ISSUE 2 // POETRY

visual art by Allyce Wood, Emi Knight, Roger Leege, Craig Deppen Auge, and Harrison Sheehan + James Evans

FRED MURATORI // PIECEWORK

"They spent the day erasing texts, Confucius and Tolstoy in the morning, Austen and Aristotle in the afternoon"

FLOWER CONROY // A BRIEF HISTORY OF NAKEDNESS

"In the beginning was clay / made flesh & tingle, & a tree / akimbo."

HUGH BEHM-STEINBERG // VULTURES

"I hung out with all the other fathers, releasing their vultures into the sky, and we would look at each other, asking, / did we do the right thing?" 

LINDA NEMEC FOSTER // THE TALENT OF KNOWING

"And that's when I think of you, dear friend, whose been dead / for over twenty years."

ANDREA GILHAM // INGREDIENTS and MOON'S CARNAGE

"As I undress, I take the moon / out of my hair." - Moon's Carnage

CORNELIUS EADY // Forthcoming Poems from the Kattywompus CD / Chapbook, SINGING WHILE BLACK

"The trouble is, you can never take / That flower from Billie’s hair." - The Gardenia

FRANKIE DRAYUS // BLACK FOREST

"I saw a woman move like a plant / Pushing herself through the soil"

KEITH S. WILSON // AFTER A STORM, THE PIGEONS

"rained from the trees and reminded / us they were filled with blood."

ERIKA MUELLER // THE WINTER HER CANCER RETURNS

"I begin with what I can't let go. The bruised morning."

AMY WRIGHT // WELLS CREEK BASIN

"Shatter cones seam shock lines fine as hair strands"

MARÍA TERESA OGLIASTRI / translated by 
YVETTE NEISSER MORENO & PATRICIA BEJARANO FISHER // from DEL DIARIO DE LA SEÑORA MAO

" I said   kill it

wrath is a pleasure"

DANTE DI STEFANO // BRIEF INSTRUCTIONS FOR WRITING AN OUTLAW COUNTRY SONG ABOUT THE JENA SIX

"Call the lily that grows in a gully / regret and croon toward her in the dark."

ALEXIS ORGERA // AGATHA'S PRAYER and AGATHA AT DAWN

"Unzip a skull: a painting of the process / of this thing operating: to the depths of disengagement / men are flying." - Agatha's Prayer

ISSAC MASON // WHITE PEOPLE DISCUSS HIP HOP

"with crumbs of brie en croute / in his beard, /
considers it a retreat / from ideology"

HEDY HABRA // EUROPA'S SONG

"You got it all wrong: no one ever heard my side of the story: I never feared his touch:"

JUSTIN GROPPUSO-COOK // THE INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE OF MIST

"days piled up with joint ash, clouding my head,

as she captured seasonal rains

inside the white frame of a Polaroid picture."

JONATHAN MAY // EVERYDAY PORNOGRAPHY

"You call that thing inside of you a monster/ as you gyrate thigh-level with your mouth open."

SUSAN RICH // DOUBLE EXPOSURE

"Get in, Omar motions and that's how it happens-"

VISUAL ARTIST BIOS:

Allyce Wood is based in Seattle and a graduate of Cornish College of the Arts with a BFA in printmaking and sculpture. She studied environmental sculpture at Glasgow School of Art in 2009. Wood has been an active member of SOIL Artist Run Gallery since 2012. Her work has been shown in cities such as Glasgow, Oslo, Oakland, New York, and Seattle. 

Wood’s work focuses on the ecological consequences of industry and human interaction. In creating aesthetically complex cut-paper installations, drawings, and prints, her work mindfully illustrates humanity’s negative influence on the natural world and the longterm consequences thereby produced. 

In her Pioneer Square studio, she continuously creates new work in a variety of mediums, making concept-reflective selections to best describe each project. Wood works without references, choosing to ‘build’ each representation from her own physiological understanding of space and material, forming new realities and reactions.