Alabama Cotton Tenant Farmer’s Wife
This is no silk merchant’s wife slim shoulders leaning against dry clapboard her eyes direct her head slightly turned left ear exposed ebony hair parted right an enigmatic smile revealing no lower lip, bones of her neck protruding from the V in her checkered blouse in this black and white photo she is centered and she knows something we don’t Amy Phimister After a long corporate career, Amy Phimister has returned to writing full time. She graduated from St. Mary's College in Notre Dame with a B.A. in Creative Writing. A member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, she is currently working on a chapbook of her poems.
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Surprise Poetry Challenge!
Did you know? The Ekphrastic Review is based in Canada. July 1 this year marks our country's 150th year birthday. To honour this landmark occasion, let's celebrate some Canadian art. Here is a surprise ekphrastic challenge, featuring visual art prompts for you to respond to in poetry. (Prose and short fiction also welcome.) You have ten days! Dive into one piece for inspiration, choose a few, or try them all. Write! Send only your best to theekphrasticreview@gmail.com. Deadline is June 30. We will consider late works, but please try to send them before Canada Day. On July 1 and throughout the month, to celebrate Canada's birthday with art, we'll post the best submissions. Our hope is that you will discover more Canadian art and be inspired to delve beyond these images, too. Canadian art history is little known outside of our country, and sadly, sometimes inside of it, too. We have a shorter history than Europe or Africa in terms of visual art, and our numbers are small for such a large nation. We are also notoriously polite and quiet and haven't always promoted our creative wealth because most Canadians don't like to show off. But even so, we have a tremendously interesting variety of visual art, and it deserves more attention and a wider audience. If you find a Canadian work not shown and want to use it as a prompt for this challenge, please do! Disclaimer: Please note, this tiny selection does not pretend to be definitive in any way. There are glaring omissions; for example, contemporary art is grossly underrepresented, and no two samples could possibly do justice to the epic variety, imagination, and skill of the diverse First Nations arts with which we have been blessed. Nor are these works specifically the "best" or best known of the particular artist highlighted. I wanted to include many more works from underrated and hardly known painters who should be; I also left out works I love and replaced them with works I don't care for at all, because it's important to contemplate art we don't like, and for prompts for writing, it's important to have an interesting selection, not just a Greatest Hits list. Enjoy! Jazz Fantasy of My Puberty*
Reality has always been too small for the human imagination. We're always trying to transcend. – Brenda Laurel She leans against the wall of a jazz club, strikes a pose under the spotlight of a streetlamp, blows ovals of smoke like lassos to rope-in all lust within sight of the Seine. She wears a beret like those Beats with their Van Dykes and goatees seen through arches in the club’s caveau as they dig Le Jazz Hot, ostinato riffs of trumpet and clarinet, jazzmen as silhouettes through another arch, wide vibratos, unblushing roll of Lonesome Railroad Blues, a trombone’s slide in a priapic rise to Mighty Lak A Rose. Her eyes flash with every blast of brass. She sways, in the groove. She begins to dance. She swoons, a cobra entranced when I transcend the band as I solo, when I play my pretend tenor sax. Jack Grady *Inspired by the album cover and music of Le Jazz Hot, an LP recorded in 1957 by The Left Bank Bearcats, a group of American musicians who masqueraded as a French jazz band. Jack Grady is a founding member of the Irish-based Ox Mountain Poets. His poetry has appeared online or in print in many literary journals and anthologies, including such publications as Crannóg; Live Encounters; The Galway Review; And Agamemnon Dead: An Anthology of Early Twenty-First Century Irish Poetry; North West Words; The Worcester Review; Poet Lore; A New Ulster, Mauvaise Graine; Algebra of Owls; The Irish Literary Times; Skylight 47, and others. He was the first Irish poet invited to read at the annual international poetry festival in Marrakesh, Morocco, where he appeared at its third edition, in April 2016. To George Bellows on Riverfront No. 1 Is that Emma watching In that trio on the right? Just last year you painted her - royal blue, white lace - seated placidly at a piano playing Schubert, perhaps, or Brahms And now you’ve hauled her straightway to the river, family fully-clothed witness to fleshy merriment. They take it all in - arms and legs and butts - Peeling off clothes, scraping, draping Pulling onto piling and docks Well out of the drawing room And that blue-eyed vase. And what about that blonde-haired boy - Curious, shyly Clinging? Will he soon arch his back? Break away? Rush headlong into New York City As you did? Pat Snyder Hurley This poem first appeared in A Rustling and Waking Within: Poems inspired by the arts in Ohio, published by the Ohio Poetry Association. Pat Snyder Hurley is a recovering attorney and long-time humour columnist from Columbus, Ohio, who recently began writing poetry. Her work has appeared in the literary journals Still Crazy and Common Threads, the Ohio Poetry Association’s ekphrastic poetry anthology A Rustling and Waking Within, and the online literary journal The MOON Magazine. A collaborative collection of her poems and those of her late husband Bill Hurley, Hard to Swallow, is scheduled for publication in January 2018 by Night Ballet Press. The Oil Well Let the bull wheel wind around my legs and thighs further tightening the loveless line. Derrick-poised, arid figure of luck and charm, I grew scales and wide-eyes. For love of country, progress, mankind. Bringing calm to elements enraged, no man knew me to be anything other than wooden, flesh-coloured, sacred and divine. Decades-bound by the corroding drilling line, I could’ve gone on like this forever. Perfect skin now burnt and dry from desert winds, solitude and time. Steel cable fraying scales turning delicate toes into five bent, rusted nails. It was then, I felt your talons bound by the same pulling line. In our self-imposed restraint, we wrapped the cable tight around us For once, not working against the wheel. Rebeca Ladrón de Guevara Rebeca Ladrón de Guevara lives in Los Angeles, California. She received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Chapman University. Her fiction has previously appeared in Chicago Literati, Genre, Sonora Review and Badlands Literary Journal. In 2008, she was the recipient of the Elizabeth George Foundation grant for emerging writers. Dillon H Fuller is a musician and photographer. He lives in Santa Ana, California. The Family in the Red House
