Marc Chagall: Ekphrastic Writing Responses

The Dream, by Marc Chagall (France, b. Belarus) 1939

Where an Angel Hovers and a Rooster Crows

In navy turmoil 
the sky churns 
and the wind roils 
as she clings to ropes. 
Her grip weakens 
releases the mulish mass 
of aluminum. 
The propeller strikes a submerged stump 
as the hull hits an outcrop of granite. 
In navy turmoil 
her dreamscape shifts 
enters a medieval realm 
mossy village 
darkened with misshapen 
doors and windows 
where flowers reform the narrative 
relax her angst. 
In navy turmoil 
the sky churns 
and the wind roils 
as she clings to hope 
slides into safety 
a setting of softness 
where refuge arrives 
bestows an angel 
a rooster 
and the tenderness of touch 
amplifies renaissance 
with gentle strokes.

Jeannie E. Roberts

Jeannie E. Roberts is the author of several books, including 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. 

​** 

Sound & Vision

Blue, blue Bowie cooed, while on the bed we sat and wrapped our arms around one another. It had been his favourite song, so we played it often and loud hoping, somehow, he would hear it, know we were thinking of him.  

We said nothing. What was there to say? Instead, we bent our heads. As I bowed my neck, the blues flooded from me and submerged the world underwater. I lived in Atlantis now; surrounded by silent, blue-bricked houses mossed with dull algae. Clouds dripped in shades of astronaut and ship cove. The flowers on the nightstand bloomed in sonorous hues. Even you, with your raw, red face, were cloaked in navy, as though your grief was turned inside out and propped up on display. 

But if you listened carefully, in time with the rhythm guitar, you heard the soft beating of wings. He had returned to earth, like some angelic alien descended from the sky, full of wisdom and hope. He reached out with open hands and kind smile. I felt his presence near my shoulder, wiping away the sadness with a flick of feather. He was so close. Come closer, closer, we were waiting for your gift. Blow my mind. I didn’t dare look up or open my mouth, but I was positive he heard me.  

The song stopped. He pulled away. Outside, a hen cruelly crowed; its beak slashing through the thick covering of blue. From the gash, colours oozed like blood.   

Louise Hurrell

Louise Hurrell (she/her) is a writer based in Scotland. She has work published or forthcoming in The Circus Collective, Oranges Journal and From One Line's The Unseen anthology. Her short story "The Lonely Fan's Guide to H.G Wells" was shortlisted at the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival's Writing Awards.

​**

Finding the Light

Blessèd are those who peel back the darkness,
see beyond chaos, shine light into the deepest corners
of fear.

Blessèd are those who fill their hearts with memories,
with love, with the promise of a better tomorrow.
Even if they delude themselves, they may enjoy another day,
month, perhaps a lifetime of hope.

Blessèd are those who generously share the gifts
of their genius, who ignore those who would steal it from them.
They understand that genius can only be given, not taken away.

Grateful are those who embrace the dreamers,
who feel the magic that comes from spreading love,
from making darkness sparkle with colour.
For they shall feel the earth healing.

Alarie Tennille

Alarie Tennille was a pioneer coed at the University of Virginia, where she earned her degree in English, Phi Beta Kappa key, and black belt in Feminism. She has now lived more than half her life in Kansas City. Alarie received the first Editor’s Choice Fantastic Ekphrastic Award from The Ekphrastic Review, and in 2022, her latest book, Three A.M. at the Museum, was named Director’s Pick for the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art gift shop.

**

A Train in the Winter Passing
    
A train passes, and the cold sky
opens room for the freezing rain
that turns to cascades of snow
and returns to winter showers
that make the waiting earth moist,
flood, and raise the river moving past.
Each form changes itself into another.

The trees along the fields are mistaken.
It is not yet the season of rain
that sweeps from the desert of stones.
That expected hour has not yet come,
though these trees misunderstanding
seem to have burst into blossom early,
arranging their white bundles of petals
along the twigs and the black bark,
as if the result of a sudden Spring.

Things around us melt into each other.
The customary wind from the west
cuts deep. And the sound of the storm
front leaves behind it a silence,
as if the earth were holding its breath,
as the great, ancient oak came down.

