Bio: New York fine arts photographer Amy Bassin and writer Mark Blickley work together on text based art collaborations and videos. Their text based art collaboration, Dream Streams, was featured as an art installation at the 5th Annual NYC Poetry Festival and and excerpts were widely published in the Columbia Journal of Literature and Art and many other journals and anthologies. Their video, Speaking In Bootongue, was recently selected for the London Experimental Film Festival. They just published a text based art chapbook,'Weathered Reports: Trump Surrogate Quotes From the Underground' (Moria Books, Chicago). The publisher sent their resistance book to the White House and members of Congress. 

PURPLE TOOTH


Once Tooth had worked through each mineral,
splitting atom and ant from ant and posterior,
he saw the earthworm and split that in two, too.

He poisoned the dirt for its comrades to eat and
split the grass in half to deafen them.
Some wretched torture that was.

Tooth snapped veins and arteries from spiders’ webs and
wove blankets for them to cover the pain with because,
boy, it was getting cold ‘round then.

He cut the wire on the stove so that families would starve
If they didn’t get with the old ways.
Things were so much simpler those days…

Tooth thinks of his Gother sometimes and cries
but no one see’s. Not the bees, not the birds nor the flies.
It wasn’t easy since they fell apart.

But milk teeth always were a pain.

Tooth saw the baby in its pram, stifled a tear. He angered.
He started to charge with a spear on his head but a voice
stopped him, said

“Not today, Sonny Jim…
It’s nowhere NEAR harvest time.
Don’t cut off a smile just to scar it.”

So Tooth dug his root into the earth, and
soaked back up his poison to use for another time,
hoping it was a good year to barrel age.




Tooth's first dance


There’s the ledge.

It seems that Tooth has been poking out his head from many angles here. He’s about ready.
The music isn’t right though. It’s too tame and slow, like dinner jazz.
How is anybody meant to swing? Do they know this??

Tooth has had his eye on those trousers, on that top.
There’s an unsure smile above it, like a timid dog that approaches hand for the first time. 
Waits for tongue to complete the sunset that was so clouded over before that no dreams
                 mattered.

Tooth thinks its funny how so little changes.

A slow song… good. Maybe the chance.
Tooth yearns for throbbing vein, he aches for skin.
He’s quiet though. He waits, he watches with
kingfisher stealth.

Maybe one day he’ll find a partner or magician to change
the way he thinks. That’s what Tooth hopes.
Tooth can’t change though. He’s a sharp wit and harsh critic.
A kind soul, misunderstood. Strange-hearted.

That’s what Tooth thinks.

He sees Lip and asks for a dance. Lip dances better than Tooth.
Tooth, however, uses one half of his wit to cut through Lip’s dress and
another to cut through her skin.
He sees Lip in rags.

The whole room is in an uproar, every molecule,
a vocal chord. An echo round a mouth in distraught confusion.
Red is on the floor, all around Lip who lies in shock,
an island in the Red Sea.

Anyone there who is Eye or is Lid is close to drowning.

Tooth is back at the ledge with a glass of wine, now.
He turns red.

No one points the finger though. Tooth was Tooth
and Lip was Lip and that was it,

and the music just wasn’t right for a night
like this.




Tooth: A Decision


Tooth was handed down a scale.
It was bronze with two undulating discs.
Some strange dance it gave.
Onto one side he placed a fish, dead and gutted
with its eye turned out toward the ghost of thought.
On the other he placed a bird, feathers reddened in patches neck
loping over the edge.
Around its beak hung the final echo of its cry.
Such equality in death, thought Tooth.
When living, this bird used wings to soar and
this fish used gills to breathe yet no sea nor air could
house the other.

Tooth saw that there were three worlds.
He struck a match and burnt this impossible image immediately.
Placing half the ashes on each creature he incinerated their
carcasses as one.

As they flew across fields and woodland they fell onto
a stream that sat as a scar across the green land,
the sky was grey with fire.
From a safe distance Tooth watched as a blue streak dropped into the stream
& shot back up with its prey.
Some kind of monster sewing together the below and above just
to make it all seem the same.

Tooth saw the monster and saw it was too late.
He was on the scale now, rocking like a boat.
On the other side was placed a fingernail.
Such inequality in life, thought Tooth.
The useless excesses put up on trial whilst hair still
grows and eyes still shine.

Tooth and Nail were left there for eternity,
judging nothing else
but rot.

