rendezvous with a Night Witch
we liaised over a cough in a wind draped hut that raked the white hard steppe a war babe achingly pretty under the grey beret & red epaulettes her trenchcoat a Tzarina's ransom I asked if she had Stalin's ear or Van Gogh's starry vision she saw off my crush with a military brush as if ten thousand Comrade Ivans hadn't staged the same unpatriotic plot save it for your lipsticked WAAFs she quipped you great homesick clot Philip Lee Philip Lee: "I’m a sixty year-old Scouse refugee in Turkey."
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First Steps
The scene is a vegetable garden on an immaculate springtime morning. At the back there is a white-walled cottage fronted by a blossoming apple tree with freshly-washed sheets hanging on a line. A wooden wheelbarrow, gate and fence, the soft earth turned and furrowed by the spade, show nature harnessed but not exploited by the worthy toil of a long-vanished age. The father and mother are dressed in blue matching the azure of the firmament the mother bending over to support the child while the father pauses from his labors and on one knee crouches rooted to the ground his arms outstretched like the child’s who must traverse the expanse of land between them to earn an embrace with loving praise. His daughter is the apple of his eye bringing ample meaning to a life of tilling the soil until the day he dies. This sentimental picture speaks volumes still for in the drama of its pastoral it seems to exist in the land of dreams the countryside of the imagination an idyllic world that might never have been yet which captures the spirit of humanity in this vignette of domestic felicity. You may say it’s just a painting but I know that nowhere in the realms of infinite space could mankind discover so sweet a place as van Gogh’s garden beneath the apple tree and the love between this humble family. Ian Fletcher Born and raised in Cardiff, Wales, Ian has an MA in English from Oxford University. He lives in Taiwan with his wife, two daughters and cat. He teaches English in a high school. He has had poems and short stories published in The Ekphrastic Review, 1947 A Literary Journal, Dead Snakes, Schlock! Webzine, Short-story.me, Anotherealm, Under the Bed, A Story In 100 Words, Poems and Poetry, Friday Flash Fiction, and in various anthologies. Masks
I dream olive trees as rain pings glass, veins windows in swirling tapers, remembering the heat of Greece, you. Gnarled branches offered scraps of shade, Ionian Sea too far for fondling breeze under blue sky burning. I discovered you there, where all roots dive deep. Marketplace stacked with cobblestone, woven blankets, pottery fired and glazed like grandfather’s grandfather shaped. You hovered like a butterfly, Eros’s breath searing my shoulder, nibbling the nectar of my lips, fingers like wings brushing skin. But somewhere across the ocean, past frosted caribou-crossed land, you withdrew. Psyche lures, and you listen to voices from the past, sputter with doubt, fear. Oh, petalouda, which is the real you? KB Ballentine KB Ballentine has a M.A. in Writing and a M.F.A. in Creative Writing, Poetry. Her latest collection, The Perfume of Leaving, has just been awarded the 2016 Blue Light Press Book Award. Her work also appears in River of Earth and Sky: Poems for the Twenty-first Century (2015), Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VI: Tennessee (2013) and Southern Light: Twelve Contemporary Southern Poets (2011). Her third collection, What Comes of Waiting, won the 2013 Blue Light Press Book Award. One Thing Leads to Another
Every stray thought sets off a slide show – each frame a collage of random association. A smell, a twinge, even the word “horse” excavates hidden ore from the gray matter. A horse, if not a dozen, will appear along with acrobats from the same circus, a runner rounding the track. Stamps, even wallpaper may surface. Impossible to catch or sort it all. Alarie Tennille This poem was written as part of the 20 Poem Challenge. Alarie Tennille was born and raised in Portsmouth, Virginia, and graduated from the University of Virginia in the first class admitting women. She became fascinated by fine art at an early age, even though she had to go to the World Book Encyclopedia to find it. Today she visits museums everywhere she travels and spends time at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, where her husband is a volunteer guide. Alarie’s poetry book, Running Counterclockwise, contains many ekphrastic poems. Please visit her at alariepoet.com. Icarus, Revisited
We have landed randomly on the subject of airplanes, and fear of flying. I am not afraid, not really, I say, I have many anxieties and aircraft are not among them. Mildly, he says. He sips my latest offering, an almost spicy Spanish red. Some people have had that dream, Anthony says, some haven’t. He confesses he has never dreamed that he was flying. Which category are you? he wants to know. Oh, I have, I say, because I have, but only the one time, and it was not long ago. How my father loved those dreams where he was a bird, or a machine! I had that peculiar brand of little girl envy of his adventures, he would tell me the story and hold me on his knee. It was strange, I tell Anthony, I was not in any kind of craft, I had my own wings, and I swooped low and high, I flew above the vineyards of my youth, and out over some far away ocean I don’t even know. I was spinning cotton candy out of clouds. The unfamiliar motion made me seasick, sky sickness if you will. I felt, briefly, a crushing wall of panic when I became self-conscious about what was happening. Even now, with this perfect Garnacha, I am floating there, above an old Dutch landscape and a forever sea. So what did you do? Anthony asks. I remember: Mid-dream, I heard myself say, remember, you know you are safe in your bed, you are asleep, and you will land at home if you fall. In that next moment, there was pure, absolute liberation. I was free of everything. It was transcendent, I say, because it was. And you will have the dream, I say. I was fortysomething before I did. And you will have it too, you are an imaginative, inquisitive person and you are going places, you have already gone and come back a thousand times from flight, I see you, pacing the darkness in pyramid shadows, looking for your lover, you are writing, scripts with words that break the hearts of dead men, and you