005. VERTIGO.
new feelings and voices.
Welcome to ISSUE 005: VERTIGO 🌀
The last full moon of 2023 has set and with that, we find ourselves here together, wrapped in the frigid embrace of January, awaiting the new moon. The transition to a new year feels like a liminal space, full of possibility and emotion. It's a time to find your footing, maybe reinvent yourself yet again, set goals or dreams or hopes for the year to come. Maybe you’re feeling a sense of peace during these slow, sleepy days that fall after the new year, or maybe you find yourself anxious and unsteady, unsure of what this year has in store for you. Whatever it may be that you are feeling, we hope you find some solace here within the words, stories, and art of ISSUE 005: VERTIGO.
This issue, Briana Soler reflects on womanhood in an essay about Nora Ephron, and Ben Wignall searches for deeper meaning with trippy visual poetry. Our poets are lovesick and torn this month, with Emenel Ohsea writing, “I’m not afraid of missing you out loud,” and Ava Mack musing on shocking, yet not uncommon, moments of love. Vivian Rienhardt’s poetry explores “The fragile state, of poised time,” which pairs well with Kelly Anne, whose poem Sleigh Bells lends this issue its title: “The vertigo comes on gradually like the brain tolerating pink powdery pills.” Finally, Irina Tall contributes another set of stunning visual art, and Jenny Edwards’ Sweet Home reminds us that maybe damnation isn’t so bad a fate after all. As we transition into this new year together, we are reminded of T.S Eliot’s words,
“For last year's words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice.”
We hope you find something here for you, amongst this year's new feelings and voices.
| co-editor
Sweet Home by Jennifer Edwards [Poetry]
Equality and Did You Know Memories Ride on Subcutaneous Highways? by Emenel Ohsea [Poetry]
The thing about Nora by Briana Soler [Non-Fiction; Culture]
Your Profile in Blue by Ava Mack [Poetry]
White birds over a stream of human tears and Fish that look like people by Irina Tall [Visual Art]
Ill-Fated by Vivian Reinhardt [Poetry]
Sleigh Bells and Hot Gun by Kelly Anne [Poetry]
aibohphobia and Deep Meaning by Ben Wignall [Poetry]
Sweet Home by Jennifer Edwards | Instagram | TikTok
My pace is steady as I pass the dark mouths of alleyways and boarded up shop fronts of my hometown. The gaze of the serpent-eyed thing with cigarette breath following each step. Chesty coughs and empty bottles in every window and we all seek absolution in this place. The air smells like grease and rotten dreams and I wonder when it will be my turn to leave. I stray from salvation with each setting of the sun. If only I could bite the apple and be exiled.
Because sometimes to be damned is to be set free.
Equality by Emenel Ohsea
I bought a plane ticket
To India
Not because I wanted to see India,
because I wanted to see you.
And I’m not afraid of
missing you out loud.
---
You couldn’t even take the train
To tell me
You won’t miss me any longer
Because you couldn’t face me.
You allow fear
To prevent you from Truth.
Did You Know Memories Ride on Subcutaneous Highways? by Emenel Ohsea
The Mediastinum keeps
Heart, but this is a lie;
perfect middles are fake.
the heart’s shape
is a sad traffic cone
kicked over since birth.
All blood on spin cycle
through the heart’s chambers.
The autorhythmicity
of reading beside you,
making chai, winter walks,
shit talking dictators—
Half cup of memories
Get filtered through the kidneys
Every single minute
and new rhythms
less tied to your heart’s pace
erupt like fanfares.
The thing about Nora by Briana Soler | Instagram | Substack
It was November 2, and I thought of Nora Ephron. Without fail, every time the temperatures start to drop and I get to take my sweaters out of my storage bins, I think of her. I was sixteen when I fell in love with the movie When Harry Met Sally. I can’t even remember how many times I rewatched it, in the comfort of my bedroom on my laptop, eventually memorizing the script. I was young, of course I was a huge hopeless romantic, and honestly I still am, especially when I put on a Nora movie. The truth is, I just want a great kiss on New Year’s Eve as everyone is counting down at a party. I just want a Christmas tree that me and my love interest have picked out that we drag home through the snow as we bicker and laugh. What’s more profound than love?
Nora Ephron has all the makings of being one of my favorite writers: she’s a Taurus, I'm a Taurus. Her moon sign is a Pisces, my moon sign is a Pisces. She loves New York, I love New York. She understood the point of blogs, I have a blog. She says things we have all thought of at one time or another, almost so mundane that no one thinks to write them down, but Nora did. I sometimes get the feeling there’s a general disdain for writers who blog. Or that some writers think only unserious writers blog, but as Nora argues,
“One of the most delicious things about the profoundly parasitical world of blogs is that you don’t have to have anything much to say. Or you just have to have a little tiny thing to say. You just might want to say hello. I’m here. And by the way. On the other hand. Nevertheless. Did you see this? Whatever. A blog is sort of like an exhale. What you hope is that whatever you’re saying is true for about as long as you’re saying it. Even if it’s not much.”
