Picasso’s Sister

No matter how carefully I dress,
he will change me. Everything
serves the art Pablo tells me.
I own nothing like this blouse,
ice blue (a plaid!). See how
he sweeps my skirt
into the tobacco background,
turns me into a floating torso.
 
Why can’t he hurry?
My neck throbs, and guitar music
wafts through the window. I want
to run to the plaza and see
who is playing. And oh the smell
of paella, calling to me
from the kitchen!
 
But here I sit. Still. Time drags
while Pablo’s brush dances.
In this house we all serve Pablo
the genius. Any way, at only 18,
how could he afford a real model?
At least he’ll make me beautiful
and seductive, not like a sister.
He’ll make other men want me.
 
He hides one hard-to-paint hand
under a gauzy waterfall of scarf,
lets loose a tendril of hair. He
takes me apart, pieces me together.

Alarie Tennille

Alarie Tennille was born and raised in Portsmouth, Virginia, and graduated from the University of Virginia in the first class admitting women. She became fascinated by fine art at an early age, even though she had to go to the World Book Encyclopedia to find it. Today she visits museums everywhere she travels and spends time at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, where her husband is a volunteer guide. Alarie’s poetry book, Running Counterclockwise, contains many ekphrastic poems. Please visit her at alariepoet.com.

Edvard Munch: Melancholy

Melancholy takes a vacation
by the sea. Sits in the sun, head
in one hand, the other hand a fist.
Surrounding him – the boulders
of his regret and sorrow. He likes
keeping them in view. Whenever
the surf begins to shush his mind,
he scrapes his knuckles
on the stones. Drowning
would be too decisive.
Tomorrow he'll go home
unchanged.

Alarie Tennille

Alarie Tennille was born and raised in Portsmouth, Virginia, and graduated from the University of Virginia in the first class admitting women. She became fascinated by fine art at an early age, even though she had to go to the World Book Encyclopedia to find it. Today she visits museums everywhere she travels and spends time at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, where her husband is a volunteer guide. Alarie’s poetry book, Running Counterclockwise, contains many ekphrastic poems. Please visit her at alariepoet.com.

The Takeover
 
Wild and free, 
the thistle in a field 
sharpens its spine, 
stretches its long neck 
to kiss the sun.

He is a runaway 
this out of control 
prodigal son 
absorbing the heat 
on a hot summer’s day 
racing to see 
who has outgrown him 
in the shortest time 
during the siege   
and takeover. 

He enjoys 
his freedom 
wildly predicting 
his end time 
when he, with all 
the others 
will be cut down.

He is one thistle in a field 
calling for unity. 
 
 Danetta Barney


Danetta Barney is a poet, author, playwright and screenplay writer. Working along side her three siblings, she has formed Write 2 Rise, a business encouraging people to tell their own stories.  She has published two poetry books: Sticks and Stones & Butterflies and Whispers from the Sky (a combination of poems and short skits.)  She has also published a children’s book, The Best of Joy, all which can be purchased on Amazon. Her goal is to travel abroad sharing her gift from God with the world.  Her heartfelt poems and plays are meant to encourage the reader as they travel inside her world of carefully chosen words. 

Po
Adrift
              
I open the door to the drop:
blue-gray strokes of water.
 
Clouds stretch across the sky--
the beginning of a painting
I'll fall into if I leave.
 
Queasy-kneed,             
I watch far-away neighbors: dabs
of color, the children primary hues.
 
I want to grab two
distant trees—slight as twigs from here—    
sturdy as jail bars—pull the house back in place.
 
Holding onto the door frame               
I hear my scream in the hollow throat of sky:    
the tongue of water laps it up.
 
Inside everything's usual: my paintings slightly awry
windows to different worlds,
some abstractly underwater.   
 
I pick up the toneless phone,
run to the sink: running water
(scattered on the counter: tubes of paint, two brushes like small oars);         
 
I check the pantry, gauge how long I can survive;
the apple I bite is real.
Drifting impalpably, the house carries me.
 
I dash to the bedroom—expect
to see myself asleep.
Or painting, painting this nightmare, this serene terror.
   
From a dry vase I snatch a spray of bittersweet
—skid off firm orange berries--
by the door set it aflame: a futile wisp of gray rises;       
 
orange heat descends toward my hand. I drop
the burning branch—it floats
 
yards below.

Laura Glenn

This poem first appeared in Poet's Lore, and also in Laura Glenn’s first book of poems, I Can’t Say I’m Lost, which was published by FootHills Publishing. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including, The Antioch Review, Boulevard, Cortland Review, Epoch, Green Mountains Review, Poet Lore, Poetry, and Smartish Pace. She is working on a second full-length book of poems. Glenn is a Pushcart nominee, and the recipient of a CAP fellowship in poetry as well as a poetry grant from AE Ventures. Along with other poets, she is currently presenting a multimedia ekphrastic show at various venues. Also a visual artist, she lives in Ithaca, NY, where she works as a freelance editor.

