Adoration of the Magi so much fanfare and heraldry for such a dying place to be born: isn't this what the artist is trying to tell us, that the kings of earth have the same colours as the angels of heaven, that only god has more splendour and more power than any of them, and we still don't know what sort of divinity this imparts to the little lord who sits as a full-grown babe as opposed to a newborn, but artists can be forgiven such things, and after all, he wouldn't want to make the christ-child impossible to see just for perspective's sake...heck, they wouldn't even do three-point perspective right for quite a time yet, but that isn't the worst of it, no...it's that no one should bend to his creator just because they are a creator...what did this god do that was so wonderful before this but make a string of mistakes he wanted nothing more than to disown with his inconsistent and selfish rules, with allowing so much pain in the name of free will, and yet where was that free will for mary when it was time to choose whether she wanted to be a mother, to carry such a burden with her all her life, if it was even revealed to her what that burden was and where it would lead her...maybe we're all looking at the best of that old man in the child who would buck the system just by being the revolutionary who told people to love as they wanted to be loved, to treat others as they wanted to be treated...this was enough to get their weaponized hatred aimed right at him, and what have we lost?: only exactly what we've gained, that every year we hear the libretto going on and on about glory and being born, but we don't hear of his messages that would make the man's words truly the stuff of legend, the stuff that makes all who hear his words love him...we get the allusion to a saviour and a king of kings, and we are supposed to set aside the tragedy of his death because it is his birthday, not his deathday, and yet the ouroboros of his life cannot be segmented to just his birth, for what was he, really, at this stage?...he was a seed, he was a baby aureoled, haloed, blessed with the artist's rendering of what is supposed to be the holy trinity with mary as the proxy for all women, without whom this miracle could not have happened...and the lowliness of his birth is given the complete revisionist history of what people at that time might've thought it was like to be visited in the middle of the night by three magi and their entourage, which is much like what we have done with our songs and our merriment that always hunt us and find us and kill us with one arrow of melody and madrigal after another: it is better for most to think of the beginning of this story when he was not dead, when he was just born, which is the furthest thing from death...everything that comes after really is the rock just rolling down again... Garth Ferrante This poem was written as part of the surprise ekphrastic Christmas challenge. Garth Ferrante is a complete unknown who teaches, writes, and makes games out of challenging his own creativity. He writes because he loves to, because he finds meaning and purpose in it, because if he didn’t, life would be lifeless.
2 Comments
No Cut-Throat Rose
This love is no rose throat cut bleeding sap from severed stem and every thorn peeled away. This love brooks no sentiment but dark humour collusion a symbiosis of intelligent lust to aid in decomposition. This love is not written on the moon reeking of rhymed verse and objectification. This love stifles every word that tries to speak itself into being no need to justify the intimate pulse, the hungry lips. This love is neither truth nor falsity, no illusory song for fools to dance to. I give you this love as a stranger might hand a dying man a drink of water at his place of execution. A matter of instinct. Kerry O’Connor Kerry O’Connor is the Creative Manager of a communal blog, imaginary garden with real toads, a group project which provides a forum for on-line poets. Her poetry is to be found on the Skylover blogsite, and several pieces have appeared in the online publications: Nice Cage, Verse Wrights and Visual Verse. During working hours, Kerry is to be found in a South African high school, teaching English as a first and second language. Still Life
