Welcome to the May issue of Unearthed (2020)!
This issue includes work from twenty-five writers and artists. Throughout the issue, you will encounter poetry, photography, film, art, and nonfiction. You will read texts grounded by transit and transported by confinement; you will view images and video and art burbling with culture and voice; you will find work from faculty and students at SUNY-ESF, and much more from around the globe; most of all, hopefully you will share with us in how each of these contributions unearths ideas, theories, emotions, and truths.
This has been a challenging season to put an issue together. Due to Covid-19, how we read and encounter writing and art has drastically changed for many of us, but the work in this issue is a reminder of how much good company writing and art are.
The challenging fact for us at Unearthed has always been that we often have to turn down good work. Issues strum together their own shape, and each differs. That said, we always encourage submitters to submit again in the future, and we look forward to another issue in the fall. Special thanks to the student editorial board who helped generate energy behind this issue, especially our new student editor, Anna Chwiejczak, who read submissions and monitored our social media accounts this past semester. This issue could also not have been made possible without the support of the Department of Environmental Studies, the Writing, Rhetoric & Communications Program, and Joel Shaw, from the Office of Communications and Marketing at SUNY-ESF.
Unearthed will return in the fall. We accept submissions year-round, but please see our guidelines for more explicit details, as we do not begin reading submissions again until August. Feel free to email us at [email protected] with any questions. In the meantime, enjoy this issue.
Cheers, Tyler Flynn Dorholt
Managing Editor
CONTENTS
An Interview with Karen Garthe
Photographs by Alan Bern
“L’aura,” by Ian Bonaparte
Nature Nurture Illustration Series by Paula Champagne
“Dear Blue Mussel,” by Anna Chwiejczak
Three poems by Thomas Cook
“Note to Self,” by Jesse Czekanski-Moir
“Ceratotherium simum cottoni,” by Toni Daino
Two Poems by Carol V. Davis
“Walls,” by Gavin Duncan
Two Films by Lori H. Ersolmaz
Three Poems by Karen Garthe
At the Foot of the Mountains, a film by Gillian Hall
Two Poems by Dave Harrity
“Singing Waters,” by Liv Hazard
Two Poems by Chris Holdaway
“In Orbit,” by Teresa Kustas
“New Silent Spring,” by Valerie Luzadis
“Candles in the Subway,” by Bria McClain
Photographs by Matthew McGlennen
Three Poems by Cindy Ostuni
“Brief,” by Ella Ramsay
A Poem and a film, by Tracy Sallows
Photographs by Courtney Scheffler
Two Poems by Lyndsey Kelly Weiner
“A World of Her Own,” art by Meghan Weinstein
An Interview with Karen Garthe
I remember coming out of the anesthesia, drifting back from wherever it is you go, back to consciousness. I looked at my mother and said “Now, will you tell me why we’re here?”
Two Poems by Carol V. Davis
The scientist invited me to her work, greeted me / on the icy sidewalk to usher me past guards stomping
Two Poems by Chris Holdaway
Longing for what it already had; yea, the rain / Should have replaced the air one-for-one,
Candles in the Subway, by Bria McClain
They do not know day from night, under the screaming lights, but when the men leave and the bulbs go out, they dream.
L’aura, by Ian A. Bonaparte
I’m always whisked to midnight / by ugly wind.
Brief, by Ella Ramsay
I think, “It must be she, the tree, standing attentive ...
Three Poems by Thomas Cook
I suppose I have been this man, regardless of what can be said of me
The New Silent Spring, by Valerie Luzadis
The tree buds are swelling, and spring emerges
Singing Waters, by Liv Hazard
the moths on paper towels are too perfect to move
Nature Nurture Illustration Series by Paula Champagne
Nature Nurture Illustration Series by Paula Champagne
Two Poems by Lyndsey Kelly Weiner
lying on the smooth wooden bottom / of a drawer, suckling rhythmically at the air
Three Poems by Cindy Ostuni
Know the way /hollow openings lead to a surface, the way a girl’s / knees know clutching tree bark will keep / her from falling.
Two Films by Lori H. Ersolmaz
Two Films
Photographs by Matthew McGlennen
Photographs
Photos and Photo-haiga by Alan Bern
BIO: Retired children's librarian Alan Bern’s poetry books: No no the saddest and Waterwalking in Berkeley, Fithian Press; greater distance, Lines & Faces, his broadside press with artist [...]
Dear Blue Mussel, by Anna Chwiejczak
kicked around by tourists, / buried from the midnight / sun
A Poem and a Film by Tracy Sallows
Plant a tulip upside down / She’ll u-turn toward the sun
Three Poems by Karen Garthe
carry on forthwith, let’s face it / we know so many helpless things
Photographs by Courtney Scheffler
Reading room based on Jugend | Canon 55mm | On a walk in Orient Point State Park, there were unoccupied seats. Caution tape lining [...]
At the Foot of the Mountains, a film by Gillian Hall
AT THE FOOT OF THE MOUNTAINSA film by Gillian Hall
Two Poems by Dave Harrity
My biggest sin was always / looking for meaning
Note to Self, by Jesse Czekanski-Moir
Entropy and emergence— / This is left as an exercise for the reader.
Walls, by Gavin Duncan
We build walls between ourselves and nature.
Ceratotherium simum cottoni, by Toni Daino
Though nothing natural / Can save them now.
A World of Her Own by Meghan Weinstein
"I'm a filmmaker and mixed-media artist based out of Los Angeles. The themes of my artwork often revolve around the ideas of femininity and how it's projected and determined [...]
In Orbit, by Teresa Kustas
The sunflowers don spiderweb veils, / carefully beaded with dew.