You asked how my heart is.
I have lost touch with it
over these years.
Like a dusty hallway that I’ve learned
not to take people down.
But every day, inside those walls
there is a longing:
“Someone please walk down here
without a guide
and find something bright
to show me.”
I want to be loved the way
I have tried to love.
I want the patience, the listening.
I want to be known
the way I have tried
to know
others.
The model in the images is my friend Elvig Michael. I told him how I was feeling inside and asked if he would be willing to act out those emotions.
Today we offer some cells, a stance, two interviews, redemption, a heart with a lit pathway, and home. This month’s issue is our longest one to date because the theme, inspired by Jen Richards, is MORE. As summer turns and fall startles we lean on MORE voices to guide us to next month, which will explore:
hope
Submission guidelines can be found here.
love,
amanda lezra
Editor-in-Chief
The Goal Is To Be Forgotten
In Conversation with Jen Richards
“Every one of us is an utterly unique being. Even if reincarnation is true, the fact is that I will only be this person in this time, in this place, once, in an infinite expanse of space and time, which is pretty astonishing. It is one of the most fundamental truths of the universe—the uniqueness of every single thing. To me, that is an indication of moral importance. We have a moral responsibility to become the most ourselves we can be.”
A Thoughtful Exchange
In Conversation with Brett Childs
“I am a photographer, so I am looking at the history of the medium and how it can support the thoughts I am having. I was interested in earlier photographic work that involved individuation and identity formation. So, I started obsessively trying to tear apart and understand what forms an individual, which is always related to another individual or a group. I wondered: how do you maintain individuality when you’re in a group?”
Down Came the Good Fairy
After Little Bunny Foo-Foo
For Bri, my Love Fairy
Sometimes I feel
like love purposely takes the sideroads
to avoid coming my way.
I text my friend this,
and she says: Nah,
love steered you from the cacti
disguised as flowers,
those people who would hurt you; babe,
you’re closer to the true path every day.
I laugh because it hurts and she talks
about being the love fairy
bippety-boppety-booping
and you, you’re Little Bunny Foo-Foo,
hopping through my forest,
scooping me like a field mouse,
bopping me on the head.
One day, you’ll use your three chances
and turn into a goon;
you’ll fly away somewhere
and when you come back,
I’ll have cut down the trees,
the paw paw and the prickly pear.
I’ll be sitting in the garden, buzzing,
surrounded by dogwood and roses and lavender.
Mariah Rigg is a writer from Honolulu, Hawai`i who likes writing about how things break. Her work has been featured or is upcoming in 7×7, trampset, Pidgeonholes, Hawai`i Pacific Review, and Yes Poetry. She was a semifinalist for the 2020 Gulf Coast Prize and a finalist for The Seventh Wave 2020 Editorial Residency, along with being nominated in 2019 for the PEN/Robert J Dau Emerging Writers Award. Currently, she is pursuing an MFA from the University of Oregon and will attend the 2021 Sewanee Writers’ Conference as a Poetry Scholar. You can find her on Twitter @riggstah.
The Truth About Home so Difficult to Believe
I want to believe what my little brother said of home
is a picture of a ruined city he read in the holy book.
This is not my home. No, not the confluence state where
Benue and Niger rivers hug in the vastness of love –
something we could copy and paste on our hearts
if really we want to gulp peace, the way African gods
drink from the calabash of fermented wine.
A friend said the boys whom I played cork with,
on my father’s land have been anointed as Babylonians
and the chant – the city of God must fall – is now wild.
The evening I was reading a poem of beautiful places,
the news from the radio broke its cloaks into sadness.
It said: there’s fire in God’s house. That God roosted
and the boys planted bombs beneath his pillow before
he could wake up. Ash on the podium, everywhere.
But I still want to believe there’s a small place,
beautiful like the garden of Eden, for love birds to nest.
I still want to believe there should be something
aesthetic off what is meant to swim mud.
Another friend said the sanctuary of our maidens
was raided like the village next to a burning bush.
This got me walking the path of this poem, slowly –
to believe home has become a haven of lions,
a laboratory for fire triggers to be tested.
Perhaps, if you tell me more of what home
has become, I’d believe there’s nothing left to pick.
