Vegans

July 2022 | nonfiction

I was in line at the Delta counter behind two white men of military bearing. They each had man sized hard cases with latches and locks, big enough for long barrel shotguns or automatic rifles. It was Mother’s Day in Texas, and I had missed my flight home to true blue LA. Delta had a flight out around noon and I was trying to find out if there were seats to be had for anything less than the cost of a Trumpian lie.

Five lines. Three agents. Worse still, the agents kept calling up those waiting in other lines. The world’s babble tangoed on the noisy air: Italian, Arabic, Tex Mex, Chinese. 20 minutes later, I sighed with exasperation, sure that whatever seats were left were gone at any price. The man in front of me confided:

“You’d think they would want to get the guns out of sight first….”

That won a chuckle from me.

Another long wait. The first guy with a gun case was finally summoned. The case was opened. A big rifle. The crowd was unimpressed. Much chatter among the uniforms, then a strategic huddle and another long wait. My neighbor laughed:

“That guy’s a pilot for them—Delta. What am I gonna have to do?”

The pilot signed a contracty looking document and was handed a red tag which he carefully placed inside the case before securing all the locks and an extra case-hardened steel padlock. The uniforms witnessed his every move until all those keys disappeared into the man’s carry on and he had stepped back from the gun case.

We were invisible again. A Chinese traveler from another line needed a translator. The man in front of me turned and made small talk:

“Where are you going?”

I mumbled,

“Home.” Then,

“To California,” more assertively, from inside my covid mask. A translator was found. The Italian family were called next.

“Where are you travelling with rifles?” I asked.

“Nevada. We got the contract on feral pigs outside Vegas,” he drawled.

“Yes,” I answered. “I read recently that they are becoming a problem in Southern California, too. Do you ever eat what you kill?

“Once. I brought a young pig home to cook for my sons. One, two years old—they only eat nuts and roots. The older ones eat dead things and stink. I had a bite. The meat was really sweet, but I am a vegetarian, almost a vegan, really.”

I had been visiting my sister in Austin for the first time since Covid began, since her husband had died, since my cancer fight. Alito’s draft opinion on Roe leaked that week. We hung on each other again, trying to ease our shared despair. Uvalde was yet to come.

I called her when I got home and told her about my travel travails, ending with the vegan pig hunter. She laughed and sung the Lyle Lovett line:

“Texas wants you anyway….”

Ellen T. Birrell

Ellen Birrell is an artist and lemon farmer in Ventura County, CA. Her writings have appeared in X-TRA, Cabinet, Adelaide, Adelaide Literary Award Anthology 2018, Mac-ro-mic, Condiment, Material, and Parabol. Her 2019 essay “Gloves” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is Faculty Emerita at California Institute of the Arts.

Emily Candler Davis

July 2022 | visual art

Acadia National Park: The Angel

Sometimes realistic, sometimes fantastic, the images of The Nature and Psyche Project try to broach the vast and broad topic of interbeing with nature, and our inherent resonance with the Earth’s imagination and our own. The images are of the Earth’s Elements, an ancient mystery school, playing in a modern context of anti-war, issues of climate, ending poverty, the lives of millennials, human rights, and Pachamama law efforts. Emily Candler Davis, A Goddard College graduate, fell in love with social justice and engagement in the arts from an early age. She lives off of the Coast of Maine, on an island like an upside-down heart.

Emily Candler Davis

Jennifer Sheridan

July 2022 | visual art

The Ice Came on So Quickly

 

Jennifer Sheridan

Jennifer Sheridan is a poet and bookseller living in New York City.  Her work has appeared in Spectrum, Rattle, Hole in the Head Review and On The Run.

Mikvah (pantoum)

July 2022 | poetry

submerged and unseen

            in an archaic well –

                        women thought dirty

                                    by men of G-d

in an archaic well,

            with bodies purified

                        by men of G-d,

                                    ensnaring the fecund

with bodies purified,

            my sisters were bait

                        ensnaring the fecund

                                    in their water ringed curls

my sisters were bait,

            fertile and sullen –

                        in their water ringed curls

                                    hid the birth of the world

fertile and sullen,

            women thought dirty

                        hid the birth of the world –

                                    submerged and unseen

Lisa Delan

Lisa Delan is classical soprano specializing in American Art Song; performing, recording, and commissioning musical settings of an expansive range of poetry. She has recorded extensively for the Pentatone label and can be heard on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, and other streaming platforms. Her own poetry appears in American Writers Review (San Fedele Press 2022), Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Cathexis Northwest Press, Drunk Monkeys, Lone Mountain Literary Society, Mill Valley Literary Review, Poets Choice, The Pointed Circle, Tangled Locks, Viewless Wings, and Wingless Dreamer.

In Memory of Angela, Enslaved, Who Arrived Before the Mayflower

April 2022 | poetry

                        After Theories of Time and Space by Natasha Trethewey

                       

The home we knew is only memory. It repeats

without variation. We are forever young—

 

forever children playing in the yard: giggling, kicking stones,

chasing guineafowl, taking too long to answer mother’s call.

 

Mother is so much older now or in her grave, though

in the home inside you, she is always young and lovely—

 

dark skin glistening in the midday sun as she simmers

peanut stew and the spice-heavy aroma is carried

 

on the wind even across the ocean. If you take a deep breath,

Angela, you can taste the meal she prepared the last day you saw her.

 

Ellen June Wright

Ellen June Wright was born in England of West Indian parents and immigrated to the United States as a child. She taught high-school language arts in New Jersey for three decades before retiring. She has consulted on guides for three PBS poetry series. She was a finalist in the Gulf Stream 2020 summer poetry contest. Her work was selected as The Missouri Review’s Poem of the Week in June 2021, and she received five 2021 Pushcart Prize nominations.