 Snow Covered Roofs in Paris, by Gustave Caillebotte (France) 1878 High Vantage Points (Vue de toits, Effet de neige, 1878) "On the roof, it's peaceful as can be, And there the world below can't bother me..." Up On The Roof, lyrics by Carole King & Gerry Goffin, Recorded by The Drifters, James Taylor & all those who understand "At night the stars put on a show for free..." "...impression, a word of considerable antiquity denoting a physical mark upon a surface for an immediate effect." Collins/Computer Dictionary Definition Snow falls in the night a promise of beauty in the morning light: Caillebotte finished his cafe au lait, his imagination already open to the snow wings of angels, what the Impressionists might call Old World -- the croaking voices of constraint. Reality had to be as he saw it, how the mansard roofs were changed into an optical roof- line between the earth and heaven; were now white with ice and snow, a view he could see from an upper-level balcony as he finished what his French famille called petite dejeuner. His eye (an artist's eye) had focused on precipitation: rainfall on people in the streets of Paris; and now, an unblemished memory of snow falling, so gently, in the night, as the women, painted nude wondered why her body was alone on canvas. If he had seen footprints in the snow -- a white carpet on the roofs of Paris -- would he have wondered at Nadar photographing those roofs for the first time, his camera angled from the side of a tethered hot air balloon, 1600 ft. altitude above Paris? Or thought of what the light was like looking down from that great height, "reality" altered by the snowfall? Or was it just another simple morning, a scene waiting to be painted, people invisible behind the dormer windows shuttered in the darker attics under white-topped roofs of Paris, snow embracing chimneys and smokestacks that stand, straight and military, on those roofs -- a "bird's eye" view of Paris; a view where, in another century's perspective a blackbird could be sitting on a roof-edge in a video, photographically real with James Taylor singing -- Up On The Roof -- in the background, what the past promises the future: first the snow, falling -- snow-tops for roof-tops -- then the snow, soundless and still, part of Snow Covered Roofs in Paris, 1878. And above the roof's fixed silence, in colour by Caillebotte a boundless, lyrical landscape, unseen and unknown. Laurie Newendorp Laurie Newendorp's recent book, When Dreams Were Poems, 2020, explores the relationship of art to life and poetry. Honoured multiple times by The Ekphrastic Review's Ekphrastic Challenge, her poetry often questions reality using a dialectical opposition concerned with what is fixed, and what is free. In "High Vantage Points," after Caillebotte's elevated scenes of Paris, the roof becomes a kind of philosophical plateau, a place to think and ask questions, as it is in Carole King's "Up On The Roof," sung by JamesTaylor in his video with King's song, and with an unexpected cameo appearance by a blackbird. It (the roof) also divides earthly nature from "natural harmonic tones, the music of the spheres produced by the movement of the celestial spheres and the bodies fixed within them." Caillebotte, knowing he would die young, must have painted with "one eye to the heights of heaven." His Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877, is one of his better known canvases; and an earlier painting, one mentioned in the poem, is Nude Lying On A Couch, 1873. ** Rooftops in Snow Ranged high above the snowfall on the ground, Oblivious to stirrings far below, Observed from higher still by a renowned French artist named Caillebotte, and capped with snow, The Paris rooftops conjured up an air Of urban stillness. Birds would have to hear Pins dropping if they listened from up there, So tranquil was the morning atmosphere ... Impressions painted long ago are what Now capture, for posterity, the peace Snow-covered roofs presented to Caillebotte Near old Montmartre ... Silence did not cease On those old roofs: it still is felt today—-- When gazing at his oil in the Musée. Mike Mesterton-Gibbons Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Florida State University. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, MONO., the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, the Washington Post and WestWard Quarterly. ** Lost Dream for My Unvaccinated Lover All anyone wants is a clean, bathed sky in pink notes. I’m hovering over a snowy roof. Paris, je t'aime. The Ghost of Future lifts me via sleigh. My ice bones and half-stabbed, frozen lungs. Feet groan to land. Roof of innocence. Roof of chalky slate. I can’t open your shuttered windows. I can’t climb down your seductive, chic facade. Our reality has run adrift so let’s start anew on a white blanket. Spring is a promise of us living in a cherry blossom frame sipping cognac and amaretto in a courtyard. The glow of this scene awakens. S'il vous plait, I gulp each breath in night bright. John Milkereit John Milkereit lives in Houston, Texas working as a mechanical engineer and has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals including San Pedro River Review, Panoply, Naugatuck River Review, and previous issues of The Ekphrastic Review. His next chapbook entitled A Comfortable Place With Fire is forthcoming from The Orchard Street Press in 2022. ** A Paris Snow He was quiet As his thoughts Tumbled out All at once Through the window Over the snow covered Rooftops Of the quarter Remembering everything That was their city Only The closeness of the fire On wintry nights In the little apartment On the rue Palatine And the way the snowflakes Danced Beneath the glow Of the Christmas lights Along St. Germaine With the smell Of chestnuts roasting And a strong vin chaud Stirring up From somewhere Down the narrow street Around the corner From the little bistro In the Latin Quarter Where they liked to warm With boeuf bourguignon On their way home From a day in Montmartre And the way She sometimes kissed him For no reason When they crossed Place Vendome Toward the river Holding his hand Tightly As the day’s light Struggled Against the brooding Grey skies Of another cold December In Paris John Drudge John is a social worker working in the field of disability management and holds degrees in social work, rehabilitation services, and psychology. He is the author of four books of poetry: March (2019), The Seasons of Us (2019), New Days (2020), and Fragments (2021). His work has appeared widely in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies internationally. John is also a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and lives in Caledon Ontario, Canada with his wife and two children. ** snow covered roofs in paris night caresses roof tops the stillness gray a sky over snow la neige they call it feminine every winter she falls in love roof tops bearing its weight Sister Lou Ella Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and new verse news as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015. (Press 53.) On May 11, 2021, five poems from her book which had been set to music by James Lee III were performed by the opera star Susanna Phillips, star clarinetist Anthony McGill, pianist Mayra Huang at Y92 in New York City. The group of songs is entitled Chavah’s Daughters Speak. ** les chambres de bonne Paris gets cold. There is no heating in the maid’s room. There is one faucet and a small lavabo in a corner of the corridor. There is a hole in the ground for your necessities. Mercifully, the little cubicle has a door. A few days ago the water froze in the tank. It froze in the pipes. No water to be had from the only faucet on the whole floor. The slim bed is dank. There are hardly any maids left. Their rooms are on the attic floors with sloping roofs, accessible only by fire escape, rickety metal stairs you climb at your peril on the outside of the building. Now these chambres are full of students, painters, poets, writers, and other unseemly folk. Cold or hot, Paris is a painter’s dream. Gustave Caillebotte saw the dark grey on white grey, set off by blacks and browns. He could barely hold his brush. He thought his paints would freeze—although he knew this to be (almost) impossible. But, oh, Paris gets so cold. He shivered in la chambre de bonne. He had not paid rent for a week. He feared the landlady was about to throw him out. But first he needed to paint the snow-covered roofs of yet another winter in Paris. That mysterious, murky light. Oh for blue, red, yellow and green… Go South, Paul had said to Vincent. Gustave was thinking about it. 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 fifth poetry collection, DO OCEANS HAVE UNDERWATER BORDERS, has just been snapped up by Kelsay Books for publication May/June 2022. Her website: https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** What Hides What hides Beneath the silent snow The chimneys The shutters The gray sodden sky I cannot know What lurks In troubled minds Behind trembling lips In beating hearts I cannot know Except to imagine That the bare, cold trees Like sentinels on des rues And the flimsy trails of smoke From furnaces within Have suffered the human stories Of fear, abandonment, and grief Yet still yearn upward Beyond the heavy metallic sky To something brighter Than this winter afternoon. Sandra Salinas Newton Sandra Salinas Newton is a Filipina-American Professor Emeritus of English. Her published works include textbooks and a short story. Her recent poetry has appeared in OPEN: Journal of Arts and Letters and Vita Brevis Press in July 2021, the Winter 2021 online issue of the Swiss-based The Woolf, the upcoming Oberon Poetry Journal 2021, the eBook Vultures & Doves: Social Issues of Our Time (December 