BLESSING OMEIZA OJO is a Nigerian teacher and author of Cry of an Orphan (novel, 2015) The Misunderstanding (drama, 2017) and The White Shadow of Illusion (novel, 2020). He has contributed to several anthologies and written for Lunaris Review, Praxis, Parousia, Wax Poetry Journal, and others. His awards include the 2019 Korea-Nigeria Poetry Prize (Ambassador Special Prize) and the September 2018 Brigitte Poirson Poetry Contest (Second runner up). Blessing holds a National Diploma in Chemical Engineering and is currently a creative writing instructor at Jewel Model Secondary School, Abuja, where he has coached winners of national and international writing prizes.
Dijungo, Patron Saint Of Disconnect
Shout into the mirror
until it gives a
different answer
and I’ll meet you
in the ensuing
– silence –
At this
one step
remove
everything
seems a lie
a third
to this
tiny crowd
and not
worth
engaging
Here
a floor
is no
different
than a
rooftop
and we
can still
see the
sky from
both
Screaming
at the stars
won’t give
away your
location
taking
too long
to reach
and they
the stars
uncaring
This
– place –
is our
good
lie
our
night sky
blackout
from
banging
our head
too long
against
the grim
sun glare
of all the
too much
We
can still
see though
and remember
and know this
is not victory
only reprieve
That all the All
and every Everything
will be waiting
ever ravenous
upon our return
See me not
as a friend
as one would
not allow any
to be devoured
I only serve to
belay the teeth
and keep the
blood running
your veins as
long as can be
afraid, yes
but you can
still call that
living
See me
as I am, a
cruel guardian
who will not
let you stay here
for there is no
air to breathe
in this
– space –
Paulie Lipman is a former bartender/bouncer/record store employee/Renaissance Fair worker/two time National Poetry Slam finalist and a current loud Jewish/Queer/poet/writer/performer. His work has appeared in Button Poetry, Write About Now, The Emerson Review, Drunk In A Midnight Choir, Voicemail Poems, pressure gauge, Protimluv (Czech Republic) and Prisma: Zeitblatt Fur Text & Sprache (Germany). Their poetry collections “from below/denied the light” and “sad bastard soundtrack” are available from Swimming With Elephants Publications. IG/Twitter: @paulielipman
Green Is All I Ever Was
Smooth liquid nails. Silver
and mint mercury slowly loading.
A witch in a mirror, painting my neck
lake placid. Hurried hands and arms and palms.
Lochness nails peeling away. Land sick
is all I ever was. Running in the grass,
plucking hairs out of the earth’s eyebrows, itchy
and stained the color of puke. A shag carpet
covering a room I grew into. Lime
like pie. Misunderstandings and me never
correcting. Lyme. Like disease, a tick that is me,
a composition notebook with a tree asp spine.
Lying, green and neon pus-like. Lobes
of a brain separate on a screen.
Broccoli. Turning cold like the Pacific Ocean
like mitosis stopping, a jabbing hook
and a half-life, a baby doll in a cactus
on a desert night. Rot lost in a room of noise
like me like a radioactive grass parrot
rolled between my sticky tongue and teeth. Hot.
Green. Knee scrapes are all I ever was.
Is all I ever loved. All I ever loved.
Kaci Skiles Laws is a closet cat-lady and creative writer living in Dallas—Fort Worth. She is an editor at Open Arts Forum, and her writing has been featured in The Letters Page, Bewildering Stories, The American Journal of Poetry, Pif Magazine, The Blue Nib, Necro Magazine, and Ten Million Flies, among others. Her published work and blog can be viewed here.
Claire – 2016
⌘ This America, How Much More Can We Take?