Photo: Tom Reese



                  Paula Boggs has worn more than a few hats in her lifetime, a musician and songwriter logging in a decade now as the front-woman for the Paula Boggs band, a lawyer, a former federal prosecutor, and an Army Airborne veteran. Up until this year, when she and other members decided to resign, she was also a longstanding member of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, originally appointed by President Obama. Boggs has spent a lifetime in service in various fields and capacities, but it is with music that one feels the soul speak through those life chapters. As Paula puts it: "Music is our best shot at “hearing” each other." On the bands new album Elixir: The Soulgrass Sessions, the call to connection, action and human understanding is poignantly at work through each of the songs, and if ever there were a time when such music was necessary, it is now. "Every day is a canvas" and we must use our brush well, if the surface happens to be our world what would you want to see reflected back at you, truth, beauty, love, understanding? These are the themes threading through Boggs' vast musical book, the life chapters lead one to a present not just born of experience, but of a lot of hope too; "I’ve now lived through enough freakout moments to know the sun will rise the next day," Paula says, adding: "It’ll rise for you too."


AHC: What has this journey in music, so far, been like for you, the highs and the lows, and what life lessons do you feel you've picked up along the way? 

Paula: My music journey has life chapters.  Exposure to music came early through the rhythm and blues I heard at home, to the Catholic folk music at school and my dad’s church, to the more solemn traditional minor chord music also at St. Joseph’s, to the gospel music of my mom’s African Methodist Episcopal faith.  Though I started playing piano at age 6, by 10 I’d found a passion for guitar and songwriting.  

During my teen years in Europe where my mom taught, I continued to write music, performing in choirs, talent show or a music event, but I also got exposure to more classical music, jazz, European folk music, Armed Forces Network top 40 music and euro-rock.  Returning to the U.S. for college exposed me to new and diverse music, including Elvis Costello and Bruce Springsteen — and living in Berkeley, CA after that exposed me to more.  

Throughout this time I played in and sometimes wrote music for folk mass and found my way to an open mic from time to time until I stopped — partly due to leaving the Catholic Church and also because a law career consumed more of me year over year. Though I didn’t consider it “low” as I was going through it, not playing or writing music for 15 years was my music “low” and I’m living the “high” right now.  I’ve never felt more free to write and share music than right now.

AHC: What first drew you to music and what was your early musical environment like growing up? Were there pivotal songs for you then that just floored you the moment you heard them?

Paula: I don’t remember a time without music.  My dad in particular was very musical.  He played sax and was a cantor.  Jerry Butler’s “Moon River” is the first song I recall and I was likely 2 or 3 when I first heard it. The nuns at my Catholic school were smitten by Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Judy Collins, Peter, Paul & Mary, etc. so I was hearing that from first grade on along with the folk mass music of the day.   Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sounds of Silence” floored me the first time I heard it — the chord progressions, it’s poetry, it’s message, the weaving of their voices — and 50 years later, Disturbed floored me again by covering it.  

AHC: What do you think makes for a good song, as you're writing and composing, is there a sudden moment when you know you've found the right mix, that perfect angle of light, so to speak? 

Paula: A “good” song communicates something impactful to the listener.  On our latest album, “Elixir, The Soulgrass Sessions” we have songs that tell traditional stories, those that convey messages that can be received more than one way, songs that through words, melody and arrangement set a mood or evoke a visceral state and those that tell a story solely through instruments. For me, writing inspiration comes from a variety of places — a newspaper article, a triggering personal life event or empathy for another’s, something random while walking, people-watching at Starbucks; it’s all fair game.

AHC: Do you consider music to be a type of healing art, a slightly imperfect vehicle through which to translate a feeling, states of rupture/rapture, hope lost and regained? Does the writing and creating of the song save you in the kinds of ways that it saves us, the listener?

Paula: I don’t think music always heals.  Some music irritates or agitates me. It makes me uncomfortable. Some music I can only listen to at certain times of day; it’s almost like consuming too much caffeine. The music I write can be frustrating when I’m stuck but mostly it’s healing for me. It’s sometimes the only way I can express something. It becomes my translator. It can take on friend-like qualities.  My number one goal in writing is to be authentic.  That comes before worrying about whether anyone, even me, likes it.  We humans sometimes hear through song what we fail to hear through spoken or written word.  Music is primal.  We all have a relationship with it and so in that way, it is truly a universal language. 

AHC: What are your fondest musical memories? In your house? In your neighborhood or town? On-tour, on-the-road?

