Last Night in a Dream
by Ashley Inguanta
Last night in a dream, I was healthy. You were a rose. You got into my car and I took you home, and when you saw the white flags at the Brooklyn bridge’s arc, you told me the story of a conflicted hero, all shadow and moon, and I told you a story about resurrecting the dead. In your story, the hero did not want to die, so she did not leap. Instead, she turned into a seed. In my story, I kneeled by your grave. When I heard gunfire, I dodged each bullet—and then, finally, I woke up next to you, all new, stripes of sunlight over your hair like a crisp photograph.
Sometimes I wonder: If God could really hear me, what would the moon do? Any good moon would reach over both white flags, carry them to you as you fall asleep. Any good moon would hold me here, in this dream, where I can run to you without losing my breath, where you are a rose and my heart is good as new.
BIO
Ashley Inguanta is a small-press author, photographer, and yoga teacher who has dedicated her life to helping others heal by developing healthy coping mechanisms. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Central Florida in 2011, and she earned her 200 hour RYT certificate from YOGAMAYA New York in 2014. She is the author of The Way Home (Dancing Girl Press, 2013 / re-published with The Writing Disorder on Kindle), For the Woman Alone (Ampersand Books 2014), and Bomb, which is forthcoming with Ampersand Books this fall. As a mental health advocate and queer rights advocate, she’s volunteered with organizations and facilities like Equality Florida and Lakeside Alternative, and currently she teaches healing, restorative writing and yoga classes at several locations in Central Florida.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Alexander C. Kafka is a journalist, photographer, and composer in Bethesda, Maryland. His photography portfolio is at https://www.lensculture.com/alexander-kafka
Born and raised in Sioux Lookout, Ontario, John Tavares is the son of Portuguese immigrants from Sao Miguel, Azores. His formal education includes a two-year GAS diploma from Humber College with concentration in psychology, a three-year journalism diploma from Centennial College, a Specialized Honors BA in English from York University. He’s worked as a research assistant for the Sioux Lookout Public Library and the Northwestern Ontario regional recycle association with the public works department. He also worked with the disabled for the Sioux Lookout Association for Community Living. Meanwhile, his short fiction has been published in a wide variety of “little magazines” and literary magazines, online and in print, in the United States and Canada. Following journalism studies, he had articles, photography, and features published in East York Observer, East York Times, Beaches Town Crier, East Toronto Advocate, Our Toronto – as well as community and trade newspapers such as York University’s Excalibur and Hospital News, where he interned as an editorial assistant. John recently wrote a novel.
Brad Gottschalk is an exile from the realm of live theater. Currently he is a cartoonist living in Madison, Wisconsin. His art and comics have appeared in Raven Chronicles, Nerve Cowboy, and Berkeley Fiction Review. Read more of his work at 
Harumi Hironaka is a Japanese/Peruvian self-taught painter and illustrator, living in São Paulo, Brasil.
Alina Zamanova is a fashion illustrator and print/textile designer. She studied at University of the Arts London. Currently looking for permanent print design roles. Require sponsorship for working. Originally from Ukraine. She is also available for freelance opportunities both as a fashion illustrator and print designer.
The Anna Pierrepont Series, my drawings of public statuary in NYC, is plein air appropriation. Plein air drawings come into being through visual encounters with the constant changes of light and color in things ideally encountered out of doors. I roll a blue whole foods cart behind me, jammed with a folding chair, pencils, oil and chalk pastels, oil sticks and a pad of paper. I encounter a statue I wish to draw, unfold my chair, lay out my materials and struggle to represent the object emerging from the light and shadows of its surroundings onto a sheet of paper. The drawings are appropriation because the subjects I invariably select are public monuments created by other artists. In 2014, I began to augment the drawings with pictorial essays that enable me to explore beyond the plein air limitations of sight. The essays enable me to explore how the monuments came into being, their connection with their surroundings and their fate after installation. I have named the entire project after Anna Marie Pierrepont, a grand dame of 19th century Brooklyn interred in one of the most magnificent tombs in Greenwood Cemetery. I named the work in her honor as a comment on the gap between my silent and anonymous wanderings and her exulted self presentation.
I was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, where I spent my childhood years. The Soviet Union was ruled by Leonid Brezhnev at the time and the USSR called itself the most powerful country in the world. At age four, my parents left for the Polar Far North for jobs in the Soviet oil and gas industry. They left me with my grandmother, who lived in a town called Luga, which was famously called the “second worst city in Russia” by the great Russian poet Alexander S. Pushkin.
