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Ekphrastic Writing Responses: Derrick Hickman

6/18/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
All This Glamour, by Derrick Hickman (USA) contemporary

Magazine Cover

Proof
All this glamour
Is the title
Of this magazine’s
Thirteenth issue.
 
There is a bird topped
Walking stick
With a top hat.
 
Something fancy
Showing the 
Sense of style
Inside.

Dr. Emory D. Jones

​**


Fake It ‘Til You Make It:  a Haiku Series

I.
Glamorous pizzazz
Great Gatsby-esque walking stick
Unneeded, for show

II.
Taking all your weight
Physically, not mentally
Your soul is your cross

III.
Which you hardly bear
Crown of thorns hidden behind 
A jovial grin

IV.
Since you have it all -
All the fame, money, and love -
How else should you look?

V.
Certainly not pinched
With the pain of all the loss
That you have suffered

VI.
You put on a smile
And twirl your majestic cane
And fake revelry

Rose Menyon Heflin

Rose Menyon Heflin is an emerging poet and artist from Wisconsin who loves nature and travel.  She is currently busy cyanotyping, but she enjoys handmade papermaking, photography, mixed media collaging, and screenprinting, as well.  Among other venues, her poetry has recently been published or is forthcoming in 50 Haikus, Ariel Chart, Asahi Haikuist Network, Bramble, The Closed Eye Open, The Daily Drunk, Deep South Magazine, Dreich Magazine, Eastern Structures, The Ekphrastic Review, Haikuniverse, The Light Ekphrastic, Littoral Magazine, Please See Me, Plum Tree Tavern, Red Alder Review, Red Eft Review, Sparked Literary Magazine, The Texas Poetry Calendar, Three Line Poetry, Trouvaille Review, Visual Verse, The Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar, and The Writers Club. Her poetry recently won a Merit Award from Arts for All Wisconsin.  ​

**
​

Until the Water Runs Out

She stretched her arm up, and tugged at the constrictive sleeve.  We were the only two on the tour bus, as the others had gone to see the lighthouse overlooking the Mississippi River.  There were too many steps for me to navigate with my cane, and the other lady, I learned, was recovering from breast cancer and just didn’t have the stamina.

Her name was Beth.  She said that her husband, Bently, wanted for the two of them to come on this trip to Hannibal.  But he failed to think through all the situations where she just could not keep up.  So she and I sat in the bus while the rest toured the cave and  later walked up the cliff to the lighthouse.  

I didn’t mind sitting out part of the tour, and Beth was a good companion.  She told me about the  breast cancer…. How they had not given her much hope….. How they had messed up the lymph so that she had to wear the compression sleeve and keep her arm up for drainage.  She talked about Bently.  They had been teachers, then fell in love.  She regaled me with stories of their travels….. of how Bently always got lost, but in doing so he found the most fascinating people and places.  Their adventures took them around the world, with strange foods, weird housing, and wild transportation.  

Sometimes a sudden friendship clicks… kindred spirits….. separated at birth kind of friends.  Our conversation never stopped….wandered into intimate confessions and tear-blinding laughter.  It was almost jarring to have the group come back to the bus with their chatter and shared photos of the lighthouse and the river and all the flowers lining the steps.  

Our next stop took us down to the historic district, where we had time to wander and explore the shops and the Twainish homes.  Bently wanted to see the Twain museum and homes.  Beth and I decided to visit the antique and curio shops.

We must have looked a sight: me with my cane and Beth with her arm held high.  We passed a coffee shop and at the same instant decided to stop for coffee before exploring any further.  The coffee shop was shabby chic, and we settled back into comfy  old chairs and put our feet up on the little table in front of us.  Our conversation continued as if we had never stopped for a short bus ride.

I confided to Beth that taking this trip was difficult for me.  I was recently widowed, had developed a hip pain that would probably lead to replacement surgery and had to use a cane.  I was determined to not hide at home mourning, but there were times when I wondered if I was sane to make this trip all by myself.

For the first time, our conversation paused.  Beth finally spoke again, but slowly.  She told me how she had about six months to live, how Bently was not taking it well, how he wanted this one more trip together.   She confessed that she was pushing Bently to explore on his own….without her….preparing him for the day when she would not be by his side every moment.  

She paused again.  

“I can’t imagine not….being,” she whispered.  “I’ve lived in this skin for 55 years…..I can’t imagine not being here.   I’m not afraid to die, but I fear for Bently not having me to help him not get lost.”