2021) published by The Valiant Scribe Literary Journal, the premier issue of the online Fauxmoir, an issue of Apricity, a future issue of The Evening Press, the upcoming Anthology of Vita Brevis Press, the late November 2021 issue of Neologism Poetry, an issue of The Decadent Review (24 December 2021), and the inaugural issue of New Note Poetry in January 2021. She earned her B.A. from The City College of New York, her M.A. from Hunter College, and her Ph.D. from Fordham University. She currently lives in Austin, Texas. Her website is www.snewton.net. ** Those Living Cold Between Buildings Equality is a snowy roof top view of black stovepipes jutting through white coal smoke streaming, terracotta flues, red brick chimneys stacked like warmth against icy gray sky. No matchstick girls are clear from up here. All the homes look the same from on high, over looking the dirty cobblestone maze of Montmartre’s slushy streets. Patches of gaslight offer little heat to those living cold between buildings. Lillian Lucca Lillian Lucca is an amateur writer with a passion for poetry. ** housewarming urban fantasies postponed by a blizzard lungs armed for biological war blistering cold blisters my toes swollen from homesickness my feet sheds rural regrets that first morning in paris we couldn’t close the windows the city intruded lovemaking making pancakes huddled by the stove to defrost jet lagged altercations our love tailored by three sutures in places that burned to touch have you ever seen snow before that day you laughed at the uncultured question calling me an uncultured american punctuated with californian ignorance azy wildfires ignited me no, i’m californian! you promised me snow all i see is grey the first floor a foreigner’s curse from the tourist gods god-knows-how-many euros you paid for broken windows we sleep all day grey under snow covered roofs in Paris Valerie Braylovskiy Valerie Braylovskiy is from San Francisco, California and attends Pomona College ('25). She has been writing for most of her life and is currently exploring intersections between poetry and prose. ** Snow Covered Rooftops, One of My Favourite Things —a whimsical adaptation of the song My Favorite Things, from the 1959 musical The Sound of Music by Rodgers and Hammerstein Snow covered rooftops and Paris in winter Shutters on windows and floors without splinters Mugs of hot cocoa where marshmallows cling These are a few of my favourite things Brightly lit houses and ice-laden maples Post-its® and Sharpies® and standard size staples Paintbrushes dripping with colours that sing These are a few of my favourite things Families brimming with good cheer and laughter Old homes with chimneys and less drafty rafters Snow angel outlines and sleigh bells that ring These are a few of my favourite things When the wind blows, when the phone pings When I'm less than glad I simply remember my favourite things And reclaim the smile I had Snow covered rooftops and Paris in winter Shutters on windows and floors without splinters Mugs of hot cocoa where marshmallows cling These are a few of my favourite things Jeannie E. Roberts Jeannie E. Roberts has authored seven books, five poetry collections and two illustrated children's books. Her most recent collection, As If Labyrinth - Pandemic Inspired Poems, was released by Kelsay Books in April of 2021. She’s a nature enthusiast, a Best of the Net award nominee, and a poetry editor of the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs. ** Pigalle In every other garret there is one like him waiting for his lover to arrive at dawn, rhythm of her footfalls, pause on the landing, tap on the door. This one is a poet. Money’s not mentioned for the moment: he’ll draw her to his window, open to a Paris made strange by snow, contemplate the violet light, vista of departing night. He’ll note the hiss of chimney pots waking with the thermals, whispered shift of slates beneath the white: a world unclenching even as she shivers from her journey through Pigalle. Imagination offers torments of its own, his guilty hours contemplating danger: her route along the Avenue Frochot, quickened pulse, excruciating moments. He knows the price of art and his shame curls around her like a tongue. As the morning holds its breath theirs will merge and disappear above the iced eaves, while she cleaves to his body and believes. Paul McDonald Paul McDonald taught American literature at the University of Wolverhampton for twenty five years, where he also ran the Creative Writing Programme. He took early retirement in 2019 to write and research full time. He is the author of over twenty books, covering fiction, poetry, and scholarship. His books include the novels Surviving Sting (2001), Kiss Me Softly Amy Turtle (2004), and Do I Love You? (2008); poetry collections, The Right Suggestion (1999), Catch a Falling Tortoise (2007), and An Artist Goes Bananas (2012), and