Paula: There are many but here are a few. My fondest music memories as a little kid are of my siblings and I performing the Staples Singers “O Happy Day” to family friends and others or me driving to school with my dad and hearing Donovan’s “Mellow Yellow” or The New Vaudeville Band’s “Winchester Cathedral” on the radio and knowing all the words. In 9th grade I spent a week in a German castle with other American kids, Germans, Canadians and Brits. At the beginning of the week none of us knew the music but by Friday night we gave a recital of works like Handel’s Messiah and Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. In 9th grade I was chosen by the senior class to sing and play Dylan’s “The Times They are a Changing” at their graduation ceremony and I sang and played an original song at my own.  While living in Berkeley, I attended The Rolling Stones “Tattoo You” concert in Candlestick Park. Hands down, the most amazing experience I’ve had as a touring musician happened in Charleston, SC last June when we premiered our song “Benediction” with the Mother Emanuel AME Choir on the second anniversary of their church massacre.

AHC: You give credence and are dedicated to the fact that the political is personal and that we all bear responsibility for the fabric of our world, our country, our town. As you sing in Sleepwalking, "Every day is a canvas... grab that brush and use it well," do you find music uniquely situated to carry a message that is able to soar beyond our usual defenses and plant seeds, hopefully, of a more open, responsive and sustainable world?

Paula: Music is our best shot at “hearing” each other.  Paul Simon wrote about this in “The Sounds of Silence.” When Paula Boggs Band sings “Sleepwalking” my hope is our music uplifts while also sending the message “all of us must have skin in this game” to make it better.

AHC: Your new record, Elixir: The Soulgrass Sessions, is an incredible mix of themes that I think is unified by love; protest, faith, the struggles and arc of a life, seem tied in to an ineradicable sense of connection that must be rekindled in our age of rapid disconnection and fraying. "I don't have answers and I can't pretend, but I know that we need each other just to mend and reset how the game is played" as you sing in "Peel the Charade," is an important reminder to the fact that no one really goes it alone. Do you find love, universal perhaps because first born on a smaller scale, to be one of the guiding lights on this record? What were your inspirations going into this latest record and your overall feelings about its final form?

Paula: I think love is universal and we need to find paths to empathize with each other within the United States and beyond.  For Earth to survive I don’t think we have the luxury of doing something different.  Life has taken me many places and my journey teaches me we are more alike than different.  There are folks I know who see the world differently in myriad ways.  One of them, from high school, is on the polar opposite end of the political spectrum, but he drove 4 hours to see us play in Philadelphia —someone I reconnected with on Facebook but had not seen in a generation plus. We are different races; he calls me his “sister.” I don’t often “agree” with him but I “see” him. The music I wrote, the song “Two Daughters” our banjo player/guitarist Mark Chinen wrote and our decision to cover Bon Iver’s “Holocene” were inspired by deep “love,” concern and “wonder.” We wanted to create something bigger than ourselves, something authentic, something enduring, something artistically excellent. With the help of producer/engineer Trina Shoemaker and Robert Lang Studios each of us dug deep within ourselves to make this record.  I’ll never forget Trina asking me “where did you go?” after she heard me sing the second verse in “Holocene.” Time will tell whether this work endures and the listener will judge its excellence.  It is though bigger than the sum of our parts and it is authentic.

AHC: Do you have any words of advice or encouragement for other musicians and singer-songwriters out there who are just starting out and trying to find their voice and their way in this world? What are the kinds of things that you tell yourself when you begin to have doubts or are struggling with the creative process? Or what kinds of things have others told you that have helped push you past moments of self doubt/creative blocks?

Paula: A lifetime ago, jumping out of perfectly well-functioning planes, I learned it’s OK to be afraid.  Sometimes fear is extremely rational.  What sometimes separates those paralyzed by fear from others is what we do with it.  Every day I wake up not knowing if there’s another song in me.  Song ideas come to me randomly; there’s no method to it. Sometimes it’s melody first and sometimes it’s prose.  I am very fortunate to have a  life partner who believes in me unflinchingly when others don’t.  It’s a gift to have played with Sandy Greenbaum, Mark Chinen and Tor Dietrichson 10 years.  That stability fuels the creative process.  It’s hard to make a living in music and I’ve learned to augment what I earn in music with other jobs.  Though that mix is different for each member of Paula Boggs Band, we all do it. Things go wrong. A string breaks. Amps don’t work.  The sound guy doesn’t show up.  A member of the band bails.  I’ve now lived through enough freakout moments to know the sun will rise the next day. It’ll rise for you too.


