Our next Featured Artist – introducing Kiley Lee!

Kiley Lee is an artist and writer from Almost Heaven, West Virginia. She lives with her husband, Toby, and her cat and dog, Charlie and Sadie, near the majestic Ohio River. Writing has always been an important part of her life, and she continues to learn and push the boundaries of her craft. She uses poetry as a way of reaching out to the souls of others, and fully believes in the power of art, regardless of the medium.

Kiley also practices visual art. She invites viewers to fit the pieces together. She uses collage as a way to funnel the data she receives from living in a digital world, full of glitches and color, but refuses to give up her hands-on approach to making art. She loves the smell of paint and the tackiness of glue and enjoys mixing mediums whenever she can. She asks viewers to find the texture in existence.

Kiley’s poems have appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic, Ghost City Review, Marias at Sampaguitas, Mojave Heart Review, and Dancing Girl Press among others, and she is currently working on her first chapbook. Her drawings and paintings have been showcased on various online platforms and shown in multiple exhibitions at the Monongalia Arts Center in Morgantown, WV. Follow her on Twitter: @KBogart10 or on Instagram: @kileylee.writing and @kileylee.art

We introduce Kiley today with a poem and one of her favourite art pieces.

My heart breaks when I reach

for you — I know your scars —

but you don’t speak the language

You say you don’t understand

and I understand that you

don’t really want to

You turn and speak

but not to me

You can hear my

weepy tears

But you don’t

love either

How long does it take to

learn a letter from a voice

that doesn’t sound familiar?

I ask you to look at the

drippy red moon: sound it out

Can you remember that my

face means love? That my hands do?