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Luristan Bronze Ekphrastic Responses

9/9/2022

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Picture
Bronze Horse Bit Cheekpiece, Luristan (Iran) c. 700 BCE

Fire Breathing Hell

Two mammoth dragons,
master in-between taming,
fire breathing hell.

Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher

Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher has been writing since 2010 and has had many micro-flash fiction stories published. In 2018 her book Shorts for the Short Story Enthusiasts, was published and The Importance of Being Short, in 2019. Her most recent book In A Flash, was published in the spring of 2022.

**

The Year I Went Without Doing Battle

There was still steam rising from the mouths of my enemy. Men who rode South until the earth had given out to the sea. A thousand dreams made to drown without reason. I’m not sure being the master of another’s life. Stirs up fire more often than grief. But either one eats at you. Means to steal whatever name the earth had drawn out of its midst. Like a loose thread. Or the soul you no longer had any need. Once you’d been ordained by the winds from up North. For there is no art to it. The dead keep reminding us. And far less craft. From the headdress to the hiss of surrender. From the first scream to its aftermath. It’s an undoing the sun would rather we didn’t have to see to. Be even figuring more. But here’s the deal. Led by two beasts on each side of me. I’ll head West. While my shadow heads East. Only one of them let up for air. Long enough to tell of it.

Mark DeCarteret

Poems from Mark DeCarteret’s manuscript The Year I/We Went Without have been taken by The American Poetry Review, BlazeVOX, The Ekphrastic Review, Guesthouse, Hole in the Head Review, Meat for Tea, Nixes Mate Review, Plume Literary Journal, South Florida Poetry Journal and Unbroken.

**

Master of Animals Part 1

Behrooz (Better Day), simple man, farmed
when he hit bronze in 1928. 
Not farm equipment beautiful,
green-plated. Later 
a cheek plate for horses honed 700 BC
sold to a collector quietly, paid Behrooz in rials, 
Said there might be more where
that came from. 

Tongues lap. Someone spilled like tea. 
Academics, archeologists descend, want and
plow up Behrooz’s fields. 

Ten years. Tenured men flew planes 
for signs of civilization  forgotten only in a
generation.
How on earth? Life died by erosion or buried by
dying plant life later swept aside in mountains of
rain, the land of the dead disappears.
A burial ground, unguarded. 

**

Master of Animals Part ll 

Horse whisperer who’s 
horned deity of hunt.
He holds mythical beasts
barehanded.

Listen to the hissed fury.
Master makes no move,
Implacable bronze horse bit
Cheekpiece has hole in solar
plexus of hunter. Personal 
power, third chakra.

Nomad, not mad, just 
restraining beasts at
bay. Transhumance
transcends bit, bronze,
light, portable
like the mountain people.

Fleeted foot, hurried hoof
following seasonal fields.
To unearth buried bronze, 
seek spring, necropolis not 
far.

​Lynne Kemen

Lynne Kemen lives in Upstate New York. Her chapbook, More Than a Handful was published in 2020. Her work is anthologized in Seeing Things (2020) and What We See on Our Journeys (2021). She is published in Silver Birch Press, The Ravens Perch, Fresh Words Magazine, Spillwords, Topical Poetry, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and Blue Mountain Review. Lynne stands on the Board of Bright Hill Press. She is an Editor for the Blue Mountain Review and a lifetime member of The Southern Collective Experience. Her second chapbook, Crows Fly at Midnight, will be published in 2023.

**

Protected
 
dark stallion
adorned you
gallant steed
ride into battle
no demons dare
attack noble beast
winged warriors
open-mouths warn
before battle, wear
 
iron gargoyles
feel beating heart
mine too beats 
we ride as one
beast, man – sword
drawn to strike down
if we fall, rest my
weary head, peaceful
afterlife ensured
 
Julie A. Dickson
 
Julie A. Dickson advocates for captive elephants and shares her home with two rescued feral cats, Cam and JoJo. Her poems appear in various journals, including Girl God, Misfit, Deadbeat Poets and The Ekphrastic Review. Dickson holds a BPS in Behavioral Science and works with in-home seniors with Alzheimer's. She is a former coordinator for 100 Thousand Poets for Change and a past poetry board member.

**

Teacher’s Peak  
found poem in Nietzsche’s prose 
 
What good is my happiness?  
It is poverty and dirt  
and a miserable ease. 
What good is my reason? 
Does it long for knowledge 
as the lion for its food? 
It is poverty and dirt  
and a miserable ease. 
 