As we left the coffee shop, we both noticed at the same time the little woodpecker bobbing up and down into the glass of water.      

“I used to watch this in science class,” I told her.  “I think it was something about evaporation.”

Beth agreed.  “Bently taught science.  He had one of those birds in his classroom.”

“Up and down, up and down,” I said.  

“Until he ran out of water…. And just stopped.” Beth continued.  

We looked at each other.  

“That’s me,” she said.  “All this glamour….” She waved her good arm around the coffee shop.   “And then when the water runs out…. The end.”

We both began to cry and sank into the coffee shop. couch.  I held her as she sobbed.   We fished out hankies, dabbed our eyes, and continued outside.   We had more to see, more to say.

Three months later, the tour guide sent the group a short note from Bently.  Beth had died.  He thanked us for being new friends and helping them enjoy the trip.  And at the end of the note was a sketch.  

It was a woodpecker...  bobbing…..

Diana Newquist Parson

Diana Newquist Parson is a retired teacher, who enjoys sleeping late, blogging sporadically at https://glorybug.wordpress.com/, and traveling with her husband. She is mother of one, grandmother of three, and  has no  living pets.    She sometimes walks around,  talking to herself as she tries out the sound of words, and she has been published a few times. Diana doesn’t know how to swim, is a mediocre cook, and hates to dust.  Otherwise she is fairly normal.

**

Bridge Night with Drinking Bird
            
my mother slips into pearls and a cocktail ring
those Saturday nights they host bridge
             my father unwraps a bar of Lava soap
             and wrestles grease from his hands and arms 
             grass clippings from his legs, pats Old Spice on his neck 
 
she dabs Chanel No. 5 onto her wrists, behind her ears 
a birthday gift from my father and me from the locked 
             case at Perkin’s Drug Store downtown 
             he unfolds card tables, latches new padded 
             folding chairs into place, sets out wooden pencils
 
cards, lined score pads while she pops open a can
of mixed nuts, removes a warm cinnamon-blueberry 
             coffee cake from the oven, plugs in the polished 
             silver coffee pot while he fills the ice bucket
             washes martini and highball glasses, opens a Schlitz
 
she looks in the hallway mirror, parts and paints her lips 
with coral, applies shadow above her steel blue eyes  
             checks her cerulean seersucker tunic
             and tan linen pants for wrinkles, her sandals 
             with kitten heels for scuffs, he centres the ashtrays 
 
at each table, lights a cigarette, his 12th
of the day, places unopened liquor bottles 
             mixers, olives, and limes on the kitchen
             counter, wet bar for the evening, where 
             earlier she left homemade egg noodles to dry
 
a Glenn Miller album begins to play from the hi-fi console 
in the living room, the doorbell rings, laughter punctuates 
             the end of preparations except for one—I slide 
             my drinking bird next to a bottle of Jim Beam—tall
             wooden toy, elegant from its blue top hat to bulbous 
 
liquid-filled bottom, gift from a Nebraska cousin during the holiday 
name-draw who claims he bought it on a trip to Las Vegas
             I don’t know what we children know of glamour and glitz
             except there’s something about the erratic laughter of adults
             deep into morning that comes from repetition, repetition, repetition
 
Dawn Terpstra

Dawn Terpstra lives in Iowa where she leads a communications team. Her poetry appears in current and forthcoming publications, including Main Street Rag, Midwest Review, MER VOX, The Night Heron Barks, Briar Cliff Review, Citron Review, San Pedro River Review, SWWIM, and Third Wednesday. Her work was selected as Honorable Mention in the Midwest Review's 2021 Great Midwest Poetry Contest. Her chapbook, Songs from the Summer Kitchen, is forthcoming in September from Finishing Line Press.
​
**

First Impress
 
Striven eyes always settle
on the brightest colormetric.
 
Bull to cape sweep.
Bird to berry tree.
 
Addict to vice.
 
My advice? Cinch your
top hat and dance.
 
Perform a lucky number;
sketch and wall scrawl.
 
You are most fabulous
 
childe
 
when giving your all.
 
Joe Amaral

Joe Amaral's first poetry collection The Street Medic won the 2018 Palooka Press Chapbook Contest. His writing has appeared in 3Elements Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, New Verse News, Please See Me, Rise Up Review, River Heron Review, The Night Heron Barks and University Professors Press. Joe works 24-hour shifts as a paramedic on the California central coast. You can find him at jadetree.org

**
​
​Night in the Gutted House
 
In the gutted house I am folding the laundry.
I walk through the brick walls, I don’t live here,
but here I am.
 