a recent collection of flash fiction, Midnight Laughter (2019). His scholarly work ranges across a variety of disciplines, including American literature, humour, and narratology. His most recent academic books are: Enigmas of Confinement: A History and Poetics of Flash Fiction (2018), Lydia Davis: A Study (2019), and Allen Ginsberg: Cosmopolitan Comic (2020). ** Take me to Paris in Winter When I was in Paris it was stifling, early summer days, hotter than home unseasonably warm, they said. Melting I walked miles past street vendors, wilting I sat in outdoor cafes with glass of tepid water. [I had to pay extra for ice] A somewhat cooler place was the Louvre, cold marble sculptures of horses and men, blank-faced watching sweat trickle down my neck , standing before Mona Lisa, jealous of her cool demeanor, mopping my face in line to buy postcards. Open windows in small hotel, second floor emitted warm breeze, lovely view if not for having to lie atop coverlet at night. It’s never been so warm the end of May, I constantly heard, feet slick inside sandals; I loved Musee d’Orsay, Van Gogh, Monet almost forgetting the heat on my neck. Take me to Paris in winter, snow-topped buildings, muffler hiding my tear filled eyes smiling beneath cold cheeks pink in chill air, happy frozen fingers, snow crunching under boots; yes, take me to Paris in winter. Julie A. Dickson Julie A. Dickson loves Autumn and Winter, is bothered by the heat, seeking out air conditioning, cool breezes and water. Her poetry appears in Sledgehammer, Misfit, Open Door and The Ekphrastic Review, among other journals, or in full length volumes on Amazon. Dickson is a Pushcart nominee, former poetry board member, advocate for captive elephants and rescuer of cats. ** Winter Voyagers January is a changeling, thrust from the womb of a spontaneous winter thaw. Cold and spare is the road to spring, winding down dry barks of nature's law. From fettered windows, i greet him and grieve for his maternal loss. Hope is but an ill begotten whim, Melancholy has gone for a toss. Likely friends are we to be, wading through porous cuts. Cursed siblings destined to weep over bearing the world's brunt. Come February , we'll be chapped and dry. envisioning love's grand story, drinking winter's last brine. 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 prolific writing career by self publishing on the worldwide community Wattpad since 2015 and on his WordPress blog An Awadh Boy's Panorama (https://anawadhboyspanorama.wordpress.com/) Besides that, his works have been published in several varied publications as Cafe Dissensus, The Medley, Screen Queens, Confluence, Reader's Digest, Borderless Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Visual Verse, and many more. ** 12-24 Wrap-up I tell you, we scoped it out and there was no possible way he could get inside. Reconnaissance showed the two flues on the port side didn’t match up with the single on the starboard side. The chimney was a definite no. And besides, the snow covering the sink-hole between those dormers was just too treacherous for the jolly fellow to slip into the room. The slope was excessively severe, and on further inspection the other three visible windows presented the same dilemma. Yeah, he was bummed not to mention take-off for us would be nearly impossible. We discussed it briefly though due to the tight schedule he insists on maintaining there were no other options. Dasher did the deed, got the big guy’s credit card, using his Prime account, specified a two a.m. special delivery on 12-24 that included a note explaining the mix-up and asking the dad to get the flues repositioned before Christmas next year. Yeah, best laid plans...here, let me get the next one. Jane Lang Jane Lang’s work has appeared in online publications including Quill and Parchment, the Avocet, Creative Inspirations, The Ekphrastic Review, and has been published in several anthologies. She has written and given two chapbooks to family and friends in lieu of Christmas cards. Jane lives in the Pacific Northwest. ** Colour of Mercy In the hour of introspection before dawn, you find even your thoughts are too loud for this scene. In Paris, snow settles on rooftops and industry. Most of the time you object to the smokestacks across from your rented attic, but now all complications of progress roll through miles of winter trees. And steel-plated alleys sing of red bricks in Eden-Nothing is as lovely, iron-blue light and city the colour of mercy. Janice Bethany Janice Bethany lives in Texas and teaches for the University of Houston system. Her work has been recognized by National Poetry Month, San Antonio; Craven Arts Ekphrastic Competition, North Carolina; O’Bheal International Competition, Ireland; Texas Poetry Calendar 2021 and 2022; Toledo Museum of Art; Anesthesiology; Raleigh Review; The Ekphrastic Review and more. ** Effet de Neige you speak