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Ekphrastic Responses: Sophie Taueber Arp

3/26/2021

1 Comment

 
Picture
Composition, by Sophie Taeuber Arp (Switzerland) 1931
Dear Readers and Writers,

Once again, we have a stunning collection of literary pieces considering an artwork from many perspectives. We had a lot of submissions for this work. Writing about an artwork that is not traditionally pictorial is both challenging and liberating. It can take some imagination to find the story, but on the other hand, the direction is not limited by the suggestions of the artist.

Again, we thank every single person who joins us. You are part of something amazing! Every two weeks, we come together, apart, from different places and spaces in the world, contemplating a painting. Then we share our words. The Ekphrastic Review is honoured to be the vessel that reveals your words to each other and to the world. Whether or not your work was chosen to post, you have created something new, inspired by someone else's creation. This is no small thing. It is mightily symbolic of the power of creativity, imagination, and communication. We honour the artists before us by giving careful contemplation to their work. And we discover their stories, their culture, their world, while thinking through and expressing something of ours.

I cannot thank you all enough for being part of this incredible community. 

love, Lorette

​**


​Sophie Composing
 
rolling
playful circles through your life’s lines
your art
 
bounces
with passion, with rhythm, your body’s
quick beat
 
taps out
geometry; triangles, polygons, spheres
constructed
 
with
precision, your shapes, skilfully balanced,
in harmony
 
you tame
your palette, paint those spaces that seem
so simple
 
yet animate
a canvas that drips pure razzmatazz, joy
and impro
 
as you orbit
the cosmos inside Sophie’s cabaret where
art is
 
 jazz dance


Dorothy Burrows

Based in the United Kingdom, Dorothy Burrows enjoys writing poems, flash fiction and short plays. Over the past year, her poems have appeared on various websites including The Ekphrastic Review. A new poem is forthcoming in Spelt Magazine and another in The Alchemy Spoon.
​
**
​
Composition
​

Four quadrants,
Off-kilter,
Like a silver screen set, shot
For an unbalanced mind.

Two topsy-turvy squares
Bounce off axis edges
Imperfect as
DVD screensaver logos.

The only order lies with the jouster,
One circle mounted on another,
Lance tilted towards
Some offscreen enemy,

Or either a cross spotlit
By blue gray colour gels,
Markers indicating the saviour
And those who mourned him,

Or two pies,
One quartered,
The other halved,
Both whole and wholly capturing
The I.

Ian Evans

Ian Evans is a writer and teacher with his B.A. in English and an Ed.M. in Secondary English Education. He is co-author of "The Mechanic," a graphic poem, and his poetry has appeared previously in The Ekphrastic Review. He lives in Highland Park, New Jersey, with his wife, who is also a writer and teacher.

**

Her Patterns Emerge by Chance

the canvas has no smell or taste
the kitchen, a blank a hallucination
I see the point where four tiles join
in solidity and silence
I feel the oxygen in her blood
disappearing
suffocated from the inside out
what’s the damage to her
cosmic metaphor, her subversive
abstraction the way she danced
in the kitchen and at Cabaret Voltaire
the plasticity of her transition
into red, grey, black
ping pictures
a synthesis of decomposition
an incorrectly operated stove
and her friends cut with the kitchen knife 
Dada
slide like a yellow line through the blue
like carbon monoxide a conduit 
into an obscure and awkward dance,
polychromal chance the leftover trace
of a strange premonition
which has no smell or taste
 
Lydia Trethewey

Lydia Trethewey is an artist and writer from Perth, Western Australia. She is currently undertaking a PhD in poetry at Curtin University, exploring experiences of nascent queerness through expanded forms of ekphrasis. She works as a sessional academic teaching art history and theory at Curtin University, where she also received her PhD in fine art. She has exhibited her art in Australia, China and Spain. Her poetry has been published in Australia and the United States. 

**

Life's  Juxtaposition of Composition 
 
Life's juxtaposition 
A lack of alignment 
Sometimes we move in concentric circles 
Following circadian rhythm 
Or randomly staking position; 
Do we strive to find common ground 
Security in similarity  
Or defined by individuality? 
Free radicles are we who find our way 
Through choice; 
I trace the rainbow through the rain, 
The drops which slip with random lines 
Down the glass; 
I move through rooms  
like chess in play;  
I compose a thought 
And find my path.  

