January the Tenth In a far corner of the room, the Christmas decals, peeling from the edges, but still enough intact to reflect off the rain on the window, retain some of the light of the season, but only when the traffic signal so many floors below changes from red to green and back again in its predictable rhythm. The gateleg table--so practical the way it could hug a corner and still seat sometimes five or six for holidays, but not if they were too full-grown-- now’s on its way to being antique, though purchased new from a small shop in Buffalo, soon after the war, when all seemed possible. But the cards we place upon it don’t always want to remain upright, though if they fall, we fix in passing, without thinking much, even at this late date when they could just as soon be gathered up and tossed. We’ve mostly forgotten who sent them, as friends we’ve known grow farther away, and many more each year exit our life and, we only hope--how silence follows silence--not their own. Though even this perpetual not knowing can be comfort as time hurries by and another Christmas, with any joy we’ve remembered to share, dwindles in January’s own sharp cold and unkind light. Alan Walowitz Alan Walowitz’s poems can be found on the web and off. He’s a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry, and teaches at Manhattanville College and St. John’s University. His chapbook, Exactly Like Love, was published by Osedax Press in 2016 and is now in its second printing. Go to alanwalowitz.com for more poems and more information. Tim Savage (artist), a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Peru, is a graphic designer, fine artist, and teacher of art, calligraphy, and web design. He’s won numerous awards in watercolor, oils and pastel painting and is a published illustrator. Tim’s a member of the Art League of Nassau County, the National Art League, and is an active volunteer in the Inkwell Foundation, an organization that brings cartoonists and illustrators together with children in need. He can be found on the web at http://timsavageteacher.com/
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The Lovers
The lovers are kissing each beneath a separate head-covering cloth. The man’s nose is a peninsula jutting into the shadowy sea of the woman’s cheek – but they have no eyes, no hair, just a presumption of mouths, the shrouded point where their faces meet. I have heard the commentary: the artist’s mother’s dead body pulled from the water covered with the cloth of her wet dress – some think it’s about death: the death of love, maybe, or the isolation of lovers, hidden identities, mystery – so what? You show what you want them to see, they see what they want to see; in the end, what does it matter? Love is a blessing no matter how it arrives: real or imagined, behind a gray muslin shroud or unclothed in the doorway, brilliant with the joy of being loved and loving back. Tamara Madison This poem was first published in the author's poetry collection, Moraine, from Pearl Editions. Tamara Madison is the author of the chapbook “The Belly Remembers”, and two full-length volumes of poetry, “Wild Domestic” and “Moraine”, all published by Pearl Editions. Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, A Year of Being Here, Nerve Cowboy, the Writer’s Almanac and other publications. She is thrilled to have just retired from teaching English and French in a Los Angeles high school. The Slave Ship*
Aloft all hands, strike the top-masts and belay; Yon angry setting sun and fierce-edged clouds Declare the Typhon's coming. Before it sweeps your decks, throw overboard The dead and dying - ne'er heed their chains Hope, Hope, fallacious Hope! Where is thy market now? J. M. W. Turner (1812) If one looks quickly, passing this painting at the Fine Arts Museum in Boston, one may see only a spectacular sunset, as only Turner could conjure, harbinger of some biblical storm or maritime disaster and miss entirely the sharks and gulls in the lower right foreground feeding on bloated corpses, which were not quite lifeless when they were tossed still chained into the palegoldenwheat waves. If one looks quickly, one may see only the purplebloodred fury of an approaching storm, as only Turner could conjure, about to wreak its fury on a skeletal ship, and perhaps feel sorry for her captain and crew, without knowledge of her worthless, but valuable, cargo. You can easily miss such small details when measured against a magnificent sunset. Neil Silberblatt _________ *In 1781, the captain of the slave ship Zong ordered his crew to throw 133 sick or dying slaves overboard so that insurance payments might be collected. The incident inspired J.M.W. Turner to create this painting. Neil Silberblatt's poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetica Magazine, The Aurorean, Two Bridges Review, Oddball Magazine, Verse Wisconsin, Naugatuck River Review, Chantarelle’s Notebook, Canopic Jar, First Literary Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Nixes Mate Review, and The Good Men Project. His work has been included in the anthology, Confluencia in the Valley: The First Five Years of Converging with Words (Naugatuck Valley Community College, 2013); and in University of Connecticut’s Teacher-Writer magazine. He has published two poetry collections: So Far, So Good (2012), and Present Tense (2013), and has been nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize. He is the recipient of a grant from Wellfleet Cultural Council. Neil is the founder/director of Voices of Poetry - which, since 2012, has presented poetry events at various venues throughout CT, NYC and MA. He is also the host of Poet's Corner on WOMR/WFMR (out of Provincetown, MA), for which he has interviewed acclaimed poets & writers on and off the Cape. Fear is Late
and in his absence sink the eyes into white shawls and in his absence sink their eyes into day hats that used to be a crown of bones that he would throw that used to be a crown but is a coxcomb that blends into backgrounds of eyes that watch but should be watched into backgrounds of eyes rimmed, happy, glaring. Max Lemuz Max Lemuz is a Mexican-American who recently graduated from California State University, San Bernardino with a B.A. in English. He tutors foster youth full-time and writes poetry in his head all the time. He spends his weekends with his amazing wife and daughter in San Bernardino. He has been recently published in SoFloPoJo, Scarlet Leaf Review, and Triggerfish Critical Review. The Testimony Given to the Court Remains Ambiguous