to me from your attic room high above Paris it's mid afternoon your face is bathed in the ghostly glow of the phone light and the reflection from the scene outside you turn the phone to show me the panorama a soft, quiet blanket hiding the uglier man-made excrescences - it could be any year in last couple of centuries - and it feels that long since we were together in the same room, the same bed in particular I would kindle warmth in your blue-white face that reappears on the phone screen cloaked under a shock of thick black hair warm your thinned lips that droop at the corners soothe the creases that never seems to leave the middle of your brow, that show the sorrow of enforced separation - being locked down apart - I'm half a world away Emily Tee Emily Tee spent her working life wrangling numbers. Now retired, she has returned to her love of reading poetry, a pleasure from her schooldays, and has recently started writing as well. She lives in a semi-rural part of England. ** Oliver Displaced I think of Oliver Twist. Though a different city and half a century more modern, I see undertakers and workhouses. Knowing my eyes play tricks on me, I glimpse footprints in snow, along a ledge, near a loose board bracing an upper window against the winter winds, a series of small footprints belonging to children, returning from a long day of picking pockets, bringing spoils back to their elderly benefactor. But my eyes play tricks on me, as I drown in Twist. As I stare into coal-stained snow, trying to think of anything else, reality summons me. My pre-teen daughter, dancing around our suburbia home, socks skidding across hardwood, tapping with a light thump while she sings in whimsical British accent learned from hours of studying You-tubers, all in preparation for a local musical. Every day I hear Boy for Sale as she chases her brother, Food Glorious Food, every meal-time, look for my wallet after Pick a Pocket or Two, and drift asleep to Where is Love? Tony Daly Tony Daly is a DC/Metro Area creative writer. He has work published in The Poet Magazine, Danse Macabre, Red Ogre Review, and others. He serves as an Associate Editor with Military Experience and the Arts. For a list of his published work, please visit https://aldaly13.wixsite.com/website or follow him on Twitter @aldaly18. ** A Glass of Muscadet She steps through customs into anonymity. Train to Gare du Nord, taxi. Her Paris hotel, where she nestles into the skin of its narrow street. The grocer, the baker, the rows of curtained lives housed under chimney pots and garrets. A lone song thrush, she perches on the windowsill, humming No Regrets. She still misses him, how they mused on Parisian street life-- the assembly line of passers-by, their lives and jobs. With him gone, her eyes turn skyward across the quiet white of mansard roofs. Morning’s soft rain pocks the night’s snow. Her thoughts drift with the solitary slice of yesterday. Apple tart at Le Fregate, a glass of Muscadet, traffic slushing beside the winter-dark Seine. They once shared dinner here—a window table—drinking in the city of light and lovers. Now only her passport knows her name. Sirens and horns fill the air. Smoke wavers above closed shutters. Sandi Stromberg Sandi Stromberg is a dedicated contributor to The Ekphrastic Review, which has honoured her with one of its Fantastic Ekphrastic Awards, recently nominated her poem “Widowhood” for a Pushcart Prize, and twice nominated her poems for Best of the Net. Most recently, her poetry has appeared in Texas Poetry Assignment, MockingHeart Review, Equinox, easing the edges: a collection of everyday miracles, San Pedro River Review, The Ocotillo Review, and in Dutch in the Netherlands in Brabant Cultureel and Dichtersbankje (the Poet’s Bench). ** Sorcery Outside, the flakes from a dour sky blanket dormant roofs. Bearded ravens caw against the gray swatch of dawn. Inside, a sorceress wakes from dreams of rhubarb bleeding red on durum crusts. Petals flake from marigolds baked into focaccia earth. She paces in the cold, her growing impatience rustling a cache of strange spells. The pulse of simmering summers quickens within the gloom of her graphite world. Through the window she tames the voices of bitter winter gusts, her ruddy palms sowing puffs of carnelian dust. Hoarfrost shatters, as phosphorescent clouds descend with the vanity of clementines. The sorceress laughs at her mischief as blanched alleys light up in a confusion of states - pools of warm tangerine seeping over the cold duvet of snow. Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is an Indian-Australian artist, poet, and pianist. She holds a Masters in English. Her art and poetry have been published in both print and online journals and anthologies including The Ekphrastic Review, The Eunoia Review, Vita Brevis Press, Bracken Magazine, and Black Bough Poetry. