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 September 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 an artist, 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 nature. Most recently she has produced collections exploring Fungi, which 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. She seeks to rebrand this odd and alien creature that we owe everything to.