Sifting Through the Jean-Michel Basquiat Exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver With a Friend on a Sunday I couldn’t explain why Jean-Michel Basquiat, in the same black pea coat my friend was wearing, paraded all over New York, spray painting alleys, or why we were looking at his thoughts drawn and written on notebook paper with musical instructions, or why he sat in front of a TV with a helmet on, or why there were sweatshirts that were painted in a way that reminded me of the way vomit caresses sidewalk, or if what we were even looking at was art. Maybe he was a performer? And we chewed on that for a couple of minutes, because I knew I had heard someone say his name before in an art history class, or in passing, but the signs just mentioned a collection from throughout the years collected by his lover and I couldn’t place how a framed paper flag, a picture of him weaving chewing gum through his glasses, and graffiti made it into the same body of work. This is really poorly curated. I asked my friend what she thought. It’s interesting to think that I am the enemy. I don’t know what she meant. I saw the paper American flag with ticks and the words a nation of fools, and the graffiti wall that said something like which of the following is omnipresent? Lee Harvey Oswald, Coca Cola logo, General Melonry, SAMO, the painted crowns, hollowed faces, and a single page with the phrase It took the guilt of four generations of sweatshop work to gain access to the statesman, and list of random names with lines through them on notebook paper. Perhaps Jean-Michel Basquiat wrote on notebook paper while thinking about men in suits who lived in penthouses, or maybe she meant that the ring on her finger meant that she was marrying into a family who owned a mining company, or that she lived in suburbs while Basquiat grew up in the city, or if she meant she didn’t understand abstract art and Basquiat was the king of it. I asked her if she was bothered by the fact that maybe someone somewhere might not like her. No, it’s just interesting. And I look at my own hands. I wonder if there is anyone who dislikes Basquiat for his graffiti, and if anyone dislikes me, and I think about the made in the US shoes I wear and the CRV that I drive, and the olive oil packaging I designed, the cheesecake light bulb that I made, the illustrations of plants in Colombia that I painted, and I wonder what anyone would want to collect from me and if they’d understand. Lauren Gombas This piece was first published in Cholla Needles. Lauren Gombas is a graphic designer, illustrator, and radio host. When she isn't designing, illustrating, or drawing, she's writing, hiking, and enjoying a great big bowl of pho.
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Elijah and the Raven on a Full Stomach
After the AYCE fish fry (battered, tartar-slathered cod, buttery roll, over-salted fries and dreamy, creamy slaw), I make a first attempt to find the right ekphrasis for this 1993 Elijah, balding, kneeling, accepting the needful wafer from the straight-outta-Heaven- or-Hitchcock beak of the raven-du-jour, but all I can manage is silence, silence and space bars for the better part of a dark night of the soul. Bill Stadick Bill Stadick has published poetry in various publications, including Barren Magazine, The Windhover, First Things, The Christian Century, Christianity and Literature and The Cresset. He founded and writes for Page 17, a marketing communications firm. Bass Clef, Percussion
(Emmet County, Michigan—1878) East of Petoskey the last swarm of passenger pigeons curled into the shape of an undulating bass clef, circled strings of meadows, and nesting woods. The moment after the painting captured, men strung over forty miles raised rifles. blasted echoes over other blasts. It was a sunrise to sunset wall of percussion, antagonistic to the hearing of hundreds of hunters there to clear out avian traffic. Dead and dying birds carpeted the ground in such concentrations men inadvertently stepped on one to avoid stepping on another. Carcasses filled barrels, barrels stuffed a line of wagons that ferried them and passengers to ad hoc processing stations back in town. Then they loaded ships. Chicago’s restaurants awaited the incredible yield. An epic field day by any measure. Fast forward one spring: no Passengers pass through, not a clef or a ribbon, a line or a vee formation numbering even a platoon of them. If solitaries survived, no one saw. Step into shade below this particular tree-line. Here riflemen waited while the painter documented the sky at its most populous. A target-rich environment. Day of the historic wipe-out, before they opened fire. Todd Mercer Todd Mercer was nominated for Best of the Net in 2018. Mercer won 1st, 2nd & 3rd place of the Kent County Dyer-Ives Poetry Prizes and the won Grand Rapids Festival Flash Fiction Prize. His chapbook Life-wish Maintenance is posted at Right Hand Pointing. Recent work appears in: The Lake, The Magnolia Review, Praxis and Softblow. Buzzed
