More great photography from Nika Ostby. Check out “Religion” above, and “Blinded” below.
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Nika Ostby is twenty, but is kind of an old man. (She wear slippers and drinks a lot of tea.) She is fascinated by the redemptive quality of water. Whether she is taking photos or not, you can find her by the sea. She is drawn to the ocean. Her submissions to Dr. Hurley’s Snake-Oil Cure can be found here.
Posted by Dr. Hurley on May 13, 2013
https://snakeoilcure.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/exposure-%e2%84%96-11x-religion-blinded/
I died for Beauty — but was scarce
— Emily Dickinson
Do I mourn my belovèd, and not move abstract nouns?
Roll-your-own sweep of the real world in an apothecary’s ounce.
Expressively, I travel the hot East & West ends, eating a volcano.
Hail, munchies are my God—I’m found on a daylight world on majoun.
A tin of dirt my heart’s palpitating talons the love after that’s unseen.
“Cinammon Girl” by Neil Young; a fool I’m twenty-five nights a roun.
Ehad, cloudy, five months on, I, Michael, a quixotic edifice discarded.
The angel gestured & I dropped her, and my debt, in the ocean towns.
*
Why am I forever saying
Words I do not mean?
–Edna St. Vincent Millay
Plagiarize love, in the absence of a decade of earth, leaking kisses.
Her amber fluid cries her belovèd steps sure-footed down the canal.
Supposedly impossible, the same One who created flies created him.
For a cheap flight open-mouthed dusk became night playing the infinite.
Hardly illicit flesh lingers cold a couplet goes on & — lays the gift.
I so like unbelief word upon word so become tired of brooding sentiment.
Pashmina wounded heralds a postmedia dawn.
A last love blind One doubled upon him dead.
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From what stuff did He create him? From nutfa He created him
–Quran 80:17
Somebody’s got to take care of him, the King will protect her & love her.
The pattern is this: the image of these injured elements woven shut.
A greying feather slips from a composed mouth, & she reached a door.
A viscous future forms in bed @ night conceives a prisoner.
The raw cotton turbulence reached anapaestic order, incomplete—
Footloose, he rose then fell into a halfway, fountaining tangled feet.
One year, two years in a travel bag en route a Bulgarian harbour.
My scant wounds a black mirror simultaneously wishing poems.
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This poem is a joint effort by Michael Fitzgerald-Clarke and Martha Landman, from their recently published joint volume entitled The Paradoxophies. This volume also features a Prooemium written by Dr. Hurley Editor Emily E. Jones. The Paradoxophies can be purchased here.
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South African born Australian poet Martha Landman now resides in Townsville. Her work has appeared in Dr. Hurley’s Snake-Oil Cure and The South Townsville micro poetry journal. Martha is a psychologist who loves all things writing and reading.
Her submissions to Dr. Hurley’s Snake-Oil Cure can be found here.
Michael Fitzgerald-Clarke has this year launched The South Townsville micro poetry journal and he welcomes submissions of a 30 lines or fewer poem from any of Dr. Hurley’s readers and contributors. If Michael could have one wish in life, he would give that wish away. michael(dot)fitzgeraldclarke(at)gmail(dot)com.
His other contributions to Snake-Oil Cure can be found here.
Posted by Dr. Hurley on December 7, 2012
https://snakeoilcure.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/the-ghazals-by-michael-fitzgerald-clarke-and-martha-landman/
Photographer Katerinna Ivanovic talks about her series of images:
“This series talks about the unavoidable act of taking our past with us in every move, every thought, and every step we do. We are our ancestors, we have the information of our past in our blood. We are them, we are still being them, we are those rituals, those believers, even if we don’t want to be, or we are not conscious of it.”
“Antique rituals and habits like adoration, our sense of guilt, and the celebration of old saints and pre-Hispanic idols are part of many cultures, and a daughter of those culture is important for representing the damages that religion did to us, making us believe that we are lost, that we are ‘sinners’.”
“The woman is represented like a dark shadow who feels the big weight of a past that runs through her veins.”
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Katerinna Ivanovic is a Mexican visual artist based in Italy who expresses her personal universe with media like painting, photography, writing, soft sculpture and recently also video. She is inspired by themes that have influenced her since she was a child, being part of a strong culture filled with myths, legends and magic. As she grew up, she started to study art, but also her culture and her country, traveling, exploring and showing interest and love for Anthropology and folklore to enrich her art and make a fusion of her feelings and her roots. Her art talks about spirituality, occult sciences, alchemy, darkness but is also rich of colors and and a particular view of life and death. Her eclectic style let her to express with freedom, and without any particular tendency, making her art as primitive as modern just listening herself and the things she has to talk about. She lives and works like and artist in the North of Italy raising her two children and occasionally exhibiting her work. Her submissions to Dr. Hurley’s Snake-Oil Cure can be seen here.
