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Verses + Vignettes is now Artists Book House Collaborations. ABH Collaborations will still pair artists and writers, but will expand on the idea of collaboration to include content such as poetry, comics, interactive fiction, photography, sound, video and animation.
Instead of serialized content delivered via email, we are posting each ABH Collaboration in its entirety on our website for all to enjoy.
Some bodily changes are a natural part of aging. Other changes might mean that your body is trying to tell you something. Here’s a fun and informative quiz to help you help yourself!
Gary circled September 29, 1974 in his date book in bold red marker. He dared not write anything else, for fear of jinxing it.
It began when a tiny sputtering stream of water rained down on Kevin O’Donnell’s forkful of au gratin potatoes as he lifted them towards his mouth.
“This wallpaper is almost psychedelic,” Rian said, running his hand along the pattern. Up close, the image was beautiful, but strange. “It looks like eyes.”
It was always the same spot. The exact same spot. First it was a money plant. Then a bird of paradise several weeks later. Then an aloe which was quickly followed by a schefflera.
I was picking a piece of viscera out of my teeth with a thin shard of femur when I received a communication from a littermate, one I long assumed had either trudged off to Alaska with the grizzlies or finally fallen into a ravine as dinner for the coyotes.
In summer 2020, we began the LindaRose Conversations with the intention of wandering, meandering, and musing, responding to one another’s words and visual art. One sends a text, the other responds with an image. Then we switch.
The sun brands a square into the rug. Archer shouts. —This is the pit of fire for the enemy!
The plane Archer’s holding soars over the burning square, axolotl at the helm. —Wuuuurrrrrrraaaaooowwww!
The first lines of a poem Damian Barr posted to Twitter on April 21, 2020 was the starting point for a series of conversations between artist Emily Martin who lives in Iowa City, Iowa and her nephew Cy Hedayati a Trader Joe’s employee in Denver, Colorado.
To Violeta Luelmo, the most beautiful girl in the neighborhood, whose childhood was taken away from her by sex. She was more fortunate than most of us, the rest of her gang.
One by one marshals of the sun...
From the shadow of my shelter I watch as I wait...
O how the wind scrolls unanonymous...
The dining room on Congress Street was the place where everything happened. At night it served as my bedroom, where I slept on a twin bed that came with bed bugs, which I hunted down. I attached them to little wooden carts with twine. Well, not really.
The moon conceals herself beneath a mask of sky. A tireless wind tears rust-stained rice-paper leaves from autumn pines. The sun sets in Jatinga, a small cliff-side village on an Indian plateau. Tonight, birds fall like rain.
‘Cause Grandma’s from Jackson, Mississippi, she can go to work on cornbread and buttermilk or cornbread and beans or, well, cornbread and anything all smashed up in a bowl. But you live in Chicago, and are only country by association, so you’ll need something green, like greens or cabbage or spinach to accompany your cornbread. Choose one.
1. Everyone cleared out the bread aisle, so you’ve decided to make your own loaf. Face down, concentrating on the movements, you knead the thoughts that swell within your head, which must be softened, shaped and pummeled into submission. Why hasn’t she called? How much longer do we wait in our houses? Is she okay?
My mother’s father would take me to a cabin to fish in the summers. What I remember is a steep dirt track with branches brushing the Scout as we dropped down to a secret lake. A short dock left to rot, a decent metal johnboat facedown and overgrown with tall grass.
