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Shifting Frames, by June Paul

12/24/2018

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Picture
Shifting Frames, by Jane Barnard (USA). 2018. Click image for artist site.
Shifting Frames

The frames slowly shift
liquid glass flows through
galaxies of new art form

June Paul


This poem and painting combination was first presented at the Portage Center for the Arts in 2018.

​June Paul has been a closet poet for years.  Encouraged by local writers and artists to begin submitting works, she's been published in The Poet by Day, Blue Heron Review, Haikuniverse and Last Day Poems (Your Daily Poems). She is in the process of compiling a chapbook for publication.
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Saudade, by Tristan Franz

12/22/2018

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Picture
Piazza San Marco, by Giovanni Antonio Canaletto (Italy). 1720s.

Saudade

I want to open my heart
wide as a Venetian plaza
let living air weave through
the stony arches of my foundation
caress the columns of consciousness

I want to feel a mountain
behind me in the distance, know
that each breath is an echo
that there is blue behind the blue
that the tattered flags wave without wind

I want to sit here all day and feel
the shadow of the steeple inflate and retreat
over the warm cobblestone, unmasking
silent centuries within me

I want to feel seventeenth century oblivion, know
nothing but sky and depth and Italian symmetry
I want to remember that passion blurs
the boundaries of time like the clouds above
into the mess of matter in our desperate
beating chests

Tristan Franz

Tristan Franz is a teacher, traveler and writer from Brooklyn, NY. His poetry has appeared in several small online literary magazines, which is good, because he probably couldn't handle being famous.   
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In Death, by Diana Torres

12/22/2018

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Picture
Dead Father, by Alice Neel (USA). 1946

In Death

​
In the opened casket,
my father lies pressed
against the golden silk.
 
To his left, lilies
are gathered in line,
their bright faces gaze at his.
 
A rose anchors
his bony hands
in perfect position.
 
His stern face, even in death,
scrutinizes the arrangement
of his funeral.

Diana Torres

Diana Torres is a Lecturer at Lehman College. She writes poetry and short stories, and currently resides in New York with her dog, Cherry.

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Eyes on the Pearl, by Max Heinegg

12/21/2018

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Picture
The Conjurer, by Heironymus Bosch and/or his workshop, (Netherlands) 1502.

Eyes on the Pearl
  
Eyes on the pearl- the prize shown first
is the one you cannot win. Curse
the magic of a charlatan
when you reckon misdirection
opened your throat for croakers, your purse
 
for the accomplice. It’s avarice
that brings beasts to table, & worth
the owl’s wisdom, to stay hidden.
Eyes on the pearl,
 
his cups & balls, her thin necklace,
all float towards a false caress,  
but a grain of regret digs in
& grows to insight, the queen’s gem  
bids all her subjects to chorus,
eyes on the pearl. 

Max Heinegg

​Max Heinegg is a high school English teacher who lives in Medford, MA. He is a Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee whose poems have appeared in The Cortland Review, Tar River Poetry, December Magazine, The Journal of American Poetry, and Crab Creek Review, among others. He is also a singer-songwriter whose records can be heard at www.maxheinegg.com  
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WILLIAM EDOUARD SCOTT: Ekphrastic Writing Challenge Responses

12/21/2018

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Picture
Rainy Night at Etaples, by William Edouard Scott (USA). 1912.

Here are the results of the Rainy Night at Etaples ekphrastic writing challenge. Thank you to everyone who writes in response to the writing prompts. If you don't know already, every other Friday, The Ekphrastic Review posts a visual art prompt for you to respond to with poetry or prose. The alternate weeks, we post a selection of results.

We are very excited that in the year ahead, we will be having some guest editors for some of the challenges! This is going to bring different flavours to the table, as well as spread the word about the challenges and ekphrastic writing to a wider audience. 

The Ekphrastic Review

***

​
All My Rains
 
I
Warm rain in the Caribbean,
giant bathtub abruptly
turned over by a tropical giant.
Rain that hurts. Rain that washes
away topsoil, flattening crab claw,
golden trumpet and scorpion orchid,
leaving the waxrose gasping for air,
fills all dents in the hotel patios.
Tennis courts become square lakes
of reddish, sandy mud. Every passing
car’s a drencher. Take off your sandals.
Let your feet transmit the moment
when a god created water and land.
A stifling thirty-eight degrees in the shade,
sabotaged for a brief, exulted moment,
soon reclaims its protagonism.
 
