aquila (unbound) didn’t look at his eyes the first five thousand years i pulled his body into my stomach and his protein turned my bronze form feathered taste of char and fennel first then later chalk (he wanted to become the mountain) i consumed the gland of anger i forgot which hate was his (this is what they made me for give me my hunger) some days some decades i ate the organ entire stayed all day grew thick eggs bile-nourished daughters to replace me when i died but i kept not dying some days some decades i quick-ripped a lobe retched it out over black sea i was busy i had daughters i hoped he was not lonely (he should try to become something weaker) we had to wait for the arrow that would make us stars (i was also bound) so all we could do was sprout power from spilled blood twin-stemmed blossoms for the children to find we were partners in this (you always think of us together) from his ichor we made witches to avenge us let me be sidereal we were saying let me decompose in the sky Jessica Franken Jessica Franken is an essayist, poet, and intermittent fiction writer living in Minneapolis. She has work published or forthcoming in River Teeth, The Cincinnati Review, Great Lakes Review, FERAL: A Journal of Poetry and Art, and Bitch magazine, among others.
1 Comment
Cold Dark Matter You have taken all the pieces of a shed a lifetimes clutter, discarded, shut away, a nightmare buried dust deep in the corners of your head and then you blew it up instead. A wheel, a fork, the detritus of every day, you have taken all the pieces of a shed, the sight of it made me stop dead, fractured fragments splintered every way a nightmare buried dust deep in the corners of your head. A hook, an axe, a dead baby’s bed the, "Cold Dark Matter," of today. You have taken all the pieces of a shed trapped them with your dangling spider thread, a freeze frame exploded every way, a nightmare buried dust deep in the corners of your head. I wonder what it is you dread death, destruction, life in disarray? You have taken all the pieces of a shed, a nightmare buried dust deep in the corners of your head. Tina Cole Tina Cole was born in the Black Country and now lives in rural Herefordshire. She likes to write about people and relationships good or bad and poems inspired by works of art. Her published poems have appeared in U.K. magazines such as, Brittle Star, Creative Countryside, Poetry Café,Mslexia, Aesthetica, The Guardian newspaper and in several poetry collections. She is a member of the group www.borderpoets.org. In 2019 she won the Oriel Davies Writing Competition and the Welshpool Poetry Competition judged by Liz Berry. She has recently won the Yaffle Press Poetry Competition and was highly commended in the Candlestick Press call for poems on Getting Older!!! She is the organiser of the annual Young Peoples Poetry Competition – yppc2019.org. Hundertwasser abolish the straight lines, curve all landscapes bright fluorescence occupies all spaces and crevices irregular trees, irregular from birth intersperse with erratic borderless buildings set loose from architectural pressures to conform and unnatural rhythms of precision as if unbuilt; as if chaos unleashed with garish disuniformity and spasmodic liberty allows human expression to shriek final, fitful, free. Daniele Nunziata Daniele Nunziata is a poet and a lecturer in English literature at the University of Oxford. His poetry has been performed live on BBC Radio and has been published in numerous journals and magazines, including (most recently) the Oxonian Review, Life-Writing of Immeasurable Events, and Open House. He is also a contributor to Writers Make Worlds. His first book is forthcoming later this year. The Colours of My Sadness Are Running Down My Face I start to cry. I tell my crow that I feel as if I am in a cage. I ask her if there is a cure for loneliness. She says, when you are left alone, it rains grains of rice instead of droplets of water. They congeal in your hair and weigh you down like cement. She says: You pick at the loose wool and unravel your favourite jumper and then get that feeling that you’re about to burst into tears so you breathe in and stare at the floor for a beat until you exhale like you’re checking your breath on a freezing January morning. My crow is called Kat. She tells me I should be happy because nothing can keep me in a cage. Henry Bladon Henry is a writer, poet and mental health essayist based in Somerset in the UK. He has a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Birmingham. His latest poetry collection is a collaboration about mental health with Dutch artist Marcel Herms