SEA TO SKY REVIEW

OTHER WORLDS

VOLUME 5. ISSUE 1. JUNE 2024

We asked for submissions on the theme of ‘other worlds’ and writers did not disappoint! Godzilla describes a monster from another world but the reader suspects our poet is actually telling a story closer to home. "Everyone wants to be first to discover anything breathing that behaves better than our globe mates," explains the speaker in Alpha Male Marian, and then despairs at the limitations of reality. Pale Child is a tale unfolding under a sky "like a canopy of floating crows extending their oily black wings." In Three Tiers our other worlds take on the guise of home. Drowning in Sky settles the reader in a cabin next to a pot of boiling stew and sealed in by fog. Delicate poems infused with love begin with Light, Another Light and a Different Light and continue in a Mother Writes to her Daughter. The Broken Bell tells of a world that has lost its heart.

Our photographers have treated us to their amazing art once again and you’ll find them shared throughout this issue. Our feature gallery from Yvonne Hanson is from a trip she took to the other world of Los Angeles in October 2023.

Cover photo: Yvonne Hanson Photography

POETRY

Featured

Light, Another Light, and a Different Light

by Paul Dickey

Three poems.

Drowning in Sky

by Sophia Conway

Only the
hum of the old refrigerator dares
break the stillness of being cut
off from the world.

Godzilla

by Bob Bradshaw

Who could have predicted Godzilla

lumbering out of the waves,
hideously scaled,

A Mother Writes To Her Daughter, In Europe Somewhere With Her Friends

by Bob Bradshaw

Your letters home
are like flower catalogs
to a gardener in winter.
They don’t come often enough.

The Three Tiers

by Sivakami Velliangiri

At mid-day we walked the winding stairways, up and up, till we came to a gallery where the departed play acted … in mock weddings, ran round the gold rimmed red chairs

Wind in My Face

by Moriah Hampton

on my bike
I ride for one afternoon
that stretches
the rest of my life

Alpha Male Martian

by Mignon Ariel King

Xenophobia for the girl or boy next door has everyone on edge,
yearning for the exotic. The exceptional. The telescopic!

Pale Child

by Royal Rhodes

The sky, but for the lone moon,
is like a canopy of floating crows
extending their oily black wings.

The Broken Bell and The Death of Goodness

by Brian Michael Barbeito

Outside the window the wind blows cold and that particular town is dirty, grimy.

Yvonne Hanson

Los Angeles is a city built for cars first and people second. The architecture is inhospitable to pedestrians. This has an eerie effect for those brave enough to take the city on foot. While walking the streets, searching for my next image, I was very often the only person around. The city was populated, but its occupants were concealed in cars whizzing by on freeways above or below the streets. I traversed shopping districs, neighbourhoods, industrial zones- all while completely alone on the sidewalk. The eeriness of this experience comes through in these images. Elements of architecture or advertising meant to attract the eye of pedestrians have been left to deteriorate and age, crumbling under billboards and elevated parking lots. The experience is one of being frozen in time.
(Film: Cinestill 800T. LA. October 2023. Click images to enlarge)