It all feels calm.
The dining room
with the chandelier that sways
 
its crystals eerily tinkling
ghosts roaming the halls. 
 
I can see white geese flying into the room
the stone chimney dismantled.
Now they are nesting on the leather couch.
 
I can see wedding dresses floating 
on the ceiling. Long white silk taffeta with 
pearls, lace veils. 
 
I can’t see I reduce my palette to 
monochrome colours 
 
scaffolding supports are built 
the floorboards have rotted.
 
I sit alone in this house.
The piano that starts to play a song.
 
A child in blue shorts and red top.
The easel still stands by the window, 
 
gesso, cotton canvases, a pine table, 
a cupboard with acrylics and brushes.

Ilona Martonfi

Ilona Martonfi is a Montreal poet, editor, curator, advocate and activist. Author of four poetry books, the most recent collection is Salt Bride (Inanna, 2019). Forthcoming, The Tempest (Inanna, 2022). Writes in journals, anthologies, and seven chapbooks. Her poem “Dachau on a Rainy Day” was nominated for the 2018 Pushcart Prize. Founder and Curator of Visual Arts Centre Reading Series and Argo Bookshop Reading Series. QWF 2010 Community Award.

**

The Famous Old Poet
 
The librarian will always remember 
that you once brought her a doughnut
and latte. You spilled
 
your very controlled guts on paper –
always aware of fashion and the avant-garde, 
the cutting edge. Oh, yes, you also
had a famous wife.
 
You had that famous cane and wore
that Moomin hat. They wrote about you.
Cartoons of your eccentricities filled
the morning papers.
You were going to live forever.
 
Curious reader, turn left at the cemetery, then follow
the lane to the cottage where he lived. 
Talking about fame, would you have known?

Rose Mary Boehm

Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart. Her fourth poetry collection, THE RAIN GIRL, was published by Chaffinch Press in 2020. Want to find out more? https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

**

Playtime

Imagine a sitting room peopled with dolls
an attic space filled with toy trains and cars
adult places filled with children’s playthings
passive playthings
out of their time
and moved on
into a time
when even the box
with it’s wrappings
and writings
fails to excite us
creating
no spark,
no glamour,
only needy memories
in passing
as time
moves
on.

Lynn White

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com///www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

**

​Prescribed Burning

You were there the first time I died. I felt the silence. The audience shuffled. Glasses chinked, cutting through green smoke. Da screamed in my head, "You’re not worth shit boy."  I saw you standing at the bar; square faced, mauve light bounced on raven black hair, radiated from your yellow lizard-skin jacket. Your eyes, smokey quartz, arrowheads slicing through the fug. 

I fixed your drink before the open-mic started. Purple Rain cocktail; vodka, lemonade over ice, lemon slice, grenadine. The crowd wafted sour beer and musky desperation. Sweat stained my shirt seams. Faces rose to the bartender known only as Wisecrack, "Not so funny now, are you boy?"

 You stared. I smiled, steadied, felt the earth breathe.

When my shift was done, we climbed the stairs to the roof. Sat silent in the night, our backs to the cool, concrete bulkhead. Looked over the white lights of Wichita, to the amber glowing smoke over the Flint Hills.

“Nice hat,” you rubbed the suede. Your fingers found furrows, sapphire changed to steel blue.

“Best part of the act.”

“Next time will be better.”

I felt the sting of tears. “Damn smoke. What’s burning anyway?”

“You don’t know about the Flint Hills Irish? The last tallgrass prairie? It was a seabed once. Every April the ranchers burn the pastures, makes the grass grow green.”

I shook other hills from my head, emerald running to the grey Atlantic, “You a rancher?”

You laughed. “My grandmother was Pawnee. It was all Pawnee territory...once”

I pictured you astride a skewbald stallion galloping over thin-skinned prairie, red divots lacing blackfire edge.

The tallgrass seeds squealed and burst. I have forgotten grey and green.

 Our lips touched, pressed soft in cola bottle kisses.

 Engines revved and rumbled. Sirens screeched. Ink waves rolled in faraway seas.

Margaret Timoney

Margaret Timoney writes from Donegal, on the North West coast of Ireland.