The cloudy evening's weary light
shows us the tangle of fallen lines
sparking, and twisting like live snakes.
We look bewildered on this scene of ruin.
And you, your eyes glow delicately
in the impending darkness we face.

Something once tightly held us, holds us,
and gave us a shelter, with spread arms.
But now I stand alone.
It is God who delays, beyond these storms,
the one we seek and who remains silent.
Our souls sought that love, trying to follow
that longing. And now we are found.

Royal Rhodes

Royal Rhodes is a retired educator, poet, and essayist. His work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Allegro, Red Eft Review, Lothlorien Poetry, Ekstasis Poetry, and the Montreal Review. He remembers the long winters and heavy snows of his boyhood.

**

​In Your Dreams

I float 
           above
the village
           green

reflection
           in the slit
of an old goat's
            eye

I whisper
            whisper
I think
           I love you

Prove it
           he bleats

My laughter 
shatters
           the spaces
between 
           my bones
and 
           his soul

Donna-Lee Smith

Donna-Lee Smith writes from an off-grid cabin with a much loved and much revered old goat.

**

The Chagall Dream
 
Where the night song flows on angel waves,
where the radio of the universe sends out tinkling
voices drunk with happiness, where the cow can jump
over the moon and where the chicken flies out of its
coop to hurry towards the lovers who shyly embrace
in a sea of silent star sound; where the village houses
dance the khorovod and windows watch
the unfolding of blue magic.

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 is a Pushcart and Best of Net nominee. Her eighth book, LIFE STUFF, has been published by Kelsay Books (November 2023). A new manuscript is brewing, and a new fun chapbook has been scheduled for publishing summer of 2025. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/

**

Consolation
 
Nostalgic for my childhood guardian angel, white and light 
who soon left my shoulder. This one seems out of control,
arms outstretched to break her fall on a huge pillow.
 
Other dreams transpired before this encounter. A pastoral
was tacked to my wall at university, happy labourers 
behind a crazy green man, nothing like the foliage 
 
I hunted in medieval English churches. This small pastel 
/ watercolour arrived at the beginning of a war
with no walls or roof, with nothing to resist intruders.
 
Small wooden houses are slipping off the mountainside 
as the news broadcasts mudslides, floods, explosions.
‘Don’t worry, it’s a dream.’ Is that what the angel has to say?
 
The dark skies of climate change hang over 
the couple repeating ‘je t’aime’ and holding each other 
while the world slowly unravels around them.

John Bennett

John Bennett has worked for New South Wales National Parks and has PhD in Poetics. He moved from Sydney to regional NSW over a decade ago and immediately involved himself in the cultural life of the region, including citizen science (birds and native forests). A documentary on his working practice, Poetry at first light was broadcast by ABC Radio National’s Earshot, 2016. His work now often incorporates video and photography into texts. A forthcoming multi-media exhibition explores a reclaimed wetland.

**

Wedding Night
 
Silenced by angels bestowing 
blessings—angels with open palms— 
the rooster clamours and squawks 
no more.
 
Hallowed blue night falls.
He holds me gently—shy
as he bends me back
for a first deep kiss.
I dream of houses:
a tumble of blue houses
descending the hill
to shelter and welcome us.
 
In the clock-tower’s windows,
last light of evening flickers out.
A soft bell tolls,
yet tells no time:
 
nor shall the rooster
crow on awakening.
For this will be our own time:
our night, and ours alone.
 
Lizzie Ballagher

One of the winners in Ireland’s 2024 Fingal Poetry Festival Competition and in 2022’s Poetry on the Lake, Lizzie Ballagher focuses on landscapes, both psychological and natural. She was a Pushcart nominee in 2018. Having studied in England, Ireland, and the USA, she worked in education and publishing. Her poems have appeared in print and online in all corners of the English-speaking world. Find her blog at https://lizzieballagherpoetry.wordpress.com/

**

The Dream: 1939

Mamaleh, mamaleh, say what have you been dreaming?
There’s sunlight in our little room and flowers by the bed.

Tateleh, tateleh, I’ve seen an angel falling;
The streets are creeping up on us, there’s trouble overhead.

