Philatelist

January 2022 | poetry

While I was a girl waiting for life

to improve I did what I could, a ladybug

on her back kicking her feet in the air.

 

Dreaming of flight, I discovered

my mother’s hoarded stamps, unused

hodgepodge of American hope:

 

Skylab, Credos of the Founding Fathers,

Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Exploring the Moon,

Coral Reefs, Emily Dickinson, Collective Bargaining,

 

Energy Conservation, Robert Frost,

Indian Art, Osteopathic Medicine, Peace Corps,

Apollo-Soyuz, Save Our Water, Peter Max’s

 

Preserve the Environment, Robert Indiana’s

Love, which was all we needed, e pluribus unum

entreaties to the common good.

 

Doing what she never would, I organized

each intaglio prayer into an album, protected

by the verdigris majesty of our Lady of Liberty,

 

the infinite halftone dots within painting

a bigger picture to show me how

my pattern of spots might one day fit.

 

Broadening, I started to write the world,

sending scarce singles via post for stamps

on approval, something I could do while grounded.

 

Each month, the universe was delivered:

glassine envelopes opening like blurry windows to full-color

propaganda from the Soviet Bloc and African dictatorships,

 

perforated portraits of the unknown: Burundi.

Bulgaria, Equatorial Guinea, Fujeira.

The Maldive Islands. Tonga.

 

Some countries even marketed to the likes of me:

a 3-D moon landing from Ajman, scented flowers

from Bhutan, a peel-off diamond from Sierra Leone.

 

I could select scenes of the Montreal Olympics,

Japanese landscapes, cat breeds, Mickey Mouse,

gemstones, creatures of the African savannah.

 

Such power even a 10-year-old had

in her nascent geekery, to buy or reject,

the limited locus of my choices in those years.

 

I licked countless translucent hinges, fixing

them to sheets in my Ambassador Album,

“For Stamps of the World—Personally Designed by H.E. Harris.”

 

Providing brief colonialist histories for each country,

a world map on the plasticized back cover,

Mr. Harris taught me all I knew of the planet,

 

preparing me for when I would no longer be stranded.

He gave my curiosity structure while my mother slept

and shouted her nightmares.

 

Other children practiced scales or played Little League

for parents shaping their lives like sculptors. With my postage paid,

I carefully opened each colorful window and escaped

 

into the beguiling worlds then closed to me: page after page

of my meticulously ordered ambition, plans

for how I would right myself and fly away.

 

Lori Rottenberg

Lori Rottenberg is a poet who lives in Arlington, Virginia. She has published in such journals as The Dewdrop, Artemis, Potomac Review, and Poetica, and in anthologies by Paycock Press, Telling Our Stories Press, and Chuffed Buff Books. She has a series of six poems to be published by UCityReview in June 2022 and another poem to be published in December 2021 in The Moving Force Journal. One of her poems was picked for the 2021 Arlington Moving Words competition and appeared on county buses this spring. She has served as a visiting poet in the Arlington Public Schools Pick-a-Poet program since 2007, was an invited poet in the Joaquin Miller Cabin Reading Series in 2002, was a finalist in the 2006 Arlington Reads Poetry Competition, and was a recipient of Best Published Award in the March 2009 issue of Poetica. She is currently a writing instructor for international students at George Mason University and is in her second year of studies at the George Mason University MFA Poetry program.

You Learn

January 2022 | nonfiction

You learned, early in life, how to become a doll. You learned to show emotion in carefully measured doses, each tear equal to one pull of the string along your spine. Just enough to make your owner hold you closer, stroke your silky hair, pat that one tear dry.

You learned to be careful. Too much emotion, and your owner would wail that you were malfunctioning, that your glass eyes might burst. Your owner would peer at every inch of your porcelain limbs, searching for cracks they might need to patch up. They would squeeze your rigid wrists, clutching you tight, till their worry hurt more than any fear or loneliness of your own.