II
A dry spell on the Castilian plateau. Earth
crust breaks like freshly baked bread. All greens
from spring and early summer dusted ashen
by hot winds. The sky turns a metallic grey,
eucalyptus whisper urgent messages to
the poplars who bow in acquiescence.
Fat drops explode on the patio roof, cut through the
pines, leave welts on the soil. Soon the rains break.
Petrichor from wounded earth.
 
III
Squishing from the soggy wooden terrace
to the overflowing frog pond. Grasses bend
under the weight of the constant drizzle
of an English summer. Brushing past the dripping
hollyhock, it shakes its droplets onto my hair.
Peony’s heads hang low and heavy, the song thrush
shelters in the blackthorn. The shed’s rusted
door hinges whine. From my poisonous-orange
slicker dried earth from last year is washing off.
Into sudden silence the song thrush trills
an acknowledgement of a forgotten afternoon sun.
 
IV
A small fishing village in the north of France.
Night and rain fall on roofs and streets, boots slip
through pools growing in importance between broken
asphalt and smooth cobble stones, the old
buildings hiding behind curtains of cold water.
We were caught by surprise on the way back
to the hotel, and the painter saw us that night:
a couple of lonely figures hesitating where
street lights seemed to transform puddles into lakes.  

Rose Mary Boehm

A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of Tangents, a poetry collection published in the UK in 2010/2011, her work has been widely published in US poetry journals (online and print). She was three times winner of the Goodreads monthly competition, a further poetry collection (From the Ruhr to Somewhere Near Dresden 1939-1949 : A Child’s Journey) has been published by Aldrich Press in May 2016, and her latest collection (Peru Blues or Lady Gaga Won’t Be Back) has been published (January 2018) by Kelsay Books.

***

Struggle

It’s hard to know what happens above your own head
when it pours so hard your face is obscured
by an umbrella’s black points shaking in wind.

The rain-wet street pools around your feet.
If you were to look back you’d see
more than your fears piling up in painted

facades. Buildings heaped with thick
strokes a palette knife clearly made.
What are you rushing to? Is your basement

flooded? Are you sick? What about the child
next to you; is it past their bedtime?
You can hear the horse’s hooves splash.

Lamplight reflections slick
the rippling puddle’s surface. Interiors glow gold
within windows, but the white houses are gray,

sodden with blue-tinged weight.
Has there ever been sun? Will the soaked
paint of your skirts ever dry?

Jessica Purdy

​Jessica Purdy has lived in New England all her life. Having majored in both English and Studio Art at UNH, she feels drawn to the visual in both art and poetry. She has worked as an art teacher and a writing teacher. Currently, she teaches Poetry Workshops at Southern New Hampshire University.  She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. In 2015, she was a featured reader at the Abroad Writers’ Conference in Dublin, Ireland. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including The Light Ekphrastic, The Wild Word, isacoustic, Nixes Mate Review, Silver Birch Press Beach and Pool Memories Series and their Nancy Drew Anthology, Local Nomad, Bluestem Magazine, The Telephone Game, The Tower Journal, and The Cafe Review, among others. Her chapbook, Learning the Names, was published in 2015 by Finishing Line Press. Her book STARLAND was published in 2017 by Nixes Mate Books. Her latest book, Sleep in a Strange House, has just been released in October 2018, also with Nixes Mate Books.

***

Ancestry

Under my skin, a little blue scene in the blood
—a piece of me stands under a painting sky
beside my black horse cooling
now that I’ve arrived at the square.

A peace in me stands the painting sky
that daubs the ruts with reminiscences.
Now that I’ve arrived at the square
in a lamp lit night of viridian and marine

that daubs the ruts with reminiscences,
I turn to gaze at topaz windowpanes
in a lamp lit night of viridian and marine
drenched with fallen clouds.

I turn to gaze at topaz windowpanes,
my house now made of nighttime chrysoprase.
Drenched with fallen clouds,
I feel the weight of my late return.

My house now made of nighttime chrysoprase
beside my black horse cooling,
I feel the weight of my late return
under my skin; a little blue scene in the blood.

Amy Holman

​Amy Holman is the author of Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window (Somondoco Press, 2010) and four chapbooks, including the prizewinning Wait For Me, I’m Gone (Dream Horse Press, 2005). Recent poems have been accepted at concis, Gargoyle, and The Westchester Review. She is currently at work on a collection of poems and watercolours. 