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and her art multiple times for The Best of The Net. She serves as a chief editor for Authora Australis. She lives and works in Sydney on the land of the Ku-ring-gai people of The Eora Nation. Find her @oormilaprahlad and www.instagram.com/oormila_paintings ** Moonglow on the Chimneys The Lost Gen showed up a century ago. They didn’t write much about the winters or snow, how Paris rooftops go white, then death-face gray when the sun runs off and days of rain follow. Naked ladies, silver and barren as oaks, re-dress and bow in the candle-lit windows. Pale old men doze by dying fires and cognac, slink off to bed in the dark, unloved and drunk. How do you paint happy with lead on the brush, Caillebotte? How do you create snow—minus the miasma, melancholy and emptiness? Gone when Hemingway arrived, you were one name he couldn’t drop in a novel or at a café. The story ended the same: snow on rooftops, fog in the streets, rats in the alley shadows, candle flickers through louvered shutters; writers, expats slumbering through the sunless winters. The Lost Gen showed up a century ago. They didn’t write about midnight roofs of glitter, artists at the glass—moonglow on the chimneys. Robert E. Ray Robert E. Ray is a published novelist and poet. His poetry has been published by Rattle, Wild Roof Journal, The Ekphrastic Review and in three poetry anthologies. Robert lives in coastal Georgia. ** Roof to Roof Teto a teto toit à toit two people from two worlds crossed, two people from two opposite directions came. No longer content to lay under the warm white blankets covering their houses. Over the white runners of snow cladding the rooves, they went. over the quarters of the sleeping and the stilled-hearts of the dead. These two hearts that beat as one, these two minds that wanted to think as one, two souls longing to be joined, skittered across the frosty, white-capped houses so that their lips might meet without eyes to see them, and so that they could breathe to one another their thoughts, hopes, and so that their souls could sync up. Face à face cara a cara Eyes met French and Portuguese tongues stilled, hearts triphammering in chorus smiled as hands held each other without witness or objection, until clothes slid off the rooftop, forced aside. Bernardo Villela Bernardo Villela has had poetry published by Entropy, Zoetic Press, and Bluepepper and forthcoming in Eldritch & Ether. He’s had fiction published with Coffin Bell Journal, The Dark Corner Zine, 101 Proof Horror, A Monster Told Me Bedtime Stories, Page & Spine. You can read more about these and various other pursuits at www.miller-villela.com. ** Caillebotte’s Snow Covered Roofs in Paris (1878) Snow washed grey holds hills with narrow, crooked streets a winter day in Paris sliced figures of the bourgeoisie demolition of the medieval Rue de Lille 7e arrondissement wide-angle Musée d’Orsay of light as it falls with notes of blue clay on the Left Bank of the Seine influenced by Japanese prints a former railway station the Belle Époque I never scraped the oils added layer upon layer. Your battered wife in black furs. Ilona Martonfi Ilona Martonfi is a poet, editor, literary curator, and activist; she is the author of four poetry books, Blue Poppy (Coracle Press, 2009), Black Grass (Broken Rules Press, 2012), The Snow Kimono (Inanna, 2015) and Salt Bride (Inanna, 2019). Forthcoming, The Tempest (Inanna, 2022). Her work has published in seven chapbooks, journals across North America and abroad. Recently, her poem "My Brother's Ashes" was nominated by The Ekphrastic Review for the Best Microfiction Awards Anthology, 2021. She is the curator Argo Bookshop Reading Series. She is also the recipient of the Quebec Writers’ Federation 2010 Community Award. ** we pretend to be immortal buried, more snow—why was that dream ravenous, cold, shivering, homeless? voices reflected off walls pierced by invisible crows-- sleep is somewhere else-- not in this room, this darkness, not blanketing this body, this restless spirit repeating these futile prayers-- these spellsongs hidden deep in the snowdrifts of mind-- the rhymes underneath no fortuneteller can scry-- we take what we can, bear it-- sentences of words, currented waves of crying, flowing brain to blood-- languages that substitute concrete clouds for starlit skies-- will morning ever come, or will I remain here, always suspended, hidden deep in the forest of these frozen memories? windows of ice framed by long silences-- glittering snowflakes-- just bones in the end—scarecrow hanging in the changing light Kerfe Roig A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/, and see more of her work on her website http://kerferoig.com/ **  Do you enjoy writing inspired by art? Don't miss our special blue themed contest! Click on image for details. Flash fiction and poetry. Cash prizes.
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