THE MERE ICONOGRAPHY DOES NOT MATTER In the new high school auditorium, they’ve hung movie posters from like the seventies that no one cares about. Horrible-sounding movies lined up in a parade above the lobby windows all featuring the same
Featured Visual Artist Issue #17
“You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you.” — Isadora Duncan Trina Maeby Mabborang is a Chicago-based artist, illustrator, curator, and founder of Trina Maeby Crafts. With her BFA from the University of Illinois in Chicago and years
Knot
one of the first things you said to me as unexplained as the last I said yuck. Something about a variety of frames. Something about the way you were standing on that stool while I knelt below. The mouldings
Witch Lullaby
What if my sideways smile slipped down a little, did not behave? Darling Sister, love me, do you not, unbraiding your hair into waves? Our house rocks like a ship at sea, our house hums in the night. Planets coast
How to Eat an Orange (No Hands)
after peel, let your tongue catch any drips–– there’s more to oranges than membrane. There’s seeds. & sometimes jewel-sheened flesh can shiver. (Use your teeth delicately.) Precision is key with mouths and fumbling parts into them. Don’t forget about lips
The Threat
Opens in a small western town. There’s a flatness. A dryness about the place. We are everywhere and nowhere. Far away. He doesn’t fit in. He’s running, but from what? We won’t find out for awhile, but it might be
Botanical Garden Duplex
Built from bricks of red poppy The short-lived perennial Two years of invisible war Warriors carve into their skin Birthing poinsettia on thighs And with pineapple sage They anchor fear to hyacinth wrists With a hand full of spades Instead
Shadows
drool in my garden like honey on the hilt smearing beneath the skin and swimming through the rock like eggs to eat a rose bitter with diamond petals I tongue the smell of rust and watch the water moan ripping hair
Shipwreck
the harpy trembles with a distant rhythm pulsing and scratching at the curl of my ear she sheds her skin to unravel the scales revealing muscle and bone wound with salt she breathes into the nape of my neck teeth
Inked
I watched the seamstress keep a stoic face as the needle guided tar-black lines out of her skin, stitching a heart. I imagine myself as tattoo artist, mutilating the softness of her body and making dashes around an empty space