***

Two
 
The night was so wet, I yearned to drown in it. Like a city under the sea, liquid light flowed off facades like a silk nightgown sliding off a shimmering mermaid, her naked scales an alchemy of sapphires, emeralds and topaz. I exhaled jewels of longing into the drenched night air, imagined a dark door opening, a silvery woman beckoning, a warm hearth glowing inside where her silent invitation led. But the child. Mine tonight. So into the chilly room and into dry clothing and into the warm bed with him and for me, cold consolation of whisky, gold in a grown-up glass.
 
Greta Bolger
 
Greta Bolger is a poet and visual artist living the good life in a little village in NW Michigan called Benzonia. Her writing has been published in several online and print journals, including Eclectica, Silver Birch Press, Literary Bohemian, Mom Egg, and Sea & Sky. Her poems have also been recognized in the Interboard Poetry Competition many times. http://webdelsol.com

***

Got the Blues

got the blues
got the blues
got the blue time blues
got the shape
got the form
got the feel
got the tone
got the time
got the pitch
got the shade
got the lock
got the key
got the sign
got the scene
got the bent
got the pose
got the woe
got the way
got the say
gotta say
gotta say
gotta say
Picasso knew
and he blew it straight,
yeah baby he showed us the way

Charles Rossiter

​Charles Rossiter, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Recipient, hosts the twice-monthly podcast series at www.PoetrySpokenHere.com. Recent books include the just-released Green Mountain Meditations and Winter Poems. He lives and writes in Bennington, VT.

***
​
Impressions on a Rainy Night

I arrived in Etaples
carrying the weight of my race
with my paint,
hoping to blend with
the cobalt-charged scene,
palette alive with blue fusion.

The small fishing port with
soft fingers of light
invited me in.
Here I would fit,
colony of colour- makers
free from dark studios,
shelter from wind
blowing its prejudice over Chicago.

My azure-oiled strokes
applauded the rain,
inspiring, incessant,
as it swept along streets
in tides of divergence,
artistic style coursing through France.

Into the frame
dark, sketchy,
I pencilled two figures
rushing yet static,
their voices like mine
lost in the hiss
the guttering, muttering
foreboding of war,

spray-can of hatred
spattering boulevard,
sliding off pavements
lines and tones merging.
Washed from canvas,
shelter eroded
I bled into background,
back to my black-American root.

Kate Young
​
Kate Young lives in Kent with her husband and has been passionate about poetry and literature since childhood. After retiring, she has returned to writing and has had success with poems published in magazines. She is presently editing her work and writing new material, particularly in response to ekphrastic challenges. Alongside poetry, Kate enjoys art, dance and playing her growing collection of guitars and ukuleles!

***

This The Start Of A Second Coming

Le Touquet hôtels full
Tourists and distant travellers
Stella-Plage no better
We made for Étaples-sur-Mer
Walking late December      the rain
Horizontal
Prevailing
From the direction of Le Mont-Saint-Michel
Along La Manche.

Squelched through puddles
Avoiding the deepest      while
Street lamp shards
Danced chanson française
Nobody else out
Nobody to seek directions
To Hôtel Souquet-Marteau
Monument historique
While not a 2 star in sight
Nor humble gîtes.

But at the corner of Rue des Remparts
Next a bon ami bar
A stable lay ahead
With les ânes at peace
Sheltering against foul weather
Straw dry under cover
Space for us at last      la Mère
Was imminent
Due
L’Enfant arriving on cue.

When darkest cumuli parted
Stars appeared
Shepherds congregated
With intellectuals of Montreuil
Off in the east
All present
Gifted
This was to be a long night
But this the start      of a Second Coming.

​Alun Robert

Born in Scotland of Irish lineage, Alun Robert is a prolific creator of lyrical verse achieving success in poetry competitions in Europe and America. He has featured in international literary magazines, anthologies and on the web. His ekphrastic poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review and Nine Muses Poetry.

***

Out in the Rain
 
The town fathers (of course
they’re fathers) must know
 
that curbs encourage puddling,
that street lamps offer more glare  
 
than safety.  When rainfall
blends grey and blue into the dark,
 
most folks take cover      
in the yellow confines of their rooms.
 
