 Farfalla, by Emilio Pettoruti (Argentina) 1961 the painting farfalla by emilio pettoruti (farfalla the italian word for butterfly) Butterfly dark, sweet and final Like the corn and sun, the poppy and the water. pablo neruda bountiful black butterfly after you emerge from this chrysalis of paint and canvas you will frame a small blue space of sky as you scissor dance the air in your flight slowly and soft as breath will hinge back and forth until they rest like silence on a cushion of petals during this season of yellow o, how dark, sweet and final your short life Sister Lou Ella Hickman 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 numerous anthologies including 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.” Her second book of poetry, Writing the Stars will be published in October 2024 (Press 53). ** Farfalla greenhouse—no stones please! glued to a smashed glasshouse pane: broken butterfly Lizzie Ballagher
Lizzie Ballagher's focus is on landscapes, both interior and exterior; also, on the beauty (and hostility) of the environment. Having studied in England, Ireland, and the USA, she worked in education and publishing. Her poetry has appeared in print and online in all corners of the English-speaking world. Find her blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/ ** Three Fibonacci Poems ices shades (for farfalla) finding the human in blue toxic rainbows the colours don’t burn bright they hover in ice shades and rain blues ** open sky dreams (for farfalla) my sunset of lost open sky dreams the blue leaked out all over the page and stood up straight up ** open me (for farfalla) there’s hope in geomancy and blue earth magic running down and out pressing hands on windows and doors open me Mike Sluchinski Mike Sluchinski writes mountainside, high in the Saskatchewan alps. He believes in 'esse quam videri' and practises Shinrin-yoku weekly. Most of his work runs ekphrastic and stream of consciousness based on his own experiences. He gratefully acknowledges the Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Foundation for their support of the arts. Very gratefully published by Kelp Journal & The Wave, the fib review, Eternal Haunted Summer, Syncopation Lit. Journal, Ocean Poetry Anthology 2024, South Florida Poetry Journal (SOFLOPOJO), Freefall, Viewless Wings and more coming! ** Landless seasick, i wandered from the edge of the world to the edge of the world no succor found me no not friendship either; merely the rippling of the far mountains and the sound of my feet. inside the great blue i found a truer shade of god so perfect it turned me blind to all other joys. o my brothers my sisters! my grief is very bad. i was lost at sea and made sick with lonesomeness, i saw god and was cursed with more beauty than the heart can bear. from the edge of the world to the edge of the world. now my home welcomes me with its dozing hills its very solemn stone faces. wine does not gladden me no nor a friend loving me with kisses. seasick, i wander from the edge of faith to the edge of faith. Maria Duran Maria Duran is an art researcher and writer from Lisbon, Portugal. She writes poetry and prose, studies little known nineteenth-century painters, and is currently writing a chapbook. Her work has been published with Helvética Press, Gilbert & Hall Press, Black Moon Magazine, and will soon be published by Querencia Magazine and Pollux Journal, among others. Maria Duran (@m.mar.duran) • Instagram. ** Tilting at Windmills A butterfly’s chrysalis — the stage between larva and adult — contains spiky blue wings. It’s an unforgettable moment of incredulity when its wings transform into the rotors of a windmill. Perhaps it was this kind of windmill that Don Quijote mistook for giants — lumbering creatures set to stomp him to the death. For a moment the errant knight thinks God is very angry — God’s rotors, a blue the colour of a stormy sky, are about to spin off and slice DQ’s throat. In DQ’s landscape of crazed imagination, one of the rotors snaps off to use as a sword to fight the windmill giants. My mother, Matilde, had her own imaginary, self-made giants to fight. She was assigned to read Don Quijote, that brick of a novel when she was studying for her Masters Degree in Spanish. Matilde. a Spanish speaker and a proud Cubana, was daunted by Cervantes’ masterpiece and motherhood in equal parts. Like DQ Matilde Alboukrek had her own fantastical life too. She believed with all her heart and mind that she was an heir to the Duke of Albuquerque’s medieval castle in the north of Spain. The Spanish government was ready to return it to her to compensate for expelling her Jewish ancestors from the country. As a child, I could hear the keys to her castle jangling in her pocketbook. As she did to make so many things fit into her life, Matilde squeezed DQ’s story into a cookbook holder — steadying it as she carefully separated the pages. The knife, gilded in silver, was meant to open letters not graze her wrists. The hush, industrious hum of pages coming apart was ambient sound to me. And it was the beginning of Matilde coming apart in front of me. Judy Bolton-Fasman Judy Bolton-Fasman – www.judyboltonfasman.com – is the author of ASYLUM: A Memoir of Family Secretspublished by Mandel Vilar Press. Her essays and reviews have appeared in major newspapers including the New York Times and Boston Globe, essay anthologies, and literary magazines. She is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Best of the Net nominee, and a 2024 BAE nominee. She is the recipient