an online adventure with words and images…that is what we create…

As we work to prep the coming issue, we have also been thinking about what actually happens after the issue is launched and you click on it; read it; skim it; share it; reflect on it…etc. Do we…
Uncover the diverse emotions of life through words and images?

Enrich your heart, soul, spirit?

Help transition the global community into a world-wide neighborhood?

Prompt you to read, reflect, act!?

Provide a multi-dimensional journey into words and images?

Give you words that intrigue; images that enrich; a publication that emboldens?

Satisfy your hunger for stimulating words and images?

Fuel your creative spirit and inspire your need to share your creative impulses with someone else?

And does aaduna rock your imagination?

Whoa…this blog posting is not about aaduna {well, may be a little.} It is about our summer contributors so let’s get back to what we do…promote our contributors!

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Shawnte Barr (photo provided)

Shawnte Barr is an aspiring and emerging poet and writer who crafts her words with meaning and a sense of history.  In the summer issue we will publish her poem, “Some Men Are Sweet, Others Are Squirrels.”  We decided not to excerpt anything from that work but to present another work, in its entirety titled, “warm rain on cool skin.”

so comforting and soothing

so refreshing the rain

washing away the unwanted pain

sort of like letting go

kind of like renewing the inside

can almost be compared to being baptized

in the water where all my sins are washed away

like renewing my spirit, so to speak

replenishing what was once lost

making me smile

like it's going out of style

so i like to sing:

when it rains on me

i believe that i'm set free

when it rains on me

i believe my sins are washed away

who are you to judge my pain?

to tell me to stop my pouring rain?

you were not there when i was going insane

you were not there when my heart was broke

when i could barely breath and was about to choke

when i was used and abused

i do remember, though, how you were amused

because life got in my way

and i didn't have much to say

“it was a man” you say

no it wasn't, at least not today

my pain will not be expressed to you

‘cause you will twist my words and misconstrue

with your mouth telling lies

trying to block all my tries

because you will only scandalize my name

‘cause to you it's a game

but i shall overcome like the warrior blood rushing through my veins

and i shall rise above like the ocean waves

if you haven't guessed by now i'm pretty brave

in the midst of winter i am summer

when it rains i am the thunder

warm rain on cool skin

refreshing me again and again

*****

Nelson Lowhim (photo provided)

Nelson Lowhim, born in Tanzania of Indian, Seychelles, and Euro background, lived in India, and at age 10 moved to the States.  He currently lives in Washington State. What is important to know about him is that ‘he reads and writes.’ Here is the opening excerpt to his fiction piece, “of dice and life.”  What else to say?  Enjoy

W

hat can one say about one’s own past? What can one do with those hazy memories of our childhood? For me it was another world; tropical deluges throwing smells of soil into the air and sending scorpions indoors where the humble light of hurricane lanterns cast trembling shadows on the walls because the electricity looked for the slightest excuse to stop. And with the warm concrete and burning kerosene dulling my senses, I'd leap into the air trying not to step on said scorpions. There was also the high noon heat of parched dry seasons, flies buzzing in the air, landing, tickling my skin, dogs howling, the stench of their feces hanging heavy over the dry clay and burned grass… and when the sun set, the relief of the night gave way to the torment of the mosquitoes, and the smell of incense.

*****

The Labor Day weekend is fast approaching and aaduna’s summer issue is right behind!

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aaduna - a timeless exploration into words and images - is a globally read, multi-cultural, and diverse online literary and visual arts journal established in 2010.  Visit us at www.aaduna.org where we put measurable actions to our words.

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