Ruth Partridge

Ruth Partridge: "In my first year of writing poetry, I have simply been impressed by the response from people who have encouraged and wanted to read it.   I am a primary school teacher – the English lead in a large primary school in South Devon, England During lockdown I turned to running the local lanes and found myself immersed in nature. I started to Blog – wwwrunningintheslowlanelife.com , and quickly found inspiration from reading the poetry of others and turned to crafting my own . I have recently turned to self -publishing my first book  – Running in the Slow Lane- an anthology available on Amazon."

**

The Path Home 
 
Outside my window, the sun and moon 
are next to each other in the sky. 
The light fills with shadow. 
 
I am on the ground, praying. 
The man outside is bleeding. 
The man outside is being mocked. 
 
A storm is brewing, the wind shakes 
my house. Everyone runs back home. 
Everyone is afraid of their mistake. 
 
The man mutters something to the clouds. 
His body goes limp. His mother weeps, 
throws fistfuls of dirt. 
 
It is Sunday, and the birds are singing. 
The neighbourhood whispers of death. 
The neighbourhood whispers of rebirth. 
 
I have come to the river, where others 
are lining up. I have come to the river 
to fall back into the water.

Kerri Vasilakos

Kerri Vasilakos is a writer from Long Island, New York who is currently living in Georgia. She earned her BA in English- Creative Writing at Southern New Hampshire University and has had her poems featured in their Creative Writing Clubs Newsletters. Kerri also owns a spiritual counseling business with her fiancé that focuses on holistic healing and energy work. She has a deep faith, and a passion for guiding others along their healing journey. Kerri is also a gifted artist and a cat lover. Her poems have been featured in the Penman Review.

**


A New Day

Clap, clap, clap. The sky is ablaze with lighted hands clapping. An equal number of feet join the dance and there is no need for radio or television. Covid19 seems trapped in some bubbles and squares or rectangles. Everywhere else calm seems to be prevailing. I finally wear my gold sheer stilettoes, a sweater dress in red, hold a clutch in gold, red gloss on my lips, and go out. I see cubes driving cars and cars are circles. Buildings are thin and straight into the clouds, and grass is grown on thin lengths of reeds. Many hued shops and neon signs gesture with a forefinger pointing at us from restaurant tops. Rest is hidden, cut by huge scissors that hang from the sky. I see myself and you as two tiny shadows between the ridges and ache to touch. The music is loud, and you are not there in flesh to dance with me. I am alone in all the circles and keep swirling like dervishes in a trance that seems to go on forever. I run helter-skelter, opening all the doors till I see my bed all neat and ready. I don’t waste time and let no haunts visit my dreams either. Next morning is fresh like a newly plucked orange and as I sip the juice, the phone rings. “Corona took him.” Residue of the second shot in my arm hurts but it’s a new day.

Anita Nahal

Anita Nahal, Ph.D., CDP is a poet, professor, short story writer, flash fictionist, and children’s writer. She teaches at the University of the District of Columbia, Washington D.C. Besides academic publications, her creative books include, two volumes of poetry, a collection of flash fictions, four children’s books and three edited anthologies. Her third book of poetry is scheduled for release in December 2021 by Kelsay Books. Her poems and stories can be found in national and international journals in the US, Uk, Asia and Australia. Nahal’s poems are also housed at Stanford University’s Digital Humanities initiative, and she is also a columnist and guest contributing editor for New York based Aaduna. Two books of Nahal's are prescribed on university syllabus at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. Nahal is the daughter of Indian novelist and professor, Late Dr. Chaman Nahal, and educationist  mother, Late Dr. Sudarshna Nahal. Originally from New Delhi, India, Anita Nahal resides in the US. Her family include her son, daughter-in-law and their golden doodle. For more on Anita: https://anitanahal.wixsite.com/anitanahal

**

Rumination 
 
The equilibrium of life  
is skewed. Unsettled by a miasma
of doubt, misgiving. Sisyphus’ stone  
doubled, gravity a raconteur  
of woe.  
 
Midnight blue existential
overload. Parallel lives  
stray from their course, 
perpendicular moments behold 
delayed denouement. 
 
Who knew the deconstruction  
of disenchantment 
to be an art? The spheres fallen  
from the heavens 
chiming their discord. 
 
All the while I long  
for soft embellishments, 
curved interludes of meaning, 
colour unyielding 
to the precision of cynicism. 
 
I yearn for worlds 
that have long  
rolled past. Asymmetrical  
freehand wonder. 
Points of intersection 
 
not entirely linear. 

