​I Am Imperfection

I run my brush over hollow curves,
trace the simple edges, the uneven lines.
Step back, fingers curled like wilted knuckles,
daring myself to feel complete.
I hold my breath and wait for doubt to creep in
before opening my eyes.

It doesn’t have to be perfect,
not like glossy magazine pages,
nor the textured brushwork of a master.
It only has to be…
me.

I infuse every pale contour with my truth,
exposing imperfections, fears, and vulnerabilities.
Yet, I’ve seen others cradle art,
shield it 
from judgment,
afraid to fail, afraid to look too closely,
afraid to find themselves within the painting.
The visage in my art stares back at me,
unsettled, waiting, yearning.

I become my reflection and my story on the canvas, 
they merge--
one imperfect portrait:
I see no flawless symmetry.
I see the scars of my choices--
a tattoo tilting too far to one side,
stray hairs drifting across my forehead,
a frame of bone, painted to life.
I see no difference between the story etched on me,
and the lines that bleed from my brush.

Each bears my touch--
proof I dared to create.
To exist 
imperfect…

yet whole.

​Patrick G. Roland

Patrick G. Roland is a writer and educator living with cystic fibrosis. He explores life’s experiences through poetry and storytelling, seeking to inspire others in the classroom and through writing. His work appears or is forthcoming in Hobart, Sacramento Literary Review, Maudlin House, Trampoline, and others. He lives near Pittsburgh with his wife and their two children.

On Second Thoughts from Soft Benches

These were the wrong shoes to wear. I realize that now. But my first thought this morning, the one made in haste as we scrambled to the station, was that we’d be on a train for some time (incorrect), and it would likely deposit us near our intended target (wildly incorrect). But alas, it was a pilgrimage, and everyone knows suffering is baked into the meaning of those. So I lean, blister-footed, brave pilgrim, in that cool stone alcove of the El Greco museum, studying my guidebook with the same furtive focus as scripture. My raw heels howl in protest, and I feel Achilles smirk in bitter recognition of my plight. 

The early train from Madrid was punctual and swift, delivering us to this tiny town before the crowds have descended. It is a slog up the hill, and I dig deep to share my guidebook’s joy touting Toledo’s glorious high position as medieval fort. Invaders opted for practical footwear, I grumble. The village holds a peaceful, cobble-streeted charm that has wooed legions. We, too, are wooed. We get lost on the curving streets that split and spoke, forged by long-ago donkeys managing steep inclines, none of them with an eye for city planning or tourist traffic, it seems. Laughing at our inept navigation, we double back more than once. Finally, our destination comes into view.

We wander curved halls and uneven walkways of the artist’s home, a modest place now converted to a shrine of his genius. Our eyes travel to placards in search of words in English to unlock the mystery of each exhibit. We absorb, marvel, and render our opinions in alternating affirmation or dissent. There is joy. There are blisters.

Then hark! In that final stretch around the corner, in the dim lighting of a tiny, high window, the benevolent gaze of a graceful carved Mary directs our attention downward, and her upturned, half-open palm offers us what we need. It is a bench, that holy grail of gifts at the tail end of any exhaustive museum journey. And not just any bench: the perfect, cushioned, backed affair, removed from foot traffic, positioned directly in front of a lovely El Greco piece in that wee chapel space. We knew, with sacred certainty, that Mary had smiled on us, and instantly canonize her: Blessed Mary, Patron Saint of Museum Benches. 

We genuflect in gratitude, descend into its plush goodness, and rest, while contemplating the El Greco that we now more fully appreciate. For we have learned of his suffering, that mental turmoil that pairs so often with creative flair. He was tolerated by this little adopted town, but never paid well, and he often felt slighted and under-appreciated. His critics were harsh, felt his renderings too unrealistic and elongated and odd. They called him “a foolish foreigner”, even “ridiculous”, which struck me as unnecessarily cruel. He tangled in legal disputes for payment of his work. He died, and with no disciples, was largely forgotten. And yet, society’s fickle heart took a turn later. Centuries later. They had another look, a broader perspective, perhaps, and deemed his worth after all.

The narrative is rewritten, and now: look at the genius he showed in this depiction! What a genre-evolving pioneer! Now all of his works are gathered and pored over with reverent awe. We stand in front of them, read from the guidebook of the bravery, the symbolism, the GREATNESS. And we look up from the page and say Ah, yes. I see it. Indeed! Now the town stamps versions of his art on top of anything sellable: magnets, scarves, spoon rests and mint tins. He was ours in this tiny town! Buy these things to show you, too, see his value!