You learned that porcelain is beautiful for its fragility, for that moment it seems about to shatter, but somehow survives.

You learned how to sit on a shelf and wait and watch.

You learned to yearn for arms around you.

You learned that the wrong arms burned.

You learned that if you held all your thoughts and desires inside you, away from your owner’s prying eyes, your wishes would make their own kind of heat. Demanding and furious, just like a heart.

You learned to break yourself, to crack one porcelain finger, then two.

You learned that destruction is the closest thing to love.

You learned about masking tape, duct tape, Super Glue. You learned that people see what they want to see. They see what will keep them from breaking.

You learned that life as a doll is no life at all.

You learned that there is so little we choose. You learned that sometimes, we can’t get up and walk. Sometimes, there’s only one way off the shelf.

You learned there’s not so much difference between a fall and a jump.

 

Stephanie Parent

Stephanie Parent is a graduate of the Master of Professional Writing program at USC. Her poetry has been nominated for a Rhysling Award and Best of the Net.

Pete Madzelan

January 2022 | visual art

Winter Hibernation

 

Pete Madzelan

Pete Madzelan is an artist who lives with his wife in Las Cruces, New Mexico. His writings and photography have appeared in Oyster River Pages, Fleas on The Dog, The Courtship of Winds, Sky Island Journal, Bellingham Review, Cargo Literary Journal, Four Ties Lit Review, Foliate Oak, Gravel, New Mexico Magazine, Santa Fe Reporter, Off the Coast, Photography Exhibits and Art Shows in Albuquerque. Photography Center of Cape Cod, Poydras Review, San Pedro River Review, Switchback, and others.

Ash Margaret Cheatham

January 2022 | visual art

GMO Picnic

 

Ash Margaret Cheatham

Gently Seeping, depicts the delusional state that many people are blissfully unaware they are in. Ash Margaret displays vivid scenes characterizing the things we do to nurture ourselves, yet simultaneously destroy. Covid exposed a “save yourself” mentality that has us at war against each other. Ash chose the gas mask without its filter to portray the relentless bare minimum mindset society continues to display. The mask illustrates a positive action but is then rendered useless by other choices. The smoke represents the danger we allow to seep into our lives while feeling protected with our faulty gas mask. This series is set in an indistinct time period. Ash mixes vintage with modern aesthetic, combining for an almost post-apocalyptic feel with a cross-processed quality. These windows of augmented reality express what life obscures.

Doug Dabbs

January 2022 | visual art

Blueish

Rose

 

Doug Dabbs

Doug Dabbs is a comic book artist, illustrator, and university professor who has taught visual storytelling and illustration in higher education for over a decade. His comic book artwork has been published by Image Comics, Oni Press, 12 Gauge Comics, and Desperado Publishing, and his work has been displayed in over 30 national and international exhibitions; most recently the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art Museum (South Korea), Shockboxx Gallery (California) and the National Gallery of North Macedonia. His work has been featured in numerous juried art publications including ArtAscent Art and Literature Journal, Coffin Bell Journal, Brightness Magazine, High Shelf, Pittville Press, and Sand Hills Literary Magazine. Additionally, his work has been recognized by international illustration competitions including American Illustration, 3×3, Cheltenham Illustration Awards, Brightness Illustration Awards, Creative Quarterly, and Communication Arts. Dabbs’ artwork and research focus on methods of visual storytelling through the exploration of the human figure and environments. His art isn’t about perfecting each mark individually, but instead, using collective mark-making to communicate themes, emotions, and narratives. He investigates the effects positive and negative space have on compositions, mood, and storytelling, and how these components invite active viewer participation and analysis. He is interested in challenging traditional illustrative rendering methods that typically rely on color. Utilizing arguably one of the more vulnerable art approaches—black and white line art—marks cannot be hidden by additional media and color applications. The result is an intimate view of his hand and vision that is not obscured by further rendering.