Old Home, Ogunquit, ME
I. Home is where the women wear sleeveless summer dresses. They sprawl on the lawn or lean against the trees, the bench, the frame. Light pours into the painting from wherever you are. The houses are one-sided, dimensionless. The women cast no shadow. The smooth, blank ovals of their faces reflect the light. They could be the same woman in different dresses or no woman in particular. They could belong to anyone, these women. Their summer dresses are long, bright their bare arms long in the long light. II. The light grows long in late summer, leans in the afternoons. The long light slows time, that’s why these women are here. They could belong to anyone these women. Their faces are not forgotten but worn smooth from touching and touching again. They have been lathed by years in the mind. The light changes what it touches, makes it different each time. III. How can I tell you about the light, except that it’s where the women are? I can give you the words but not the light or the way it clasps the sides of the houses. I can’t come to your house on a cold night, pour it into your sleep. Just the women on the lawn, barefoot or sandalled, hands behind their heads or languid in their laps. I can give them to you lying on the grass, dry at the end of summer, pricking their bare arms. They are counting the feathered seeds in the air, the blades of grass on the backs of their necks. Counting the days left in summer, the swallows in the almost-night sky. The mower a block over shuts off, and there are insect noises, music from a passing car. The smell of cut grass, of the earth opening itself to their limbs. The light pours into them like breath. They could belong to anyone, these women on the lawn. It is the end of summer. The grass is dry. It will hold their shape when their bodies are gone. Liz Hutchinson Liz Hutchinson is a writer and gardener living in the North Shore area of Massachusetts. Her first collection of poetry, Animalalia, is available online.
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Degas: Poet and Painter “Degas began to write poetry, complaining to Stephane Mallarme that he could not understand his difficulties with sonnets, since he was not short of ideas. ‘But Degas,’ replied Mallarme, ‘you do not write poetry with ideas, you write it with words.’” The Private Lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe When you painted the joint portrait of your sister Therese and her husband, Edmondo Morbilli, were you working with ideas or with paint, brushstrokes? You painted them when they visited Paris in 1865: they’d lost, just months before, their expected child. Therese sits, one hand on her chin, the other on Edmondo’s shoulder, partly in his shadow. He looks out blankly at the viewer. Each of their four eyes is differently painted. One of Therese’s is darkened by her husband’s shadow, the other, more widely open, stares at us. Edmondo’s right eye seems normal, if half in shadow; but the left is wide, unfocused, its oddity underscored by a thick comma, a red patch of skin. He has pursed his lips, holding them tightly together. Therese could be asking us, the viewers, will we get through this, will our marriage survive it? While what Edmondo says is “I can’t speak. I don’t know how to name what’s afflicting me, what words could speak for my mouth, my eyes, what I’ve seen, wept, mourned.” There are no words here, no ideas; brushstrokes carry her question, his silence. Sandra Kohler Sandra Kohler is a poet and teacher. Her third collection of poems, Improbable Music, (Word Press) appeared in May, 2011. Earlier collections are The Country of Women (Calyx, 1995) and The Ceremonies of Longing, winner of the 2002 Associated Writing Programs Award Series in Poetry (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003). Her poems have appeared in journals, including The New Republic, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, and many others over the past 40 years. Wherefore Art Cast out the triptychs. Cast out the saints. Cast out the people that artistry paints. Away with all nature. Away with all form. Away with the substance that once was the norm. Eschew the censorious accept the notorious and mediocrity victorious praising as most glorious Now's artist So artless and bold voiding vanity and brains in the sandbox called his soul. Jack Belck Jack Belck is a retired university publications editor. Editor's note: The image was an editorial selection to illustrate the poem, which was not inspired by a specific artwork. Light at Two Lights and Cape Cod Evening as if the light, always less than it should be on that white lighthouse in winter, or those green- blue trees at the forest edge, her hands folded at the recurring argument's inevitable impasse, Drugstore or on the sidewalk outside that dull drugstore flat and lonely covered by a gray-green tedium The Sheridan Theatre as if the light, drowsing over that dim theatre balcony like an orange malaise where she peers down from the rail he’s gone for some candy from the girl at the counter will he return? Or does he exist? The Bootlegger or bleaching air on a windy shore where someone waits with the cold unlit house behind her for the white boat riding the rough trough of twilight is he sullen, and unconcerned of returning? Sunlight on Brownstones or one sits and one stands on the stoop of the brownstone at sunset or dawn does it matter which? as if the light was a strange dawn or alien sunset they see for the first time with