It troubles my soul, this rewriting of history. This man struggled, in real time, as he created, and now others profit. Perhaps the town of Toledo is as guilty as their chosen son: have they, like him, warped reality into elongated, odd shapes that only marginally resemble truth? I stare at my museum ticket stub, wonder whose mouth my euros feed.

 From my bench, I study the elderly docent, a gravity-sieged question mark of a man, gently guiding guests to the gift shop. Dare I judge him for the sins of his ancestors? Surely my own family tree harbors those who nodded when the Emperor claimed Mozart’s music had too many notes, or who snidely deemed Picasso’s work satanic. And today’s genius might be revised tomorrow as derivative hack. It is all just…opinion.

These things percolate in my head as we sit on that soft bench, munching granola, savoring the cool respite. This posthumous honour did not exactly help poor Dominick Theotopolis. Bless him, no one even remembers his actual name, just where he came from: “The Greek.” They couldn’t even be troubled to learn to pronounce that slippery name. And yet, now we make the pilgrimage here to honour him, to say: thanks for doing what you did. I’m sorry it comes a bit late.  

Here is one inarguable truth: none of us will paint the narrative when we’re gone. Time shifts everything, from tectonic plates to world perspectives. It is a humbling, grounding, dare I say: liberating fact. The fickle winds of validation turn without warning: perhaps finding joy in creation may be the actual point, untethered from outside noise. This lesson lands deeply. I return my ticket stub to my pocket, deem it money well spent. 

Later, when I reach into my purse for a tiny mint, its lid will give me a moment of pause. Thank you, Dominick. For your work, and how it provides: our eyes feast on the colours and shapes you claimed, and its joy fills the bellies of families who live here now. I am grateful for them, too. For they, with Mary’s grace, have granted me this bench to rest my sore feet and think of you.

Shelley Russell

Shelley Russell is a practicing physician in Central Arkansas. She thwarts melanoma as her day job, but her writing has been featured in the New York Times, Literary Mama, Kelly Corrigan’s podcast, and an upcoming BBC podcast. 

​A Story of Simple Design

​I used to ride the steel frame bike to fetch small items from the mom-and-pop store.  In recent times, I became very good about getting groceries from the supermarket, so more often left the bike untouched in the garage. My boarder found it there while poking idly around the house. He was a quiet, endeavoring kind and didn't stint over fiddling with any odd item he got into his hands. Once I caught him taking apart my old coffee maker that had a broken lid, trying to reassemble it.  When I walked into the garage one Saturday afternoon, I discovered he had hitched my bike upright and was spinning  its front wheel round and round. He seemed fascinated in the motion, and, truth to say, his feeling infected me watching him spin the thing.

As it happened, I kept an old white stool in the corner of the kitchen. I had it to sit down when I was tired from standing too long while cooking. But I found I needed it less than I'd imagined, especially since I was better about getting exercise and staying healthy. So the stool sat there beside some old boxes, gaining little of my attention. My boarder, poking into my part of the house per his habit, would plant himself on the stool to read while I had a cake or a casserole baking in the oven. He said he enjoyed his book better in the warmth the oven provided than the loneliness of his room. He would read contently, his eyes moving  gently over the page as I saw peeking at him when I checked on the oven.

By accident one day, I saw the stool had gone from its corner. I thought to ask my boarder what had happened with it, but without him there right then, put the idea aside.  How much did the stool matter anyhow?, I told myself. Only then, a few days later, I noticed my unneeded bike gone from the garage. This second disappearance set the wheels in my mind going. 

I did not bother my boarder usually when he was alone, but I sought him out in his basement room to ask if he had seen the stool or the bike. When he opened the door, I discovered he had both items there. As it happened, he had removed the front wheel and part of the metal work from the bike and mounted them atop the white stool like an statue on a pedestal. He said it was his special creation, "a pure work of art." 

"You don't mind that I did this with your bike and sitting stool, I hope?" he added almost as an afterthought.
​
I assured him I didn't. I couldn't be upset with as modest and polite a young man. I was more interested actually in the work he'd produced. I knew he had artistic leanings; I had enjoyed looking over some sketches that he made of the garden behind my house. But his new sculpture brought home the idea of his creativity seriously for the first time. His sculpture was a strange combination for sure; I had never seen a bike wheel paired with a stool that way. Who ever has, in fact? I was struck thinking of the thing as an artwork as I considered its parts. The wheel from the bike and the stool from my kitchen each had served a practical purpose. Now he had combined the items, creating a new one that served no function whatsoever. The difference between this sense of part and whole was amazing in my mind. My wonder hit its peak when he gave the wheel a light spin with his hand. It turned beautifully just as I had seen when he spun the wheel on the bike in the garage. The light glanced off it now in waves, advancing and receding. I felt a warm fascination to see it that kept me comfortably looking on that most singular sculpture.