Mamaleh, mamaleh, there’s nothing here to scare you;
Our neighbours all are friendly, it’s a home where we belong.

Tateleh, tateleh, the window frames are shaking;
There’s writing on the rooftops and the shape of it is wrong.

Mamaleh, mamaleh, we’re rooted and we’re growing;
We’ll raise our seed in pride and joy as all His creatures may!

Tateleh, tateleh, I’ve heard the angel calling:
Wake up, wake up, you innocents!  It’s done.  You cannot stay.

Julia Griffin

Julia Griffin lives in south-east Georgia.  She has published in several online poetry magazines, including The Ekphrastic Review.

**

Nuntius

The angel, with no time to slot his wings on,
Grabs two big petals and comes hurtling down;
The rooster, in his haste quite self-forgetful,
Bursts out more like a pony or a clown.
The wall-eyed homes are trooping down the hillside,
And so a couple's bedroom's thrust to view,
In all its rosy privacy; beyond it,
The outlook is cadaverously blue,
Which doesn't promise well for either human:
The white-faced girl, the clasping husbandman.
There's writing on the wall if they can read it;
First comes the star and after that the ban.

If you're permitted an Annunciation,
Rise up and head for Egypt while you can.

Ruth S. Baker

Ruth S. Baker has published in a few poetry journals.  She has a special love for animals and visual art.

**

​The Dream

Mother tells me good night; her fingers are cold, long nails that push my pores and dig into my skull. She holds me tight and tells me stories of Cinderella and the fairies and I wish for a midsummer night dream where I am Puck and I dance, stupid yet happy whilst I bray at the moon. My eyelashes are rough and seep into the crevices of my eyeballs, I feel I have not slept in hours, days, weeks. Yet Mother is there to tuck me in and tell me to rest. When I awake the mossy trees smell of hunger, sucking me into the little town with little people who vibrate like a string. Mother is the puppeteer. She is kissing my forehead now, and I wince at her touch- she feels like spiders against my skin that creep and dance against my follicles. Mother’s rouge smells like citrus and rubs against my cheek, flakes of chalk dissipating from her person. One day I too want rouge, so I touch my face and “O”- I gasp at my wrinkles, little mountains of a tiny clock that runs too fast. My hair strips off my scalp, sobbing, miserable. I weep in Mother’s arms at my loss, grasping the pitiable pieces of my beauty that have escaped me. She holds in her palms sweet scented chocolate candies whose innards rot with the scent of persecution. I take a piece, my ever expanding guilt a cavity that bites my lungs when I try to swallow. Mother stares at me, unmoving, and the hole grows bigger. In my ear, she whispers sweet things to me, soiled cough drops buried in dirt. Mother leaves. The minute worms that surround my heart begin to relax their tight hug, and I drift off to sleep. This sleep is real, I am sure. In my dreams I dance with the fairies, creatures that kiss my brows with their wings and steal me away to amazon skies. 

Anika Mukherjee

Anika Mukherjee is a 17 year old student writer based in Utah. She writes poetry, fiction, and screenplays.

**

The Moment

The angel—clad in cloudy billows,
wings like ghosts of leaves—speeds down,
spurred by an earthly gust, his right hand
stretched, but not yet touching
the dreaming woman inside the dream 
he’ll fade to black, his left hand cupped
to gather her in. She will not hear
the rooster’s crow at dawn. 
But at the precipice of this moment,
she still dreams: a ruddy 
sun-kissed lover comforts her
on a bed as white as the angel’s wings,
as her own pale face just tinged
with fever. Amongst the not yet 
angel-visited hovels of the little village
huddling together in the blue-black night, 
she sleeps for a jeweled moment more,
breathing in the glow of the dream.

Judy Kronenfeld

Judy Kronenfeld’s sixth full-length books of poetry include If Only There Were Stations of the Air  (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2024), Groaning and Singing (FutureCycle, 2022), Bird Flying through the Banquet (FutureCycle, 2017) and Shimmer (WordTech, 2-12). Her third chapbook is Oh Memory, You Unlocked Cabinet of Amazements! (Bamboo Dart, 2024). Her memoir-in-essays-and-poems, Apartness, is forthcoming in February, 2025 from Inlandia Books.

