The Last Testament “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing.” - 2 Timothy 4:7,8 “Ah, Holy Spirit, how could I have scrolled such mighty things if You, Cantor of heaven had not breathed your sweet psalms upon my stubborn head; hearing inside hearing seeing without seeing chapters of apocalypse, leaving Your Word, its precise prophetic utterance; send Lord, my cloak from Troas the books of the old poets the Salt Sea parchments the family engravings from Tarsus; that shaky knee hates the cold I need some more ink this vellum is caked with mould I think too much of the pancakes of Prisca in Corinth; the centurion grumbled to himself but I heard without hearing soon it comes, soon it comes the black hood bearing the clean edged knife block under my chin last squawking chicken outside the door, last mouse scurrying in the straw, the last damp house. Ah Holy Cantor, even so, even so...” John Robert Lee JOHN ROBERT LEE (b. St. Lucia 1948) has published several collections of poetry. His short stories and poems have been widely anthologised. His reviews and columns have appeared with regularity in newspapers, local and regional. He has also produced and presented radio and television programmes in St. Lucia for many years. His books include Saint Lucian (1988), Artefacts (2000), Canticles (2007), Elemental (2008), Sighting (2013), City Remembrances (2016). He compiled and edited Roseau Valley and other poems for Brother George Odlum (2003), Bibliography of Saint Lucian Creative Writing 1948-2013 (2013); he co-edited Saint Lucian Literature and Theatre: an anthology of reviews (2006) with fellow St. Lucian poet Kendel Hippolyte and co-edited Sent Lisi: poems and art of Saint Lucia (2014) with Kendel Hippolyte, Jane King and Vladimir Lucien.
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Thoughts During Taps
Our hearts are bereft, heavy with their absence. Why do we trumpet them off to war to consecrate them to the ground with bugles? They rally in the name of country and go down like moths in a storm of flames, heavy with the misfortune of violence. Though skin be black or white the same honour is leeched from the same milky bones. We stand subdued at this moment, each of us with a visage in mind as a sort of last rite. They remain ever valiant stars but we, in the interim, think our country downright bereft as we receive folded stripes from white-gloved hands in exchange for flesh and bone. Rebecca Weigold This poem was written as part of the 20 Poem Challenge. Rebecca Weigold's poems have appeared in Black River Review, Perceptions, Up Against the Wall, Mother, and other publications. In 1987, she founded/published The Cincinnati Poets' Collective, an annual poetry journal which featured the work of poets for a decade. An Incomplete Alphabet
W-E- A for ache, an acre, a field of oats N for new words in your mouth, N for now, for noise: grain in a digital world, the random optical texture of a photograph, over- enlarged, exposed a grainy image: round of cheek to round of breast a curtain of sleeve, blouse: the round of earth from space is the round of the baby’s earring, round of her ear Exposed on park bench, concealed under trees to enclose you, me: W-E: light passing between (For angle, for ache) above the breast, the heart: over-enlarged in nursing room art: Dar pecho, un regalo que dura toda una vida a pattern just like the original light source as with seed, Modotti scattered sun onto film Not giving, this morning: I hear your chair legs winnow the floor, reaching for spooned oats in your father’s hand W-E- (for grain, for give forgive me) & you reach for grain instead, for ache You cry my name Pure your gentle name, pure your fragile life Neruda wrote of Modotti when she died & gave her a garland of earthly things to soften her exile: a rosary of bees, shadows, fire Little seed, pepita, granar--we lift the leaves in your flip-flap book “Why do flowers die?” Because they are no longer needed In the photograph, the baby’s mouth blossoms over the mother’s breast round as earth from far away Melissa Reeser Poulin This poem was written as part of the 20 Poem Challenge. Melissa Reeser Poulin is a poet and writer in the Pacific Northwest. Her poems and essays appear in a variety of publications and can be viewed at melissareeserpoulin.com. The Song of Clay Ankara Turkey In the Archaeological Museum I study a clay tablet carved in Sumerian for Ningirsu, god of fertility. Soft etches, lift of riverbed where the waters shone on this piece of earth. The scribe must have paused between lines to contemplate cedar branches brushing blue sky. Conifer became part of the carving. Dusky wings of bats careened from branch to branch. Wind sighed the sound of clay shaped to carry a human voice. Maybe it says The phosphorescent float of sky we hold between us touches the undersides of trees. Maybe it says We become a riverbank where night animals bend to ease their thirst. Tonight will bring us luminous travel, Holy oil lighting every tree above this terra cotta above us as we sleep. Mary Kay Rummel Mary Kay Rummel was the first Poet Laureate of Ventura County, California from 2014-16. Her seventh book of poetry, The Lifeline Trembles, is winner of the 2014 Blue Light Poetry Prize. What’s Left Is The Singing was also published by Blue Light Press of San Francisco in 2010. She has poems in new issues of Miramar, Pirene’s Fountain, and Nimrod and was a Laureate’s Choice winner in the 2016 Maria Faust sonnet contest at the Great River Shakespeare Festival. Born in St. Paul, loving the Pacific, she teaches part time at California State University, Channel Islands and divides her time between Ventura and Minneapolis. marykayrummel.com Shadow Puppets
