Category: Visual Art

Beyond words and photos

Día de Muertos

painting & photo by Elizabeth

THE CHOIR

I walk and I rest while the eyes of my dead
look through my own, inaudible
hosannas greet
the panorama charged serene
and almost ultraviolet with so much witness.
Holy the sea, the palpitating membrane
divided into dazzling fields and whaledark by the sun.
Holy the dark, pierced by late revelers and dawnbirds, 
the garbage truck suspended in shy light, 
the oystershell and crushed clam of the driveway, 
the dahlia pressed like lotus on its open palm.
Holy the handmade and created side by side, 
the sapphire of their marriage, 
green flies and shit in condums in the crabshell
rinsed by the buzzing tide.
Holy the light--
the poison ivy livid in its glare, 
the gypsy moths festooning the pine barrens, 
the mating monarch butterflies between the chic boutiques.
The mermaids handprint on the artificial reef. Holy the we, 
cast in the mermaid's image, smooth crotch of mystery and scale, 
inscrutable until divulged by god
and sex into its gender, every touch
a secret intercourse with angels as we walk
proffered and taken. Their great wings
batter the air, our retinas bloom silver spots like beacons.
Better than silicone or graphite flesh absorbs
the shock of the divine crash-landing.
I roll my eyes back, skylights brushed by plumage of detail, 
the unrehearsed and minuscule, the anecdotal midnight
themes of the carbon sea where we are joined: 
zinnia, tomato, garlic wreaths
crowning the compost heap.

 Olga Broumas

Día de Muertos

Explosion

EXPLOSION

Flash fiction and photo by Elizabeth

Days after the United Nations coalesced, she slivered out in almost as many pieces as she had cells. There were cells that had surrounded the embryo created before her lungs had forced its expulsion, cells that hurled with such force one could not imagine how hard they’d tried to make marriage work yet a lifetime isn’t just love and loyalty but also kismet, and sometimes everything that can go wrong lasts beyond endurance and without right. Some cells radiated forth like the kaleidoscope that made her laugh as a girl while others were sucked into dark stars, worm holes, the Horsehead Nebula…she’d always wanted to be a horse. Only two of her cells joined like team cyclists breaking wind for the other so they could reach the crescent’s pointy tip where they stayed to play with shadow and light along the impish moon thus fulfilling what she’d have chosen if not embodied. 

Thank you to the editors of Doorknobs and BodyPaint for first publishing “Explosion.”

Trees

photo by Elizabeth

Years ago, my friend dreamt she was a camp counselor leading a group of children through the forest. She woke herself when she exclaimed aloud: “Trees are our friends!”

Frank Lloyd Wright, Stanley and I agree.

photo by Elizabeth, Flat Stanley loves the redwoods

Taken

flash fiction, pastel sketch & photo by Elizabeth

TAKEN

I’m haunted that it happened here. Thought this was a safe community. Yet Tammy took that woman’s diamonds, clothes, and almost took her life. She starved that poor woman under the guise of helping a shut-in. Tami helped herself instead. 

Never met the woman even though she lived across the street. Didn’t even know she was there for the longest time. Nice home but I thought it was deserted—blinds drawn, never saw anyone go in or out. That is till after I heard Tammy tell a neighbor, “…poor thing…broke her hip…no, no children…needs help.” After that I saw Tammy walking a runt of a dog that trembled and skittered as she drug it down the street till it did its business then half-choked itself lunging against the leash toward home. I’d see Tammy go in around dusk and leave not much after with bags in each hand and always two more tucked under her arms. 

I’m embarrassed I didn’t think about it till the deputy asked if I’d seen anything unusual. This was right after the woman’s son came. Apparently she did have a child and he fired Tammy and packed what he could in this tiny trailer hitched to his cigar box of a car. The deputy asked what I’d seen—wanted to know how often Tammy was there, if I’d noticed her wearing fancy jewelry, or how much weight my neighbor had lost the past few months. But all I’d seen was brown bags and that scaredy-dog and how skeletal that woman looked in her boy’s arms when he carried her to his car.

Thank you to the editor of Doorknobs & Body Paint for first publishing this piece.