**

The Dream

The shingled rooftops sag under the weight of the amethystine sky. Clouds tumid with rain crowd the night, so that when the boy, a cherubic child of ten, gazes out from his window, he cannot see a single star. Pressing his cheek against the pane, cool with condensation, he angles for a better look but still sees nothing except those looming clusters of grey. His parents retired to bed some time ago. The boy recalls his mother reading to him. The copy of his favorite book—whose title is on the tip of his tongue, whose letters on the cover he cannot discern—hangs off the nightstand’s edge. He recalls listening to his mother’s tender soprano while he warmed under the covers, though he cannot remember how long ago that was or how he slipped into slumber. 

When he crawls back into bed, the boy hears the first drop. A plonk that echoes through the room. It is silent for a few seconds. Another drop dribbles, then a second, a third. A trill dances across the roof, soon followed by an even thrum, a vibrating whoosh that subsumes all sound. The ceiling begins to melt. An aureole of plaster turns slick and bulges in the centre. The water forms into a bead, stretched like putty by gravity, until it is severed from the ceiling and plummets to the floor. The boy watches the puddle grow. He lapses into a momentary trance—the metronymic drip hypnotizes him. As the tempo quickens and sets him free, he hurries to his closet, empties his hamper, and puts it below the leak. The sussurating storm swells in volume. The boy returns to bed. In his mind, he calls out for his parents but cannot hear his own voice, so he wonders if he has shouted anything at all. Amidst the deafening hum, the roof lets out a catarrhal moan. In an instant, it ruptures open, with the hollow boom of a thunderstrike, and the rain gushes inside. Down goes the roof, disintegrating into ash around the boy. The clouds seem to brush the top of his head, so close he can almost touch them.

The feeble walls hem in the water, which rises and rises and rises. The boy’s bed rocks like a boat on the waves. Pieces of furniture, a lamp, dirty clothes draped over chairs, and wooden toy cars float along the frothing flume. The boy grips the headboard. His moss-green pajamas cling to his skin. Loose curls stick to his forehead. His tears disappear with the rain. He can feel his fingers losing strength, sliding off the oak frame. Squeezing his eyes shut, he tells himself to wake up; he convinces himself that when he opens his eyes again, it will be morning and the sky will be a cerulean blue and the sun will trickle in, teasing the approach of spring. 

Just before he sails over the cascade—crashing down the sides of the house—a being, a flit of white among the palette of greys, swoops from the sky and plucks the boy out of bed by his nape. Before he can see the torrents submerge the town, the boy is carried into the clouds. His vision is hazy. His eyes squint through the wispy whites. Catapulted from the humid limbo, the boy soars into the atmosphere. He is suspended in mid-air. On either side, he sees fluttering, feathery wings. He cannot be sure if they are his own, if they have sprouted from his own shoulder blades. 

Beneath him is the celestial ground. Tufts of cotton, convex with a plushness that reminds him of his bed. The boy does not hear the constant hiss of rain anymore; he hears only the wings, swishing through the air. All around him is the ethereal expanse. For the first time that night, the boy smiles. As he and that winged being fly through the fertile nothingness, he giggles and opens his mouth. The zephyr inflates his cheeks and turns them ruddy. Higher and higher, the two travel into the realm of dreams. They travel towards an escape. 

Daniella Nichinson

Daniella Nichinson  is a fiction writer from the Philadelphia area.

**

​Chagall’s Dream, 1939

Grim green of death pollutes the blistered sky 
Then tumbles downwards
tainting earth and homes in its wake. 

Homes hug the ground as they tilt
Dark and precarious like boulders
Defying gravity.

War hovers on the horizon. 
Its white blasts grip the crest, balloon into the sky
Masking moonlight.

A messenger flutter-kicks from the heavens
Resistant to earthly forces
Wings luminous with other-worldly light.

Hugging the heart with one hand
The other extends, fingers furled
In incandescent blessing.

Suitors dressed for flight 
Are shielded by sturdy headboard and pearly pillows
And the gravity of love.

A lowly rooster floats upwards
Looks toward the lovers
And awaits the signal to declare dawn.

