Open House
Can’t you imagine coming home to this stately gem each night? I let clients think I opened every single door to let in light and show off the stunning woodwork. Well below market price – the owner took a job overseas. For sale AS IS, so you can add your personal touches. Last night I closed each door. Today they gaped wide open. As you wish, I whispered. I’m leaving well enough alone, afraid to do my morning walk through. A ribbon of cold air trails me, room to room. I brought my collie, still leashed to the porch rail – as far as she’d come. Crossing my fingers this place sells today. I’ll lower my commission if I have to. Can’t you feel the history? I ask the young couple, giving them my card. Alarie Tennille This poem was written for the surprise Halloween ekphrastic challenge. Alarie’s latest poetry book, Waking on the Moon, contains many poems first published by The Ekphrastic Review. Please visit her at alariepoet.com.
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Meth Widow
I am an upstanding citizen. Hair upstanding. Standing on the bus, no seat given. I am the ghost in the mirror. The startle. The flashback. The time before. The days to come. I am sutured by death. Free of him. He, free of it. End of discussion. I am fog lamps on the dark dock. Headlights around the bend. Deadly. I am the iron-filled mouth. The loose teeth. The fat lip. The cloven tongue. Hit. Devon Balwit This poem was written as part of the ekphrastic Halloween poetry challenge. Devon Balwit writes in Portland, OR. She has five chapbooks out or forthcoming: How the Blessed Travel (Maverick Duck Press); Forms Most Marvelous (dancing girl press); In Front of the Elements(Grey Borders Books), Where You Were Going Never Was (Grey Borders Books); and The Bow Must Bear the Brunt (Red Flag Poetry). More of her individual poems can be found here as well as in The Cincinnati Review, The Stillwater Review, Red Earth Review, The Inflectionist; Glass: A Journal of Poetry; Noble Gas Quarterly; Muse A/Journal, and more. Meth Widow she floats in despair letter fragments are cruel symbols without meaning or hope beneath the crown of thorns etched into her head is a face bleached-bone white eyes shaped like from a skull except in dull orange hint of blue black squiggle of line are the embers of hope dying mouth stitched like the rictus grimace of a fleshless cadaver cannot stop blood smearing the mouth and flowing in rivulets down chin and neck she cannot speak but her stare is more profound than words the pain the pain the pain the pain Neil Creighton This poem was written as part of the Ekphrastic Halloween surprise challenge. Neil Creighton is an Australian poet with a passion for social justice and a love of the natural world. Recent publications include Poetry Quarterly, Silver Birch Press, Praxis Online, South Florida Poetry Journal, and Verse-Virtual, where he is a contributing editor. His poetry blog is windofflowers.blogspot.com.au White Doors Something’s not right with this room, where one door opens and another swings on its hinges, each giving onto the next room, and the next, multiplied as in a mirror, each door differing slightly in its brass hardware, the design of its rectangular compartments, blank as photo albums stripped of their images. The frame of one door wavers at the edges, like stiff paper thrown into a flame, while another reveals itself as a drapery of doors, a stack of identical white entrances or exits, accordion-folded, a book of lives standing on edge, eternally ajar in the dusty back room of the afterlife. Robbi Nester This poem was written as part of the Ekphrastic Halloween surprise challenge. Robbi Nester frequently writes ekphrastic poetry, and particularly enjoys such challenges as these. She is the author of three books of poetry, an ekphrastic chapbook, Balance (White Violet, 2012), and two collections of poetry, A Likely Story (Moon Tide, 2014) and Other-Wise (Kelsay, 2017). She has also edited two anthologies of poetry, The Liberal Media Made Me Do It! (Nine Toes, 2014) and an ekphrastic e-anthology, Over the Moon: Birds, Beasts, and Trees--celebrating the photographs of Beth Moon. She has published poetry in many journals and anthologies, including this one, and has poems forthcoming in Pirene's Fountain, Cimarron Review, Muddy River Review, and Negative Capability. Child
I thought we were Out of night's dark wood Your fever down Your small body Close in my arms I thought what safer place Than this bright clearing In sweet air Where the sun is warm And small birds busy Chattering their way Through morning But the birdsong stops And the leaves grow still Nothing moves As death comes to us Barefoot and hungry Wrapped in linen White as a hard scar White as a leper White as ash When the burning's done She bends down swift Silent as the owl Stoops to her kill Taking your breath With one touch Of her cold lips No mercy I hold you close But you are gone Beyond rescue One more tender life Taken by frost Mary McCarthy This poem was written as part of the Ekphrastic Halloween surprise challenge. Mary McCarthy has always been a writer, as well as a visual artist and a Registered Nurse. She has been published in many online and print journals, and has an echapbook "Things I Was Told Not to Think About" available as a free download from Praxis magazine online. White Doors
The house of our soul is never neutral. Spirit children quickly devise games for its empty corridors, its white walls. One, it, becomes monstrous. Those who flee, terrified. The lightest footfall threatens, the slam of a door makes us shriek. Which lintel marks the gateway to hell? Which shadow hides a nightmare? We become experts on each creaking board, on the weight of a footfall. White is the shroud, the slow light of Sundays, the gleam of bone from our upturned graves. Devon Balwit This poem was written as part of the ekphrastic Halloween poetry challenge. Devon Balwit writes in Portland, OR. She has five chapbooks out or forthcoming: How the Blessed Travel (Maverick Duck Press); Forms Most Marvelous (dancing girl press); In Front of the Elements(Grey Borders Books), Where You Were Going Never Was (Grey Borders Books); and The Bow Must Bear the Brunt (Red Flag Poetry). More of her individual poems can be found here as well as in The Cincinnati Review, The Stillwater Review, Red Earth Review, The Inflectionist; Glass: A Journal of Poetry; Noble Gas Quarterly; Muse A/Journal, and more. Virgil Speaks to Dante in Hell.
