Letter from the Editor
Welcome to Inverted Syntax’s Fissured Tongue Volume V.
In this issue we have a number of multidisciplinary artists sharing powerful prose with us—artists, photographers, filmmakers, musicians both in the studio and on paper. No matter the medium, they bring us great gifts.
Revenants ride in water-cup waves, antique kimonos secretively tuck their voluminous layers into prosaic paper airplanes, and an artist/activist inspires beautiful ekphrastic poetry from a dreaming musician.
These pieces exist as scattered dots twinkling across a continuum that extends through cardinal and dimensional directions; babies scream on Santa’s lap in the North Pole, a hot mess drives through the Mojave desert, a temple makes its home wherever you want it to, and somewhere in the unsettled past, wild curls bounce onto the gleaming floor of a drafty salon.
This is an invitation to approach these works as our writers do; as foragers, finding the beautiful gems scattered throughout this issue. Some hide in plain sight and others ask you to fill your nails with rich, loamy soil. No matter the costs, these treasures are worth the effort. I’m bringing my shovel.
Happy digging,
Yesica Mirambeaux
Managing Editor
Inverted Syntax
May 2023
Welcome to Inverted Syntax’s Fissured Tongue Volume V.
In this issue we have a number of multidisciplinary artists sharing powerful prose with us—artists, photographers, filmmakers, musicians both in the studio and on paper. No matter the medium, they bring us great gifts.
Revenants ride in water-cup waves, antique kimonos secretively tuck their voluminous layers into prosaic paper airplanes, and an artist/activist inspires beautiful ekphrastic poetry from a dreaming musician.
These pieces exist as scattered dots twinkling across a continuum that extends through cardinal and dimensional directions; babies scream on Santa’s lap in the North Pole, a hot mess drives through the Mojave desert, a temple makes its home wherever you want it to, and somewhere in the unsettled past, wild curls bounce onto the gleaming floor of a drafty salon.
This is an invitation to approach these works as our writers do; as foragers, finding the beautiful gems scattered throughout this issue. Some hide in plain sight and others ask you to fill your nails with rich, loamy soil. No matter the costs, these treasures are worth the effort. I’m bringing my shovel.
Happy digging,
Yesica Mirambeaux
Managing Editor
Inverted Syntax
May 2023
READ FISSURED VOLUME V
"The Only..." by Lisa Berley, collage, acrylic paint
on board, 12 x 16 inches, 2023
About the Volume Five's Featured Cover Artist
Visual artist and poet Lisa Berley began her career as art director at KQED TV in San Francisco after receiving a BFA in painting and photography from the San Francisco Art Institute. At the intersection of art and media Berley began her pioneering work as an artist for Aurora Systems, developing one of the first computer graphics and animation systems for television. After returning to New York she raised a family, wrote a blog, and exhibited mixed media/collage works in galleries across Long Island culminating in a one-woman show in Geneseo, New York. In 2016 Berley moved to Boulder, Colorado and after her sons accidental death from a fall, began using methods similar to her collage paintings to create hybrid erasure poetry/collage. Her nonlinear approach to poetry/collage, redacting found words to create new reductive fragments, mirrors her journey of profound grief.
About the Art
I begin with words, then visuals and vice versa, to create erasure poems/collages by deconstructing and reconstructing found word and image fragments from the NYTimes magazines, forming new structures. The grief I experience is nonlinear, and writing with erasure/collage shapes the poems with the use of new juxtapositions, punctuation, and abstracted visuals. These constructions are a way of navigating a new path forward.
Visual artist and poet Lisa Berley began her career as art director at KQED TV in San Francisco after receiving a BFA in painting and photography from the San Francisco Art Institute. At the intersection of art and media Berley began her pioneering work as an artist for Aurora Systems, developing one of the first computer graphics and animation systems for television. After returning to New York she raised a family, wrote a blog, and exhibited mixed media/collage works in galleries across Long Island culminating in a one-woman show in Geneseo, New York. In 2016 Berley moved to Boulder, Colorado and after her sons accidental death from a fall, began using methods similar to her collage paintings to create hybrid erasure poetry/collage. Her nonlinear approach to poetry/collage, redacting found words to create new reductive fragments, mirrors her journey of profound grief.
About the Art
I begin with words, then visuals and vice versa, to create erasure poems/collages by deconstructing and reconstructing found word and image fragments from the NYTimes magazines, forming new structures. The grief I experience is nonlinear, and writing with erasure/collage shapes the poems with the use of new juxtapositions, punctuation, and abstracted visuals. These constructions are a way of navigating a new path forward.