Posted by Dr. Hurley on October 5, 2012
https://snakeoilcure.wordpress.com/2012/10/05/exposure-%e2%84%96-0xx-rituals-of-the-lost-faith/
I am your king! I am your king! Don’t you see that!
A continuation of Conrado Sarid-Maletah’s series of photographs interpreting passages from Pirkei Avot (The Master’s Sentences).
Be as careful in observance of a minor commandment as in a major commandment, because you don’t know the respective rewards for the commandments.
The power of love can grow up in the living challenge of reflections in a mirror
Rather be like slaves who serve the master not to receive a reward. And let the fear of Heaven be upon you.
Keep far from an evil neighbor, do not befriend a wicked person, and do not despair of divine retribution
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Conrado Sarid-Maleta’ is a Cuban photographer and painter. He left his home country six years ago, and has not returned. Most recently, he has lived and worked in Europe, and is now in Tel Aviv, Israel. He learned photography with the help of a great Cuban artist, later continuing alone and working very hard to increase day by day what he knew. Mainly, his works use the visual experience as a means to connect with ideas rather than with techniques or methodological processes. He prefers to be a storyteller rather than a perfectionist.
His other contributions to Snake-Oil Cure can be found here.
Posted by Dr. Hurley on March 2, 2012
https://snakeoilcure.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/exposure-%e2%84%96-0xx-pirkei-avot-ii/
This week, Dr. Hurley’s Snake-Oil Cure
is being guest edited by photographer JA Mortram.
Abram was 99 years old. God appeared to him and said, ‘I am God Almighty. Walk before Me and be perfect. I will make a covenant between Me and you, and I will increase your numbers very much.’ […] This is My covenant between Me, and between you and your offspring that you must keep: You must circumcise every male. You shall be circumcised through the flesh of your foreskin. This shall be the mark of the covenant between Me and you. ‘Throughout all generations, every male shall be circumcised when he is eight days old. [This shall include] those born in your house, as well as [slaves] bought with cash from an outsider, who is not your descendant. [All slaves,] both houseborn and purchased with your money must be circumcised. This shall be My covenant in your flesh, an eternal covenant. The uncircumcised male whose foreskin has not been circumcised, shall have his soul cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant.
(Genesis 17:1-14)
“Walk before Me and be perfect.” How very confusing. It would seem god did not succeed in making people perfect in the first instance, otherwise why the need to saw away various parts of the newborn and infant genitalia? What bad design. And certainly not very intelligent.
Firstly, the female child. Imagine, if you would, a scene wherein this prepubescent girl is taken to a room. Upon entering this room, she goes through a procedure called infibulation. This involves partial removal of the labial lips to expose raw flesh. The exposed and raw labia are then sewn together using catgut or silk. A very small opening is left for the passage of urine and menstrual blood. In some instances the legs will be strapped together for up to two weeks, resulting in almost full closure of the sutured labia. On the wedding night, the vaginal opening is enlarged, by either the husband or a female relative. In some instances this is carried out with a ‘ceremonial’ double bladed dagger. Methods of infibulation differ according to region, culture and religious belief.
Let us now turn to the infant male child. Picture a child of only eight days old. He is about to be circumcised by a mohel. This ‘qualified’ adult male will cut the foreskin surrounding the head of this infant penis and remove the flap of skin. In some instances, the mohel will then take the infants penis into his own mouth to extract blood from the exposed tissue. These abhorrent procedures are often mandated by religion. Can you imagine any educated secular individual behaving in these reprehensible ways toward his or her own infant or newborn? These behaviours are quite simply inexcusable on any level whatsoever. And pray why the genitalia? As with so many religious edicts, we once again return to the penis and the vagina. Well-trodden ground indeed for the pious lunatic.
Sign this petition to protest: The Ashley Montagu Resolution to End the Genital Mutilation of Children Worldwide, a Petition To The World Court, the Hague.
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The|G|™’s other contributions to Dr. Hurley’s Snake-Oil Cure can be found here.
Posted by Dr. Hurley on November 15, 2011
https://snakeoilcure.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/exposure-%e2%84%96-048-the-fine-art-of-genital-mutilation-of-the-child/
Dr. Hurley's Snake-Oil Cure 