 Breaking of Faith, by Anna Lee Hafer (USA) 2018. Click on image for artist site. Broken Faith The depths of Tartarus can’t compare to the endless and unholy darkness that swirls across the canvas. The evils that lurk in Pandora’s hellish box could hardly hold a candle to the horrors found here. Mortals weep in shock and horror, their feeble minds broken by the images of destruction they are shown. Broken faith, like the bonds shattered between Jason and Medea. Trickery and lies, like those declared by Odysseus so that “nobody” could maim poor Polyphemus. Abandonment, as Aeneas abandoned Dido to wallow in despair until her last breath. But it is not all destruction, and it is not all fear. Ares gazes in awe at the battlefield, the bloody reds and soulless greys smeared for all to see. Artemis gasps in delight as she glimpses the moons on the page, clearly a tribute to her. The writhing mass of colours and shapes a pentimento of the betrayals that named it. There was beauty in destruction, and rebirth in betrayal. Reclaiming the happiness stolen by the hurt restores the faith that had been broken. Breanna Hanley Breanna Hanley is an English major with a concentration in writing and a minor in Women and Gender Studies at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, USA. She plans on graduating in May of 2022. She currently resides in the small town of Beech Creek, Pennsylvania. In her spare time — outside of writing — she enjoys crocheting and playing video games with her friends. She hopes to one day have a job doing editorial work for a publishing company and write her own novel.  Sun on South Street, by Anna Lee Hafer (USA) 2019. Click on image for artist site. Sun on South Street The sun was everywhere, once, drenching each corner with incandescence, pooling around fat cats as they lie, kissing the face of a woman to wake her in the early, white dawn. There were years of ever-sunlight on South Street; this world content to glow, to grow sunflowers in sidewalk cracks, to dance in beams across the floor. A woman waltzed in the sun on South Street, once. Her bare feet swung in sweet tandem with each fractal of light, flitting over the floor’s worn boards. The sun peers, now, through cracks in the haphazard handiwork, sometimes glinting off nails left jutting out into the South Street darkness. The boards pried from the floor, pinned to the window pane, pitiful in their effort to forget what once shone here, who once danced in light. Every sun-spot long faded, only golden memory remains, wandering lonely halls, enveloped in cutting wool, left to decay with South Street’s pain. Olivia Hanna Olivia Hanna is a Social Work major at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, USA. She plans on graduating in May of 2024. In her spare time she enjoys playing music and making art.  The Library, by Anna Lee Hafer (USA) 2019. Click image for artist site. The Choice Late night, mid-morning, dawn, the door of the library clicks open, cracks wide to rooms of elsewhere & beyond—imagination’s Open-Sésame to other doors, libraries, landscapes. Click open possibility. What book shall we pull from the shelves? Beyond Open-Sésames, imagination’s magic enters the mind’s inner workings, gathers possibilities. What book shall we pull from the shelves? What ancient treasure tug from the tale? The mind’s inner workings enter in, gather tools of chessboard and floor, bookcase stacked with tale and treasure, the ancient why of creation sparking each synapse of stacked choice: chess, ceiling, floor, books—tools to chisel word and image onto the shaped space of creation. Sparking each synapse, the mind reaches beyond reason to memory, chisels word and image onto the shaped spaces of now, before, maybe, if—choice the reason the mind reaches beyond memory, mirroring the large and small. This way. Choose now, before, maybe, if— or not. Your turn. Concentrate. Mirror the large and small. This way. Do you remember? Can you stay? Yes? No? Your turn. Concentrate. What move in chess shall we open with? Do you remember? Can you stay? What voice is woven in the fabric? What move in chess shall we open with? Follow the arrows to pawn or king. What voice is woven in the fabric? Here is the story of Open-Sésame. Follow the arrows to pawn or king, rooftop or floorboards. Don’t go without a story. Open-Sésame your way to elsewhere & beyond. Climb rooftops. Sketch floorboards. Go. What path shall we take today through this library? This way to elsewhere & beyond. A splatter is not a mistake, but a choice. What path shall we take today through this library? Follow the inner workings of the mind. A splatter is a choice, not a mistake. Cracks open the room to elsewhere. Always the inner workings of the mind follow choice. Each dawn, mid-morning, night, crack open rooms to elsewhere. You hold the pen and paintbrush. Late-night, mid-morning, or dawn, choose imagination. Click open the door to the library. Marjorie Maddox *Used by permission of the artist. Italicized phrases are taken from the artist’s description of the work, as well as from words and phrases hidden within the painting.  Ark, by Anna Lee Hafer (USA) 2021. Click on image for artist site. Ark Ladders to below/above to turn off the faucet to weeping to turn on the spigot to here/now to unleash the liquid to water to weary to whiplash to swirl in the iris of horizon to witness the wet of windswept to hide in the eye of reject to float in the drowning of hopeless to breathe in the rattling of broken to gasp with the mouth of ocean to curl with the swish of sudden to gulp with the whir of twisters to swallow with the salt of senseless to blur with the vision of serpents to spew with the sputum of whales to reek with the regurgitation of Jonah to sink in the rise of remorse to know with the blind-eye of Noah to soar on the dry-sky with dove to circle the submersion of world to flutter and hover to dive and discover to finally land. Marjorie Maddox  Noise, by Anna Lee Hafer (USA) 2021. Click image for artist site. Noise My own electrical storm break- dancing the sky of skull, riotous riffs on the unpredictable. Even before the EEG MC’d asymmetrical jerks, my tolerance for sound’s tossed out with each dizzying jag of note. Each ragged twirl, each syncopation on steroids, batters the cerebral, cyclone gone haywire into some vast static of seizure. Richter scale of cacophony— tornado and earthquake, firework and fissure— this ramped-up Chaos axes the faux door, pummels the thin walls, evicts balance from the brain. No predictable melodic drone sliding forward toward home, no Quiet Sweet Quiet easing the night into calm. Marjorie Maddox Professor of English at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published 13 collections of poetry—including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation, about her father’s unsuccessful heart transplant; Begin with a Question (Paraclete 2022) and the ekphrastic collaboration with Karen Elias Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (Shanti Arts 2022)—the story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite); four children’s/YA books; and Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania(co-editor). Her forthcoming collection, In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind, an ekphrastic collection based on 17 paintings by Anna Lee Hafer (www.hafer.work ) and including work by artists Margaret Munz-Losch, Antar Mikosz, Ingo Swann, Karen Elias, Greg Mort, and Christian Twamley), is forthcoming (Shanti Arts 2023). Please see www.marjoriemaddox.com Anna Lee Hafer is a studio artist based in the Philadelphia area whose work is heavily influenced by famous surrealist painters such as Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali, and Pablo Picasso, all of whom strove to create their own realities. these works are small glimpses into a particularly confusing, but utterly unique worldview that entirely dictates and follows its own specific set of rules. Anna Lee Hafer graduated from Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester, NY in 2019 with a Bachelor of Science in Fine Art. She relocated to the Philadelphia area to pursue a career in studio art. Previous experience in the art field includes: studio exhibitions at Davison art gallery and Rochester contemporary art center in Rochester, NY, as well as publications in Still Point Arts Quarterly. Please see www.hafer.work
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June 2023
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