What Dreams May Come: Coleridge and the Pains of Sleep
David James Lamb
Insomnia is a literary disease. Those who have the best command of language seem least able to lay their head on a pillow and join the collective slumber. “The night is always a giant” said Nabakov, who could scarcely snatch more than an hour or two of rest back from each interminable night’s oppression. Ray Bradbury said of insomnia: “Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open.” Honoré de Balzac practiced a kind of self-imposed […]
Escapist
Escapist
by Emily Kako Masuda
This series reflects the magic of nostalgia through representations of my childhood hyperfixations. Our perceptions of past memories are made up of vivid visuals, overwhelming emotions, and a sense of pleasant simplification. However, to recall the past is also to experience the disorientation and dissonance of loss. Nostalgia has the power to transform loss and longing into something palatable, intriguing, and dream-like. Do we capture nostalgia, or does nostalgia capture us?
Watercolor and mixed media on paper. 13” x 9.5” […]
fall thunder drums
fall thunder drums
by Michael Lee Johnson
About the Author
Michael Lee Johnson lived 10 years in Canada during the Vietnam era and is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. Today he is a poet, freelance writer, amateur photographer, and small business owner in Itasca, DuPage County, Illinois. Mr. Johnson published in more than 1072 new publications, his poems have appeared in 39 countries, he edits, publishes 10 poetry sites. Michael Lee Johnson, has been nominated for 2 Pushcart Prize awards poetry […]
Searching
Searching
by Carl Scharwath
About the Author
Carl Scharwath, has appeared globally with 170+ journals selecting his poetry, short stories, interviews, essays, plays or art. Three poetry books Journey To Become Forgotten (Kind of a Hurricane Press), Abandoned (Scars Tv), and Lake County Poets Anthology have been published. His first photography book was published by Praxis. His photography was also exhibited in the Mount Dora Center For The Arts gallery and their exhibition “Be A Part Of It.” Carl is the art editor […]
Nonfiction: Fever Dream
Wang Chutong
I once had a fever dream. I dreamt I was missing, falling into the deep abyss of time. I sensed the touch of waves and the sweet sounds made by gulls flapping their wings most joyously. I dreamt I was traveling, most intensely, through mysterious mists of early morning, but a clear cracking of knuckles or a grin, a clenching of fists or teeth would immediately drag me back to the secular life, mourning, without a purpose. A lighthouse became clearer and clearer to me, while at the last instant, totally […]
Nocturne
Timothy Dodd
Magda smoothed back a wild strand of her hair and crossed the vestibule at the Baltimore Museum of Art for the first time, stuffing the twelve o’clock entry ticket into her jeans’ pocket. On loan, Albert Bierstadt’s The Blue Grotto hung on the wall in front of her as she entered the first gallery of the exhibition thinking of her mother again—wrinkled and gnarly-thumbed, pouring tea for her daughter in the dark at their small kitchen table covered with bread and goat cheese and freshly-made cherry jam. Who would lock arms with her […]