and is available from Egalitarian Publishing. An Ekphrastic Event with the Paintings of Gabriela Gonzalez Dellosso This poetry “event”—poets responding to paintings by Gabriela Gonzalez Dellosso and then the painter responding back—is one of countless literary events that the Covid-19 pandemic bumped from in person to online. In the spring of 2020, the students in my Advanced Poetry Writing course at Southeastern University, along with myself and my poetry collaborator Anna Cotton, were scheduled to perform at our local art museum, the Polk Museum of Art. For the sixth year in a row, we would have delivered our poems aloud while standing on the museum’s wood floors, standing between the very works of art on the walls and a live public audience in the halls. In losing that physical experience, we lost something important. But in moving online, we gained several important things as well. We gained the opportunity—thanks to the generosity of Lorette C. Luzajic in providing our event a digital home at The Ekphrastic Review--to have the work remain available beyond a single evening. We gained the opportunity for the poet Lisa Pegram and several of the students she led in an ekphrastic poetry event at the Smithonian over a decade ago, the very event that inspired ours in Florida, to join us. And we gained the opportunity for the artist Dellosso, whose work we were slated to engage with in person at the museum in an exhibit titled A Brush with HerStory, to be part of the event—by responding to our responses with a video included at the end of this page. In short, what we lost in immediacy we gained in mediacy—in the ability to have connections and conversations across time and space, mediated by technology, that we would not have been able to otherwise have. I do not like to speak of a silver lining in a catastrophe. There are no hidden blessings in a pandemic of disease and death ravaging our planet. But there are so many people responding to the situation by discovering and developing new ways to connect and create. We’re so glad to be part of that conversation with this event. Paul T. Corrigan Hidden in Plain Sight What sorcery is such to capture the moon, place it in a gilded cage, dangle the keys on foreign fingertips? The hinge creaks as she opens the door to devour my light. What alchemy swirls the spoon in the tea cup, where my glow is channelled, that she might drink until she is full? In her wake, I am left crescent. Hungry. I hum. Vibrate. Beam, even. These are involuntary acts like blink or breath. They supersede will. These waves of sound. This constant rhythm that beats so beautifully against the glass she is compelled to dance. Drown her own misery to the tune of mine. This music brings her joy. She cannot reach these notes. Or hear the crack inside. My life force is drained. But a moon will not be extinguished. Even as it suffers, to shine is its nature. I fade, then rest before assuming my next form Paso a paso, el remedio-- Step by step, the cure. Lisa Pegram Lisa Pegram, MFA is a DC native living in Curaçao. A writer, arts integration specialist and personal chef, she is founder of the Shakti Brigade, an international women arts collective that juxtaposes literature, visual arts, music and wellness. Quarantine (Should your soul resemble a moon shrunk lamp size or a sheet worn ghost thin or a negative drying in a darkroom or an infant cholicy gumming spoonfuls of gruel or an owl old and caged watching out with one large eye please note your symptoms require time alone.) Paul T. Corrigan Paul T. Corrigan teaches creative writing and academic writing at the University of Tampa. His essays and poems appear in a number of publications, including The Ekphrastic Review. Twice he won the Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge. |
بلا عنوان تم پیچھا کر رھے تھے بھوتوں کا صدف پیتے ہوئے اور جن خلیج پر۔ ریتیلی ساحل پر صرف سرمئی سوٹ میں ملبوس میں نے تم سے اتنا پیار کبھی نہیں کیا جتنا اس دن کیا اور رات روشن ستارے اندھیری ساحل۔ |
Transliteration:
Bila Unwaan
Tum picha kar rahay thay
bhooton ka,
sadaf pitay huway aur
gin khaleej per.
Raitilee sahil per,
sirf surmaee suit mai malboos,
mai nai tum say itna piyar kabhi nahi kiya
jitna uss din kiya,
aur raat,
roshan sitaray,
andhairee sahil.
Untitled
You were chasing
ghosts,
sipping oysters and
gin down by the bay.
At the sandy coast,
suited simply in grey, I
never loved you more
than that day,
and night, bright
stars, dark shore.
Lorette C. Luzajic, translated into Urdu by Saad Ali
The English version of this poem was first published in Aspartame, by Lorette C. Luzajic (Mixed Up Media Books, 2016.)
