 Genesis, Mary Lou Payzant (Canada) 2015. Click image for artist site. Blue And the earth was without form and void And darkness was upon the face of the deep And the Spirit of God Moved upon the face of the waters Genesis 1:2 Was earth ever without form? Clay-coloured earthly angel of might Rising from the blue Between field and violet Blue wavelengths Birdwoman, fish figure Gowned in azure-- Head back, arms spread--Hallelujah High-priest breastplate born And the earth was without form Splashing, piercing light But all is not lyric We are burdened with the Bible An excuse for dangerous men To call me angel—sow what they reap Dare I try on robes of snakeskin Take to the sea Full measure replete Darkness upon the face of the deep But all is not parable Nor a firmament of good and evil Mother Earth returns Blows wind into her sail-- Tern, puffin, thick-billed Murre, winter-phase guillemot-- A wet bird beats in your chest Seahorse meets air Wing-tipped pen nib, paint pot The Spirit of God Black-billed mother trails ribbon in her beak Builds nest on rugged shore Stares me in the eye-- Birdwoman looks to her daughters Earth and air release her Upon the face of the waters Sheila Stewart Sheila Stewart has two poetry collections, The Shape of a Throat (Signature Editions) and A Hat to Stop a Train, (Wolsak and Wynn), and a co-edited anthology of poetry and essays, The Art of Poetic Inquiry(Backalong Books). Her work has been published in Canada, Ireland, and the US and recognized by the gritLIT Contest, Pottersfield Portfolio Short Poem Contest, and Scarborough Arts Council Windows on Words. She teaches at the University of Toronto.
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 Apology, by Glenn Brady (Australia) contemporary Lost I’m looking for a word that goes by the name of sorry. She used to be patient and generous before she turned double-faced and I called her a pathetic bitch. She packed her bags and left. I hear she’s taken refuge on a lost-and-found shelf between an umbrella and a purse. I lost my word and found her in a shoe one day, soaked after the rainy season, so I asked her out. She sat by the window of a mom-and-pop restaurant, ordered an extra dry martini like a pro and waited for me, all dressed up. She had all the evidence spread out in front of her under the local paper’s Romance on the Road column. I didn’t even call to say I wasn’t coming. Sometimes I see her from afar, long rosemary-thin fingers crossing bridges and opening doors. Sometimes she tucks me in and lies down beside me, snoring the night away in the starfish position. The other day, I heard her panting while watching me undress from a coin-operated booth, like in a pornographic show. You know I can’t see you, and it excites the hell out of you, doesn’t it? You need to pay the entrance fee, though. Nothing’s free, lady. What if I pulled you out of the audience and asked you to join me? What if I was the one watching, and said – Strip for me. Would you turn me down for fear of what I may (not) find underneath or nod as if guilty because it’d be less embarrassing to go along? You playing a trick on me? she asked. Women are rarely chosen for this shit. Maybe, but you can’t tell as you’ve never been to a sex show. I always wanted to do it with another woman. It could be fun if you left your camera at the door. Some things you just don’t do, like buy drugs off the street or take photos of show girls to laugh at how imperfect they are with the lights on. Over the years, we got into a rut and started resembling longtime married couples – wrinkled sheets every day, once a week, once a year, year after year, drifting to the other side of the bed, separate beds, separate bedrooms, fragments of lava fuming and sizzling, moving out and in and out, and at some point I began to shudder at the thought of her. I hated her slicked-back hair, rolled-up sleeves and other pretentious bullshit. I hated the taste of her on my tongue and gave her the finger. When we got back together, I took a sadistic pleasure in beating her up repeatedly. She tried to break up with me but I assured her I’d change, and she stayed. I kept her chained up in the cold basement while she waited an eternity for me to think again. She’d reach out for the door but it slammed shut. I held her captive till she admitted she had never existed and I forgot what she’d love me to remember. Bojana Stojcic Bojana Stojcic teaches, bitches, writes, bites and tries to breathe in between. Her poetry and prose have appeared in over 30 publications, including Rust + Moth, Anti-Heroin Chic, Barren Magazine, The Opiate, BHP, Mojave Heart Review, Okay Donkey, Spelk Fiction, Eunoia Review and X-R-A-Y. Her flash was a finalist in the 2019 Midway Journal’s -1000 Below: Flash Prose and Poetry Contest. She blogs at Coffee and Confessions to go.  