The Nature and Psyche Project

July 2023 | visual art

# journalism is not a crime

 

The Nature and Psyche Project

Emily Candler Davis’ Opus, The Nature and Psyche Project, is a visual storytelling endeavor from Acadia National Park, a little heart-shaped island off of the coast of the United States. The images capture a human story or element within the elements themselves. Those prized moments with Nature when we once again leave our own process and return to the trees, the birds, the sunrise or set, a moment of awe or beauty or perhaps even fear, when we are one, once again in Nature, are the heart and soul of her work. The images in, “Storytelling”, describe a process of homecoming.

Stephen Curtis Wilson

July 2023 | visual art

Benson

Ono Como What Can I Do?

 

Stephen Curtis Wilson

Wilson explores rural communities and urban neighborhoods searching for reminders of humanness, culture, and community. He was a medical and generalist photographer, writer, and communication specialist in the health care and library science fields for 36 years—cut steel in a foundry and drove a truck for a time. He is a graduate of the fine arts program at Illinois Central College, received a BA from the University of Illinois, and is a juried Illinois Artisan for Photography, Illinois State Museum. www.stephencurtiswilson.com.

Scott Urquhart

July 2023 | visual art

Cat on Rockets

Ruins of an Apartment in Kherson

 

Scott Urquhart

Scott Urquhart is a volunteer on the frontlines of Russia’s genocide against the Ukrainian people. He has been in this area of great contention since, working with schools and humanitarian aid across the country.

Lullaby to Bacteria

July 2023 | poetry

May you sleep in slushy apples,

the acid mash of stomachs,

seafloor chimneys smearing

the deep with tartars of smoke.

 

I coo to poisonous beans,

noxious Botox twinkies,

and hum at naughty bonbons

of streptococci. Let your dreams

 

carry hordes through rotten tarns

and maggot guts. The world

needs your silent sawing:

wood to dirt, corpses to sand.

 

Waking, your tiny diamonds

dapple dog tongues and rain.

Your rancid flocks fester kisses

and ferment grapes to wine.

 

Eric Fisher Stone

Eric Fisher Stone is a poet and writing tutor from Fort Worth, Texas. He received his MFA in writing and the environment from Iowa State University. His publications include two full-length collections: The Providence of Grass, from Chatter House Press, and Animal Joy, from WordTech Editions.

Scales

July 2023 | fiction

Scaly edges pierce eggshell: my oval microcosm of speckled beige – limited, yet a thinly protective sphere.

Siblings dispersed, hatching to dilating day-lit skies and mother’s sheltering feathers.  Feather-winged, like her. Fitted into a puzzle. Her pieces.

Not so, this fate, for me.

My edges are sharp, toughened as steel cornices. I choke on flames – knowing I’m different.

I patter discontentedly, innately perceiving a world – one elongated ahead as taut elastic. One where scales are not accepted nor hot-flame breath. An existence where a man can crumble to ashy dust from a plume of distaste, cannot be tolerated. Mankind will view me as a villain: disdain pouring from clenched lips.

As fragments of shell cascade amidst held wings, unopened fans of propellent force, I admire belted rays of sunlight. Bands warm troughs and peaks of my verdant skin like a reduced in size mountain range. As my wingtips expand, more shell dispels, flaking before my beating heart.

Man will fear me.

They will come – summoning blood spill.

I sense hellish flair, even now, within teething, infantile hours, coursing vivaciously.

None will survive belly-deep roars, nor cast sight away to a more tender species, petting absentmindedly whilst entangling fingers into furred oblivion.

I am the future.

Here, and now, my clawed feet stomp the earth, grounding eggshell roots to powdery forgetfulness.

Upwards, I soar to shaky plains where God stands by an easel, casting futures with daubs of metallic paint.

 

Emma Wells

She is a mother and English teacher. She has poetry published with various literary journals and magazines. She enjoys writing flash fiction and short stories also. Emma won Wingless Dreamer’s Bird Poetry Contest of 2022 and her short story entitled ‘Virginia Creeper’ was selected as a winning title by WriteFluence Singles Contest in 2021. Her first novel is entitled Shelley’s Sisterhood which is due to be published in 2023.