**


All This Glamour

Long since my ancestor did stop to fly,
we lost our wings before one is aware.
So I, innate be unconcerned with sky,
drink water ceaselessly in stuffy air.

Hey boy, you say a flightless bird worthless?
No way! In truth how prideful as I am,
saved in my stomach full of blood noblesse
of Icarus in every fluid dram.

Who dreams of unobtainable is fool,
although that girl aloof is so breathtaking.
Hence you, highly optimistic, stay cool,
refrain from such a silly undertaking!

Follow my lead and don't move on that daughter.
Stay here and let us peck on the mud water...

Toshiji Kawagoe

Toshiji Kawagoe, Ph.D. is a professor at Future University Hakodate. He lives in Hokkaido, Japan. His poems in ancient Chinese have been published in the anthologies of Chinese poetry and his science fiction short stories in S-F Magazine and Anotherealm. His academic works in economics are also published in many books and academic journals.

**

All This Glamour

The duckman nods and sips his absinthe,
absent of thought, he agrees
with the bobbling bulldog
who nods and shakes his three-chinned head
in yes and no,
and in all this ecstasy. 

All this,
a never-ending supply
of ephemera
swizzled, 
their layers never truly mixing.

Party until.

Hell knocks on the door of hell, hell-o?
Jello shots shot full of
holes, 
Empty shells roll, hull-o?

The duckman ducks and dithers
and the cows come home
and the bulldog sniffs the floor and
nods and disagrees.

Martin Hill Ortiz

Martin Hill Ortiz is a professor of Pharmacology at the Ponce Health Sciences University in Puerto Rico where he lives, pining for the lost Lenore. A score of his stories have appeared in print and online journals. Author of four mystery thrillers, he is an active member of the Mystery Writers of America.

**

The Hand of Fate

The Drinking Bird's a scientific
marvel as a toy,
a heat exhaustion engine we can
magically enjoy
concealing, for a little while, its
fatal tragic flaw  --  
the friction it will slowly fight to
stillness of a draw

as all its frantic agitation
grinds to graceful halt
and shildren wonder what has happened,
fearing hidden fault,
and some of us are simply thinking
sun will have its day
and then give in to dark of other
stars so far away

as glitter left of all the glamour
life well lived has been
and, by the Hand that holds our fate, will
have its dawn again.

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.

**

​
Clearance 
  
I rediscovered it in my Father’s wardrobe 
That cane 
Behind piles of National Geographic 
Unworn brogues still in boxes 
Gloves I gave him at Christmas 
Elton John massed vinyl 
His pink souvenir tin. 
 
He would often flâneur down Yonge 
That cane 
Swivelling in his right palm 
Looking dapper in attire 
Dedicated to all this glamour 
From days when he was young. 
 
In my recollection they were inseparable 
That cane 
Walking out with my Father 
From coffee shops to Woody’s 
Season after season. 
 
World famous at Church & Wellesley 
That cane 
Father acquired in a junk store 
In North York or Niagara. 
 
Gregarious red handle with blue top hat 
That cane 
Synonymous analogous with my late Father. 
 
Wish I told him that I loved him even with 
That cane. 
 
That cane …

Alun Robert 

Alun Robert is a prolific creator of lyrical free verse. He has achieved success in poetry competitions across the British Isles and North America. His work has been published by many literary magazines, anthologies and webzines in the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Italy, India, South Africa, Kenya, USA and Canada. Since 2018, he has been part of The Ekphrastic Review community particularly enjoying the fortnightly challenges. He is a member of the Federation of Writers Scotland for whom he was a Featured Writer in 2019.

**

All This Glamour

Shot glass to her mouth,
wet circle on the table. 

A red creature stares from the wall with garish eyes, 
phallic if you wanted it to be.

All this Glamou hovering over its head,
completely expressionless with
a Valium stare wrapping the globe a thousand times over.

She shifts in her chair,
bare skin tearing away from the plastic with a terrible noise.

Thirteen tallies. 
Not the tally-marks of someone waiting to be let out,
but the tally-marks of waiting for someone else to come home.

The red creature doesn’t care.
Caught on the very edge of one swing as it does back-and-forth,
it is more annoyed than anything.

She places ten dollars on the counter,
brings her fingers up to her nose to smell the money-smell.

Still on the wall,
eyes so empty and so big, like Kandinsky's as he lay in bed, 
starving to death.

Arim Lim

​
Arim Lim is from South Korea, but currently living in the Middle East. She has not (yet) published any poetry, though she enjoys writing and reading it.