of several writing fellowships, including Hedgebrook, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Mineral School. ** Coming Out This butterfly struggles to free itself, escape the sharp edges of its cocoon, cover itself in blue, flutter beyond that frame. Gary S. Rosin Gary S. Rosin’s work has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and “Best of the Net,” and has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Chaos Dive Reunion (Mutabilis Press 2023), Cold Moon Journal, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Texas Poetry Assignment, Texas Seniors (Lamar Literary Press), Verse Virtual, and elsewhere. He has two chapbooks, Standing Inside the Web (Bear House Publishing), and Fire and Shadows (Legal Studies Forum). ** The Fortune Tellers we poked our small fingers into the pockets of the paper we’d carefully folded —bring the corners to the middle, turn the square over, bring the corners to the middle again-- pick a number between 1 and 8 and we opened and closed, opened and closed, counting pick another number open and close, open and close, then unfold the flap to reveal a smile, a teardrop, a heart, or a skull what did we know about the future except that it was uncertain we believed we could find the answers hidden in paper folded by our own fingers we believed, then, we could shape our destinies with our own hands Eileen Lawrence Eileen Lawrence is a poet living in Central Texas. Her poetry has been published by Dos Gatos Press, Mutabilis Press, the Fargo Public Library, and Visions International. ** Base Jumper When I tire of me in relation to you I rip up that version and fly out, naked, into new land but your scent is still there or is that me I stop to detect, head bent, nose probing for history? The echoes come back older like they don’t believe me. I find myself drinking from the same cup, the teaspoon rowing the same strokes, but my throat catches when I try to swallow the brew, now hot powder, undissolved. Hemat Malak Hemat Malak is a poet from Sydney, Australia. She writes on diverse themes including motherhood, separation, nature and identity. Her works have been published or are forthcoming in Catchment Literary Journal, Quadrant Magazine, WestWords Living Cities Anthology, Writerly Magazine and elsewhere. ** Inching Toward Reentry As she inched out of the well she considered the array-- the unified stones its resistant display As she inched out of the well she remembered the restraint-- the impassive pit its laconic abyss As she inched out of the well she encountered the wholeness-- the luminous sky its unbridled expanse As she inched out of the well she envisioned the ascent-- the unforeseen path its imminent dispatch This must be heaven she thought as she stepped out of the well-- the sharp pinch of release its triumphant pinions This is heaven she affirmed and with one mighty whoosh-- a contrail of light Jeannie E. Roberts Jeannie E. Roberts is the author of several books, including her most recent title The Ethereal Effect - A Collection of Villanelles (Kelsay Books, 2022). On a Clear Night, I Can Hear My Body Sing is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 2025. She serves as a poetry editor for the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs. ** Flightpath of a Butterfly The pale blue sheet stretched taut across the living room. I could hear my kids giggling underneath it. The fort had taken them hours to build. They’d clothes-pinned the sheet to the long wooden table in the kitchen and then secured it under cushions of the pastel-flowered couch in the living room. They propped up a mop and broom in the middle, forming a teepee. The sheet dangled half-way to the ground, allowing fresh air and space for a hand-made window to be clamped to the edge. This see-through window, made of blue and white tissue paper, blew in the breeze from the French doors. The butterfly window must have been my daughter Emma’s contribution, while my son Ryan would have engineered the walls, the roof, and designed a barrier to keep their fort safe from Wags, our dog. There would have been food inside: pizza bagels at the very least, but probably popcorn and Oreos. Through the window I could see their blond heads bent, as they huddled together over some silly picture book. Good to see them laugh. The tissue on the window must have gotten wet as the papers curled inward and didn't quite fit together. Maybe when Emma designed it, her lemonade tipped over. The layers of blue and white shapes looked more like an upside-down chalice, the symbol of our Unitarian faith, than a butterfly. But I knew what she was going for. Everything Emma made these days was a butterfly, ever since my mom died, that is. It wasn't unexpected. My mom had lived with ovarian cancer for two years before it took her. What was unexpected was that God didn't intervene, didn't change her mind, and leave my mom here with us. The way she cared for Emma and Ryan was more like a mom than a grandma. Five-year-old Emma was a challenge at times, rigid in her thinking and wedded to routine. Before my mom became too sick to babysit, she would take Emma to art class at the lake. After class, they'd have snacks and play by the water building sandcastles. Emma never wanted those outings to end. One day Emma refused to get in my mom’s car, going all stiff-backed and screamy. My mom, toting a boot from a sprained ankle, decided to walk Emma home in the stroller rather than risk people thinking she was kidnapping a child. Emma rolled along, sipping