For more visit  www.paulaboggsband.net/

THIS AGE OF OPTIONS
 
It's the thing I despise most of all.
My fingers hover over
the touch tone buttons.
I'd rather break up a relationship.
I dial the number.
Why can't they reintroduce conscription?
Why can't I be the first they choose?
The voice answers:
"Please listen carefully
because the options have changed."
But some options never change.
I'd rather have eye surgery.
I'd prefer developing a boil on my leg
and then having it lanced.
If you are calling about a new problem,
press 1.
If you are calling regarding a previous problem,
press 2.
That's how it was the last time.
The options have not changed.
Give me a fall on the ice any day.
Why not a car accident, me and the pole...
anything but this robot.
But no, I press 1
and am given more choices.
I pick one of those
and this opens me up to an array
of further numbers.
I'd love to speak to somebody…anybody
but there's no way that can happen.
I can only choose a number
that's a front for other numbers.
Why don't I just call my worst enemy.
Or the dentist and schedule a root canal.
Oh doctor, are you free for a spinal tap?
What's pain compared to human contact.
Press 1 for more options.
Press 2 for the previous menu.
Press 3 to return to the menu before that.
My mother is so old she remembers a time
when you could speak to a real person.
Ah, at last, press 4 if you'd rather be so old.




THE HOMELESS MAN AND THE CAMERA

He knows
a picture
is worth a
thousand words,
which is why
he says nothing
when he finds
the camera,
is wary
that it might
suddenly click,
take a snapshot
of a face
he hasn't seen in years.




GETTING

There are only two poems
in me:
the one where I get the girl
and the one where I don't.
There was a third poem
where the girl
came and went of her own free will
and no getting,
successful or otherwise,
was involved.
Only I didn't write it.
I'm not even certain
it was a poem.



Bio: John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in the Tau, Studio One and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Naugatuck River Review, Examined Life Journal and Midwest Quarterly. 

galaxies and hurricanes



Meta-statement

I keep my
eyelids
open with
toothpicks
until I
see no more
I take the
toothpicks
away I
plant them
into the soft
dirt where
the seeds of the
unseen are
rooted in between
the grooves
I give water
I give light
I expect
nothing to
grow only
to crawl

I wait.




Family Album

This is an old photograph
blurry in the periphery
details and lines lost
Here it is the window
with the curtains in
the color of the moss
Here it is the field with
the potatoes and the lettuce
In the corner the small tractor
suitable for the small people
of this house
And further on there they stand
The reeds.

The reeds are moving
back and forth
I am trapped inside
The smell of the dead
cats and dogs is burning
my lungs and my brain
I cry because I can´t
spend there the night

I can see the house beyond
moving back and forth
back and forth

A cradle for unwanted children




While passing by a playground

My cells like fruitflies
dance around the light
they are dazzled
they are blinded
they are confused

The fruit is rotten and
the light is a burning bulb

There is a connective path
It fills in the carved chasm and
the few of them that survive
they jump into Lethe

I guess all my future children
are predisposed to poetic
suicide even at this early
stage of half development

I would like to name you
but I don’t know how many
of you are left and for
how long

I could freeze you down
Search for a suitable host
My fear is that you will
carry this parasitic attitude
later in your life and I
will still choose kittens
over you

(I am sorry
                    I don’t know any better)




Associations

(When) you say you
can’t (easily) forgive I
assume you weren’t hurt
enough

My mind is full of
holes where memories
flow through like
waterfalls

What are you planning to
do with that thing around
your neck
You call it pearls
I say it’s a rope

The acid finds its way to
my oesophagus and from there
to my lungs
I know it’s wrong
but it happens

My reflection on the
window is fat or I
am full of air

I try to have a good
look inside me but
I can’t
go as deep as the
subcellular level  
so I don’t know what
is going on in there

​

Photo - Thomas Hawk



Florida

Spring Break
Beaches and girls
Blah blah blah

We partied in a taco bell

The Russians started it.
They worked an oil rig.
The only human beings
we met down there.
dancing
With the employees behind
The counter.

The cops came
More for them than us
We ran into the streets and
Jumped into a taxi
Throwing money at him.

The driver took a back alley
And seemed to not
Like cops as much
As us
And then
side swiped a van
Taking off its back bumper

It was a great joke
We all had a good laugh

He kept driving
But faster.

He was angry but didn’t speak English
Pointing at the funny front end of his
Taxi,
which was smoking.
Then
We transformed into the only little things we knew
Which was that
We grew up with guys
who got killed in war in a country that
he might’ve been from

Kicked out by a pier
We found a hotel party
Full of people with tribal tattoos
that wanted to

Drull the world
Over.