dine on maple goat cheese and real Champagne with ghosts whose books you treasure. I think about how you play your piano after the night falls, how you fling the window back, just a few doors down from Glenn Gould. And from me. And maybe that is what I heard, those nights from across the street burning through my sleep. The music entered the dark and made me dream, how to get silver wings. Lorette C. Luzajic Lorette C. Luzajic is a writer and visual artist in Toronto, Canada. This poem is from her ekphrastic collection, Aspartame, below. Click image to see book on Amazon. Lilium The orphan hears her mother call from the fields of Hellas, and meets her where blossoms of red silk Turk's Cap curl back on their stems, acres of glorious suns blooming against the Mediterranean sky. For a moment, she feels her mother's petal-soft olive skin, smells the floral scent of her Grecian curls. In the city she sells crocus and grape hyacinth, enough to pay for bread and figs. Lilies would earn her pomegranates, but she would rather her stomach and basket be wanting and know where her mother waits. Rebecca Weigold Rebecca Weigold's poems are forthcoming or have appeared in BlazeVOX, The Tishman Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Winamop, The Skinny Poetry Journal, and others. In 1987, she founded and published The Cincinnati Poets' Collective, which featured the work of national and international poets for nearly a decade. Her writer's page can be found on Facebook at Rebecca Weigold--Poet. Cold Dreams Come whispering up from the deep trenches undersea, exhaled like poison gases feeding the strange lives that can live nowhere else- Oddly luminous, blue-white beautiful, their songs a dark music, rising like the voices of the drowned who have swallowed the moon and wonder why there is no light. They use up all the oxygen making it impossible to breathe the leaden air, impossible to avoid infection by the burden of despair, unsolvable, a crushing weight keeping you down until a new sun rises strong enough to melt an age of ice. Mary McCarthy This was written as part of the 20 Poem Challenge. Mary McCarthy has always been a writer, but spent most of her working life as a Registered Nurse. Her work has appeared in many online and print journals, including Earth's Daughters, Gnarled Oak, Third Wednesday and Three Elements Review. She is grateful for the wonderful online communities of writers and poets sharing their work and passion for writing, providing a rich world of inspiration, appreciation, and delight. Haiku Leaving her sisters off to follow Apollo love-struck sunflower Kati Nagy This haiku written as part of the 20 Poem Challenge. Kati Nagy is a semi-retired, globe-trotting ESL teacher who now resides in San Francisco with a view of the sparkling Bay Bridge. She weaves her stories in poems, collages, memoir, and solo performances. His Beauty My Secret
And when I brought his face to life, manifest idea of heaven into his eyes, it was of my own personal Jesus. It was in his beauty within which I toiled, made his face smooth as worked marble, touched his lip with tip of finger then left him for time to abuse. In court yard of soiled faith etched from empirical pagan ritual, I’d watch his sun warmed lips call beyond olive gardens to where, in red wine reverie, I rested; and I’d dream of buildings where I could tell the story of my secret faith, retell it within his simple hands. Gardens where I’d whisper secrets into empty nights and where he keeps them still, no loose tongue let slip for deceptive judges’ to cast scorn. In place of purest sanctuary I brought him to life. With a lick of gilded brush his holy cheek flushed pink as if affected by heavenly hand that blew life into his heart. Now he overlooks their days as he does mine, but they shall not know his name, his real name, is not wrought from scripture, but wrung dry from a thirsty shame that casts shadow on my days. Paul Crompton Paul Crompton is a poet and journalist on the south Coast. He performs at Brighton's many open mic nights and produces a quarterly chapbook of the town's poets The Giant Egg
Where exactly the giant egg was found is no longer remembered clearly. What is certain is that an egg of such a size had never been observed before and it dwarfed the sightseers who gathered to gawk at it. The immediate instinctive reaction was to attempt to crack it open right where it lay to see what was within, but a voice screamed out above the din of the excited crowd that something rotten, perhaps even a half-decayed gigantic monstrosity, could be inside. It was therefore decided to drag the giant egg to a nearby beach so the sand could absorb any putrid liquids that might leak out once the shell was broken, and the ocean could then be used as a trash can to dispose of every trace of this aberration’s existence. Engineers arrived on the scene to draw plans for the most effective way of breaking the shell. Environmentalists gathered to ensure the surrounding land would not become too contaminated, should the egg release any foulness. Scaffolding was erected all around the egg, upon which an army of labourers hammered relentlessly at the egg's thick, concrete-like shell. No one can recall how much time it took for the workers to make even the slightest dent in the shell or how long it was before the first visible cracks appeared on the surface of the mysterious egg. The spectacle of the egg unveiling its secret was just so overwhelming that all other details faded into obscurity. An awed hush swept over the crowded beach as the inner contents slowly came into view. Some could not bear the stress of the suspense and turned their backs; others even ran away. But those who stayed to watch are unanimous in their recollections of the wonder of the moment when a golden star, bathing the surroundings in soft light, drifted calmly out of the broken shell and settled cozily upon the horizon, as though it had always belonged there. Boris Glikman Boris Glikman is a writer, poet and philosopher from Melbourne, Australia. The biggest influences on his writing are dreams, Kafka and Borges. His stories, poems and non-fiction articles have been published in various online and print publications, as well as being featured on national radio and other radio programs. |
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Tickled Pink Contest
March 2024
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