It takes 100,000 buzzing vomits to create one pound of honey inside my head Our moisture will evaporate as my nectar converts into your honey A foraged energy source of sweet offerings you ingest to thicken into honey Creating within me the cells that seal my honeycomb for later consumption. Mark Blickley Mark Blickley is a New York writer and proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center. He is the author of Sacred Misfits (Red Hen Press); Weathered Reports: Trump Surrogate Quotes From the Underground (Moira Books) and the forthcoming text based art book, Dream Streams (Clare Songbird Publishing House. His video, Widows Peek: The Kiss of Death, was selected to the 2018 International Festival of Experimental Video and Film in Bilbao, Spain and he is a 2018 Audie Award finalist for his contribution to the original audio book, Nevertheless We Persisted. Dawn Drums They march again to war, Sniffling, shuffling, voices muffled, Through dawn's uncertain door Youth and man, rich and poor, Through campfires' smothered smokes They march again to war, From college, farm and store They carry loaded muskets Through dawn's uncertain door Damp drums tapping, four by four, Meadow mists like ghosts ahead, They march again to war Black cannon mouths, fresh gore, Shattered limbs and death await Through dawn's uncertain door Flags yet furled And bayonets sheathed, They march again to war Through dawn's uncertain door Robert Walton This poem was first published at Classical Poets. This poem was inspired by a different but related relief by Caspar Buberl, which can be viewed here. Robert Walton is a retired middle school teacher and lifelong rock climber with many ascents in the Sierras and Pinnacles National Park. His writing about climbing has appeared in the Sierra Club's Ascent. His publishing credits include works of science fiction, fantasy and poetry. He also worked as a newspaper columnist for a time.His historical novel Dawn Drums won the 2014 New Mexico Book Awards Tony Hillerman Prize for best fiction, first place in the 2014 Arizona Authors competition and first place in the historical fiction category of the 2017 Readers Choice Awards. Most recently, his SF short story “Starbuck Billy” was published in Alien Dimensions. Please visit his website for more information about him: http://chaosgatebook.wordpress.com/ Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Beata Beatrix When the air clears and the moon returns, it’s Beata Beatrix I recall though Rossetti’s Pre-Raphaelite symbolism seems a little smeary and sentimental for an Okie, on a back porch mulling obsession and half a can of Lone Star. Tonight, I can imagine Rossetti's suffering: his Lizzie gone, how he buried a reef of new poems clutched in her pale fingers, then, years later, empty and tired of scavenging the gray creeks of his imagination for some great mudcat of a sonnet that didn’t want to be dragged out of its hollow log, he dug her up at midnight from Christ’s Church Graveyard and found a fat worm had bored a hole through each page. If this were Oaklawn Cemetery, where spectres of long dead Okies drag tired wings through calcified stone, the ghosts of my cousins and uncle would have raised their longnecks then laughed because in Oklahoma you’ve got to have a sense of humor to carry you past the grave. After that, Rossetti kept painting this one picture over and over: small details shifting, a white dove dipped in cadmium red, the light clearing, and even Dante in the background looking up as if to say what the hell? Markham Johnson Markham Johnson won the Pablo Neruda Prize from Nimrod, and his first poetry collection was published by the University Press of Florida. He has an MFA from Vermont College, and his poems have been published widely in magazines including Nine Mile, Coal Hill, and Library Journal.
