The Green Machine 

There are no gears in this machine.
Power comes from chlorophyll and sun.
From the primordial sea comes 
jellyfish drifting upward 
to symbols making up 
the language of life 
mixing and rearranging 
a collage on canvas.
Verde, verde, verde

Like Neruda writing in green ink 
Luzajic paints with green acrylics 
And what does her green convey 
the sway, the forte, the green way 
the infinity of hope.

Mary Hood

Mary A. Hood is a retired microbiologist who was a fellow at Radcliffe and Harvard Medical School. She taught at University of West Florida. She was also a poet laureate of Pensacola, Florida. Mary has a special interest in ecology, a passion that took her to more than 50 countries. Her books include River Time: Eco Travel on the World's Rivers and Walking Seasonal Roads. She has a website of nature-based and ekphrastic poetry: https://maryahoodpoems.org/

How to Recreate Flaming June
 
Step 1: Don’t look at Mia Waterage longer than you can think, Mia Waterage. This is before cellphones, before social media, before the internet has conquered your every thought, so if you want to gaze at her face, you have to actually be close to her. Or put a Kodak disposable in front of her, and you are not about to do that. Mia Waterage lives in your neighbourhood, at the end of the block in a house that is the supersized version of your wee little bungalow, even though you have two sisters and she is an only child. During the summer, you, your sisters, and three other neighbourhood kids spend almost every day at her house, because she has the underground pool. When school is in session, she ceases to exist, because she is three grades above you, and you have other problems to deal with.
 
Step 2: Wear your Jane’s Addiction t-shirt over top your swimsuit, and pretend like it’s because you’re still juiced up from seeing them live in concert. But really it’s because you are badly sunburned, and your chest looks like old wallpaper, coming off in strips and patches. Mia has been gone for four days, visiting colleges, and you spent that time obsessively perfecting a cartwheel in your bikini. Be the only person actually swimming in the pool, doing laps as ferociously as possible so that no one can tease you about your t-shirt. Mia is floating on her alligator raft, sweaty glass of diamonds and diet soda in her manicured hand, maple syrup hair so long the ends of it slip along in the pool like seaweed. 
 
When Mia’s mother comes around with more soda and pizza rolls, take only two pizza rolls, and be proud of yourself for leaving the rest for everyone else. Work your teeth around the hard dough as the hot concrete lip of the pool burns your butt, indigo dye from your shirt drooling down your leg. Overhear Mia talking to your sister, Fran. She is still floating on her alligator raft, but now she is sitting up, talking more animatedly than you have ever seen her. She is talking about a painting she saw in one of the dorm rooms. “It was so beautiful, I feel like I heard music when I saw it. There’s this woman, right? She’s in the deepest sleep ever, on this bench outside on a balcony, with this dreamy ocean view, and you know it’s sunset because of the way the waves catch the light, and you know she’s been out there for a long while because her cheek is all flushed. She’s got her legs all curled up, kind of tucked in close, and it’s like she’s making this crescent moon shape with her body. Her dress is this brilliant color that just–” Mia makes a sound like a bomb exploding as she spreads her hands wide. “It’s the most perfect orange colour, like eating an orange creamsicle at the golden hour in summer, while standing on a rusted fire escape.”
 
“Not orange like, an orange?” Fran asks, smirking behind her sunglasses. Her body was draped over an off-white, glittering seashell.
 
“Citrus orange is a morning colour,” says Mia.
 
“But a creamsicle? That doesn’t seem right,” says Fran. “It’s the fake version of an orange, right?”
 
“I didn’t say it was the colour of an orange creamsicle, I said it was like eating one. Like if this painting had a taste it would be bright and tangy, but also creamy and vanilla-y too. It’s like when you have ice cream at the end of a summer day, when you’ve been outside for so long you feel like the sun is still glowing on your skin, and you still feel so warm even as the ice cream is cooling you down.”
 