Siobhán Mc Laughlin

Siobhán is a poet from Co. Donegal in Ireland. Her poems have been published before in The Ekphrastic Review, including some Ekphrastic challenges, as well as literary journals online including The Honest Ulsterman, Quince Magazine, Drawn to the Light Press, The Poetry Village, The Trouvaille Review and forthcoming in Bealtaine magazine. She blogs about writing at: www.a-blog-of-ones-own.blogspot.com and is currently looking forward to partaking in the NaPoWriMo Challenge for the month of April. 

**

But What Does It Mean, Sophie?

To have a name that means wisdom and knowledge, and

To live in an era when wisdom was kicked front and back by the
bootheels of two irrational wars, and

To earn your supper selling handcrafted drawstring purses, though
you’ve authored a textbook , edited a magazine, and been the founding
faculty member of an art department, and

To be remembered best for a Dadaist head shaped like a hatmaker’s
block, the way Georgia O’Keeffe is remembered best for paintings of
flowers, and

To pose for a photograph holding the bowling-pin face of your
sculpture in front of your cheery smile, so your left iris is hidden
behind its painted mouth, which holds not a tongue but a watchful eye,
and

To remember your father’s life veering away from you like Haley’s
Comet, ending as your life began, leaving five children orphaned when
he died of TB, almost before you were old enough to walk, and

To choose for your canvases the shapes of pill tablets, chemistry
beakers, test tubes, while calling them studies of “Circles” and
“Personnages” –  you, a pharmacist’s daughter, and

To be the life partner of an artist lionized for his organic forms,
while pursuing your own increasingly geometric vision, and

To be invited to decorate the interior of a public arts center, then
have your work covered over because the public couldn’t accept the
architect’s choice of a modern, Mondrian-inspired aesthetic, and

To weave tactile tapestries with delicious, saturated melon colours and
thick, wooly fibers, featuring patterns of hyperbolas, the double-Ess
motif of waistbands and hourglasses, and

To sketch swirling, curlicued serifs, to cut them out and layer them,
like peek-a-boo stacks of calligraphy, or Burmester curves – those
elegant drafting tools indispensable to both couturiers and engineers,
and

To title these works “Design” and “Shell,” and

To live in the same Germany, at the same time, as the esteemed
mathematician Emmy Noether,  colleague of Hilbert, praised by
Einstein, creator of theorems indispensable to quantum mechanics, who
nonetheless, being female, was denied a salary for the first decade of
her teaching career, and

To build marionettes for a puppet play –  an eight-armed robot soldier
with a tank-turret head, gold-antlered King Stag -- and to give the
king’s retinue of pantalooned clowns feet like a pig’s or a horse’s
hooves, made of amputated cones, and

To speak a language in which style rhymes with distill, frustum rhymes
with frustration, and your patronymic could be taken as a pun for
“deaf,” or for “dove”  – and

To forgo signing your artwork most of your career, and

To laugh anyway, to dance anyway, to dress like Nijinsky did in
Diaghilev’s ballets, to dare to love, to be enthusiastic, to
ceaselessly explore, and

To save your most private thoughts – perhaps – for your work, writing
them in the language of Euclid and Pythagoras, of Newton and Hypatia,
a language that requires no translator, only an alert and open mind;
and

To know that your secret message – dynamic as a unicyclist, balanced
as an equation, precarious as the past, and thrilling as your
uncertain future  –  can wait for as long as it takes, until a reader
arrives who can recognize it.
 
K. Roberts

K Roberts is a non-fiction writer who also trained in art and design.

**

Off to Join the Circus

Geometry is fun! says my already most hated teacher of the year. What a waste – a nerd who looks like he majored in modelling. 
 
Now what? He’s passing out plastic bags filled with geometric shapes cut from construction paper, felt markers, and a glue stick. What is this? Kindergarten?
 
Tonight you’re going to play with lines, curves, angles, and shapes. Move things around. Cut things apart. Experiment. Please, please, go beyond snowmen, beach balls, and houses. 

Surprise yourselves! There will be prizes for thinking outside of the square!
 
I’m so NOT going to love geometry, but at least I like art. Maybe I can impress Mr. Looks enough to be lenient when we get to the hard stuff. But, by the time I get home, I’m too tired even for a snack. I drop on the sofa and nap.
 
Now I’m walking the high wire at a circus. I look down, down, down at the tiny people pointing at me. I smile like I know what I’m doing. No worries! (That’s how I know I’m dreaming.) By the time I wake, my art’s creating itself.
 
Viewers look up at the tent top, see me practically rolling down the tightrope that slopes downhill. I counterbalance by leaning back. My balance pole is more a cross – the one I have to bear.
 
