Hilda has it all. She’s 42, mother of bubbly two-year-old Todd, and a professor of intellectual property law, where she has just made a bundle—her share in an inheritance suit deploying ‘The Eustace Diamond Defense’—which persuaded the judge to allow Mrs. Mandolini to keep the family diamonds her late husband, olive oil magnate Giuseppe Mandolini, had lavished upon her. Besides these personal and professional triumphs, she has just won a weight-lifting trophy at her fitness club, for executing a 190-pound …
Tag: Rose
“Safranal” & Other Poems by Lora Berg
Safranal We happened on a nest of Crocus Sativus, petal, stigma, style, strands of saffron lolling over lilac rims, and slid our hands close to the earth to pluck them, three per bloom. Evocations: * Jeweled rice of Persia * Paella in Andalucia * Amish golden broth * Under the counter, in the old Tunis souk * High up, in Mama’s kitchen cabinet * Curled in Grandpa’s crystal pill box * bittersweet notes reaching back in time * to Minoa, …
Sillage 1: Chanel No. 19 * Poetry + PROSE * Jehanne Dubrow
Aromatica Poetica is delighted to present the first in a new series called Sillage by Jehanne Dubrow. She is the author of several books of poetry and prose that dance with our heart’s senses, including Taste: A Book of Small Bites, which we highly recommend! Each of the 12 poems are written in the voice of a specific perfume—this first one is Chanel No. 19—and were begun during the height of the pandemic. For this Sillage series, the poems are …
Read More "Sillage 1: Chanel No. 19 * Poetry + PROSE * Jehanne Dubrow"
Disgruntled Elites * Digital Photography * Joe Lugara
I’ve been an abstract painter for decades. When I began producing digital photographs about six years ago, it was with the goal of pushing them away from traditional photography and a little closer to painting. To do that, I needed to find painterly tools within the software that would enable me to make brushstrokes akin to those in my oils, acrylics, and watercolors. These florals, from a series called “Disgruntled Elites,” are more commonly known around the studio as “curious flowers.” …
Read More "Disgruntled Elites * Digital Photography * Joe Lugara"
“To My Sense of Smell” * Poetry * Gabriela Iacovano
*This poem was inspired by the recent loss of my sense of smell since I contracted COVID-19.* passed the season in rose-muddied berry-tinted dairy-clotted clouds tiny porcelain-and-steam pillars sweet smoke spirals ancient resins candied orange when id never eat it lathering creamy wintry bubbles carrying honeyed mists crushing petals breaking seeds laying ferns on cakes blooming magic feels your absence in the glitter and fog of my soup pot oily kale on broth swirling sea plant emerald frills golden …
Read More "“To My Sense of Smell” * Poetry * Gabriela Iacovano"
“The Smell of Purple” * Fiction * Rainie Zenith
Before my grandmother died, we would walk down to the cemetery, sit on the bench that faced the road and count cars. Just the red ones. When the count reached ten, we’d walk back up the hill to Gran’s house for a cup of tea and a shortbread biscuit. The most amazing thing about Gran’s house was the bathroom. It was purple in every sense of the word. That is, it was painted mauve and always smelled like lavender, from …
Emily Dickinson * Two Poems of Rose & Gentian
“The gentian is a greedy flower,” Emily Dickinson wrote to a friend in the autumn of 1859, “and overtakes us all. Indeed, this world is short, and I wish, until I tremble, to touch the ones I love before the hills are red—are gray—are white—are ‘born again’!” Flowers lace the landscape of Dickinson’s poetry. Botany was one of the rare scientific outlets for women in the 19th century, and Dickinson was versed in the scientific as well as the romantic …
“AN OLFACTORY LIFE,” Fiction by Steve Carr
My nose has been trained to sniff out every objectionable smell within sniffing range. It’s a marvel of radar technology. Why the military hasn’t used my nose for national defense, or offense, I have no idea. Being in the hospital, in this bed, my nose has been working overtime. Cleaning fluids. Pure alcohol. The perfumes the nurses wear. My urine soaking through the top sheet. My nose is unable to block out the smell of any of it. My nose …
Poems & Flash Prose by Mel Finefrock
*Aromatica Poetica is delighted to present Mel Finefrock’s poetry and flash prose in our Blind Writers Project series sponsored by Awesome Foundation Disability* Runoff That night, I washed my hair over and over again as if to clear my head of the persistent thought that I must be unclean. Five months down the road, that rose shampoo has only just begun to smell again of other memories, like that weekend at my dad’s or afternoons on the trail with a …
Hendrick’s Cucumber: A Hydrosol gin cocktail experiment
I’ve been obsessed with gin on the one hand and hydrosols on the other for a little while now, and mixing them together seemed only natural, though they may strike the uninitiated as strange bedfellows. Hydrosols and alcohols (as well as essential oils) are all distilled. So what is distillation? Simply put–which is about all I can manage since I’m no scientist, distillation is the heating of a liquid to create steam in order to separate out substances. Different substances …
Read More "Hendrick’s Cucumber: A Hydrosol gin cocktail experiment"