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we were encounters of some other kind or form, nature. really, i was full of it like a new baby dropped on the bathroom floor. we were stages of development. a series of giving empty. a love song with a common name you grew up with, but never heard anyone call, ask for. in the aisle of the grocery store you were a bodhisattva, hungry & i was helpless, eager to be. ✱✱✱ 
when i don’t tell my girlfriend i’ll need to fuck other people one day but she knows anyway // or sometimes you have to let something be nothingif i never become a girl / who goes to church / if body / feels less girl / more alien / less own / who do i belong to? who am i to myself / if i am no one / last night i held my girlfriend’s face / for hours or forever / her skin warm, always / she has fever, always / i am fever, always / too warm but always feeling cold / in sheets we’ve never washed / i lied to her / she said i was lying / she said she could tell / she said, i know you / i said i know / i said it’s nothing / she said it’s something / i said sometimes you have to let something be nothing / she looked at me / i held her skin / it felt like wet in my hands / slick and warm from fingertips / as if only i could warm her / as if my fingers were life-giving and not good-sucking / i imagine her soul fading to black / my mom says i have a god complex / i think she gave it to me / or i brewed it on my own / nine and always dressed as witch / or old woman / i’ve never wanted to be this version / of myself / am always ready for the next / her lip beneath my thumb / she pulled away / me from myself and her from me / skin thick and hot / i said it doesn’t make sense / because you’re not like this / she said i don’t even know what you’re talking about i say / it’s like what i said when i made you cry in the car and there were deer everywhere / she says what are you talking about i say i don’t think monogamy makes sense to me and i think one day we’ll have to talk about what that means but i don’t want to lose you / and she cries and says what? is something happening now? with eyes so soft our cat won’t come out of hiding / i say no and she says am i supposed to be dating other people and i am crying too and i am saying no i’d rather you not be dating people because i don’t know how to explain what i mean because no one taught me how to say i just feel like when you don’t want to fuck i should go fuck someone else and it’d be cool if someone fucked us sometimes and sometimes i want you to fuck other people to a girl with big big eyes and soft soft soul and warm warm skin / and i’m such a fucking asshole to turn her into a character she isn’t she agrees / she says i’m not some southern baptist republican / we are both crying / because i act like she is / i say i’m afraid you’ll give me rules because i’ll follow / i don’t know how i feel about that / she says i’ve never given you rules / i say i know / she says you don’t give me any credit / she says do you even know who i am / i say yes / but i say you’re right / but i move close / but she lets me / but i cry in coffee shops writing about my perfect relationship / chai to my left because i don’t know how to say macchiato / am not sure what it is / reality is so much harder, sometimes, than the life i create for myself, steamed foam tucked in bottom lip / small thing birthed and fluffed / waiting to be swallowed so who the fuck am ithe weight of my kitten on my chest is // all of the weight i can hold. i imagine the boring life i'll lead and it feels like orgasms lightning bolts cheese and crackers (the fancy kind i almost buy every monday but always put back, tuck behind lighters i can't light and candy bars i want to eat all of). but, too it feels like going to pick up my kid and having them say a different mom came yesterday so who the fuck am i. feels like having them say these are white kids, so who the fuck am i. feels like being in hospital with pregnant uterus and having people stare and not knowing if it's because we are one part white, one part brown or two ladies at restaurants, everyone says, 'hello ladies,' and i want to kill them because i am not a lady. don't know what that means though my life is 'ladies.' i'm nervous about going down on girls but i've done it. i like it but i freak out about trying new things with my body. i thought i did a good job the first time i went down on another girl, but then she said 'you hated it, huh' and let me know she didn't come. i thought that was what love looked like and now it makes me sick to think about. to see my own weakness in another girl's face. to revel in it. is art breakdown? when i write my girlfriend comes home and asks me where i am. i say, 'here.' she says, 'you're so far i can't touch you.' i smile but it's all teeth, like toddlers learning to smile, no eyes, all teeth and gums and mushy food scent. i am so mushy and so easy to tear apart and i wonder if it's my fault. but, too everyone else's. but, too, like, society. but, too, mental illness. but, too, anything but me, anything but here, anything but this, or all of it. all the time. try to soak without overflowing. try to spill without staining. ✱✱✱
