Submission Sixty-Eight

We sat out on the deck all night
From 20 feet away the rain fell,
onto the pavement,
where it began to forget itself

the headlights flickered through-
spelling in flashlight:
Last Chance,
Remembrance

The night,
it grew so dark,
we actually had to hold the lighter
at the bottom of our frozen breath
to simulate the sunrise

He had been missing for over 2 weeks
We exchanged journal entries,
tried to pretend like they weren’t eulogies

I grabbed your pinky
whenever a cloud would yell too loudly



I think the best part about growing up
Is not having the time
or ability
to miss someone

Behind our first house their was a Lilac bush
we would play in the backyard on Sundays,
you refused to go near it,
you said it was because
the mirror had made you afraid
of anything too easily beautiful

I think we both knew from a young age
the body makes you work for it

Around 4 a.m
my stomach jumped
It wanted to join the rain
which is to say,
it wanted to forget.
you did what you’ve done our whole lives
patted counter clockwise

the pads of your fingers
felt like Last Chance

Ever since he left
a body part has gone missing,

I think I see him
at the end of a trail of headlights
Collecting the parts of our selves
we tend to forget too easily.

Submitted and Writtend by: Andrew Pine

Submission Sixty-Seven

“Welcome to the Fairie Worlds festival”.

I was there, it was my sixteenth birthday, and I could not wait for my day to unfold. I thought about the coming hours, the people that would come, the music that was to play, and more than anything else I looked forward to meeting Brain Froud, an artist’s inspiration.
The gates opened, and people from all over the world came pouring in. It was amazing to see how they wore their creative souls on the outside. Elaborate hand sewn costumes, giant wings, painted bodies, men on stilts, and simple smiles stretched across the crowd. Each one a work of art, telling you a thousand untold stories as they soaked it all in.
Somewhere in the distance music began to play, it started out soft and low, drawing me nearer to make out the lyrics. “Hear the howling of wolves, provoking the night, wild dances in the full moon light...” Every able creature was linking arms and moving to the music without a care as to what waited upon their Monday desk or what anyone told them they should be. Complete freedom overtook the night with every beat of the drums.
When at last my feet could no longer take it, I braved the line of the goblin market. I have long admired the work of Brain Froud, his drawings and paintings have been the inspiration for my own art many times. He, along with his wife and son, had flown in from England to be at this festival. It was not too long before I was there standing in front of him. We shook hands and he wished me a happy birthday as he drew a small fairie on the inside page of my favorite book, Good Fairies/Bad Fairies. I can’t honestly tell you what I said to him or his talented wife, as I was struck so speechless from the reality of it all, that tears had formed in my eyes.
It was silly to cry, I know that now, but at the time the whole day made me feel like a part of something bigger than myself. It felt as if anything that you dared to dream of, could and would manifest into an attainable reality.
I met some wonderful people; I am still in touch with a few of them, others I wish I could find again. I danced to the most amazing music sung straight from the heart of poets. I was able to meet the artist whose work got me seeing fairie art in a whole new way, I was sixteen, and it was the happiest day of my life.

Submitted and Written by: Kamea Black

Submission Sixty-Six

"The Hand that Speaks Images" ~ Anonymous

Submission Sixty-Five

Saw a lovely lady at a bus stop with this backpack and requested to take a photo.
She agreed and thus,submitted it to my project.



HAVE HOPE

Smile Dolls!

Take a moment to listen to your favorite song many times and dance!

Submission Sixty-Four

Call Me A Leaf

Every fall I take notice of the leaves. They become so vibrant just before they take the flight on the blustering wind express. Eventually they become settled in and wither or whirl away.

I look at life just as I look at a leaf. Look closely at their veins. They have so many paths and patterns, like our many journeys they connect to others. But all the lines eventually come to an end. In the end there is splendid color in the preparation to “fall”. I believe our spirits do the same.

Recently I’ve noticed the imprint of fallen leaves on the cement paths of downtown. Shadows, so beautiful, where they were alone or were connected, then whirled away by a blower or breeze. Even after the leaf was gone the shadow remained.

Spring comes again for another chance at life, just like our journey if you believe in such things.

Enjoy this beautiful time, be peaceful in your winter slumber and look forward to awakening in the spring, anew!

~Submitted and Written By: Josie Leahy-Brooks

Submission Sixty-Three

He sees me still

Circumstances keep us apart
Me in the hospital
Greeting new faces every twelve hours
for six days
Him home sick unable to come.

Fate would have it
day thirteen comes while I am away
He isn't there to see me
on the Most Dreaded Day.

I leave this place
a woman changed, different though the same

Anticipating his arrival
I forget myself
I shop for dinner amongst strangers
that won't know the difference
nor care.

