FLAWN #5 - June 2023
A monthly newsletter of events, shout-outs, interviews, and bite-sized pieces of creative work from the Florida Local Artist & Writer Network (FLAWN).
A Piece of FLAWN
Welcome to our fifth serving of FLAWN. If you enjoy what you find here, be sure to subscribe, and you’ll get our monthly newsletter in your e-mail inbox once per month! (Desktop view allows for optimal viewing.)
Subscribers can also submit one piece of writing (<500 words), art, or multimedia content for guest post consideration. As we want to promote the arts in Florida, we’ll consider pieces submitted by those who live in the state, were born here, or whose work is somehow inspired by the state. All genres are welcome.
To submit, email FLAWNinfo@gmail.com.
Calendar of Literary and Art Events
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You can submit an event through the button below if you are a FLAWN subscriber.
If you are interested in volunteering with FLAWN to manage a calendar for your region, please reach out to flawninfo@gmail.com.
Interview with Artist & Designer Reina Kashima | Jacksonville, FL
by Yuki Jackson
REINA KASHIMA. 1st born Japanese American from Morehead City, NC. Self taught. Painter and upcycle designer.
JOURNEY. Identity struggle. Not accepted as a child in Japan for being me. Different clothes, hair, and skin tone. Points and stares in the US. Go back to your country. I’m not normal. Trauma child. Run away kid. Emancipated high school dropout. GET ME OUT OF HERE. Joined the military at 19. 20 years of service. RETIRED SENIOR CHIEF.
REBIRTH. ART. STRUCTURE. LEADERSHIP. CARE. VALUES. PURPOSE. WAY FORWARD. RESPONSIBLY. IKIGAI.
-れいな
Take the negative and sling shot it into a positive you never believed could happen. Violated series. Preyed upon. Recorded on hidden cameras for years as child in bedrooms and bathrooms. People also uncomfortably stared for looking different. Eyes everywhere. I always lived in fear and in defense mode. Now this is me in flip mode.
Adult Summer Camp with Tyler Gillespie! (On-site Writing Residency from June 19-23 in St. Petersburg, FL)
in partnership with Keep St. Pete Lit at Morean Workshop Space
In this week-long immersive camp, we'll explore the natural and artistic worlds around us to bring multi-disciplinary elements into our practice.
We'll talk about the craft and theory of writing as it applies to our work, and work together to complete a collaborative publication!
Cost: $500 for the 5-day workshop
Optional, on-site residency: +$275 for the full 5 days
For more information, either contact the program director Valerie Knaust (valerie@moreanworkshopspace.org) or Tyler Gillespie (TylerMGillespie@gmail.com)
Occhiolism
by Boy in the Rain
occhiolism - n. the awareness of the smallness of your perspective, by which you couldn’t possibly draw any meaningful conclusions at all, about the world or the past or the complexities of culture, because although your life is an epic and unrepeatable anecdote, it still only has a sample size of one, and may end up being the control for a much wilder experiment happening in the next room.
-from The Dictionary of Obscure Shadows by John Koenig
Middle School Science Class by Dustin Brookshire
inspired by Denise Duhamel’s “Nature” Mrs. Smeyser explained the life cycle of stars. Our sun, a yellow dwarf, will become a red giant. Flames will consume Mercury and Venus like appetizers before reaching Earth. My ears ignored the 5-billion-year timeline. I exclaimed, We’re going to burn to death! Mrs. Smeyser laughed, I don’t plan on being around. Giggles wafted through the air. A few students looked as horrified as me. Maybe they too were Southern Baptists raised on fearing a city of flames. I knew God would use the sun for the final destruction. The red giant loomed. My face red from its heat.
The Writer’s Corner
The Writer’s Corner is a monthly installment in which Dustin Brookshire interviews writers residing in Florida with a focus on south Florida writers. The June installment features Hollywood poet Nicole Tallman. Nicole is a poet, ghostwriter, and editor. Born and raised in Michigan, she lives in Miami, serves as the Poetry Ambassador for Miami-Dade County, Special Projects Editor for Redacted Books, Poetry and Interviews Editor for The Blue Mountain Review, and an Associate Editor for South Florida Poetry Journal. She is the author of Something Kindred and Poems for the People (The Southern Collective Experience (SCE) Press). Her next book, FERSACE, is forthcoming in November 2023 from ELJ Editions. Find her online at nicoletallman.com.
Holding Onto
by Gloria Muñoz
How compression keeps the heart
beating but too much stops it
even while I sleep the drumming
throbs The heart a Battering
Ram that breaks
out of instead
of into castle doors
The body a mote
curled around dreaming
Recognizing the movement of someone else’s heart
is like a chill or a burn always new How a gasp feels
less like a filling of
and more like a diaphragm double
knotting itself into a fist
But the body is not punctured
by heartache organs stay stacked
and the heart beats to shitty soft rock requests
on the late night radio for the heartbroken
where a woman with a dove
voice says tell me everything
How in a doorway I gave
the reasons why a relationship
would work to a face bedecked
with secrets like a disco ball
and all the air sucked out
of every container of my body
but even emptiness requires attention
A vacant office building
lit up at night is monumental
The climate-controlled units
where we keep our stuff cradled
in bubble wrap to sleep
in the city of memories
Is there a more sublime example
of human nostalgia Everything
seems to be made to hold another
thing How all our past
relationships were kept
in boxes A life span
of inside jokes compacted
into a shoebox
Guest Post!
Photograph and Poem: Shades o' Dewey & Metaphorically Me
by Suzanne S. Austin-Hill 
Photo credit: "Shades o' Dewey", December 2018. Metaphorically Me by Suzanne S. Austin-Hill I am a file cabinet crammed with wonderful life experiences arranged alpha- betically, chronologically. The unexpected arranged cas. u. al. ly. The painful arranged hap a haz r d l y. Suzanne S. Austin-Hill hails from The Big Apple. She is a poet who lived in Miami, the Cutler Ridge area, from July 1980-April 2010. Suzanne now lives in a house built on what used to be a thriving tomato farm in Ruskin, a crowded suburb of Tampa. She has penned hundreds of poems; many recognized on the local, state, and national levels. Suzanne is particularly proud of the pieces published in Sandhill Review, Culinary Origami Journal, NonBinary Press, 805 Lit + Art, Newtown Literary, Lucky Jefferson, O Miami, and by the Florida State Poets Association. Her first book of poetry, Sixty-seven pages from the Heart, is a testimony to her belief that poetry is an ointment, an elixir, and a tonic that pours out from the heart. It is available at <amazon.com>
FLAWNT IT! 🎉🎉🎉 compiled by Gloria Muñoz BIG CONGRATULATIONS to Tyler Gillespie for the publication of the nature machine! Still buzzing from Yuki Jackson's PHENOMENAL play. Listen to KATARA here!!! SAVE THE DATE for Alicia Thompson's launch of Cold World! CALLING ALL FLORIDA* POETS, WRITERS, ARTISTS, MUSICIANS, AND MULTIMEDIA ARTISTS!!!! We want to feature your work in FLAWN! Submit one piece of writing (<500 words), art, or multimedia content for guest post consideration. All genres are welcome. To submit, email FLAWNinfo@gmail.com. *writers must have some past or present connection to the sunshine state. ☀️
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