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We Take Our Teen-aged Daughter, a Wolf, to Rome A sort of pilgrimage. Her middle name is a landmark in this city founded by brothers raised by wolves. We roam the streets, the piazzas, the cathedrals. We listen to the singing and the chatter of tourists, race each other around the Circus Maximus, imagining chariot wheels, reciting legends as if they were history. Because she loves art, we reserve time at the Borghese Gallery, let her lead us through its many rooms. She stops at Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne, my wolf daughter. She circles then is still a long time. Here is Apollo--spoiled, selfish, all pursuer, villain, hunter, god--and Daphne, running even as her feet take root, captured in the moment of change, between girl and tree, always. She says, “Look: you can see light through the leaves.” We walk out past David, past Persephone and Hades. Her sharp claws click on the marble floor. Amy Watkins Amy Watkins is a poet and corporate trainer from Orlando, Florida. She is the author of three chapbooks--Milk & Water, Lucky, and Wolf Daughter--and the art editor for Animal: A Beast of a Literary Magazine. Geisha Her mouth is like a small red heart Her hair, black and shining, swept up into an abstract geometry of tender secrets. But behind the white mask, the humble step, those delicate bowed shoulders and cultivated sighs, is an ancient matter of wills: hers bent to yours. Karen Petersen Karen Petersen has traveled the world extensively, publishing both nationally and internationally in a variety of publications. Most recently, her poems, flash and short stories have been published in the Peacock Journal and KYSO in the USA, The Bosphorus Review in Istanbul, Antiphon in the UK, and A New Ulster in Northern Ireland. New work will be appearing in the Saranac Her poems have been translated into Persian and Spanish. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Classics from Vassar College and an M.S. from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. Ageless I hold a voice, sometimes feel it slip between my fingers. Grasp a little tighter. Not so tight as to startle it or send it fleeting. Just enough to let it know I remember, understand its time is not limited to my past, its confusion a sign I have more to learn. Its wonder reminding me to be open to possibilities, that even decay and loss can lead to growth. I hold that voice to my ear, remembering beginnings never really end. Ken Gierke Ken Gierke started writing poetry in his forties, but found new focus when he retired. It also gave him new perspectives, which come out in his poetry, primarily in free verse and haiku.He has been published at The Ekphrastic Review, Vita Brevis, Tuck Magazine, and Eunoia Review. His website: https://rivrvlogr.wordpress.com/ Voice of the Mountain “Believe me, I have a belly of rock hard earth. The aftermath of feasting on lava flows, gorging on the soup of a melted planet. And I have a brain, the sentience of fire agate and mycellium neural networks, all chanting the names of gods in an everlasting clicking of the world’s rosary. Euphorbia tirucalli. Convallaria majalis. And on and on, in a silent green Hail Mary. My heart beats the bass drum of slow time, one human life expiring in the flashing of my eyelash. All is burnt umber, bricks of clay waiting, wanting to be molded from my flesh, and above it all? A sweet circle tracing a figure eight along the horizon.” Fire Dance A race of creatures born of fire- just as we are of clay and the angels, light- dancing, dancing nightly emerging from out of their fireproof garments releasing hungry little beasts of abundance onto a land meant for consuming. They dance around a bonfire built of themselves, incapable of making shadows, eating wood and plastic, flora and rubber tires with no discrimination. The great feast that ends only at dawn, but it is still midnight, so carry on, carry on our starving friends, and we will sleep easily as you revel, as you eat everything we have set out for you. What Does the Sun Say when no one listens. As the bedrock shields us from ruthless burnishing. As we unlock the fierce power of the only star the in sky that matters by rubbing wood together. Friction fire. Heat tucked away for a rainy day in the concentric rings of an old growth redwood tree. Carbon buried treasure. All of life is a layering. The wicked rays sent from the centre of this solar system electromagnetic vessels for encrypted Morse code. Communicating in koans with our shadows, the mind wriggling with riddles while the body is awash in the stillness of a sun-bestowed bliss. afrose fatima ahmed afrose fatima ahmed is a hybrid Texan-Washingtonian living in the Bay Area who writes poems for strangers with her typewriter. she is the daughter of Muslim immigrants from India. Her body and her art live in liminal spaces: polar US borderlands, the division between land and sea, the place where urban density drops off into rural solitude. afrose comes to poetry as just one avenue for creating experiences of beauty and communion for herself and other people. her writing emphasizes all the senses and acknowledges a world in which humans are suffering and experiencing bliss against wild landscapes that are simultaneously living and dying. www.instagram.com/afrosefatimaahmed Bill Zuk is a multimedia artist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria specializing in printmaking, digital art and sculpture. His artwork finds a spiritual passion constantly refreshed by Aboriginal belief systems and the vast polar landscapes and Indigenous cultures of the circumpolar world. He is co-editor of the British Columbia Art Teachers’ Journal and Curator of Art in Public Places jointly sponsored by the British Columbia Art Teachers’ Association and the Government of British Columbia. He is also a Board member of the Victoria Visual Arts Legacy Society (VVALS) that provides bursary awards to post secondary art students. His artwork can be found in the permanent collections of the University of Victoria; Government House Foundation of British Columbia, and recently, the Museum Collection of the Bienal De Gravura do Douro, Alijo, Portugal. For more information, see www.zukart.ca and www.intotheice.ca. Keats in Rome Our landlord has reported us to the Police. With Keats' death, strangers will burst through the door, scrape down walls, haul bedding and anything we have touched away. Rome's fear of consumption is as thick as the humidity. Keats has not slept for over a week, barely breathing like a bank of ash. I’m nearly as exhausted. When he does nap, I sweep, do