Sunday Papers, W.86th Street, NYC, 1922, by Edward Steichen (USA, b. Luxembourg) 1922 Fire Escape Most summer nights the three of us slept on that fire-escape-- crammed together like a litter of baby rabbits. Mr. Nestor downstairs complained he couldn’t keep his windows up because of the racket. Remember the time we let Joey sleep through the downpour. We stood by the window, stomped our feet and laughed like only brothers can. He was one tough little guy. His mouth and dad’s belt like those syncopated swimmers at the Olympics in Helsinki. Never a whimper. The only time dad seemed proud was when Joey became a green beret in ’66. He spent twenty-seven days in Nam-- shot in the belly, he bled to death in a rice paddy-- one final soaking. Remember when he finally came in through the window that night, looking like a drowned cat, and climbed right into bed without saying a word. Steve Deutsch Steve Deutsch lives in State College, PA. Over the past two years, his work has appeared in over two dozen print and on line journals. He was nominated for Pushcart Prizes in 2017 and 2018. His chapbook, Perhaps You Can, was published in 2019 by Kelsay Press. His full length book, Persistence of Memory, was recently accepted for publication.  The Best is Yet to Come, by Lorette C. Luzajic (Canada) 2019 Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrastic! We feature some of the most accomplished influential poets writing today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative.
The prompt this time is The Best is Yet to Come, by Lorette C. Luzajic. Deadline is March 6, 2020. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination. 2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. Have fun. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include LUZAJIC WRITING CHALLENGE in the subject line in all caps please. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. Do not send it after acceptance or later; it will not be added to your poem. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. We are sorry about these technicalities, but have found that following up, requesting, adding, and changing later takes too much time and is very confusing. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight, March 6, 2020. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges!  The Lady of Shalott, by William A. Breakspeare (England) between 1872-1903 Bury Me in White Copper shards in Merlot Dense and deep and wealthy Luna pries apart a pristine bower. Crimson tears in hyssop and Splashed across mulberry. Baby's breath grown in red clay. Mother's milk to sickle cells and Pools ripple with salty floes. Miming screams with whispering echoes. Joyful in the spring and Wonderful in the summer. Awful in the autumn. Terrible is the young winter. Michael John Wiese  Starry Night, by Vincent Van Gogh (Netherlands) 1889 Someone Shot the Sun Today It bled into the sky, Bled bright red and pink, until the night was nigh. So the sun thus murdered for yet another day, The stars alight to move around and play. Little eyes of different shades, staring through the night; They twinkle and they wink at me with all their glowing might. All the while I see some grow so weak and tired, They fall right from the very sky so bright and set afire. But the time is what it is and no clock is really broken, And rosy fingered dawn is softly spoken. So the tiny boiling lights seem to turn into a shimmer, And all their winking eyes are suddenly much dimmer. To the east the sky - caught a faint blue-gray, Was it true? Could it be? A star for another day? Birthing into the waters of a sky to be so blue, Came in infant sun to start its life anew. It laboured and it crowned and the sky became so bright. The world was filled in every way and every dark made light. Like the crime forgiven, and all the blood before, The sun had rose in red and pink, with the new day it had bore. Michael John Wiese  Saturn Devouring His Children, by Francisco Goya (Spain) 1819-1823 Goya's Republic They say the Gods live up on the hill, but it hadn't always been so. First, there was infanticide, Native Sons gone to grist and gristle, until patricide reigned only to postpone the tyranny. Then a capital hill rose to a mountain built on lighting and sea and the scent of death Where the Gods still devour the children of the poor in their land. They are guilty too, but pretend they are not. This time, abused Mother Gaia may not have the strength to secret us away, us freshly children of her womb. Michael John Wiese  Judith Slays Holofernes, by Caravaggio (Italy) 1599