So a patient horse has the outdoors
mostly to itself.  But tonight
 
a man and woman have stolen out
to risk the rumor of a warm encounter
 
at the corner.  And a mother, trailed
by her child, worries that she’ll lose
 
the resolve to walk away from home. 

Jack Kristiansen

Jack Kristiansen exists in the composition books and computer files of William Aarnes.  Kristiansen’s poems have appeared in such places as FIELD, The Literary Review, Stone’s Throw Magazine, Main Street Rag, and The Ekphrastic Review.

***

Two Years Before
  
Events that happen every day are noted
and recorded in diaries.  Incidents are reported
in newspapers. Photographers take pictures.
 
It is continuous, these moments.
Before the flood, then after.
Before the riot, then after.
 
For Etaples, a town in France,
before was a rainy night depicted
as an impression in marine colours
 
by an artist two years before
the start of World War I.
Before the military hospital.
Before the cemetery.
 
There is such innocence in before,
such optimism, because not knowing,
we can hope.  
 
Zen Masters say, stay in the moment.
This moment is a rainy night.  
I am in France.  I am painting.  
And I am happy.
 
Mary C. Rowin

Mary C. Rowin's poetry has appeared in various publications as Panopoly, Stoneboat and Oakwood Literary Magazine.  Recent awards include poetry prizes from The Nebraska Writers Guild and from Journal from the Heartland. Mary’s poem “Centering,” published in the Winter 2018 issue of Blue Heron Review, was nominated for the Pushcart Anthology.  Mary lives with her husband in Middleton, Wisconsin.

***

A Winter’s Night 

An inky-dark place     
      pushes down on them
from night’s bleak horizon

They seek the limen     
     which will welcome them--

Isolated, yet not alone,
     the two trudge
through dark corridors
     
burdened and bleary-eyed,
     weakened but sanguine

Carole Mertz

Carole Mertz, poet and essayist, enjoys the way The Ekphrastic Review helps her view sights with greater care. She has recent works at The Ekphrastic Review, Eclectica, Quill & Parchment, Front Porch Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, and elsewhere. She lives in Parma, OH.

***


The Storm Within

Umbrellas braced as futile shields
reveal the force that nature wields
where river lifted into cloud
now loosed as rippled, falling shroud

has washed against the window pane
through which my eyes have sought in vain
to see by softly haloed light
the sharpness dulled by rain and night

of structures whose defiant stance
is mirrored more as shimmered dance
in shallows out across the street
where intermittent drops repeat

their troubling echoes mocking gloom
of silence that engulfs my room.

Portly Bard

Portly Bard: Old man. Ekphrastic fan. 
 
Prefers to craft with sole intent
of verse becoming complement...
...and by such homage being lent...
ideally also compliment.

***

​
Etaples Hue  

…at etaples
I waited while
the rain met my tears for
convalescence

your empty promises
floated
past my drowning feet
into an ocean of blue

your cry of pain
sounded as
false as the night-flies
glow between glass

my soul became
globules of yellow
orbs behind
darkened dank windows

our memories
blurred into
a hue of cobalt
insignificance

we fell
into the cerulean
pavement while
snaking lamps gazed

I asked for
a hand perhaps
one last look
you dreamed away…

Zac Thraves

​Zac Thraves is a writer and performer based in Kent. "I have written a couple of books, plays and poems; I am a storyteller and actor and I am in the process of trying to get an agent to help me in getting my latest book to a wider audience."

***

Rainy Night

The continuous rain flooded the freshly dug trench, washing away the loamy soil. The stench of the soldier’s infected wounds, as he was being carried in the stretcher, nauseated Emile Beaupre, who was hip deep in water, fearing that he would either drown or be shot in the head, never seeing Marietta and his unborn baby. He trained for trench warfare six months ago at Etaples. Emile practiced maneuvers, polished buttons, scrubbed pots and pans, scrubbed the floor, dug trenches, set up wire netting as a shelter for in coming hand grenades. His individuality was slipping away.

Two years ago Emile was standing on the corner under a lamppost attempting to light the tip of Marietta’s cigarette, holding his hand over it, shielding it from the rain. The lights in her parent’s house flickered on, her father expecting his daughter home at a certain hour. He was spying on the Bohemian artist, who had no real future, no better than a busker. Her father cursed Emile accusing him of leading his virgin daughter down the path of debauchery, even though Emile had met Marietta at a Paris cabaret, introduced by a mutual friend, Henri Levesque, a writer who sat with the smart set at the literary and artist’s table. They smoked and drank and exchanged ribald jokes. Marietta joined in.

