Pencil takes to page,
graphite smears at speed of thought,
just to make it real

Drew Mindel

Sierra Basquez

Sarah McConchie

Sarah McConchie

Tamar Sidi

Tamar Sidi

Tamar Sidi

groupless
but not alone
companionless not unattached i am
maladroit nonconformist
anchored in lukewarm liquid
dark conceived here i breed so do not say i do not belong
when i become we they send my water zinging and find
our protons pirouetting in magnetic wake they name us ouroboros
malignant serpent expanding into and from ourself call us instead
mosh pit for we are unceremonious seethingwrithingcolliding mass
when i become we they label us malignant-intracranial-unnatural-undesirable but do not say
we do not belong we are made from your wiring and have trenched
our space into your grey matter what you call dna gibberish we make our gospel we gather your canal silt
into boulder transcript your would-have-been-star into black hole you try to carve us out but you cannot
tell us we do not belong now i am not groupless now we are manifest and will not be stopped

We’re told that artists mimic what they know.

I disagree!

I think artists pursue what they don’t know, what they wish they knew.

Canvases are not slaved upon, nor hands stained with clay, nor voices strained

For something as common and mundane as reality.

The human mind adds onto what we witness and transforms it into something that

never existed before.

Not even a forger’s work can be anything but unique and their own.

Take Van Gogh’s Starry Night,

A man who was depressed, who walked the streets with the putrid stench of alcohol in

his breath,

Who received no recognition in his lifetime, who created masterpieces taken as garbage.

A man stuck in a dark room with no stars, no light, nowhere to turn.

So miserable and tortured that when he looked at the night sky and saw nothing,

He had no choice but to make something more.

The canvas of the night became a sky that was lively and spunky and naïve.

Stars staining the evening with their glow like broken egg yolks spilling into one another.

The galaxy’s gases and particles of stardust swirling as if geometry had given up

completely

And faded into wonderful nonsense that could not be named nor measured.

A gentle melody that could be heard for hours floating past the quaint village below.

Mesmerizing, inviting, and not just

Black.

Sabrina Parra