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Willawaw Journal Spring 2018 Issue 3

Our third issue includes the prompt by Poet Laureate Paulann Petersen and offers a wealth of visual art. The poets are listed in (nearly) alphabetical order with the artwork interspersed:

Cover Art:  Leslie Green's "Sunrise," 24 x 30, acrylic on board
Editor's Notes
Page 1:  Jude Brigley   Elizabeth Cohen   Jim Zola   Laura Dinovis
Page 2:  Katherine Edgren   Judith Sander   Erric Emerson   Vincent Francone   Abigail George   John Grey
Page 3:   Frances Van Wert   Marc Janssen   Kathy Jederlinich   Karen Jones   Gary Lark   Frances Van Wert   Anna Leahy
Page 4:  Joana Lutzen McCutcheon   Layla Lenhardt   Judith Sander   Sherri Levine   Sue Fagalde Lick   Gargi Mehra
Page 5:  Leslie Green   Megan Munson   Paulann Petersen   Gail Peck   Marjorie Power   Frank Rossini
Page 6:  Kathy Jederlinich   Lauren Scharhag   Judy Shepps Battle   Jim Zola   Penelope Scambly Schott   Sheila Sondik
Page 7:  Leslie Green   Dorothy Swoope   Vivian Wagner Frances Van Wert   Linda Wimberly   Matthew Woodman
Page 8:  Back Page with Judith Sander

Leslie Green

“White Rainbow,” 24 x 30, acrylic on board

Leslie Green’s work reflects her love of nature, animals and geologic forms and forces.  Guided by the unconscious, Leslie explores the idea of perception vs. reality within the abstract forms, gestural line work and organic processes found in her paintings.  She has devoted most of her career to clay, beginning as a potter in her teens and expanding into architectural-scale vessels and sculpture.  She founded Terraclay Studio in Santa Monica, California in the 1980’s and has taught ceramics privately and at the community college level to the present day.  She has recently returned to painting to find the free expression in color, line and movement that 2-dimensional work allows. Go to LeslieGreenart.com for more information.

Dorothy Swoope

Wintering

Sunlight tilts
and shadows shift
as the season turns
‌           towards wintering.
I gather skeins
of these days,
to knit into
‌            the long evening.

 

Dorothy Swoope is an award winning poet whose works have been published in print and online in newspapers, anthologies and literary magazines in Australia, the USA, and Canada. Her memoir, Wait ’til Your Father Gets Home! was published in 2016. She resides on the South Coast of New South Wales, Australia.

Vivian Wagner

Syo-ro

 
There’s this ink that goes down
blue and turns green –
dew on pine trees, it’s called.
I want to protect it.
I want it to keep going down,
keep sheening on the page,
keep drying in the cold
breath of piñons on
distant granite cliffs.

 

Vivian Wagner lives in New Concord, Ohio, where she teaches English at Muskingum University. She’s the author of a memoir, Fiddle: One Woman, Four Strings, and 8,000 Miles of Music (Citadel-Kensington), and a poetry collection, The Village (Kelsay Books).

Frances Van Wert

“The Sixth Level,” 24 x 16, Steampunk assemblage

 

Frances Van Wert has been a collage artist for many years, inspired by the steampunk art movement.  She loves to re-purpose found objects and give them new life. She showed her work in several venues in the Tacoma area before she retired to Newport, Oregon, in 2004.  She is a founding member of the FOR ARTSAKE GALLERY in Nye Beach. (2004). More of her work can be seen at her gallery and at different venues and art events around Lincoln County. 

Linda Wimberly

What She Says

Crinolines scratching her skinny legs,
she disrupts Sunday school,
says Jesus might have walked
on a sandbar,
not water.

The teacher demands punishment,
smirks as Mother cuts a willow branch,
fresh for switching.

At dinner, she tells her uncle
she likes his cigarettes.
He laughs,
but Mother disagrees,
says her child will never smoke.

The child steps between trees,
scatters moldy leaves,
uncovers the lidded jar:
stolen cigarettes, matches,
hidden behind sweetshrub.

At dusk,
she flees in shadows
on the pine-strewn floor.
She runs past the jar

hidden by sweetshrub,
down the path to her granite chair
where she talks to God, listens
as the creek gurgles over rocks.

 

When

1
When I wrote songs that questioned belief
and dared sing them in church,
a woman said Beautiful,
but why don’t you write happy songs?

When one of my jobs was a hospital secretary
and my own diagnosis depression,
another employee leaned over my desk,
demanded Get over this!

When color faded to a gray stain
and paramedics knocked on my door,
I went to a doctor to unravel my darkness
but instead was told Take this medicine.

2
When I wrote a song that soared above clouds
and sang it one Sunday morning,
the congregation nodded, even smiled,
then said Write another one.

When the hospital work became intolerable
and I gave a two-week notice,
the other employees frowned,
asked What about health insurance?

When I threw away the pills,
said I’d rather die,
the doctor disagreed,
predicted You cannot do this alone.

3
When I chose a different path
I struggled,
listened,
screamed,
and read,
walked sweat-drenched
on city sidewalks,
leaned into fierce wind
and walked at the edge
of forest, sleet slicing
against my face.
I worked,
cried,
smeared paint across canvas,
cursed,
wrote, and finally,
slept.
I listened again:
found silence
like snow falling at midnight.

4
When people see me now
they say You are different.

Yes.  It happened
when you looked away.

 

Linda Wimberly is a writer, artist, and musician from Marietta, GA. Her poetry has appeared in Gyroscope Review, Lunch Ticket, Stone River Sky: An Anthology of Georgia Poems, Kalliope and others and a short story appeared in Cricket. She is a self-taught, abstract artist. (lindawimberly.com)

Matthew Woodman

Still Life, 1935

            (after Rufino Tamayo’s Naturaleza muerta, 1935)

The finer joys of black
coffee after a dinner fresh

mackerel wine watermelon
sunset lighting the tile

flesh toned the table
a door turned side

by side we enter bones
clean we bottle the exit

we savor the grounds
aroma I am so happy

we could be hungry here
together we could be full

 

Matthew Woodman teaches writing at California State University, Bakersfield and is the founding editor of Rabid Oak. His poems appear in recent issues of Sonora Review, Sierra Nevada Review, and The Meadow, and more of his work can be found at www.matthewwoodman.com.

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