Judith's Confession I love running fingers through dark curly hair. Seeing a long sharp nose and strong square chin. You look at me like an army to conquer like I'm meek and mild, but I'm seething with malice. Even while I dance, you're watching at my friend, wondering at her basket, wanting to touch it, rough it, pry it open, leave your mark upon it. If your gaze strays from my hips the truth is in my eyes. Instead, you underestimate me, you undervalue us and you are mistaken. Patriarchy meets the immovable object of the feminine. I am silk in the evening. I am steel in the night. I am creator and destroyer. I am become Savior to my people. Because your locks have lost their luster. Your sparkling eyes turned silent and surprised, unlike my nerves, alight with hope and heat, as I steal through the darkness toward my own lamp. I am liberator and deliverer. I am warrior and an army will tremble in dawn's early light. Michael John Wiese Michael John Wiese is a writer and an inmate in Texas. While incarcerated, he has earned his Associate of Arts degree and is well on his way to a Bachelor of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies. He writes stories, essays, and poetry. Many thanks to his writing mentor Barbara Martinsons for sharing his poetry on his behalf.  Self-Portrait with Speed Graphic Camera, by Weegee (USA) 1944 Weegee: Self-Portrait with Speed Graphic In this shot you’re mostly camera. Weegee and his love you captioned the working print -- bulky, tucked under your chin, it hides everything but your face and hands, neatly manicured as a surgeon’s. Why am I surprised? as if shooting all those cops and corpses were manual labour. Bland and blank, round as the flash reflector, your face says nothing about the ambition that smoldered like a tenement furnace. You hardly look like the canny businessman you were. You made death pay. Murders and fires, you liked to say, my best sellers, my bread and butter. Is that all that kept you behind the wheel each night, the static-burred police radio running down another shooting, another floater? Count it 10 years; 10 years and 10 thousand negatives. Even after you owned every front page, and museums bought your pictures, you made your nightly trawl through the Lower East Side. Who cares if your later work was crap -- cheesy nudes and trick photographs? Who cares what happened when you left New York? You gave us a new way of seeing in the dark. Aaron Fischer This poem appeared in Black Stars of Blood: The Weegee Poems (Main Street Rag). Aaron Fischer spent 30+ years in technology and trade journalism and as an online editor at a news and public-policy website. His poems have appeared in Adelaide Poetry Review, After Happy Hour, American Journal of Poetry, Briar Cliff Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Crosswinds Poetry, Naugatuck River Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and Tishman Review. He has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize, as well as for Best Poetry 2019. His chapbook, Black Stars of Blood: The Weegee Poems was published in 2018 by Main Street Rag.  Welcome to Earth, photography by Donald Brackett (Canada) contemporary WELCOME TO EARTH : YOU TOO CAN BE US “What is essential is invisible to the eye and can only be seen with the heart.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery 1. “HOW TO RECOGNIZE A HUMAN BEING” Gravity plus appetite equals forward motion: We are limited to three dimensions, with the hope of a fourth forming our future. Our bodies are very fragile and our existence is incredibly brief, hence our history: colonizing the void. 2. “HOW TO GREET THE HUMAN CREATURE” Occupying the intermediate zone: We are living radios and living clocks. We have multiple languages saying the same thing without realizing it. Our skins look different but inside we are identical, a fact we frequently forget. Our destiny is unified in absence. 3. “HOW TO TAKE A HUMAN OUT ON A DATE” These are metaphysical mnemonics, for knowing the situation we are in. Our beliefs are based in large part on misinterpreting everything that happens to us. Our living and dying occur without the slightest bit of certainty, apart from the fact that soon everything must disappear before our eyes. 4. “HOW TO ENJOY HUMANIST HUMOUR” Essentials rest below the surface: Remember: any attempt to explain our basic human dilemma, of which all art is an emblem, will inevitably result in paradox, since paradox, and to some extent irony, immediately arises from attempts to express the ineffable. 