The Bird Goes First
Enter handle, crank, shaft and suddenly man controls nature. The birds elongate their postures and become a dream of their own making. Sounds curl in their throats. We crave to wear the masks of other creatures. I would like to wear the mask of an ancient bird with eyes that can’t hold tears. The beak is only a phallus when imagined by man. It is difficult to decipherer between the clouds and the down of the swan’s belly and more difficult still to refrain from reaching out. To be seduced by a swan is to believe that beauty equals goodness. Out on the pond I’m told they kill their young. When I climb to the top of the ladder, attached by a string to a hummingbird, the string means we both know I lack courage. In the end I wont fly or try to fly, especially against the backdrop of this white sky. It’s hard to see the stars over my head or that my feet are carefully encased in plaster. The bird goes first. Another incomplete circle draws blood. There is no denying the scythe, round as a breast or a belly, but less forgiving. Ravens haunt the edges of the canvas. Feathers and hair the same shameful black. When the light hits it, a mirror most terrifying. Feet bare to the ground signifying sin, unnamed, but winged. Crystal Condakes Karlberg This poem was written as part of the surprise ekphrastic poetry challenge on birds. It responds to multiple bird paintings at once. Crystal Condakes Karlberg is a graduate of Simmons College and the Creative Writing Program at Boston University. She writes looking out her kitchen window where she often sees cardinals, house finches, blue jays, woodpeckers, and the occasional Baltimore oriole.
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Quiet
When one escapes the language and frees the screaming bird, perches above letters rising, there is little she needs to say. John Riley This poem was written for the surprise ekphrastic challenge on birds. John Riley lives in North Carolina, where he works in educational publishing. His fiction and poetry have appeared in several print and electronic journals, including SmokeLong Quarterly, Connotation Press, Willows Wept Review, Loch Raven Review, Dead Mule, and Blue Five Notebook. He can be reached at riley27406@gmail.com. Owl in the Bathroom
sir, what would you have said to me as you saw me laying there feeling the cold tile aspirate drops popping up and down again? or maybe you would’ve said, “you’re better off going in blind, you’ll choke if you know beforehand all there is to torment you with…” i would only have understood my own fear, not the quiet light behind your eyes telling me it was going to be fine because i had no confidence back then, and hiding out in the bathroom, cover up on the toilet, seat down and ready for business, that was no way for me to live: it was never someplace to hide-- even you couldn’t just fly away… me, i just wanted to, which wasn’t the same thing as jerking off on the bathroom floor wishing i was anywhere but here Garth Ferrante This poem was written as part of the surprise ekphrastic challenge on birds. 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. Die Zwitschermaschine
What can it mean, This twittering machine Of birds. Absurd, We could just turn that crank And hear the gears that squeak, Their tweeting, croaking, birdsong beaks (Or mouths?) And watch their heads roll round, Their bodies bobbing up and down, A childhood blend of toy and avian. * * * But something’s also sinister, are they There against their will, tied onto the shaft? Or are they crying ‘cause they lost their way, Or singing for their supper? Do they laugh? While almost featherless they still have hope. It’s almost something else the painting shows: Are they swallowers of swords on tightrope, The trampoline or safety net below? See, the collective of birds' noise without words is poetry. * * * Twenty-Five by nineteen inches, in a Mat and wooden frame, and under glass, in a Modern Art Museum now, but painted Three years after Rosa Luxemburg was killed, A year before Hitler’s Munich putsch-- Then caught and called degenerate and sold, Hung, now, against the wall, it can not move. One day, when the window breaks, the birds are heard, and someone turns that crank then all the paintings there will fly away. Eric Fretz This poem was written as part of the surprise ekphrastic poetry challenge on birds. Eric Fretz has been a student of contemporary visual arts since they were modern, and not contemporary, and a long time reader of modern poetry. He is a published author of art criticism and history, but has only recently been persuaded to share his ekphrastic writing exercises. He divides his time between Brooklyn and Beacon, New York, and between art and politics. Goldfinch Oh, I've seen that look many times before. Up against the world. Alone. This refuge away from others for a moment of peace. Perched above it all as if on a throne left by the Watcher. A stiff upper beak, they