Amuse-Bouche

The poetic form has a compressed intensity to it. There’s such a focus. With the essay form, there’s more room to expand upon things. In an essay, I can wander around a little bit more; I can go on a tangent and reconnect with the main focus of the essay later. I like having that room.[…]

I’m one of those poets who gets the most creative satisfaction out of editing. That said, I don’t think I would enjoy working on a poem or group of poems after more than a few months. I tend to tinker until I make myself sick of it.[…]

Allen, TX In a stash of nostalgia my parents keep a piece of orange paper. Typed at the top it reads: “What three things are most important to you?” and underneath in neat rounded writing my teacher transcribed my answer: “God, Jesus, and money.”[…]

My work explores an inner world of stored images and reflects on the shifting space of landscape, narrative, and memory. In the context of globalization, I am interested in how any image conveys a sense of time and place specific to a personal and cultural history; drawing and painting have been the constants on which I rely to investigate these questions […]

And this is when fear grips me the tightest. How can I protect them? How can I keep them safe—[…]

Chief Smiling Officer of the Art Cart, Saba Shahid-Moir, MS, has made it her mission to help those who can’t smile so easily anymore due to complications from Parkinson’s disease […]

My art was born out the quest for perfection, and in every work that I create, I make a realistic drawing of people, showing the emotions they wish we could see through their eyes, with pencils. […]

It takes an inundation to isolate my isolation. I hope you remember―how a moon flooded fields for yellow spirits to rove, how we hastened through terraces into shrubs of pleasure. You: denuder, I: stony road. […]

Can I find the words I mark electronically without the cluster of stars I draw in margins to show what is important? Can I discover a buried treasure finger-flicking entries on a screen? Can I flip pages for perusal of bright maps on unexpected pages? […]

By definition, the grey area is the mixing of different characteristics or the lack of clearly definable characteristics. In this collection, I have attempted to do both, by merging and mixing three of the things I love most about art. These are: nature, skin tones, and geometry, as a whole, that is found naturally in both. Aesthetically, I have always loved the endlessness of what can be created in the spectrum that is found between black and white.[…]

Anjali Singh, literary agent with Ayesha Pande Literary (APL), started her career in publishing in 1996 as a literary scout, and later worked as an editor with Simon & Schuster, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Vintage Books, and as Editorial Director at Other Press. She is best known for having championed Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, after stumbling across the original French version on a visit to Paris.[…]

The biscotti slipped first, falling to the floor through the space of her forearm. Next went the cheese, then the crackers. Agitated, she dropped the rest of the assorted bags and packaging and breathed deeply. She knelt down to restack the boxes, starting with the largest and utilizing every angle of her arms and torso to balance each.[…]

Nouns drop from their perches,
seeking a less
hate-driven sentence,
aiming for purpose or purchase
or mere acceptance.

Ashley Lumpkin has been writing since she was seven. She is a poet and started doing slam poetry performance in 2010. She has four poetry collections and a new creative nonfiction collection called I Hate You All Equally […]

You were the villain at tea parties, attacking the blonde society barbies, with skin pale like fragile porcelain and eyes an unblinking blue sky. You were dark as coffee, an uninvited stain on the white rug I played on. I wanted to love you, being a gift from Grandma.