Step 3: Voice out loud how much you want an orange creamsicle. All the girls agree (except Fran). Make plans to migrate to Wegmans. Be cool when Mia gives you a dry t-shirt, and don’t smell it until you change in the bathroom. After you put it on, realize that it’s advertising University of Syracuse. Resist the urge to shout, “Hurry up!” even though the other girls are slug-slow getting ready to walk to the grocery store, especially your little sister, Cami. Offer to give Cami a piggyback ride, and let everyone think it’s because you’re so sweet. Have her say, “Yee-haw!” as you take off at gallop.
 
Wait until you return to Mia’s house before ripping open the packaging to your creamsicle. Try not to make “yum noises” and don’t eat it too quickly. Think of Mia’s painting and try to picture her perfect colour orange.
 
Don’t give Fran a dirty look when she refuses to eat hers. “I just don’t like sweets,” she says, and remember that it’s not your job to tell everyone she’s lying. 
 
“It’s not the golden hour anyway,” says Mia. “We should have waited until after 8.”
 
Step 4: Decide to eat another orange creamsicle the next day, this time with just Mia. Wait until after dinner, just when the sun is starting to melt. At the last minute, leave her t-shirt at home, even though you’ve been meaning to give it to her. When you get to her door, holding the two creamsicles in their silly, crinkly white packaging, wipe your sweaty upper lip with your arm. When her dad opens the door, stutter pathetically as you explain why you’re back at his house so late in the evening. Feel your upper lip sweating even more. 
 
Smile when she comes downstairs, but don’t compliment her on how nice her freckled shoulder looks peeking out of her oversized shirt. Try to act like you don’t care all that much, even if all you can get out is, “Here,” as you hand her the cold treat. Join her when she laughs at how silly you’re acting, and latch on to the delighted gleam in her eyes when she realizes why you’re here at the orangest part of the day. “Let’s go up to the water tower,” she says, and you let her lead. 
 
When you sit, force yourself to be still with loose limbs, even as the wet grass seeps into your jean shorts. Listen to her talk about college. Hope she doesn’t ask you what you want to major in or anything like that because you haven’t even started high school, and you don’t want to remind her if she has forgotten how young you are. Start to feel as if she is talking you from a great height, like she is a goddess on a cloud. Accidentally let out a squawk when she touches your bare arm. “I’m so glad we’re doing this,” she says. Finally unwrap your orange creamsicle as the sky morphs into a palette of deep orange and gold. For one glorious, tangy, vanilla-scented moment, all your feelings of self-consciousness fall away, and you are simply tasting your creamsicle and beholding the magical radiance of the last light before nightfall. 
 
Step 5: Scour the neighbourhood for rusted fire escape stairs. Don’t tell your mother when you ride your bike all the way to the city, and rejoice when you finally find an old rusty staircase behind a crumbling brick building, its iron steps spiraling downward into the alleyway. Beg Fran to drive you back there that evening so that you can take a whole roll of pictures, but refuse to tell her why. Offer to give her anything she wants, and stay cool when she says, crossing her arms across her chest, “You have nothing that I want.” Remind her that you know all her secrets, like how she drove around with Carlos Vivavattine last Thursday night instead of going to the movies with Heather.
 
Step 6: When you get your rusted staircase pictures developed, tape your three favorites onto the wall. Neither the sky at golden hour nor the taste of a creamsicle can be captured on camera, but spend some time mixing paints to try to capture the colour forming in your head. Then, throw those mistakes away and be embarrassed that you ever created such amateur splooshes.
 
Create a 5X5 grid featuring a spectrum of oranges created by mixing red and yellow in various ratios, adjusting the base oranges with white and black. Stop going to Mia’s pool every day. Be brave and pencil a sleeping body shaped like a crescent moon. Start over. Study the position of your hands in the mirror. Ask Cami to put on a dress and study its creases and folds. Convince her to try on every dress she owns, and then decide that the most suitable dress is the first one she tried on. Smell the chlorine in your sister’s hair as you help her zip up the dress. Agree to go swimming with her the next day, but stay in your room, learning how to paint, instead.
 
Step 7: Finally create a painting you are halfway satisfied with. Be sure that the painting is complete the same way you know when you are finished with a run, or swimming laps. After washing your paintbrushes in the bathroom sink, slip into your bed for a nap. 
 
