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.

Arrives Like the River

July 2023 | fiction

The scent of the river on his skin, late, hair and swimsuit wet from Barton Springs. Nine or ten at night, the candles dead. She’s fallen asleep or she’s pretending. It doesn’t matter, she’s nothingness, blue tulle and white dreams. He sheds the trunks, gets in her bed. With her face she seeks the warmth of the sun caught in his skin. Smooth hard chest almost bare of hair. River algae, spring coolness down below, gossamery sustenance, twirling iridescence. It’s loud inside his head . ‘You are full of noise,’ suddenly noticing her deep silence. ‘And drunk, or high, or both,’ she ponders without judging. ‘You are a strong woman’. ‘So?’ He doesn’t tremble but almost. It’s his way of telling her he’s afraid. ‘Shit, you’re not the one who’s almost fifty.’ Damn. Skin against skin, unique kisses. She stops. ‘Yes, it seems incestuous.’ He jumps back half a meter away, escaping. ‘Like mother and son???” His terror makes her laugh and love him all at once. She thinks, ‘No, like brother and sister.’ She means it. Like brother and sister is what it feels like. The skin is exactly the same, the curls, the primordial innocence. He returns to her and the story begins. It will be exactly eight times. The air lowers, breathes them, the earth rises to meet. A vast pool full of people left behind, both in the deep, dancing around each other, as if the water was a ray of sun and they water itself, everyone there, but gone.

 

Viviane Vives

Viviane Vives is a finalist of the Sandy Crimmins National Prize in Poetry and the Pesserof Prize in Poetry, a semifinalist of the American Short(er) Fiction Contest by American Short Fiction and a nominee for Best of the Net Anthology. Recent publications include Tupelo Quarterly, Litro Magazine (London and New York), Burningword, Reed Magazine, and The Write Launch. Website: shushchattymonkey.com