Like a milkmaid, Leda curves into the avid swan, her sheer rain of drapery spilling into cloud. She looks grim about her business. What the swan is whispering, blandishments or threats, escapes us. Perhaps Zeus worries about comparisons to swains, fearing he’ll come off poorly with his primitive cloaca. He presses his other points upon her. Above, horses, dogs, a girl model shock, the world holding more possibilities than they were told of. Devon Balwit This poem was written in response to the surprise ekphrastic poetry challenge on birds. Devon Balwit teaches in Portland, OR. She has six chapbooks and two collections out or forthcoming, among them: We are Procession, Seismograph (Nixes Mate Books), Risk Being/Complicated (A collaboration with Canadian artist Lorette C. Luzajic); and Motes at Play in the Halls of Light (Kelsay Books). Her individual poems can be found here in The Ekphrastic Review as well as in The Cincinnati Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Fifth Wednesday, the Aeolian Harp Folio, Red Earth Review, The Fourth River, The Free State Review, Red Paint Hill, Peacock Journal, and more. How To Paint Potential Flight
Scribble with your pencil, let your pink paint run. Ponder the perfect butterfly with its delicate dark outline which will separate it, clarify it, let it be large. Larger than the pair of warblers. Larger than any city to which a plane might fly. Scatter your alphabet on your edges, a single row, a double row, a triplet, and make a pink promise with a few words. Place your large number, the perfect 10, toward the lower right of the work. It weights the whole. Now decide. Where will you fly? And how? As what creature? With what mind? Do not erase the scribbles, they are cryptic hieroglyphs. Shirley Glubka This poem was written in response to the surprise ekphrastic poetry challenge on birds. Shirley Glubka is a retired psychotherapist, the author of three poetry collections, a mixed genre collection, and two novels. The Bright Logic of Wilma Schuh (novel, Blade of Grass Press, 2017) is her latest. Shirley lives in Prospect, Maine with her spouse, Virginia Holmes. Website: http://shirleyglubka.weebly.com/ Online poetry at The Ekphrastic Review here and at 2River View here and at The Ghazal Page here and here. Pseudopodia; Jonathan Wolken for Pilobolus Dance Theater, 1973 Coiling body as rolling flames, holding foot in space hangs. He is soundless in the hall behind the kitchen. She protects her softening core, her crumbling color still red. In the doorway, he leans. Over her darkening hips he breaks his decline. An all-percussion score is playing across the gored linoleum, digging her heels and clenching each toe purple, wedged, while gravity proves following too closely against the suspension she is failing to hold. Beyond silent, the evening shifts along the asphalt, distracting dirt as he lets the rest of her fall again, still again, still red. Emily Newman Emily Newman is a poet from Seattle. She served as managing editor for the Beloit Fiction Journal for the Spring 2017 issue, and her poetry has been published most recently by Seattle 4Culture and The Eunoia Review. She is uncommonly good at the 1981 edition of Trivial Pursuit considering that she was not alive in 1981. Eleanor, Chicago 1953
I love you, telephone pole brick streets, tracks and parked, fat cars. Oh, back in the day, my drab, sweet city. Behind her, concrete arches a roof and angles to ramp a road. At her feet, Neenah cast iron covers another manhole, while her face holds the centre and calls me to traffic in black and white. She fixes me with her stare. Matthew Murrey Matthew Murrey: "My poems have appeared in various journals such as Tar River Poetry, Poetry East, and Rattle. I received an NEA Fellowship in Poetry a number of years ago, and my first book manuscript is seeking a publisher. I am a high school librarian in Urbana, Illinois where I live with my partner. We have two sons who live in the Pacific Northwest. My website is https://matthewmurrey.weebly. com/" Bronze to Bronze
—WWI Memorial, Jacksonville, Florida Streaked black and green, he stands a close crow-fly to the hospital where I was cast into this weathered world. Naked, young, metal, and muscular—wide wings outstretched from his back-- he perches atop a huge globe of bronze aswirl with torsos and limbs and pained faces. World of war underfoot, he’s gazing up, as if to take to the sky where kids claimed they’d heard the thwump, thwump of his wings at night above stormed and stardarked roofs. As a kid I loved to look at him: his freakish wings and green indifference to all the years of standing, staring, solitude and rain. Pity him, forever looking up, poised to fly but never leaving—his feet welded to a world of grief, bronze to bronze. Matthew Murrey Matthew Murrey: "My poems have appeared in various journals such as Tar River Poetry, Poetry East, and Rattle. I received an NEA Fellowship in Poetry a number of years ago, and my first book manuscript is seeking a publisher. I am a high school librarian in Urbana, Illinois where I live with my partner. We have two sons who live in the Pacific Northwest. My website is https://matthewmurrey.weebly. com/" Here’s Johnny She would look at me in such a way that every day became a brand-new mountain in need of God to pull me to the top, each gesture reminding me of the peeling paint, the unmown yard. The only thing for it was the whiskey hidden in the dash, the fishtailing around the farthest curve that she could follow with her eyes. Even out of sight, she bothered. I could never rest easy on the barstool, open an envelope without fearing the bounced check. Days became the burn barrel, the shotgun shatter of empties on the sagging fence. When she finally left, I changed the locks, left the lawn to sun-glare, ripped each tired geranium from her bed. Devon Balwit This poem is from the just released Risk Being/Complicated, a full-colour illustrated collection of poems by Devon Balwit inspired by the art of Ekphrastic Review editor Lorette C. Luzajic. Click book cover image below to view or purchase on Amazon. Devon Balwit teaches in Portland, OR. She has six chapbooks and two collections out or forthcoming, among them: The Bow Must Bear the Brunt (Red Flag Poetry); We are Procession, Seismograph (Nixes Mate Books), and Motes at Play in the Halls of Light (Kelsay Books). Her individual poems can be found in The Cincinnati Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Fifth Wednesday, the Aeolian Harp Folio, Red Earth Review, The Fourth River, The Free State Review, Rattle, The Inflectionist Review, The Ekphrastic Review, and more. |
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