The mountain’s lassitude weights the significance of the house’s red roof, links form to form, the way order comforts the mind, diminishes storm’s jeopardy. Its roil, its froth. Instead, reminiscent of Bach’s contrapuntal reliability – each note’s clarity tilted, turned carefully on its side by echo and time – the mountain’s rise and reach mime roof’s angle and altitude. Tree shaped like a woman’s dark skirt, unswirling, unmolested by wind. To hide in tree branches above the white wall. The wall a grandfather’s steady tread. Sun a commonplace guardian. This is what a child partially wants: to recognize her world, rendered in kin. From which she can safely long for cloud’s umber irregularity, its tickle of the corpulent sun, its unseemly absence of beatitude. Grace Marie Grafton Grace Marie Grafton’s most recent book, Jester, was published by Hip Pocket Press. She is the author of six collections of poetry. Her poems won first prize in the Soul Making contest (PEN women, San Francisco), in the annual Bellingham Review contest, Honorable Mention from Anderbo and Sycamore Review, and have twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Poems recently appear in Basalt, Sin Fronteras, The Cortland Review, Canary, CA Quarterly, Askew, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Ambush Review. Just a Girl When that angel came aimed like a lightning bolt at your life when his word entered you like a tongue of fire you knew gods do not request permission. They announce, they take, they overwhelm and whatever follows, joy and grief the simple loneliness of the chosen will be yours your world transformed in one searing breath. Later they will name you Blessed, Holy Mother, Queen of Heaven, like any mother set to intercede between us and the father’s wrath. Mother of sorrows, you will be crowned with a halo of stars surrounded by a nimbus of roses, your small bare foot set firmly on the serpent’s head your arms forever open to cradle the new born child, or to hold the body of a murdered son. Mary McCarthy This poem was written as part of the surprise ekphrastic Christmas challenge. Mary McCarthy is a poet and former Registered Nurse who has had work published in many print and online journals, including Third Wednesday, Gnarled Oak, Praxis, and Earth’s Daughters. She has an electronic chapbook “Things I was Told Not to Think About,” available as a free download from Praxis magazine online. Upon Unwrapping a Handmade Stuffed Camel Toy How do you gracefully unravel candy cane wrapping tissue, pry it loose from a stuffed camel? It is Christmas, and our glasses are full of cheer on the corner of a bar, and I am wedged in between Karen and her husband. Blessed, with such besties. There has been already chocolate, and chocolate tea, and Merlot, pressed back into a gift bag, pushed down with our boots under the countertop. Now it is this, a hand-knit toy, my favourite animal, the camel. Right here, the crochet dromedary is absurd and beautiful and the best gift I have ever received. I have built myself into something stronger, I have reached past death and darkness for light and life and I have disposed all those demons that possessed me, but face to face with this bactrian boy, I crumple for a moment into tears. We had emerged, thirty or so moments before, from a candlelit carol service, where I sat dry eyed through two hours of exquisite sonatas celebrating the greatest story ever told. The Magnificat, the Annunciation to the Shepherds, the old man with pop out ears singing his heart out in front of me. Through all this more, I held my composure. Oh, yes, I readily confess it, that for awhile now, I've prided myself on feeling nothing. I have found salvation in negation. But here in my hands is the same love that crocheted a pale blue owl for the daughter of a girl who used to share my mirror. Here is that same nativity story, two millennia after the fact, this toothy, gypsy queen of the desert that carried wiser men and frankincense. The story, knit by Christ and Karen, love manifest without question for a sinner like me. Lorette C. Luzajic Lorette C. Luzajic is a Toronto, Canada based writer and mixed media visual artist. Her poetry and stories have appeared widely in journals, blogs, magazines, and online publications, including Taxicab Mag, The Fiddlehead, Rattle, Grain, The White Wall Review, Peacock Journal, and Workman Arts Ledger. Her artwork was exhibited this year in Tunisia, where she made friends with many camels, and in Mexico, too. Lorette is the founding editor of The Ekphrastic Review. www.mixedupmedia.ca The Annunciation to the Shepherds
it's just like they said it would be: again, seraphim and cherubs and putti serving and studying in the clouds usually depicted as heaven, only this time we see the shepherds as they were meant to be seen, with families and babies wondering what this light could be, but deferring to it, kneeling before it as they innately understand it to be the presence of god and his avatars...and while this light casts clear shadows, there is also something in the way these men and women shield their eyes and bow their heads like they know there is no precedent for this and they know that, yes, yes, they have to go to wherever it is he's being born, the way is where the messenger's hand opens, they must gather themselves and go, and what tales will they tell when they return?...there will be more of that light, to be sure, and when their wives ask about the child, they will point to some of the babes being held in their mothers' arms, they will say he was just a baby boy born under a shining star, a baby boy whose birth was announced from on high, and who else was there, what was said, was there a festival, were there gifts, what was the point of