Art: The Unknown God from Socio-Psychological Dreamscape Series by Gary Van Haas
TWO BATHERS
An indecisive woman floats in a tub
of bubbles, her head bowed by the
weight of humidity and hopelessness.
Suddenly her body straightens,
and her head lifts in an attitude
of firm resolve in the same moment
that a burst of steam soars
upwards to the ceiling. She rises
from the foam like Aphrodite.
Six months later, her husband
sits in the same tub, shoulders
slumping in despair, his mind
working the treadmill
of inconclusive thought.
His dull eyes follow the curls
of steam to focus on a single
corkscrew strand of his wife’s
hair, caught in the fern hanging
from the ceiling, a single hair
hanging by one tenacious end,
the only thing she left
behind. As steam envelops
the fern, the curl tightens.
About the author:
Toni La Ree Bennett’s verbal and visual work has appeared in Gold Man Review, Gravel, Poemmemoirstory, Puerto del Sol, Hawaii Pacific Review, Journal of Poetry Therapy, and Viet Nam Generation, among other publications. She is also a photographer and lives with a flock of feisty finches. Photography can be seen at tonibennett.com.
Art: The Unknown God from Socio-Psychological Dreamscape Series by Gary Van Haas
In the artist’s words:
Gary Van Haas’ unique art works have evolved from love of surrealist imagery and his search for expression in today’s quixotically dominated socio-political arena. In his paintings, he combines an illusionary vocabulary with non-objective subject matter as a way to impress color and collage, which instead of relying mainly on imagery, responds formally and expressively to the illusionist idea of surrealist space and time. http://worldarts2014.