Through the Looking Glass
by Isra Hassan
fanjoy labrenz, push pull, digital capture, 2017. Courtesy of the artists.
Through the Looking Glass
ISRA HAssan | May 2025 | Issue 45
They whistle before telling us a lie.
We’ve grown weary of Greats.
We’re almost dead, almost alive.
We wish for the energy to daydream.
Catastrophe has become suddenly new and
drawn out. Idyllic gestures purview repentance.
News ingratiates to the product of lies,
paid for by a very real, very realized money.
Bone teeth. A hunger that stampedes.
The ash of past bloody pursuits.
Panic fragments the collected mind,
as we treat the aching thunderclaps.
Into aching thunderclaps, we retreat as
the collected mind panics in fragments.
Bloody pursues the ash of past
hunger, stampeding bone and teeth
and money. Very real money. Paying for
the product of lies, ingredients to the news,
idle gestures persecute repentance. Drowning
has become our new, sudden catastrophe.
To daydream, we wish for energy.
Almost alive, we’re almost dead.
Weary of Greats, we’ve grown.
Before telling us a lie, they whistle.
Isra Hassan is a Somali-American poet from Minneapolis, MN. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and can be found in DMQ Review, Poetry Wales, Poet Lore, Logic(s) Magazine and elsewhere.
Sally Fanjoy and James Labrenz, known as fanjoy labrenz, are are artists living and working in Hickory, North Carolina. Together they push the boundaries of the photographic medium as they explore light: reflection, refraction, transmission, continuity, translucence and connectivity, to create conceptual and site-specific work. Most recently their work has been exhibited at the Cain Center for the Arts in Cornelius NC, the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, NC, the Charlotte ArtPop Class of 2023, the North Carolina Museum of Art, and ArtFields 2024. Their project Light in Space received a grant from the United Arts Council of Catawba County for 2023. An abstract of a 2019 project at the Hickory Museum of Art with Corning Optical Solutions was published in the Yearbook of Moving Image Studies 2021 Augmented Images, Büchner-Verlag.