Monthly Archives: March 2017

Poetry from Mahbub

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Melody

The world itself a melody

where every instrument is playing with music

we sing together, we dance together

we laugh together, cry together,

die together, born together,

enjoy the whole item of beauty

with a melody that is going on always among us

proud of our birth

always hand in hand a splash of water

try to fly in the brown sky

time after time

run after the wave of the  ocean

we wander on the grass, ponder over things

break the heart again built

stand together

fall dividing

all are fixed as if from long day and night

circling the ground  there is a harmony

to bend on each other

to cross the unparalleled

beats the drum  more loudly

that weaves the heart into melody.

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Poetry from J.D. DeHart

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Sucrose

Published at Poet Community

 

Sickly sweet

the swirl of today’s news

sitting on my empty

stomach. Syrupy

on my lips and on

the roof of my mouth.

An ideal that when tasted

does not blend so well,

overstaying its welcome.

Sucked through a straw,

then spat back out,

better left roadside alone.

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Poetry from Stella Pfahler

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God’s Square Mile

I imagined you struck by lightning, paralyzed and hanging in the air or above my bedside

isaiah 58:11 reading beneath you

I wanted to write you into verse psalm after psalm say it back to me echo like Presider: Congregation:

there is nothing like touch in electricity your hands

in water beneath a tall black sky

brushstrokes simmering beneath skin  draw me a riverside, blanketed in peaks considering the largeness on each side

and the smallness in the middle

you sheared the plastic off a car door handle with close­cut careful nails and murmured “cows” at every intersection whenever they appeared

 

 

 

 

Creative nonfiction from Doug Hawley

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I Won’t Take Manhattan

Not that Manhattan, the Big Apple, Bright Lights Big City, this is the little apple, dim lights, little city in Kansas.

I ended up there after my third year of a math Ph.D. program at the University of Oregon in Eugene.  I didn’t care for Eugene, and I was a poor Ph.D. candidate.   When not studying, I spent my time drinking, consuming a controlled substance, getting fat and hanging out with other unmarried male graduate students.  It was an unpleasant life of my own making.

My thesis advisor decided to take a job at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas.  I didn’t think that anyone else in the department would take me as a student, so I decided to go with him despite the Kansas horror stories.  Oregon has mountains, trees, lakes and canyons, but Kansas not so much.  Another four of his students also followed him.

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Cristina Deptula interviews Italian and American filmmaker, actor and screenwriter Federico Wardal

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Federico Wardal is an Italian playwright, screenplay writer and director and acting instructor. He speaks widely on topics related to human rights and his artistic craft and currently lives in San Francisco.
Cristina:  
First off, please introduce yourself! We’ve got an audience from around the world, and not everyone may be familiar with the world of live theater or independent films. 
Wardal: 
It is not easy to introduce myself as Wardal, as I consider Wardal a “faceted character” due to the influences of the Nobel Prize-winner Pirandello, Einstein and my mentor Federico Fellini.
To be more clear, I could consider [my persona] Wardal an invented imaginary author, arising out of the ideas of the ancient authors from Greece, Pirandello, and his friend Einstein. I love Einstein’s theory of relativity and think Fellini was inspired by Pirandello and Einstein when he created his film “8 1/2.” 
From the first time I appeared on the stage as Wardal at the age of 14 years old, my aspect was (and is) an artifact, built up, never natural or simple, and sensational and amazing.

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Novel excerpt from Carol Smallwood

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Excerpt from In Hubble’s Shadow by Carol Smallwood.

*****

Midwestern Spring
     Spring is the season that brings Midwesterners the most anticipation: the brown to green, the burst of delicate pink and white blossoms on fruit trees, the low dare devil swooping of nesting birds while driving—a welcoming confirmation that we made it through. Even dandelions delight our eyes, scattered replicas of the Sun. The first grass mowing. A celebration as new leaves cover bare limbs to make changing patterns of shade. We open the car windows driving past lilacs.
Citation: Smallwood, Carol, In Hubble’s Shadow (Brunswick, Maine: Shanti Arts Publishing, 2017). Used with permission of the publisher; www.shantiarts.com