West Trestle Review
  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • Past Issues
    • May 2023
    • March 2023
    • January 2023
    • November 2022
    • September 2022
    • July 2022
    • May 2022
    • March 2022
    • January 2022
    • November 2021
    • September 2021
    • July 2021
    • May 2021
    • March 2021
    • January 2021
    • November 2020
    • September 2020
    • July 2020
  • Cross-Ties
  • Silver Tongue Saturdays
  • About
    • Arrivals & Departures
    • Masthead
    • Submit
    • Join Our Team
    • Archive >
      • Jane Beal
      • Beverly Burch
      • Kathleen Gunton
      • Connie Gutowsky
      • Priscilla Lee
      • Irene Lipshin
  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • Past Issues
    • May 2023
    • March 2023
    • January 2023
    • November 2022
    • September 2022
    • July 2022
    • May 2022
    • March 2022
    • January 2022
    • November 2021
    • September 2021
    • July 2021
    • May 2021
    • March 2021
    • January 2021
    • November 2020
    • September 2020
    • July 2020
  • Cross-Ties
  • Silver Tongue Saturdays
  • About
    • Arrivals & Departures
    • Masthead
    • Submit
    • Join Our Team
    • Archive >
      • Jane Beal
      • Beverly Burch
      • Kathleen Gunton
      • Connie Gutowsky
      • Priscilla Lee
      • Irene Lipshin
Search by typing & pressing enter

YOUR CART

March & April​​​​
​2023

Women :: Non-binary :: Art :: Fiction :: Poetry

Part of a woman's body, clad in yellow, against a blue sky, with a landscape containing fish, animals, insects, and plants draped like a blanket in front of her
Neem Tree / Purbasha Roy
Backyards of several houses, seen from above. The yards contain people engaged in various tasks, one holding a child, others seated or standing
Seasonal / Suzanne Langlois
On the right, someone stands on a ladder, pours a cascade of blue liquid toward a yellow basin that sits on the floor. Near the basin, a figure on its knees with its hands in the liquid as it falls. Lit candles stand nearby.
My Mother Teaches Me How to Stargaze / Heather Qin
As though the x-ray of a female organ featured shades of green, yellow, fuschia and brown, delicately rendered
Lipstick / kwan ann tan
Against a bright, colorful background, four indistinct figures disposed on the rails of a fence
Rumination / Natalie Marino
Faces of two people and part of a third, with their arms up in the air, fists clenched, mouths open as though shouting
Advice from Strangers / E.N. Walztoni
Black background with white text: Artist Aiyana Masla Interview & Gallery
Street scene with half-a-dozen people, some gazing in a window, others walking, one carrying a purple umbrella, the central figure carrying flowers, wearing a green dress and black boots
When people ask me how I am, I never tell them / Kate Sweeney
Four people seated on a blue blanket, as though for a picnic. The air that surrounds them is green
BURIAL / Nicole Brooks
As though screen-captured in a Zoom call, windows into the lives of a number of individuals, engaged in various domestic activities
Come Close: Artist Interview
Sepia-hued scene of a city street, with steps leading up to houses to the right and three figures, two in the foreground, one in the distance; pole of a streetlamp stands on the left
Not That Gretel / Marion Brown
Scene on a rainy street, with almost everyone huddled under umbrellas. One person pushes a stroller
Easter / Melissa Eleftherion
Against massive waves and a stormy sky, the figure of a person seated in a little boat
I remember my mother's hands / Li Chen
Against a peach-colored sky, two figures, holding hands. Their bodies are composed of scenes from nature, one with plants, a pond, and a frog, the other with a rowboat and people walking
Photo album for the last time I went to China / Maggie Yang
Partially concealed in a lush, dim-lit landscape, two indistinct figures sit very close to each other
Esther Consorts with Hegai / Carol Barrett
Figures sprawled or seated, in positions indicating comfort and contentment, on a green lawn
Hiraeth as Adoptee / Jen Stein
Crowd scene of multiple individuals looking in sundry directions and engaged in varied activities
Artemis / Jen Grace Stewart
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
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.
March / April 2023
Artist: Aiyana Masla. View full gallery here. 

  
Powered by Women