GAS Featured Artist and Poet: Cierra G. Rowe

Cierra G. Rowe is an artist, painter and poet. As an artist, her work is unapologetic, carrying depth and raw expression. As a poet, her writing holds the same but in a more clarified way; being pure and unfiltered. She is firm in her belief that art, in all forms, should not be dictated by audience but rather that it must remain as an unbound act of expression. 

MOONSHINE

by Cierra G. Rowe

I will fight it tooth and nail
And in the end it won't prevail.
Candles, sunshine, stars and lamps;
The darkness won't get through.

Not used to coping in this way,
Nowhere to run from this pain
but deep inside I hear a voice;
''The darkness won't get through.''

I'm writing this to try and show,
try to mend, try to grow,
It's so hard to let go.
The darkness won't get through.

Around me, your presence swirls;
Your smile and your soft curls,
Your spirit in the skies and moon,
The darkness won't get through.

I know you never went away.
I can see you on some days.
I can hear you too.
The darkness won't get through.

Your strength trickled down to me,
Through time and birth and agony.
I'm standing and I feel you.
The darkness won't get through.

I will fight this punch by kick.
I won't let the sadness stick.
''Lord have mercy'', it's so hard.
The darkness won't get through.

On sunny days, you're around.
On rainy days, you're around.
I know you're not gone.
The darkness won't get through.

We keep in touch in special ways,
from time to time on random days.
It's not enough but that's ok.
The darkness won't get through.

Take a beating and learn to fight.
learn to crawl then learn to thrive.
Laugh and cry and dry those eyes,
The Darkness won't get through.

I really miss you.

Artist Bio: 

I grew up in a sleepy, southern, one-stoplight town. Having always been naturally artistic — as I matured, so too did my closeness to painting. This inherent passion has always compelled me to paint without boundaries. My art is driven by a complex combination of emotion, sensitivity and vulnerability. Speaking through brushstrokes, my paintings are filled with depth and meaning. As an outsider artist and someone who is intensely consumed by her work, I have not sought to fit anyone's mold. This firm rejection of ideals and modern archetypes is influenced by fragments of my background. Throughout adolescence, I dealt with private anxieties and a burgeoning awareness of reality, in solitude. I had no intention of seeking approval to exist or permission to become an artist. This seclusion and rebellion led to me throwing myself into painting and poetry. As an artist, the most important thing to me is remaining authentic. My earliest art has paved the way for present compositions. Throughout painting, I have often embraced change; shedding what was for what is; allowing my art to narrate metamorphosis. I dislike the exactness of forms and I find solace through painting things in my own way. I have no control in how viewers interpret my paintings. Most works of art have their mysteries; It is stimulating to feel as though you understand them — through gazing into them.

Insatiable

Spirit

 

Cannibal

GAS Featured Poet/Artist: Lorie Greenspan

Lorie Greenspan is a poet and artist residing in southeast Florida trying to keep herself and her plants cool during the broiling summer of 2024. Her poetry, including her video poems, have been featured previously in GAS as well as other anthologies and poetry journals. You can see her art on Instagram: @loriegreenspan; her video poems are available on YouTube: @LemonDropPoet.

A tribute to those who climb

Three Studies From Inside The Room 

While Plants Try To Grow in Florida

When The Heat Index is 109 

 

1.

If I were a garden I’d grow

texture out my ears, fluffy velvet

nostrils welcoming shade

my arms would be full hydrangea

a crush of petals

dried out just as pretty, dried out

still strong enough to stand solid in a vase

my face a daisy

my legs tall foxglove

curvy stripes of floppy green

dead all too soon

free of things that annoy.

We all have those flecks

we’d like to pick off ourselves but can’t, our arms

don’t extend that far, remember,

we’re hydrangea puffs,

soft as bubbles             afraid to be crushed.

 

 

 

 2.

Nothing as green ever breathed here.

Clamped tight, trapped in prison

wanting for water

grumpy from air-conditioned air

full-on fists seeking their space

then music floats through walls, and

makes their days steady in pulses

of rhythm light, enter

Bach’s soothing caress

these plants on stands

should thrive in summer

now behind shades cutting the sun’s glare

ungiving these walls but the melody of the violin

takes the air and plumps each breath, if only summer

were as forgiving

if soldiers could hear such music

there would be no war, instead

orchestras on battlefields

boots marching toward Bach

and his violin

in heat of summer, loneliness and anger

a riot of heady fists, all leaves await their time,

oxygen fingers and bayonets, not captured but four walls for a cell –

music calms

green nothings. Wait here, breathe.

 

 

 

3.

The bird

is a scream

from a mouth

darting

diving

from the light

pole,

who bleeps

at light

when they

need to see?

Who cries

in birdsong

when life

isn’t hard enough?

If birds

were vowels

they’d be

never-ending

oooooooooooooos . . .

a sound

the heart

makes

when

it’s done

screaming

GAS Featured Poet/Artist: LaWanda Walters

 LaWanda Walters is the author of Light Is the Odalisque, which was published in 2016 by Press 53 in its Silver Concho Poetry Series. New poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Southern Review, Poetry, The Georgia Review, The Ekphrastic Review, and Live Encounters Poetry & Writing. She received Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards in 2020 and 2024. She is also a painter who once worked with acrylics but now concentrates on digital painting via Procreate on her iPhone and iPad. She lives in Cincinnati.

