Art: "Volcanic Woman" by Lucy Kay Plowe
Poetry: "No man is an island entire of itself" by Jonny Groom
“No man is an island entire of itself”
–John Donne
yes i see that now John the love i have
for you is the same love i have for me the body
gave up trying to make sense of the map
replacing itself with Bermuda Triangles
i tumbled as the earth bottomed-out
under the weight of our mouths all the poison
is held invisible as marionette strings in night sky
taut with directionless mass the fingertips
i kissed goodnight become callused islands
so prettily faraway my hands reach up
to meet them in orbit
in third grade my best friend called
the only Iraqi girl in our class horrible
things he would not be capable of spelling
were it not for his father who was the only
man outside cartoons to tell his son cold raw
meat healed black eyes a tongue cannot
do the work of lungs but then again we’re fluid
as any ice planet caught far from the sun
the damage is done
we run at one another but there
aren’t enough movable joints
to justify anything but love for your fellow
animal we meet at the crossbite of horizon
the trees growing crooked as a mouth
full of genetic words our teeth
work through the archipelago of men
like lava through a sieve the alien in me is
the alien in you we’ll fly each other’s bodies
like spaceships & alight on titan heads
the lanugo of grass & green ash
over which i’ll still wonder why
i was too gutless to stick up
like Haneen for Haneen:
soft gentle girl
Published February 27th 2023
Jonny Groom is a student in West Lafayette, Indiana, where he once saw a fox and hopes to see one again. He often talks to squirrels.
Lucy Kay Plowe is a nomadic painter and yogi. Her work deals with the human soul in relation to nature and the miracle of reality.
Volcanic Woman
the smoldering crater, remnants of a past epoch
Oil and wax on linen, 50×58 inches. 2022