Pink Studio

Show me the world
as pink confection
no walls or corners
to educate the eye
it’s an origami toy
unfolded
dimensions down
to planes and pattern
in a joyous calligraphy
a bright scribble
denying all the old
conventions
restoring art
to where it started
in play’s divine
enchantment

Mary C. McCarthy

Mary McCarthy has always been a writer, but spent most of her working life as a Registered Nurse. She has had many publications in journals, including Earth's Daughters, Caketrain, and The Evening Street Review, among others. She has only recently discovered the vibrant poetry communities on the internet, where there is so much to explore and enjoy.

This poem was written as part of the ekphrastic 20 Poem Challenge.

The Unexpected Beauty of Imperfect Things

Floating
On the water,
drifting in the breeze.
Live oak limbs caressing
rippling surfaces,
sunlight crystallizing ,
fading, dancing
with the shadows.
Bullfrogs and loons
in chorus,
As I sit in canoe quietness
enjoying 'shalom' in the
Sanctity of the swamp.

Robert Thiessen

This poem was written for the 20 Poem Challenge.

Robert Thiessen worked at General Motors for forty years and is now retired. These poems from the 20 Poem Challenge are his first.

Untitled

a long journey
through twilight shade
as gift of nature
I embrace the darkness
the light of my inner thought

Pravat Kumar Padhy

Pravat Kumar Padhy, a graduate and Ph.D from IIT-Dhanbad, loves to blend science with literature. His
short form of Japanese poems have appeared in The World Haiku Review, Lynx,The Notes from the Gean,
Atlas Poetica, Simply Haiku, Red lights, Ribbons, Haigaonline, World Haiku Association, TanshiArt, The
Heron’s Nest, Atlas Poetica, Skylark, Shamrock, A Hundred Gourds, Bottle Rockets, Frogpond, hedgerow,
Acorn, Kokako, Presence, Issa’s Untidy Hut, The Bamboo Hut, Modern Haiku, tinywords etc. Recently his
tanka have been anthologized in Fire Pearls 2 and Bright Stars, edited by M Kei. His haiku won the
Editor’s Choice Award at the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, Canada UNESCO International Year of
Water Co-operation and The Kloštar Ivanić International Haiku Contest, Creatrix Haiku Commendation
Award.
http://pkpadhy.blogspot.com

Untitled

the brilliance
of cosmic dance
god particle
at the sparkled centre
radiates blissful rays

Pravat Kumar Padhy

Pravat Kumar Padhy, a graduate and Ph.D from IIT-Dhanbad, loves to blend science with literature. His
short form of Japanese poems have appeared in The World Haiku Review, Lynx,The Notes from the Gean,
Atlas Poetica, Simply Haiku, Red lights, Ribbons, Haigaonline, World Haiku Association, TanshiArt, The
Heron’s Nest, Atlas Poetica, Skylark, Shamrock, A Hundred Gourds, Bottle Rockets, Frogpond, hedgerow,
Acorn, Kokako, Presence, Issa’s Untidy Hut, The Bamboo Hut, Modern Haiku, tinywords etc. Recently his
tanka have been anthologized in Fire Pearls 2 and Bright Stars, edited by M Kei. His haiku won the
Editor’s Choice Award at the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, Canada UNESCO International Year of
Water Co-operation and The Kloštar Ivanić International Haiku Contest, Creatrix Haiku Commendation
Award.
http://pkpadhy.blogspot.com

I am so happy to announce my newly released collection of reflections on art.

Truck, and Other Thoughts on Art
Lorette C. Luzajic
an Idea Fountain edition, 2015
click on title or image to view or purchase on Amazon.
MANY THANKS!

Raising the Bar

Come along, mate,
Let us cross this concourse of coincidences and pray before this
ever-evaporating deity of oblivion.
And offer the termite hills of our doubts
at the altar of this counter-god.

Placed before his liquid justice
is our shared compendium of one mind
two heads and four arms in the form
of some kind of a binary or joke.

Are we algebraically trying to tie up
the imponderables like
mind, head and means,or just
offering up our movables like
money and matrimony and
immovables like kids and tits.

But the new mind is a dumb platform
like meadows are just mud
And the means as always converges
to come-what-may.

Any which way, let us not go slow
into contrition
into oblivion.

S. Jagathsimhan Nair

This poem was written for the 20 Poem Challenge.

S. Jagathsimhan Nair is the author of three poetry collections, and has also been published in various anthologies.

Monet’s Mirage
 
Twilight on the Seine: the river plucks
sugared plums from a vista too rich
for so humble a sight. A stroke of yoke
clucks, broods over a custard flourish,
(though it honeys the jolt of aubergine.)
Listen as Heather hums brightly to Violet,   
Vive la rose de les villages, while green
dances the Farandole.  An artful quiet
snubs the pleas of black-headed gulls,
shuns each lick of  russet—no roe deer
are welcomed here.  If you seek Cattails,
best look elsewhere. Still, how cavalier
the balm of mauve, prudently winsome,
a mirage well worth the cull of crimson.
 
 Cyndi MacMillan

This poem was written for the 20 Poem Challenge.

Cyndi MacMillan poetry has recently appeared in Grain Magazine and the Fieldstone Review.  Her verse, short fiction and novel-in-progress resentfully compete for her attention.  She lives in New Hamburg, Ontario, home to North America’s largest working water wheel. Coffee and family allow ideas to percolate.

Today

Thrift shops.
Flea markets.
Second hand venues.
Old stuff.
Used stuff.
Nostalgia.
Old signs.
Old tools.
Rusty cast iron.
Wagon wheels.
Relics.
Antiques.
Attempting to pull yesterday into today.
Eternity in our hearts.
Remembering the past.
Anticipating the future.
Trying to claw the future back.

Robert Thiessen

This poem was written as part of the 20 Poem Challenge.

Robert Thiessen worked at General Motors for forty years, and is now retired. The works he did for the 20 Poem Challenge are his first poems.

Vincent's Stars

Did you get lost?
Lost in swirl of swirl
Cobalt blue sweeping ocean
Strokes upon the sky
 
Were you drawn in?
Big mustard moon hanging
Hanging heavy within your sun-shaped star
Spiraling in pulse, above
Your quiet little town
 
Your sky throbs. 
It throbs and rolls bloody veins  
Fiercely pulsating
Turbulent sky
 
I barely see your neat sleeping town, nestled, snug
Roofs smooth as rosary beads
Poking, that sharp steeple pricking
Your already tormented sky
 
And you Mr. Poplar, the sentry guard
Of charcoal mane and lion’s roar,
Do you reach high
High up to other worlds
Other minds
Lost in your turbulent starry sky?

Heather Browne

This poem was previously published by the Poetry Quarterly

Heather M. Browne is a faith-based psychotherapist, recently nominated for the Pushcart Award, published in the Orange Room, Boston Literary Review, Page & Spine, Eunoia Review, Poetry Quarterly, Red Fez, Electric Windmill, Apeiron, The Lake, Knot, mad swirl.  Red Dashboard  released her first collection, Directions of Folding.

Follow her: www.thehealedheart.net