(dis)enchantment

Connecting Acts of Oppression: Applying Practice Theory to White Supremacy

By Ian Kennedy

Contemporary popular debates about race and racism are caught in a difference of assumptions. On the one hand, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ article “The First White President” in the October 2017 issue of The Atlantic exemplifies the systemic view: white supremacy and racism are perpetrated by all members who share a particular identification, leveling racist violence on all members who share a different identification. To varying degrees, all white people contribute to white supremacy, and all non-white people are victims of this violence. For Coates, a pervasive identity of whiteness unites Trump […]

Connecting Acts of Oppression: Applying Practice Theory to White Supremacy2018-05-07T21:39:05+00:00

First Dream

 

By Alexandra Malouta

Acrylic on canvas
36” by 24”

 

Alexandra Malouta is a native of Houston, Texas. She completed BAs in Earth and Environmental Science and Studio Art at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, and later an MS in Geochemistry at Rice University. Her art focuses on translating the physicality of geologic processes and forms into paint. Her studies in geology, as well as her hobbies of cooking, dancing, and knitting have influenced the involved, physical, repetitive nature of her painting methods.

First Dream2018-05-07T21:37:42+00:00

Long Term Vision II

By Luma Jasim

Ink, charcoal, and acrylic on canvas.
72x48x1.5 inches

Luma Jasim is a multimedia Iraqi-born artist. Jasim emigrated from her home country to the United States in 2008. During the last nine years, Luma accomplished a full scholarship from Parsons School of Design, The New School. She is one of the four winners of The 2017 AAF American Austrian Foundation/ Seebacher Prize for Fine. In 2015 Luma was one of a panel discussion at The National Arts Club, organized by ATOA (Artists Talk on Art) discussing “The Artists Role in Society.” Recently she has been selected to join […]

Long Term Vision II2018-05-07T21:38:05+00:00

What Next?

 

By Luma Jasim

Mixed media
Plaster, tissue, transfer photo, tar, oil, acrylic, charcoal, ink, and shellac on wood panel framed with aluminum sheet
48x48x2 inches

 

Luma Jasim is a multimedia Iraqi-born artist. Jasim emigrated from her home country to the United States in 2008. During the last nine years, Luma accomplished a full scholarship from Parsons School of Design, The New School. She is one of the four winners of The 2017 AAF American Austrian Foundation/ Seebacher Prize for Fine. In 2015 Luma was one of a panel discussion at The National […]

What Next?2018-05-07T21:47:52+00:00

Olive Ave., 12:46am

By Ian Thompson

The drunken man on Olive
wears a shirt that reads I need a chica
from Costa Rica! below the outline
of a nation poverty-stricken
but known by outsiders for its tranquil
beaches—just as my city is more associated
with a haunted cruise liner
than the ghosts of those killed
on its streets, or people like
this drunken man on Olive.

He’s singing Smokey Robinson’s
“The Love I Saw in You Was

Olive Ave., 12:46am2018-05-07T21:48:25+00:00

Visiting an Old Friend

By Ian Thompson

Strung above your mother’s slatetiled
patio, gleaming orbs
wobble with the breath of night—
like pendula. I’m counting
soggy Dorito morsels
that soar as you speak, a few
finding their way to the feet
of this deck chair, upon which
I sit in a defensive
lotus pose.

You want to make
a film, you tell me (about,
like, this lonely ass virgin
who meets a hot girl online,
but she lives in another
galaxy and shit, so he
hijacks a NASA spaceship
to go get laid), and I feign
the woozy grin that adorns
my face in all our old pictures,
and I force the words,
You’re a genius! as I had
a thousand […]

Visiting an Old Friend2018-05-07T21:48:48+00:00

Sundays

By Sophie Dess

This was when I’d lie transfixed by the light that only came on Sundays, with my small body wrapped in a quilt cocoon, my head pressed against the pillow and eyes open and eager. I’d study the pale green of my walls, lit in that tender, rustic way. Lit in a light so delicious that my nails would itch to scrape it off the wall and taste it, to capture its green warmth in a jar and let it glow, perennially, in a darkened room where maybe I’d take a peek at it for […]

Sundays2018-05-07T21:46:24+00:00

A Reflection on Uncle Leonard

By Ian Thompson

If one had asked you why
your career in the arts
never flourished, you would
have shrugged perplexedly.
the stub on your right foot—
what remained of a toe
you’d sheared off to avoid
being drafted—a sign of
the madness that all geniuses must possess.

Today, I read about
a sculptor who achieved fame
for ingesting a lethal combination
of psychedelics and amphetamines,
then stapling his testicles
to a park bench in broad daylight,

and I couldn’t help but think
that maybe you could’ve tried harder.

 

Ian Thompson is currently working to receive his graduate degree in Literature at California State University Long Beach. He has published poetry in the literary journals Cadence […]

A Reflection on Uncle Leonard2018-05-07T21:49:25+00:00
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