The red shape angled below me is a foam ramp. Clowns wheel it along to catch me should I fall. The pointy black thing?  That’s the fear I’m facing down.

Alarie Tennille

Alarie Tennille was born and raised in Portsmouth, Virginia, and graduated from the University of Virginia in the first class admitting women. For Alarie, looking at art is the surest way to inspire a poem, so she’s made The Ekphrastic Review home. (She confesses she was once a math nerd, too,)  Alarie was honoured to receive one of the Fantastic Ekphrastic Awards for 2020. She hopes you’ll check out her poetry books on the Ekphrastic Book Shelf  and visit her at alariepoet.com.​

**

​Cross Hairs

Geometric, angular, circular,
sallow gray, Democrat blue,
death black, blood red,
blue caught in cross hairs
blue is the head
gray the body
red the blood
the black of the limo
lighter gray surrounding all,
open air, open car
November twenty-two 1963,
Dealey Plaza, Dallas,
cross hairs to the head
hair trigger
blackness of death:
Prophecy.

Stephen Poole

Stephen Poole served for 31 years in the Metropolitan Police in London, England. As a freelance journalist, he has written for a variety of British county and national magazines. Passionate about poetry since boyhood, his poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Poetry on the Lake, LPP Magazine, and two anthologies.

**

Sophie Taeuber Arp

Artist extraordinaire’, Switzerland’s Sophie Taeuber was raised in her mother’s
Bed and breakfast, after the untimely death of her pharmacist father
Confined to his room no longer, his daughter wept while removing the colourful drawings 
Daddy loved, she moved on to art school in time for the Dada movement, an anti-
Establishment idea rebuking WWII- a slaughter in trenches while the world kept turning
Formal instruction at St. Gallen meant learning how to break rules, utilizing art as a weapon,
Galvanizing artists hands as a means of insurrection, a protest with brush strokes
Hans Arp, poet and sculptor, was first her collaborator, then her husband. They 
Inspired one another, delving into Cubism, Constructionism, and the Avant-garde, 
Juxtaposing different techniques, they were the ultimate coupler, encouraging
Knowledge and exploration of artistic expression, challenging one another to
Lean towards the unexplored, the depths of the soul, to bring forward
Mastery of the self, to express the universal struggle of all mankind
Never one to limit her reach, Taeuber-Arp danced to her own tune,
Orchestrating a life of teaching, starring as a (masked) chanteuse in the Cabaret Voltaire 
Paris in the 20’s was tailor-made for her unconventional spirit, and Sophie bucked
Quotidian ideas of womanhood in the early 1900’s, a person of true
Renaissance, she defied being put in a box, crafting beaded purses and 
Spectral choreography with equal passion and fervor, her art was both 
Transcending and urbane, encompassing traditional lines in new ways
Until her untimely death at age fifty-three, she continued to exhibit 
Verve and ebullient energy in her art and her life, never 
Wasting a chance to expand her visionary exploration, refusing the 
Xenic moral codes set for females of the time, forestalling fame in her hometown,
Zurich, until her portrait was chosen to posthumously grace the 50 Swiss Franc note.

Debbie Walker-Lass

Debbie Walker-Lass lives and writes in North Decatur, Georgia. 

**

Shapes Speak to Me From the Canvas
 
I listen to the canvas before me: Jostling for position to speak directly to me, these shapes spoke to me. Each told a slightly different tale and I do not know which is true. I have accepted each, all into my heart. Judging among them is left to you.
 
Black triangle on the side: Together we will make a house with a grand triangular front. Sun, a blue round ball, will smiled and shine on us, its blue(with gray shadow) means cool calm of winter skies without storm, not the intense yellow of summer. There will be heat but not enough to melt the snow that fills and whitens the flat lots all around our house, separated into lots by thin black fences, waiting for us to venture out into the world, wearing our green skies, stopping now and then with an x where we’ve marked the spot with their x.
 
Gray ball speaks: With an engineer’s precision, we are laid out here to no special purpose, a still life of shapes, culled from a child’s  pile of shape and color blocks. Taken straight from the toybox by the child, she has laid out upon the tile floor and now pleased with that effort called the artist to depict what she has made. I see this child will not  take the path of frilly dresses and doll’s tea parties that others might see for her. I think she will be an engineer. I am her favorite block, me, the simple gray. She says I shine and reflect the light. The artist makes a picture out of her creation and she smiles.
 