Bill Richard  

Bill Richard is a docent at the Phoenix Art Museum and has loved art since he sat on his dad’s lap as a toddler and looked at books of paintings. He is also a standardized patient for medical schools, helping prepare healthcare professionals by giving them feedback on their communication skills. Bill’s husband Kent is an infectious disease doctor. They share their home with their dogs Staccato and Presto. His poems have appeared in publications such as Red River Review, Ilya’s Honey, and National Catholic Reporter.

**

Our Wedding Night Made in the Image of a Novelty Napkin 

I am embarrassed for my forehead. For the lies that I fed to your parents. And the deafening absence and swell of my conscience. For the mice traps that punctuate my enticements. And whisker-kiss my ancestors from their sleep. For the weight class of my pillows. And the rain that airs its grievances on the slate of the roofs. I am embarrassed for not taking the dog’s threats more seriously. For the lack of any coasters. Or thimbles. Or any of those tiny mints. The white of your willpower. Any road maps of Prague. And its most reliable tailors. Or astrologists. For not including your neck in the trust. Or reserving the last sweet for the brother who’s determined to spend eternity in a cellar. And will soon resemble a turnip. Or a pinto bean. For the mechanical chicken whose heart I dinged up. And whose prehistoric shins I still sing to. For the soot and the cab fare and the inference of moon and the lack of any goat besides the dried blood and mud it’s tracked in on the sheets. I’m embarrassed for the loan I took out on the flowers. For the late hour of my calling. And for the look my landlord continues to give you over his newspaper. Which he studies like the lease of a dollhouse. I’m embarrassed for the trouble I caused blue. And its allegiance to the sea. For our Savior’s nonexistent sense of balance. And His questionable hygiene. For the short supply of any fun facts. Or floors to stack books. Or our hundreds of fur lined boots. For the craftsmanship of the windows. The angel’s lack of any tact. And the small bat it nurses at its chest. For leaving the door ajar. And still insisting the wind keep our place. As the universe applauds the modest size of our vows.

Mark DeCarteret

Mark DeCarteret has been a member of City Hall Poets for 30+ years.

**

To Marc Chagall Regarding The Dream

You paint as only soul could see
the truth of known reality
as fate and fear and faith disclosed
that hope envisions juxtaposed

against the darkened in-between
where unforgotten and foreseen
are woven into circumstance
becoming here and now the dance

transcending time and space as bond
to Love unending far beyond
from which it sprang as life renewed
by will that left its time imbued

with promise still the precious worth
of Grace preserved as Heaven's earth.

Portly Bard
 
Portly Bard: Prefers to craft with sole intent...
of verse becoming complement...
...and by such homage being lent...
ideally also compliment.

Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise
for words but from returning gaze
far more aware of fortune art
becomes to eyes that fathom heart.

**

In Chagall’s Dream
 
an ocean of mermaid clouds
swimming reefs of cobalt
 
cacophony of slate and tile
village tumbling hillside
 
a wobble-legged rooster
floating on betrayal
 
an angel earth-falling
lungs breathing twilight
 
a bedstead beach-anchored
on floral encrusted quilt
 
peach tones bleeding pale
skin tattooed in sorrow
 
a lover’s arm in velvet
reassuringly calm
 
the world slow-spinning
to overtures of war
 
turmoil rolling into fugue
discordant-dark     foreboding
 
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

**

​The Dream

My dear, all life is a gift towards death. 
Do you hear the angel’s wings
open like the wind harp’s dark saying?

He wears them as the dove tree wears its flower
and he has the body of a boy
whose blue eye yearns for the blue flower.

We are each born onto this earth
by our forebears, who breathed 
before, into us, that we may breathe

in time into the time in front of us,
shrouded in morning’s blue mist,
dark and cold like deep sea, and salty

as the origin of life,
staining the white cloth wafting from our bodies,
the cock’s moongleaming feathers

that makes it float a little
and forbear from crowing
so the floating houses don’t need to return

to gravity, solidly bound to their feet,
and we, dreaming in the great Dreaming,
are spared from farewell for a moment,

held in a long embrace.
For a long moment
bees bated in the lilac on our bed table 

burrow into the burning blue depths
and buzz out, unseen,
at four a. m., pollen in their faces

stinging their composite, rainbow gaze.
The boy’s golden hair has snagged
wisps of cloud colored like the undersides

of swallows, who don’t have feet,
who are therefore spared a little more
from gravity. The boy opens his arms.