When Germany declared war on France, advertising posters and recruiting stations sprang up everywhere - Enrolez-vous! Marietta’s father incessantly taunted Emile, calling him a momma’s boy and an effete - Emile holds a paintbrush, not a rifle. Her father was incensed that their relationship had lasted two years; he knew Emile’s reputation. Soon after, Marietta learned that she was pregnant and broke the news to Emile. Emile did the honourable thing and they had a private wedding ceremony with Henri as the best man. To prove to her father that he was a brave man, he walked into the recruiting station and enlisted.

Corporeal Beaupre lay in a hospital bed. He awoke with his left hand bandaged.  Screams and moans flooded the ward. An American and British flag were draped on the adjacent wall. An angelic nurse clad in white approached, holding an envelope. She smiled and handed it to him. He stared at it.

“Would you like me to open it for you?”

Emile shook his head, eyes still fixated on it. She left.

Emile tore open the envelope with his teeth, shook out the folded letter which landed on his thigh. He read the letter, folded it up, and slid it back into the envelope.

An American doctor pulled up a chair and sat by Emile. He introduced himself as Doctor Murphy from St. Louis. He had trained in Britain and was transferred to Etaples.

“News from a girlfriend?” He pointed to the letter.

“My wife gave birth to a baby boy.”
 
“Congratulations, corporeal.” The doctor held Emile’s wrist, counting out the beats of his pulse. Dr. Murphy opened a folder. “I see here you listed your occupation as an artist.”

           
“That’s correct.”

           
“Are you right handed?”

           
Emile nodded.

           
“Lucky for you that it was your left hand.”

           
“Yes, I’m very lucky.”

           
Two military police officers approached the bed.

                      
Emile cradled Henri’s head in his lap as the rain and his tears commingled. An incoming grenade had blasted Henri’s legs off. His clothes were shredded, exposing his lacerated flesh. Emile retold Henri the same ribald jokes. Sitting in the trench, Emile recreated the cabaret scene - the sights, the smells, the gaiety - the day when Henri introduced his beautiful future wife to him. He said goodbye and with his two fingers, closed Henri’s eyes.
​ 

Three days later, on a cold, clear night, when the stars were at their brightest, Emile had stuck his left hand above the parapet attracting German fire. The bullet had blown off three fingers, left a fourth a stubble. 

Matthew Hefferin

Matthew Hefferin loves writing flash fiction and short stories. He is currently writing a book of ekphrastic prose poems based on his photographs.  

***


William Edouard Scott Paints Northern France and Haiti
 
Figures of a woman and child in the flooded street,
umbrella against the wind,
 
scene all black and blue except for the yellow of light
from gas lamps and their reflection in pools
 
that in Haiti would be streaked with diesel gasoline
as we splashed through in a Jeep
 
after evening prayer behind the school once a prison
on Independence Square. Before the downpour,
 
I sat on a balcony in a cane captain’s chair above where
the first African freedom was declared
 
sixty years before end of the American Civil War,
Haiti, where women carry bundles on their head to market
 
and men rest with machine guns sheltered by awnings
against the sun.
 
Kyle Laws
 
Kyle Laws is based out of the Arts Alliance Studios Community in Pueblo, CO where she directs Line/Circle: Women Poets in Performance. Her collections include Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing), So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press), and Wildwood (Lummox Press). Ride the Pink Horse is forthcoming from Spartan Press. With six nominations for a Pushcart Prize, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., and Canada. She is the editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press.  

***


Le Temps Perdu                                                                           

Strange to think of such a night
as paradise, even in memory.
A piercing, cold rain moved in –
not uncommon for a fishing village –
just one more reason to leave.

My wet shawl shuddered, my numb
feet shuffled on. Swinging wide to avoid 
the corner puddle ­– almost home, almost 
home – I stopped. The swirling water 
shimmered under the lamp post 
as though posing for Monsieur Monet.

Glancing up, I saw the daffodil windows
of home, glowing like a light house.
Was Maman expecting a guest?
As I reached for the handle,
the door swung in. I swooned
in the warm fragrance of coq au vin.

Maman wrapped me in a blanket
by the fire, rubbed my feet dry.
Did I even thank her? All day long
I’d been daydreaming of life in Paris.
Pourquoi?

