Ghazal for Valley Girl (▴▴▴)
We wanted this flat here. To point out that range ▴▴▴ is a sideways measure just like
words & sometimes weeping, as they spread, & cancer, until it hits skin as a cusp like
when each body ▴▴▴ in the way, like the firefly emerging on that very solstice night &
your dream of corals ▴▴▴ blessing plankton before killing them, begins to align just like
stars & moons & heavy metals ▴▴▴ are dotted & crossed & marked in time. See, what
I’m trying to say is that you make sense, being born to this web of mutation & rust like
museum jars, ethnopaleobotanical archaeology, drought, & Vitamin C gummies. It makes
so much sense that your sun is in Cancer ▴▴▴ & your mother can’t remember the rest like
what second you crowned ▴▴▴ so sharp & whether the sky was black. Myth has to be the
mother of evolution. I can only imagine that’s how we came so far & wide, obsessed like
our own chromosomes & their constant moving & marking: drawing shapes ▴▴▴, adding
dots to lines, & chiseling crosses like they might conjure up our next niche, some nest like
a valley ▴▴▴, maybe pink, or green, or purple (in patches ▴▴▴ & only if it flowers after
snow) & so many shapes ▴▴▴ like ferns, & rivers, & bulls, all to tether like, to dress like
& maybe even, all the while we give ourselves to sickness, to give us something to be like.
MITALI KHANNA SHARMA (she/her) is a Punjabi-American writer, editor, multi-media artist, and occasional farmer. Her work has appeared in Peach Mag, Five:2:One, Wordgathering, and elsewhere. You can probably find her in the Midwest, where she advises an undergraduate literary/arts magazine while also thinking about (agro)ecology and socioecological diversity, or, perhaps, on Instagram: @mitalikhannasharma. Previous creative projects and academic work can also be explored at mitalikhannasharma.com.
KRISTIN ABIGAIL is a visual artist in the area of photography, collage and calligraphy, captivated by the process of creating raw, unpolished pieces; playful lines balanced with soothing but vibrant colors and minimalistic compositions. her work process is impulsive, her style is approachable and her art is accessible. photography has been her profession (and main form of artistic expression) for years, but in 2020 while she sat at home on unemployment, she felt herself being drawn to the non-digital arts of analog collage and calligraphy. she reconnected with her childhood/adolescent-self who had doodles scribbled all over her school notebooks and spent hours scrapbooking all alone in her basement late into the night. it took her two years (and birthing an entire human baby!) later to recognize that she’d like to start sharing her art (also what she considers to be her dream space) with others, outside of just social media platforms. what she finds and loves in mediums such as calligraphy and collage is freedom to access pure originality. the subject is her imagination, the scissors her lens.