It’s a constant painful inundation
to be alive in this America
this America
as if I have detached myself from my country
as if I am removed
from its borders
outsider trapped inside
warrior of light with no where to hide
how much more can we take?
this America—
its spacious skies
choked with the ash of a million acres burning
climate change deniers keep the fires raging higher
everything tinder
everything silver cinders and smoke
black out the sun with the arms of falling redwoods
Ancients collapsing
with the weight of humanity’s collective disregard
how much more can we take?
this America—
its amber waves and waves of pain
every day a new horror
every day a new shame
another slashing of our human dignity
by the hands of the heartless minority in (stolen) power
a regime that viciously stamps out American dreams
and builds walls of broken glass and silenced screams
brandishes weapons of fear and hate and teens with AR-15s
turns our stars into swastikas in the bright of day
this is America 2020 and I cannot look away
he turns the peoples’ house white white white white
holds an authoritarian ego convention on the sacred steps with flood lights
blinding out the darkness he created as savior for the radical right
how much more can we take?
this America
from sea to (once) shining sea
we are a sick country quarantined
suffocating in a public health emergency
our passports no good for travel internationally
because we have no handle on this ravaging disease
300,000 will die before the end of the year
the world laughs at our dictator in chief
as he says what a very good job he did
the very best job ever he did
better than any other country ever did
better than humanly possible and every other fucking superlative
the most robust testing (lie)
it will just disappear (lie)
china virus china virus china virus (racism)
I provided the most ventilators and PPE (lie)
cases are going up because testing is going up (gaslighting)
maybe try drinking some bleach (JFC)
hydroxychloroquine (oh please)
I will have the best vaccine (lie)
children are virtually immune (lie)
and we send in the teachers to die for the economy
how much more can we take?
this America
its purple mountain majesty turned bloody bruises
turned tear gas and rubber bullet blush
turned crush under the foot of brutality’s boot
knee on his pleading throat
George
shot seven times in the back in front of his children
Jacob
these men
these Black men
these Black fathers
whose martyrdom is unfounded
unfound fathers lost to their existences
holes in their former lives
to teach us a lesson
that just keeps repeating and repeating
that you cannot be Black in this America and survive
hashtags stitched up to the stars like barbed wire
and we have fenced ourselves in
with all our collective history and hate
to look at each other in the face
until each side screams
for a civil war
and this America—
I just can’t take anymore
I just can’t take it anymore
anyone with a heart in their chest
a pulse in their striving soul
a light inside that guides them
can see us
all of US
spiraling out of control
how much more can we take?
how do we save our principles?
how do we build upon real foundations
while there are monsters tearing at the roots?
how do we save our democracy our liberties our virtues?
how do we taste hope on our lips again?
Vanquish the oligarch and his mob of evil men
Open your heart even wider though it may be broken
Tell truth to power though your voice might be shaking
Embolden justice progress inclusiveness brotherhood empathy and light
This is still Our America
This is still Our America
“I wrote this piece on the theme of MORE the morning after 45 gave his final speech at the RNC on the steps of the White House to throngs of maskless followers. The palpable call to action through poem, like metal in my mouth— interrogating the daily barrage of information, headlines, protests, fires, COVID numbers, Black men murdered by cops, more bad news, lies and lies, tweets from the despot, and the idea of MORE floored me into a type of righteous rage, like I was up to my neck in existence, and the idea of more of anything seemed almost painful. This poem reflects the exasperation any decent, empathetic human being might be feeling at this particular point in our nation’s collective unrest.”
Kai Coggin is the author of three full-length poetry collections PERISCOPE HEART (Swimming with Elephants 2014), WINGSPAN (Golden Dragonfly Press 2016), and INCANDESCENT (Sibling Rivalry Press 2019), as well as a spoken word album SILHOUETTE (2017). She is a queer woman of color who thinks Black lives matter, a teaching artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, and the host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry. Recently named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, her poetry has been nominated three times for The Pushcart Prize, as well as Bettering American Poetry 2015, and Best of the Net 2016 and 2018. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Cultural Weekly, Entropy, NELLE, Sinister Wisdom, Calamus Journal, Lavender Review, Luna Luna, Blue Heron Review, Yes, Poetry and elsewhere. Coggin is Associate Editor at The Rise Up Review. She lives with her wife and their two adorable dogs in the valley of a small mountain in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas.
We Are Here to Stay
You asked how my heart is.
I have lost touch with it
over these years.
Like a dusty hallway that I’ve learned
not to take people down.
But every day, inside those walls
there is a longing:
“Someone please walk down here
without a guide
and find something bright
to show me.”
I want to be loved the way
I have tried to love.
I want the patience, the listening.
I want to be known
the way I have tried
to know
others.
The model in the images is my friend Elvig Michael. I told him how I was feeling inside and asked if he would be willing to act out those emotions.