vacant features, and always the eyes of darkness, as if the light, weary of its own gaze, gave up itself to a weariness it had no business having, glaring over uselessness from strokes of the brush, imperceptible on walls, shadows and aches, intangible as thought and desire, as if the light was from a distant dying fire. The City as if the light, never more than it could be on that building, gray and blue, companions dressed in yellow-gray or gray-white or red brick, somber as if someone died and we are made aware we are the voyeurs here and stand above the empty street below, as if the light, losing vital essence and no one there to validate its presence, only those on the empty street below, Chop Suey as if the light, not withering or growing, in a kind of stasis a blue and yellow wall the lower part of a restaurant sign, red, unlit, inert under pallid rays streaming through unshaded glass diviner of motives and meaning and forms suggestions of hands and the angles of arms she sits with her eyes of darkness wondering what it was she could have done to halt the inevitable impasse the other from across the white sunlit table looks at her and trying to console, speaks the words she thinks the other needs there is a moment’s pause the other’s inward glance while vestiges of sunlight in response presage a sad and slow unfolding, saying, come with me, no use in going home Hotel by a Railroad as if the light, defeated by a drab white slab of stone the response to his attempt at glibness yields the sound of a drab white page turned by her aging fingers, whose fingers are these? she asks, were those my hands that held the brownstone rail as he leans beside me somewhere far away? I try to reach, but never really touch him, never really hold him, as if he ever wanted to be held and now he leans in some imaginary solitude and this grim episode holds them both in a way they always feared they would be held, reading and staring, tired of the years of impasse, as if the light, escaping through the doors of twilight, slipping out of upraised hand and downturned eyes Room in Brooklyn
as if the light, in this most dreadful place a rocking chair beside a window, looking out on all and nothing, does she stare down at the street or at the tops of the buildings? no one hears the beating of her heart, a tiny sound in that high room and could her eyes be closed by the ache of a dream she knows descends when she turns in her chair to face the order that keeps her secure? looking on nothing and all, as if the light, like the shadow of which she is made transfixed by the light of the world without a connection and only by a terrible kind of inertia held back from the fall, by the stroke of a brush forever holding her there, as if the light Michael Harmon The work of Michael Harmon has appeared in The Raintown Review, The Adirondack Review, North American Review, and several other publications. He has a degree in English Literature from Long Island University and one in Computer Information Systems from Arizona State University. He resides in Scottsdale, Arizona, near my three sons. Octopus Muse
Mad blue swarming, inky swim of watery colors colliding and dividing, as if the octopus in me used its multi-tasking arms to accomplish its to-do list at one go. Those arms are equipped with one third of the animal’s neurons—like me those rare mornings fleet fingers fly. Even sea- monster-flick-severed, the arms retract in pain when prodded, curl around a stick. Its schtick is to ink enemies, blind and numb them, but if it doesn’t flee fast enough it will succumb to its own venom and die. Now it’s me I see in this inked scrawl, flailing to do everything before me, throwing down a trail of distractions, crying: Can’t you see I’m trying, don’t reprimand me. Look how far I’ve progressed from the globular splat embedded in sea rock from the Carboniferous era of my childhood. I try to do good. Three- hearted purveyor of the dark, two for its gills and one to pump up organs, keep it on track. Copper-based blood’s blue, allows it to survive in depths of cold, and it changes colours too, changes shape to mimic and mask. I lag behind, flagging, breathing hard, merely single-hearted. I yearn to partake of depths where darkness blesses, for words that can be seized and drawn towards those paired, hard claws of a beak, for a poem that will make the many-armed grow weak. I want to mate like an octopus, externally, to hand off my sperm for her to impregnate the world with, to partner with another artist who’ll know all I fail to know, the way the right lover makes me better than I am, wiser, more noble. An octopus produces 400,000 at one go. She obsessively guards her brood, creating worlds beyond comprehension. O to discover in me the feminine, to cross over from this isolated beast of masculinity, to tie myself to the greater good, to cease obsessing over whether I’m doing what I should, to know I’m only a vessel for something beyond what I see, then to implode in cellular suicide, to die from the outside in. O to have birthed something astonishing, a plankton-cloud of offspring eating anything that doesn’t eat them, or poems that both sink and swim, that know when to end. David Allen Sullivan David Allen Sullivan’s books include: Strong-Armed Angels, Every Seed of the Pomegranate, a book of co-translation with Abbas Kadhim from the Arabic of Iraqi Adnan Al-Sayegh, Bombs Have Not Breakfasted Yet, and Black Ice. Most recently, he won the Mary Ballard Chapbook poetry prize for