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Ekphrastic Writing Responses: Gustave Caillebotte

12/31/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
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/

**


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