Connected At the museum today, a young couple stands before a painting called The Yellow Lampshade. The young couple is dressed inconspicuously, in light colours. Their faces are plain. Their very youth provides their colour and aliveness. The painting depicts a couple standing in a corner windowed apartment. A penthouse, I guess you would say. The subjects stand a distance apart. A good stretch of carpet between them and the big windows with all the gray skyscrapers in them. The young couple at the museum is kissing. With deep love, you might say. Sweetly but lingering. I am standing near the painting, closest to the man. My husband stands before the next painting over, closest to the woman. We give them their time – young love is to cherish. And when they move away, he and I come together in front of the painting and kiss, then walk companionably away in opposite directions. In a gray gravel alley shirtless metal workers called puddlers relax, shirtless. They are pale. Spindly. Not mighty workers of the world. Yet their professional was a skilled one. Later, I learn that the job entails continuously working with boiling iron. Puddlers performed strenuous work, very close to the high heat–a job of skill as well as strength and stamina. In the painting, one’s skin is reddened at his clavicle. All of them are arrayed in poses of stretching, reclining and twisting. Poses recalling classic Greek sculptures. The green onion stink of their skin, their unwashed hair and animal restlessness; these are palpable to me. Their male-ness. In their way they are mighty. But the factory behind them looms large. Here’s the third: Modigliani, my favourite painter. This painting depicts a Polish friend of the artist: the poet Pierre-Edouard Baranowski. But I like thinking of the subject as being female. The angular face; the tilted head, the pronounced cupid’s bow. An androgyne in a black jacket and white shirt with the collar loose. The Pole’s eyes are a complete blank. Not blank in that they are white. Rather they are the same blue as the background, which renders the face mask-like. Not unpainted, but rather painted with the effect of being blank. “When I know your soul, I will paint your eyes.” the artist said. In museums these days, I view paintings with a distinct but not unpleasant dizziness: I suffer from vertigo. My husband is always with me. I touch his arm. He squeezes mine, lightly. After 25 years of marriage, he knows what I like. Patricia Quintana Bidar Patricia Quintana Bidar is a native Californian with roots in New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona. She is a former fiction reader for Northwest Review, and alum of the UC Davis graduate writing program. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Wigleaf, The Citron Review, Jellyfish Review, Barren Literary Magazine, Blue Five Notebook, fomercactus, Flash Flood Journal, Train Literary Magazine, Riggwelter Press, and Soft Cartel. In addition to writing fiction, Patricia serves as a writer for national and regional nonprofit organizations. Her Twitter handle is @patriciabidar.
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Bury Our Heart
Like every other, this is the year of shifting sorrows, the thin shadows of land that slip from countries we've left for fear or want of finding ourselves in a handful of dirt. Even in sleep, a warm wonder of birth and loss, there too the earth's vibrations, the leveling of cliffs in eyes we claim. The soul is the land liquid in the lines of veins that stripe the inner atlas. It bubbles and flows, smoothes the rough roads, carves out our caves of refuge, our weeping echoes. Here too, they will find us the outcasts, the fugitives, the lost, the abandoned, the running-for-our-lives. Oh homeland of sadness, these dusty bones that could not save. I have held in my clay hands, the fine grains of his blood, bold in my muddy palms; I have held in my earthen arms the jagged pot of his pain, brimming and bitter. I have waited for that open mouth of the world to lay him down. Marjorie Maddox Artist, activist, and retired Pennsylvania College of Technology professor Karen Elias' photograph Fractured Heart and Marjorie Maddox's poem "Bury Our Heart" are part of a collaborative series by artist and poet to be exhibited March 22—April 13, 2019, at The Station Gallery, Lock Haven, PA. The poem appears in Maddox's re-released collection Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Wipf & Stock, 2018), which chronicles her father's unsuccessful heart transplant during the Blizzard of ’93. The book won the Yellowglen prize and was one of three finalists for the Brittingham and Felix Pollak book awards. Maddox has published 11 collections of poetry, a short story collection, and several children's books. For more information, please see www.marjoriemaddox.com Falling Apart
On my table tonight in a bowl, apples and pears, Balanced against each other, stem to glossy skin. If they are joined at all, it’s an intricate architecture, Forces at rest. It makes me think of Cezanne And his basket of apples spilling out onto the table, The wine bottle leaning like the Tower of Pisa in Miniature, folds of the towel forming ski slopes For apples, the disjointed table, and toasted Biscuits stacked crossways on the white plate-- The world seems to be falling apart, held together Only for a moment by the frame of the painting. It is Poussin’s L’Enlèvement des Sabines enacted By a basket of apples, by biscuits and a white plate, And underneath the plate, barely noticed, lies a Notebook, level, undisturbed. George Franklin George Franklin's most recent collection, Traveling for No Good Reason, won the Sheila-Na-Gig Editions competition and was published in 2018. A bilingual collection, Among the Ruins / Entre las ruinas, translated by Ximena Gomez was also published in 2018 by Katakana Editores, and individual poems have appeared in various journals, including The Threepenny Review, Salamander, Pedestal Magazine, Typishly, and Cagibi. A broadside from Broadsided Press is forthcoming in 2019, along with new poems in Into the Void and a feature in Cagibi. He also practices law in Miami and teaches poetry workshops in Florida state prisons. The Accompanist I adjust the violin at my chin, stare down at the bridge. In thick-soled boots, frock coat, I play gigues, sarabandes while bleak northern light floods in from the Place des Vosges. The faces of the Corps de Ballet are in shadow. They exercise, distracted not by my music, so much as by the prospect of Monsieur