Issue 14: Cantilevered | Redrez Dogs | Heliotropic
"The first time I saw the cards, my mother was sitting at a picnic table with two other Korean mothers from church, with her back towards me..."
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Welcome to Issue 14!
Over the past two years, Issue 14’s Featured Artist Nanette Carter has been working on three series that reflect the zeitgeist of our time. They include Cantilevered, The Weight, and Afro Sentinels. Nanette says of these series: “With advancements in technology, the pervasive use of social media, Donald Trump, and social injustices seen around the world, there is much to respond to … in the series Cantilevered, the act of balancing the bombardment of information and responsibilities while deciding what is actually of great import is a harrowing act.”
Nanette continues: “Cantilevered is an architectural term where a building is anchored at one end and balancing a structure that extends out horizontally. The structure then becomes a metaphor for our lives. With some of the works in this series the shapes appear to be teetering and falling off the structural plinth, mimicking the idea of letting go or prioritizing in hopes of gaining some normalcy or balance during these anxiety-driven times.”
Nanette Carter received her MFA at Pratt Institute of Art in Brooklyn, NY. Today, she is a retired tenured Associate Professor from Pratt, where she taught Drawing/Mixed Media classes for 20 years. Over the years, Nanette has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, The Jerome Foundation, The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation and most recently, the Anonymous Was a Woman Award. She is in numerous collections across the United States, and has had international solo exhibitions in Japan, Syria, Cuba, and Italy.
Issue 14’s Featured Writer Sage Ravenwood is a deaf Cherokee woman residing in upstate NY with her two rescue dogs, Bjarki and Yazhi, and her one-eyed cat Max. She is an outspoken advocate against animal cruelty and domestic violence. Sage says of her poem, Redrez Dogs, “[I’m aware that this poem] is more truth than a lot of people can swallow. Even in the movement to change native names of high schools, sports teams, etc., there are repeated instances of students and sports fans continuing the tradition of the ‘Tomahawk chop’ and inappropriately wearing headdresses.”
Cut my braids swallow my native tongue
Hypocrisy dressed up injuns
beat us in god’s name
Red Redrez dogs Reservation dogs
I’ve seen how you treat your dogs chained and unkept
My skin is darker than yours we bleed the same
Sage’s work can be found in Glass Poetry—Poets Resist, The Temz Review, Contrary, trampset, Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Pioneertown Literary, Grain, Sundress Press anthology - The Familiar Wild: On Dogs and Poetry, Gothic Blue Book Volume VI—A Krampus Carol, The Rumpus, Lit Quarterly, PØST, Massachusetts Review, Savant-Garde, ANMLY (Anomaly), Native Skin, River Mouth Review, The Normal School, and more forthcoming.
This issue, we’re back with spectacular new work from our team of curated writers: Bazeed, Amy Estes, Tammy Heejae Lee, and Lorena Hernández Leonard, and artists: Hyun Jung Ahn, Tyler James Bangkok, Theano Giannezi, and Farangiz Yusupova.
Check out the highlights below.
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Leigh
Leigh Hopkins
and the Corporeal/Khôra squad
Issue 14 Highlights
Go, Stop by Tammy Heejae Lee / Artwork by Hyun Jung Ahn
“The first time I saw the cards, my mother was sitting at a picnic table with two other Korean mothers from church, with her back towards me. There were tiny red cards and a pile of dimes scattered in front of each woman, and my mother had placed the small fleece blanket she kept in the car to cover herself from sun exposure on top of the table’s surface, to cushion their game. They took turns slapping down the cards in their hands and taunting each other loudly while waiting for the next move.
‘Assa!’ I heard my mother say. The other women groaned in defeat and pushed their coins towards her…”
Read Go, Stop.
Children of the Sun by Lorena Hernández Leonard / Artwork by Tyler James Bangkok
“I can’t recall the first time I heard gunshots as a kid, but my body remembers the fear. Or maybe it wasn’t my body responding to fear. I simply ran for cover; I followed the herd like a good sheep because that’s what everybody did. Stop what you’re doing, get away fast, find a safe place to hide. This wasn’t a drill, and no one ever walked us through an Active Shooter Training. When I heard the sharp POP! POP! POP! there was no time for reflection: Is that gunfire or fireworks? or Where is it coming from? No time to think. Drop everything. Run. Hide…”
Read Children of the Sun.
Heliotropic by Amy Estes / Artwork by Theano Giannezi
Sunflowers are heliotropic: when they are young, they turn to face the sun as they grow. Heliotropism, also called phototropism, is most apparent in immature sunflower buds.
— S.F. Gate’s “The Heliotropism Of A Sunflower”
“I am told that I was a happy child, and I believe it. Even now, when I feel myself drifting out to sadness, I recall one of the sweetest memories of my childhood: a summer evening running through sprinklers with my brother and laying down to sleep, bathed in the pale yellow of setting summer sun still streaming through my window while reading Ramona Quimby, Age 8, my lips stained cherry-red with remnants of a popsicle, listening to my mom and dad laughing together downstairs. It was easy to face the sun when I was young. I had everything I could want—a loving family, friends, and, most importantly to young me, a relationship with God…”
Read Heliotropic.
Thus Spake Safia Elhillo by Bazeed / Artwork by Farangiz Yusupova
“say something to me in arabic
mixed with water my border dulls
that blue becomes me
& i get lost in wanting
i turn the color of mirrors
i go quiet for days
say something to me in arabic
atlantic got your tongue?”
Read Thus Spake Safia Elhillo.
Khôra will be back next month.