Art: "Reverie (Daydream)" by Sherri Romm
Poetry: "Songs of Solastalgia" by Aishatu Gwadabe
Aching through epochs, I measure pain in eras while
Broken tectonic promises carve new faults, as
Chronoruptured time slips through fossil fingers —
Disability isn’t new to planetary bodies
Each tremor teaches adaptation:
Fault lines become mobility aids,
Glaciers my cooling compress, melting too fast
……….. rest required ………
Hot springs soothe inflamed strata
In between flares of volcanic fever, where
Joints of continental shelves grind:
Kinetic friction, bone against bone
Learned to pace myself through
Millennia, moving at magma’s speed while
Nitrogen burns acid-etch my skin —
Overexertion of industrial dreams
Planet-pain radiates through ages:
Quaking limbs of mountain chains mark
Recovery in rotations, not revolutions
Sometimes centuries pass between breaths,
Time-worn rifts reshape my knowing:
Underwater strength in coral beds grows at its own pace,
Vertebrae of stone adjusting to
Weather’s weight, learning to read
Xeric changes in my desert skin
Yielding to new ways of being, until
Zones of eco-ache become maps for survival
………resting………resting………resting………
Published January 2nd 2026
Aishatu Ado (she/her) is a Peace Technologist, writer and poet who advocates for social justice. She is an alumni of Tin House, VONA, Hurston/Wright, Roots Words Wounds, and Voodoonauts fellowships among others. As a visual & literary artist, she weaves transformative Afro-feminist cosmovisions, channeling ancestral oral traditions & mythologies. In Aishatu’s poetic alchemy, reality bends to imagination’s will, each word a spell cast in Africansurrealist ink. She is featured in anthologies such as “Parables of AI in/from the Majority World” & the literary NFT collection “To Each Their Own Reality.
Born with a natural curiosity about the physical world and things that “could not be seen but felt,” Romm embarked on a lifelong journey of discovery from an early age.
Around five years old, she began wandering her surroundings, teaching herself to draw and craft imaginative pieces from natural materials like tree bark, feathers, hair and twigs. Art quickly became her personal haven—a thrilling escape into solitude where her creativity could flourish unchecked, sparking a passion that would define her path.
As she grew, Romm experimented boldly with various media, further honing her skills in observation, transformation, and the creative process. Due to financial hardships, Romm first dove into college as a computer engineering major, establishing a means to support herself and her family. Her heart always pulled her toward painting, leading her to attend evenings at Maryland Institute College of Art—all while juggling a budding career and raising a family. Post-graduation, eager to manifest her surreal visions, she apprenticed with a master classical painter, sharpening her techniques and unlocking new depths in her expressive style.
When a dear friend battled cancer, Romm naturally blended her engineering expertise with her artistic talents to design a custom wig that faithfully recreated her friend’s pre-hair-loss appearance. This pivotal success sparked a profound new calling, leading her to work “behind the chair” as a alternative hair specialist, assisting hundreds of men, women, and children coping with hair loss from cancer, alopecia, burns, and other conditions. Over time, she patented her groundbreaking hair enhancement designs and chiaroscuro coloring techniques, profoundly influencing the traditional hair loss industry by incorporating a fine art paradigm to its approaches in anatomy/design, materials, chiaroscuro color, and visual language.
True to her promise, Romm has successfully returned to painting after achieving family and career milestones.
Today, as a full time fine artist, her authentic voice is embedded in the supernatural and surreal art, driven by a deep reverence for life, the interplay of spirit and matter, and divine intelligence. Her intuitive, experimental process incorporates influences from music, symbology, poetry, and personal dreamwork. Using vibrant light, color, and symbols, her paintings transcend the ordinary, immersing viewers in enchanting realms where figures emerge from elements like skies, trees, and water—blurring physical and ethereal boundaries to form portals to the mystical.
Romm’s website: www.romm-art.com