My friend, note the perfect form, the beauty of musculature, the balance and symmetry of body. You reel from the savagery, the ferocity of tooth and claw, the primal tearing at the throat. This is the beginning of sorrows. Stone and stick will replace tooth, then devices sufficient to destroy all life. Tremble not, nor quail. Ascend, leave this darkness, take your light, reveal truth to the living. Though darkness holds sway hearts are not in hardness fixed. In knowledge and truth is power. Go. Climb upwards. Lament. Warn. Prophesy. Paint. Sing. Reveal not just what they are. Open hearts to what they can be. Neil Creighton This poem was written as part of the Halloween ekphrastic challenge. Neil Creighton is an Australian poet with a passion for social justice and a love of the natural world. Recent publications include "Poetry Quarterly", "Silver Birch Press", "Praxis Online", "South Florida Poetry Journal" and "Verse-Virtual", where he is a contributing editor. His poetry blog iswindofflowers.blogspot.com.au mother
mother it’s getting late death has come mother give me to her go on your way mother the forest is dark no more day mother death is here our time is done Tricia Marcella Cimera This poem was written as part of the Ekphrastic Halloween surprise challenge. Tricia Marcella Cimera will forever be an obsessed reader and lover of words. Look for her work in these diverse places: Buddhist Poetry Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Foliate Oak, Fox Adoption, Hedgerow, I Am Not A Silent Poet, Mad Swirl, Silver Birch Press, Stepping Stones, Yellow Chair Review, and elsewhere. She has a micro collection of water-themed poems called THE SEA AND A RIVER on the Origami Poems Project website. Tricia believes there’s no place like her own backyard and has traveled the world (including Graceland). She lives with her husband and family of animals in Illinois / in a town called St. Charles / by a river named Fox. Meth Widow When you first danced With the White Prince His touch was cold Lightning Sending it's crystals Through your every Vein and nerve Until a million Frost flowers Bloomed in your brain And you spun with him Across the glassy floor Faster and faster Your heart transfixed On the needle Of his cold enchantment Keeping you Locked in his arms Even as the glass floor Splinters And the shards of ice Cut through nerve and flesh You dance with death And cling to him As your body withers Your teeth fall out Your breath turns To corruption Your skin a torment You tear at With desperate fingers Trying to remember Who you were Before your demon lover Mary McCarthy This poem was written as part of the Ekphrastic Halloween surprise challenge. Mary McCarthy has always been a writer, as well as a visual artist and a Registered Nurse. She has been published in many online and print journals, and has an echapbook "Things I Was Told Not to Think About" available as a free download from Praxis magazine online. Mexican Codex 16th Century
Those with obsidian blades imagine the gods hungry. How else to justify whet-stones, the time spent honing each avid edge? That the gods might want nothing cannot be thought, for that would leave them as naked as any would-be lover, their cut flowers wilting in their hands. Devon Balwit This poem was written as part of the ekphrastic Halloween poetry challenge. Devon Balwit writes in Portland, OR. She has five chapbooks out or forthcoming: How the Blessed Travel (Maverick Duck Press); Forms Most Marvelous (dancing girl press); In Front of the Elements(Grey Borders Books), Where You Were Going Never Was (Grey Borders Books); and The Bow Must Bear the Brunt (Red Flag Poetry). More of her individual poems can be found here as well as in The Cincinnati Review, The Stillwater Review, Red Earth Review, The Inflectionist; Glass: A Journal of Poetry; Noble Gas Quarterly; Muse A/Journal, and more. |
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