Forget to comb your hair when you walk over to Mia’s house to gift her the painting. Freak out when you see the outrageous shadow of your bedheaded hair. Knock on the door, but softly, and hope that no one answers. Take in the look of pity creasing Mia’s mother’s forehead when she tells you that Mia isn’t home. Present your painting as if you are delivering a package you’ve never seen before. Say, “This belongs to her,” then run away as fast as you can. 
 
Wait for Mia to come to your door to tell you how much she loves her gift. Practice the tiny, half-smile you will give her as you say, “So, you liked it. I thought you would.” Wait all summer. Resume practicing your cartwheel, but this time slather every inch of your skin with sunscreen.
 
Step 8: End up at Syracuse University, even though Mia went elsewhere. During your first week, find Mia’s painting at the college bookstore. Buy 8 posters and hang them all in your dorm room, so that you can see a Flaming June everywhere you look. Buy creamsicles for all your friends, because you don’t want to eat them by yourself. Be self-righteously surprised when your roommate requests a room transfer after living with you for only six weeks, and assume that it’s because you are openly gay. Years later, think about all those Flaming Junes, and how there was little space to hang anything else. Remember the rolled up tube in the corner of the room, still sealed. Try to guess what artwork your first roommate would’ve put up on her side of the room. Fail at looking her up online, because you only remember her by her nickname, Lolly.
 
Step 9: Speedwalk the city streets of Portland, Oregon, at night, as you try to tire your mind. Ache for sleep. Keep your head down as you walk, going over the same scenario in your mind. See yourself getting on a plane with Andy in five days, off to London where you will walk past the bronze statue of Joshua Reynolds, step inside the Royal Academy of Arts, and finally see Flaming June in person. Debate with yourself whether its ethical to go. Replay again the night Andy raised his hands, as if in surrender, swearing that he wanted nothing more than your friendship. And yet, wrestle with Andy’s age (17 years older), and the spring in his voice when he let you know the hotel room has only one bed. Concentrate on how many nights you stayed up with Andy, listening to his stories, tears in your eyes from laughing so hard. Then zero in on his anger, how he turned on that waiter one night for no reason at all. See yourself in a foreign country with a man who is more than a hundred and fifty pounds heavier than you. Pull your phone out to text Andy, and simultaneously see yourself in London once more, about to witness Sir Frederic Leighton’s actual brushstrokes. Due to a hasty, ill-fated breakup, Andy is actually your roommate, and his name is the only one on the lease. For so many reasons, it would be easier if you just went. Wonder what led Flaming June’s woman to fall asleep on the bench. Where was she coming from? Had she not been able to sleep in her own bedroom? How long had she been asleep before the painter happened upon her?
 
Put your phone back in your pocket.
 
Hear someone call your name, and question your sanity. Look up. See Mia Waterage’s face, her smile, her swan-like neck, her slender arms open for a dancing, overjoyed hug. Break apart from her embrace to look at her face once more, then pull her back into a tight squeeze. Mia Waterage. Breathe her in. She smells like sandalwood and vanilla.
 
Step 10: Let her fast words rain over you. Concentrate on what she is telling you, and ignore your wooziness. Don’t tell her about your insomnia, but admit how tired you are when she invites you back to her apartment. She lives in southeast Portland, near the posh Hawthorne district, which is just about the most incredible thing you’ve ever heard. Imagine! Two Penfielders meeting up all the way across the country. Love her convoluted story of how she ended up on the west coast, involving an acting experiment in L.A.. Worry you sound crazy when you explain your living situation. Wish she would hurry up and tell you her relationship status, even though she already has you like a kitten claw hooked onto a pant leg.
 
“I still have your painting,” she tells you. “I’ve taken it everywhere. I never got a chance to tell you how much it meant to me. I kept waiting for you to come back to the pool.”
 
Say, “I kept waiting for you to come over to my house.” Feel sick about how honest and vulnerable you are being. Reach for some levity. Say, “It was pretty rough before texting was invented.”
 
Back at her apartment, wait on her couch while she fetches your painting. Tell her she can take as long as she needs, because although you are excited that Mia Waterage loved your painting after all, think of a million other things you’d like to be reunited with, other than that thing you made at age fourteen. Remember how you didn’t know how to show where the light is coming from; remember how crowded the face was, how her wormy lips were all the way onto her chin. 
 