It is not your sin, but your moderation  
that cries to heaven. 
Where is the lighting to leak your tongue? 
Where is the madness  
with which you should be cleansed?      
 
Man is a rope, I love those  
who do not know how to live, except 
their lives to be down-going, to be sacrifices. 
The time has come, I go my way, my down-going. 
 
Many, who called themselves his disciples, 
followed him, thus they came to a crossroad: 
there Zaratustra told them that from then on  
he wants to go alone, but his disciples  
handed him in farewell a staff, upon a golden haft, 
of which a serpent was coiled about a sun. 
 
He balanced the staff doubtful in his hands, 
for he disliked how gold always bestows itself; 
how the staff bestowed itself as a balancing act 
upon the shoulders of his sacrifice is a doubtful guess,  
for this was his last teaching etude;  
from then on animals’ roars backed  
his slopping equilibrium of infinitude. 
 
Ekaterina Dukas 

Ekaterina Dukas has studied and taught linguistics and culture at universities of Sofia, Delhi and London and authored a book on medieval art for the British Library. She writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning and her poems have featured often in The Ekphrastic Review and its challenges selection, among others. Her poetry collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europa Edizioni, 2021.

**

We Know

We know it was supposed to be 
an honour, in fact, the greatest 
honour we Luristan steeds could 
have bestowed on us, but shit,
the damn thing weighed a ton.
It hurt like hell, rubbing our cheeks 
raw. Nevertheless, we bowed and 
deigned to grin and bear it, for we 
were famous, we Niseans, sought-
after by the Spartans and the engines 
of the chariots of the Persian kings.

J.R. Solonche

Nominated for the National Book Award and twice-nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, J.R. Solonche is the author of 26 books of poetry and coauthor of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley.

**

Homeward Through the Dark

We gathered in the winding darkness there
where six directions met beneath the swelling moon,
upon the fires that danced upon the dancing dust
and silver-plated hills, emblazoning our tents 
and huddled ovens, the rotund wombs of life
that harbored warmth from each escaping breath
and ravening pyre, from livid tongues of flame 
that joined each turning dancer to the sky.

We gloried as our dark-eyed daughters birthed 
upon the frugal steppe an age of wonderers 
content to rattle reason’s numbers in the air and sit
in little groups beneath the arching disk of night 
to contemplate the spangled whirl of rings and spheres 
and wonder what it meant to see them disappear 
within the wilderness of daylight’s sun-struck sight, 
to suffer past the shadow-play of night and firelight 
the fearful coruscating breath of noon and recognize
the rasping presence of a fiery voice, that lunatic 
who beckons from the blinding entrance of the cave.

And some would say that mind has world in it,
or world has mind, yet by and by we found 
we’d always find the logics of disorder there, 
and all the while the winding sky whirls round itself 
out here, right here where there is somehow nothing 
but the turning, nothing but the shoreless river churning
through the unremitting twist of time, no stable space
beneath the coiling dark where worming thought 
might find its place and safely set its bearings.

And all the while a distant starlight rumbles
through the unreceptive air, across the unrelenting 
silences of futures past, the noise that dimly echoes 
only in the eye and leaves us free to picture life 
as we see fit, as dagger, dragon, banquet, bird 
or burning choir, or as a chariot of bronze 
             we haul across the fragrant fields of night
                             on silent wheels of fire.

​DB Jonas

​DB Jonas is an orchardist living in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico. Born in California in 1951, he was raised in Japan and Mexico. His work has recently appeared in Tar River, Blue Unicorn, Whistling Shade, Neologism, Consilience Journal, Poetica Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Amethyst Review, The Deronda Review, The Decadent Review, The Amphibian, Willows Wept, Sequoia Speaks; Revue{R}évolution and others.

**


Changes
 
At first, they had a Mistress of the Animals, those Black Sea peoples, the plains and horse peoples of Asia Minor. They passed on their heritage from mother to daughter and they brought husbands into the maternal home. The Mistresses watched over their charges, offered grain and wine not blood, made whole, nurtured. The Mistress of the Animals was flanked by lionesses. Nurturing huntresses. 

Did the horses notice the tipping of the world when the Mistress was replaced by a Master, when the lioness guardians grew wings, talons and cruel beaks? Did they feel a change in the hands that held the reins? The plains were as wide, winters as hard, but the hands, were they as gentle? 