5. “HOW TO DEAL WITH REJECTION” Accidental archives: An emergency is waiting to happen. My thirst is your thirst : my thirst first. Procedures for a well-timed ending. End of the world productions: because........we cater your dreams. 6. “HOW TO KNOW WHEN ITS TIME TO GO” Slaves of the alphabet: a fence surrounding nothing. Entrance to the large hours: no east or west in dreams. Making of virtue of necessity: the meaning of life is that it ends. 7. “HOW NOT TO BECOME A HUMAN” Mobile enigma. A eulogy for our history: Queen of the earth we worship at your feet. Some things are perfect the way they are. Suddenly the search for the miraculous comes unglued, and we find ourselves in love with being lost. 8. “HOW TO FILL IN THE BLANKS” We have forgotten our names on a landscape fashioned from laughter and tears: so we wait. The armour of our heart is almost unimaginable. Our animals are still hiding deep inside of us. Be careful of befriending us. Donald Brackett Donald Brackett is a Vancouver-based culture journalist and poet who writes about music, art and films, as well as curating film programs for Cinematheque. He is the author of three books with Backbeat Books: on Amy Winehouse, 2016, Sharon Jones, 2018, and Tina Turner, 2020. He is currently working on a new book about the conceptual artist and musician Yoko Ono.  The Bones of the Foot, and Shoulder, by Leonardo Da Vinci (Italy) 1511 The Bones of the Foot, and the Shoulder Charged to finish Agostino's statue he looked for a youth of shape and vigour with the strength to stand perfectly balanced and make his David perfect. He chose me. I became respected, celebrated, my fame a reflection of the artist's illumination. Finished, David will remain forever in the light. I slid, unneeded, into anonymous dark. No-one saw my fall. My bones un-fleshed for the pen of the anatomist. In death I have recovered my fame, my images admired by thousands, though my name is lost. Bert Molsom Bert Molsom retired early to become an apprentice poet, fully understanding apprenticeships last a long time! He has been long-listed for the Bridport Prize, won Poetry on Loan 2016 and his work has been published by Anthropocene and Ink, Sweat and Tears.  Seville Still Life, by Henri Matisse (France) 1911 Seville Still Life An arm chair with a shawl of deep Atlantic blue. A settee the colour of the garrigue patterned with flowers and pink flamingoes, and two end tables draped in the same cloth. And a tablecloth the shade of Seville oranges, all floating on a terra cotta sea. It’s a riot of color, inviting the eye to sit down and eat. From the open window, a fresh breeze is billowing the curtain like a flag. The pleasures of the table reign among other pleasures, said Brillat-Savorin. No food on this table, only a cool white pitcher outlined in blue, a splotch of lemon on its side. But I can imagine a plate of cheeses, a scattering of grapes. I read somewhere that Roquefort is not just a cheese, it’s a complex network of shepherds, dairymen, fromagers, geologists, hewers and haulers, business executives. I put a wedge in my mouth, and a meadow of wildflowers blooms. Matisse’s father said Everything you do is pointless and leads nowhere, and I wonder, where else would you want to be? Barbara Crooker This poem appeared in Barbara Crooker's book, Some Glad Morning (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019.) Barbara Crooker is the author of many books of poetry; Some Glad Morning and Les Fauves are 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, and she has received a number of awards, including the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowships in Literature, and the Fantastic Ekphrastic award of recognition from The Ekphrastic Review for her body of art-inspired writing.  Click book cover to see on Amazon. Dear Friends, I am so grateful for the many wonderful reviews of my new collection, Pretty Time Machine: ekphrastic prose poems. Click here for a review by Bill Arnott at League of Canadian Poets. Click here for a review by poet Alarie Tennille. Click here for a review by Jenene Ravesloot. There are five reader reviews on Amazon, all five star. THANK YOU for your love and support! There are several interviews, reviews, and features coming soon. I'm overwhelmed by the response to this book. love, Lorette |
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