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Robert L. Giron

Issue 155

Updated: Feb 11, 2023


In Issue 155 we feature art and poetry by




Gordon Shalleberg

Best Evening of Summer

Copyright © 2021 by Gordon Shalleberg.


Green Flash

Copyright © 2021 by Gordon Skalleberg.


Utantitel

Copyright © 2021 by Gordon Shalleberg.


About the Artist

Swedish artist Gordon Skalleberg, on painting faces and people, muses, “…I am trying to see beyond the surface…are we really aware of what we are seeing?” Painting in oil on untreated wood, unique grain patterns are visible beneath the paint, intensifying movement and texture. A native of Arild, Sweden and now residing in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Skalleberg transitioned to full-time artist after years in the family’s business. His relocation to New Mexico inspired new imagery, a distinctive twist on Southwestern features - desert landscapes, mountains, open skies - in a semi-abstract landscape-style. Skalleberg has shown in exhibitions throughout Sweden since 2007; more recently in museums, art centers, and galleries across the United States. Since 2015, he has participated in the prestigious annual Studio Tour in southwest Sweden. Occasionally he accepts commissions - a recent example being Netflix engaging him to paint portraits of Uma Thurman and Tony Goldwyn for a production. His work is in museum, corporate and private collections in Sweden and the United States.




Colin Ian Jeffrey


My father’s grave


My father’s grave is my Sunday morning visit

Where I kneel at his tombstone remembering

The joyful things he did to make me happy

And how he was proud to call me his son.

An hour with him, so close, with memories he inspires

The strength of love he gave without reserve or rebuke

Always supporting, encouraging, gentle and understanding.

Because of him I stand tall reaching for the stars

Treating peoples of the world as one great family

Not divided by religion, race or colour.

Fresh flowers for my father with tears, and a prayer

Thanking my father for teaching me right from wrong

And about a man who walked on water

Was crucified so those who believe will see God.


Copyright © 2021 by Colin Ian Jeffery.


Elusive happiness


Happiness is elusive like the wind blowing free

Soul soaring mountain high, eagle free

Coming and going like migrating birds

Sounds of echoing peals of church bells

Sighs of old people for what they have lost

Now but memories of throes of youthful passion

Never rejoiced again with blood running hot

With road ahead short, straight and true.

We never know when we are truly happy

Until it has passed leaving heart grieving.

Oh, how I would keep happiness safe and strong

Never lost amid furies of purple storms.

Once, I was royal without fear of passing time

And through folly have lost all to loneliness.

Copyright © 2021 by Colin Ian Jeffery.


About the Poet

Colin Ian Jeffery is an established English poet and novelist with world-wide reputation, his books can be purchased from Amazon and all good bookshops. He was seven, a choirboy, when he became entranced by poetry after hearing the twenty-third psalm. The beauty of the words struck his soul like lightning and his Muse began to sing. He then found poetry was being read on the BBC radio Home Service and would listen in awe and delight to such poets as Dylan Thomas, John Betjeman, and Ted Hughes.




Mario Loprete


UNTITLED concrete sculpture

Copyright © 2020 by Mario Loprete.

UNTITLED concrete sculpture

Copyright © 2020 by Mario Loprete.


UNTITLED concrete sculpture

Copyright © 2020 by Mario Loprete.


About the Artist

Mario Loprete, born in Catanzaro, Italy in 1968, is a graduate at Accademia of Belle Arti, Catanzaro, Italy. Painting for him is his first love. An important, pure love. Creating a painting, starting from the spasmodic research of a concept with which I want to transmit my message this is the foundation of painting for him. The sculpture is his lover, his artistic betrayal to the painting that voluptuous and sensual lover that inspires different emotions which strike prohibited chords.


"For my concrete sculptures, I use my personal clothing. Through my artistic process in which I use plaster, resin and cement, I transform these articles of clothing into artworks to hang. The intended effect is that my DNA and my memory remain inside the ​concrete, so that the person who looks at these sculptures is transformed into a type of postmodern archeologist, studying my work as urban artefacts.


I like to think that those who look at my sculptures created in 2020 will be able to perceive the anguish, the vulnerability, the fear that each of us has felt in front of a planetary problem that was covid-19 ... under a layer of cement there are my clothes with which I lived this nefarious period—clothes that survived covid-19, very similar to what survived after the 2,000-year-old catastrophic eruption of Pompeii, capable of recounting man's inability to face the tragedy of broken lives and destroyed economies."


Links to his socials:



Suleiman al-Fulayyih



Clouds

What pain When the heart darkens gloomily Thick clouds come crowding my mind, densely densely, gradually. What sadness when thunder shakes the mountains of anguish in my heart violently violently it comes. It destroys me, this lightning that gleams in the desert of my soul but illuminates nothing!

Translated by Lena Jayyusi and Naomi Shihab Nye


A Pony for the Tribe

When will the promised

pony come, people

ask and ask and more

And more people are

haggling over it, more and

more people aspire

To manage it, more and more

the chatter and the rumours

multiply. When, when

Will the pony come,

the promised pony?

they ask, the bridle makers,

More and more of them

fashion its bridle, the scribes

are all bent on figuring

Its pedigree. It's really

a farce. When will it come,

when, the pony? More,

Plenty of people hope

it won't come at all.

The problem, they argue, is

Its imminence. When,

when will the pony

come? Others wonder —

Those who weave abortive plans

about it, more and

more of them, those who

Busily are rigging

the gallows for whoever

might be riding it.

The farce goes on, the

questions multiply, the plots

and the confusion —

When will the pony

come? I'll tell you. Simply look

at the sky, the clouds

Piling up, their folds

dark, loaded with lightning, when

the lightning flashes,

Then the pony will come,

as lightning in lightning,

thunder and earthquake. Translated by Lena Jayyusi and Christopher Middleton.



About the Author

The late Suleiman al-Fulayyih, a Saudian-Kuwaitian poet and critic, was born in AL-Hamaad desert located on north of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, He was working as journalist and writer for many newspapers and magazines in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. He has seven published works of poetry that have been translated to English, Russian, French, and Serbokian.




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