I was born in Vladivostok, Russia, and spent my first twenty years of life by the seashore. After graduating Far Eastern National University (Vladivostok, Russia) with my Bachelor degree in Math in 2007 I spent about seven years working in the financial industry in Russia and abroad. In 2012, I was in a car accident entailing ten days being in coma and ten months of rehabilitation. During that period, I started to draw prolifically as an artist, illustrated one book, the full Tarot deck (78 cards) and made more that 50 illustrations for different projects. This was helping me to fill my time as my abilities were pretty limited at that time. After I left hospital I moved to Canada and continued working as an illustrator and concept artist for animation and gaming industry.
I’m originally from Running Springs, California, in the San Bernardino Mountains, although I’ve lived all over Southern California. I wrote and drew a few webcomics for a few years, and was the writer and publisher of a web series called Supernaturals Presents for two years which is available to read online. I’ve had artwork, fiction and poetry published in Phineas Literary Magazine, Morpheus Tales, Statement, Inlandia and The Realms Beyond since 2014. I’m currently an illustration student at Cal State Fullerton.
Bill Wolak is a poet, photographer, and collage artist. His collages have been published in The Annual, Peculiar Mormyrid, Danse Macabre, Dirty Chai, Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, Lost Coast Review, Yellow Chair Review, Otis Nebula, and Horror Sleaze Trash. He has just published his twelfth book of poetry entitled Love Opens the Hands with Nirala Press. Recently, he was a featured poet at The Hyderabad Literary Festival. Mr. Wolak teaches Creative Writing at William Paterson University
I am heavily influenced by old sci-fi, mystery and horror movies, monsters, UFOs, hauntings and unexplained events. I love to draw and find inspiration from the strange and unusual. I attended the School of Visual Arts and majored in Illustration in 2012.
Born in Canada and bred in the U.S., Allen Forrest has worked in many mediums: computer graphics, theater, digital music, film, video, drawing and painting. Allen studied acting in the Columbia Pictures Talent Program in Los Angeles and digital media in art and design at Bellevue College (receiving degrees in Web Multimedia Authoring and Digital Video Production.) He currently works in the Vancouver, Canada, as a graphic artist and painter. He is the winner of the Leslie Jacoby Honor for Art at San Jose State University’s Reed Magazine and his Bel Red painting series is part of the Bellevue College Foundation’s permanent art collection. Forrest’s expressive drawing and painting style is a mix of avant-garde expressionism and post-Impressionist elements reminiscent of van Gogh, creating emotion on canvas.
A graduate of Syracuse University School of Art and New York University, I have been a textile, apparel and home products designer for three decades, working in the New York and Los Angeles garment and design districts. I began painting canvases in 2004 and have experimented with various styles. I started with a series of large expressionist botanicals and have since moved on to more illustrative studies of mid century modern themes. As a long time collector of Eames Era furnishings, I find the subjects fun and inspiring. I like to add my own twist to the sometimes stark Eames elements by posing pets in the settings. I am also intrigued by the futuristic space age themes from the period, and like to add mystery and humor to my works.
My name is Lauren Martino and I refuse to write about myself in the third person. I paint, I write poems, I take pictures, I draw, I sculpt, I build sets, I make things. The day I stop learning is the day I die. I am the daughter of two painters who gave me the experience of a lifetime by raising my twin brother and I in a building called Westbeth Artists Housing. I pray one day to be at least half as talented as they are. Taking summer classes at FIT throughout my adolescence had an enormous part in shaping me into who I am today. I am currently embarking on a new journey as a part time student at the New York Studio School. I have shown at Westbeth Gallery under the alias of Heather Bridges because if they knew how old I was they wouldn’t have accepted my work. I have worked as a Set Designer for the ID channel and other independent projects. I am young, with time I will collect more anecdotes to inspire and impress perfect strangers, but for now this is me and that is all.
Paul Garson is a writer and photographer. He has contributed to many magazines and periodicals, and has published both fiction and nonfiction books as well as written two screenplays that have been produced. He served as a university instructor of composition and writing, as well as a martial arts instructor. His public relations and marketing projects included several for national and multinational companies.
Sarah Katharina Kayß is winner of the manuscript-award of the German Writers Association for her poetry and essay collection Ich Mag Die Welt So Wie Sie Ist (Allitera, Germany 2014). She edits the bilingual literature magazine The Transnational (
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