About Place Journal

Bird kite in flight. 'Color in Wind' by Zohreh Zadbood.

The artwork for the section 'Succession: Young Authors & Artists' was done by Iranian photographer, storyteller, and poet Zohreh Zadbood.

➡️ The piece is titled 'Color in Wind,' in our latest edition. aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...

🔗 Discover more of her creative work at zohrehzadbood.com

Joseph Laurro – On Freedom – About Place Journal

The cover artwork for the latest edition of About Place Journal is titled 'A song for you/Flight' and was created by Joseph Laurro. Laurro holds a BFA from SUNY New Paltz and an MA from Brooklyn College, and teaches art in NYC public schools. #LitMag #Art aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...

Lesley Wheeler – On Freedom – About Place Journal

Thanks to @aboutplacejournal.bsky.social for another great issue! Here are two new ones from me: aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...

Chris A Smith & David R Kopacz – On Freedom – About Place Journal

Chris Smith & I have an article in About Place
"Freedom & Free Doom: Reflections on Agency, Doom, and Hope"
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...
@aboutplacejournal.bsky.social
#freedom #doom #hope #agency
@soulinmedicine.bsky.social

On Freedom – About Place Journal “On Freedom” features poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, visual art, video, and hybrid works that question what freedom means in our turbulent world. The pieces in this issue explore freedom's dual...

The fall issue of About Place Journal, On Freedom is out today!! The poetry, prose, visual art speak to so many of the freedoms we see, feel and include in our hopes.

➡️ Issue Eds: DJ Lee & Michael McDermott with Assistant Eds: Rachel Sanchez & Jacob Klaung
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/on-fr...

Military personnel. Photo from Unsplash.

When I stand before
my mirror, ready

to attack my tangled locks,
I see dozens of well-groomed
soldiers with purple picks

stowed safely in kit bags
as they attack. I see
the enemy striking back.

From 'Combing My Hair,
Operation Desert Storm'

- Jill Barrie

aboutplacejournal.org/issues/caref...

There are times when I fear the distance of the past
& sit with the collapse. Forget who I am
while in an office too far above the soil.
I sit at a desk writing words – insisting
to find meaning elsewhere on a page

- simóne j banks

aboutplacejournal.org/issues/caref...

Mita Mahato

How do our movements create resonance(s) between us? asks issue editor Dr. Mita Mahato.

➡️Resonance. I am thinking about insects. Their buzzing, winging, rubbing, clicking, scurrying fill my ears. At its most fundamental, “resonance” means sound again.

aboutplacejournal.org/issues/caref...

Trees with sun shining through. Image from Pixabay.

-Our Table - Orchestra - Marulas

Three poems from 'body,' a #poetry manuscript by Erica Waters "challenges 'myths of exceptional individualism as constructed within colonial and capitalist contexts.'”

Waters is an Assistant Teaching Professor at CSU.
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/caref...

My Poem Commemorating 9-11

poems.anniefinch.com/occasions/th...

People around a dinner table. Photo by Zach Reiner on Unsplash.

We’re already all here, the lot of us,
more than the sum of our parts,

oneness not sameness, diversity
that spins. Shared meal persists,

even when we trust too much in knives,
even when we break dishes, spill wine
__

From 'Our Table'
by Erica Waters

aboutplacejournal.org/issues/caref...

Storm clouds. Photo by Paul Zoetemeijer on Unsplash.

Shelter from the Storms: Quiet Collaborations

Renga 1
Storm Clouds
2/2/24

Storm clouds loom heavy
across distant horizons —
ominous portents.
Wind and lightning fly fearsome
as bountiful rain destroys.

______

➡️ Dana JS Washington & Janet N. Ryan

aboutplacejournal.org/issues/caref...

Grapes. Photo from Pixabay.

Mounds of fruit melt in the tired Friday afternoon,
and our feet enliven,
dance on fermentation grapes,
bubbling juices coloring
the toes warm,
yellow colors;
the soles yelp
like child-play

From 'An Ode on Wine Grapes' by Austin Thornton

aboutplacejournal.org/issues/caref...

Nancy Takacs is an award winning poet and the author of eight collections of poetry.

➡️ Discover more of her work in the latest edition of our literary journal @aboutplacejournal.bsky.social.

Blue Beetle. Photo by James Wainscoat on Unsplash

I am like this beetle,
tentative and a little blue,
or is that the reflection of sky
on her back or is it
the reflection of my cup
as she wanders toward
my warm hand?

From 'A Whispering Beetle' by Nancy Takacs

aboutplacejournal.org/issues/caref...