Spectacular Effect 

He insisted his new device, long in the making, realized the most spectacular "rotary-kinetic" effect. "But you must see it for yourself to understand," he said when, excited, I asked just what kind of machine he had made and what it did. So I went with him to his private office where he had the device to see it as he urged. I realized quickly, on being shown the thing, just why my friend said that I should see it in person. The device was no ordinary machine, in fact it was more like a series of machines than just one. The series had its start in this small cylindrical engine down in the corner on the floor. At one of its ends stuck forth a spool  like you might wind up with thread. This spool had a belt hooked over it that led to a six-spoke wheel standing a few inches away. From the center of this wheel, a long axle stretched over a small platform close by; after passing through a pair of loops that seemed to hold it to the platform,  the axle ended in a pulley. Now through this pulley was wrapped a long, black cable; the cable wrapped upward toward a large disc mounted on a yard-high stand about a foot away. Behind the disc on the stand, the cable encircled a hoop attached to a metal rod; this rod passed through the disc into the back of a half sphere bulging from the disc's front.  A pair of entwined white and black spirals ran along the surface of the half sphere from its base to its end jutting out in space. 

The whole apparatus, from engine to axle to half-sphere, was the most bizarre arrangement I have ever known for a machine. But what did the contraption do?, I wondered as my friend smiled at my apparent puzzlement. The engine, wheel, and axle convinced me it must perform some intricate mechanical process, carefully synced and exact; the disc, rod, and half-sphere suggested some kind of scientific experiment. I had read of scientists who had charged metal plates, much like the disc appeared, to bring forth an electric current or beam. At another time, I heard an engineer speak of creating magnetized fields by spinning a disc in the presence of electricity. Did my friend's device achieve either of those remarkable feats? Or some other? I asked him, and my friend said , "You will see for yourself." Then he went over to the corner and pressed the power button on the engine. The spool on the end of the engine began to turn. The belt around it whirled, causing the wheel hooked to the belt to do the same. The axle through the wheel center turned; the pulley on its end rolled round. The pulley drew the long cable through its groove; the hoop to which the cable clung turned, as did the attached rod. 

Then the half-sphere itself spun. I held my breath, waiting for a crackle of electricity or even (I'll admit it) a laser beam to shoot from the sphere's end. The black and white spirals on its surface whirled around. Dark circles appeared to pulse over its face. The form of a black spiral, imprinted atop the other spirals,  looped round to the left, closing in toward the half-sphere's end. The spiral circled and with each turn renewed itself, each dark arm appearing to emerge from the disc behind. The bands of the dark spiral kept coming, turning, and appearing to advance outward without end. But this illusion of motion was all that was being achieved by the half-sphere turning, I soon realized. No electricity blazed forth, no laser beam. Rather than a scientific effect, the half-sphere created an optical illusion. I saw this was all my friend had to show me, the output of a curio built in his spare time. And I had trusted, hearing his enthusiasm over the device, it would be that much more. I will admit that the way I had worked myself up had fed into the charm of the machine. However, I think few might be blamed for expecting some magical result from the workings of that remarkably built creation.

​Norbert Kovacs

Norbert Kovacs lives and writes in Hartford, Connecticut. He loves visiting art museums, especially the Met in New York. He has published art-inspired stories in The Ekphrastic Review and Timada's Diary. His website: http://www.norbertkovacs.net. ​

​Grace of the Sandhills
 
I often think of that cold weekend in Nebraska on the cusp of spring: the clouds low in the threatening gray sky, the flat, flat landscape from Omaha to Kearney, the fields of grain reduced to brown stubble.  And the wind, thrusting through my coat and hat, reaching for my throat.
 
I could say that watching the sandhill cranes land on the Platte River at dusk was one of the most grace-filled moments of my life.  That weekend, there were an estimated six hundred thousand sandhill cranes roosting on the river, circling in clusters above our heads, landing awkwardly on sandbars in the river with legs splayed wide like landing gear as the violet darkness deepened.  The scuffles, the honking, the flapping of wings and legs as each one jockeyed for an optimal position on the narrow sandbars, safe from predators.   The experience may have been grace-filled but the cranes were hardly graceful on land, with behaviors straight out of a cartoon movie I somehow missed.
 