Saad Ali (b. 1980 C.E. in Okara, Pakistan) has been brought up in the UK and Pakistan. He holds a BSc and an MSc in Management from the University of Leicester, UK. He is an existential philosopher-poet. Ali has authored four books of poetry i.e. Ephemeral Echoes (AuthorHouse, 2018), Metamorphoses: Poetic Discourses (AuthorHouse, 2019), Ekphrases: Book One (AuthorHouse, 2020), and Prose Poems: Βιβλίο Άλφα (AuthorHouse, 2020). He is a regular contributor to The Ekphrastic Review. By profession, he is a Lecturer, Consultant and Trainer/Mentor. Some of his influences include: Vyasa, Homer, Ovid, Attar, Rumi, Nietzsche, and Tagore. He is fond of the Persian, Chinese and Greek cuisines. He likes learning different languages, travelling by train, and exploring cities on foot. To learn more about his work, please visit www.saadalipoetry.com.
Lorette C. Luzajic's creative writing has been widely published in hundreds of literary journals online and in print. She has been twice each nominated for the Pushcart Prize and for Best of the Net, with one poem making it to finalist. She has five poetry collections, two of which are ekphrastic: Aspartame and Pretty Time Machine. Lorette is the founder and editor of The Ekphrastic Review. She is also an award-winning visual artist whose works have been collected in at least 25 countries. Visit her at www.mixedupmedia.ca.
Click here to view more than 150 square foot collage paintings.
THANK YOU!
Lorette
Three Tanka, in Irish and English, on Margaret McCarthy Photography, by Gabriel Rosenstock
9/17/2020
Tanka 1 - Dolmen Axeitos, Galicia, Spain
a shearc
óm' chroí réamhstairiúil
ó shaol seo na gcloch
mo bheannacht ort
beir barróg orm led' ghilese
beloved
from my prehistoric heart
from my petrified existence
greetings to You
embrace me with Your light
tá sé ag cur báistí
le míle bliain
nó níos mó, a chumann
fearthainn ón bhfarraige
ina siollaí caoine
it has been raining
for a thousand years
or more, beloved
rain coming in from the sea
in gentle syllables
a shearc
ní thuigtear níos mó an bhrí
atá leis an Mên-an-Tol
neosfaidh mé anois duit é
bíodh sé ina rún daingean
long gone, beloved
days when men knew
what it was: the Mên-an-Tol
I shall tell You now
the secret must be ours
Gabriel Rosenstock
The English versions of these poems first appeared in Modern Literature.
Gabriel Rosenstock was born in postcolonial Ireland. He is a poet, translator, haikuist, tankaist, playwright, essayist and novelist.
Inspired and indebted to mythology, Margaret McCarthy brings the eye of a poet to her photography, exploring archetypes of myth and dream in her imagery. Recent honours include Honorable Mention in 2020’s 14th Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers, and a Merit Award in the 2020 All About Photo Awards. She was named among the “Best of the Best Emerging Fine Art Photographers” by BW Gallerist Magazine; Artzealous chose her as one of “Four Photographers to Keep Your Eye On in 2016.” McCarthy’s extensive list of exhibitions include: the Fogg Art Museum, The Griffin Museum of Photography, the Overseas Press Club and The Hudson River Museum, as well as numerous galleries, universities and public exhibition spaces. Her “Divine Feminine” series is now part of the Kinsey Institute Art Collection. A few of the fine art publications where her work has appeared include Musee, Lenscratch, Shadow and Light, and Parabola.
This site uses cookies to deliver your best navigation experience this time and next. Continuing here means you consent to cookies. Thank you.
Tickled Pink Contest
Archives
March 2024
February 2024
January 2024
December 2023
November 2023
October 2023
September 2023
August 2023
July 2023
June 2023
May 2023
April 2023
March 2023
February 2023
January 2023
December 2022
November 2022
October 2022
September 2022
August 2022
July 2022
June 2022
May 2022
April 2022
March 2022
February 2022
January 2022
December 2021
November 2021
October 2021
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
April 2021
March 2021
February 2021
January 2021
December 2020
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
July 2020
June 2020
May 2020
April 2020
March 2020
February 2020
January 2020
December 2019
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
June 2019
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
December 2018
November 2018
October 2018
September 2018
August 2018
July 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
December 2017
November 2017
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
July 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
July 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015