Our Tiny Issue can only be so big, but our inbox is always full of experimental, inspiring work! These are some of our favorite pieces that made a splash — even if they didn’t make it into the printed edition.
“She came out to herself”
“In the moon laid man, brokenhearted again”
“2020 Year of the Rat”
Bio: Maine denizen Alyson Peabody can be found under the pseudonym Psychorama Mama on Tik Tok, Instagram, and Etsy.
Our Tiny Issue can only be so big, but our inbox is always full of experimental, inspiring work! These are some of our favorite pieces that made a splash — even if they didn’t make it into the printed edition.
“Confession”
“MallRat”
“Tide”
Bio: Liuxing Johnston is a Jersey based cartoonist and the founder of Lemon Liu Press, a small printing company dedicated to telling the stories of butch lesbians of color.
Tiny Talks is an interview series with Tiny Spoon’s talented contributors. This week we spoke with Ashley Mezzano from our tenth issue.
Tiny Spoon: What kindles your creativity?
Ashley Mezzano: I believe creativity is a work in progress. While I certainly look to events in my own life, I also try to incorporate news, pop culture, and conversations into my work as well. Even if the poem doesn’t work out, I get to think about my surroundings in a deeper way, so I think of it as a win-win situation.
Tiny Spoon: Are there any artists/ heroines/ idols/ friends that you look up to?
Ashley Mezzano: As far as poets are concerned, I would love to meet Torrin A. Greathouse in the flesh one day. Her poetry is so raw and focuses on the body and words in a way few can so masterfully capture. She’s taught me so much about my own poetry and perspectives as an artist!
Tiny Spoon: Are there any natural entities that move your work?
Ashley Mezzano: I’ve always been a “nature-minded” person. My undergraduate is in Marine Science and before returning to school or becoming a teacher, I was really lucky to have worked or interned in so many beautiful environments. I still think about my time in Maine, Alaska, and Australia a lot. I credit my experiences for a lot of the natural imagery I invoke from time to time, even if it’s just the more abstract concepts, like rebirth or cycles.
Tiny Spoon: We love insight into the creative process. Could you share what it is like for you, either with your work that appears in Tiny Spoon or in general?
Ashley Mezzano: In Tiny Spoon, my works “Ouroborus is a Woman” and “On Loving Your Wife, The Worm” are both about my experiences with familial love and self love, and how hard it can be to love someone wholly. In “Ouroborus is a Woman,” I compare my past to a carcass and blame my birth for the destruction of my mother’s peace. In “On Loving Your Wife, The Worm,” the worry of destroying love persists, but this time in a relationship between a wife and her husband. While the latter poem ends on a more touching note than the first, both focus on natural imagery that is rather unpoetic, such as vultures picking apart flesh or apple cores thrown haphazardly around a bedroom. My goal with both these pieces was not only to show how messy love can be, but how past experiences and mental illness can warp a person’s sense of self.
Tiny Spoon: Do you have any current or future projects that you are working on that you would like to share?
Ashley Mezzano: I have recently had a chapbook accepted by Beyond The Veil Press titled, “We are Creatures of What Has Happened” for publication. It centers around themes of mental health and recovery. It’s my first chapbook and it will debut later this year!
Tiny Spoon: What book, artwork, music, etc., would you recommend to others?
Ashley Mezzano: Oh goodness. Since I brought up Torrin A. Greathouse earlier, I’ll deviate away from poetry and talk about longer forms of literature for this question. I love generational stories and stories that feel like epics. I’d easily recommend Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, One Piece by Eiichio Oda, The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, and These Ghosts Are Family by Maisy Card to anyone. They may not seem like they all share similarities, but all of them focus somewhat on circumstance, legacy, and generational relationships.
Tiny Spoon: Is there anything else you would like others to know about you, your creations, or beyond?
Ashley Mezzano: I’m incredibly touched by anyone who has read my work and found meaning in it. I’m still very early in the publication stage of my writing career, and every person who finds me feels so special because I know how many great writers are already out there. Thank you for spending your time with my words. I hope I can continue to meet your expectations.
Tiny Spoon: Where can people learn more about what you do?
Ashley Mezzano: Please follow me on:
Twitter – @ashley_mezzano
Instagram – @waytogomezzano
Chillsubs – https://www.chillsubs.com/user/ashley_mezzano
Our 10th Issue is packed full of exciting artists and writers! Our blog is an extension of the issue so we can share even more experimental, beautiful work with our readers!