On that night, before the Great War,
Étaples was perfect. Now no place
feels like home.

Alarie Tennille

Alarie’s latest poetry book, Waking on the Moon, contains many poems first published by The Ekphrastic Review.  Please visit her at alariepoet.com.

***

Remembering Etaples

I slipped from tangled sheets
To stand naked at the window
Looking down at a night
Turned watery blue in the rain
Yellow lamp light blurred green
Reflections in the street

I was young then in Etaples-sur-Mer
My days were heady with turpentine

Standing naked at the window
I saw the tableau before me
Waver and sway
As if beneath the sea

And from the watery depths
Emerged two dark shadows
An elderly man and a small boy
Standing as if apart
Their heads bent to the rain

I felt your arms
Go around my waist
You coaxed me back to bed

How I regret leaving
Those two dark figures
Alone in the street
In Etaples-sur-Mer

I don't even remember your name

Elizabeth Gauffreau

​Elizabeth Gauffreau holds a BA in English/Writing from Old Dominion University and an MA in English/Fiction Writing from the University of New Hampshire. She is currently the Director of Writing and Communication Programs at Granite State College in Concord, New Hampshire.  She has published fiction and poetry in Foliate Oak, Serving House Journal, Soundings East, Hospital Drive, Blueline, Evening Street Review, and Adelaide Literary Review, among others, as well as several themed anthologies. Her novel Telling Sonny has just been released by Adelaide Books. Learn more about her work at http://lizgauffreau.com.

***

A Periodical Journey 

The subtle brightness of the light
shown through the dark, unstormy night
of steady rain, chilled summer air,
with hardly any people there
who might traverse by light of day
the street on which the town hall lay.
 
One woman with her child in hand
endured the cold by harsh demand
of drunken spouse returning late,
whose temperament would not abate
till Sunday noon, or later yet,
so leave they must, though tired and wet.
 
Although the way was damp and dark
she knew the route well—through the park,
across the square, the bakery shop
where in the daytime she would stop
meant they were almost half-way there;
the comfort of her sister’s care.
 
They’d pass the coach beside the lamp
where cabby made his evening camp,
awaiting those who’d pay their way
and help him keep his debts at bay.
He knew them well and touched his cap--
they had no fare to break his nap.
 
A lonely gendarme came in view
and smiled at them, although he knew
they wouldn’t stop tonight to talk--
the weather forced a swifter walk--
but he would watch for one more block
until they turned beneath the clock.
 
Her sister, wakened where she couched,
gave warm embrace to both and vouched
she’d care for them, just as before,
and on their next trip to her door.
They knew her husband, loved and dear,
was like this just twelve times a year.

Ken Gosse

Ken Gosse prefers writing light verse with traditional metre and rhyme filled with whimsy and humour. First published in The First Literary Review-East in November 2016, his poems are also in The Offbeat, Pure Slush, Parody, The Ekphrastic Review, and others. Raised in the Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife have lived in Mesa, AZ, over twenty years, usually with a herd of cats and dogs underfoot.

***

Romancing Blue

Sheen imbues buildings, soaks sidewalks, 
lifts teal, bathes beside turquoise,

steeps within steel. Bristles splash aqua,
sip lapis, drip white, scumble the surface,

where pools collect light. Cerulean builds
columns, frames windows, forms

shape, caresses the canvas as technique
brushes place. The effets de soir*

romance the piece, play with impression
and reflective release. Oils surrender

in painterly dance, a rainy night, à la plein
air, in Étaples, France.

Jeannie E. Roberts

*effets de soir (French) is an impressionistic
technique, meaning the effects of evening.

Jeannie E. Roberts lives in an inspiring setting near Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, where she writes, draws and paints, and often photographs her natural surroundings. She has authored four poetry collections including the most recent The Wingspan of Things (Dancing Girl Press, 2017). Her second children's book, Rhyme the Roost! A Collection of Poems and Paintings for Children, is forthcoming from Daffydowndilly Press, an imprint of Kelsay Books. She is Poetry Editor of the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs. ​

***

I Do This On Rainy Nights

It amuses me,
the way glossy cobblestones distort
​glistening reflections 
in lamplight.
A wizened mother,
perhaps thirty years old,
ushers her child home
late from the sitter's.
Twelve-hour laundress routine
seen in soggy scuttle and stoop.
Both become horizontal smudges
on a painter's slate palette.

