10.26.15

This post I have been writing in my head for at least a week. I discovered the literary magazine Ghost Town the other week, then got sick. (A friend is published therein and shared the works via social media). I like the idea of a "ghost town" as the name for a collection of arts. The town might be empty of people but the structures for the lives are all still there, if a bit cobwebby. I like the idea that art is never finished, only abandoned, so perhaps the ghost town's emptiness is merely a pause in its existence.

From their Issue 8, you can look at some art (these are the artists from the issue, I didn't see which pieces were featured in the issue or if that's something you only get in the print version).

Jacqueline Schneller has an interesting page, where each thumbnail is accompanied by (and inspired by) works of music. Amy Maloof has an interesting gallery of wall objects. Mike Stilkey makes painted sculptures out of books.

Read a series of vignettes of memory in Harrison Fletcher's Imperfect Blossoms. Similar in style and substance, Jacqueline Doyle discusses her life and Dorothy's in The Ruby Slippers.

And here are some poems for you. Camoflauge by Terry Ford:

I removed my wedding ring today.
After thirty years, I just took it off,
rolled it between my fingers,
and gazed at the track
it left behind:
deeply incised upon my finger,
a thin, pale, bluish band of skin
the color of an oxygen starved infant.

I selected the ring myself,
much as if a slave
had selected her own shackle,
a prisoner, his own chains.

The hand lay empty,
freed of its metallic bond
but deeply marked by an
ugly, ineradicable strip
of repulsive, lifeless-looking skin.

I slipped the metallic circlet back in place
where it settled into its accustomed task—
hiding the stain of an ugly little scar.

Here's Ma, by Amanda Tumminaro:

Someone grabs the rouge from the sunset
and dabs her with nostalgia.

The cruel winter waitresses
her Atheism.

Roles reversed, I always see her
at the sink, soaping dishes.

She has the resolve of a solid,
but the travel of an apparition,

for her sneakers are winged.
She has her fist in the air,

but I see her as the olive
in the Martini.

Go forth and read!