january is whatever you want it to be, not because it’s the beginning of the year but because that’s just how things worked out. february is watching a mail truck run over your roommate’s bike and not telling her about it. march is a tradition you’ve never understood but celebrate anyway. april is talking about anything besides the weather. may is seeing a small dog in a small sweater outside your apartment and smiling for the first time all week. june is being comfortable in silence with anybody. july is a story you can tell at parties if you ever go to one. august is your dad not caring you’re bad at sports because your dad doesn’t care about sports. september is being cold without having to think about it. october is a youtube video of stephen king explaining to stephen colbert who flava flav is. november is biting your lip and tasting cabernet. december is blindly trusting anyone who says, “you don’t want to know.” ✱✱✱ 
After Blueberry Elizabeth Morningsnow I am a seed. Breathe a circular breath. Pulse. My heart becomes an eye. I see through a web of cut patterns To say the ring of seven spheres carries the planets, moon, and solstice sun To say a sphere of fixed stars and the zodiac To say an outer blue ring holds solid the phases of the moon Black sage bound in red and white thread. Smoke palpitates in the peripheral. Earth a bull’s-eye in the medicine wheel. I root south – the Way of the Healer. My eye extinguishes sage in small stones ✱✱✱ 
The Artist Rossella, Lella, Rosaria - different names used to sign her artworks. She creates an essential world, sometimes complicated in symmetrical and specular figures - well designed in the series of self portraits, shoes, and houses (always with doubled streets), chimneys and trees; some abstract paintings draw remarkable similarities to graphic design and contemporary illustration; artworks from Rossella are painted in bright colours, with high contrasts and essential marks and gestures. She has worked in Turin since the '80s and hosted a solo exhibition curated by Print About Me at The Others Art Fair in 2014. The Exhibition Rossella Carpino' solo exhibition is in the context of Mai Visti e Altre Storie (Never Seen and Other Stories), a project for enhancement of Outsider Art in Piedmont Area (Italy). It is based on the idea of Tea Taramino (Città di Torino, Servizio Disabili), curated by Arteco (Annalisa Pellino and Beatrice Zanelli) in collaboration with Passages cultural association. /maɪ prɪnt/ solo exhibition of Rossella Carpino is the first of a series of solo exhibitions about artists included in Mai Visti e Altre Storie archive (www.maivisti.it). The exhibit displays artwork from the '80s to present and retraces Rossella's artistic research in conjunction with serigraphies (screen printing) by Print About Me from Rossella's artwork for /maɪ prɪnt/, a project in the context of Mai Visti e Altre Storie. /maɪ prɪnt/ was born as a tool for sharing outsider artworks from the Mai Visti archive through their limited edition serigraphic reproduction. Also on display is a short video by Claudio Malpede to show how serigraphic technique works. The venue, Palazzo Barolo, is a typical Italian baroque style palace, but the exhibition setup, totally contemporary, will make a sort of "shortcircuit" in the traditional way of approaching and perceiving the interior. The Details: Address: Palazzo Barolo, Via delle Orfane 7, Turin, Italy Opening: May 19th 2016 at 6:00 pm Exhibit Hours: Monday, closed Tuesday to Friday, 10:00 am to 12:30 pm and 3:00 pmto 5:30 pm Saturday, 3:00 pm to 5:30 pm Sunday, 3:00 pm to 6:30 pm Contact and Websites: stampa.arteco@gmail.com | www.associazionearteco.it | www.maivisti.it  Glass on tiles is from broken dishes is from walking home. Trying to find where you live is picking up jagged pieces is wrapping the gash from the contact of the sharp corner colliding with your skin. Dropping the plates feels like 8 PM feels like asking you to pass the salt. Broken mugs are glued together like an antique puzzle, fragment by fragment found one under the table, found one I stepped on it. Almost reversed except for the lines running around it, the memory and experience also regret. It still works if you're in need of a mug but always drips a little from a crack the glue couldn't fill. Bought some new dishes fixed the kitchen sink fixed the glass on the tiles. Found new tiles found new reasons to break some new dishes. Forgot to wrap the gash it'll heal anyway. forgot to ask to pass the salt the plates dropped themselves. Feels like 8 PM feels like 9 feels like 10. Put the broken dishes away buy some more glue later. ✱✱✱ 
      "These images represent an insecurity of vanity within my poems, and how female artists often feel pressured to be 'hot' while also making good work. I want to critique how impersonal reading a poem can be. The text interrupts the selfie, (and vice versa), as an inner dialogue, but also so that the reader is forced to look at my face while reading the poem. When the poet is revealed, the wall obstructed, the poem can be seen as more real. Poetry's stereotype is that it's 'hard to understand' - historically, only a small group of academic, elite people hold the knowledge to 'get' poetry. This is changing, though. Through the internet, personal texts and personal pictures are accessible to everyone, constantly whirling around - people feel more comfortable sharing their thoughts, with this barrier. The poem/selfie project acknowledges that - by posting fractions of my face and my words, I am reaching out for someone to understand, while aware that no one ever really can." ✱✱✱ Delia Rainey is a writer, artist, and musician living in St. Louis, MO. Her band is called Dubb Nubb. She loves lemons. Her poetry has been featured or forthcoming in Spy Kids Review, Pleiades, Potluck Magazine, Sweet: A Literary Confection, Cactus Heart, The Sensation Feelings Journal, Pajama Party Zine, and Western Humanities Review.