Today we offer some cells, a stance, two interviews, redemption, a heart with a lit pathway, and home. This month’s issue is our longest one to date because the theme, inspired by Jen Richards, is MORE. As summer turns and fall startles we lean on MORE voices to guide us to next month, which will explore:
hope
Submission guidelines can be found here.
love,
amanda lezra
Editor-in-Chief
The Goal Is To Be Forgotten
In Conversation with Jen Richards
“Every one of us is an utterly unique being. Even if reincarnation is true, the fact is that I will only be this person in this time, in this place, once, in an infinite expanse of space and time, which is pretty astonishing. It is one of the most fundamental truths of the universe—the uniqueness of every single thing. To me, that is an indication of moral importance. We have a moral responsibility to become the most ourselves we can be.”
A Thoughtful Exchange
In Conversation with Brett Childs
“I am a photographer, so I am looking at the history of the medium and how it can support the thoughts I am having. I was interested in earlier photographic work that involved individuation and identity formation. So, I started obsessively trying to tear apart and understand what forms an individual, which is always related to another individual or a group. I wondered: how do you maintain individuality when you’re in a group?”
Down Came the Good Fairy
After Little Bunny Foo-Foo
For Bri, my Love Fairy
Sometimes I feel
like love purposely takes the sideroads
to avoid coming my way.
I text my friend this,
and she says: Nah,
love steered you from the cacti
disguised as flowers,
those people who would hurt you; babe,
you’re closer to the true path every day.
I laugh because it hurts and she talks
about being the love fairy
bippety-boppety-booping
and you, you’re Little Bunny Foo-Foo,
hopping through my forest,
scooping me like a field mouse,
bopping me on the head.
One day, you’ll use your three chances
and turn into a goon;
you’ll fly away somewhere
and when you come back,
I’ll have cut down the trees,
the paw paw and the prickly pear.
I’ll be sitting in the garden, buzzing,
surrounded by dogwood and roses and lavender.
Mariah Rigg is a writer from Honolulu, Hawai`i who likes writing about how things break. Her work has been featured or is upcoming in 7×7, trampset, Pidgeonholes, Hawai`i Pacific Review, and Yes Poetry. She was a semifinalist for the 2020 Gulf Coast Prize and a finalist for The Seventh Wave 2020 Editorial Residency, along with being nominated in 2019 for the PEN/Robert J Dau Emerging Writers Award. Currently, she is pursuing an MFA from the University of Oregon and will attend the 2021 Sewanee Writers’ Conference as a Poetry Scholar. You can find her on Twitter @riggstah.
The Truth About Home so Difficult to Believe
I want to believe what my little brother said of home
is a picture of a ruined city he read in the holy book.
This is not my home. No, not the confluence state where
Benue and Niger rivers hug in the vastness of love –
something we could copy and paste on our hearts
if really we want to gulp peace, the way African gods
drink from the calabash of fermented wine.
A friend said the boys whom I played cork with,
on my father’s land have been anointed as Babylonians
and the chant – the city of God must fall – is now wild.
The evening I was reading a poem of beautiful places,
the news from the radio broke its cloaks into sadness.
It said: there’s fire in God’s house. That God roosted
and the boys planted bombs beneath his pillow before
he could wake up. Ash on the podium, everywhere.
But I still want to believe there’s a small place,
beautiful like the garden of Eden, for love birds to nest.
I still want to believe there should be something
aesthetic off what is meant to swim mud.
Another friend said the sanctuary of our maidens
was raided like the village next to a burning bush.
This got me walking the path of this poem, slowly –
to believe home has become a haven of lions,
a laboratory for fire triggers to be tested.
Perhaps, if you tell me more of what home
has become, I’d believe there’s nothing left to pick.
BLESSING OMEIZA OJO is a Nigerian teacher and author of Cry of an Orphan (novel, 2015) The Misunderstanding (drama, 2017) and The White Shadow of Illusion (novel, 2020). He has contributed to several anthologies and written for Lunaris Review, Praxis, Parousia, Wax Poetry Journal, and others. His awards include the 2019 Korea-Nigeria Poetry Prize (Ambassador Special Prize) and the September 2018 Brigitte Poirson Poetry Contest (Second runner up). Blessing holds a National Diploma in Chemical Engineering and is currently a creative writing instructor at Jewel Model Secondary School, Abuja, where he has coached winners of national and international writing prizes.
