camila elizabet aguirre aguilar  

I used glue in this guy, with acrylics, oils & melted wax, done on a rogue plexiglass window I found by the side of the road in Richmond.

At this point in my practice, I was fixated on the value of the surface.

A canvas, like people, can only do so much for us when we can’t peer through it to find the dimensions of depth.

I call it “Me Seeing Through You Seeing Through Me.”

  Lauren K. Dougherty  

So:

The arctic is on fire and the earth has quaked since we last spoke. There’s been death, hope, and devastation.

So:

I’m thinking about the thing that compels us to dream, play, plan, and create, as we face chaos.

It’s fragile and intangible, whatever it is. A good day can burn in a split second; the past gets heavy and the future gets tangled. But then the sun keeps rising and you laugh and forgive and decide to go on.

Which leads me to spirit.

What moves you?

Why do you try?

Why do you care?

Maybe the point is the process, not the outcome.

So: here’s to the process.

With love,

  Billy Lezra  

Editor-in-Chief

  Sara Pacelko  

A Nautical Study of Possession

  Cass Lintz  

Air changes in molecular structure
in speech, and tears.
It is well known that
the invention of the ship
came with the invention of shipwreck.
You were a storm.
Fear of obscurity,
locked landlessly, without rescue or compass, no flair.
Hope remains buoyant even in darkness;
As hunger starves in circles, trick.
Words as articulation
of borders, of lack
thereof
the musculature of
your noun, pressed
possessively, into mine.
Transubstantiation with a twist.
Wreck.

This is a beautiful and precious land full of history, possibility; fragile ecosystems.

Donald Trump’s land grab has opened up large portions of the once Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (including the slot canyons and gorges where I took this photo) to oil drilling and coal mining.

There are very few wild places left on this planet.

Treat them sacredly.

  Jordan Zweig  

Syntax

We experience so much we don’t have words for.

I was laying down when I “wrote” this—journaling, scribbling, doodling, drawing, and it felt nice; it felt as if, somehow, I was transcribing little pieces of my environment into a different shape—a complete story, all at once.

We have, so far, built a world where our unique gifts are stifled in the name of progress, success, and personality; a world where we feel alienated, confused, and oppressed.  And so I think, perhaps that is what Art is for—an excursion beyond our limitations, beyond the domains of learned language, to broaden the scope of what we can share.

So, I have been writing these poems in a spontaneous language. They happen automatically, and they surprise me as much as they may surprise you.

I learn from them.

Here, language isn’t forced into being. Marks are free and direct.

Here, language is immediate; a dance. What is read is no longer “heard,”  but beheld.

Then, we are left with artifacts of expression and attempts to articulate an ever-deepening sensitivity to the unfolding infinity of our being.

Scroll up.

What do you see?

  Cory Fisher  

Spirit
  billy lezra