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ISSUE NO. 22: GOLDEN HOUR

September 2024

This issue of Pearl Press features work from:

Adam Thorman, Larena Nellies-Ortiz , Benjamin Littler, Rowan Tate, Renee Paiement, Elisa Michelet, Jacq Roderick , Riley Goodman, Manuel A. Elías, C. Bay Milin, Holaday Mason, Rona Bar and Ofek Avshalom, Lillian Jenner, Ellen Henning, Cassie Jain, Ola Faleti

Cover image: Riley Goodman

Curated by: Delilah Twersky

Download the PDF →

Issue Begins

Last light of the day, June 20, 2022: Adam Thorman

Chimera: Larena Nellies-Ortiz

When All The World Was Green: Benjamin Littler

IT IS JUNE

you return to me
in the simple skin of an italian summer, birds on sun-washed balconies,
milky sleep and ocean poems, the endless desert of a nostalgic longing,
childhood. i hold the shape of you
as a tender skyline
against the silhouette of time.

Rowan Tate

Days of Heaven: Renee Paiement

Last light of the day, January 12, 2024: Adam Thorman

THE BROKEN HOUR

the sun cracking in pieces as heat released
on the summer morning. there’s nothing good about 4am, the door’s stiff with resentment

and its own shadow, there’s countless
altars being born before worship
might begin. these trees and their kindness
are mangled in the 60 minute shitshow,
the window also godless. how to be touched without the mortal recoil. how to
be everlasting without resisting.
there’s too much evil to make more of it
when the world turns itself in on you.
did you know a wrinkle is a gift? look
how time folds for you.

Jacq Roderick

Kaki: Elisa Michelet

Sundown At Poplar Vale (2021): Riley Goodman

Malecón: Manuel A. Elías

Hither & Thither: C. Bay Milin

Lingering: Elisa Michelet

Dreamland On 5th Street (2022): Riley Goodman

LATE SUNLIGHT LIKE MONET

1.
Searching for gilded snowmelt ponds shrouded in the woods,
we decipher our way
over the decaying storm fall hidden in dense lodgepole pines.
Sliced with sunset,
there are so many hidden
sides of things:
fire on the oceans behind us,
the cries of gulls spiraling updrafts,
amber clouds too
as if clouds could burn all regrets away.
No, it’s not selfish to push,
to mount sundown, strip beside
you & enter the opal water— cast in liquid gold—
no remorse.

2.
It’s not selfish
to be
sliced with sunset.
We decipher our way cast in liquid gold.

Holaday Mason

Chimera: Larena Nellies-Ortiz

Ezekiel in the golden hour: Rona Bar and Ofek Avshalom

THAT WAS OUR MANSION.

She’s driving me through one of the neighborhoods I would wander barefoot – or wade the water, which pooled at low sea levels, in storms. I try to see the city I grew up in from her eyes, but as we turn onto Coffee Pot Blvd. – or, over the bridge – viscerally, darkness overcomes my memory.

Struggle to recall little joys: bait supply and fishing in the bay. We drank Mountain Dew on the walk back, my sisters and I were once secure in the riches of this street.

The sun is bellying orange, and Alex’s eyes are twinkly with the weed shared beneath the canopy, trash-ridden banyan tree – somebody’s home, occupied briefly, we.

She jokes that I’ve been captive in her car, her driving, when I feel so guiltily I have held her warm against my chest, as a life-raft, in boating ‘cross my memory.

Then, right here, and right again, I guide us out, out, out. I haven’t come here since I moved back, I explain. I think she gets it. Already, she’s tuned into my running. I think it’s why she doesn’t ask, What happened to the mansion? Why did you leave?

Lillian Jenner

Diving sunset: Manuel A. Elías

Dashed Dreams: C. Bay Milin

LUCKY IN WISCONSIN

My mother and I were lost. We needed to call. Although we read the name once ours on a mailbox, the house and Uncle Fritz were nowhere. He told us he would stand outside with a cigarette. His daughter Sena and six dogs waited in the house. He fed us roast, whole peeled potatoes, and gravy. The butter, the photographs, the suds in the sink– all of it felt shadowed in a familiar kind of ache. When we left, an ashtray in our hair & clothes, we drove fast for beer. Slap-happy stupid with escape, belly up to the bar, we couldn’t stop laughing about the absolutely absurd size of my father’s brother’s earlobes. Just the kind of thing my dad would have found funny, too, I knew. I was pleasantly dizzied by a pure kind of presence— something slightly psychedelic. Signs spoke in a language largely indecipherable, scattered like stars across our trip. The music on the radio in the yellow Bronco and the red graffiti suspended on an overpass praising the land of the living! felt fated. The twenty dollars dumped in the pull tab machine wasn’t wasted. Every mismatched cherry, clover, peach, and blue bell was exactly where it needed to be.

Ellen Henning

When All The World Was Green: Benjamin Littler

Unkai: Elisa Michelet

Derek Cracking Chicote: Cassie Jain

LETTER TO S. ON A COLD, FEBRUARY NIGHT

What if happiness was a hummingbird? It would announce itself with song and flutters, knock every heart into a corner of nectar. You know

me and my hows, my whys. My mind in overdrive. When I was a kid I was always afraid that the CO2 would kill us quietly. I’d

check the burner knobs just to be sure. You know I like to be ready with my paper and lists. I should know better. It’s 5 am somewhere

and someone is still, in sleep or meditation or death. I am a creature of comfort and sorrow. Of worry and “what if.” What if I never find

my happiness. What if it’s trapped in my sternum like a scared bird, bashing its body against a cage. I only know myself and my neural

pathways. How I connect dots: this happenstance led to this happen stance led to this crucifixion led to this holy, holy mess of guts, blood

and bone. You are a holy mess too, my friend. We will clean each other.

Ola Faleti

Bakery Catnap: C. Bay Milin

Mommy Hasn't Cut Her Hair Since the Pandemic: Cassie Jain

POSTCARD FROM HOME

the world we were in is overgrown
with the pit-pierced places in us we were afraid to give a name
and sharper lines of sight.
in it, we go foraging for selves
across the sword-swish of time in the fall of its folds,
unpeeling pasts from presents, the moth of a memory
skewered
with a toothpick
to the yolk-yellow lamplight of this childhood bedroom
where i am five years old and still cross-legged
as if learning how to pray.

Rowan Tate

When All The World Was Green: Benjamin Littler

Meditative findings: Manuel A. Elías

Days of Heaven: Renee Paiement

Thank you for reading.

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www.pearl-press.com

Delilah Twersky

Pearl Press