Theatre of the Dreaming

The Battered Suitcase represents the baggage that we carry around with us through our many voyages and adventures here on Earth. Writers and artists tend to wander, gathering up bits and bobs of truth that they can manipulate, enunciate and paint into something of their own. The road stretches out at their feet, the twists and turns rarely averted, and the images encountered catalogued away with a scrawl of ink on paper, the shutter click of a camera, the broad stroke of a brush, or even in the simple flutter of eyelashes collapsing into a blink.

But, what is the source then of the other-worldly illusions? Where do the poets and painters find the fantastical and the surreal images and tales of myths and magic? Are not dreams just another rite of creative passage? Do we carry a different set of baggage when we travel to the realms of unadulterated imagination?

The art of whimsy, enchantment, supernatural, wonder and dreamscapes are well-worth celebrating, and visiting now and again.

Inside the virtual pages of the third issue of The Battered Suitcase, Louise McGinnis loses herself in the lyrical daydream of escaping a very mortal predicament. M.E Carter leads us into a world where emotion and intellect are split in two, and where a suit of armor may disguise both. Sandra Maddux-Creech weaves a tale of sensual fixation on grown-up storybook characters who come of age in alleyways. James Shackell shares the tale of the defender of the rats, the sacrificial martyr to the so-called vermin in the basement.

Johnette Napolitano, of Concrete Blonde musical fame, grants us a feral version of the reality-television obsession, turning the absurd mirrored-reflection of superficiality on itself, and having a laugh at it in the process.

Lyrical contributors this month are Vanilla Swingers who capture in song a love story that defies time travel, physics and separation. They are joined by the stylistic refrains of Phil Cooper and the Haiku, who, like the poetic reference, delve into depths and meanings in a minimalist construct of sound.

Poetry selections for August include novelist and ex-burger-slinger Barbra Annino, the prolific poet William Doreski and fairy tale spinner Katie Graham. Mother and poet Carol Lynn Grellas links arms with Alan King, Corey Mesler and award winning Laura LeHew. Radio show host Kenneth Pobo waxes poetic with the likes of Sergio Ortiz, Joseph D. Di Lella, and award-winning playwright Natalie Meisner.

Art graciously provided by acuPUNKture designs' Sarah Hutchinson Burke, painter and beauty-collector Deb Thompson, professor and visual artist Ernest Williamson III, and form and detail stylist Stephen Milazzo.

All of the contributors featured in the August issue gift us with a glimpse into the unknown, sharing their own journey of the imagination. Within the fanciful and mystical, the human spirit prevails, flourishes, and seeks to devour our senses in the best of ways.

"When we were children, clouds became animals.
Now that we are adults, the vast, blue sky is a metaphor
for the infinite, upward potential of the human spirit." ~ Laura Teresa Marquez

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