Dijungo, Patron Saint Of Disconnect
Shout into the mirror
until it gives a
different answer
and I’ll meet you
in the ensuing
– silence –
At this
one step
remove
everything
seems a lie
a third
to this
tiny crowd
and not
worth
engaging
Here
a floor
is no
different
than a
rooftop
and we
can still
see the
sky from
both
Screaming
at the stars
won’t give
away your
location
taking
too long
to reach
and they
the stars
uncaring
This
– place –
is our
good
lie
our
night sky
blackout
from
banging
our head
too long
against
the grim
sun glare
of all the
too much
We
can still
see though
and remember
and know this
is not victory
only reprieve
That all the All
and every Everything
will be waiting
ever ravenous
upon our return
See me not
as a friend
as one would
not allow any
to be devoured
I only serve to
belay the teeth
and keep the
blood running
your veins as
long as can be
afraid, yes
but you can
still call that
living
See me
as I am, a
cruel guardian
who will not
let you stay here
for there is no
air to breathe
in this
– space –
Paulie Lipman is a former bartender/bouncer/record store employee/Renaissance Fair worker/two time National Poetry Slam finalist and a current loud Jewish/Queer/poet/writer/performer. His work has appeared in Button Poetry, Write About Now, The Emerson Review, Drunk In A Midnight Choir, Voicemail Poems, pressure gauge, Protimluv (Czech Republic) and Prisma: Zeitblatt Fur Text & Sprache (Germany). Their poetry collections “from below/denied the light” and “sad bastard soundtrack” are available from Swimming With Elephants Publications. IG/Twitter: @paulielipman
Green Is All I Ever Was
Smooth liquid nails. Silver
and mint mercury slowly loading.
A witch in a mirror, painting my neck
lake placid. Hurried hands and arms and palms.
Lochness nails peeling away. Land sick
is all I ever was. Running in the grass,
plucking hairs out of the earth’s eyebrows, itchy
and stained the color of puke. A shag carpet
covering a room I grew into. Lime
like pie. Misunderstandings and me never
correcting. Lyme. Like disease, a tick that is me,
a composition notebook with a tree asp spine.
Lying, green and neon pus-like. Lobes
of a brain separate on a screen.
Broccoli. Turning cold like the Pacific Ocean
like mitosis stopping, a jabbing hook
and a half-life, a baby doll in a cactus
on a desert night. Rot lost in a room of noise
like me like a radioactive grass parrot
rolled between my sticky tongue and teeth. Hot.
Green. Knee scrapes are all I ever was.
Is all I ever loved. All I ever loved.
Kaci Skiles Laws is a closet cat-lady and creative writer living in Dallas—Fort Worth. She is an editor at Open Arts Forum, and her writing has been featured in The Letters Page, Bewildering Stories, The American Journal of Poetry, Pif Magazine, The Blue Nib, Necro Magazine, and Ten Million Flies, among others. Her published work and blog can be viewed here.
Claire – 2016
⌘ This America, How Much More Can We Take?
It’s a constant painful inundation
to be alive in this America
this America
as if I have detached myself from my country
as if I am removed
from its borders
outsider trapped inside
warrior of light with no where to hide
how much more can we take?
this America—
its spacious skies
choked with the ash of a million acres burning
climate change deniers keep the fires raging higher
everything tinder
everything silver cinders and smoke
black out the sun with the arms of falling redwoods
Ancients collapsing
with the weight of humanity’s collective disregard
how much more can we take?
this America—
its amber waves and waves of pain
every day a new horror
every day a new shame
another slashing of our human dignity
by the hands of the heartless minority in (stolen) power
a regime that viciously stamps out American dreams
and builds walls of broken glass and silenced screams
brandishes weapons of fear and hate and teens with AR-15s
turns our stars into swastikas in the bright of day
this is America 2020 and I cannot look away
he turns the peoples’ house white white white white
holds an authoritarian ego convention on the sacred steps with flood lights
blinding out the darkness he created as savior for the radical right
how much more can we take?
