Art: "Human Natures" by Sarah Balsley
Poetry: "damages" by Ellen Sander
my neighbor\\hates
the sun\it reminds her
of better days\\the unbearable
light\
the failure to hope\\for
a kinder past\\seeps like
sap from a tree\\ & just
as\\impossible\\ to remove\
from clothing\flesh\\or conversation
overheard \it adheres
the more you wash it\the label
says\\shake well
Published October 11th 2025
Ellen Sander, a New York native, has lived in Bolinas, Venice Beach and Beijing & is a past Poet Laureate of Belfast Maine where she now resides. She was a first wave rock journo, her nonfic Trips-Rock Life in the Sixties was reissued by Dover in an augmented edition. Her latest poetry book is Aquifer, published by Red Bird Chapbooks. These poems pull threads on all that. It’s been an amazing life.
Sarah Balsley is a visual artist and writer, working along the drama and serenity of the Atlantic ocean in Nova Scotia, Canada. She works in mixed media, primarily using acrylic paint, often challenging the viewer, using seductive lines, exciting colour and familiar images or shapes, to question perceptions of social construction, whether it is gender, our relationship to nature or even death. Most recently she has produced collections of Fungi, examining not only this interesting form, but also looking at the human connections that bind us in the face of difference. They come in all of these odd but beautiful shapes, both familiar and different and connect every living thing on earth. If Fungi didn’t exist, breaking down nutrients, plants that make oxygen could not cover this planet.