Red box, partly seen: I shake my head and wonder why they see such fancies in our pattern. Let me tell you what you see before you. “The practice ground is deserted now. All that’s left is their equipment, no time to put it away before they must be at their desks. The balls, blocks, the sticks and poles, the odd box like myself that is supposed to hold the balls and sticks we are all here, scattered about where we were when the last horn sounded. Sports now stilled, the children at desks are yearning to play again. Perhaps they left it all out for after school when we plain shapes will take up our roles in wild play of suns gone mad, of battles, balls, and fierce struggles for the crown. When those little heads now bowed over lessons of mathematics and geography will burst out of those sterile rooms on churning legs, they will pick we objects up and breathe us into life again.
 
To the artist from me, the observer: Were these bits of fruit in a still life I would think we had a scene of life as it once was—alas , Sophia you depict what we have today—color, shape, and style, arranged just so, but devoid of life, merely shapes, carefully put in order but with no life of their own—unless you believe one of the tales your canvas told me.
 
Joan Leotta
​
Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. Her poems, essays, and articles, have been published or are forthcoming in Visual Verse, Verse Virtual, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Pine Song, The Ekphrastic Review, Potato Soup, Eastern Iowa Review, Mystery Tribune, and others. She’s been a Tupelo 30/30 writer and Gilbert Chappell Fellow. Her chapbook, Languid Lusciousness with Lemon, is out from Finishing Line Press. Other poetry works available are: Nature’s Gifts is free online with Stanzaic Stylings, Dancing Under the Moon and  Morning by Morning, mini-chapbooks published with Origami Press, both free, online. When not hunched over a computer or performing, she enjoys sitting at table, laughing, and talking with friends and family.Her short stories are in Mystery Tribune and other journals. She performs personal and folk tales featuring food, family, and strong women. When she is not at computer or in front of a crowd, she roams local beaches in search of seabirds to photograph and seashells to collect.

**


Dada 

The mood was like the first day of Creation, Arp and Sophie re-inventing the world… 
Claire Goll  
 
You spat out your first word, wet and smooth as river stones  
in the pockets of the world. 
 
You tried your eyes and found only windows to look into.   
You noticed  
 
The panes were other planes of existence,  
The frame existed without its master  
 
As the perfect form of a circle: anthracite apple,  
Cerulean rib, a long toothed ouroboros,  
 
Two snakes made an innocent black cross 
to nail composition to.  
 
You noticed time is a straight line. 
You noticed time is a circle, bringing me back to you.

Alice Watts-Jones

A Welsh-speaking poet living in Canton, Alice graduated with a master’s degree from Edinburgh University and is continuing her postgraduate studies at Cardiff University. She writes about what she loves: mythology, philosophy, art, and absurdity. You can find her on Instagram @alice_wattsjones.

**

Snow Leopard and Ibex 

for Ejaz Rahim & Lloyd Jacobs 
after Composition by Sophie Taeuber Arp (Switzerland), 1931 C.E. 
 
here the ink has rushed out of the nib as a famished snow leopard rushes out of her cave at the end of hibernation season to hunt an ibex or two in the himalayas. her resolve usually turns into a treat—one of a kind—for onlookers, if she has a hungry cub or two to feed, too. sometimes the nature itself is in a dire rush. so i need not to be so hard on homo sapiens for their propensity to rush things and/or rush into things. apparently. the nature and time and space aren’t always on their side either. well, as far as space is concerned, i think i can get my mind around it; but time: i am not too certain that it even exists! i think, on many instances previously, i have already scrutinized the concept of clock amply, but perhaps, i haven’t performed a comprehensive autopsy on it, thus far. the reason as to why it keeps finding its way into my verses. the last four to five verses, or sentences, if you prefer, were not intended to be a part of this composition, though. but i suppose, i decided not to get in the way of the ink and the nib and allowed myself to be devoured by this tsunami-of-letters as it flowed naturally, instead. and again, the last four words—before the last word in the last verse—weren’t necessary either. but i don’t think i should be so hard on this stylo and its storage compartment and its mistress—namely the lady nib—leading the way for the refill cartridge. if anything at all, i ought to be utterly grateful to them all for their company. after all, they have been the witnesses to many, many histories; all manner of histories—histories of man and beast alike. the only thing is: on this occasion, i was that starving leopard. but i think you have gathered that already by now. and in the rush of chase, i even forgot to properly tend to the capitals and punctuation and line breaks and paragraphs and grammar, in general, here. and it still feels as if i haven’t been able to hunt a word or two, at all. but even if i let this chase continue, i know that nature and wo/man and beast and language and pen and paper and history and all will become breathless after a very short while of chasing me. so, i think i ought not to be so hard on them all. so, i think i had better resolve to containing this rush of/for composition now for now. 
 