Elegy for the Luminous
 
After centuries,
pink roses remain dewy—a few weighed down
by headiness. You'd like to inhale the golden-orange freesias: not a scent
 
of turpentine. Crocuses open beaklike, snowdrops droop,
colors swirl up Rembrandt tulips,  
persimmon lilies arc
 
backward in the vase aswarm with flowers
of every season—combinations
no gardener ever saw.
                                                                         
          In your garden one loveliness replaces another
          or shoots drown in their roots in an eyesore
          patch of earth you can't paint over.
 
          Winter gessoes your canvas white.
          You sketch on it with a stick
          and dream of seeds—their hidden pigment. Eternally pink
 
petals collect at the bottom
of this Dutch Still Life,  
where grape hyacinths spike up, and higher—star delphiniums.
 
Poised leaflike on a stem, the subtle butterfly’s beyond delirium.
Despite the museum window’s darkening landscape,
despite the pithy insights on the painting's placard,
 
you don’t notice—farther down the wall--
the framed timepiece, mirror, skull,
 
but admire the lushness of the peony,
the creamy yellow strokes of composite,
the unblinking delft verbena.
 
The lizard
lolling in the shadow, deepened by age,                    
takes in the viewer who, forgetting the reaper, gleans               
 
the moment, and wanting all bounty, all seasons             
at once, loses sight
of the heavy frame.

Laura Glenn

This poem appeared in Bookpress Quarterly and in Like an Index of the Fragile World, as well as in Laura Glenn’s first book of poems, I Can’t Say I’m Lost, published by FootHills Publishing. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including, The Antioch Review, Boulevard, Cortland Review, Epoch, Green Mountains Review, Poet Lore, Poetry, and Smartish Pace. She is working on a second full-length book of poems. Glenn is a Pushcart nominee, and the recipient of a CAP fellowship in poetry as well as a poetry grant from AE Ventures. Along with other poets, she is currently presenting a multimedia ekphrastic show at various venues. Also a visual artist, she lives in Ithaca, NY, where she works as a freelance editor.

Your Self-Portrait Pointed Me To You Without You Knowing It
 
 
You conjured this mask
before we met.
 
                        The smoked wine glass and fluted vase,
                        one faceted paperweight and sorrowed stems
 
of bent barley, kept me refreshing the screen.
What I found there
                       
                        along the horizon of your photograph,
                        was a floating mirror, rimmed with kitchen foil
 
in which the grief-stricken gaze of a woman--
perhaps the artist—called out this viewer--
 
                        half in magic,
                        half in tarnished light.
                       
We needed a way to regenerate our lives.
Think luminescence and blue water, voices and an invisible bell.
 
                        Your face transformed into its own alchemical vessel.
                        On my computer, a pixilated trace.
                       
 


Susan Rich

Susan Rich has written two essays on writing about visual art, Entering the Picture  and Dark Room.  Susan is the author of four poetry collections including Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue: Poems of the World (White Pine Press). She is a co-editor of The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Crossing Borders (Poetry Foundation) and has received awards from The Times Literary Supplement (London), PEN USA, and the Fulbright Foundation. Rich’s poems appeared in the Harvard Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and World Literature Today.

Carol Sawyer is a singer and visual artist working primarily with photography, installation, video, and improvised music. Since the early 1990s her visual art work has been concerned with the connections between photography and fiction, performance, memory, and history. She performs regularly with her improvising ensemble ion Zoo (with whom she has released two CDs) and in other ad hoc improvising ensembles. Her work is represented by Republic Gallery, Vancouver.

Your Still Life Builds A Home Inside My Head
 
In the late afternoon hour we lose an f-stop
as light bleeds out of the bandaged sky--
 
and like phantom detectives with wide-brimmed hats
 
we re-examine the drop cloth, the passport,
the magnetized colour of 4 ‘o’ clock air.
 
In this ghost harbour, we re-arrange
 
pipe stands and glass slides. We multi-task tabletops
where objects could topple at anytime--
 
left or right--let them topple!
 
Here in the land of deferred decisions,
a hand-painted gazing ball reflects on a floating scroll.
 
In this alchemical mirror, in this ark of a studio--
 
built out of instinct and breath, through windows
clouded and clear--
 
under the sign of the light metre--
 
I’ll meet you here: a bright space I’ll keep inside my head.
Another country      another life still new.

Susan Rich

Susan Rich has written two essays on writing about visual art, Entering the Picture  and Dark Room.  Susan is the author of four poetry collections including Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue: Poems of the World (White Pine Press). She is a co-editor of The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Crossing Borders (Poetry Foundation) and has received awards from The Times Literary Supplement (London), PEN USA, and the Fulbright Foundation. Rich’s poems appeared in the Harvard Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and World Literature Today.