DEPTH | by Katey Andrews
AS KINDRED MAGAZINE nears three years of publishing personal essays, poetry, and short fiction each month, we’re shifting directions and doing something NEW. Starting with this issue, Kindred will publish quarterly at the beginning of each season, and our team, while continuing to write, will invite, mentor, and amplify the voices of even more writers, artists, musicians, and poets. This issue alone features original work from 19 individuals, 12 of whom are contributing to Kindred for the first time, including our first male author! You’ll find a gorgeous original song, beautiful poems, and personal essays on farming, Comic Con, divorce, homelessness, cooking, parenting, and more. Some are short and sweet, others profound. So please, poke around, explore, and discover a NEW voice, a NEW perspective, a NEW opportunity for delight or compassion or contemplation or connection. Enjoy our first quarterly issue: NEW.
OUR FEATURED ARTIST is Katey Andrews, a Pacific Northwest painter inspired by the strength and beauty in nature, particularly trees, roots, and water. Her love of both nature and art began when she was a child growing up in Alaska. Katey’s favorite medium is watercolor. For texture and depth, she adds ink to many of her watercolor paintings using sticks she finds on the ground—a practice she discovered in college while earning her Fine Art degree. Katey and her husband have lived and raised their two daughters in Duvall, WA, for the last 20 years. She is currently a member of the Duvall Creative Arts Guild and shows her work in local venues. See more of her work at www.kateyandrews.com.
Latest articles
The Phoenix
TRACK The Phoenix—Tara Ward with Special Weapons Song and vocals: Tara Ward Song arrangement, synths, and sounds: Matthew D. Chism (aka Special Weapons) Mixed by Lacey Brown at Nervous Breakdance Studios, Seattle WA Artwork: Cecelia Romero Likes LYRICS See her fly above the seas Inexperienced not she Any constraints—she’ll break free And find a truer…
A stroller story
It was Saturday morning, and tiny pinpricks of early light had just begun to filter into my darkened bedroom. I awakened to the familiar sound of little feet padding across the hallway accompanied by an unfamiliar sound I couldn’t quite identify. The door creaked open, and I peeked sleepily from beneath the covers. Standing before…
Lytle Beach
Afternoon sun, cutting sharp shadows on clamshell, white pebble, gray beach glass, green (such familiar things), warms each March beachgoer, including the heartless seagulls dropping helpless mussels from the sky to open them. Down across the sand an unlanguaged man – vocal tic, facial twitch – stands in the mudflats going “hum hum hum”…
Thirty-four years new
I’m celebrating my thirty-fourth birthday. As a parent, I love watching my kids enjoy their birthdays. They’re thrilled by all the “new” that is coming their way: Five means getting ready for Kindergarten; thirteen means you fit in that teenager category, no longer a kid; and sixteen means new independence and the possibility of driving.…
The call of the wild
Pit toilets are a dismal attempt to domesticate the mountains. The stench hit my nostrils as I rounded the corner and came in view of the toilet, a simple wooden throne with a single step up to it and a hole in the middle. Flies hovered over the opening, which looked half rotten, drenched in…
New
Bare branches clutch the dying moon, coyotes mourn and call Poor attempts to hold this moth drawn to the beloved Flame Though she shall be reduced to ash then thrust forth born again Jamie Maciejewski belongs to Wordways, a group of women on the Olympic Peninsula who write and share pilgrimages of faith and life.…
Springtime in the Northwest
I grew up in the northern desert where long, harsh winters were followed by dry, hot summers. My siblings and I spent whole days outside building, swimming, exploring in the summer. Our winters were spent huddled around the pellet stove, making snow forts and sledding down the ditch embankment. Later my husband and I lived…
Keep looking up
I close my eyes, fighting against the tears. Sam is below me, his hands tight around the rope, his voice soothing and patient. “You’ve got this, come on.” I take a deep breath and try again, finding a solid place for my right foot. My fingers cram themselves into a small crack system, and I…
Love in a new language
It started with a research project for the novel I’m working on, but it’s quickly turning into an obsession: the culture of Persia. I became especially interested in the cuisine because my fictional main character has a culinary talent. Problem: I’d never actually tasted Persian food, and the more I read about it, the more…
New mercies
I am typing this on a borrowed laptop. The ceiling paint above me is cracked and peeling, tainted with yellow stains. The bedroom door won’t shut into a door frame deformed from years of settling. I can see out the window because several of the blinds are cracked or missing, but the view is incredible.…
If I only had the nerve
The swarthy tones mingled long and loud over the packed multipurpose room that late Saturday afternoon for the boy who stood playing the Beast. It had taken him hours to assemble himself that day. Girls swooned in silent corners watching as the one lucky makeup girl, who had volunteered months before so as to simply…
If it ain’t broke
I zoomed around the corner, footloose, and fancy free (meaning I only had one of my three kids hanging on me) at Costco. I even started humming a little happy tune when I ran smack into the gridlock of carts. The lines sprawled out like jagged tentacles of a six-headed beast. It was 11am on…
So I married an alcoholic
Hello. My name is Danielle, and I married an alcoholic. It’s been 10 years since I divorced him for his substance and subsequent emotional abuse. I naïvely believed that somehow that meant I could begin again, that his problems would be his problems. But I was wrong, and now things have reached a boiling point,…
A beginner’s mind
I’m staring at the blond fuzzy hair that covers his newborn head and trying to take it in. Maybe I can imprint this image in my mind forever. I smell his head (doesn’t everyone tell you to?) and yes, there it is—the smell of a newborn—a mix of soap and sweat and sweetness that should…
Comic Conomenon
When I sat down to write this article, I could not think of a single new thing in my life. Same job, same house, same brand of coffee (Major Dickason, you delicious, brooding devil, you). Luckily, a quick perusal of my recent photos quickly reminded me of a ginormous, 90,000-person new thing that I just…
In the blood
As we walked the field webbed by early century water lines, I noticed in moments of stress, he’d lift his hat with a hand on his head, favor a leg, and take a deep breath. I used to wait, like a kid who lit a firework, for the explosion. But, the explosion never came and…
My friends are stars
Sometimes when I walk home at night, I see people I love under the lights of surrounding businesses. Around this time of year they are bundled up, cardboard boxes, umbrellas—whatever they can use—surrounding them to offer some amount of protection and privacy. Often, it can feel as though I am walking through a tiny secret…
Surprises of the body
43rd Time’s the Charm: In a Thriller, Wozniacki Wins Her First Grand Slam Title The headline of an article in the Sports Section of the Sunday edition of the New York Times reads like a poem. I cut the article out and, hanging it on the fridge, forget it almost immediately. Months later I sit…
Kindred 