her apple juice, enjoying the ride. We picked up my mom's car from the lake later. Gail Lenney centered her life around making everyone else happy. That’s why six months before she passed away, she dug up all the daffodil bulbs in her garden and brought them over to our house. “What’s Nanny doing?” Ryan asked when he saw my mom digging in our yard. “She’s making our garden more beautiful.” And giving us one more way to remember her, I couldn’t bear to say aloud. When my mom died, we saw butterflies everywhere in my yard. This sign was a bit on the nose, reminding us of all the afternoons my mom spent with the kids in the yard as she taught them how to be gardeners. As the Monarchs flew around them, my mom showed my kids how to plant sunflower seeds and then, after they bloomed, to brace them against our brick wall. She taught them to dead-head pansies and play with snapdragons, pinching their blooms so they barked like dogs. The butterfly window in the living room fort was an invitation for my mom to join them for the weekend, to hear their secret plans, and pretend that cancer didn't steal her—that God did the right thing this time and left her alone with them to be a grandma. Kathy Lenney Kathy Lenney is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, community college counselor, and part time graduate student, working on an MFA in creative writing. She is a mom to two amazing grown children, a gardener, and a lover of butterflies. This is her first publication. ** Window in an Abandoned Building That window. They somehow forgot to board it up. She found a temporary refuge here. Moved like a ghost through the rooms whose walls still emanated the hatred, the threats, the love, the laughter. Yes, there had been laughter too. She heard it at night, when the rats scurried, their nails click-clacking softly on what was left of the wooden floors. Echoes of the children who used their laughter to escape alcohol-fuelled beatings. She often stood behind that window and looked out over a backyard strewn with syringes, plastic bottles, condoms, broken glass… waiting for the children kicking an old ball, their laughter breaking out on tear-stained faces. Rose Mary Boehm Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as eight poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was three times nominated for a Pushcart and once for Best of Net. Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books July 2022), Whistling in the Dark (Cyberwit July 2022), and Saudade (December 2022) are available on Amazon. Also available on Amazon is a new collection, Life Stuff, published by Kelsay Books November 2023. A new MS is brewing. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** Farfalla Farfalla. In Italian, butterfly. In English, bowtie. The table with the cloth rent into quarters. The blue glass platter awaits heaped steaming pasta that is sure to come soon. The brown table above the blues of the rug Holds, cradles the platter that lay in waiting for sustenance for the hungry to be fed. The cloth in pieces, still used, tattered, in disarray. Hunger doesn’t care. The platter, devoid of utensils, of plates, of mouths to feed, but waiting still. Blue on blue on blue. The cloth flutters, hovers, waiting for the solitary offering. You don’t have to have much, to give much. M.Lynne Squires M.Lynne Squires is a Pushcart Prize-nominated author of four books, including the award-winning Letters to My Son - Reflections of Urban Appalachia at Mid-Century. A short story crafter and occasional poet, her work appears in numerous anthologies and journals including Change Seven and Fearless: Women's Journeys to Self-Empowerment. ** Helicopter Seeds and the Horizon Because they spin as they fall on his head, Johan spreads his arms and twirls. “Helicopters,” he laughs, throwing green seeds in the air. We’re grandmother-grandson in a Montreal park where maples grow in an abundance unknown to us. He lives in Singapore, me in the deep South. As we walk, the sun lowers in a burst of orange. “Look at the horizon,” I say. “Where?” “In front of us.” “Can we walk there?” Because I say it’s impossible, questions fly faster than twirling seeds. My mind stutters over vague explanations far from satisfying for a six-year-old. How does one explain a movable, intangible place? “Can helicopters fly there?” I repeat, “Impossible.” “Why not?” “It’s at the edge of the world where the sky and Earth meet.” “Then, why can’t we go there?” I try to explain how it moves as we move toward it. He narrows his eyes, grimaces, “But if it’s the edge, what keeps us from falling off?” Sandi Stromberg Sandi Stromberg’s poetry appears most recently in The Orchards Poetry Journal, Pulse, equinox, Gyroscope Review, Panoply, San Pedro River Review, The Windhover, and The Senior Class. She is an editor at The Ekphrastic Review and edited two anthologies of poetry: Untameable City and Echoes of the Cordillera. Her poetry has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize, twice for Best of the Net, juried into the Houston Poetry Fest eleven times, and translated into Dutch. Her collection Frogs Don’t Sing Red was published by Kelsay Books (2023). A book trailer featuring two poems is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQU7j5UwsbU. ** Urban Planning, 1941 The rynek, market square, lies in the center of this four-street, one lamplight village. One street, never named, leads out of town to the train station and pine forest where Soviets dig trenches to monitor trains in and out of Warsaw. Beneath the town’s plan lies the guilt of locals betraying their Jewish neighbors as the Soviets evacuate and the Nazis trespass with their tanks and tumult. A bloody shape spreads and seeps into root cellars, an amoeba obscured by gravestone-graveled roads and lopsided shacks hanging onto each other for support. Years later, you’ll open the town’s memorial book. You’ll find a hand-drawn map’s outstretched arms to neighbouring villages that the Bug River could no longer fortress. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in Holocaust & Genocide Studies from Gratz College. Her work has been featured several times in The Ekphrastic Review Challenge and has also appeared in Nimrod, Michigan Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Rust + Moth, Consequence Forum, and elsewhere. She lives and teaches in New Jersey. Visit her website at www.barbarakrasner.com. ** Sparring With Writer’s Block A broken pane of glass, a little crack, a flyball struck and left its mark, a hole – that’s what it’s like to want to write, the knack is nearly gone, the mind cannot cajole a whimsey to jump off the neuro grid and sprawl itself on paper, or imbibe the fingers on the keyboard, like it’s hid the elf who knows the words, and you can’t bribe them out. There’s fracture in your bone, as if a fall denies a break that needs a cast, imagination’s brittle – no, it’s stiff, your pencil rocket won’t lift off, won’t blast into beyond. Forget the outer space you’ve visited before. You’re stuck on first. At last, when pencil lead connects, you brace for one home run – but slam into the worst – a shattered window just outside the field. The muse has pitched a grin. But you won’t yield. MFrostDelaney MFrostDelaney is a bean counter by trade, a tree hugger in heart and a recovering soul, practicing life in New England. A member of the Powow River Poets, her poems appear regularly in Quill & Parchment, and she has been nominated for the Push Cart Prize. She has contributed poetry to HerStory 2021, has poems in the Powow River Poets Anthology II and Extreme Sonnets II, and displayed a poem at New Beginnings – Poetry on Canvas, Peabody Art Association 2022. ** Butterfly/Psyche Far-faller, you’ve got such a long way to go through the glow of the blue and the cut-butter yellow. What do you do when you feel you’ve been dreamed into being? Cellophane tricks of the light catch you out, you adorer of luminous, onerous paths; spluttering petals of wings too lopsided for flight and a fluttering mind too misguided to give up the fight. Caitlin Prouatt Caitlin Prouatt is a Brisbane-born, Oxford-based Latin and Greek teacher. When not tutoring or looking after her toddler, Caitlin writes poetry, currently unpublished. Much of this centres on her experiences of being a parent, but she also often returns to Classical themes. ** Farfalla Litany you are the maw that will not shut you are the jaws that can’t get enough when the night falls and the gloom sets in that’s when you should open your wings open your wings open your wings you are the maw that crawls to a stop but now you should open your wings you are the bruise that lingers and stains you are the snooze in a cobalt blue frame you curl up cocooned so hidden and still but now you should open your wings open your wings open your wings you are the bruise that glues your limbs shut but now you should open your wings you are the rock that boxes the grave you are the darkness that blacks out the day when you’re seen through the cross and the stone rolls away that’s when you can open your wings open your wings open your wings you are the rock that blocks the way but now you can open your wings Helen Freeman Helen loves trying her hand at the prompts on The Ekphrastic Review. Her husband is obsessed with butterflies and even did a dissertation on woodland varieties. Helen has poems published on various sites and magazines and currently lives in Durham, England. Instagram @chemchemi.hf ** The Vigilant Farfalla She was a seed when her wings emerged, broken, spreading out like tissue paper in a stormy breeze. She clung to her new body as she soared, determined to find her way through the fog. In the distance, a flash, a high house shining light into the blackness. Sails turn toward that beacon, guiding them home, guiding her home -- A reminder of what can be lost in the darkness. Corrie Pappas Corrie Pappas is a lover of poetry and song, living outside of Boston. ** Heliotropism As I drive west into sunset a small army of turbines rise, wings rotating in unison huge blades slicing the sun. I kill the engine, listen – metallic symphony graces the sky with its solar song like a steel-winged gull in flight. The future turns slow and steady like a helianthus head waiting for the sun to rise in the east bursting with hope and yellowness. Kate Young Kate Young lives in England and enjoys writing poetry, painting and playing the guitar, ukulele and mandolin. Her poems have appeared in various webzines, magazines, and chapbooks. Her work has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlets A Spark in the Darkness and Beyond the School Gate have been published by Hedgehog Press. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet or on her website kateyoungpoet.co.uk **
1 Comment
Julia Griffin
8/11/2024 02:37:38 pm
What glorious poems! It's a lovely painting, and the different responses all contribute so much to my enjoyment of it ... Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
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