No, Met has not been published yet, but when I asked Gary about it today he said "March, March March!" so hopefully that means March...
In the meantime, I would like to give you a little bit of a preview of what is to come, and maybe my reviews of a few pieces.
This is "Pair of Feet" by M. Batty. He is a Cerro Coso student from Ridgecrest, and I absolutely love his work. We are featuring several of his pieces, including the cover piece, which you will have to wait to see!
This is "Rousing the Whirlwind" but Aunia Kahn. She is one of the non- Cerro Coso students we have fought to be able to feature. We are also featuring more than one of her pieces, and each one of the pieces submitted by her have a very unique statement. I like the way she expresses herself through her work.
"Desert Dreams II" by Jeani Sunday. I love this piece. Not many photographs of deserted buildings make me want to be in the picture, but I almost get a feeling of weightlessness looking at this. It's beautiful.
"Amusing" by Donna Fitch. I have taken art classes with Donna, and she does some amazing work. This is one of my favorite pieces of hers.
COMBING by ANDREW SHELLY
I.
Stilled dusk of washed-out louring light
rain-tense day silted down to a black line of cloud on the horizon
sense how everything goes quiet and freezes
just before the storm crumbles and boils over
cloud violently colliding with itself to crush and fracture the curdled light brighter
feel how everything goes silent just before the fall of autumn or that of night
see how a life goes still and turns in on itself at evening just before it ends
as if viewed through a soundproof screen of doom-tinted glass/shade-stained glaze
element stained to slurry with black ink
cloud-streaks of blue-black aquatint
whose sleek perspectives trailing back into the sky's past
converged upon us and trapped us standing there at an odd angle to each other
drawn across the landscaped page
with a paint-drenched brush pressed firmly to the surface
shot across the ether's sheet
or dashed angrily in savage black against the feverish background greys
held back beyond the dulled rim of the looming horizon ruthlessly planed down
flush with the pert cut scar of your flat prim mouth
slowly disintegrating like a jet's ragged wake
as torn tares into the close-heated thickness of afternoon-muted light
earth line brought so near as to be a gulch between us
by the storm-borne air of haze-saturated heat/waterlogged lead
heavy as tears in a pain-soaked skull-shell of scree and sand/sunburst earthhead
rimful of intimate distance brimming with unshed, grey theatre rain
yellow-purple bruise of sunset storm-sky just before it breaks in blood
low-humming of near-pent water muted ominous booming
threatening to bulge and burst out as the first or final flood
retreating and retrenching to silt over the parched terrain
to fresh growth teeming from black mud.
II.
Stiff, dry grass in the swamp-heavy air
combed obliquely back and forth between green and paler matte lime
I stood slightly slantwise on the uneven rain-thirsty plain
rigidly ruled into plots by cotton twined round short planted stakes
pock-marked with hollows and unburst shell-holes,
I untangled your hair, as your bare face wept
unraveled the knots in your clammy hair carefully
washed out the matted strands of your hair in the river water
pecked cloth-balls from your crummy clothes ruefully
your baggy rumpled skirt and wind-shocked top
while you cried, bare-faced,
while ineptly you wept, your bald face wet
a trickle of wincing tenderness seeped out through the cracks in our broken hearts
vulnerable pulp or sap to salve the knife-cuts in the tree's bark
which slashed our sticky initials into the fresh white wood flesh
such that they oozed glue but obstinately refused to adhere together
separated by a thin line like a joy division sign
like a flat cut pert mouth primly shut and silent
me over you doesn't go or leaves a remainder of precisely zero
flung an 0 echoing down the deserted street of days in the bleak light of spastic dawn
popped us like a plastic spit-bubble
pricked to the shape of a flame-burnt scar-tissue heart by a red-hot needle
hovering over our heads forever like a trembling speech-balloon
empty but for an exclamation that twists itself up to the shape of a question mark
or an illegible rune that bursts in a pretty tinkle of little spit-specks like a teardrop tree
and vanishes into clean air, into lean air.
I dried you, while you cried, your bare shame-face
turned up to the sky which dropped a fine
freckling of scattered rain-flecks upon the pale
sliver-of moon opal thumbnail of your face's plane,
my finger chucking you lightly under the chin
tilted the beaten-thin disc of your visage's skin
slightly to the grey light the grim sky
like a jagged diamond turned slowly between fingertips
in the hard light of exact appreciation,
precise pencil-beam trained seekingly upon the smooth of your round moon-face
fused first as pixel points of dense intensity
into the surrounding dawnrise silence
as you smiled a little in the hot pre-storm half-dark
shattered blue of your eyes' metalled crystal ovals
faint against the stark zinc light
like almond-facets of pastel quartz
touched into the neuter pre-downpour twilight
bleached colorless and drained off-white like strained rinds
by a blunt thumb's end dipped in stain.
We stood slightly bent towards each other-
I stood sagging in low-slung loose trousers at an awkward angle
one foot higher than the other and skewed shoulders slanting sideways
in the spitting pre-deluge drizzle
on the stumpy marsh-land studded with clumps of hard sod
crumpling into myself like a used tissue screwed up in a fat fist
having absorbed all the snot and sweat and filth of the world
you ran off over a fence, leapt like a lamb,
heavy space weighed me down, drooping greens
all around, early haze, pre-summer moist,
rain-freighted shale while
the vivid bright stile closed its colors.
This is another one of the people who submitted that we almost didn't get to publish. Andrew Shelley is from London, and I'm glad we are able to publish this work.
PUTTING DOWN MY RAKE, I TAKE A MOMENT TO THINK ABOUT GETTING OLDER by Shawn Aprill.
September leaves fall.
Beige hand holds brown—see myself:
Fragile. One more year…
Shawn Aprill is local but is not a Cerro Coso student. All the wonderful work we wouldn't have been able to use without all the fundraising we did!
Though one can presuppose that Coleridge was at least moderately inspired by his addiction to laudanum, this literary scholar would prefer to concentrate exclusively on the poem—isolated from all outside influence. So, please--read this poem and post your thoughts here. Do you think the old Mariner ever attains peace? What do you think is the message here?