© Jacqueline Shatz

THE GESTURE AND THE MEANING by Jacqueline Shatz

Jacqueline Shatz’s work has been included in exhibitions at the June Kelly, Monique Knowlton, and Kouros galleries in New York City, and she has curated and organized many exhibitions, including CollageLogic which was last presented in 2012 at Hampden Gallery at UMass in Amherst. She is a recipient of a NEA Individual Fellowship, a Craft Alliance New Techniques grant and several NYFA SOS grants. She has been artist-in-residence at the Kohler Arts/Industry program, where she created a series of music box sculptures and collaborated on sound and sculptural installations for Glyndor Gallery at Wave Hill and on Governors Island. She had a show at The Garrison Art Center in 2015.

Illustration by Kursat Unsal /Shutterstock.com

LETTER FROM BRAZIL

I started my psychoanalytic learning and political activism in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It was the spring of 1981, a time of turmoil and search for personal and collective freedom. I migrated from Brazil to the United States in 1990 with my husband, daughter, and all twenty-four volumes of the Brazilian edition of the works of Sigmund Freud.

© Gjertrud Hals

THE NET by Gjertrud Hals

I was born in 1948, on Finnøy, an island with two hundred inhabitants. My family was living close to the factory where my father and grandfather were mechanics, making and installing engines for the fishing boats. During my childhood, there was an abundance of herring fishing going on every winter. The herring were caught in large nets and hauled up in smaller ones. When the weather was bad, the harbor was packed with boats, and big bunches of fishnets were hanging to be dried. Every summer holiday I spent with my grandparents, living on the tiny island Notholmen (not=net) on Hustadvika.

Photo by Jovis Aloor

PROTESTATION by Daisy Bassen

Daisy Bassen is a poet and practicing psychiatrist who graduated from Princeton University’s creative writing program and completed her medical training at the University of Rochester and Brown. Her work has been published in Oberon, McSweeney’s, The Sow’s Ear, and [PANK] as well as multiple other journals. She was the winner of the So to Speak 2019 Poetry Contest, the 2019 ILDS White Mice Contest, and the 2020 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize. She was doubly nominated for the 2019 Best of the Net anthology and for a 2019 Pushcart Prize. She lives in Rhode Island with her family.

PERHAPS by Aremu Adams Adebesi

Aremu Adams Adebisi is a North-Central Nigerian writer and economist. In 2019, he was nominated for Best of the Net, a Pushcart Prize, and the 2019 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. His work of poetry, “Force Mechanism,” was adapted into Lucent Dreaming’s first theatrical performance in Wales. He has works published in Newfound Magazine, Lucky Jefferson, and elsewhere. He served as a mentor for SprinNG Fellowship and a panelist for the Gloria Anzaldua Prize. He edits poetry for ARTmosterrific, facilitates Transcendence Poetry Masterclass, and curates the newsletter Poetry Weekly on Substack.

Illustration by Mafe Izaguirre

OTHERING by Aremu Adams Adebesi

Aremu Adams Adebisi is a North-Central Nigerian writer and economist. In 2019, he was nominated for Best of the Net, a Pushcart Prize, and the 2019 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. His work of poetry, “Force Mechanism,” was adapted into Lucent Dreaming’s first theatrical performance in Wales. He has works published in Newfound Magazine, Lucky Jefferson, and elsewhere. He served as a mentor for SprinNG Fellowship and a panelist for the Gloria Anzaldua Prize. He edits poetry for ARTmosterrific, facilitates Transcendence Poetry Masterclass, and curates the newsletter Poetry Weekly on Substack.

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THE POWER IS IN YOUR PULSE by Paula Coomer

Paula Coomer spent most of her childhood in the industrial Ohio River town of New Albany, Indiana. The daughter of more than two hundred years of Kentucky Appalachian farmers, she moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1978. She has been a migrant farm laborer, a waitress, a bean sorter in a cannery, a cosmetics saleswoman, a federal officer, a nurse, and a university writing instructor. Her essays, short fiction, and poetry have appeared in Gargoyle, Ascent, and The Raven Chronicles, among others.

Photo by IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation | Azez, Aleppo.

WAR AND PANDEMIC IN ALEPPO by Mohamad Kebbewar

Danger during the war in Aleppo was marked with sound and smoke. During the pandemic, danger is boundless. It can be everywhere and anywhere. The most fashionable and well-off person can carry the virus and pass it on to me, while on the other hand, an armed person walking next to me on the sidewalk could be harmless. The invisible danger is what makes the virus lethal. In war, if the sound is far away, then I can assume I am safe.

Photo by Matthew Roth

FIRE AND ICE IN PORTLAND by Joshua Maserow, Maryam Omidi, and Omer Leshem

Portland protesters armed with leaf blowers and cardboard signs face off with masked federal agents sporting fatigues and riot gear—guns, truncheons, and shields. Orange tear-gas clouds plume up from the tarmac as the agents grab protesters and hurl them into unmarked cars. These are images typically associated with far-off, war-torn countries ruled by authoritarian regimes—not democratic governments. But in less than six months, some of the most toxic elements of the US national psyche have risen to the surface, denuded by the global pandemic and bull-horned across the country by the divisive and belligerent rhetoric of the White House.

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THE WITNESSES by Margarita Serafimova

Margarita Serafimova is the winner of the 2020 Tony Quagliano International Poetry Award and a 2020 Pushcart nominee. She has four collections in Bulgarian and a chapbook, A Surgery of A Star (Staring Problem Press). Her chapbook, En Tîm (Wilderness) (San Francisco University Poetry Center), and a full-length collection, A White Boat and Foam (Interstellar Flight Press), are forthcoming. Her work appears widely, including in the Nashville Review, LIT, Agenda Poetry, Poetry South, Botticelli, London Grip, Steam Ticket Literary Journal, Waxwing, A-Minor, Trafika Europe, Noble/ Gas Qtrly, Obra/Artifact, great weather for Media, Origins, and Nixes Mate Review.