chores, shop for groceries... Mostly I read all day and night to the poor soul. How can I talk of recovery when he coughs up cups of blood? Unhinged, he feels his heart knocking wildly, like a boat banging against its dock in a storm. He longs for England. Yet he barely survived the trip here. Whenever I can I search Rome for a cemetery. Mercifully, he has finally fallen asleep, but when he wakes, his thoughts will again drift in and out of despair, his heart unmoored Bob Bradshaw Bob Bradshaw is recently retired, and living in California. He is a big fan of the Rolling Stones. Mick may not be gathering moss, but Bob is. Bob's work can be found in many publications on the net, including Apple Valley Review, Eclectica, Loch Raven Review, Peacock Journal and Pedestal Magazine, among others. Stress Some people have a fear of falling upwards when they raise their eyes to the top of a tower block. They feel their feet might leave the ground, as if gravity could release them to fall through clouds and vanish, just because they look up. They are afraid to glance. The high wire walker knows gravity from the rooftops, joins high rises in a dot-to-dot, makes it look easy, as the wind fills his ears like a plane on take-off. The only way is to slide each footstep forwards in his own ballet, tasting the blood metallic rust of the wire, believing it to be just one metre off the ground, like the one at home, where he has fallen many times. The concrete of the blocks tells him the fall will not be through the clouds, but down, hard, and ugly, as the windows spool past, a movie reel fast forward, with all his admirers watching. Adele Ward This poem was inspired by the film High Wire by the artist Catherine Yass, featuring Didier Pasquette, shown above. Adele Ward lives in London, where she works as a writer and editor. She's the co-owner of Ward Wood Publishing and is currently doing a PhD in creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her poetry has been published in a debut collection called Never-Never Land. Ars Ekphrasis Ekphrasis is not a quirky mode of making poems, a party trick like the limerick. Image begets imagination. All poems are ekphrastic. Like tennis with the net, what’s given gives boundaries to work with. That painting of a boy falling from the sky gives W. H. Auden a scaffold for suffering. That sculpture of a girl scrubbing the floor gives Agha Shahid Ali the diameter of dignity. This photograph, say, of an abandoned van gives you what? First, attend to the details: Small red curtain, with floral spirals. The vehicle’s aging interior. Graffiti of a woman’s name. Window smashed clean through. Shards of broken glass reflecting the shattered, patterned view—like tiny buckets of branch and cloud and blue. Now, wonder: What mishap, what longing, set such a scene? Accident? Murder? Sex? Who sprayed the paint? Did a jealous brick break the glass in rage? Or a heel thrash in ecstasy, unobstructing the sky? Who snapped the photograph? Why? At last, give the given back: Tell us the least likely story we’d still believe—ours, told in a new way. Paul T. Corrigan Paul T. Corrigan teaches writing and literature at Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida. His poems have twice won the Artist Choice Award in the Rattle Ekphrastic Poetry Challenge. He leads an annual ekphrastic poetry event, with students and professors, at a local art museum. His poems have appeared inPoets Reading the News and Saint Katherine Review. His essays and interviews with poets have appeared in various venues. He lives in the Peace River Watershed, where he walks to work. More information atpaultcorrigan.com Perfidy My dear leader, do not turn away, can you not see I am from the fields, my parents and sheep behind me, working with toil to task, with faith in hand-- I turn to you, beg you for your heart for a few crumbs of bread, of love of smile. My Father, why so unkind? Why so brusque and false? Why no delight? I see only your back not your faith nor kind spirit, but only your dark robe that seeks out perfidy of world, misanthrope of mind. Judith Brice Judith Alexander Brice is a retired Pittsburgh psychiatrist whose love of nature, experiences with illness, and outrage over political issues has informed much of her work. Her over 50 published poems have appeared previously in The Paterson Literary Review, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Vox Populi, Versewrights, The Magnolia Review and Light, a Journal of Photography and Poetry, and more. One poem, "Questions of Betrayal," is part of the permanent collection of the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, MI. Dr. Brice’s first book of collected poems, Renditions in a Palette, was published in 2013 by David Robert Books. Overhead From Longing, her second book, also by David Robert Books (Wordtech Communications), was published in August, 2018. One of the poems, "Mourning Calls" has been set to music by Michigan composer, Tony Manfredonia. Its performance, (Pittsburgh, PA, December, 2017 by Tuesday Musical Club) can be found at https://soundcloud.com/tony-manfredonia/sets/mourning-calls. Judy divides her time between Pittsburgh, PA and Petoskey, MI and delights in her life with her husband, poet Charles W. Brice, their substandard-standard poodle and two cats! Fashion Forward Five mannequins animate a raised platform in puffy layered finery. In the hushed Vancouver Gallery visitors gasp at these flawless faces beatific as six-year-olds. Their knee-length starchy crinolines of blue, yellow, white-gold befit an invitation to Alice’s tea party. This worn observer, a fractured fairytale in tennies and a sagging cable knit sweater long out of vogue, resists a photo op alongside chic young women who hung the moon and now bask in its ethereal glow. Their swishy poses hint at a sophistication not yet acted on. Nor should they understand what their teasing couture, those bejeweled eight-inch platforms, might propose as each peeks through feathery sequined masks. Could I coax them out of here, like Pied Piper? Girls, your chariot awaits. Their dangling earrings chime a delicate alarm. From atop a nearby spiral staircase, Simon says, Tip this way, that. Freeze! Margo Davis Margo Davis is a recent retiree with wanderlust. Last fall she revisited all major Madrid and Barcelona museums, Malaga and the Alhambra. Her home base is Houston. A recent Pushcart nominee, Margo’s more recent poems have appeared in What Rough Beast, The Fourth River, and The Houston Chronicle. Recent anthology publications include Enchantment of the Ordinary and Echoes of the Cordillera. |
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