Take Wing. He teaches at Cabrillo College, where he edits the Porter Gulch Review with his students, and lives in Santa Cruz with his family. His poetry website is: https://dasulliv1.wixsite.com/website-1, a modern Chinese co-translation project is at: https://dasulliv1.wixsite.com/website-trans, and a call for poetry about the paintings of Bosch and Bruegel for an anthology he's editing with his art historian mother is at: https://dasulliv1.wixsite.com/website. The Painter Goes to Work It was intolerable to think of Theo delaying his marriage, short on money. Where were Vincent's paintings destined for? Exhibitions in Paris? Brussels? No, for Theo's crowded apartment. Where would Theo and Jo put a cradle? Perhaps it would be best for Theo if he gave up painting...but today he would not think of Paris. He would return to the fields, packed down with palette and paints, the sun roosting over his shoulders, his focus turned to the orchards, their branches weighted in light Bob Bradshaw Bob Bradshaw is recently retired, and living in California. He is a big fan of the Rolling Stones. Mick may not be gathering moss, but Bob is. Bob's work can be found in many publications on the net, including Apple Valley Review, Eclectica, Loch Raven Review, Peacock Journal and Pedestal Magazine, among others. Rothko’s White Center, 1957 in horizontal bands a cleaved rage floats scarlet planet rent by light wisps at edges joining kingdoms of vapor vermilion will held fast by brilliance this gravity of resolute peace this steam-to-steam flag of an unrecognized country whose people would die before they’d retreat Jari Chevalier
Jari Chevalier's poems are forthcoming in Puerto del Sol and Green Mountains Review and have recently appeared in Arcturus, Beloit Poetry Journal, Boulevard, The Cincinnati Review, Concīs, The Cortland Review, Gulf Coast Online, The Massachusetts Review, and Poetry East, among others. In Fall 2016 her poem won the inaugural poetry contest at Sheila-Na-Gig Online and she was a semi-finalist for the 2016 Tomaž Šalamun Prize from Verse magazine. In 2014 she received a Merit Award in the Atlanta Review International Poetry competition and was a finalist in the Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Contest. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in writing and literature from Columbia University and a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from CCNY. For more information, please visit http://jarichevalier.com Caned
Is it the shocking sight of how the stout man’s hands gripped it? The cane made taut across his chest, all I can see, and so close up. Imagination is the most harrowing part. I can’t move on, despite hearing voiceovers from a documentary shown in a darkened room, where, in a burst of film, small children are killed, between droned interviews. But here, the caning’s done to educate, not kill. For not speaking the Queen’s English in Hong Kong, caned. The artist came to grips with what it meant. Survived. Bonnie Naradzay Bonnie Naradzay: MA in English, Harvard University, 1969; Peace Corps, South India, 1970-72. MFA in poetry, University of Southern Maine, 2008. Graduated from the St. John’s College Graduate Institute in Liberal Arts Studies (Annapolis) in May 2017. I lead poetry workshops at the Women’s Jail, at a day shelter for homeless people, and at a retirement centre. My poems have appeared in New Letters, Poet Lore, JAMA, Pinch (nominated for a Pushcart prize), Passager, Innisfree, The Guardian, Beltway Quarterly,Seminary Ridge Review, Anglican Theological Review, Split This Rock, and others. Untitled
Behold my head: a totem, an egg; my arms are snakes and I’m smiling. My brain speaks Greek and with the Geeks I’m sailing. Mike Barrett This poem is from the author's two-volume poem Recto Verso, written ambidextrously in the white spaces of Carl Jung's Liber Novus. Mike Barrett helped establish the poetry slam in Chicago during the 1980s before moving on to more esoteric pursuits. He has a B.A. in Economics from the University of Notre Dame and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has published many poems and essays. He lives, and teaches, in central Missouri. A Quail Hymeneal The couple in the painting present for the brush a formal wedding portrait, quiet, unmoving, feathered Arnolfinis, Jan van Eyck meets Audubon – poised and proper for posterity. Meanwhile, just out of the frame, meddling relatives fuss and fume, caterers lay out food and drink, musicians set up, tune up, chicks play hide-n-seek beneath overhanging tablecloths - losing patience, the rest of the guests fidget waiting for the arrival of the day’s celebrated ones. In my yard such formality is lacking, quail scratch at the ground, stay alert for feral cats, scatter at the casting of shadows always ready for the short flight to cover beneath the blackberries, casually grazing in the sunlight, in an overcast glaze of mist. Mama hen trailing offspring like a long wedding dress train. M.J. Arcangelini M.J. Arcangelini, born 1952 in western Pennsylvania, has resided in northern California since 1979. He began writing poetry at 11. He has published in a lot of little magazines, online journals, & 9 anthologies. He is the author of two poetry collections: With Fingers at the Tips of My Words, 2002, Beautiful Dreamer Press, and Room Enough, 2016, NightBallet Press. He maintains an occasional blog of poetry and prose at https://joearky.wordpress.com/ |
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