Anna Lena Phillips Bell
Art by Jenny Rask
Jenny Rask, Body Festival, nylon, cotton waste, lycra,wood, thread, 5 x 16in
Attempt with a Gap in It
Always by copying down each
filigreed gesture, they inferred
jousting kisses lipped my nose
on proximate quiet roundabouts,
so took unseeingly,
unsaw the insidious recurring
quandary, preferring only niceties,
minced licorice, kindly jests,
insensate howls gone furtive,
elided, dimmed, covered by assent.
Jenny Rask, Bubble, nylon, wool, cotton, yarn waste, 7 x 14 in
Attempt with a Gap in It
Alpha boy carrying dread enters, freights gentle hours,
irked, jets kindled, lathers, menaces, nips out pleas, quashes rejoinders,
struts, teetering under victimhood, whines, exhausts you—
You expunge what venom under the skin, real quick.
Put on new mettle, luxuriate. Keep jaunty, irrepressibly
here, gotten free: every dear callus, basking, always.
Jenny Rask, Life Cart, pen, graphite pencil, colored pencil, oil pastel, 9 x 12 in
Attempt with a Gap in It
Allow bees: cut down
ever fewer goldenrod, hyssop.
Holler gaudy fealties each day.
Coralbean! buttonbush!—ambrosia.
Jenny Rask, Two Worlds, collage, 9 x 12 in
Attempt with a Gap in It
After being called down every fissure,
getting hotter, inching, just kidding, let my
natural offset position quit, remain still,
turn upward, vibrate with exceeding yes—
yes except when veering, undone, tired;
still so readable, quite pretty, outstaring
naysayers, men, lemons: kitted out, just
in it, happy gamboler, freighted estuarial
downy cat-faced bear-footed ambler-after—
Fall / Winter 2023
Anna Lena Phillips Bell
Anna Lena Phillips Bell is the author of Ornament, winner of the Vassar Miller Poetry Prize, and the chapbook Smaller Songs, from St Brigid Press. Bell’s artist’s books have been selected for exhibitions at Abecedarian Gallery and Asheville Bookworks. She teaches in the creative writing department at UNC Wilmington and is the editor of Ecotone.
Jenny Rask
Jenny Rask is a Lebanese-American visual artist from Portland, Oregon. After completing a BA in journalism from the University of Oregon, she worked as a self-taught graphic designer. She relocated to New York City after winning a design award at twenty-one, establishing herself as a motion-graphics designer at MTV. Vibrant NYC life and daily exposure to street style deeply influenced Jenny’s design and artwork. Trash piles on city sidewalks sparked a deep fascination for the subtle beauty found in discarded objects and their forms. After relocating to Los Angeles, Jenny maintained her art practice while raising three children. Inspired by the mundane aspects of domestic life, she photographed masses of family laundry and arranged sculptures made from household items, which influenced her to work in fiber and assemblage. In 2017 she had her first solo exhibition, Colors of Inanimacy, at The Lodge, Los Angeles. Jenny completed an MFA in sculpture at CSULB in 2020, and has been included in several group exhibitions in California and New York.