Driving home though
my breath begins to catch in my throat
panic and fear strangling me
What if this changes everything?
What happens if he looks at me
and can't see ME any more?

Dried tears on my lashes
I turn to greet him at the door
His hair is gone too and he sees me still
and he holds me tight
while we cry together.

Cindy Scillo
December 5, 2009
Day 15 after my first round of chemo

Submission Sixty-Two

Photo By: Josh Hagan

Mightier II - early 2009

The written word,
As in the pen,
Is mightier than the sword.
It is sharp, concise, and to the point.
It is blunt and harsh.
Words can wound even the toughest,
Can pierce the heart.
All of which a sword is capable.
Malicious and cruel.
But words are mightier.
They can heal the stabbed heart,
Amend.
Words can patch up the evil wrought.
And in that sense,
Let the pen
Be mightier than the sword.

Submission, Poem, & Modeling By: Briauna M. Graeber

This model often writes poems and then has photographers focus on her poem to be the theme of the photo shoot. Some of the photos that have come from this are just amazing. It creates a visual to go with words. They walk hand and hand to create something beautiful and truly unique.

Submission Sixty-One

I was born ugly. The soot and dew of a wash away city like Seattle-

stained my forhead.

Years would come and go



in and out, the doors revolving like a bandsaw alphabet

it was hard to hold on,



i did not speak the same language as the others,

my mouth was broke as porcelain



i spoke deft kitchen table philosophy



the kind spoken with father after he's got a few glasses in

I asked questions-

questions about

oceans, phylums, genus's,

about movies, about

sunken eyes, do they disinigrate like shipwrecks?



we spoke in incomplete's,

in predicates, I stuttered

I rapture dyslexic

Homonym prophetic selective

etiquette, where stars dad come from?

where did the teachers lose me?



clearly my kitchen talk

philosophy was like looking at the alphabet barely

eaten and wasted, bloodied and

meat still at the bones



so they force fed me more

I entered rooms with no doors



with big clumsy computers yelling robotic english lessons at me

the teachers stood behind,

the world stood behind me,

with gun and stop watch

as i typed the sentences

"Marie walks to the park, with her dog

Marie wlaks to teh prk--her dog with

////////////////////////

Marie ash walked, her dog with park

Marie

Marie has

Marie dgo park and walked

Marie

park

--and what they didn't know

was that when i went home

to schizophrenic times tables

that spoke backwards and with a hiss

and i read their books

practiced their equations

Dug a grave with the syllables

-I spoke pretty for a society of ghosts

I held that pen in my mouth like Hamlet held Yorick

Am I Am I am I am I am I am I am I?

i spoke like a gun contemplating its bullets birth

the ears bless(ed) and will be, I told my father we are

what we are what we are

I said I am I am

i told everyone who would listen

I am! I not them? REad, yes, write, math arithmetic

But no one ever asked me

the right questions

I made sure to ask my father

all of them

why

why this earth? my mouht?

this school? this empty notebook? what happens to the words when in the air?

are they lost before crash landing on another's ear?

Do i talk funny because my words are in fightdogs fightdogs

fightdogs I mean I mean I mean

why is the air heavy?

consuming?

Do words die?

Do words die?

Then where do they live?

.

~Andrew Pine

Inspiration from Others Work

Submission Sixty

It seems like I am getting very personal submissions. The realness and thankfulness that you all are expressing is more than I ever expected. Keep your beautiful wonderful submissions coming. You are all wonderful human beings that care so much about the people around you. Thank you!

Submission Sixty is from Jen Owen. I found her because of an organization that I am closely tied to. Poetrynight. She did this wonderful photo album about finding her strength from poetrynight and I friend requested her on Facebook because I knew the people in the photos. About a week later I found out that she was also one of my friends boyfriend's mothers. Then she located my project and submitted this:

I lost my mother in 2002 to her 4th battle with Cancer. She beat Breast cancer. She beat a brain tumor. She beat bladder and ovarian cancer...and I thought she would just keep living forever because she was so strong and had so much hope that she would be here to see my children have children. She called me one afternoon and I picked up the phone and I knew it was her because I just knew...and I knew why she was calling me. The cancer had spread through her whole body and when she got that news - all of her hope was extinguished with the words "You are going to die....this time."

