Issue 1:
Home
What is Home?
To me, "home" is a neighborhood, not just the place where I sleep.
In this series of three pieces, I've painted the cluttered backyards abutting my house and the corner store down the block. My own "home" is defined by its surroundings, sort of like the hollow space in a bird's nest. It wouldn't exist without the tangled branches.
They are all painted with leftover latex house paint on scraps of plywood salvaged from renovation projects (I had to build a scaffold to paint the exterior of my house.)
- Mark Thomas
"Queen Street Backyards" (24" X 32"), Latex house paint on scraps of salvaged plywood, Mark Thomas
"Wellington Street Backyards" (24" X 32"), Latex house paint on scraps of salvaged plywood, Mark Thomas
"Academy Street" (24" X 24") (bottom), Latex house paint on scraps of salvaged plywood, Mark Thomas
Home Hum
by Christopher Stolle
You thought
home
was a place
that didn’t move.
You expected
home
to be there
after a trip.
You hoped
your parents
would return
home
after work.
You prayed
no tragedy
would befall your
home.
And when
you moved away
you found
home
stuck to everything—
and the heart
the most.
Big World, Oil on Panel 20x24", Marion Reynolds
One Heart 8x10", Oil on Panel, Marion Reynolds
Clearance
by Sharisa Aidukaitis
I almost tell you to look out
as I reach for flour in the cupboard
and you twirl in your habitual
spot by my elbow—
and the warning is a new sensation
because you used to be so small that
whatever happened at my eye level
was irrelevant to you,
content in your world of
dance parties and lego cars—
but now you are thoughtlessly taller
than the first time we made
banana bread in this house
and on any unsuspecting morning
you might close that one-inch gap
between your head and the cupboard door
Hearth
by Jim Eigo
______
*
EAR
HEAR
HEART
HEARTH
EARTH
ART
*
______
Nicky in her garden, 30 x 25 cm, oil on board, Jen Maidment
Sunny-Side Up
by Michael Alcée
Some mornings,
we are co-conspirators.
You cooked, I placed
the egg on the couch,
while our seven-year-old
watches YouTube videos
to start the day.
Slid it beside
our little egg—no fanfare,
just business.
Hunger best served in absentia,
as if conjured, self-contained,
in this secret we all share.
Submission
by Michael Alcée
The window is open
for your work—
much like the world—
plays like minutes,
even if days and weeks.
We accept political haiku,
poems that fit
on a postcard—that’s all
the space we have.
We’d love to take more,
but only so many of us
listen, read, imagine
these days.
Are you surprised?
You already knew
men die miserably
for lack of what you’ve sent.
Trust us:
even if no one sees your words,
one day your sister
may send us the backs of envelopes,
fascicles of the facts we failed to heed—
those only you could seam.
ReCOLLAGES #ro, Digital collage, Laurene Bois-Mariage
Justified
by Johannah Simon
You told me that if you died before me, you would haunt me, so I don’t forget you or remarry, and with my deep fear of the supernatural, can you blame me for having the affair now, while you are still breathing?
The Black Unicorn
by Z. T. Corley
after Rachel Eliza Griffiths
after Audre Lorde
Even.
The.
Black.
Unicorn.
Cannot.
Res(is)t.
(In.)
America.
Bearish1, ink on paper- 21x14cm, Ori Aviram
Disease; Device (All provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities directly under the central government soil + blood transfusion bag, rack), Yang Lijie
People Fight Against Epidemic Disease, Installation / Steel pipe, barbed wire, mask write a hundred surnames, /70X70X90cm / 2020, Yang Lijie
Dandelion
by James Benger
We find ourselves in this mire,
muddling around
like we've always done,
because what else is there to do
when the world finds itself
in this painful shape.
The warning signs were always there,
banging on from the sidelines,
louder and louder,
and now it's not only in our face;
it is our face.
Our blood finds itself
anywhere but where it should be,
and we stick our heads in the dirt,
hoping a flower will finally spring up,
but the soil was poisoned
so long ago,
and the toxicity of our time
has been leeching silently outward,
killing any hope.
There is a little copse of trees
by the side of the highway,
candy wrappers and spent rubbers,
the exhaust fumes never leave the air.
A few feet into those trees,
there's a weed growing,
scraggly and forlorn.
But the wilting stalk holds up
the start of a flower,
and that is where it will begin.
On Same Shores
by Adria Libolt
“light falls through the huge windows/then they decide to try
love as a kind of heart softener” Grace Paley from “The Hard-Hearted Rich”
White caps this October morning kick
their feet fiercely on the Bay’s wind
gulls float on gusts shielded
by picture windows from
where I read in a warm robe.
Her car on the street, partly hidden by a large fir
except for the headlights
a car full of items, she moves and arranges,
sometimes but seldom with the child,
her hands busy, looking under the hood
or when someone walks by,
letting anyone know
she has something to do, a purpose.
Her boat in the storm, the car warming up
warming her, half an hour now
the car’s relentless motor’s idling drone
drowns the dinning racket, buses and trucks
rumbling by bumping,
snuffs out an emergency vehicle’s siren
some sounds can’t be unheard,
sometimes she’s slumped like grief
in her long hair’s curtain
that covers the steering wheel,
malingering on the streets,
loitering wary worrying work
waiting for a tap on the shoulder,
one time it's me, she assures me she's fine
and has work, her words send me away.