Automatically pull the blanket over your legs. Take in its orange color, and wonder if it was a gift, or if she bought it herself. It’s softer than you expect, like how cotton candy is supposed to feel. Catch yourself cataloguing the colour, comparing it to Flaming June’s orange. It needs rust, and also a teensy bit more mustard.
 
Step 11: Fall. You have been hovering above yourself for far too long. Fall into yourself, and feel yourself all the way to the ends of your toes, fully immersed in your skin. Let go of everything that was causing your body unease. What you need to is perfectly doable, and will take rest. Relax your muscles, slow your breathing. Sink your body a touch lower into the couch. Apperceive the moment Mia enters the room, while keeping your eyes closed, your head so blissfully resting on your bare arm. Feel how she fixes you as she adjusts the blanket, her lips brushing your forehead in a way that makes you feel flush all over. Fall deeper, then deeper still. Surrender to the gentle pull of the moment, the sweet, languid tide of sleep.
 
Jessica Dylan Miele

Jessica Dylan Miele is a writer and librarian living in Portland, Oregon. Lately she has gotten into paddle boarding. Her work has been published in numerous literary magazines including Gravel, Gingerbread House, and Buckmxn Journal. You can find her on Substack @JessicaDylan.

Hyena

"I'm like a hyena, I get  into the garbage cans. I have an insatiable curiosity.” 
Leonora Carrington

That camel toe beckons from her white jodhpur pants like an invitation, but of course, it’s not. 
Instead, she extends her hand to the hyena’s toothy mouth, sits in the blue chair, the colour of its 
eyes. Out the window, a galloping white mare, forest-bound. You’re that horse, Leonora says. 
I’ve set you free. And she? The hyena, she sighs. She paints herself as hermaphrodite, her 
elongated clit, that trio of dugs hanging from her belly. Today when she reaches for me, I see 
who’s coming. Dark and cunning. Like her avatar. So unlike yesterday, when we lay together in 
the high grass, the thin September light, straw yellow, her face shading mine. You’re ravishing, I 
said; she did not believe me. I stroked the wild hair from her forehead, planted kisses on her 
pulsing throat, tugged those white pants down past her hips. Mercurial, intent on pleasure. How 
can I not adore her? I open like a filleted animal. Don’t play me, Leonora warns, when I gush 
over the horse, delight in how she portrays me. See the smudge, lower left? She points to a smear 
at the painting’s edge where a figure once lived. I decided I didn’t like her any more. It could 
have been you. 

Alexis Rhone Fancher

This poem first appeared in The Pedestal Magazine.

Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Hobart, Verse Daily, Plume, Tinderbox, Cleaver, Diode, The American Journal of Poetry, Spillway, Nashville Review, Poetry East, Gargoyle, and elsewhere. She’s authored ten poetry collections, most recently, TRIGGERED, 2023 (MacQueen’s Publishing); BRAZEN, 2023 (NYQ Books); and DUETS,  (2022) an illustrated, ekphrastic chapbook collaboration with poet Cynthia Atkins, published by  Harbor Editions. Alexis’s photographs are featured worldwide including the covers of The Pedestal Magazine, Witness, Heyday, Pithead Chapel, and The Mas Tequila Review. A multiple  Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, you can find her at: www.alexisrhonefancher.com 

​Bernini's Arrow
​
The angel holds the arrow above my chest--
The arrow I know she will plunge into me
Over and over
Strong with righteousness
And the anger I deserve.

My pain will be as clear and sharp
As my guilt,
My blood dripping
Like my first blood.

And in this instant
This flash between the holding
And the plunging
I am lost in the ecstasy of anticipation--
the first touching of the tip against my tender skin
the parting of the flesh
my blood
my muscles surrounding the arrow
    as she pushes it in further
and then the release
the absence of arrow
droplets of blood following
flowing down my sensual skin
my eyes closed
knowing she is right
knowing the arrow is good

I will not defend myself.