I told her I loved her. I told her it was ok to stop fighting. I told her it was ok to die. And she stopped hoping to keep living long enough to see her great grandchildren and started hoping that I would continue hoping for things when she was gone. She switched her focus in the last few months of her life and started hoping that I would do something with the talents she helped create in me...art, photography and poetry as well as lessons of how to be a good mother when life didn't seem to ever throw you anything but crap. She started hoping that in watching my own mother and my best friend die a horrible painful cancer filled death - that I would grow stronger and learn how to see my struggles and pain - as gifts...and learn from them. She hoped I would pass on everything she had taught me growing up...to my children, so that when they grow up and have children of their own...part of her would still be undeniably present in the way they live their lives...and her original hope to be there with her Great Grandchildren (in heart) - would still be a reality.




I tried to think of one thing that gives me the most hope and had a really hard time until I remembered this poem I wrote about 4 years ago. The one thing that my Mother taught me growing up, was to be grateful for everything you have - even if its not what you originally wanted or hoped it to be...because there are some people that will never have even that much.




The one thing that gives me the most hope - is that Im working so hard to ensure that my own children grow up being grateful in this world that seems to force selfishness and self centeredness down their throats every chance it gets...by not giving them everything they want or ask for. Making them work for things. Save for things. Be thankful for second hand things instead of upset we couldn't get them brand new...happy about wearing thrift store clothing, playing with puzzles that have a piece or two missing because it used to belong to someone else that loved it once or being grateful about having an old rusty bike to ride instead of the $200 shiny new one they put on their birthday list...and sometimes they don't understand why I do these things and sometimes they get angry at me for refusing to give them what they want but when they are grown and stand before their own children who are asking for a new bike - when the neighbor offered up their child's old rusted one...I can only hope they say no to my grandchildren and pass down a little piece of my Mother to them...that is my hope. That she lives on through me, through my children...to stand face to face with her great grandchildren someday and speak her words of wisdom through the mouths of those she missed out on watching grow up..and that her greatest hope will be realized too.



UGLY BIKE

I want you to have an ugly bike.

One that you are ashamed of -
with rusted pedals and broken spokes
that will never make snapping noises
with playing cards woven between them
like the rest of the neighborhood kids.

I want you to have an ugly bike.

One that wobbles side to side
when you try to go faster -
like little old ladies in crosswalks,
arms full of groceries and arthritis
at busy intersections.

I want you to have an ugly bike.

One that throws you off
and gives you a forehead scab
when you push the brakes too hard,
like broken race horses
tired of being kicked in the side.

I want you to have an ugly bike.

A screaming banshee
when you turn bent handle bars.
I want it to wail and screech
a constant reminder to you
of how much it was loved - once.

Because I love you.

Because
I want you to know what it feels like
to be laughed at for things out of your control -
like kids that cant have bikes
....because their legs don’t work.

Because I want you to know
what its like to feel off balance -
like little boys in white walled rooms
that spend their days being held
over waste bins full of today’s
chemo reactions.

I want you to have an ugly bike.

Because I want you to learn
that ugly things can be beautiful,
and forgotten things
still have plenty of life in them -

Like car crash scarred cheekbones.
Like burn victim smiles,
and starving Vietnam Veterans stuck in
soiled sheets all day
while overweight nurses play cribbage
and order stuffed crust pizza
with three different dipping sauces.

I want you to have an ugly bike.

Because I want to see your eyes light up
when you get new plastic rainbow tassels
to hang from your rusty, bent handlebars
and watch you race off into the horizon
Grateful

Because I love you.

Photo and Poem Submitted by : Jen Owen - 2006

Submission Fifty-Nine

~Justin Hall

Submission Fifty-Eight

I've been trying to decide if I should share this or not for a while. I decided to go for it. In responce to this note I just want to do a shout out for Julie and tell her that she gives me hope. She did so much to help my family and I will always cherish her.

Dear Kashia,

I apologize for missing your Whispers of Hope deadline. I appreciated your calling my attention to what generates hope for me but did not create anything to reflect that appreciation. Well, that is not entirely accurate. I did not create any piece of art, but on multiple occasions experienced the creation of a spring in my step as I walked along pondering your question (dance?) and I generated ongoing lists of sources of hope as I wandered in the woods with my dog. I guess you could say that you inspired a ritual. Often my walks would begin with heavy thoughts on my mind. I would leave my office and drive to some path that would lead me into the mountains or along the river. I would be thinking of the sad stories that I had just heard or anticipating accounts of struggles I would soon be hearing. Then I would shift gears and contemplate, "What gives me hope?" Often the beginning of my list would encompass my current setting--arriving in the moment and noticing the warmth of the sun, the green of the plants, the sounds of birds calling and water running. (I am always better able to summon hope in warm weather.) Experiencing the present moment allows me to feel hopeful. And birds. My God, they can FLY! I participate in their flight when I watch them with all of my attention. I have a particular affinity for great horned owls. I feel hopeful because I see at least one almost every day. I experience a feeling of blessedness every time that I do. How does that happen?