at midnight when it rains i’m hoping you’ve seen something as soft as the green/gray they put in the sky in the middle of a summer,afternoon,storm on the coasts of florida if not let me tell u it is … soft … like the tiny kisses u put on my forehead when it’s 5 am and the sunrise wakes us up and warms us up and i sigh something like a smile with my whole body and then go back to sleep i’m grateful ur always awake first . ur still a tiny forehead kisser a few hours later when i open my eyes again and it’s still very much morning i know the sun’s gonna be pulling some flowers out of the ground today, so i will get out of bed and ask you to wrap me in a shirt with many buttons and say thank u bc some afternoon last summer before it’d even stopped raining for the day i kicked my mom out of the house … but somehow i still sleep pretty good next to u, kiddo ✱✱✱  Cameron Graham is a girl from a small island in Florida
who wants to save the bees & eat a lot of peaches. Oh Color Milks is a collaboration project between Elise Mesner and PAX Ceramics. Sea Foam Thoughts We love Elise Mesner's work. It's luminous and it's whimsical. It manages to be glamorous without a hint of pretension. Her photography has a distinct energy, which translates into fixed scenes and objects radiating life / effervescence / enchantment. Colours rule her projects, somehow carrying airs of being both expertly curated and wildly carefree. Filled with interesting perspectives, pallettes and compositions, her lens dusts people, landscapes and articles with some sort of rare magic. And the subjects of Oh Color Milk? Well, we have a strong affinity for ceramics in general. There's a history, process and tangible result. We have nothing but praise for those who use their hands and minds for creation. Speaking about PAX specifically, we love the application of modern colour gradients to minimal, artifact-like structures in the "breakfast club" (debut line, pictured below). Seeing traditional mediums combined with a fine eye for design and quality product is always a delight. Kitchens rejoice! Also, let's be honest - we'd probably set these all over our houses and not just in our kitchens because they're really pretty. Elise Mesner
Detroit native Elise Mesner (now based in Los Angeles) is an eclectic-minded painter, illustrator, fashion/costume designer, stylist, taste maker, cross-media artist, singer-songwriter and fine art photographer working and dipping into all arty media. Creamy colors, plants, fresh air, and drops of neon rule her world. With whimsy forever as her guide, she's known for creating idyllic dreamscapes, both in front of and behind the camera, as well as on the canvas. Mesner's artwork has garnered solo and group shows at local galleries, including the Detroit Institute of Arts. Her photography has been featured in several print publications and in other incarnations, including album covers and recipe books. You can visit her website at elisemesner.com and find her on Instagram @lellopepper. PAX Ceramics (California) PAX combines contemporary design methods with time-honored production techniques. Our process starts with hand-sketching and wheel throwing, refining forms in CAD programs and 3D-printing prototypes. The pieces are then handmade in Los Angeles. Creative references for the debut line—titled the “breakfast club”—include the forms of Japanese, Scandinavian and Bauhaus master ceramicists. The beauty found where simplicity meets usefulness. Closer to home, we are in constant awe of California’s natural environment, particularly during the golden hour, which inspired our gradient glaze. PAX was founded by Mia Herron Kantor in 2015 based on a lifelong love of ceramics and exceptional design. Available for purchase exclusively at www.paxceramics.com. You can also find PAX on Instagram @pax.la. i watch you lie i can see it in the shape of your mouth so i turn off the lights in the dark i don’t see your twists easy all words are made equal when you can’t see their shadows i let you fill me up but you no longer spill over you’re sharing too much too generous your mother taught you to share too early kinder to keep some of it to yourself i break you but only inside of my head because outside i am all flowers and kisses you made me so white tulips to match your sweet lies wilted i watered you daily but all it did was drown our roots i dash your body with a little bit of salt and reach for the pepper flakes so i can feel the bite in my mouth i’d rather hot peppers erupt in my mouth than feed the fire of knowing where your gaze is small of your back is tender and freckled with constellations that i never knew how to read i sink your bones into your bed my head at your chest your mouth in my ear hot as i look away no poetry anymore but love is our poetry the lie we tell ourselves to make this worth it shoved deep into the corners of your bed i lose my edges i hear your words dripping with violets windy with the sound of you leaving rustles as you stand to get up to go to the bathroom you turn on the lights fumbling at your robe hushed shutting eyes in the light i see your shadows ✱✱✱ 
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