The winds that swept those antique plains swept away the tenderness. We reap the whirlwind now; horses bear heavier burdens and cruel bits. They race and jump and dance, carry children in endless circles. They obey, their eyes on the whip, noses sniffing our recycled air. There are no horse dreams in this brave new world.

Poets on the shores of the world’s fringe wrote in the sands of the foaming shallows, in the stars that march across dark hill, of how the world has changed. Utterly. We snatch at the whirling debris, listen for hoofbeats.

Jane Dougherty
 
Jane Dougherty lives and works in southwest France. Her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, The Ekphrastic Review, Black Bough Poetry, ink sweat and tears, Gleam, Nightingale & Sparrow, Green Ink and Brilliant Flash Fiction. She blogs at https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/ Her poetry chapbooks, thicker than water and birds and other feathers were published in October and November 2020.

**

Shaman

the secret to channelling
all that power
is to be in the right place
in your mind
to let the magic flow

ibex horns on my head
torc round neck
the griffins pour their chi
through my core
we make a mighty totem

Emily Tee

After years spent with numbers Emily Tee is now writing poetry and flash fiction.  She's had pieces published in Ekphrastic Review challenges and in print with Dreich, with other work forthcoming elsewhere. She lives in England.

**

Ars Bestia Domitor

The urge to create is a burden 
we barely contain. Our thirst 
for control, belly hollow 
since the eve of birth; a bang 
heard when atoms shot out the eye 
of our horse. We need 
water, not droplets from our tap 
dancing, but an outpour 
that sustains. Our impulse 
is a wound that splits 
in two, the shape-shifter; 
our steed turns 
to dragons, their wings an arc 
to whip us, master of none, 
or possibly one-
trick pony. We might be 
mad, but whatever 
we compose it’s an art. Maybe 
we are also flailing 
beasts, but beasts can’t tame 
beasts. Strength forgot-
ten, toes dug in the stirrups, 
we ride on. Our blind horse 
leads us to the water, still 
we will not drink, the harsh 
bronze bit in our mouth.

Heather Brown Barrett 

Heather Brown Barrett is a poet in southeastern Virginia. She mothers her young son and contemplates life, the universe, and everything with her writer husband, Bradley Barrett. Her poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Yellow Arrow Journal, OyeDrum Magazine, AvantAppal(achia), and elsewhere. She has work forthcoming in Black Bough Poetry. Find her on Instagram @heatherbrownbarrett

**

Indiana Jones and a Horse Bit Cheekpiece

“Who do you think you are? A hatless Indiana Jones?” Elena tsk-tsked and wagged a finger at Desmond. “And at your age?”

“Come on, Elena.” Desmond swiped a hand through what was left of his white hair. “What’s the harm in having a little adventure? I’m not quite ready to retire to a rocking chair and chew on a blade of grass.”

“Couldn’t you take up a different hobby? Something safe and practical? Something legal? Wallpapering. Wiring. Woodworking. If you need suggestions, just ask. This old house needs work.”

“Elena, you know I love you.” Desmond grabbed her hand and kissed her palm. “And I’d do almost anything you want. But really, do you expect this retired English professor to fix a leak? Surely not when we can pay someone to do it.”

She regained the use of her hand and picked up the small bronze object lying on Desmond’s desk. “And what will the woman you love do when you’re hauled off to jail for stealing this...this....”

“It’s a horse bit cheekpiece.”

“Oh, really? And you knew that simply by looking at it?” She turned the bronze object this way and that, as if a new angle would reveal its secrets. “What horse in his right mind would prance around with that…thing in its mouth? It must hurt.”

“The cheekpiece spoke to me.”

“Don’t you mean it neighed at you? What did it say? ‘Steal me’?”

“Very droll, dear. I’m afraid you never did have an appreciation for fine art. Around 700 B. C., a fine Persian artist slaved over it for heaven knows how long. It’s a masterpiece.”

“How come last night you didn’t call my chicken Kiev a masterpiece? That’s the least you can do. I slaved over that dead chicken for hours.”

“Dear, you’re missing the point. You know I love your chicken Kiev almost as much as I love you, but I can’t hang it on the wall.”

“Well, you can’t hang this on the wall either. Not unless you want our first born, who, you might recall, is a police chief, to turn you into the authorities for grand theft. I assume this thing is worth a chunk of change.” Elena dropped the cheekpiece on the desk. It warbled an F sharp as it danced atop the oak desk before decrescendoing into a decidedly flat C. “If Albert hadn’t arranged for the return of the Shakespeare’s First Folio you stole--”

“I prefer ‘borrowed.’”