Rock of Ages, Pencil Sketch, Picture 59 As if buckshot blew a hole in the side of an Ozark hill he once called home, the pencil patient artist of State Hospital #3 left a wound gripping the rock of his mountain, spraying green spruces grown in shale, lime and sandstone, mortared by bones of the dead bedded in hot springs up the side of his discarded invoice canvas, ROCK OF AGES #59 penciled over a reminder to pay promptly as required by law on an otherwise empty page. I see him, a boy running these hills standing in his pew at his father’s church to sing let me hide myself in thee with nowhere to hide, helpless against his father’s fists his father’s name on a dotted line remanding him to this place, as empty of grace as the columns of debits and credits printed on his medium, double sins of difference and indifference in the shattered Rock of Ages. Janet Reed Janet Reed is guest editor of I-70 Review, author of Blue Exhaust (FLP, 2019), and a multi-year Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sow’s Ear Review, Ellipsis, Tipton Poetry Journal, and others. She began writing knock-off Nancy Drew stories on wide-lined notebook paper at age 11 and now teaches writing and literature for Crowder College in Missouri. Windows Love-sick So in love with her one night he walked four miles to her house, hid in the bushes hoping for a glimpse of her up in her bedroom window. Blind Date Watched from a window above the cafeteria as they threw snowballs at one another, tussled in the snow, her giggling like a little girl, hair shining in the sun. Embarrassed So embarrassed spilling her drink in fancy-schmancy Toscano’s I wished I could turn back time make it not happen or if it must let it happen to me. Michael Estabrook Michael Estabrook small press poet since the 1980s striving always for greater clarity and concision rendering language more succinct and precise more accessible and appealing a Sisyphean adventure for sure. Retired now writing more and working more outside just noticed two Cooper’s hawks staked out in the yard or rather above it which explains the nerve-wracked chipmunks. Bouncy House is a recent collection edited by Larry Fagin (Green Zone Editions, 2014). She Who Was In Love With Rodin
I have been gazing ardently At a self-portrait of a woman Born exactly a century before me, Gwendolen Mary John her name Or Gwen John as she is commonly known. Her egg-shaped facial contours, Alabaster-like complexion And petite frame beg At first glance to suggest A malleable reed-like demeanor. But when I look into those eyes - Those eyes that are not looking Directly at me but penetrating Through some glimpses Of her heart's ruminations Bespeak traces of Steely detachment, of Self-possession amidst The world's incessant clamourings; The voice of her thoughts Her only audibles, Her one true north. Whatever passions that had steered The then painted self would In two years succeeding Be consumed through and through By a franco passion as crimson bold as the Artist's own blouse. You could say she was wilfully Toying with fire, One that would potentially Reduce her to mere ashes; Scattering her core into Infinitesimal bits. Burned she did and loved. This love, this slavish devotion To her Maître Rodin Who sculpted her Likeness cast in bronze - Though celebrated with fame, Her love was not. She, one of his many muses and lovers But he, the wellspring of her life. And so it was, as played out by Love's cunning; The phoenix rose And blazed the sky, Only to orbit The indifferent sun. Ellen Chia Ellen Chia exchanged her corporate heels for paintbrushes in 2007 and had since embarked on a journey from Singapore toThailand as a self-taught artist. When she is not painting, Ellen enjoys going on solitary walks in woodlands and along beaches where Nature's treasure trove impels her to document her findings and impressions using the language of poetry. Flying
the cranes are flying they fly, Shigeyo in gold and silver flocks as the sun rises-- gilded rays escape a scarlet bow above the mountains-- the crane is flying she flies, Shigeyo a single peaceful origami offering in rose red wings folded at sunset when the sky is also red and the stars are coming out blue now like rain drops or tears only later will they glitter blazing white when the rose has faded the cranes are flying they cry, Shigeyo in those gargling, raucous voices and I did not know you but the cranes cry with the dawn fly to feed in the fields and return at night to settle murmuring roosting in the river and the river reflects the sky and we remember Janet Ruth Janet Ruth is an emeritus research ornithologist living in New Mexico. Much of her writing focuses on connections to the natural world. She has had poems published in Grey Sparrow Journal, Santa Fe Literary Review, previously in The Ekphrastic Review, Manzano Mountain Review, and Unlost: Journal of Found Poetry & Art. She also has poems in regional anthologies including: four volumes of Poets Speak Anthology – HERS, WATER, WALLS, and SURVIVAL (2017-2018); Weaving the Terrain: 100-Word Southwestern Poems (2017),Fixed and Free Poetry Anthology (2018), and Missing Persons: reflections on dementia (2019). In 2018 she published her first book--Feathered Dreams: celebrating birds in poems, stories & images (Mercury HeartLink). https://redstartsandravens.com/janets-writing/ |
The Ekphrastic Review
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