovely mouth. Pretty makes try makes yet. Beautiful makes flit makes fate. Wordscapes has never asked me to spell death, which makes heat makes date makes tea. Without power, heat is unbearable.[…]
the dying Italian mother of seven
raps the ceiling with a wood cane
as we make love in silence—no
less eager than a mother scolding
Despite his popularity in Brazil and his immigration to Europe, Murilo Mendes has never found an English translator.
The specific paints and color variations I use in my work also impact the work as well as the subjects I present. Colors like red and blue can sometimes be used as references to political parties, or the use of black to emphasize the feeling of emptiness, as well as it being used for more modern line work for the pop feel.[…]
When Michael arrived, there were no flames licking up the building, but he could still feel the heat waves emanating from below. The fire had started low and restricted itself to one floor, the bottom floor where Michael and his mother lived. He took a breath and tried to sniff out the burnt scent of his room and all its used furniture.[…]
think too many writers don’t do enough research about the business of writing. They focus so much on the craft, writing their books, polishing them up and then, they don’t know what to do. Also, the all-time end goal cannot be how to get published, but rather, how to stay published.[…]
Sometimes we’d be sitting on the floor, with our backs against the wall and our hands would get so close that our pinkies would touch. When that happened, it was like my body received an infusion of electricity and I’d have enough energy to run a marathon three times over. […]
Each time a new friend was in treatment, I held my breath waiting for results of follow-up scans, my entire body exhaling when results were positive. As in negative. As in clear.[…]
As painful as it is to dig inside these memories, there’s something larger that I’m trying to explore. I want to examine it because my family is not the only one who has experienced it. Just like my brother’s death didn’t just happen to my family.[…]
Man: Honey, I really want to support you. I know it’s a lot with the kids and school and disinfecting the mail and everything.[…]
I knew for a decade just one way to die the one that took my uncle, my cousin, all the kids from my high school who didn’t leave town.[…]
He ain’t my favorite person, she’d say, but he is your father. A simple truth he ignored, never once attempting to bridge the gap. Lived ten minutes away, worked even closer, but he was like a ghost, an apparition, someone we fabricated a connection with but who would ultimately vanish.[…]
As a Black woman from Mississippi, my cultural roots have imposed a powerful influence on my art process. My work is a conversation between myself and place, using art as a paradoxical intervention to address racial trauma at its core. Integrating the pineapple’s growth and journey as a guiding metaphor […]
She is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Fine art, I think, worthy of the masters; no, better than the masters. Da Vinci couldn’t have painted her better than this traffic light. Donatello would’ve messed up her nose. Botticelli doesn’t even bear mentioning.[…]
The sap of the plantains stains your clothes, hard to get them clean afterwards. During the preparations, the rain continues to fall. You open the kitchen window. The smell of wet earth mingles with that of the fritters or the plantains cut into thin slices before being plunged in hot oil.[…]
I had scattered the scallions too soon for the oily black seeds to germinate. They needed warmth, patience, and timing, but I’d rushed them. They sniffed the chilly air, trusted their instincts, and refused to sprout.[…]
I was blown over by the swift, sharp gale that was your dismissal; it knocked me flat. When I finally got my breath back and gingerly sat up, the monster was directly in front of me, and I saw that it had grown again.[…]
I remember a damp paper towel in my hand, a dusty rose-colored lampshade on my night table, and the sun streaming through the windows of my bedroom. My hand spun in a circular motion, watching as the dust became trapped in the sunlight, even after I heard Francisco had been shot in broad daylight.[…]
Through her artworks, she is able to pass on messages without writing an essay. Her subject matter mostly deals with emotions and self-discovery. She connects with music, books, people, her environment, and situations around her vicinity before creating any art piece.[…]
Lou didn’t need another coffee, but she needed to see her reflection again. The café’s insides were a meshwork of devil’s ivy and Matisse-inspired line drawings. Aesthetics at the end of the algorithm, her sister would call a place like this.[…]
I’m a political artist by trade. I’m interested in exploring human connections through this thing called politics. They say everything is political; that’s very true, at least for me.[…]
I admit I’m a worrywart. That’s what my mom always said, “We’re a family of worrywarts.” In reality, we’re a family riddled with anxiety of varying degrees, from mild uneasiness to extreme panic attacks.
This project aims to portray women as they suffer a crushing defeat in society. Being the core of my focus, woman is described as a bird who is dying. I have applied Forough Farrokhzad’s last poem of her last book of poems—“the bird may die…”—to the photos to address each image more touchingly.[…]
A literary and art journal
from the MFA community at
Antioch University Los Angeles.
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Photo credit: Kris Brunelli
Photo credit: Lucas Ranieri
courtesy of MAMM (Museu de Arte Murilo Mendes)
Photo credit: Gina Kim
Photo credit: Studio 65
Photo Credit Georges Seguin (Okki) — Travail personnel, CC BY-SA 3.0