“The Fugue of Acedia”
“I’ll feel like this forever because the mycorrhizal network is too strong”
Bio: Kimberlee Frederick is a collage artist based in Portland, Oregon.
Find “I’ll feel like this forever because the mycorrhizal network is too strong” in Issue 10!
Our 10th Issue is packed full of exciting artists and writers! Our blog is an extension of the issue so we can share even more experimental, beautiful work with our readers!
Bio: Cha is a multi disciplinary artist who likes to confuse and push the boundaries of what’s considered normal.
Find these images in Issue 10!
Our 10th Issue is packed full of exciting artists and writers! Our blog is an extension of the issue so we can share even more experimental, beautiful work with our readers!
Bio: Pratheesh usually gathers poem-objects and found words from the homestead and preserves them all in a wooden box.
Find “leaves home” in Issue 10!
Our 10th Issue is packed full of exciting artists and writers! Our blog is an extension of the issue so we can share even more experimental, beautiful work with our readers!
“All The Same”
Bio: Julia began her exploration of collage as a therapeutic exploration many years ago & continues to find her voice through creating.
Find this image in Issue 10!
Tiny Talks is an interview series with Tiny Spoon’s talented contributors. This week we spoke with April Hernandez from our tenth issue.
Tiny Spoon: What kindles your creativity?
April Hernandez: I find that a lot of lived experiences kindle my creativity: memories, strong emotions, life events, the media I consume, the places I’ve been, and the people in my life.
Tiny Spoon: Are there any artists/ heroines/ idols/ friends that you look up to?
April Hernandez: When it comes to writing: I really look up to poet Jessica Pierce, who was my high school writing mentor, and author Justin Hocking, who was hands down one of my favorite college professors. I also admire my partner in life, Gabriel Isaac Lakey, who is an incredibly talented videographer, and my best friend, SarahAnn Harvey who is the founder of Pile Press.
Tiny Spoon: Are there any natural entities that move your work?
April Hernandez: I think growing up in Portland and Oregon in general moves my work. We have so many types of environments here that it is hard not to feel influenced by the natural beauty of where I am fortunate enough to live.
Tiny Spoon: We love insight into the creative process. Could you share what it is like for you, either with your work that appears in Tiny Spoon or in general?
April Hernandez: As I mentioned before, I get inspired by lived experiences, and my poem “Recipe for When You Miss Him” appearing in Tiny Spoon’s 10th Issue is a great example of that. When I was in my junior year of college my brother Michael committed suicide. It was a lot to handle and I found that writing really helped me not only process his death but grieve him as well. I think the same can be said about my writing in general: I use it as a way to process my feelings about events that happen. Once I get everything down on paper, I usually will then type it up and make revisions and stylistic choices from there.
Tiny Spoon: Do you have any current or future projects that you are working on that you would like to share?
April Hernandez: In terms of my own writing, my creative nonfiction chapbook “Getting to Know the Stoveman” was just recently released through Bottlecap Press, and it is a project that I am really proud of. The summary for it is as follows:
“Getting to Know the Stoveman is a collection of vignettes that delves into the idea that love is more than big gestures and rather finding its warmth in the small yet habitual acts of care given by the people around you. After learning her estranged uncle has passed away, Hernandez helps pack up his possessions and in the process she discovers that their similarities run deeper than the blood that they share.
Through her sincere yet offbeat tone, Hernandez’s memoir finds love in small actions and encapsulates a bigger story using focused and simplistic vignettes. Her writing, while being tied to specific moments in her life, draws on universal themes of love, loss, and death that all can relate to and connect with, in both their happiest and their darkest of times.”
I am also the Co-Coordinator and submissions reader for Pile Press, which is a journal that publishes work by women, non-binary and fluid creatives. We are currently working on our sixth issue, so be on the lookout for the release date on that!
Tiny Spoon: What book, artwork, music, etc., would you recommend to others?
April Hernandez: As someone who reads as much as I do, narrowing it down is very hard for me. I would say one of my favorite books of 2022 is Fruiting Bodies by Kathryn Harlan. It is a collection of short stories that involve queer characters, typically women, who are on the edge of change. There are elements of fairytales, myths, and gothic literature that really add to the collection as a whole. In terms of a visual recommendation, I would highly recommend HBO’s The Last of Us. This is probably one of the best adaptations I have seen in a long time and I think anyone can enjoy it- not just those familiar with the game. Just go in with the knowledge that it is a very depressing but beautiful show.
