A note from Oormila: Each of these micros has been paired with a miniature painting I made in mixed-media, on used and dried tea bag silk. These are part of a series of over 150 paintings that I painted on tea bags last year when I weaned myself off coffee and started drinking tea. I wanted to recycle the tea bags and I had the idea for making them into mini-canvases. The paintings in this submission have the same title as the micros …
Tag: Garden
“Blonde Noir” * Short Story * DC Diamondopolous
Kit Covington sat on the sofa in her Pacific Palisades mansion with a cigarette lodged in the side of her mouth. A cloud of smoke floated around her head. She adjusted the oxygen tube in her nose, then brushed ash from her dog Muffin’s champagne-colored curls. The miniature poodle dozing in Kit’s lap startled when the camera crew from The Great Morning Talk Show banged equipment into Kit’s antique furniture. “Watch it! You scratch anything, you’ll pay for the restoration.” …
Spirit Becomes Concrete: Mandy Aftel’s Jasmine Grandiflorum Concrete * Leona Godin
“Is Jasmine then the mystical Morn—the centre, the Delphi, the Omphalos of the floral world? Is it the point of departure, the one unapproachable and indivisible unit of fragrance? Is Jasmine the Isis of flowers, with veiled face and covered feet, to be loved of all yet discovered by none? Beautiful Jasmine! If it be so, the Rose ought to be dethroned and the Inimitable enthroned in her stead; suppose we create a civil war among the gardens and crown …
Read More "Spirit Becomes Concrete: Mandy Aftel’s Jasmine Grandiflorum Concrete * Leona Godin"
“An Ode to Icelandic Tap Water” & Other Poems by Sara Letourneau
An Ode to Icelandic Tap Water I was told to drink you, that you are “completely safe” and “no other tap water on Earth tastes so good,” and I cringed as if I had sipped rancid milk. Where I come from, such water perfumes the skin with trace metals during a shower, and who knows what kind of slow death it inflicts on one’s cells. Regardless, I pour my first glass of you, and you appear as water should, clear …
Read More "“An Ode to Icelandic Tap Water” & Other Poems by Sara Letourneau"
“A Dictionary of Tomatoes” * Creative Nonfiction * Gabriella Brand
The summer language classes are free, but Rabka insists on leaving payments on my desk. Slippery eggplants—aubergines--waddled in a dish towel like purple babies. Ripe tomatoes cradled in a woven bag. Cookies, sweet and wheaty, pregnant with raisins. Moist, glistening farmer’s cheese, twisted like a rune. I try to return the towels and the tidy bags, carefully stitched from recycled nightgowns or a baby’s shirt, a towel from Canadian Tire. “This is a useful bag,” I say. “You should take …
Read More "“A Dictionary of Tomatoes” * Creative Nonfiction * Gabriella Brand"
“Love Stings” * Flash Fiction * Samantha Meddaugh
I impatiently burst through the opening of our stuffy home where we have been secluded for several long months and take in the fresh air. The sun shines so brightly and beautifully in my compound eyes. My yellow stripes gleam like sunlight, my black stripes dark as night. My name is Phoenix, and I’m a young female worker bee. Spring is almost over, and summer is making its move, filling the days with a welcoming warmth. As my antennae take …
Read More "“Love Stings” * Flash Fiction * Samantha Meddaugh"
“Of Man’s First Disobedience” * Taste & Smell in John Milton’s Paradise Lost
The opening lines of Paradise Lost (1667) by John Milton are perhaps some of the most recognizable in all of western literature, and they begin with taste—the oh-so-delicious taste of good and evil that will get humans kicked out of Eden forever: Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruitOf that forbidden tree whose mortal tasteBrought death into the World, and all our woe,With loss of Eden, till one greater ManRestore us, and regain the blissful seat,Sing, Heavenly Muse,… A quick …
Read More "“Of Man’s First Disobedience” * Taste & Smell in John Milton’s Paradise Lost"
Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” A Tale of A Boy, A Girl, Her Flower & It’s Poison
Aromatica Poetica is delighted to present “Rappaccini’s Daughter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, first published in 1844, and later collected in Mosses From An Old Manse. We were alerted to this stunning gothic tale by Jim Endersby in his fun cultural history of the Orchid, in which he analyzes it as “one of the earliest killer plant stories.” As you know from reading “The Flowering of the Strange Orchid,” we love killer plant stories! But whereas H.G. Well’s story is lighthearted, Hawthorne’s …
Read More "Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” A Tale of A Boy, A Girl, Her Flower & It’s Poison"