**

Summer Nights in the ‘90s
 
Bright lights twinkle on the pier in summer season
like performers backstage in Vaudeville season
 
dog-fox is out dressed up to the nines
beady eyes pierce in a kiss and tell season
 
top hat and (furry) tail, cane in hand
Fred and Ginger pairings, when love’s in season
 
girls in thigh high sundresses skyscraper heels
man-seeking safaris – shriek it’s hunting season
 
Manhattans, tequilas, dry ice concoctions
cocktail-fuelled dares, never out of season
 
giggling, outrageous or teasing flirtatious
girlpower confidence in fashion this season
 
Máiréad and her sister-pack ready to burst
all this glamour explodes for red carpet season
 
Jill Simpson

Jill Simpson lives in Leicestershire, England, where she runs a small business with her husband. For many years she has been writing short stories and poetry and has recently begun sharing her words beyond her family and friends.


**

goes the weasel 

an opulence of twisting 
complex, intricate, mathematical proofs 
of base hash, slash, ticker parade
tallies counting panoply of nearly missed,
catapult driven bites dull beak 
a weapon thwap through childlike, music
box ding slow and steady 
single notes mingle, become a recognizable 
tune, speeding up in warning 
all around the cobbler's bench I’m not good 
enough the monkey chased the weasel I’m not smart
enough the monkey thought twas all in fun I’m not
enough POP

Dane Lyn

Dane Lyn (they/them) is a queer, educator, poet, and glitter enthusiast with an MFA from Lindenwood University. Find them in Southern California with their partner, advocating for disabled rights, constructing blanket forts, caring for their menagerie of teens, snakes, lizards, dogs, rabbits, and cats, and ridding their shoes of beach sand. Dane’s work has been or will be featured in Gnashing Teeth, Silver Rose Magazine, Closed Eye Open,  The Dillydoun Review and Nymph Publication. @punkhippypoet is where you will find them on Instagram and Twitter.

**

The Memory Prompt
 
The girl with a mop of curly hair
left the album on my bedside,
can’t place her name
but I recognise those eyes,
my eyes of flecked hazel.
 
I lift the yellowed pages
conjuring the cine-strip-click
of image and triangular clips
that pool on the pillow,
transporting me back in time.
 
I pause at Mr Duck-Head
and draw at the long pull of memory
frayed as the strands of string
I used to clutch
with sticky-fingered rub.
 
It is 1956, he is propped
on a stand, centre stage
as I gaze through layers of glass
at his little cherry face, all pop-eyes
and ‘come and buy me’ smile
 
topped with a tilted hat
propped on a sleek cedar head.
My thumbs briefly graze the bedframe
as I feel the cool slice of varnish
brushed across his cheek.
 
Excitement, nerve-tingling, electric
as I opened the box later,
placed him on linoleum
and watched him wobble-bob
to the rhythm of string’s thread.
 
I close the book,
no idea of the year, the month,
the day, as hours click by
drawn by the moon’s pull
but the girl is here again
 
her mop of curly brown hair
tousled in tears from eyes I recognise,
my eyes of flecked hazel
not dissimilar to the satin stroke
of Mr Duck-Head’s skin.

Kate Young

Kate Young lives in England and has been passionate about poetry since childhood. She generally writes free verse and loves responding to art through ekphrastic poems. Her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Nitrogen House, Words for the Wild, Poetry on the Lake, Alchemy Spoon and a Scottish Writers Centre chapbook. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness recently won The Baker’s Dozen competition with Hedgehog Press and is due to be published. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet.

**

Clues

how the body interprets glamour
a shiny top hat   furs   choker
a polished cane or is it
death of glamour   these years
in anything as long as it’s clean  
ticking off the days   thirteen a lucky
number for some  what lies below

grass the body buried in loss   a neighbour
placing a sign no _____s allowed
flipping off the simple request
not to leave rat poison near
the sidewalk where dogs
or children   curious   might put
it in their mouths   the kind
that looks like chocolate
and smells tempting  what
Proo(f) do we have
that it’s harmless to humans

how the body absorbs harm
the beaten newsboy caps
my uncles wore to peddle
papers in 1907  going into
smoky bars and pool halls   they
being the oldest of nine   their daddy
pushing a cart of eggs  milk
the like to make ends meet
ends   how the body wants
meat wants fresh fruit in winter
how the children draw eyes
and wide grins on the wall
bright crayon over lead paint    

Stephanie Pressman

A graphic artist and lifelong poet, Stephanie Pressman earned an MA in English from San Jose State University, taught writing at community college, and is the editor of her small press, Frog on the Moon. She served as co-editor of cæsura and americas review. Her work has appeared in Bridges, The MacGuffin, The Kerf, Sing Heavenly Muse, and Montserrat Review as well as on-line in Newport Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, Red Wolf Editions, The Ekphrastic Review, The Collidescope, and others. Her long poem Lovebirdman appears in an illustrated volume published in June, 2018.

