Bone Ache, Heart Break: Journal Sketches 2013-2019, by Katie Marie Frank

Prose, chapbook, 24 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

This collection of free-written journal entries traces a not-quite chronological line through the pains of living. It is a collage of depressive episodes, dreams, and longing. Crafting a watercolored story from dissolute pieces, Frank has cataloged the desire for love that propelled her into a series of misguided relationships, a tragic marriage, and the ultimate acceptance of life as a messy, beautiful experiment.

The need for expression, for art, for love, remains constant throughout this chapbook. Frank uses confessional entries and dreams to sketch the scene: loneliness, fear, and a deep desire to create, regardless. Emotion roils under the surface. The words may be calm, the clarity undeniable, but the life? Lessons piled upon lessons, with love at the heart of it.

A graduate of The Graduate Center at CUNY, the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, and Murray State University, Frank is a multidisciplinary artist and writer. They are largely influenced by their Midwestern upbringing and large extended family, the ideals of the labor movement, motherhood, and philosophies of hope and joyful creative living. She creates assemblages of found and foraged items and writes autotheory, poetry, and short fiction. Recently their artwork has been seen at the Brick Wall Gallery in Astoria, Queens and at the Jamaica Center of Art and Learning.