Feral: ˈferəl,ˈfirəl/
adjective
Df: (especially of an animal) in a wild state, especially after escape from captivity or domestication.
Make art about wildness, about being in a state of wildness, about escaping domestication.
23 November 2016
Dreamt I was working with a couple of other people in some kind of disaster distribution center, coordinating and handing out goods to people in need, blankets, socks, water bottles, cloth diapers for babies. People moved through the barn-like building, their steps stuttering softly against the dirt floor. The line seemed as if it would never end. It didn’t feel like I was doing enough. But then, a young woman with two small children, a baby on her hip, and a four or five year old girl holding her hand, stopped in front of me for a blanket. The young mother’s face was drawn and exhausted, and the kids too seemed scared and weighted with whatever disaster it was we were all dealing with out there in the world.
The little girl said, “Blue.”
I smiled, not sure for a second what she meant, but then I looked down. The stacked blankets were mostly green and gray, but tucked into the pile halfway down or so, one blue blanket.
Her mama shushed her, and smiled sadly at me. but the little girl looked up at me, smiling a little around the fingers she had in her mouth, and said again, “Blue?”
Her mama hushed her again, saying, “Missy, we can’t–“
“Sure we can,” I said. I pulled the one blue blanket out of the others and offered it across the table to the little girl. She let go of her mama, and reached out with both her little girl hands to take the blue blanket, wrapping her arms around it like a hug and smiling.
We all smiled.
Make art about small acts of taking care of each other.
J JOURNAL: NEW WRITING on Justice seeks submissions for its 19th issue.
J Journal seeks new writing – fiction, creative nonfiction (1st person narrative, personal essay, memoir) and poetry – that examines questions of justice. Although we find that our most powerful pieces relate tangentially to the justice theme, we also welcome work that speaks directly of crime, criminal justice, law and law enforcement. As a literary project, however, J Journal is less likely to publish straightforward genre fiction. We encourage writers to approach the justice issue from any angle.
Email up to three poems or up to 6000 words of fiction/nonfiction to: submissionsjjournal@gmail.com
Or send your submission to:
Editors, J Journal
Department of English
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
524 West 59th Street, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10019
Website: www.jjournal.org
http://jjournal2.jjay.cuny.edu/jjournal/
21 November 2016
Make art about facing the darkness, even, especially our own.
11/17/2016
I called my beloved brother, my late husband’s brother, for advice early yesterday, and in the way he has that I love and respect and admire and need so much, he started by saying, “You may not like the advice I have to give. You might get mad at me.”
I laughed, and said, “I’m not gonna get mad. That’s why I called you.”
Later last night I texted him Thank you. He called and asked, “So did my cantankerous advice work out?”
I laughed again, and said, “Sure did. Thank you so much.”
He said, “Don’t thank me. It’s you. All you. Just sometimes, even when we know what’s right, what we need to do, we just need someone else to say it, to say what’s hard to hear.”
Yep.
Make art about hearing hard truths.
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
Recent Comments