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.
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The Cigarette Holder
limp as a silk scarf bent wrist, hollow hand, fingers undone by narcotic calm a damned woman lies opium at her fingertips graceful even in dying faceless harlot vain glorious with quellazaire lipstick stains her ivory needle nails display her cruelty bone wrapped in jewels ashes like cherry blossoms Deborah Guzzi This poem was written as part of the 20 Poem Challenge. 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/ La Lorette, 1869 Silk ribbons on a white chemise. Wild flowers, periwinkle blue, Ah, she is new. Quite lovely. in a spring meadow. I pick some, Her corset, trimmed in lace, breasts and belly pale. for a vase on the mantle. In an hour's time I am sated, gather hat and gloves. the blossoms turn a dirty white and droop, Blood on her petticoat. petals wilted. Sarah Russell This poem was written as part of the 20 Poem Challenge. Sarah Russell has returned to metaphor after a career teaching, writing and editing academic prose. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Kentucky Review, Misfit Magazine, Red River Review, Ekphrastic Magazine, and Black Poppy Review, among others. More poems at www.SarahRussellPoetry.com. Her New Face
Her cloak is water-- it falls away blue-gold to depths dark as the space between here and Pluto. She rolls upward creamy breasts shimmering stomach titian hair to soft beams bouncing off waves. She wakes in a field as bright yellow as mbuna fish her new face open to the sun. 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" Deep Ink Some things whitewash will never cover streaks made by bloody fingers sliding down a wall thick scars from clumsy stitches closing up a wound marks you wear forever signatures of battles fought under cover of darkness-- of custom or indifference signs left for those who know how to read the hidden text overwritten by a more acceptable mythology who know hard truth like bones beneath the flesh eventually outlasts all disguises Mary McCarthy Mary McCarthy has always been a writer, but spent most of her working life as a Registered Nurse. Her work has appeared in many online and print journals, including Earth's Daughters, Gnarled Oak, Third Wednesday and Three Elements Review. She is grateful for the wonderful online communities of writers and poets sharing their work and passion for writing, providing a rich world of inspiration, appreciation, and delight. Milk & Honey
Milk The only milk I know is the flock’s ewes’ from long ago & that the desert was a factor affecting the clotting properties after the teat. But even the desert can’t permeate the lamb’s ear. My own lambs, swarthy, not Egyptian, their ear lobes were this velvet clotting. Honey Bites raw, like the igneous of this sojourn. Bites amber, like the coral I gaped at hiking the ocean they called red. All the live fishes suffocated of a sudden—already flushed. Who could have known their breathlessness would turn them rose. And the sea monsters I would never have known existed—they are honey now, too, compared even to the conquered Philistines. Milk My children’s children have children. I watch them bleed green stalks of a white substance. They’ll bleed more green when they descend to home those stalks. My granddaughters are women with babies at their breast. Some of them think I was a pharaoh. Honey I’ve grow horns like the lizards. I think it’s so I can joust with God with more than just my ribs when I cross over. I wake. Were the horns a dream? An infant screams and I tell his mother to bring him to me. Smashed to the tender sole, a bee. I lean far as I dare over this precipice to see the flower whence it came. Laura Page This poem was written as part of the 20 Poem Challenge. Laura Page is a graduate of Southern Oregon University where she studied English and Sociology. Her work has appeared in many literary publications, including Red Paint Hill, The Minola Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Kindred. Her chapbook, "Children, Apostates" is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. Untitled Poem
all i know is i fall into a work of mixed media land on a swath of pink sound my toes sticky with acrylic apples spit-polished with rhythm and blues teepees whisper loose words in wispy velveteen balloons curly-cues of razor wire protect italic slant of mushrooms a bird examines me finds me perpendicular to blue perfume of hidden thoughts i sneeze the letter P skis lose their edge in summer pen cuddles ink four-toed feet curl into fists perch on chocolate stencil brown betty gone the bird gobbles her crumbs Kathleen Stancik This poem was written as part of the 20 Poem Challenge. Kathleen Stancik discovered a love of poetry two and a half years ago during a series of classes led by local poets. She’s been writing and learning ever since. Her poems have been published in Manastash and Poets Unite!, The LiTFUSE @10 Anthology. Milk Symphony I. Allegro The city of milk, behind puckered teat, floods and drips through walls of skin, then leaks onto a baby’s soft tray of teeth. II. Andante Allowed only to watch her grow – She, whose bones, bloom from my garden of genes – no funnel with which to nourish, no clot of milk behind my nipples to quench the baby’s thirst. III. Scherzo Through an alternate lens, the baby blows liters of air into the stiffened lip of a toy balloon while Sleep gently kneels on her left eyelid. IV. Presto I remind you, in the dead of night, the hunger never ends, babe, the hunger never ends. Tanmoy Das Lala This poem was written as part of the 20 Poem Challenge. Tanmoy Das Lala lives in New York City. His works have appeared in Thought Catalog, The New Verse News and Chelsea Station Magazine. His blog is tanmoydaslala.blogspot.com Venus Frigida “Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus” -Terence The Frozen Venus is the image caption, a homage to the jaundiced Latin maxim, “All love grows cold when food and drink are absent.” Depicted in a sickly green-lit landscape, the fair-flanked goddess squats on balled red fabric and hugs her wind-nipped trunk to fend off gangrene from frostbite, while her infant son emits a rattly cough in the vicinity of her waxen knees. She pointedly ignores a goat-eared man-beast, an umber muscled satyr, hovering blackly mere inches from the pair, a bulging basket on his arm.—I don’t buy it for a fraction of a second. I’ve been cold before. If Madam Venus were really cold, she’d grab that damask she’s sitting on and wrap it round her fat-knobbed back. I’ve been cold. If I were in this tableau, I’d grab pale Cupid, press him to my mammaries, absorbing all his heat. Good Lord, I’d gladly tackle the brown goat man himself and wrassle him to the dirt. That Terence was a hack: if love were great enough, it’d conquer. Come back. Jenna Le Jenna Le is the author of Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011) and A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Anchor & Plume Press, 2016). Her poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and translations appear or are forthcoming in AGNI Online, Bellevue Literary Review, The Best of the Raintown Review, Denver Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, The Village Voice, and elsewhere. Her website is http://jennalewriting.com/ |
The Ekphrastic Review
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Tickled Pink Contest
March 2024
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