FALL

2024 | Issue Two


POETRY


Genre cover by Jessica DeMarco-Jacobson

“Is the hundreds ways / of expressing joy.”

Siobhan Casey

Sam Monroe Olson

“She takes my hand / as I say all I can—ty jesteś piękna, babcia, you are beautiful.”

“If only you could turn around. Try it again. Keep your foot on the gas and your eye on / the rearview mirror, trusting in the blur of time travel and the light trickery of this / haunting, hoary month.”

Lucinda Trew

“And yes, this, too, / is a kind of looking, a kind / of being seen.”

Talia Beckhardt

“I would tell you not to waste your time / loving what is difficult, but we do it every time.”

Sheila Black

PROSE


Genre cover by Jennifer Griffiths Orudjev

“You can feel it, the way the land buckles under your feet. The way it folds over itself to push old things to the surface.”

Jacob Dimpsey | Fiction

“And there it was. He was going to get it. Apanhar—not pick up, not understand; catch, yes, but not a ball, not a cold. A beating.”

Emma Sheppard | Nonfiction

“It was not concerning that Tor’s son had run away. He always hid in the same place.”

Coda Danu-Asmara | Fiction


Issue cover by Lana Eileen

Slow Release

Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?

“This piece was created during one of the most transformative and transitional periods in my life, when I had just left my adopted home of New Zealand and exited an abusive relationship that I had been involved in for several years.  I was dealing with residual PTSD and entering a time of growth in the form of truly becoming a visual artist, with my camera being the tool that initially lead me down that road.  I had a newfound sense of freedom and resilience, but it was only the beginning.  The image is meant to represent that unburdening, that release from darkness, letting go and finding your power in the form of honouring your truth and spirit, which for me became the first step to finding where I am now: very much healed, with more access to my own creative potential than I ever could have possessed in the past.”