The City Life for Me Some enjoy living in the middle of nowhere. I’d be as lonesome as a bale of hay, stranded in a snowy field, waiting for something, anything to happen. Alarie Tennille This poem was written as part of the 20 Poem Challenge. Alarie Tennille was born and raised in Portsmouth, Virginia, and graduated from the University of Virginia in the first class admitting women. She became fascinated by fine art at an early age, even though she had to go to the World Book Encyclopedia to find it. Today she visits museums everywhere she travels and spends time at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, where her husband is a volunteer guide. Alarie’s poetry book, Running Counterclockwise, contains many ekphrastic poems. Please visit her at alariepoet.com.
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Four Round Bales. Photo by Todd Klassy. To see more of Todd's rural photography, visit www.toddklassy.com. Montana Man He squints from under a John Deere cap even when there is no sun. It's late fall now, the hay—enough this year—baled for January feeding if the pickup makes it to the herd—huddled, wooly, steamy breath to match his own, pitch fork separating clouds of gold, strewing it like loaves and fishes-- that kind of pride, though pride's a wobbly perch when drought and blight's the norm, when the pickup needs a fuel pump, barn needs shingles. But this morning, the sky's wide and blue and bare, and Waylon's singing Ramblin' Man while he hums along. Bernice'll have coffee scalding hot at the cafe, and prices were up on the farm report this morning. Folks and steers ain't so different, he reckons, herd gathering, keeping with their kind. Sarah Russell Sarah Russell has returned to her first love after a career teaching, writing and editing academic prose. Her poetry has appeared in Red River Review, Misfit Magazine, The Houseboat, Shot Glass Journal, Bijou Poetry Review and Poppy Road Review, among others. Her poem “Denouement” won the GR poetry contest in February, 2014. Follow her work at www.SarahRussellPoetry.com. January 12th 2010, Haiti Madonna of Port-au-Prince You who look like Alice Your eyes red with shattered plaster and weeping Your full lips bruised with dirt Your hairpiece of locks slipping back like a cowl The powder dusting your oval cheeks is grey concrete — If the rest of you was not buried under rocks of blasted wall And the figure in the foreground was not blood splattered And someone’s leg was not trapped behind you, You could have been a pretty girl With sand on your bare arms Writing your name on a shell On some beach off Les Cayes— You who look like Alice Another lost girl I used to know, Not an ikon’s model On a chapel wall in Jacmel But a strange Madonna anyhow Flat on the scattered masonry Sans enfant, or enfant gone from your hands To the devouring earth — The ikon herself Impassive Erzulie, gazing through your Carib face From a palette of pixels Framing now before me. Maman Did you find him, maman, the old man, Or was it the grandchild left in your care for the day, Or, in the catastrophe behind you, The daughter who was setting your supper, Or perhaps your friend, having a Dominican ponche with you? Your long arms, maman, are bathed in the white dust of disastrous city-fall, Your fingers are exhausted from their frantic and futile search for bones, For hair, for a belt or a bodice, For a baby, a baby who was impossibly there, Gurgling at her spoon Teasing your heart, And you singing a lullaby, “Haiti Cherie” Haiti beloved, beloved child, Gone child, gone with the walls, the debris, the tranblanterre and the lavalas, Gone from your arms, from your keening, scrabbling fingers Despairing under block, under board, under broken back And the child disparu, taken — Or was it your friend from Cap Haitien, Or the daughter who shared your name, Or the old man — companion of your days, Comrade of sleepless hours, keeper of your young heart Comforter of those fallen breasts Fallen under your torn chemise Fallen with the roofs and the windows and the President’s house Fallen with the broken routes of Port-au-Prince Fallen and forlorn, Haiti Cherie? Cathedral The ionic columns hold nothing up Not the twin cupolas that welcomed mariners to Port-au-Prince Not the grand round windows of stained-glass ikons Not the novenas of those who died in the fallen girders, Unless you count the blue dome of vacant air The ruined, ruined facades The hovering stench — Has Boukman triumphed? Do Legba and Ghede aka Baron Samedi mount the buried altars? Does Ogoun lie entombed in this broken peristyle? Do these curious questions matter to the houngan Crying down the mess of fallen masonry To touch his daughter’s ears?-- Outside the shattered cathedral The women kneeling in the dust Raise rosaries to the familiar Haitian sky And lift their psalms Past the ionic columns That hold nothing up. At Capernaum, Boats “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned.” – Matthew 4:16. This, the Port of the boat people This, the Port of their Prince Home-harbour safe Docks of sails in sunset-- This is the Port of the boat people After Dessalines and Duvalier, HIV and cholera After tornado and tremblor The Gadarene adventure and their Bay of Pigs Canoewrecks off Florida, the invading boots of marines From caravel to carrier— After the desolate cities of my pilgrimage And diverse tribulations From deserts and catacombs to creole favelas, These crosses of masts under the purpling evening Their sails folding like seamless robes The people neither coming nor going Home-harbour safe Intransit to the undying lands of their Prince Who loved fishermen Who slept in their boats Roped their storms to His peace And encompassed their little faith With His incomprehensible love Home harbour safe— At Capernaum, boats The Port of the boat people The Port of our Prince. In Caravaggio’s Ikon
