Acrylic Artist description of the piece (translated from Arabic): There is something hiding behind the painting. There is a ghost behind it. It is the ghost of someone. (Who?) (No answer to that.) It is not me (says the artist); it is another girl who is afraid. The ghost frightens people, but it does not hurt them. (What does the girl in the picture say?) The girl (in the picture) says the ghost came to her. (What does the girl say to you about the ghost?) She told me so we can help her. This painting was created with the support of the Inside-Outside Project. Halil, age unknown Syria About the Project There are millions of children affected by war, social collapse, and climate change now living in refugee camps, or dispersed in host countries far from their original homes. The work that appears here is a part of Stone Soup’s growing collection of creative expression by young people whose lives have been upended by such conflict throughout the world. To explore the entire collection, please visit the Stone Soup Refugee Project online: https://stonesoup.com/refugee-project/
June 2021
Cornered
Deep in the White House, maybe in a closet, the door is shut and barricaded from the inside by an armoire and a heavy sofa. To his left you might see a machine gun. To his right is a decoy: a rifle labeled the 2nd Amendment. The man’s face is in shadow. On the wall, his country’s upside-down flag hangs crookedly. On the wall opposite, the flag of treason has been nailed to the wall beside the hanging skeletal figure of a young man. A Bible sits, brand new and yet covered in dust, on a barren shelf behind him. On the back wall, a flat-screen TV frames his face. There is a whiteboard deep inside the closet. An Expo marker is tied on a string to the corner of the board. It has been recently erased. A picture of his daughter has been tacked to the board with a round black magnet, her face false with make-up. If you look closely, you will see that his right shoelace is undone. The hem of his pants are crooked. Perched on the bridge of his nose is a pair of borrowed glasses. If he knew these things, if he could see these things, he would not let them slide. The man is cornered. He has cornered himself. Cora Burch, 13Van Nuys, CA
Bike Shopping
I am on my dad’s computer scanning Craigslist and stressing over the purchase of a new bike, as I am adamant about getting one that doesn’t have a sloped bar, which is a trait of stereotypically “girl” bikes, and I don’t want one with a horizontal bar either, a “men’s” bike, so the one I would really like would have a half bar, like my current bike, that sits without curve on a diagonal, and look— here is a red one, with the bar that I want, simple gear shifters, and just my size of 16, and it is listed as a women’s bike, but I will get it anyway, so my dad and I schedule a trip to pick it up, and it takes less time than formerly thought, only thirty minutes with the pandemic and all and— oh right. The pandemic. Cora Burch, 13Van Nuys, CA