Until morning bright domed
Like we lit the sun on fire.
Over that lesser peninsula
On the rippling blue sea

​

Bio: Jon Berger lives in Saginaw, Michigan. His work has appeared in Five 2 One Magazine, Jellyfish Review, The New Engagement, fluland mag, The Bitchin’ Kitsch and Oddball Magazine.

One Million Tiny Cuts

How did you cope with the first tiny cut?
the milk that drained from the soul.
Did that cut lay inscribed on your back?
how did the mechanism work for you.

Some never reveal their first tiny cut
thin tissue that departed into liquid,
shrugged as a learning curve of emotions
while other’s build a solid resistance;

killing sorrow before it spreads into their blood
age will always teach us the value
in the cracks that will reappear,  

as they do not see the one million tiny cuts
embellished on your back which strengthens resolve,
in a battlefield where you feed on another tiny cut.

​


A Portrait of Park Benches

Summer evening in June
a square field in short embers
long emerald –
frozen crow like miniature statue in coal
blood trees
shake nervous leaves from their bones,
falling like bullets
shaped as acorns into streams.
The only requiem I see these days
are the silver and blue plaques
etched into the centre of park benches,
no place of birth or worship -
wasteland in camera and scarlet ruin.  

​


Modern Happiness Was Never
Supposed to be an Algorithm

Under the mask lamp posts in black
camera stands eyes powering you to believe in everything
they never planned.

Similarity makes a city EASY to ply,
sugar laced exterior
it’s guts and voice a textual clone;   

When culture saturates repeating
stars on a moving racetrack - we are transfixed by our handheld squares
a prisoner to our own made – up popularity.

Eventually you’ll see
the full print of the human condition
where happiness has always been kept as a flux of oxygen;

A ceramic sky of blue with a vista of two million tears
falling beside the whispering moths of wild and dangerous nature,
we know now that modern happiness was never supposed to be an algorithm

​

Bio: Poems have appeared in Harbinger Asylum, Anti-Heroin Chic, Osiris, The Journal, Into the Void, Ink, Sweat, and Tears, Carillon, Anapest Journal, Algebra of Owls, Winner of the Erbacce Prize for Poetry in 2015 and Winner of the Into the Void Poetry Prize in 2016. Matt has a new collection of poems being published by New York Publishing House http://www.claresongbirdspub.com called ' One Million Tiny Cuts' now taking pre-orders.

Photo - galaxies and hurricanes



tiny catastrophe 1
 
the murmur hollow in her, she tangled rapturous in  the tall,  tall  garret,
entwining in a body glitter, diadem begemmed, the  microplastics  wash
off, proceeding to the ocean’s debris, she says water feels good in me, the
payment won’t complete, it buffers, she needs artisanal  waters  at  zero
calories, she nearly forgot the prozac after hours, at the craggy room of
hers, the salted drenching snarls below.





tiny catastrophe 3

sickly, I winnow in the window, mewling for strawberry milk & a poplin  button-down  with a
peter-pan collar & a dried pomander of apple stuck through with cloves. this hot september
goes too achingly, like a ragged something slinking into the  underwood,  into  the  streamlet
nearly died out. smite, smitten, I spangle myself with cold  gold  lockets & holographic  sling-
back heels. I know you won’t come around any time soon, I complain too much,  hog the red
blend bottle to myself.





tiny catastrophe 5
 
she is so very achey lately, she orders an
expensive room for sleeping in, the zero
money  that  she  has—it goes  to  hand-
milk & complexion  sponges, plum  seed
oil,  a   glass-dazzle   lippie,   a   grosgrain
ribbon barrette, she downs a claret, her
cheek-dew  blushes rubescent,  stinging
for a dip in the streambed.





tiny catastrophe 6
 
why would I want to murder in my rapid eye movement sleeping, why lacerate  the
cat  with  a  box  cutter,  why  put  my  love  in  a  pillbox hat box, removing the lid  to
inspect him as his eye befallen & calm, why hurt, why the red impulse to put an end
to moving objects, the mouth-watering dagger & musket in my glottis.  myself  as a
pinprick in a bucket of  wool,  I  am  a  big  weepy  idiot  &  there  you  are  gloriously
typical, I am loving you all  wrong,  always  cellular  calling  you,  in  all  ways  from  a
pinch-dark hill, no firewood for acres, for stretches of america I have not itched.




Bio: Emily Corwin is a Midwestern girl who loves all things pretty. She is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Indiana University-Bloomington. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Winter Tangerine, glitterMOB, Hobart, smoking glue gun, and Word Riot.