Saad Ali

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.

**

Composition of Guilt

we find eyes in all shapes
ghosts of purpose, signals lit to fire
circles that come to life at night

soft prisms fall into unfinished lives
we gloat, while we mock the hunger
imprisoned in a grief of plenty

we find shapes in all eyes
pleaded for pardon, set free and fired
night brings air full circle

doors float on a sunswept sea
lives imprisoned, soft to a close
open up to break the chains, grief

fuels the guilt of the world

Zac Thraves

Zac Thraves lives in Kent, UK and is a writer and performer. In the 2020 lockdown he created an online workshop using the magic of the arts to help come to terms with anxiety and depression; he also published a book about his own struggles, available on Amazon. Poetry has been published by Nitrogen House and Scrittura Magazine; The Ekphrastic Review, and some are on Youtube. You can follow on Twitter - @28thraves or Insta - @28zacthrav. Heroes include Chaplin, Wilde, Hays, Spielberg, Kirk and Kaufman.

**


The Regard

The eyes in this painting—one blue
one gray—that look at me
with gentle curiosity
see the longing, the loneliness
and all the passions.
They see the seventy-three years
of confusion and blundering.
They see the envy and the
vanity, the betrayals and the
glaring failures of ordinary
kindness. There is no part
of my life they do not see. 
And yet, how extraordinary
that they do not judge!
How I wish these were my mother’s eyes. 
How I wish these were the eyes
looking back at me from the mirror.
 
Laura Ann Reed

Laura Ann Reed is an emerging writer whose work has appeared in Literary North, The Singing Bowl, Sky Island Journal and Third Wednesday Journal, as well as having been anthologized in How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, Storey Publishing LLC. She completed Masters' Degree programs in both the Performing Arts and Clinical Psychology and was a dancer and dance instructor in the San Francisco Bay Area before working in the capacity of Leadership Development Trainer at the San Francisco Headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency, prior to the Trump Administration. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, she currently lives with her husband in Western Washington.

**

Composition 

Does the world consist of flat logic 
straight lines, squares and circles?  
Is black always black  
Can it fall in love with blue and white 
and give birth to a baby named blue gray or grey blue? 
 
Why do we define objects with colour and shape? 
An apple is red and round but it can also be as green as 
the blood of early leaves in March  
When an apple is cut into pieces 
it lives in the shape of petals 
dripping its own nectar, sweet or sour  
 
Why do I call me “I” and you “you”? 
Can we break the prison built of skin and bones 
and the illusory shelter founded on memory 
Listen in stillness 
the rhymes of tide inside of us  
may come from the same ocean

Sha Huang

Sha Huang grew up in China and received her PhD degree in the University of Iowa. Her poems appeared in more than 20 literary journals and anthologies in China and the U.S, including Verse-Virtual, Trouvaille Review, The Wild Word, and Chinese and Western Poetry (中西诗歌). She also loves creating art. Her watercolor works were exhibited in Taicang City Gallery in China and the Art House in Acworth, Georgia. She currently teaches at Kennesaw State University.

**

In Their Plain Abstraction

When you stepped 
on the landmines of my eyes
I covered them with two lids
and then went blind.

It was the last time I saw you
so I did my best not forget you.
But more and more
all that’s left of your face
is the quadrants of a fair-skinned cartesian plane
in their plain abstraction.

I can only recall
your two potentially habitable planets
goldenly sectioned with green boulevards.
The upper corner of your smile.
Your scalene bangs.

Serves me right
because one day will come
when I’ll figure out
that I couldn’t really hope to solve you.

Angelo "NGE" Colella

Angelo "NGE" Colella lives in Italy, and writes in Italian, English, and French. He also makes collage and dadaist objects.


Picture
There is still lots of time to join us for our Bird Watching contest! Deadline is May 1. 

$10 CAD for book of forty bird themed ekphrastic prompts and entry.
$100 prize for poetry and $100 prize for flash fiction!

Special guest judges: Poetry- Tricia Marcella Cimera
Flash Fiction-Karen Schauber

Click here or on bird image for details and entry.
1 Comment
Ruth Partridge link
3/27/2021 05:27:22 am

Such a joy to find my poem sitting alongside such good company . I have loved reading this selection on Sophie’s theme.

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