this America
from sea to (once) shining sea
we are a sick country quarantined
suffocating in a public health emergency
our passports no good for travel internationally
because we have no handle on this ravaging disease
300,000 will die before the end of the year
the world laughs at our dictator in chief
as he says what a very good job he did
the very best job ever he did
better than any other country ever did
better than humanly possible and every other fucking superlative
the most robust testing (lie)
it will just disappear (lie)
china virus china virus china virus (racism)
I provided the most ventilators and PPE (lie)
cases are going up because testing is going up (gaslighting)
maybe try drinking some bleach (JFC)
hydroxychloroquine (oh please)
I will have the best vaccine (lie)
children are virtually immune (lie)
and we send in the teachers to die for the economy
how much more can we take?
this America
its purple mountain majesty turned bloody bruises
turned tear gas and rubber bullet blush
turned crush under the foot of brutality’s boot
knee on his pleading throat
George
shot seven times in the back in front of his children
Jacob
these men
these Black men
these Black fathers
whose martyrdom is unfounded
unfound fathers lost to their existences
holes in their former lives
to teach us a lesson
that just keeps repeating and repeating
that you cannot be Black in this America and survive
hashtags stitched up to the stars like barbed wire
and we have fenced ourselves in
with all our collective history and hate
to look at each other in the face
until each side screams
for a civil war
and this America—
I just can’t take anymore
I just can’t take it anymore
anyone with a heart in their chest
a pulse in their striving soul
a light inside that guides them
can see us
all of US
spiraling out of control
how much more can we take?
how do we save our principles?
how do we build upon real foundations
while there are monsters tearing at the roots?
how do we save our democracy our liberties our virtues?
how do we taste hope on our lips again?
Vanquish the oligarch and
his mob of evil men
Open your heart even wider
though it may be broken
Tell truth to power
though your voice might be shaking
Embolden justice progress inclusiveness
brotherhood empathy and light
This is still Our America
This is still Our America
“I wrote this piece on the theme of MORE the morning after 45 gave his final speech at the RNC on the steps of the White House to throngs of maskless followers. The palpable call to action through poem, like metal in my mouth— interrogating the daily barrage of information, headlines, protests, fires, COVID numbers, Black men murdered by cops, more bad news, lies and lies, tweets from the despot, and the idea of MORE floored me into a type of righteous rage, like I was up to my neck in existence, and the idea of more of anything seemed almost painful. This poem reflects the exasperation any decent, empathetic human being might be feeling at this particular point in our nation’s collective unrest.”
Kai Coggin is the author of three full-length poetry collections PERISCOPE HEART (Swimming with Elephants 2014), WINGSPAN (Golden Dragonfly Press 2016), and INCANDESCENT (Sibling Rivalry Press 2019), as well as a spoken word album SILHOUETTE (2017). She is a queer woman of color who thinks Black lives matter, a teaching artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, and the host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry. Recently named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, her poetry has been nominated three times for The Pushcart Prize, as well as Bettering American Poetry 2015, and Best of the Net 2016 and 2018. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Cultural Weekly, Entropy, NELLE, Sinister Wisdom, Calamus Journal, Lavender Review, Luna Luna, Blue Heron Review, Yes, Poetry and elsewhere. Coggin is Associate Editor at The Rise Up Review. She lives with her wife and their two adorable dogs in the valley of a small mountain in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas.
We Are Here to Stay
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Yanina May
“My first camera created these teeny-tiny Polaroids; I was obsessed with it. Then, one of my best friends noticed that I was really into photography. She gave me a 35-millimeter camera. I kept it on my nightstand; it was always with me.”
Jenna Marie Townsend
“I started on the path of a horse trainer. I had a different mindset then; as I got older and learned more, my thinking shifted to healing work. I have a very holistic approach; when I work with horses it is centered on how I help them with their environment and how they interact with their humans.”
Yanina May
“My first camera created these teeny-tiny Polaroids; I was obsessed with it. Then, one of my best friends noticed that I was really into photography. She gave me a 35-millimeter camera. I kept it on my nightstand; it was always with me.”
Jenna Marie Townsend
“I started on the path of a horse trainer. I had a different mindset then; as I got older and learned more, my thinking shifted to healing work. I have a very holistic approach; when I work with horses it is centered on how I help them with their environment and how they interact with their humans.”