What Glass Is

 

Glass shows itself through what

it holds, as in a Janet Fish still life—

four old-fashioned tumblers like

the ones in restaurants for water,

 

before you had to say you’d like

water with the menu. Here the water

fills up the almost-invisible glasses

set on a glass table outside, somewhere.

 

The bottoms of the glasses kiss

their upside-down likenesses

that swim up to the table’s surface

as fast as starving koi. The glasses 

 

might obscure the road that goes somewhere,

surrounded by woods on either

side, except that we see the scene,

the road disappearing, again and again,

 

a swirl of green and ochre, repeating

concentric circles of lemon-lime grass, indigo

sky, fir trees bending in the water, filling

the curvy tumbler, tumbling the view.

 

 

Composition

 

balances, the way it settles the wings

of the shoulder blades, how my mind becomes

another thing, a composition in greasy oils,

which takes time, which allows no fussing over,

 

the mind’s surplus of feeling in need of the blade

of the palette knife, scraping off the errors

I was fussing over for too long, muddying

what should be clear—taking time to clean

 

the excess of color with a palette knife

so it has time to dry in the sun, so the trees

show in their clear tones of green and brown,

so I don’t drive off into spinning mud,

 

so the sun dries the trees in their perfect being,

so you’ll see what I mean, meant all the time.

 

Screen Porch

 

Still tangled together in bed, we keep on talking

like water overlapping, small slaps

at a blue pool’s edge, like riders 

walking their horses home,

like two people rocking on the porch swing,

loath to go in to the bright yellow light.

 

The Renaissance of Grandparenthood

 

Grandparents, if they’re lucky,

get to go down the lane again,

make up stories, say “Let’s play like

we’re pirates with the costume earrings,

 

now we’re princes, now we’re home again,”

get to see what once they had no time

to see—how lost earrings make a pirate’s

loot—and know their child should be painted by

 

a Mary Cassatt. They see, this time around,

the curves that made Giotto’s cherubim,

the child in the painting all of them

at any time, and those who sit in court

 

should recognize Giotto’s cherubim

from a blue mosaic sky—gold and earth tones

seen and shown with awe, any court aware

of a chessboard that is garden, toads and all.

 

 

Two Seasons: An Elegy for My Second Husband

 

In the video 

your daughter posted last night,

Tokyo petals

 

loiter, swirl, circle—

a blizzard like a slow dance

of cherry blossoms

 

in the lantern light,

like that night in early spring 

I left you at Good

 

Sam and it started

to sleet as I was driving.

I was terrified

 

until the flurries 

distracted me. Like flowers 

riding the headlights

 

accompanying

my journey home to our kids,

escorted by snow.

 

 

GAS Featured Poet/Artist: Eric Brunet

 Eric Brunet is a poet, photographer, graphic artist, and satirist. He lives in the Mission Valley of western Montana and, despite recent mobility challenges due to a hereditary neurological disease, continues to venture into the wilderness. His photography has been featured in various galleries and magazines. His artwork, poetry, and satire has been published in a variety of literary journals and online sites. 

Rise

Catch Yourself

Not being able to stop thinking is an affliction,

entirely normal, and the reason for sleepless nights

in contemplation of glaring algebra teachers

and pink horizons speckled with approaching drones.

Better to be a wailing child stopped instantly

by a perfectly-arced dirt bomb to the head.

I grew up with two boys who once shot each other 

in the ass with a shotgun just to gauge severity. 

They were living in the now, breathless with laughter. 

The greater part of human pain is unnecessary.

You'll need to do some remodeling. Rip up that red shag carpet

and put in a skylight. The steps to meditation should not be fuzzy

or poorly lit. Wear shoes with good traction.

The true nature of space and time is slippery.

As children, we learned the nuances of a canoe

because we didn't want to drown. As adults, we own

canoes that collect dust in the rafters of cluttered garages.

Like drunken archeologists, we prop ladders

at impossible angles to retrieve relics from a reckless past.

Catch yourself says the guru in you. Stop thinking

for a few moments and breathe. No mind. Just breath.

The universe will never say It's not you, it's me. 

Unmarked Snow

Badminton In A Tempest

I should inform you I am armed,

anodynes have not slowed me.

Here’s the thing: it’s dark.

Remedies have been a distraction.

Those things that seemed harmless

are now fully in charge. I bend

backwards to the river, to wash

my face or drown. It started

with wordplay, a dictionary fetish.

After years of obsession, entire cities

have been reduced to confetti. 

Thoughts are birds in a windstorm,

swirls of feather unseen in the gloom,

announcing themselves by touching your face.

Kicking Horse

Sacred Path of the Warrior

Had a case of the Mondays so I caught a fish

with my bare hands, chased a tornado,

and rode on the world’s biggest rollercoaster.

Next day: bungee jumping from a hot air balloon,

Tuesday is spaghetti night and roller disco.

Arrested for stealing a motorcycle on hump day

but posted bail and saw both a solar and lunar eclipse.

Learned Swahili on Thursday, got a tattoo,

and went skinny dipping at the aquarium.

Built a catapult on Friday and shouted “Drinks are on me!”

at a dive bar on the wrong side of the tracks.

Spent most of Saturday creating a cult

and experiencing weightlessness. Milked a cow.

Sunday was a day of rest under the vast silence

of stars, most of them unnamed.  

Last Mile