On the Actor or His Magnificent Face​​

Gaunt in the desert, at a diner, he picks

at prop food, assuring his companion

he’ll be dead soon. Michael Shannon

deep in ruts of makeup artistry, dusty,

dressed up like a vigilante, and I’m waiting

for a flu shot at the Minute Clinic,

two blocks out of LA county.

Fifty years ago, my father powdered his face

for the stage, painted lines around his eyes,

shellacked his brows. Expressiveness a virtue,

subtlety another, like playing drunk

by playing sober in a suburb kitchen, calm

and crazy, telling truth but out of turn.

I’ve become obsessed, working through

my daddy issues and his resume:

Michael Shannon in a suit, gender theorizing.

Michael Shannon on the industrial kitchen floor.

Michael Shannon in red lipstick, in a beard,

a cardigan, a motorcycle jacket.

Michael Shannon with a cigarette,

a scowl, with sideburns, with a bowtie,

with a baby, a guitar. Undercover

in a magazine, posing as himself. The drug

store nurse removes her syringe.

Michael Shannon on his knees,

squibs burst open,

buttoned down and crimson soaked.

Squeamish! – I’m collapsing toward the carpet

by the spinning periodical display – what

engulfs me, or my father

who monologized. Forgive the intrusion –

Michael Shannon,

when you wash & dry your skin tonight,

will so many faces fade eventually to one?

Mara Lee Grayson’s poetry has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Tampa Review, Nimrod, and other literary journals and has been nominated for the Best of the Net and Pushcart Prizes. Grayson is the author or editor of five books of nonfiction. She holds an MFA from The City College of New York and a PhD from Columbia University and previously worked as a tenured professor of English in the California State University system. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, she currently resides in New Jersey.

The Elephant Seal

There’s an enormous elephant seal rotting in the town square. I don’t know how it got there, considering we’re at least two hundred miles from the ocean. It stinks to high heaven, but nobody seems to be bothered by it. Many of the local children have been using its bloated body as a playground, leaping up and down on its hulking blubber. A romantic couple daydreamed while reclining on its hind flippers. An old man brushed his thinning hair in the faded reflection of the seal’s eyes. I even saw the girl who works at the bookstore sensually nuzzling its proboscis the other night at sunset. “What’s all the fuss?” I said to another man watching the girl blush as she brought its bulbous trunk to her lips. “Don’t you know anything?” said the man. “This town was founded by elephant seals almost three hundred years ago. In fact, tomorrow is the anniversary of that very day.” “I’m sorry,” I said. “I had no idea. I’ve only lived here for a few months.” The next day, I attended the founding celebration. Everyone was writing their names on pieces of paper and placing them in a wooden box for a raffle. There was live music, vendors, games, and a tremendous commemoration unlike any I had ever witnessed. Partway through, the mayor tapped the microphone and announced the winner. “Davis Hunt,” he said. “Oh my,” I said. “That’s me.” I walked toward the front as people patted my back and congratulated me. Some of the women were even crying and kissed me. When I reached the front, two burly men grabbed me and forcibly inserted me into the elephant seal’s mouth. I screamed and hollered, but everyone just applauded, whistled, and shouted for joy. Once inside, everything was pitch black. It smelled strangely like a pine forest. I couldn’t make heads or tails of the beast, so I crawled and crawled, through the slop of cartilage and organs, slicing my hands and knees on splintered bone. I pressed on for hours, maybe even days or weeks, and I had no real sense of time and place. At one point, I thought I heard wolves in the distance fighting over a kill, children crying, screaming men and women, trees collapsing, gunfire, and even dynamite. Eventually, I found an opening. I pulled myself out of the elephant seal and lay breathless on the ground. When I looked up, a giant man was standing over me. I quickly rose to my feet and backed away from him. Then he squatted down to his hands and knees and said, “Come.” I looked at him and then got down on my hands and knees. “No, no,” he said, gesturing for me to rise. “Come,” he said, patting his back with his hand. Tentatively, I walked over to him, straddled his back, and grabbed hold of his torn sweater. He began trotting along in the darkness. “Hold on,” he said, building to a canter. “Where are you taking me?” I said. “Hush now,” he said in a full gallop. “We have much ground to cover before sunrise.”

Joseph Cooper is the author of several collections including, most recently, Splash Fields (VA Press, 2024), the chapbook Flaming June (Bottlecap Press, 2025), and The Thief of Mars (Carbonation Press, 2025). His work has appeared in numerous journals including Ambidextrous Bloodhound Review, Assignment Literary Review, Nat1 Publishing, Oddball Magazine, One Art: A Journal of Poetry, Scud, Tough Poets, and DMQ Review which nominated his poem "The Nose" for a Best of the Net Award and a Pushcart Prize. He lives in Lewisburg, WV.

Quartz Secrets: María DeGuzmán

Artist's Statement:

Echoes of Casablanca and Woman Seated in the Temple of the Cats are two photographs from an expanding series called Quartz Secrets. These particular photographs resulted from experimenting with clear quartz exposed to morning sunlight while placed on a hammered metallic plate. The refraction and diffraction occurring along with the miniature worlds suggested by this particular quartz piece’s inclusions and the surface of the plate produced complex imagery reminiscent of the object fragmentation and multiple perspectives of Cubism. Yet, unlike the two-dimensional flatness of much Cubist representation, these photographs evince some stereoscopic visual depth. They “blur the line” between Cubism and the Neo-Baroque and between minimalism and maximalism. The ensuing images constitute a sort of optical unconscious, what surpasses our ability to see in the moment, but that is, nevertheless, there, as the photographic process reveals. However, what is “there” involves continual interpretive perception on the part of viewers, myself included.

María DeGuzmán is a scholar, photographer, writer, and music composer. Her photographic work has been exhibited at The Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA, USA), Watershed Media Centre (Bristol, England), and Golden Belt Studios (Durham, NC, USA). She has published photography in, among many other journals, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Phoebe, and New Delta Review. Her SoundCloud website may be found at: https://soundcloud.com/mariadeguzman.