by tina gross
it’s not a phase
(a library catalog “browse title” found poem)
It’s not a myth : it exists : find it
It’s not a myth, it’s our 55th McKinley Hi class of ’29
It’s not a one man thing
It’s not a one person thing
It’s not a parade, it’s a march!
It’s not a perfect world
It’s not a perfect world, but I’ll take it
It’s not a personal computer anymore
It’s not a pink slip, it’s a blank page
It’s not a plane, it’s not a girl’s name, it’s a book about art
It’s not a plot to drive you crazy
It’s not a plot to drive you crazy: a tool box
It’s not a president’s business to catch flies : proverbial rhetoric in presidential inaugural addresses
It’s not a pretty picture
It’s not a pretty site
It’s not a private matter anymore
It’s not a problem
It’s not a project, it’s a policy
It’s not a prop
It’s not a pull, it’s a push
It’s not a puzzle
It’s not a question
It’s not a question of dogs or babies
It’s not a question of doing or not doing it – it’s a question of how to do it
It’s not a question of if
It’s not a question of sex
It’s not a question of time
It’s not a quilt until it’s quilted
It’s not a real wedding
It’s not a realization if it were always there
thermogram
The words And you were there!
only occur when someone’s relating a dream.
You are, and I was.
You dreamed I was in
labor and I passed you
my phone to watch
a thermal image video
of a tree being felled.
Where it had stood
an infrared oak shape
glowed for a second,
as if each leaf had
raised the air temperature
in its own image.
Later we call our botanist
daughter to ask if this
tree heat ghost
could actually happen.
She yawns. I can’t see how.
As a child, she would
lick an ice cream cone
the way a cat cleans
a newborn kitten.
The night before she
finally leaves her husband,
he’ll call out Baby,
let’s just sleep on it
and she’ll come to bed
with the belly of her shirt
warm with dishwater.
Tina Gross is an MFA candidate at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Her poems have appeared in The Laurel Review, Emrys Journal, and Flyway. She works as an academic librarian doing cataloging/metadata, which accounts for most of the publications in her ORCID profile: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-
Art: “luna” by issue 6 featured artist, Matthew Chapman
Working from relationships observed in his day-to-day, Matt finds his work in an interaction between two people, the space between the meeting of nature and architecture, or the spill of light on the ground. Using painting and drawing as a way to speak to the these relationships, a language of geometric abstraction and considered mark making is developed.
Chapman lives and works in Lancaster PA, studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia (MFA) as well as Lancaster’s Pennsylvania College of Art & Design (BFA). He has exhibited at: The Walter and Leonore Annenberg Gallery, Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building at PAFA, Philadelphia PA. Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia PA. Rothus Halle, Solothurn, Switzerland. The Ware Center for Visual and Performing Arts at Millersville University, Lancaster PA. Sunshine Art + Design, Lancaster PA. City Hall Permanent Collection, Lancaster PA.
Instagram: Mattallynchapman
Facebook: Matt Allyn Chapman
Website: www.mattallynchapman.com