For thousands of years, these birds have funneled onto the Platte from points along the Gulf Coast and the Southwestern states to rest and fuel themselves for the journey north to Canada and Alaska.  Even with their habitat in peril, they are as oblivious to us now as they were all those many centuries ago.  South of the equator, the indigenous people of Australia believed that the Magellanic Clouds, two small irregular galaxies on the edge of our Milky Way, represented two cranes who flew up into the sky to escape the emu spirit, tethered to the ground.  The cranes, always looking for safety.
 
I believe that the cranes’ ascension off the river in the fire of sunrise, a group here, a group there, rising now in their natural form as ballerinas, represents the grace with which we awaken each day, to strive once more.

Nancy Glass

Dr. Nancy Glass has been published in the Missouri Review, The Intima, in Pulse, in Examined Life, in Persimmon Tree, and others.  She won the 2022 Writer’s League of Texas Manuscript Contest in Nonfiction and was runner-up for the Perkoff Prize at the Missouri Review in 2024.  She practiced pediatric anesthesia and hospice medicine, retiring as Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine in 2022.  She received her MFA (Writing) from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2023. She is completing a book of pediatric hospice essays and violates the privacy of birds all over the world.  

Join us for a journey of discovery through the meaning of masks, as we look at some fascinating examples of mask art from around the world. What does it mean to wear the face of someone else, or to imagine we are animals, or gods? We will take inspiration from various masks for our own poetry or small fictions.

Floods

​How could she know then
that one day the floods
would dry, and a clear summer night
fill her again with wonder.

Rose Mary Boehm

Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as eight poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely  online and in print. She was several times nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of Net. Her eighth book, Life Stuff, is from Kelsay Books. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/
​

​How to Vanish

He thinks he’s hidden, 
the man in the black coat. 
Stiff and still, he stands like a shadow, 
lurks like the Babadook, 
slippery as an oil slick, 
a long, lean knife of night. 
Behind a spray of flowers, he waits, 
speckled by the undergrowth, 
confident he can’t be seen.
 
But the woman beside him? 
The woman in green? 
Squint. 
Lean into your screen. 
Slide your fingers. Zoom
until you find her. 
Now she knows how to 

vanish.
 
Quiet, 
discreet, 
she nearly bleeds into the trees. 
 
I wonder if she has a thousand dresses 
in a thousand tones and tints 
to hide inside a thousand different scenes, 
or if, like an opal, 
this one garment shifts 
to match whichever place 
she finds herself.

Glenn Schudel
​
Glenn Schudel lives in Florida with a neurotic dog, a malevolent cat, and several overgrown bonsai trees. He holds an MFA in Shakespeare and Performance from Mary Baldwin University and teaches Creative Writing at Ringling College of Art and Design. "How to Vanish" is his first poetry publication.

 Charts & Graphs & Caillebotte
  
There's a famous scene in Henry James's novel The Ambassadors where his protagonist feels as if he's walked into a painting. While I've been going to museums in the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe for decades, I'd never experienced anything similar until early in December 2024.

It started when I was sitting in my warm, book-filled study finishing a second cup of freshly-brewed, mild Gevalia coffee and my husband called from another room: "Hey! Shouldn't you be at physical therapy? It's 8:00."

The question was as shocking as the clamor from one of those silvery, round, old-fashioned alarm clocks with a bell on top. I've never been late for PT and I was sure the appointment was set for 8:30—which meant that I still had plenty of time to enjoy my coffee. 

Not so. A super-quick check of my Google calendar made it clear that I'd gotten the week's Tuesday and Thursday appointment times reversed.  I shouldn’t have doubted my husband was correct since he has an unerring sense of what's ahead on our calendar and even remembers dates from years ago. So if, for instance, I ask when we bought our last dishwasher or had the new front door installed, he won't hesitate: he'll reply with the year, the season, and the month.

Before this PT goof, I would have brushed off my mistake as absent-mindedness or a result of too much multi-tasking. But when I hurried into a coat and gloves, calling ahead to the physical therapist's office to say I was en route, I knew that my "number dyslexia" was the cause.

The awareness of this issue had hit like thunder only weeks before when I told my voice teacher at Michigan State University's Community Music School that I'd always had trouble with sight reading music. That's the case even though I have a good ear for music and in my teacher's words, "terrific audiation." What does that mean? I can hear the notes, hear the music, in my head. In our weekly lessons whenever he's asked me to try a new vocal exercise and he's played it on the piano, I've had no trouble singing the right notes. Maybe I need to work on fine points of technique, but my accuracy has never been an issue.

