Fiction, Poetry, Nonfiction, Photography and Photo Art
“I don’t belong here.” This is what I say as Jack pours ketchup on his fries. He gives me a look and picks up his beer. “I can’t get out,” I say. “Really, I can’t . I don’t know how.”
Jack is not a handsome guy. He’s about my age, 50 or so, but more wrinkled. Creases abound on his round face, becoming deeper when he concentrates or when he is annoyed. He is annoyed now.
My father was a bird lover who always had bird feeders and nest boxes in the backyard. He loved watching them. His love for birds is something I share now. I enjoy going out to look for birds with my camera and when I do, I always wish my dad was still here to enjoy it with me. Here is a selection of bird photo art I have created in recent years. I’ll share some of my straight out of the camera bird shots in another post at some point in the future.
Florida has many wonderful places to photograph birds. Most of these were captured at Ward Park here in Winter Park, FL where I’m lucky enough to walk with Mimi dog every day.
Please visit my Flickr photostream if you would like to see more.
Barred Owl – Ward Park
In sadness, he said
leaning back in his chair,
we complement each other
very well
And smiled across the cluttered space
expectant
as if a question reposed there
People who are familiar with my photography know that I don’t often photograph people. But as an artist, I have often felt the need to express the feminine/feminist/pagan/passionate side of myself — the she in me. This set of photo art pieces was created from my own photographs including mannequins and masks among other things. In some cases, I have also layered public domain images from Wikimedia Commons with my own photos.
You can see more of my work in my Flickr photostream.
Dark Dreams
The wind hurries a ragged
leaf across the lawn as rain begins
to fall. Outside, in your stairwell,
the small shriveled corpse of a frog lies
exposed. You lean
toward the window and feel some
tenderness.
In the glowing light of the setting sun, I pad through the grass
to the altar by the door.
The mouse is still warm. I drop it there and wait,
a supplicant in shadow.
The goddess screams when she steps outside.
This night is blessed.
Before I started this blog, I spent some time creating an organizational outline and going through my computer files to select existing content that I wanted to include here. That was all pretty straightforward. But as I was getting organized, I was moved to go searching through my paper files for stuff that I wrote decades ago, mostly poetry and some short fiction. I finally found those things after rummaging through several desk drawers and miscellaneous boxes. As I read through the pieces I had kept, including some commentary from former professors, I found something else I hadn’t expected. I found my young self.
Once on a hot, humid day
at the lake, a snake swam calmly by
the bank where I
was sweating in the sun. Suddenly
it came and moved
slowly, the water rippling and settling
in its wake. It held its head up, skimming
the surface, one eye
turned to where I stood. Silently
it slipped into the shadows
near the shore
and disappeared.
Alan and John are swapping stories about Vietnam when I notice Ann Foster lumbering in our direction. When Alan and John reminisce, they tend to fade away from other people. They don’t notice Ann as soon as I do. They don’t notice when I stop listening to them and start watching her. Ann is an incredible figure by anyone’s standards, at least six feet tall and fat, a Sumo wrestler kind of fat. Today her shirttail has come untucked and dangles, wrinkled and dejected, below her gray polyester jacket. Her short, red hair is creased and matted on one side as if she just rolled out of bed. She holds her textbooks in front of her like a shield. I know from experience that she is heading for the seat next to mine and wish I could occupy both seats simultaneously.
I can’t have an online blog without introducing my fur family, past and present. They have been and are such a big part of my life. After my boy Ozzie passed away in 2014, I went almost 2 years before adopting another dog. Life without a dog can be pretty darned sad.
This is Holly. I adopted her from a Collie rescue organization in 1999 when she was 5 years old. She was the first pet I had had in 20 years. She gave me a reason to look outside myself and changed my entire perspective on life. She passed away from kidney failure in 2010 at the very old age of 15. I don’t have many pictures of her because she was gone soon after I took up photography again. This is an art piece I did recently as a remembrance of her.
Karen Lee Kleis 