Bob McHeffey has taught high school English for 38 years, including an Humanities course that focuses on all aspects of art (not just literature) so he gets to mix them together.  "I even teach my students the word ekphrasis.  I also teach creative writing and write with my students, challenging them to challenge me."

​Woman in a Yellow Dress

You know who I am
by my bright dress and red hair
my face a gray, blurry space 
to hang my crooked eyes 
and lips

I'm only an impression 
of a real woman
who can cook
give birth
and raise children

I have been erased
only to appear again
and now I'm worth millions 
to the world and myself
enjoying this party of one
on my high wall

Jackie Chou

Jackie Chou is a writer from Southern California who has two collections of poetry, The Sorceress and Finding My Heart in Love and Loss, published by Cyberwit.  Her poem "Formosa" was a finalist in the Stephen A DiBiase Poetry Prize.

The Mother House

An ill-fitting web stretched over a mouth-sized hole bored into the back porch. Something lived
in hollow wood, stripped gray by the salt air. Forlorn web. A whole family gone by first frost. I
think I’ve always been alone in my own sweet way, always hungry: ate cold roast beef after
birthing my daughter, after my son, smoked that first cigarette, its tip orange, hot in the winter
night, right here, on this porch—me, steaming milk, signaling my compulsion to be outside 
of myself. Do you understand? Nothing fit after that or ever again. Not even me in my own
mossy cocoon of skin. This frail web barely stretched across the hole, to its splintery rim, its
​messy lips. Some poor thing long ago tried to home here, in my home.

Braid

Even in my unlit room at night, I could braid /my hair so quickly, so tight, the plait would lie / 
still as a snake down my spine. An atheist //

now, I do miss how God could grab me / by that woven hank, pull my head back / on its neck
bones until my mouth opened wide, //

and all that escaped was a sigh, the smallest / orgasm in the world, so small I’d think, / did it
really happen? Like God. Delusion // 

is lies that tell the truth. I always knew how / to braid, how to move my long fingers: split / the
hair at the scalp into three thick sisters //

looped over the other’s length. Oh, I tugged hard / behind my own back, so hard, / it brought
tears to my eyes.

Jennifer Martelli

Note: Italic portions of poems are quotes from the film, Suspiria.

Jennifer Martelli has received fellowships from The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Poetry, Verse Daily, Plume, The Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree (forthcoming, December, 2024, Lily Poetry Review Books), as well as The Queen of Queens, which won the Italian American Studies Association Book Award and was shortlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award. Jennifer Martelli is co-poetry editor for MER. www.jennmartelli.com

Purgatorio

Hidden in the clouds of unknown possibilities,
Purgatorio rises from the plain toward hope.
The sun peers down, a giant eye witnessing 
the suffering of he who would climb the cruel 
heights toward redemption.

No hand helps his labors, he must toil 
and brave the steep path, with eyes fixed 
on the source of light that flickers through 
the gloom. The way upward twists and turns
in a series of dead ends, forcing the climber 
to retreat and seek a different route.

Just when he gives up hope and sinks to his knees, 
a new route opens before him, and he recommences 
the arduous climb.

When he enters the zone where mist blocks
our view, we cannot help but wonder,
does he reach a broad meadow filled with flowers, 
watered by myriad streams and cascades?
Does the great eye of the sun shine clear, free of clouds?        

It is not for us to know.            

Ellen Dooling Reynard

​​Ellen Dooling Reynard spent her childhood on a cattle ranch in Jackson, Montana. A one-time editor of Parabola Magazine, she is now retired and lives in Grass Valley, California. Her poetry has appeared in publications including Lighten Up On Line, Persimmon Tree, The Ekphrastic Review, and Poetica Review. Her first chapbook, No Batteries Required, was published in 2021 by Yellow Arrow Press. Double Stream, a chapbook of ekphrastic poems based on the art of the French painter Paul Reynard, was published in 2022 by The South Forty Press. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize.

​Guardian of the Red Egg

Sans mask, my flame hair
shorn, 
instead I adorn

myself in shimmering 
gown and russet shawl 
falling

in wavy tresses down 
my back. I kneel before the glow
as yet unseen. 