He suggested in this pivotal lesson that I might want to try what’s called "Solfège" in music. That's where you use the do-re-mi etc. labels to replace the names of the notes and this apparently helps people read music better. We spent about ten minutes working with that in the too-bright practice room where the baby grand piano loomed over a swarm of black, plastic stackable chairs and matching metal music stands. 

My teacher is tall, blond, young, enthusiastic, and profoundly encouraging. Our lessons have always been educational and fun for me—sometimes even thrilling when I do things I didn't know I could, like sing something "piano" with full and steady release of air so that the sound is crystal clear. Whether singing a song by Sondheim or Schumann, I've always feel at ease.

He often grins when he introduces something new and asks if I'm willing to try it. I've said "Yes" because it doesn't feel risky or embarrassing—even the first time he asked me to sing while walking around the crowded room. That was a bit complicated because I had to concentrate on not bumping into any of the myriad chairs filling the large practice room, but it also freed me from thinking about what I was singing. It was fun and I just sang with more expression and nuance than before.

But this do-re-mi approach was different. I felt some vague inner qualms about what we were doing when he played notes in an arpeggio and asked me to sing their Solfège names—it was like a pop quiz. 

We moved on after this brief foray into Solfège, and back to familiar territory,, I felt what I realized only later was relief. I had lots of errands to run when the lesson was done and didn't think more about it until that night in my den when I started reading about Solfège online and checking out videos from various music teachers. 

The den is my "music room," a quiet, cozy room where I replay my recorded lessons with headphones on, make notes in a weekly voice diary, and practice. The walls are painted apricot and they're dominated by a huge poster of an Art Institute of Chicago Caillebotte exhibition from the 1990s that makes the room both larger and more intimate at the same time. It's the painter's famous rainy Parisian street scene from 1877.  Considered his masterpiece, the original is monumental, with life-size figures, and it's been my first stop at the Art Institute every time I visit.  Matching French-style twin bookcases opposite that poster are filled with art books, history books, and museum exhibition catalogues, recording my grand passions and decades of museum tourism across the U.S., in Canada, and Western Europe. 

But the always-soothing atmosphere in the room was shifting as I sampled more websites and YouTube videos about my problem with sight reading and finally gave up in frustration. Then it hit me: how about asking Google if some singers might have trouble with sight reading music? Was that even a thing?

It is, and that's how I discovered number dyslexia, whose technical name is the cold-sounding "dyscalculia."

There are various levels of this neurodivergence and mine is on the low side. It has never undermined me as a writer, teacher, or public speaker, but I can't do arithmetic in my head very well and never could. That's why I love the tip percentages they show you at restaurants when you pay your bill, either in the server's handheld device or at the register. 

Multiplication tables were a particular problem for me in elementary school and no matter how many flash cards I studied with my math whiz mother, when I got to class the next morning, whatever knowledge I'd stored the night before had drained away. If I got something right, it was likely thanks to a lucky guess. In high school, any kind of chemical or mathematical formula looked like hieroglyphics to me and they all existed in some parallel universe of learning because I excelled in subjects like English, History, and French.

Nowadays, I sometimes enter the wrong figure in the correct column in my Excel spreadsheet of personal expenses, or the totally wrong date in that Google calendar. Luckily this is a joint "household calendar" and my husband usually queries me in advance if he finds something that looks like an error. Sometimes I'm off by a day, sometimes a week, and occasionally a whole month. 

When I come across a long newspaper article filled with charts or graphs that illustrate the major points, I can feel myself tuning out. They seem like castle walls I could never possibly breach. After half an hour with our jovial, white-haired accountant going over various facts and figures and examining one computer screen after another, I am barely present. It's as if I have a migraine without the pain, and I feel almost suffocated. 

That evening after my voice lesson, I felt like the lonely-looking man at the centre of Caillebotte's painting. Until I realized he wasn't frozen. Like everyone else in the painting, he was going somewhere. And that's when I decided I had to explain number dyslexia to my voice teacher so we could drop the idea of Solfège and keep working together as we always had. I was briefly embarrassed at the thought, but then decided I would enter the Caillebotte painting during the lesson and stay there as long as I needed to.

Lev Raphael

Lev Raphael's personal essays about art, music, travel, family, neurodivergence, writing and publishing have appeared in close to 90 online and print journals since the height of the pandemic, including The Ekphrastic Review, Black Fox, Lit Mag News, Spellbinder (in London), and most recently Mystery Readers Journal.