“Pilfered. Pinched. Purloined. Pick your favorite synonym. The museum had you dead to rights. Need I remind you that you weren’t wearing a mask? At least Indiana Jones had the presence of mind to wear a hat. You smiled right into the camera.”

Desmond sighed.

“Without Albert’s assistance. Let me restate that. Without our son’s heavily veiled threats to disclose the provenance of several of the museum’s prized possessions, you’d be in the state pen waiting for our next monthly conjugal visit.”

“I love it when you employ alliteration.”

“Don’t change the subject. You were able to remove this...this thing from the museum. I suggest you put that retired English professor mind of yours to good use and figure out a way to unremove it. Pronto.”

“Elena, you don’t mean that.”

“Oh, but I do. Did I mention I’m rereading Lysistrata?”

“Oh, god, Elena. Not again.” Desmond groaned and jumped to his feet. “I just remembered I have to run uptown to do an errand.”
Desmond snatched up the cheekpiece and cradled it to his bosom, In a faraway, forlorn voice, he said, “This would have been perfect over there, right next to the statue of Ishtar.”

“I’ll miss you while you’re gone.” Elena bussed his cheek. “Darling, will you be back in time for dinner? I’m fixing beef Wellington.”

“Beef Wellington?” Desmond sighed and studied the cheekpiece. “Oh, most definitely.”

When she heard the front door close, Elena smiled and thanked her favorite author, Aristophanes. Long before that Persian artist was kicking in his mother’s belly, Aristophanes wrote a brilliant play that continues to inspire women. Just the mere mention of Lysistrata was enough to make Desmond behave. One of these days, Elena thought, I just might get around to actually reading it.

Paula Messina

Paula Messina writes short and long fiction, essays, and feature stories. She reads literary works in the public domain for librivox.org. When she isn't working on her novel set in Boston during World War II, she can be found strolling along the United State's first public beach.

**

I Pursue Dance Lessons with My Unvaccinated Lover
 
In the cracked-mirror room, we steer, 
quick and slow on the salsa floor—hole 
 
inside my stomach—and, nectar,
inhale your blood orange, blonde leather, 
 
and white woods. Demons appear behind 
in dizziness, bronze winged, curled tails, burnt 
 
tongue-laughter, taunting my 2-3-5 & 8 roll 
while they squash other chickened students. 
 
The recess-lit habitat has a yield strength of 
taffeta: I bite the minutes, roll a mouthful, 
 
press your lovely shoulder blade the way I want 
love pressed into. Right left right and scariness 
 
or spaghetti awkwardness. Happiness is a horned 
god that centers the body. I am a nomad fighting 
 
past every past & future variant of myself. 
I am concerned about the unbitten 
 
Fredericksburg peaches and the hatch green 
chiles from our last road trip—another salsa 
 
recipe to ruin. Try to enjoy the dance without 
beads of sweat. Trust that a titanic array, 
 
a shimmering zenith will lead with steps to follow.

John Milkereit

John Milkereit lives in Houston, Texas working as a mechanical engineer. He has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals including Naugatuck River Review, Panoply, San Pedro River Review, and The Ekphrastic Review. His next full-length collection of poems, A Place Comfortable with Fire, is forthcoming from Lamar University Literary Press.

**

Wakizashi.

Walking to your house the day after you died
I saw myself as a doll with arms and legs of stone
protruding from a torso now a gaping maw in rictus - the wind 
streaming through the wet tangle of my grief. A vase 

of white chrysanthemums beckoned me 
through your loungeroom window, their petals
soft with shadows from the half-drawn blinds, and I imagined
Mum’s slippered footsteps sliding along kitchen vinyl, each swish

echoing the sound of a swift sharp downward cut.

Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman

Linda is a poet living in Lake Tabourie, NSW Australia. She is just beginning her arts degree in Creative Writing. She has recently been published in three anthologies, on Viewless Wings.com, in The Ekphrastic Review, with poems forthcoming in the next edition of the Star 82 Review, right hand pointing and One Sentence Poems (OSP).  Linda adores animals, family, and good champagne not necessarily in that order.

**

Cheekbit From a Grave in Luristan, 700 BCE

You. Your horn-crown
declares your status,
scares
marauders,
shields
your horse's vision,
to keep it straight,
focused
and true to your command. 
 
And yet ...
we only found one of you? 
 