Les Gendarmes will find him.
A pattern will be established--
he is neither first, nor last--
a profile created.
I preserve my souvenirs 
in formaldehyde Petri dishes.
They will wonder 
what sort of person
removes eyelids from victims.

What is the perpetrator telling us?

Their eyes are open 
in that final moment--
my face the last image
scored on stunned retinas--
they understood their role 
in the cosmic experiment,
selflessly offered-up their pieces 
to a puzzle master’s expert hands.

Jordan Trethewey

Jordan Trethewey is a writer and editor living in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. His work has been featured in many online and print publications, and has been translated in Vietnamese and Farsi. To see more of his work go to: https://jordantretheweywriter.wordpress.com

**

It’s 4 am and I’m wearing a blue raincoat (after Leonard Cohen)

It’s 4 in the morning, almost December--
each day I return to you hoping you’re better,
New York is a hospital, dying and living,
machines full of numbers, the music of beeping--

Do you dream of your house with its ceilings and stairs?
Are you living inside it now, making unseen repairs?

As your past comes by full of stories and tears,
what you gave what you feared--
all the things left unsaid…
drowning in the unsaid--

Now each day is the first and the last and the always,
no masks to uncover, disguise what the time plays--

We come and we stay and we go meeting only ourselves,
spending fortunes and throwing them away like wishes in wells--

You hand us no thoughts and your eyes gaze beyond,
skipping dreams through the air like stones on a pond--

I see you there still breathing harshly with pain,
what abides, what remains--
will we waken or sleep?
to release or to keep--

Oh what can I tell you, what can I tell you,
what can I possibly say?
All the sorrows forgiven, lost tomorrows now riven,
our lives intersected and frayed…

All is circling round to the centre of you--
you can be who you need to be now without fearing the truth--

And thanks for the gifts that you didn’t intend--
thread to bind and to mend—lives I didn’t expect--

And the years collapse spilling stories and tears,
nothing left now to fear--
all the words disappear…
​
Kerfe Roig

A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new.  Follow her explorations on her blog with her friend Nina: methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ and see more of her work on her website:  http://kerferoig.com/
1 Comment

Oriental Poppies, by Barbara Crooker

12/19/2018

1 Comment

 
Picture
Oriental Poppies, by Georgia O'Keeffe (USA). 1929.
Oriental Poppies
                            for my mother

Lit matches struck in the dark, road-flares
burning, these poppies smolder by the bird bath
where we brought my mother’s ashes
when her life wicked out. Each flower
is splotched with black, night at the heart
of burning day.   Light shines through the petals,
translucent as skin.  At the end, her bones shone through,
the skeleton wanting to dance.  The poppies’ orange tango,
a wild fandango with the wind.  Nothing in English rhymes
with this color, not porridge, not ordinary, not original.
We only have one mother.  Reach for a blossom,
twirl it in your fingers, a dancer on an unlit stage.  
Every gardener knows about loss: thinning, pruning,
the appetite of rabbits, how frost waits in the wings,
sharpening his shears.

Barbara Crooker

This poem first appeared in Barbara Crooker's book Gold (Poiema Books).

Barbara Crooker is the author of nine books of poetry; Les Fauves is the most recent.  Her work has appeared in many anthologies, including The Bedford Introduction to Literature, Commonwealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, The Poetry of Presence and Nasty Women: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse.  www.barbaracrooker.com
​

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Unlimited, by June Paul

12/17/2018

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Picture
Unlimited, by Lorette C. Luzajic (Canada). 2018. Click image for artist site.
Unlimited

There they were
blooming boldly
in the middle
of the city streets 
neon lights flashing
in the midnight sun
and it was 1981.

June Paul

​June Paul has been a closet poet for years.  Encouraged by local writers and artists to begin submitting works, she's been published in The Poet by Day, Blue Heron Review, Haikuniverse and Last Day Poems (Your Daily Poems). She is in the process of compiling a chapbook for publication.
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Light at the End of the Century, by Alun Robert

12/17/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
Tyne Cot Cemetery, by Alun Robert (Scotland). Contemporary.
Light at the End of the Century

I sense you in the shards
Of November twilight
Cascading across from Ypres
Another day set to rest

When I feel your monologue
In dulcet tones
Proffering your gratitude
To we lions led by donkeys
For our bravery, for our courage
In an ecstasy of fighting
Though horror of laying down lives
By me and my comrades

