White Doors My grandmother told me this story: On her wedding night, after the consummation, she awakes to a rushing sound through the house, every door flying open. She looks at my grandfather sleeping like the dead and wants to kill him, the bastard. She gets up and walks through the house, through the white doors -- opened by whom? She takes a knife from the drawer, puts it back, hesitates. Blood stains her thighs, bruises bloom. Someone stares at her from a dark mirror, waits. Then my grandmother slowly closes each door, returns to that narrow bed. 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.
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Isle of the Dead
To the muted splash of oars, you consider your new home. You see you have brought too much, no room for it all. The furniture can be burned and the books, the tennis racquets and the butterfly nets. Harder to dispose of the body; its clingy hungers. With enough time, surely, it can be done. 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. Procession
Two by two, they follow the one with the cross, seeming to trust, as that one does, the faint glimmer overhead. Is that dim smudge Spirit or atmosphere? Those in rows stay bowed over the question, meditating on the give of joints as they bear up, on the wet earth smell, the murmur of cloaks and footfalls rising. 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. The Flood of Noah and His Friends
You tell yourself you would pick up any you saw, lowering lifeboats, hauling up. You would wrap the shivering in blankets, divvy provisions to the last crumb. A good soul, you would sleep the sleep of the righteous. Really, though, you would pass on by, willing the panic-slung arms nothing more than a wave, the piercing pleas, seagull-mimicry. You would note latitude and longitude, promising to forward coordinates to the next boat, knowing yours the last and only. You would fix in your mind’s eye, the odd conjunction of predator and prey, threat neutralized by misery. Something for a fine poem, you would think, when, at last, you reached harbour. 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. Dante & Virgil in Hell
Two men grapple, and I mistake them at first for the two poets, wondering which is Dante, and which Virgil. I marvel at how passionately they consume one another, the way their four hands cling and dig; the vampiric mouth, seeking the jugular. I have known such kisses, both in the giving and the getting, one knee pushing away even as my arms cling. Passion confuses, so much like hate, hunger, annihilation’s overture. Locating the painting’s namesakes disappoints, so retiring are they, so shy in their looking, gazes not even askance, but elsewhere. Dante comforts Virgil, there, there, as tenderly as a mother, the laureate’s robe between his teeth, pacifying. A demon fixes both with a belligerent stare as if to say, man up! He hovers, ready to uncloak them, two more for the pile, baring what must burn beneath, the secret torrents of the blood. 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. The Tie That Binds I’m searching for something we can all recognize, something that connects us. I don’t know--maybe it’s a sight, like the Milky Way on a clear new moon night or a high note from heaven or maybe an aroma. Whatever it is, I think it’s something we experience simply by being human. Then again, maybe it’s not sensory. This began with the senses but now I’m thinking big. Like maybe it’s something intangible. I’m getting lost in the vastness and also in abstractions like “heart” and “soul” and “spirit” as if my mind has gone off in space with ideas flying around like planets that have escaped their orbits, or maybe shooting stars. It’s all supremely slippery with nothing to grab on to. Have you ever felt that way? I don’t know. Maybe it’s that feeling we get, lost in our thoughts, in an infinite universe of ideas-- maybe that’s the tie that binds, maybe that’s what we all have in common. Charlie Rossiter This poem was written for the Surprise Challenge, ekphrastic poetry about Magritte paintings. Charlie Rossiter's popular poetry podcast can be heard on the first and third Fridays of every month. http://www.poetryspokenhere.com/ Get his free ebook, Poems People Like, here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/39347 These Shapes
are not symbols. Do not attach meaning. Bowler hats and gentlemen may fall on the page in this frame. The words do not mean the thing. Magritte is a mark only. All that attaches to it is irrelevant. It does not help. A birdcage is not a rib cage. Paul Brookes This poem was written in response to the surprise ekphrastic challenge on Rene Magritte. Paul Brookes was, and is a shop assistant, after employment as a security guard, postman, admin. assistant, lecturer, poetry performer, with "Rats for Love", his work included in "Rats for Love: The Book", Bristol Broadsides, 1990. First chapbook "The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley", (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). Recently published in Blazevox, Nixes Mate, Live Nude Poems, The Bezine, The Bees Are Dead and others. "The Headpoke and Firewedding" (Alien Buddha Press, 2017) illustrated chapbook, "A World Where" (Nixes Mate Press, 2017) "The Spermbot Blues" (OpPRESS, 2017). The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far from the Tree Right above my head, hoof beats, the self I could have been bringing down the crop on lathered haunch, the smell of sweat and dust, the crowd roaring. Father, however, felt otherwise, and father always wins, jowls and gold chain heavy. I am following in his footsteps, being driven, rather, from pillar to post in more ways than one. The driver knows his business and keeps his foot on the gas. I dream of throwing myself out. There’s a certain bridge where my attaché would never break my fall, so high, even father couldn’t save me. Devon Balwit This poem was written as part of the surprise ekphrastic poetry challenge on Magritte. 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. Under the Rose
I’ve cut my hair, short in the back, an edge of one ear shows like a barely open door, with no light in the room beyond. A red-wash haze of sky makes rows of buildings purple shadows, duplicates, mirrors, matches. Street lights wait for night. The cobbled-brick bridge is in front of me. No cars in sight, nothing, no one, but they are somewhere. The surprise already happened, the miseries released. I wear my father’s Bowler Derby and black coat. River holds still as glass. The strange white rose flares, a temptation-- not what it seems but whiter than light. Under the leafy rose a jar shaped box split open. Expectation waits on the bottom of the broken box. The sad city doesn’t know and I walk into it. Sherri Bedingfield Sherri Bedingfield’s poetry has been published in numerous anthologies and small press publications. She has presented her poetry at many Connecticut venues as well as the Cornelia Street Café, a poetry bar in New York City and in Dingle, Ireland. Several of her poems have been performed in Plays with Poetry by East Haddam Stage Company. Sherri is the author of Transitions and Transformations and The Clattering, Voices from Old Forfarshire, Scotland. She did the artwork on the covers of both books. Sherri works as a psychotherapist and a family therapist. The Horizon
So long have we walked along sands of time, we have become a marker for others on the way. "Avoid the knothole, follow us. We are immersed in each other, happily." Joan Leotta This was written as part of the surprise ekphrastic challenge on Rene Magritte. Joan Leotta has been playing with words on page and stage since childhood in Pittsburgh. She is a writer and story performer. Her Legacy of Honor series feature strong Italian-American women. Her poetry and essays appear or are forthcoming in Gnarled Oak, the A-3 Review, Hobart Literary Review, Silver Birch, Peacock, and Postcard Poems and Prose among others. Her first poetry chapbook, Languid Lusciousness with Lemon, was just released by Finishing Line Press. Joan's picture books from Theaqllc, Whoosh!, Summer in a Bowl, Rosa and the Red Apron, and Rosa's Shell celebrate food and family. Her award-winning short stories are collected in Simply a Smile. You can find more about her work on her blog at www.joanleotta.wordpress.com |
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