In Issue 155 we feature art and poetry by
art by Gordon Skalleberg,
poetry by Colin Ian Jeffrey,
art by Mario Loprete, and
poetry by Suleiman al-Fulayyih
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.