Poem by Heidi Hemmer

Surface Textures

Under our mattress of memory foam,
I found your suicide note.
Every night, I turned and tossed
countless times,

I stripped the bedsheets
for wash, then tightly tucked
under the mattress;
a chore concluded.

I shoved unwanted wall art,
useless boxes underneath,
our cat buried between the junk,
never noticing the note.

You wrote in Helvetica,
a robust vocabulary,
twenty four pound paper with
a perfect woven finish.

I now sleep on the floor, clawing carpet.

Heidi Hemmer has been published in The Talking Stick, The Southwest Journal, Wild Leaf Press, as well as Cornerstone Research Journal. She served as Poetry Editor for Mankato, MN Poetry Magazine Blue Earth Review.

Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, writer, book dealer,photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows bothin the USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum,The Albright-Knox Art Gallery & The Allen Memorial Art Museum. Since 2006 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 230 on line and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Pollock-Krasner grants, the Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grant and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists’ Fellowship Inc. He currently teaches art to retired public school teachers at The United Federation of Teachers program in Brooklyn.