by Jonathan Aibel
Anti-Elegy
Beyond the scrim, do the dead
remember? If so, let her remember
some other child,
the one she wanted,
a girl, too good to write
on walls, who didn’t hide
in her room, unwilling
to talk. I don’t want
to make her into a saint —
fold my memory in half,
fold the corners, a paper
airplane, release
to loop, spin, let it
fall where the wind takes it.
Poet Jonathan B. Aibel is a recovering software engineer who lives in Concord, MA, traditional homelands of the Nipmuc. His poems have been published in Barrelhouse, Chautauqua, Pangyrus, Lily Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, and elsewhere. Jonathan’s chapbook, Echoes of Uruk, was a semi-finalist for the Tupelo Press 2024 Snowbound Prize. http://www.jbaibelpoet.com.
Artist Shelbey Leco is a New Orleanian artist who is a fiction writer, and sewer. Most of her work focuses on mixed media portraiture art. Her art was inspired by her grandmother. When Shelbey was little, she often went through art supplies, which her grandmother could not afford. Instead her grandmother would give her pens, to fill in negative space with patterns from coloring books. As an adult, Shelbey incorporated vibrant color and materials.
Gulf Stream Magazine 