We cannot see the future
in front or behind.
All we can see is the morning

is not yet here, the hawk moth is still
sucking the ever-replenishing flower’s
blue nectar that bears it towards death

over to the bluer beyond.
All we know is we are
being towards one another.

Lucie Chou​

Lucie Chou is an ecopoet from China whose work appears or is forthcoming in Entropy, the Black Earth Institute Blog, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Transom, Tofu Ink Arts, Halfway Down the Stairs, Kelp Journal, Sky Island Journal, Plant-Human Quarterly, Slant: A Journal of Poetry, Wild Roof Journal and Poet’s Lore. A debut collection, Convivial Communiverse, came from Atmosphere Press. In August 2023, she participated in the Tupelo Press 30/30 project where she fundraised for the indie press by writing one poem each day for a month.

**

Ordeal
 
Day one
What a dream-come-true
to encounter Chagall’s Dream
out of the blue!
Surreal mainstream
persistently insane
triggering migraine –    
the Chagall cocktail
is not a fairytale  –
it’s so madly spirited –
you are left limited
to sob or spook.
Before you know
you’ve been framed.
But the gist is bent –
only roosters, angels 
and love souls can gravitate,
your wingless landing depends
on lots of perilous acrobatics
constantly risking absurdity
just as by Ferlinghetti.
I remind myself it’s art
brushed cold stalled,
yet, quietly leave,
rather – unfold.
 
Day two
Curiously, I find myself again
savoring the Chagall cocktail
with a couple explaining
to each other the meaning
of love dreaming.    
And that the dream
makes us human!
At the same time
the Dream couple  
can’t comprehend
why all their appeals  
to the night watch
of the dreamland
are in vain!
They are strictly framed!
But they are adamant!
To make it real again!
Oh, Dream couple, comprehend –
the surreal of Chagall
is your real hall of fame!
 
Day three
Afternoon free –
ultimate Dreaming spree
I’m alone, it seems here too
at three everything stops for tea.
The Dream gist that spirits my mind
is insane but brushed a heart vein.
The two scuffle for a second.
I try hard not to scream
and boldly proclaim:
Hey, Dream-Souls,
take your chance –
here is the key
to unlock the real –
DYI - Donate Your Ideal!
To the American dream,
actual on earth as it is in your heaven!
Rain roosters angels and sweet hearts!
Before I suggest more acrobatics,
a bunch of young fans flood the space
as if it was Nothing Really Matters.  
Their bouncing thrill
unframes Chagall.
The new normal.
No ordeal.
Just deal.  
 
Ekaterina Dukas​

Constantly Risking Absurdity is a poem by the Beat poet Laurence Ferlinghetti.
Nothing Really Matters is a name of American cocktail bar brand.  
 
Ekaterina Dukas, MA in Philology and Philosophy, writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning. She is an enthusiastic contributor to ekphrastic poetics and her poems have often been honoured by TER and its challenges. Her collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europe Edizioni.  

​**

Dreaming

On a blue night
all the town houses
lean together
in a rough tumble
as if to listen
sharing secrets
trading gossip
resting in the lap
of white mountains
rising like shoulders 
to surround them
while the folk sleep safe
enfolded 
in blue layered comfort
and one couple wakes 
embracing
on the edge of their
simple wooden bed

weightless as moonlight
beneath a barefoot angel
who shines
not like the seraphim
with coruscating fire
but in ordinary trousers
and a plain shirt-
white winged–reaching
down to them
in  tender benediction

Mary McCarthy

Mary McCarthy is a retired Registered Nurse who has always been a writer. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic World, edited by Lorette C. Luzajic, The Plague Papers, edited by Robbi Nester, The Memory Palace, edited by Lorette C. Luzajic and Clare MacQueen, and recent issues of Gyroscope, 3rd Wednesday, Caustic Frolic, Inscribe, the Storyteller Review, and Verse Virtual. Her collection How to Become Invisible, that chronicles a bipolar journey, is now available from Kelsay books, amazon, and the author.

