May 26, 2023 - “I have to leave the table, have to sit and stare blankly” by Elizabeth Lerman
I have to leave the table, have to sit and stare blankly in the small bathroom because they are so honest it makes it hard to breathe and I don’t know if it’s the beer or the boundaries but something is different here and I know I’m not easily shocked, so maybe it’s not shock so much as it is relief, a deep breath that breaks me in two and I don’t really want to think about what I’m trying not to think about but the way they think about it makes me want to sob and say so what because that’s what they are doing, as they lock hands and smoke like it’s second nature, and that’s what I want, later I mean, when it matters, which seems so far from now but also so close because the way they are talking about it tells me it all happens very fast, and she is on her knees now, in the garden, shameless and screaming while they laugh and love her for it, and I want to pounce then, want to pry the sureness out of the scene and swallow it up for myself.
May 25, 2023 - “Thinner in Time” by Rahil Najafabadi
THINNER IN TIME
Nothing is lost between the pages, we’re running.
Variations of the same confusions take us back,
and I know I can be bored, lifeless, a count of many.
Nothing is lost––the hair kept in a drain will grow
even longer, like the brighter wall that covered
the discoloration of grief. Nothing is ever lost,
except the passing of light, the dark wall is back.
I will switch off, like the room stuck in shadow.
The end sounds more forgiving because we begin
seeing the absence thinner in time.
May 24, 2023 - Christina Geoghegan’s Nightscapes: “Saturation”
“Saturation”
Nightscape. A portrait is revealed in the light from the street lamps through the windows. A glimpse in the dark. Confronting, one experiences the intimate moment although the shadows cast the expression and it's not directed at the viewer.
___________________________________________________
Christina is an Irish artist based in Dublin. Her main influence is the transposing mood of time in Irish landscapes and portraits in introspective moments. She graduated with a BA from Minerva Academy, the Netherlands in 2018, completed a MA Erasmus with NCAD in 2016, and has exhibited nationally and internationally with her work sold in the US and across Europe.
May 19, 2023 - “They’ll be getting hungry inside” by Elizabeth Lerman
You shut the shower off and stomp the cigarette into the wet, wooden floor before crouching down to shove the orange butt between the boards, pushing it with your pinky until it drops somewhere it won’t be seen. You stand, take a shaky breath and smell dusk setting in, bringing with it a weak, briny breeze from the bay. They’ll be getting hungry inside, you think. He will order a pizza, you decide, he will order a pizza from the one place in town and the three of you will sit together and try to talk. After dinner, you’ll look through photo albums that have never asked to be opened, you’ll find the sweetest scenes and show them both, you’ll pass the pictures down the couch and say something like, they look so happy here.
May 17, 2023 - Christina Geoghegan’s Nightscapes: “Some people feel the rain others just get wet”
“Some people feel the rain other’s just get wet”
Nightscape. A portrait is revealed in the light from the street lamps through the windows. A glimpse in the dark. Confronting, one experiences the intimate moment although the shadows cast the expression and it's not directed at the viewer.
___________________________________________________
Christina is an Irish artist based in Dublin. Her main influence is the transposing mood of time in Irish landscapes and portraits in introspective moments. She graduated with a BA from Minerva Academy, the Netherlands in 2018, completed a MA Erasmus with NCAD in 2016, and has exhibited nationally and internationally with her work sold in the US and across Europe.
May 15, 2023 - “Summer, Mostly” by Rahil Najafabadi
Summer, Mostly
I’m happy now because the cold quiets
are gone. Even when we sit in the shadows
on the cool ground, a warm wind will always
be sweet. I’m thinking of how to be honest
in the presence of salt, prone to being broken
into our own people. The flowers are ready
to be cut away from damp housing––How come
you are not? The color from my childhood fish
has faded, but it is still alive. So is this seasonal persona,
sometimes. Especially when it is summer, mostly.
I figured my touch became familiar to the trees,
perhaps they say my name in passing. I don’t know,
I think they do, often.
May 11, 2023 -Lispenard & West Broadway by Jordan Myers
A man in an olive green t-shirt and black denim jeans wearing Ray-ban sunglasses walks across Beach Street in black and white sneakers that look like Air Force Ones, but no — they’re Diadora, his pant-legs hover over rhe sideways Y. Just then, at Lispenard and West Broadway, a white twelve-passenger van brushes against and exchanges paint with a black BMW X-5. The driver jumps out and screams, “You scratched my car! You scratched my car!” Behind him a symphony of car horns commences —- Get out the way! —- the whole world is trying to get to the Holland Tunnel before sunset. And the traffic lights that turn from red to green do not say “go,”but “inch forward - - . . . try.”
May 10, 2023 - Christina Geoghegan’s Nightscapes: “Fragmented”
“Fragmented”
Nightscape. A portrait is revealed in the light from the street lamps through the windows. A glimpse in the dark. Confronting, one experiences the intimate moment although the shadows cast the expression and it's not directed at the viewer.
___________________________________________________
Christina is an Irish artist based in Dublin. Her main influence is the transposing mood of time in Irish landscapes and portraits in introspective moments. She graduated with a BA from Minerva Academy, the Netherlands in 2018, completed a MA Erasmus with NCAD in 2016, and has exhibited nationally and internationally with her work sold in the US and across Europe.
May 9, 2023 - “Blowfish” by Rahil Najafabadi
BLOWFISH
I have holes on my spirit––Some people see them,
some see the clear rain through them. Who are you?
The look of love sticks to my memory at night.
Yet inside, the long past stretches the hours
until midnight. When a blowfish encounters danger,
it puffs up to double its size. When I lay down in bed,
by myself, where the past meshes with right now,
I, too, become two people. Stuck in one body,
I stay unsweetened and my sleep escapes.
One of the two selves I contain stays awake,
poisoning the other. My sheets shroud me once
I sleep altogether, and we come together again––
Both of us: me and you, the past and the present,
the night and after midnight, poison, and the light.
May 5, 2023 - “Spring has always been here” by Elizabeth Lerman
You smoke with one hand, run the other under the hot water and wonder how long it might take for skin to split this way. You would like something in you to open. You imagine taking a sledgehammer to the walls of your throat, your stomach, your head, all the parts of you that tense and swell with pain or pride or pointlessness. There is already a hole in your heart, you think, and when you breathe you can feel the parts of you that need filling and life is right there, ready to flood the empty space in your sternum, but here, something stops you from swallowing it. Maybe it’s the house and how quiet it is without the two of them, or the way she won’t stop dragging her feet down the halls, maybe even, maybe mostly, it is that spring has always been here but you have never seen it.