While walking through woods Near a rambling river I came upon a paint peeled red house barn like in appearance, ` broken window panes, tall grasses covering old cement steps unattended for years. Who inhabited this red house and where are they now? I entered cautiously through the front door, looked around the open space. Dishes with cobwebs adorned the wooden kitchen table. Shriveled food occupied the old refrigerator. The scene appeared as though a family simply disappeared. Bedroom quilts covered most beds, one bed remained unmade. As I walked around floorboards creaked like soft screams. I slipped on a small throw rug; moving the rug with my feet, I discovered a trap door located in the floor. Slowly, I lifted the rusty hinge. There in the hollow space were skeleton bodies. The family stayed behind in the paint peeled red house. Pat St. Pierre Pat St. Pierre is a freelance writer for adults and children in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her third poetry book, Full Circle, was published by Kelsay Books. Some of her work can be viewed at: Black Poppy Road, A Long Story Short, Fiction 365, 50 words, Friday Flash Fiction, Kids Imagination Train, The Kids Ark, Silver Boomer Books, The Camel Saloon, etc. She is also a freelance photographer whose photos have been on the covers and included in such places: Gravel, Sediments, Our Day’s Encounter, Peacock Journal, Pacific Poetry, etc. www.pstpierre.wordpress.com. The Girl I Was
Sunflower, taller than a man, brighter than the star that warms earth, with broad leaves that pull me close to its golden face—hypnotic eye with steadfast stare—I am struck by its caress . . . What happened to me under this pocket of stars? I feel weak, stepping into indigo shallows, with my arms loose at my sides, my blouse split open to my waist. No wind to speak of, or a distant bonfire with shadows dancing wild, I clench my fist around the golden petal I stole from the sunflower’s brow— proof, but no one cares. I become an excuse for carrying on. The moon anoints me with its silky light, making me part of night’s spellbinding silence. M.J. Iuppa M.J. Iuppa is the Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor Program and Lecturer in Creative Writing at St. John Fisher College; and since 2000 to present, is a part time lecturer in Creative Writing at The College at Brockport. Since 1986, she has been a teaching artist, working with students, K-12, in Rochester, NY, and surrounding area. She has three full length poetry collections, most recently Small Worlds Floating (2016) as well as Within Reach (2010) both from Cherry Grove Collections; Night Traveler (Foothills Publishing, 2003); and 5 chapbooks. She lives on a small farm in Hamlin NY. Boetti’s Mapmakers
for Jenny Hart For months, we could not work. Then middlemen arrived one dry, pale morning; while I made bread, my heart unraveling, my mouth, constrained, gave no sign. New instructions: Malaysia, France. The woman assigned a chord of Russia stitched the most beautiful purples, the colour saffron blooms, before burning the work in her fire. After turning the ashes, her portion recreated was vermilion. The day always cools. Momentarily, my true work: satin and steil stitch. Before my child weeps for milk, my husband wails for supper, Hafiz whispers counsel: with a sweet string at hand, my friend, the world gravitates from demolition to form. Alicia Cole Alicia Cole is a writer and artist in Huntsville, AL. She struggles with bipolar disorder. Her work is forthcoming in Star*Line and Anima. You can find more about her at her publishing press Priestess & Hierophant, www.priestessandhierophant.com, or Facebook at www.facebook.com/Aliciacolewriter. Did you know? Ekphrastic readers always get 25% off Lorette's Etsy artworks. You can support The Ekphrastic Review and own an original work like this brand new creation. Use EKPHRASTIC25 at checkout for discount on all items purchased. https://www.etsy.com/listing/523589828/madame-butterfly-square-foot-original Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne
Apollo finally wearies of his lunging rush at Daphne, whose slender fingertips even now are changing into sprigs of laurel. Why does she always have to run so fast? And to have all her creamy skin covered by that crust of bark, that always burns him up. He’d just like to ask her out, so they might sit together on his back porch in the twilight and hold hands, or maybe a little more. And Daphne, sometimes she’d like to turn on him and dare the gorgeous fool: all right, let’s do it! Right on the museum floor! Just to let herself go a little would be such a relief after all these strenuous centuries. She’s seen all the patrician women, soi disant, stalking and turning in slacks and sunglasses, inspecting her with an envy that’s a little smug, divining her marble beauty did nothing for her. And all the gasping men, what good were they? At last she’d just like a home to go to where she could water the geraniums on the windowsill and watch her neighbours in the street below. Yes, she has to admit that the pose she’s held for so long has been superb and she’s glad to have had the job, but finally any cramped apartment would do, somewhere she could cook some fagioli-- wiping her hands on a mildewed dishtowel, swatting at flies, one kid hanging to her sweaty thigh, and cheesy disco on the radio-- while she waits for her husband the truck driver to finally come home. Charles M. Boyer Charles M. Boyer’s novel, History’s Child, was chosen by Mary Gaitskill as the winner of the AWP Award Series in the Novel and was published by New Issues Press in 2016. He also published poems and short stories in such places Abraxas, Literal Latte, The Larcom Review, The Atlanta Review, and other literary magazines. He received a grant for writing from the Wisconsin Arts Board and a Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. Charles Boyer graduated from Beloit College with a junior year at Harris-Manchester College, Oxford, and has an M.A. in fiction writing from the University of New Hampshire. He teaches English and Humanities at Montserrat College of Art and lives with his family near Boston. |
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