Tiny Spoon: Is there anything else you would like others to know about you, your creations, or beyond?
April Hernandez: I am a huge bookworm! I absolutely adore reading and am constantly adding to my TBR pile. One other thing I would like to mention is that I co-produce (and sometimes appear in) some of my partner’s works, including his films. His first film that he has co-written and co-directed, “Punched After the Fact,” will hopefully be hitting the festival circuits this year. Here is a link to the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woOPQQIXLJg
Tiny Spoon: Where can people learn more about what you do?
April Hernandez: My personal Instagram is @april.alexis and the Pile Press Instagram is @pilepress
Our 10th Issue is packed full of exciting artists and writers! Our blog is an extension of the issue so we can share even more experimental, beautiful work with our readers!
Lions in the Grass
Lions in the grass, a bird flies from the tree to the cliff, orange rocks and crawling snakes jagged with lust. Here is the number five, here is the equation born from the universe and the imagination. The light goes out. The robbery is a success, this is the number five. On the outskirts of the town the sleeping woman can still hear the screaming zebra, the bookends of her slumber, the soundtrack to her flowing dream. A muscle tenses against the bone, a vacant breath for her to own, the hills rise like the edge of a cavern, the lip of a crater. No instruction is given, and the orator begins, a vacant flow of the water to cascade there under the bridge, there to touch the morning, there to awaken each one of us. As we drunkenly shake the idols from our hair, these are the gold nails hammered into the yew, hammered into the ebony, we are sore, but still we walk, still we drink from hands soft and we chant soft words to raise spirit, to break the straight line from ancestor to fateful sleep. Hold the strong, and make love to ghosts, stinging the assembly, burning the actor’s hair and beard. These candles spin, these voices are soft wrapping around our army of echoing precision. Here the masters feast on the poems of heaven, here we construct tunnels inscribed with golden prayer.
Sweet rain laying on the ground, throwing brilliant colour towards the men in space. I hold myself in the blanket and look up to the sun. Somewhere there is a fire burning the sacrifices for an understanding God. Cold hands and slouching shoulders, black shirts beneath black coats. Shoes stepping into the wet soil, shoes leaving prints in the red clay. There is smoke coming out from the roof, there are mice in the walls, and thoughts yet to be released from the shaking effects of legs and limb. All the dinosaurs came
today, all the moths flew away. Bubbles formed in the water and we flooded the valleys so we could build more boats. I read your message left for me on the standing tree, I read your words and couldn’t find the difference between now and then, age holds no recollection or lesson, age is no medal for me to pin to my dark shirt. Some new honour for me to toss in all directions, a triumph in the form of a golden apple to share at the feast, when dogs lie beneath stone tables, when horses make for home and great
philosophers sleep through the eclipse of Autumn. I do not know what your wine stands for, I do not know what your toasts are honouring, the dead they are gone. The living they are walking on dusty roads, they are kicking quartz stones against quartz stones. Pissing against the soft bark of elm trees, watching the dust of drought take effect on the middle son.
Normally the audience holds candles to the roof, normally the lust of the theatre leaves black scars on the walls. Seeds are planted beneath the floorboards, and when the building burns to the ground these will grow. On the rivers we planted grape vines, on the mud flats we planted lucerne trees. A prison was built where the caravan used to sit, and the author watched as they built statues in memory of his art. I don’t know where the paths are leading me, I don’t know where desire sits, this grassy crest beneath
citrus tree and jasmine vine, this stone ledge where the adolescent boy sits holding a cigarette to his mouth. It reminds me of a movie I once saw, the British fellow went swimming and died. I have no white shirts to wake up in, I leave words at the breakfast table, I leave words in the wine. I can’t hold this memory forever.
Bio: Tim Bocquet is an Australian writer of poetry and prose, living the semi-rural life with very large collection of books, many unread. He has a degree in Ancient History and enjoys the simple things in life, such as pork and fennel sausages and cardigans.
Find “An Ocean’s Jagged Smile” in Issue 10!
Our 10th Issue is packed full of exciting artists and writers! Our blog is an extension of the issue so we can share even more experimental, beautiful work with our readers!
Bio: William Clark holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Texas and teaches at the College of San Mateo.
Find “at wood’s edge” in Issue 10!