A wind of easy acquiescence reaches me,
She’s safer on the street.
waves crash in piercing persistence
lash me numb in burning salt spray’s beauty
She’s safer than in a shelter.
I want to be accepted
for any reason I’d be here.
'Silent Spring ', 60x70 cm oil on canvas, Juliet Mathes
Mater Alarmata. “Et expecto sirenam” (Mother Under Alarm. “And I Await the Siren”),Tempera, levkas, linden board, 20 × 30 cm, Olesia Herashchenko (Shambur)
Three elderly nuns flee an Austrian retirement home to return to their abandoned convent
by Damaris West
The sisters are homesick in their care home in the valley, without the mountains blue beyond the windows. They are not accustomed to the washing of their wrinkled bodies by uncaring hands. But there are three of them and they confer.
Two years of hiding under their tongues the pills intended to sedate them, and the plot is laid for their escape. They take only bare essentials. They are driven up the hairpin bends to their beloved castle in the clouds, peaks rising round them. God in the guise of grateful former pupils will provide.
We are not burglars, says one as a locksmith breaks the locks.
We are not squatters, says another as the services are partially restored.
I have been obedient all my life, says the third, until today.
I would rather die in a meadow, says one.
Under this apple tree, says another.
In my own bed, says the third.
Subsumption
by Samantha Lucia
Gaia
Obeisant One
Usurped by mortals
Ephemerally abides
Subsumption, Photography, 4003 × 2666 pixels, Samantha Lucia
Poppy Fields", gel print: acrylic on teabags, 5in x 5in, Anita Dime
Long Road Home
by Gerard Sarnat
…That he not busy being born is busy dying…
—Bob Dylan, It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)
After in so many other words
saying your forever good-byes
to dear places + beloved friends
down on SF Bay
during four hours
drive north couldn’t nearly manage
without eldest daughter at the wheel
as return for last time to family cabin
grandson of sorts
recently oy boy but now
a man calls to announce we’re great-parents.
Torus (41cm, 2025), Alchemy (41cm, 2025), and Vortex (48cm, 2025, mixed media on wood panels, Izabela Ołdak
Assimilation
by Adria Libolt
Short and dark, he stands close to a doorway
of Sonora’s Taqueria, nearly blending into rosy sandstone
of a Mexican eatery, walls aqua with yellow trim,
a cactus growing out of a stone sombrero at his feet,
his back leaning against what’s behind him
a concession to colorful Guadalajara.
Absorbing a northern world rushing by to work,
he dines on the culture’s frenzied mornings
as important as his kitchen’s tacos and burritos,
not imagining a century ago
the Dutch Boy Laundry across the street,
opening, an owner looking out,
stooping to clean the step, when the picture
above of the bobbed boy in blue on the façade,
a hint of Holland, had not yet faded
or bleached out in the sun.
In two generations
their backs behind the door,
intent on their operation,
washing, drying all the clothes
that have come together
to be cleaned.
except to break
for lunch at the new place,
with the alien accent
and order tortillas and tacos
with a Dutch brogue.
Face the Music, mixed media collage (acrylic paint, oil pastel, HVS paper, magazine cutouts), 23,5cm × 15cm, Metalhead Melankolis
Water Music 53, 80, 81, photographed with Kodachrome 25 film and converted to digital images, Roger Camp
Capes Gossip about Retirement
by Ted Guevara
Batman & Robin
If it's golf, the sand traps look too much like litter.
We defecate like ladies at a beauty salon,
mind you. We’re not only duo at night.
we’re duo for all time. He’s looking
for life insurance. I don’t know why.
He can buy his death twenty times,
and Alfred’s and mine, and that maniacal
Catwoman’s. Does super-indulged
muscle lose intensity over time?
No, it doesn’t. We’re still slick on the page,
even if our god had succumbed due
to human years. He should really think
about a wardrobe change. He’s so TV.
Houses_of_Knowledge_Malokas_Mambeadero_4_Elders, Houses_of_Knowledge_Malokas_Mambeadero_Knowledge_Benche_Pensadero, and Houses_of_Knowledge_Yage_Malokas_Gathering_of_Knowers_Taitas_and_Aprentices, digital art, Sergio Yepes "Zurya"
Last This, Last That
by Joyce Peseroff
Last morning for scones on the porch.
Last farm stand corn and peppers after
last week’s frost. Last headline before
selling wicker loveseat and rocker:
the blond assassin held a gun
to his wife’s head, forced her
to decapitate her dead lover, I read
to a dozen wasps knocking against
the screen. I’ve knocked their gray
empty amphorae from the eaves
for the last time—strips as thin
as birch bark, fibers chewed and glued
to last through a Nor’easter. My own
dead wood: harvest table, cane-back
chairs with rush seats packed, carved
chickadee and duck decoys crated.
Row of sugar maples whose leaves
like scarlet palms clutched at aortic roots,
pruned. Rooms we slept and shouted in,
shaded and shut up. Our last goodbye:
a frown, a sneeze. Last gravel spit
backing onto the road. House with good
bones, time for another to twist
into the driveway and turn the key.
Between the Gaps, photography, Cameron J Laing,
Friday’s Reflections, photography, Cameron J Laing
Thank you for reading Hum Magazine.