We heard ambulances day and night.

034

Art

Zoonotic Disease Quilt
S. Heinlein

2020. 45 x 45 inches. Recycled denim, shirts, and scrap fabrics; pearl cotton thread; buttons. Hand-quilted.

My Zoonotic Disease Quilt was hand-stitched from old clothes from neighbors and friends, while the covid pandemic raged around the world.

The Zoonotic Disease Quilt takes on a dark subject with a humorous tone. Quilts traditionally appeal to our need for historic continuity, warmth, and intimacy; however, this “baby” quilt features sixteen adorable animals and the diseases they transmit to humans. It poses the following questions: Would you want to cover your child with it, despite its “contagious” nature? Are you willing to recognize the destructive cycle that causes zoonotic diseases due to the abuse of animals and natural resources?

The zoonotics quilt was selected for inclusion in a 2021 group show entitled The New Normal, Working Through Quarantine at Payne Gallery, Moravian College, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Poem

Now
T. Paris

I am transfixed.
Pierced by the shrike’s thorns,
Alive and waiting.

Art

Amabie
G. Garcia-Fenech

2020. 12 x 12 inches. Acrylic on linen.

I painted this on March 29, 2020, when NYC became the epicenter of the pandemic. We heard ambulances day and night. The subject is an Amabie, a figure from Japanese folklore believed to fight epidemics.

Poem

Get off of my face
G. Coppola

nighttime people come in
& out of the bathroom they
say the same thing again and
again slide onto the bar
buying you rounds of
syrup that you keep in your
glass until the ice melts
this bar has become New
York City & they keep
talking hearts caked in
dust beating so fast
are you listening?
crushing the night with
stories they can’t
remember the next
afternoon you keep
saying the wrong thing
O the eyes going
somewhere else god
won’t get off of
your face & your friends are
gone death over a
year vials of little poison
dropped in the soup so in
the end you are grey &
ugly to one another it’s
the quick slice when you
realize that he will
rape you if you let him in the
house people come & go
& buy you drinks
you wish you still had
a friend who wanted to
wear your clothes but
now you’re grown & someone’s
wife this little
pussy so plump
throbs with no poem to
take it for a ride

Sound

Stay for the Ride
Magritte & Rosen

“Stay For The Ride” is an excerpt from the full-length original folk-rock musical Safe Hands, which tells the story of how, in 1950s New Jersey, the lives of five women become inextricably intertwined through their involvement with a secret clinic at the edge of town.

A moth flexes its wings and considers the viewer, probing. C. Halley

Guest Editor: C. Halley

---

Make art and/or writing. Send it to info@behindadoor.com. We will publish submissions in this ezine or in our first limited edition handbound chapbook.