What else to do
but what is expected— 
safeguard the red egg

I hold aloft between
my palms. I feel its life
pulsing inside the shell. 

Time to start the crack, break
the seal, let light in.
Let it all begin.
​

Guardian of the Black Egg

It’s heavy as it rests in my lap.
My gown, the colour of fading
roses. My cloak the colour of water.
Egg and I, ward and guardian, 
only ourselves in this desolation.
A fire razed, a fire burned, a fire 
took all. Now I wait. Though patience 
is not my best skill, it is expected.
Until ... I don’t know what. Or when.
Or what else to do. The sun
spills and warms. The black egg
is restless to free its fire creature--
dragon or phoenix. And then we’ll see 
what kind of future there will be.
​
​Karen Neuberg

Karen Neuberg is the author of the full-length poetry collection, PURSUIT (Kelsay Press) and three chapbooks including the elephants are asking (Glass Lyre) Her poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Inflectionist Review, Unbroken, Unlikely Stories, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, NY.

Join us Monday evening for a fascinating discussion and writing session on Death in Art. 

On Zoom. Mon. Sept. 9. 6 to 8 pm est. $35CAD/$25USD


Death is an evergreen theme in literature, painting, and all of the arts, because it is something every one of has experience with, or will have. It could be said that death makes life epic and precious. Because people we love die, we wrestle with grief, loss, injustice, and pain. Experiencing the loss of a loved one is humbling and changes us. Death makes life a great mystery, as we attempt personally and culturally to come to terms with the inevitable. Rituals and celebrations and beliefs help us cope and process. Yet even to those of deep religious faith, or convictions about an afterlife, or a pragmatic attitude of acceptance, losing a loved one and facing death ourselves can be very dark, traumatic, mythic, and transformative. Just a few of the realities we go through include witnessing the pain and suffering of someone who is sick or mentally ill; the shock of losing someone to murder or suicide; the helplessness and chaos of a terrible or gruesome accident. 


In this session, we will discover and discuss a variety of fascinating treatments on the theme of death in art history. We will engage with the work we see to free our own words and create some notes and ideas and some poems or short prose. 


Trigger warning: Art history is full of unflinching imagery on the subject of death, and we will be looking at paintings that some may find disturbing. We will be speaking openly about illness, murder, suicide, war, grief, loss, fear, and pain. 

​

Reflections on a 10th Century Fragment
  
A discrete elbow of the art museum,
the lower torso of a Yakshi--semi-divine, 
notes the label on the wall. Location unknown.
 
Also lost, her naked wrists and ankles, their bangles, 
her feminine abundances. A sprite fond of trees. 
 
Coleridge in mufti stands transfixed, ignoring
agnostic admonitions not to idolize an icon.
The raddled hem of her garment, 
subtle mons, tensile thigh poised as if a moment
in her hypnotic dance.
 
A goddess manqué. Boat of a pelvis
meant to rock. Like the truncated mannequin
at L’Ivresse (a shop in Essex-on-Onion),
also without, except the suggestive twist 
of knickers with (imagine) Ashoka flower lace. 
 
Next to the foxy mannequin derriere,
as sister poet blew intoxicating verbal smoke 
and veiled allusions, he dreamt eyes 
soft as flowers and other figments of desire.
 
Mystery, how one fragment implies a fractal,
merges with another (all time being one time),
centuries ancient and at the reading yesterday. 
A goddess is a goddess. 
 
Paused a moment. Torque
of heart’s rest—nada that follows
each r-wave blip on the EKG monitor when spirit 
animates flesh  (skips a beat). Augurs admiration.
 
Look here: We all have a ticket to ride 
(mind the gap). An iamb then a prayer. 

Daniel Lusk

Daniel Lusk is author of The Vermeer Suite and other books, most recently Every Slow Thing, poems (Kelsay Books 2022), and Farthings eBook (Yavanika Press 2022). His work is published widely in literary journals, and his genre-bending essay “Bomb” (New Letters), was awarded a 2016 Pushcart Prize. Native of the prairie Midwest and a former commentator on small press books for NPR, Daniel is a Senior Lecturer of English Emeritus at the University of Vermont.