When you’re young you don’t realize how profound a recipe is, how important it is to hear stories of other women failing at hosting, or how comforting it is to hear about women aging. Or maybe it has nothing to do with being young but everything to do with the misogyny deeply ingrained in our society. Nora writes intimately about what it means to be a woman, from breast size to periods, to cooking, to sex and love, to divorces, to sexism in the workplace, you name it. These sorts of stories have always been brushed off as unimportant. Nora has been known to write about what she feels, and her experiences, even if they hurt people along the way. But don’t we write for ourselves anyway? When Nora wrote her only novel, Heartbreak, about her second husband cheating on her while pregnant, it was controversial. But Nora grew up in a progressive household with a mother who worked when most mothers didn’t. Her mother was a screenwriter, and she taught Nora, “Everything is copy.” Our hardships and heartbreaks can even be turned into novels and movie adaptations starring Meryl Streep.
Nora often gets grouped into chick-lit, dubbed as an unserious writer simply because she writes about what it means to be a woman. But she knew the importance of women’s stories, or maybe even just her own story. This is not to say Nora was the first woman to battle critics on what is acceptable to write. Look at Jane Austen, Colette, and Virginia Woolf—sadly, the list goes on. But the thing about Nora was she was unapologetically herself. She was funny and had a sharp wit to her. She was a journalist first and was able to combine humor with political opinion.
But I must confess, I love that her work feels like a club to which only other women are privy. She feels like an honor, like a rite of passage; to be a woman is to read Nora Ephron. And I sort of love that men don’t get to have her. I don’t know anyone else who makes me as excited to be a woman as Nora, she just gets it. She ended her commencement address to the Wellesley Class of 1996 (her alma mater) by saying,
“It’s slightly easier for [women] to shift, to change our minds, to take another path. Yogi Berra, the former New York Yankee who made a specialty of saying things that were famously maladroit, quoted himself at a recent commencement speech he gave, ‘When you see a fork in the road,’ he said, ‘take it.’ Yes, it's supposed to be a joke, but as someone said in a movie I made, don’t laugh, this is my life, this is the life many women lead: two paths diverge in a wood, and we get to take them both. It’s another of the nicest things about being women; we can do that. Did I say it was hard? Yes, but let me say it again so that none of you can ever say the words, ‘Nobody said it was so hard.’ But it’s also incredibly interesting. You are so lucky you have that life as an option. Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women.”
Despite the hardships I have always loved being a woman, and to have women trailblazers like Nora who have lit the way inspires me. Her legacy lives on and will continue to do so because romance and being a woman are nothing to be laughed at except when it’s funny.
Your Profile in Blue by Ava Mack | Website | Instagram
These moments in love are not uncommon
but are as shocking
as the blueness of your eye in profile
and how the light shines pale yellow
right through them
into mine
dark green and greedy
the light enters them
never leaves
and dies.
You’re always giving me these gifts
maybe you don’t even realize
you’re generous
that this is my favorite view of you:
the right side of your face
looking forward to something
you don’t know yet
open, expectant, waiting
your profile in blue
goodness,
how I’ll remember you.
White birds over a stream of human tears by Irina Tall | Instagram | Instagram
Fish that look like people by Irina Tall
Ill-Fated by Vivian Reinhardt | Instagram
The fragile state,
of poised time.
Where the lucky meet the unlucky,
where the skies are cleared from clouds,
where the sense of being lost is
intertwined with those of being found.
Where the draw comes to an end,
where the struggle meets the serendipity,
where the world freezes and
the roots ravel in spirals— interlocking the fibers of two beings,
still lit eyes shine upon the void of nature
and breaths become quiet with the wind between leaves.
In the burning frenzy,
of voices clawing
of blurring lines
of running streams
of shattering peace,
there lie the doubtful loves of the caught.
Stuck between the Fire and the Water,
the pull of the opposing forces,
forcing through gravitation into
seas of celestial bodies coating the azure,
there lie thoughts of the far away oasis,
where they step toe to toe.
Where they sketch the line,
of where they will collide.
Where the man in the moon searches
from earth to sky,
for his sun’s ricocheting light
casting center stage for their distant stars dance.
Sleigh Bells by Kelly Anne | Instagram
“How are you feeling?” the shrink asked.
I compare my insides to a muted trumpet
“Have you ever listened to Closing Time…1973?”
That’s how.Doc gazes at me obtusely
—
The vertigo comes on gradually like the brain tolerating pink powdery pills
Sometimes I listen to the French horn play again & again until I am lucid and mouthing the words
It’s not lost on me that I haven’t missed anyone like this since 2014
The year that shattered time’s watch
___
“You can hear sleigh bells in God Only Knows” she said earnestly.
“That song makes my eyes sting.”
Precisely, I knew.—
Doc carries on about triggers
How they illuminate the senses
How music makes unsuspecting time travelers out of us
Doesn’t it?
Hot Gun by Kelly Anne
Looking in the mirror
I held my own gaze
Like a gunslinger anticipating a fast draw
But this isn’t a Western &
I refuse to be the understudy
of my lifeMagic hands quicken coz
I am the Cowboy with a hot gun.
aibohphobia by Ben Wignall | Substack
Deep Meaning by Ben Wignall
I’ve written this poem
But I don’t know what it means
Maybe it’s something romantic
Or maybe it’s obscene
I’ve sat down at my keyboard
And let my fingers play
They tapped and wrote this poem
I think that it’s okay
So I sit and read this poem
I don’t know what it means
Maybe it’s something novel
But it’s probably just routine
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