Dear reader,
In lieu of an editor's note, I offer you a cento, a patchwork of words from this issue's contributors: Carol Barrett, Nicole Brooks, Marion Brown, Li Chen, Melissa Eleftherion, Suzanne Langlois, Natalie Marino, Heather Qin, Purbasha Roy, Jen Stein, Jen Grace Stewart, Kate Sweeney, Kwan Ann Tan, E.N. Walztoni, and Maggie Yang.
Think of this cento as the sweet person in a hairnet and gloves standing behind a makeshift table in the supermarket and passing out miniscule paper cups filled with morsels of something warm. How to resist such deliciousness? Particularly when paired with these gorgeous watercolors by Aiyana Masla (whose poem "Glimmerers" was published in the July / August 2022 issue of WTR).
Check out the slideshow of Masla's art, learn more about the artist, including what she's currently reading and how Ocean Vuong continues to inspire her creativity.
Once again, I cannot thank WTR's contributors and editors enough. This is a community effort! Please do send our West Trestlers some love in the socials if that's your thing.
Patricia Caspers
Founding Editor-in-Chief
West Trestle Review
In lieu of an editor's note, I offer you a cento, a patchwork of words from this issue's contributors: Carol Barrett, Nicole Brooks, Marion Brown, Li Chen, Melissa Eleftherion, Suzanne Langlois, Natalie Marino, Heather Qin, Purbasha Roy, Jen Stein, Jen Grace Stewart, Kate Sweeney, Kwan Ann Tan, E.N. Walztoni, and Maggie Yang.
Think of this cento as the sweet person in a hairnet and gloves standing behind a makeshift table in the supermarket and passing out miniscule paper cups filled with morsels of something warm. How to resist such deliciousness? Particularly when paired with these gorgeous watercolors by Aiyana Masla (whose poem "Glimmerers" was published in the July / August 2022 issue of WTR).
Check out the slideshow of Masla's art, learn more about the artist, including what she's currently reading and how Ocean Vuong continues to inspire her creativity.
Once again, I cannot thank WTR's contributors and editors enough. This is a community effort! Please do send our West Trestlers some love in the socials if that's your thing.
Patricia Caspers
Founding Editor-in-Chief
West Trestle Review
My hair
folds across my back like fronds
across a cloud.
We tuck paper cranes between your toes,
a family bloodline jagged of stitches.
Do you
know hunger and the smell of hot fat?
fish
braised in soy sauce, my grandma's specialty dish
the sidewalk is alligators
the spoon shoved in my mouth
the taste of salt as dark as the colour of my lips,
the bleak
gray-scale of winter replaced with forsythia
Red clouds threatened me
with arrhythmias
as I pointed at the stars and mistook them
for airplanes
like a found beat
in an almost silent pulse.
They pulse in my neck, nest behind my ear.
A trail of crows flew over the gulch.
I am afraid of trapdoors,
the dark, mutton, the chasm of language.
A myth is like chalk in the throat.
folds across my back like fronds
across a cloud.
We tuck paper cranes between your toes,
a family bloodline jagged of stitches.
Do you
know hunger and the smell of hot fat?
fish
braised in soy sauce, my grandma's specialty dish
the sidewalk is alligators
the spoon shoved in my mouth
the taste of salt as dark as the colour of my lips,
the bleak
gray-scale of winter replaced with forsythia
Red clouds threatened me
with arrhythmias
as I pointed at the stars and mistook them
for airplanes
like a found beat
in an almost silent pulse.
They pulse in my neck, nest behind my ear.
A trail of crows flew over the gulch.
I am afraid of trapdoors,
the dark, mutton, the chasm of language.
A myth is like chalk in the throat.
March / April 2023
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