Louverture, who will burst through the door at any moment like a mistral. Will he be irritable? Forgiving? What do they anticipate, my cygnets? Odette, dark hair held back from her face with a ribbon, tenses her jaw. Odile, at the window, unbearably fair, jealous of Odette, stretches, sighs. Nearby, Fleur whispers advice to Rosette. These sylphs, lips pursed, are like water lilies, tethered by hope, dread. The foreground, vacant, bristles with peril. Mike Ross Mike Ross is a poet and teacher. His book of poems, Small Engine Repair, was published in 2015. Ekphrastic Writing Challenge Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrastic! We feature some of the most accomplished influential poets writing today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. Thank you to everyone who participated in our last writing challenge featuring the work of ancient Egyptian sculptors, which ends today at midnight. (Click here to see the Egyptian challenge.) Accepted responses for the Egyptian funerary boat challenge will be published on February 15, 2019. A very special thank you to Alarie Tennille, who was our guest editor for this challenge. The prompt this time is Ishtar, by Jean-Michel Basquiat.. Deadline is February 22, 2019. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination. 2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything. 3. Have fun. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include BASQUIAT WRITING CHALLENGE in the subject line in all caps please. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. Do not send it after acceptance or later; it will not be added to your poem. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. We are sorry about these technicalities, but have found that following up, requesting, adding, and changing later takes too much time and is very confusing. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight, February 22, 2019. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! NEWS We have been featuring occasional guest editors for the ekphrastic challenges. We're hoping this will inspire us in unexpected ways, add new flavours and perspectives to the journal, foster community, and widen readership. Upcoming guest editors include Shirley Glubka and Jordan Trethewey. We're excited about this and about having a whole year of challenges, now that we've found an ekphrastic prompt system that is working in terms of consistency and longevity. Many great poems are about to be written! A Sort of Genesis
This would have been as good of a start as any: before the vault fissured, before light, before wind swung categories of air or rippled grass blades, we were shapes assembled without logic, our association undulating through a saturated plane, yet to find any bearing albeit becoming. Nolan Meditz Nolan Meditz was born and raised on Long Island. He received his MFA from Hofstra University in 2014 and his Ph.D. from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2018. His poetry has appeared in Roanoke Review, Califragile, deLuge Journal, and Mockingheart Review among other publications. He currently lives in Weatherford, OK, where he teaches writing at Southwestern Oklahoma State University. Dress Her for Her Wedding
Shroud the girl in velvet, thread her head through the tiny neck hole, stiffen the starched ruff. Circle her throat. Cinch her breasts. Strap her waist. Turn her to the mirror so she can see her own bridled perfection-- downcast eyes, kissable lips. Silence. A cross hangs from her ruby-studded collar. A little dog licks her hand. Linked to her belt, a pine marten, gutted, narrowed, shaped into a purse. Its stiff paws and furred face, elaborated in gold. Alive, the creature was rank and feral. Those beaded eyes will not turn away from the chain. Gail DiMaggio Gail DiMaggio lives and writes in Concord NH. Her work has appeared most recently in Salamander, Slipstream and the Tishman Review. In 2017, her book, Woman Prime, was chosen by Jericho Brown for the Permafrost Poetry Prize and was released in Feb. 2018 by Alaska University Press. Treat yourself to an art journal or notebook to set down your future poems. These notebooks feature the visual artwork of editor Lorette Luzajic, and were designed as merchandise whose proceeds directly support The Ekphrastic Review.
There are spiral bound soft notebooks and hardback journals in the designs shown here and many more. Get some today! Thank you so much. https://mixedupmedia.threadless.com/accessories/notebook Freya and Od Waiting, I’m never where you’re not, sitting in the window square, sun glinting off the snowbroth. Why shouldn’t this tinselled patch be your side of the bed at dawn, that tree root your foot, seeking air from under-sheet? It is nearly our hour and we are plummeting towards spring. You have pulled me into season, the blossom bud-hearted, earth wet-black with last year’s leaves, death, everywhere. A plane frets the branches. Something is always leaving, like your name, falcon-feathered, rising in me by degrees. Jessica Mayhew Jessica Mayhew is the author of two pamphlets, Someone Else's Photograph (Crystal Clear Creators, 2012) and Amok (Eyewear, 2015). Her poetry, short stories and essays have been published in journals such as Ambit, Stand, Magma and The Interdisciplinary Literary Studies Journal. Jessica has given readings at Lyric Lounge Northampton, the Leicester Shindig, and Smack the Poesy. She has also read from her pamphlets at the Nottingham and Ledbury poetry festivals, as well as in London. Georgia O'Keeffe Gone now the virulent inwardness of flowers, their craving purple and ochre gullets, your hewn face, furrowed like nature’s baked landscapes of skull, adobe, rock, Is reduced over decades to bone, slowly erodes, takes on canyons, agave. crowds in, concentrates into mesa, red earth. In the late photographs, welder of colour, artisan of light, you have been honed to abstraction, you have become the mountain. Christopher Levenson Christopher Levenson, originally from London, England, has lived and worked in Germany, the Netherlands, and India. He is the author of twelve books of poetry, most recently A tattered coat upon a stick (Quattro Books Toronto 2017) and three chapbooks. He co-founded and was first editor of Arc Magazine. After teaching English and Creative Writing from at Carleton University, in Ottawa, from 1968 to 1999, he moved to Vancouver, B.C. in 2007, where he helped to revive and run the Dead Poets Reading Series. |
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