​**

Speakeasy

Martinis shaken not slurred
lost count after two gates and a set of stumps
struggling with my whirreds
I’m putting on my hop tat
putting on my tight why
tutting on my pails
dancing like Freddie Starr and ginger hobnobs
all this clamour
my sprains binning
the hole world is tipsy
focus and consecration kneaded
another knight in the gutter
wood be such bad form
 
The final proof

Rob Joynson

A writer of poetry for 50 years with no intention of publication. For the last few years as a member of poetry groups in Louth, Lincolnshire, and the instigator of several performance poetry events he has decided to expose his poetry to the critical gaze of the wider world. He published his first collection Of life and love and interludes in 2020 and has been published by The Ekphrastic Review.

**

All This Glamour

All this glamour
goes with the hour
and the American Dream
decides its new course on Madison Avenue,
making friends with admen and executives
and hustling secrets through the secretarial pool.

All this glamour
is all about suburban commutes to Connecticut,
a country house 
and golf on Sundays,
fatigue resting on armchairs on weekdays
and notified dalliances during lunch hour.
All that glamour,
going with the hour.

And still picture perfect Easter and Thanksgiving portraits,
a pale and surreal inversion,
with Norman Rockwell on the walls,
looking down at his own idealized creations, 
of storied lives
in all their derivative glamour.

All that glamour
rescued by this practical grammar
of coming and going
and taking the back door
while the children watch 
The Twilight Zone,
disappearing into a more palatable fantasy
than the one left to their own devices.

All that glamour
is nothing but life through the looking glass,
print billboards bewildering with big eyes.
Consumerism and Capitalism packed in fancy stationery
and sold to the highest bidding finger.
Eyes on the Prize
A New Name on the Rise.

All this glamour
finally set to tune to "Bye Bye Birdie,"
like a dead weight on the table,
wearing Uncle Sam's hat
and bobbing its head upside down.
Upside Down
Upside Down.

Prithvijeet Sinha

The writer's name is Prithvijeet Sinha from Lucknow, India. He is a post graduate in MPhil from the University of Lucknow, having launched his writing career by self publishing on the worldwide community Wattpad since 2015 and on his WordPress blog An Awadh Boy's Panorama besides having his works published in several varied publications as Cafe Dissensus, The Medley, Screen Queens, Borderless Journal, Aspiring Writer's Society, Lothlorien, Chamber Magazine, Live Wire, Rhetorica Quarterly, and in the children's anthology Nursery Rhymes and Children's Poetry From Around the World ( AuthorsPress, February 2021), also awaited in the upcoming 2022 anthology Pixie Dust and All Things Magical, Dreich Magazine, among others.

**

The Pink Gold

The bangle that adorned your hand
Through the years
Of your becoming a great grandmother
Against the caretaker's white and red, a mere symbol
Of marriage and youth, glittered
Enticing me each visit more vivid than the earlier.

My gaze would trace the bangle on your hand
Then stutter up the face
As in despair you would say that I may not come again.
On each goodbye meant to be the final
Like the count of five with a crossing out after
I knew soon I will be this face, yet like before we waived.

Until the lines turned deeper, the crevices sank
And the bangle too changed.
It melted into a blob of pink gold, a home to diamonds
From a glamour shelf, now adorning another hand.

Abha Das Sarma

An engineer and management consultant by profession, I enjoy writing the most. Besides having a blog of over 200 poems (http://dassarmafamily.blogspot.com), my poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Sparks of Calliope, here and elsewhere. Having spent my growing up years in small towns of northern India, I currently live in Bengaluru.

​**

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Don't Forget!!!!

The Women Artists contest deadline is approaching on July 7, 2021.

Sixty art prompts by women to choose from, and up to ten entries. Ebook/entry $10, cash prize to winner $100.

Poetry and flash fiction!

Our special guest judge is Alarie Tennille.

Details, rules, here.
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