**

Visitation
 
Angels need no maps of the stars,
no compass to locate the forces of infinity--
they are the not that is,
a geography larger than what can be written down.
 
No compass is necessary to locate the forces of infinity
that gravitate, pull, and repel inside
a geography larger than what can be written down.
Larger than shadows, veils, and mirrors,
 
they gravitate, pull, and repel time.
They ride on invisible strings woven through air,
larger than shadows, veils, and mirrors.
Their landscape inhabits their very being,
 
riding on invisible strings woven through air,
moving on currents of skywind and dream magic.
Their landscape inhabits their very being,
alert to the pauses and imperfections of the light.
 
Moving on currents of skywind and dream magic,
they become feathers and wings--
alert to the pauses and imperfections of the light,
they become vessels and messengers.
 
They become feathers and wings.
They balance the world as it slumbers and waits.
They become vessels and messengers.
They become what is seen with closed eyes
 
They balance the world as it slumbers and waits,
echoing and reflecting the pull of the unknown.
They become what is seen with closed eyes,
the outline filled with what isn’t there,
 
Echoing and reflecting the pull of the unknown.
They are the not that is,
the outline filled with what isn’t there.
Angels need no maps of the stars

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/.

**

Temporary Shelter of Dreams, 1939
 
Let us exist in now
hair unbound,
desire afloat, unanchored,
 
we sail 
from the winter-whipped world,
the thunder-boots and snarling-dogs
of endless night;
 
hold me tight,
as angels pass over--
announcing life-tidings
or foretelling death
in plagues and wine-red seas, 
 
in transit,
we drift in delphinium light
on a counterpaned barque of fools and dreams
 
as the rooster crows
once in practice
twice with vigor,
and then over and again
in warning.

Merril D. Smith

Merril D. Smith writes from southern New Jersey. Her full-length poetry collection, River Ghosts (Nightingale and Sparrow Press) was a Black Bough Press featured book. 

**

​"why I get confused between smelling salts and dead African violets"

I dream that I am dreaming of sleeping in the street, but I am not asleep and my bed is a boat adrift in the blueness of the dead of night

I dream of a night adrift from walls, from constraints, free from the prying sight of the droopy-eyed sad faces of the houses holding the village's closed minds and vacant stares

I dream of vacant stares and empty stairs, empty rooms in a deep gloom under a blue-grey pall

I dream of a blue-grey pall, made from a palette of hues mixed from the ashes of emotions, love-hate-lust-anger-longing-despair-desperation 

I dream of lying under a night sky a particular shade of blue, the colour of the African violets in the blue vase once their blooms wither, their dying petals falling, shrivelling, falling, always falling 

I dream of a dream within a dream, a night visitor dressed in blue velvet with a red face and white hands.  I love-hate-want-despise this demon, who is a version of me in another guise

I dream that I am dreaming within a dream, I am the angel that watches over me, I am floating above, approving, announcing, protecting, advising, distracting, tempting, goading, reproving myself, and my other demon-self, while angel-me records it all on the unending scroll that captures every second of my life, just like the angel-self of every one of us keeps on updating our individual permanent records forever

I dream of the arrival of a white horse, a red horse, a blue horse, any horse galloping into the night, a horse that always arrives in my dream, a horse that saves the day, a mare, a nightmare, a horse that's not a horse but in this dream has become the cockerel that will bring the sound of the break of dawn and awakening, but the cockerel is here now, and it is still the dead of night

I wonder if the cockerel is really there?  What do I even mean by that?  I know this is a dream, even as I dream it within my dream.  I know I am me, I know that I am also the red-faced demon, I am the angel and I am the cockerel, I am the village and the sad-faced houses and I am the blue night

I wait for the horse - did I say there's always a horse?  I wait for the inevitable horse that I will mount and ride through the blue night till I wake up at the break of dawn

when I wake up I will write a poem called "why I get confused between smelling salts and dead African violets"

Emily Tee

Emily Tee is a writer from the UK Midlands.  She particularly enjoys ekphrastic writing and has had some pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review challenges previously, and elsewhere online and in print.