Behind the parchment screen and eye to eye Punch chided. Who are you? Who is she? He’d point it out. You’d see. No marionette with strings was he. Their paths collided; Judy stands and faces his animosity The play is writ by man and maid and staged to teach, the right and wrong of woman’s position, our place. Standing on two legs, she meets his gaze without speech. what shenanigan have brought on this crutched lambaste. Let us ponder Mr. Punchinell’s stance, his missing leg let his two-eyed profile tease, has Judy been upstaged? Stumped by the shadow lore, the punch, the audience begs for the stiff necked tirade to end her pick engaged. Speared by humour, we see two realities spar on with no means to run, the missing third prong’s a pun. Deborah Guzzi This poem was written for the 20 Poem Challenge. Deborah Guzzi, author of The Hurricane, writes full time. The Hurricane is available ataleezadelta@aol.com and through Prolific Press. Her poetry appears regularly in journals & literary reviews in the UK, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Greece, Spain, France, India & dozens of others in the USA. http://www.the-hurricanedg.com/ Winter’s Rush
The road waxed cerulean stood divided in half-- it began with wild horses bucking their bounds gymnasts pirouetting between bars ricocheting between mat and sky hurtling themselves into the clean black of space their backs straight as summer scepters Later the road became a path waned dusky slate its pockmarks filled with splashes of grey burbling like exhausted lava littered with postage stamps from unwanted letters the same dog licking her wounds every mile patina’d poppies their heads on pavement listening for winter’s rush. Taunja Thomson This poem was written for the 20 Poem Challenge. Taunja Thomson: "My poetry has most recently appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic and will be featured in the September 2016 issue of Halcyon Days. Two of my poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Award: “Seahorse and Moon” in 2005 and “I Walked Out in January” in 2016. I have co-authored a chapbook of ekphrastic poetry which has recently been accepted for publication and have a writer’s page at https://www.facebook.com/TaunjaThomsonWriter" Nancy Drew Anthology from Silver Birch Press
I am most excited to announce that one of my paintings is featured in the new Nancy Drew Anthology from Silver Birch Press. How amazing it is to see the names of quite a number of Ekphrastic's contributors listed as authors and artists. I can't wait to get my copy! Get yours here. Lorette The Cost of Advertising Not for a drop-waist brocade dress, a jeweled bracelet, a crystal wineglass, and layers of hand-embroidered texture, not for a fresh new vote or a woven hat two feet in diameter flung off in favour of a cloche with a cheek curl peeking out, not for a memory of “In the Good Old Summertime” mixed with a premonition of “Dinah,” not for a glimpse of Duke Ellington or all the tea in China-- not for all the moonshine in the speakeasy would I step into a time machine and crank the brass knob to the 1920s to end up where long cigarettes dangle like pens from women’s fingers and where the free spirited spend their final days wheezing. Sarah Carleton Sarah Carleton writes, edits, plays the banjo and raises her son in Tampa, Florida. Her poems have appeared in Houseboat, Burning Word, Avatar Review, Poetry Quarterly, Bijou, Off the Coast, Shark Reef, Wild Violet Magazine, The Binnacle, The Homestead Review, Cider Press Review, Nimrod, Silver Birch, Ekphrastic, Chattahoochee Review, Sow’s Ear, Kindred and Spillway. Dear Brueghel,
Stop by at your good time to see the piece. I’ve named it Venus Frigida. It turns me blue to think of her. How we all long for the warmth and sun of Italy. Finding the wench took little doing. I simply put word out in the taverns and the next morning the boulevard was packed with women—eager to pose. They blocked the street so thoroughly the provision carts had no passage and our fellow Antwerpers had, that night, no waterzooi but cabbage heads alone to sample with their beer. Some old-timers easy with a grudge still assault me with rude gestures as they pass. I found a trick by which to make my model shiver. I doused her with water-- two or three buckets do, and had her repose in a sunless spot until the goose bumps popped and her breathing shallowed. Her face spoke of pure despair, as she shook from morn to eve! But damn the imp. The very thought of finding one gave me shivers. Have you technique to make them settle? I used three infants and shuttled them in and out when patience, theirs or mine, waned. I threatened, I cajoled, and finally I bribed them with the finest sweets. I would have liked to string one up to gain the interest of its peers. A sculpted infant, life like enough to paint would be a boon to all. Have you the skill? I don't. Yours, Rubens Steve Deutsch Steve Deutsch, a semi-retired practitioner of the fluid mechanics of mechanical hearts and heart valves, lives with his wife Karen--a visual artist, in State College, PA. Steve writes poetry, short fiction and the blog--stevieslaw@wordpress.com, which attempts satire. His most recent publications have appeared in New Verse News, Silver Birch Press, Misfit Magazine and One-Sentence poems. Shade
I have no name for the look in your eyes- blackness is the last thing I’ll mention and then only in terms of obsidian and ebony, in terms of interiors and privileged pornography. I see nothing but ice-cream in the pockets housed outside your shirt. Nothing but pistachio, dripping with lavender, flowing into a bowl of vanilla. Your ear I’ll call a nautilus, your hair threads of blood- red woven tightly into your texture, circles the nipple, smudges the lips. Your weary phrenology, I read as a novel you remain invisible, named after my fear. To keep on looking tests my mettle- your lifted shirt looks like a noose. Your back remains hidden- seeded with scars? You’d hate me if you knew what I hope for Turn around and let me see the tree of absolution. Heather Nelson Heather Nelson: "I am a poet, teacher, mother and recovering attorney based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I studied writing under the poet C.D. Wright as an undergraduate at Brown University. Most recently I have studied poetry with Tom Daley and Barbara Helfgott Hyett. My work has appeared in Ekphrastic, The Compassion Anthology, Lyrical Somerville, "The Sunday Poet" (a feature of the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene) and Constellations. I am a member of Poemworks, the workshop for publishing poets." |
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