tell you. How your little heart trembles. You can't escape life forever. The good and the bad are out there, waiting. Billy Howell-Sinnard This poem was written for the surprise ekphrastic poetry challenge on birds. Billy is a hospice case manager. He's been writing seriously for the last ten years. His poems have been published in anthologies and online poetry publications. He has also published short verse: haiku, haiga, haibun, and tanka. Billy is a graphic artist and sculptor as well. He studied cast metal sculpting at the University of Iowa under Julius Schmidt. The Walls of Your Apartment Mountain lion hide smudged with charcoal. The cold drip coffee stains and paperbacks stacked like ego. I'm finding my lips falling into the nondescript fragrance of your home. They twist like a town square —and you with them-- reverberating into shadow. I unhinge my jaw to expend a suite of questions because truth be told I am confused but desperate to listen. I ask you what you mean when you say your words—the ones that belong to you, tucked neatly behind your basement birdfeeders. Because you've arranged them in a row. Yes, I can see you've strung them up along the moulding. Decor commemorating the quiet in the back of your throat. So now lounging in your apartment we make do with the radiator and I lay my palms flat and open and your words dance and we smile. Gabe Kahan This poem was written for the ekphrastic surprise challenge on birds. Gabe Kahan is a poet, freelance writer, visual artist, and the founding editor of Taxicab Magazine. His poetry has appeared in the Occulum, The Bitchin' Kitsch, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Paragon Journal, and others. He lives and writes in New York, and never leaves the house without his Burt's Bees beeswax lip balm. You can follow him on Twitter @GabeKahan. The Twittering Machine
don’t be ashamed, that’s your family calling for you this is the nest you never wanted to think about having to go back to this is the place that reminds you how things should be, but also how they aren’t the screaming of the birds, the young, you created them, in this other world that might have been they’re out there in the cold and freezing night left alone with her and you know how that goes, which is why they hate you without knowing you without ever having spoken to you without ever having been born Garth Ferrante This poem was written as part of the surprise ekphrastic challenge on birds. 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. World With Wings that was us once, though when you said “pair bonding” and told me what it meant, it just felt like a caution and a reckoning were due: in the pastels were each other’s bodies we’d started tiring of being with, our world the wild and garish colours of what wasn’t possible, what we didn’t want anyway but these were all beside the point-- we should not have been a pair, and whatever bonding was there was done out of fear and loneliness and despair and the only flying in the picture was fated to be in opposite directions to opposing poles where i could tell them i’d served twelve years of a life sentence, this jailbird did Garth Ferrante This poem was written as part of the surprise ekphrastic challenge on birds. 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. Mary and the Sphinx Taken over by the holy mission, bare feet soothed in the warm wind. Look to the sky, to the star Eyes upturned in the pleasure and wonder of purpose. Nature is shifting: heart full of nursing, of nurturing the blessed one, infant in arms. So fully protected, all may shed their burdens -- to feed, to nourish, or to sleep. The morning will come. Betsy Mars Betsy Mars is a Connecticut-born, mostly California-raised poet, educator, and mother two adult children and several animals. Living in Brazil as a child led to a lifelong love of language, travel, and an appreciation for other cultures. Her work has appeared in The Rise Up Review, The California Quarterly, and Antiheroin Chic, among others. The Swaddling Clothes In this, she is no exception: Mother Mary swaddles her newborn boy, to help the child recall the opiate confines of the womb and so give in, again, to primal sleep untroubled by any man or beast or fire. In the same way, she wraps herself in red-- simple cloths run through with exquisite threads of her own sundered flesh. Her fingertips, hesitant, entwine above her belly, soft and swollen still with his absence. She turns away her face, her visitors left unnoticed. Let them believe the child came from something purer than themselves, she prays. Let them see a holy apparition in his slumber. She keeps her eyes on him, vigilant: In this, Mother Mary is no exception. One rustle and she’ll scoop the child up, return him to her breast before he wakes with whimpering cries of naive indignation at the snow-white sham of swaddling clothes. Andrea L. Hackbarth |
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