In A Land Full Of Promises By Jimin Lee

In A Land Full of Promises

All light rests on you like lovebirds
on an intricate arm of an apple tree.

Your mouth speaks a foreign language
that my mother tongue can’t decipher.

Small moles on your left cheek are
arranged into the cosmic sign of Virgo,

a blurry reminder of my homeland.
Trapped, in this endless vacuum of time.

Your glossy eyes embody the Atlantic sea
that drove me into depression. An estranged

pilot stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Drifting away with ocean currents. No boats

to drive me back to my homeland.
I can trace your blue veins

more easily than my lineage. I stand
alone in this world, resisting to be dragged

by the currents that once engulfed me
into an endless pit of darkness. When I reach

into the center of your body, your heartbeat
is a distant light for a wanderer in the sea.

So I decide to settle on you.

By Jimin Lee

Biography:

Jimin Lee is a Korean-American writer living in Seoul, South Korea. As a published author on various platforms, her fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Crashtest Magazine, The Daphne Review, and The Rising Phoenix Review, among others. She is the founder and Editor-In-Chief of The Ideate Review, a literary magazine that recognizes works of creative writing and art relating to global issues and identity. In addition, she is an alumnus of the Juniper Institute for Young Writers. She enjoys learning about the world around her and writing about it.

Message to the White House By Sankara Olama-Yai

Message to the White House

You hate me, I know
You hate my people
You hate what we represent
My flesh is the night’s untold tale
My eyes are the dark tunnels Harriet Tubman marched into
My hair is nappy, my lips are full like bloated rose
petals swollen from rain drops
My hair, darker than the hearts of supremacists
and I carry the weight
of what it means to have skin like mine
from those long gone

You sit on a throne, white as the moon
Whiter than the nation you conquer
and craft a plan to melt the golden wings of my people

You don’t have the power to steal the waves underneath our ships
You are the ones who brought us here
and now this is our country too

On the news
somber tears float on unkind winds
Another one of my brothers has died at your whim

I bet you’re making a killing
from making us out to be killers
stuffing us into your for-profit prisons
Engraving us with lead, a new branding,
and yet you dare to speak on that podium as if
we begged the bullets to take refuge in our bodies
begged them to make a home in our decay

You’ve conducted a mental, perceptual genocide
systematically murdering our image
In the minds of the unsuspecting– even our own
But it haunts you doesn’t it, my black fingers
crawling up your pristine, cotton colored monuments
dragging my bullet riddled body slowly up your pedestal
up to where you stand with condescending eyes looking down
on our struggle. I bet it terrifies your sleepless nights
in your whitehouse, the symbol of smiling freedom and democracy
That same ivory castle that was built atop the scarred, ebony backs
of freedom-starved men. Ironic isn’t it.

By Sankara Olama-Yai

Biography:

Poems by Sankara”Le Prince Héritier” Olama-Yai. Sankara is an LGBTQ+, African American student who currently studies at Penn State. They is a reader for Frontier poetry. Poems have previously been published by Weasel press, InSpiritry and Military Review, they have had work accepted by 805 lit won three Scholastic Art&Writing awards for his poetry. Sankara is in the process of publishing their first two poetry books with Vital Narrative Press.

One Photo By Thomas Gillaspy

15296728010_21131e8760_o (1)By Thomas Gillaspy

Biography:

Thomas Gillaspy is a northern California photographer with an interest in urban minimalism. His photography has been featured in numerous magazines including the literary journals: Compose, Portland Review and Brooklyn Review. Further information and additional examples of his work are available at: http://www.thomasgillaspy.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasmichaelart/

Martha 3 By Ligia Berg

martha-3
I worked with Martha Saffo for several years. She is a Crossdresser. These images are a little part of a work that i was doing about her history, her thoughts, and her imaginary aesthetic. Being a Crossdresser is sometimes being that you really are but for ‘ours’ and ‘sometimes’ because the ‘regular people’ and society don’t admit this expression. I want to say to Martha that everything is ok, that she is a wonderful person and she have to be that she wants.

By Ligia Berg

Biography

Ligia Berg was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1987. She loves visual arts and music, and does both of them. She is fan of mysterious images and the baroque composition and we can find that in her work. Her work was showcased in see me, xataka, inrocuptibles, so bad so good and other local publications. She loves the cinema aesthetic, creating characters and telling stories in images. She is really interested in gender issues and that crosses almost all her work.

Martha 2 By Ligia Berg

martha-2.jpg

I worked with Martha Saffo for several years. She is a Crossdresser. These images are a little part of a work that i was doing about her history, her thoughts, and her imaginary aesthetic. Being a Crossdresser is sometimes being that you really are but for ‘ours’ and ‘sometimes’ because the ‘regular people’ and society don’t admit this expression. I want to say to Martha that everything is ok, that she is a wonderful person and she have to be that she wants.

By Ligia Berg

Biography

Ligia Berg was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1987. She loves visual arts and music, and does both of them. She is fan of mysterious images and the baroque composition and we can find that in her work. Her work was showcased in see me, xataka, inrocuptibles, so bad so good and other local publications. She loves the cinema aesthetic, creating characters and telling stories in images. She is really interested in gender issues and that crosses almost all her work.

Love Boat By Ligia Berg

love-boat-ligia-berg.png

I worked with Martha Saffo for several years. She is a Crossdresser. These images are a little part of a work that i was doing about her history, her thoughts, and her imaginary aesthetic. Being a Crossdresser is sometimes being that you really are but for ‘ours’ and ‘sometimes’ because the ‘regular people’ and society don’t admit this expression. I want to say to Martha that everything is ok, that she is a wonderful person and she have to be that she wants.

By Ligia Berg

Biography

Ligia Berg was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1987. She loves visual arts and music, and does both of them. She is fan of mysterious images and the baroque composition and we can find that in her work. Her work was showcased in see me, xataka, inrocuptibles, so bad so good and other local publications. She loves the cinema aesthetic, creating characters and telling stories in images. She is really interested in gender issues and that crosses almost all her work.

Champ By Joseph S. Pete

Champ

By Joseph S. Pete

Biography:

Joseph S. Pete is a photographer, an award-winning journalist, an Iraq War veteran, an Indiana University graduate, a book reviewer, and a frequent guest on Lakeshore Public Radio in Merrillville. He was named the poet laureate of Chicago BaconFest 2016, a feat that Geoffrey Chaucer chump never accomplished. His work has appeared in The Five-Two, Chicago Literati, Dogzplot, shufPoetry, The Roaring Muse, Blue Collar Review, Lumpen, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Pulp Modern, Zero Dark Thirty and elsewhere. He once Googled the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. True story, believe it or not.

One Photo By Thomas Gillaspy

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By Thomas Gillaspy

Biography:

Thomas Gillaspy is a northern California photographer with an interest in urban minimalism. His photography has been featured in numerous magazines including the literary journals: Compose, Portland Review and Brooklyn Review. Further information and additional examples of his work are available at http://www.thomasgillaspy.com
and http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasmichaelart/