Art

Zoonotic Disease Quilt
S. Heinlein

2020. 45 x 45 inches. Recycled denim, shirts, and scrap fabrics; pearl cotton thread; buttons. Hand-quilted.

My Zoonotic Disease Quilt was hand-stitched from old clothes from neighbors and friends, while the covid pandemic raged around the world.

The Zoonotic Disease Quilt takes on a dark subject with a humorous tone. Quilts traditionally appeal to our need for historic continuity, warmth, and intimacy; however, this “baby” quilt features sixteen adorable animals and the diseases they transmit to humans. It poses the following questions: Would you want to cover your child with it, despite its “contagious” nature? Are you willing to recognize the destructive cycle that causes zoonotic diseases due to the abuse of animals and natural resources?

The zoonotics quilt was selected for inclusion in a 2021 group show entitled The New Normal, Working Through Quarantine at Payne Gallery, Moravian College, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Poem

Now
T. Paris

I am transfixed.

Pierced by the shrike’s thorns,

Alive and waiting.

Art

Amabie
G. Garcia-Fenech

2020. 12 x 12 inches. Acrylic on linen.

I painted this on March 29, 2020, when NYC became the epicenter of the pandemic. We heard ambulances day and night. The subject is an Amabie, a figure from Japanese folklore believed to fight epidemics.

Poem

Get off of my face
G. Coppola

nighttime people come in

& out of the bathroom they

say the same thing again and

again slide onto the bar

buying you rounds of

syrup that you keep in your

glass until the ice melts

this bar has become New

York City & they keep

talking hearts caked in

dust beating so fast

are you listening?

crushing the night with

stories they can’t

remember the next

afternoon you keep

saying the wrong thing

O the eyes going

somewhere else god

won’t get off of

your face & your friends are

gone death over a

year vials of little poison

dropped in the soup so in

the end you are grey &

ugly to one another it’s

the quick slice when you

realize that he will

rape you if you let him in the

house people come & go

& buy you drinks

you wish you still had

a friend who wanted to

wear your clothes but

now you’re grown & someone’s

wife this little

pussy so plump

throbs with no poem to

take it for a ride

Sound

Stay for the Ride
Magritte & Rosen

“Stay For The Ride” is an excerpt from the full-length original folk-rock musical Safe Hands, which tells the story of how, in 1950s New Jersey, the lives of five women become inextricably intertwined through their involvement with a secret clinic at the edge of town.

A moth flexes its wings and considers the viewer, probing.
C. Halley

Guest Editor: C. Halley

Make art and/or writing. Send it to [email protected]. We will publish submissions in this ezine or in our first limited edition handbound chapbook.