In Caravaggio’s ikon of Thomas seeing Christ all eyes are locked to the doubter’s firm finger poking around the torn flesh, under the strong hand of the Carpenter. Thomas, Apostle to our secular, mocking, murderous new age, meeting his worst-case scenario with the firm grit of flesh under his thumb that index of incarnation— incarnation, Immanuel God is with us — under the impossible rubble as we claw at the unimaginable earthfall, Immanuel— over the body of someone’s son fallen in crossfire in shrieking shadowlands of betrayal through terminal disorientation of disease, Immanuel. Because that wound is real, the death was certain here, beyond reason, beyond the apocalypse of private disasters, is something else is Life beyond life, beyond heartbreak beyond assassination, beyond the tremblor at 3 in the afternoon, beyond the amnesiac cancer of the mind. Here, under our finger, is faith, here is hope, and He asks us, against the brutal heel on the locked door the harsh fist of imploding earth the shroud covered bier— “Love one another.” 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. Editor's note: Some of the photos shown with John Robert Lee's Haiti earthquake sequence were not the original photos that he was inspired by. Where unable to obtain permission to show specific photographs, Ekphrastic has substituted public domain imagery that is related to the pieces. In this case, the author and editor believe the subject matter is so important and timely again that selecting related imagery was the best option. Both paintings are the original inspiration. Rothko Meant Nothing
canvases painted in one colour. Where the detail? I've painted house walls with one colour. Modern art is crap. Money for nothing then I saw the ordinary light of a wintered Humber Estuary subtle difference to the sky and understood. Paul Brookes Paul Brookes has performed in poetry performance group "Rats for Love" and is included in their "Rats for Love: The Book" Bristol Broadsides, 1989. His first chapbook "The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley" by Dearne Community Arts, 1993. He has read his work on BBC Radio Bristol and had a creative writing workshop for sixth formers broadcast on BBC Radio Five Live. When Blue Seemed Like a Good Idea
I’ve never been good at opening hearts or talking to strangers or simply making my own bed. Some might call this sky blue, but they wouldn’t be from around here. Will you move in with me? I asked her before lattice and fencing, on the stoop with cigarettes and soft breeze. If you paint the damn thing, she said, and laughed. She’d left her husband for a bad tattoo and a grungy rock band. She left me too. On that ladder, giddy with a colour from Miami or some old cartoon, I was shouting to the street. The fence was too low, and the dog ran away. The flowers never got planted, though we’d made a list. If you’re like my neighbours, you’re shaking your head and calling it an eyesore. I got a tattoo to match hers. Working long hours, warping permanence into a blurred design that could mean anything. I put up the lattice after she left. Spring on its way. Have you been to Miami? I could tell you why she left, but when I look back, I still see her bare arms rising toward me when I came down the ladder and hugged her in blue, the reckless music of our cartoon laughter. Life itself can make our eyes sore. I don’t know much, but fading is a part of it. I’m not climbing back up there to scrape and prime and start again. Jim Daniels Jim Daniels is the author of numerous books of poetry and fiction. “The End of Blessings,” the fourth short film he has written and produced, is currently making the rounds of film festivals, and his poems and the photographs of Charlee Brodsky were displayed in their show, “Beyond the Obvious,” at the Robert Morris University Art Gallery last year. Girl
Once a girl, barely more. Upon finding that boys like her better when she kisses them, she loans out her lips. A museum of photos, mostly of herself, wither on her mirror. Time to lock the door. Maddison Scott Maddison Scott lives on a big island and is the author of numerous unwritten novels. Her work has appeared in The Molotov Cocktail, Subterranean Quarterly, SpeckLit and Eunoia Review. You can find more of her writing at: https://maddisonscott.wordpress.com/ Mannequin
She would be perfect if she had arms or clothes. Her waist cinched even without a belt her legs crossed just so and though her breasts are full she has no nipples to embarrass anyone who notices that it’s colder inside the store than outside on the street where another woman watches or maybe it only looks like she watches. Someone older a little thicker around the waist with glasses framing her small black eyes Still someone else watches behind the lens recording the envy that tightens the corners of their smiles. Lori Gravley This poem is from an as of yet unpublished chapbook, titled On Seeing, responding to Elliott Erwitt’s photographs. Lori Gravley writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. She earned her MFA from the University of Texas at El Paso. She has published poems in a variety of journals, recently including I-70 Review, Burningword, and Ekphrasis. She travels the world for her work as a USAID consultant, but her home is in Yellow Springs, Ohio. You can hear her read her own work and others' on Conrad's Corner and listen to her interviews with poets at WYSO Public Radio (www.wyso.org). Lifting I split free from the paper mask of my face, nose and eyes emerging first, while a halo of night sky blesses me, as if I can see for the first time beyond the ice works of my body, as if my cells remember the waking moment in the womb. I recall the soft cradle of my mother’s arms, face so close her breath became mine and then years so soon later her hair thin, scalp exposed, my own voice choked with not knowing what to do while my mother lies dying. Years have scratched lines into me, hoed me back under the weight, the fertile soil of what my mother hoped for me, thin hair roots of nourishment in the dark urging me to break, and so I cry at night when no one can see me until the tears thin my skin, until leaves bloom at my neck, until I push through the torn aperture into painful fragments of sky. Judy Kaber Judy Kaber lives in Belfast, Maine. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, both print and online, including Eclectica, Off the Coast, The Comstock Review, and The Guardian. Contest credits include the Maine Postmark Poetry Contest and the Larry Kramer Memorial Chapbook Contest for her chapbook Rehearsing in the Dark. Additional work may be viewed at www.judykaber.com. |
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