From all over the Empire
Across many oceans
To the futility of the Great War
A conflict bellicose
Too obscure, too confusing
To mortals like us

Enlisted and conscripted
Carried into heinous conflict
To a war to end all wars
Battles to be remembered, for
We were due home by Christmas
If not before

I believe you when you cry
Of the carnage, the travesty
As we lie here in front of you
Near twelve thousand young men
Taken on Passchendaele ridge
Now next cottages of Tyne
A microcosm of the millions
Gone well before our time

Yet I no longer smell cordite
No longer ingest mustard agent
No longer feel pain, then
You must have achieved peace
In our time
In your time too
When cruelty to brothers, to sisters
Has been eradicated
Vanquished from our globe

Though your shake of the head
In despair, in realisation
Suggests that the folly
Of the Great War has been lost
On politicians of power
Those embers of great men

As I wander through your psyche
To domains I don’t know
Where conflict is constant
In life beyond horizons
To mortals like us

While I wonder if you’re my descendent
And if not
Why you care
With history casting shadows
Over years following on
For a century has passed
And your friends were our foes

Then I sense your departure
After November twilight
In the direction of Ypres
And another site ticked.

Dedicated to the brave sons of the British Commonwealth
taken during the Great War of 1914-18 and
buried at Tyne Cot Cemetery in Flanders


Alun Robert

Born in Scotland of Irish lineage, Alun Robert is a prolific creator of lyrical verse achieving success in poetry competitions in Europe and North America. His poems have featured in international literary magazines, anthologies and on the web. He is particularly inspired by ekphrastic challenges.
​
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The Song of the Lark Ascending, by ginny schneider

12/17/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
The Song of the Lark, by Jules Breton (France). 1884.
The Song of the Lark Ascending

One day I found you:
on another day Bill Murray did too.

My head was shaved at the time.
It was cold;
Chicago in April.

I just wanted to sit
inside.

So I rolled my metallically frozen Chicago-Bean-of-a-head into the Chicago Art Institute.

The Impressionists were well courted:
I moved as a shy planet
orbiting quietly away from the parasouled social centre.

I spun rightrightright-
until I was pulled into a
small square of Space.

I didn’t see you at first.
I saw pink-
no I felt pink-
no not pink-
pinkorangered radiated into my skin.

You were there
barefoot and singing the world into being.

I wondered why Bill Murray
came to you:
he has money
to burn
to fuel his own pinkorangered sun
to keep him warm from Chicago winters.

But maybe both of our baldish heads,
were cold
in the dark Chicago April
and just wanted the wide
soft palm of a
star-and-lark song
to warm us, to re-centre our
lonely orbit.

ginny schneider

Ginny M. Schneider is a human person living in a beigey suburb in Southern California with zero cats, but 6 roommates (which is comparable).  She is trying to live out the West Coast Millennial dream by having a podcast and hoping her part time job pays her rent. Not to be romanticized, the state she loves remains on fire. 

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Solitude, by Mike Dillon

12/17/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
Solitude, by Edward Hopper (USA). 1944.
Solitude

Along a country road he stopped to paint it, where the road runs
through tall grass, yellowed by late summer, toward a cod-belly sky
flushed with marine light.

The road is empty as our short journey between crib and coffin.

The neon shadow of American loneliness reaches even here. And it’s
1944. There’s a war on, though far away. Though far away, there’s a
war.

On the right, a steep roofed, no-nonsense white cottage lacks any sign
of life. Three gaunt evergreens stand between the cottage and the
road. A fourth stands apart from the rest. The tall grass is
undisturbed around the cottage.

There are countless places we hurry past which catch our attention for
a breath-span. And then the scene is gone forever. But it was here
someone said: This is the place. And built a white cottage.

Was it a man alone or with a family? Why did he or they move away --
too much solitude or did the tide of war take him?

Would we have the inner resources to hold out here? We can’t answer.
We don’t have to. We’re mere voyeurs playing the what-if game,
flicking our cape at a bull with no horn.

We who are always passing by on the way to elsewhere. Because we can.

Mike Dillon

Mike Dillon lives in Indianola, Washington, a small town on Puget Sound northwest of Seattle. He is the author of four books of poetry and three books of haiku. Several of his haiku were included in Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years, from W.W. Norton (2013). Departures, a book of poetry and prose about the forced removal of Bainbridge Island’s Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor will be published by Unsolicited Press in April 2019.
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