List elements: flowers growing out of crevices in rocks, the river endlessly flowing, companion animals sharing unreserved affection for humans, rainstorms that subdue forest fires, lightning storms that cause forest fires, people whose trust has been betrayed maintaining open hearts, the easy smiles of children at play, music, my children's capacity for love, synchronicity, awareness that my being is bigger than my body, the infinite variety of clouds, altruism, cocoons, snakes shedding skin, knowing there a wolves in the woods, tears shed in knowing relief, babies, restful sleep...

I walked and discovered hope. I also discovered that every "list" included your name, dear Kashia. You give me hope with your generous heart, your concern for others, your devotion to your beautiful mother, your capacity for play and eye for beauty, your intelligence, your activism, your creativity. YOU give me hope. Thank you.

Love, Julie

Submission Fifty-Seven

Hope Whispers Sorbetto (White Peach & Basil Sorbetto)

3C peeled & diced white peaches
1/2 tsp fresh squeezed grapefruit juice
a whisper of basil (1 medium-sized leaf), finely chopped

Place all ingredients in blender & blend 'til velvety smooth. Place this puree into an ice cream maker & follow the manufacturers instructions. Once puree has reached desired consistency, place in the freezer to set 'til ready to serve. Garnish with fresh white peach slices and fresh basil chiffonade. Serve and eat.

Submitted & Created by: Mare Butterworth

A bit of irony. . .

So my mother and I were talking about her hope to walk again. My thoughts were channeling through my head at rates that would shoot me into space. But mainly I was thinking, "Shit." The neurologist gave her a glimmer of hope in a few simple words and immediately I started wondering what the consequences were going to be and if I was prepared to deal with them.

It's funny. I am the girl that is all about hope, all about promoting internal happiness. However, I am also the one wondering what the consequences are going to be of that doctor giving my mother a glimmer, a whisper of hope.

I guess my ideals were a bit different than what my mom had in mind. My hope was that my mom would one day be able to navigate the world in a wheel chair, discover true love, and be happy. Meanwhile her's maintain even more simplicity: to be able to feel like she is giving something to the world and to be mobile.

I love that she is optimistic about being able to walk again and just about life in general. She where's her heart on her sleeve and often times she ends up heart broken because of it. (Yes that remark is directed towards certain, very specific people, that shall remain nameless for this post.) I have seen the pain that loosing hope can cause my mother and to so many people. I have seen the vines of disappointment griping our throats, the terrors that permeate my household when dreams are lost. I have seen sadness and have felt pain and so has my mother. Every time she manages to come out a better person than before but the scars left because of the lack of hope and dreams run deep in my family. So even to this day, even after working so hard on this project I find myself challenging hope. The thing I live for. The thing we all live for in one way or another.

This is what I said to my mother during a conversation we had this evening on the subject of her walking again, "I can watch you loose your mobility, I can be there for you in anyway possible. But when it comes to you loosing hope that is the one thing that impacts be above all else. That is the one thing that is going to scar me for life. The one thing I will remember is the hope that you lost so many times. It will break my heart."

After saying that I realize that it grips the core of who I am. I search for hope so much because I have seen the consequences of loosing it. I have seen how it can destroy a person only to build them back up. So I challenge hope. I fight to give it to people but I challenge what it is. Is it good or bad? I have seen it make people's lives worth living, but loosing hope can be the same as loosing a will to live. I see so many ups and so many downs of this thing called "Hope."

I have come to the final conclusion : I think hope is like authority, it can be exactly what is needed but it also needs to be questioned.

Submission Fifty-Six

"Citizens demonstrating for the improvement of our nation and world
give me hope."

~Gary Wade, photographer & poet

Submission Fifty-Five

Landscape with block party DJ.

(In which the author samples a De La Soul Lyric.)

The crates, with the table, are lifted on tenuous arms.
Cadences and their memory transfigure
the concrete; dips, sways, arrested

by the thread of the needle. Shoulders
in the vinyl’s bell’s gradiated arc
lean, waver, their delta’s and darkened

corners spun in the basin of a table
and the sound. Stilled, for a beat-drawn
revolve of the wax in the crates." Five

days to work, one whole day to play
come on everybody, get your roller skates today"
In the crates, the DJ is a comforter.

Submitted & Written by : Robert Lashley

Submission Fifty-Four

Submitted by myself for my mother who finds this song hopeful.

Submission Fifty-Three

"Finding someone that is enough like me to understand gone through and not judge me, Alex, you give me hope." ~Ashleigh

I think that this quote goes perfectly with this submission.

"The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Submission Fifty-Two

"Food gives me hope." WWU Student