it all...but the answer does not lie across the dessert with that mother and father and infant making their way to safety...it lies in the eyes of their children, the reason, the gifts, the celebration, all of it is right there in their sleeping faces, in their hungry cries...those shepherds were told only of the beginning, of the birth...did they ever discover that there was to be something afterward to change the state of living and dying for them and their children and their children's children?...and why tell these isolated people, why not the town they were staying in so they could at least get a decent room, why not all nobles, all kings everywhere, and not just the shepherds and the magi?...these are all the lesser mysteries we never ask about, never wonder about, never spend much time thinking about...but he was supposed to love them, too, wasn't he, the saviour, i mean: wasn't he concerned about these people living off the land and their animals, their trip through the desert to where he was born, their return trip back, their life of difficulties and tragedies mixed with some joys much as all our lives are...wasn't he concerned the next time they saw him, he would be the light calling to them, surrounding them, taking them to their new home with his father who was also him?...but he could explain all this faster than thought even as they asked what had happened, why he had allowed them to leave, why he'd never sought them out, why he had let them suffer and die and wait until he closed the door to hell for the rest of eternity to take them with him beyond the stars...and just what would he say?...maybe he would begin with a joke and say those angels weren't lying, were they, when they said they had some big news... Garth Ferrante This poem was written as part of the surprise ekphrastic Christmas challenge. Garth Ferrante is a complete unknown who teaches, writes, and makes games out of challenging his own creativity. He writes because he loves to, because he finds meaning and purpose in it, because if he didn’t, life would be lifeless. Annunciation to the Shepherds And what would you do if an angel appeared in the sky, shrouded by a cloud? Would you believe this heavenly messenger who’s announced the child of God has been born of a virgin in a stable? If trees can be nourished by rock, cannot this, too, be true? The sheep do not wake, the dog howls with fear. One shepherd has covered his face, the other reaches, one palm open as if to receive a gift. To witness wings and flight when darkness hovers, when you’ve been dreaming, visions swirling, a lamb next to a beast who does not stir. Gail Peck This poem was written as part of the surprise ekphrastic Christmas challenge. Gail Peck is the author of eight books of poetry. The Braided Light won the Leana Shull Contest for 2015. Poems and essays have appeared in Southern Review, Nimrod, Greensboro Review, Brevity, Connotation Press, Comstock, Stone Voices, and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart, and her essay “Child Waiting” was cited as a notable forBest American Essays, 2013. Here's a gift you can afford to give to every single writer, reader, and art lover on your list- The Ekphrastic Review. It's free.
The Ekphrastic Review has been showcasing imaginative, thoughtful poetry and prose in response to visual art (and sometimes music, film, dance, or theatre) for over two and a half years. It's free, and always will be. By sharing us with all of your friends and social media outlets, you are giving also a gift to all the contributing poets and artists here, sharing their work with a wider audience. Thank you for taking a moment today to send our URL, www.ekphrastic.net, around your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. Scrawl it at the bottom of your holiday greeting cards. Share a favourite poet's post. On behalf of all the great contributors we're so thankful for, thank you for spreading the love! Happy holidays to everyone. On the Water
A question shouted over urns, baskets, bundles of cloth tied tightly, a cage without birds, and more baskets floating on the water; as she waits for her mother to answer this question, which she does not know is lost to the squabbling pigeons and people trading fish nets and gossip, her mother notices her daughter is, this morning, in the sun, a woman, with fine cheeks and long fingers; an expression on her face, serious beyond her years. Ashley Mabbitt Ashley Mabbitt lives in Brooklyn, NY and works in international STM publishing. Her poems have appeared in South Florida Poetry Journal and Avocet Weekly, and she studies poetry in workshops at the 92nd Street Y. She also studied with Ruth Stone and Liz Rosenberg as an undergraduate at the State University of New York at Binghamton. |
The Ekphrastic Review
COOKIES/PRIVACY
This site uses cookies to deliver your best navigation experience this time and next. Continuing here means you consent to cookies. Thank you. Join us on Facebook:
Tickled Pink Contest
April 2024
|