And Now

April 2020 | poetry

Quand j’étais jeune

The leaves sprang bright and

Green from every branch

Sparkling in the spring sun

 

Et maintenant

The leaves fall red, yellow

And museum blue

From each knotty limb

 

Quand j’étais jeune

Dashing like a gazelle

Across the trafficked boulevard

Catching the bus as it paused

 

Et maintenant

Waving a cane of oak

Cursing the huffing diesel

Standing behind and alone

 

Quand j’étais jeune

The femme avec les yeux

Smiled like an amused cat

Purred and waited

 

Et maintenant

Like an irritated crow

The femme squawks

And flies away

 

Quand j’étais jeune

My head was full of dreams

Et maintenant

There is only the menace of silence

 

Phillip Periman

Phillip Periman was born in 1938 in Memphis, Texas, grew up in Amarillo. He received a BA in history from Yale University and his M.D. from Washington University School of Medicine. He has had poems published by the Black Mountain Press in their anthology, “The Sixty-Four” (Best Poets of 2018) and by Unstamatic. He writes about aging, retirement, his life, and the world as he finds it—always in an attempt to acknowledge the real.

Flight

April 2020 | Best of Net nominee, poetry

When I’d walked away

from my beloved house

the new owner called: to say

she’d found a ring

and a feather

stuck into the beam

above the bedroom:

had I forgotten?

 

She’d saved the ring

but she’d lost the feather

I told her to keep it the ring

part of the house

I had its mate

broken in three pieces

in a little tin box

one broken circle enough

 

I brought her a new feather

left it in her mailbox

a long brown feather with

a blue tip and white edges

I’d let her decide

the name of the bird

 

Kelley Jean White

Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her recent books are TOXIC ENVIRONMENT (Boston Poet Press) and TWO BIRDS IN FLAME (Beech River Books.) She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.

Jupp Soetebier

April 2020 | visual art

I Almost Missed You #1

I Almost Missed You #3

I Almost Missed You #5

Jupp Soetebier

Raised in the American Midwest in what was once known as The German Triangle, Mr. Soetebier’s work explores what effect his Deutsch heritage, ancestral family, and the myths and traditions of his peoples have had on memory and the way he perceives and goes about the world. Mr. Soetebier received his Master of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of Florida in 1988 and taught drawing at the New World School of the Arts in Miami. He was an original member of the South Florida Art Center and later worked as a decorative painter in New York City and Los Angeles where he was also admitted into the Los Angeles Art Association. A frequent exhibitor at such events as The Other Art Fair by Saatchi, stARTup, and Conception; his work was recently included in the 79th Crocker Kingsley in Sacramento and a solo show at Acumen Gallery in Napa Valley. Jupp currently resides in Northern California with his wife and Leonberger dogs.