Why is it, a burial,
such a holy thing,
set to preserve
man and beast and shield
for a safe gallop into the afterlife,
can so easily be raided? 
 
Neither your snake gods
nor your devil's tails
nor your beast-like human head 
can deter 
the ragged grave-digger,
eternally electrified 
by greed.

Anita Jawary

Anita Jawary is a Melbourne artist, writer and poet.  She waits for spring, and writes. 

**

Bridle 

A barren field, dirt-clod  
Rock-strewn, root-twisted 

Brats at the table, bawling. 
I offer a prayer to overcome. 

It is an impossible task. 
There is no other way but to go on 

The bare table gleams  
The dull morning beckons 

Each muscle in my body aches 
Wishes to lie entombed in clay. 

With a cacophony of children crying 
I can no longer dream of shifting this yoke 

So I ask the impossible  
Yoke monsters to my horse’s bridle: 

First the alchemy of the crucible 
Then the careful anvil work calling forth 

Griffons, dragons and me 
With horns on my helmet! 

Between the soft lips of my poor nag  
This magic bridle. 

So she must, at all costs, 
Cost to her gentle quivering lips 

Pull my plough  
Feed my family. 

Lucie Payne


Lucie is a retired Librarian who is fascinated by ekphrastic challenges and is writing as much as  she can.

​**

The Red Horse Louisa
 
On a sunny summer day,
I almost caused my father’s death
in the old fenced lumberyard
a photographer taking black and white pictures
father holding the bridle of his red horse Louisa.
 
I am holding father’s hand, skipping to his side
I want to be in the photo
pigtailed Magyar refugee girl.
I pick up a horsewhip
 
standing behind the mare 
father receives a rear kick
steel hooves striking his chest
 
father does not fall to the ground
so I could hug him back to life
he does not beat me with a rubber baton
the sun continues shining,
 
but four decades later
oh I want to hug father again
in his coffin, my little apu.
 
River town Donaustauf, by the Danube
Bavarian Forest chalk hills ridge
 
on a sunny summer day,
remember that day in the Baracke 
my brother József is born,
a boy after four girls 
and I am a tomboy
helping father feed three horses
 
but father forgets me
a small photo in the sunshine.

Ilona Martonfi

Ilona Martonfi is a mother, an activist, an educator, literary curator, poet and an editor. Born in Budapest, Hungary, she has also lived in Austria and Germany. Martonfi writes in seven chapbooks, journals across North America and abroad. Curator of the Argo Bookshop Reading Series. Recipient of the Quebec Writers’ Federation 2010 Community Award. Martonfi lives in Montreal, Canada. The Tempest, Inanna Publications, spring 2022, is her fifth poetry book.

**

The Warrior-Poet of Luristan
 
Consider the Farmer. When his field
yielded an ancient crop of bronze,
did he stand in awe in the middle
 
of the row, turning the bit cheekpiece
in his hands? An artifact of such deft
craftsmanship, Master of Animals
 
holding the reigns of two chimera--
part bird, part ibex—one balanced on a hare,
the other on a fish. Or did silver
 
dance in his eyes as he rushed to market?
It was the 1920s. But step back
some millennia. Consider the Rider.
 
Perhaps a Mede or a nomadic
Cimmerian from southern Russia
or a Kassite. A man considered
 
cultured for his time. Perhaps he was
a warrior-poet like Lu Chi
in second-century China, or
 
a chronicler like Homer. Perhaps he told
the struggles and suffering of his clan
around campfires. And when he set
 
the sacred bronze, the Master of Animals
in his horse’s mouth, what bit did he clench
in his own as the last crisis brought him
 
to his knees? When he thundered across
frosted fields into battle. When he dragged
himself back weeks, maybe months, later
 
to his river-home. When he found his people
scattered, now bones in a fallow field.
Did he weep, cry out his grief to the Master,
 
to the animals, to the bit he had
thought blessed? Did he feel deserted,
suffer a loss of faith? Or did he reach  
 
deep into his pain and begin to gather
words of mourning and war, knowing to suffer
would always be man’s fate?
 
Sandi Stromberg
 

Sandi Stromberg’s poetry has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and twice for Best of the Net. She is a dedicated contributor to The Ekphrastic Review, which has honored her with one of its Fantastic Ekphrastic Awards. She has contributed to the Review’s Throwback Thursday and is currently the guest judge of the Jo Zider Challenge, https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-challenges/ekphrastic-writing-challenge-jo-zider-with-guest-editor-sandi-stromberg.


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