Person looking intently.

"Shot in stop motion after Randall’s motion was stopped due to hip surgery fall 2020, this work reveals and revels in the “broken” body, a body replete with the markings of its 40-year career in the dance trenches..."

Candy Dish, in our latest edition.

aboutplacejournal.org/issues/caref...

Jocelyn Casey-Whiteman – The More-Than-Human World – About Place Journal

"my half millimeter of being has evolved for centuries
to withstand the prodding of this place, has preserved under the pressure

of even the lowest ocean."

#TodaysPoem #poetry
Tardigrade by Jocelyn Casey-Whiteman (2023 @aboutplacejournal.bsky.social) tinyurl.com/4trran8m

"Throughout the process of co-creating Reckoning and Release: The Blessing of the Fleets by Auset, I came to understand the profound need to evolve beyond a Eurocentric model of the goddess."

➡️ Discover more about this collaboration in the latest edition of @aboutplacejournal.bsky.social.

Bundle of sticks on a rock.

Reckoning and Release: The Blessing of the Fleets by Auset, A Ritual Performance Meditation in the Kemetic Month of Parmuti

- by Lucia Pavone (Sciarpa Paxton) & Desiree Mwalimu-Banks

Watch & listen ➡️ in the latest edition of About Place Journal.

aboutplacejournal.org/issues/caref...

Drawing of crickets by Sarah Nelson.

In the stories my people tell, crickets are the old ones who stay up all night recounting the whole history of the world. The chirping of crickets, our mystics say, is the first sound you hear after you leave your body.

From ‘Uhini Nēnē Pele by K. Nuernberger
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/caref...

BIO: Lisa Novick is a grant writer & educator who was on LA Mayor Garcetti’s Biodiversity Expert Council & Urban Ecosystems Working Group & outreach & edu. dir. at @theodorepayne.bsky.social…Her writing’s in @aboutplacejournal.bsky.social, @skyislandjournal.bsky.social, @wildroofjournal.bsky.social…

Line drawing beings, spinning

If I were a winter crane fly, my blood would have antifreezing chemical properties. Should light flicker across the eyes at the top of my head, suggesting the air is sunny and just above freezing, something would come alive in me.

From 'Umwelten'

aboutplacejournal.org/issues/caref...

The Song We’re Singing by Karen Elias. Abstract colours with spaces for poems and images.

What is that song you’re singing into my poem,
each note dripping paint the hue of mourning?
Some poems are a tear-splattered canvas. Everyone
has an image or note that lures them home,
that recreates their own joyful evening or sad morning
into song.

aboutplacejournal.org/issues/caref...

For my afternoon friends. 👇🏻

Jack B. Bedell - pictura journal Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University.

I did a quick interview to go with the poem, too. 👇🏻 https://picturajournal.com/interviews/jack-b-bedell-interview/

Title: Care to Reconsider by Karen Elias. Abstract flames with the word 'care' repeated on blank pages of a book.

Wildfires are blazing. Care
to reconsider where? Paper mountains. Paper forests. Handle with care
the paper lives in paper houses that are not yours but could be.

From 'Collaboration of Poetry and Images' by Karen Elias & Marjorie Maddox. #Poetry #Poems #LitMag
aboutplacejournal.org/issues/caref...

There's still time to submit your #Poetry #Prose and #Art to the next issue of our literary journal ➡️ @aboutplacejournal.bsky.social. We invite you to join us in the radical act of creative freedom, to challenge constraint & to imagine liberation in both bold & quiet ways. Submissions due August 1.

Three photo collage of stream, river, waves. Title: Waters of Possibility by Karen Elias

With her grandmother,
the young girl wades waist-high
into a stream sparkling with possibility.
It is not enough to fry the fish and serve it
on the special dish shaped like a trout.
She needs to be part of the scene...

From 'Stream, Lake, Ocean'

aboutplacejournal.org/issues/caref...

'Ballota- (Black) Horehound'

by Petra Kuppers and Orchid Tierney is an astonishing poem that creates a new meaning to form and storytelling.

Excerpt: "shout in spores that it is time again unroll your deep taproot anchor, you and me, to make a home..."

aboutplacejournal.org/issues/caref...

Natural textures. From the book cover of Traces: Sand & Snow in Symbiosis

This is the story of how two scientists, separated by an ocean of water and a chasm of culture, came to collaborate on the creation of an earth-centered anthology of poetry that evoked their love of distant, but not-so-different, homelands.

aboutplacejournal.org/issues/caref...