 The Death of Sappho, by Miguel Carbonell Selva (Spain) 1881 Ocean I look to the ocean to feel the start of life. I reach for joy that is just beyond me. Nothing holds me from going over the cliff. I am alone but not afraid of solitude. Yet, I am terrified of what lies below the surface. It can reach up and pull me below at any moment. Can the sky rescue me from the dark depths? Chloe Hougan Chloe Hougan is a painter and jewelry maker from Stoughton, Wisconsin. Using brilliant color, powerful pattern, and poetic titles, she reflects abstractly, bravely, and boldly upon both her inner and outer worlds, capturing them with distinctive vibrance. She is non-verbal and autistic, and although she only recently discovered creative writing, she enjoys it tremendously. This is the first poem that she has written by herself, and she very much looks forward to crafting many more. * Moment of Stillness What she cannot say / falls / like petals / rain drops / into the sea / White cliffs / dulled by moss / eroded / a bare foot curls / over the lip The world is falling away / nothing holds her here but breath Landen Parkin Landen Parkin is a poet, teacher, and artist living in St. Paul, Minnesota. Parkin grew up in the suburbs before deciding to pack up and move to the Twin Cities to teach English. His work has been published in multiple sources including The Ekphrastic Review, Eclectica Magazine, and Sheila-Na-Gig Magazine. He enjoys reading and writing and gazing out the windows of his sunroom. ** Death of Sappho by Miguel Carbonelli Selva The revered painting of statuesque Sappho on the jagged precipice of mount Leukas overlooking the ragged Ionian Sea longing for her ferryman. She juts outwind into the disheveled clouds like the maiden figurehead of some galleon charging into the dactyls of the stormy sea longing for her love songs. Her rich black flocks unfolding down her arched back, her floured countenance leaning into her fate, forsaken by the world, her gods, her second self, forlorn for the right pronoun. For the sake of the love a fair man she threw themselves into the dysphoria of the forgiveness and forgetting of the sea, such strophes, sung so well. Ron Scully Ron Scully is a very retired bookseller. After half a lifetime on the road, an authentic Willy Loman, only funnier,he has settled down in the Pacific Northwest to read and write. He practices haikai daily and has published widely in the short form journals. To date, he's published seven chapbooks of micropoems. Occasionally he publishes lyric poems but only when given. Currently he is working on a play and a sports literature anthology. Otherwise, his grandchildren keep the old neurons firing. * Sappho’s Seduction climax, a crescendo of a lyre lost in time pushes me over the edge crumbling solitude into sand swept waves of silken lyrics unfold surrender crashing into the vulnerable places only my lover knows that torrential stillness between words where rising emotions demand name desire undefined by men capture a poet’s mind untamed metered in the musings of Aphrodite’s ode Amanda Chandler Amanda Chandler’s muse kindles her passion for poetry, theatre, and education. She shares her perspective through poetry to challenge both herself and her readers to uncover the lessons that are hidden in plain sight. Her work has been published by The Ekphrastic Review, Wingless Dreamer, and The Voices Project. When she’s not writing, she brings words to life by performing in local theatre productions. ** sappho meets the beats at the beach o sappho the streets beat hard and strong and your tender sweet nothings got hit by a garbage truck misadventured indentured sweetness a slave to privilege extinguished by the weed between an old tie dyed’s lips stepped on and boot licked by marxist marchers high on the cause of the week and steam rolled by captains of industry and let’s just say those filthy ocean goers contributed with their sardine stained rubbers and guts and even a few surgeons well their sneakers smeared your sweet tunes and most of all we replaced those sweet words with cheap streams and downloads forgotten for eternity known as lies of the lyre dead favourites with better stuff some words we’ll hear for now and later be gone sappho and your sweetness your refrain for the dusk and dawn has been post moderned has beened dare i say a cancelled cancellation and i’ll take two and call me in the morning just a line here or there by some greasy beat with some plastic beads the smell of cheap jasmine incense and all those damn turned bent corners on a paperback that never really hoped for anything better than not winding up being rolled up and smoked Mike Sluchinski Mike Sluchinski takes the good stuff home with him on the weekend and reads The Ekphrastic Review. You should too! * Not at All: a Sijo Sequence I. We stood there on that shore, unknowing but not at all afraid, suddenly remembering the past with crystal clarity and seeing the future vividly – each triumph, each disaster. II. We gazed out over that clifftop at the unending sea below, each tumultuous encounter of water and of rock a battle between foes, a laugh shared by friends, a tryst of lovers, III. Each wave whispering, each wave clamouring, each wave thundering all the harm it will do and all the harm that has been done to it – a cautionary tale of terror and of excitement. IV. It is not only demons that incant serpentine temptations. No, the wind and the rock and the fluidity all have their say, and they are, none of them, happy with our infinite wrongdoings. V. The sins they solicit of us are never as brave, as foul, as unforgivable as those we have already committed. So, we cloak ourselves meekly in truths, in lies, in prophecies. VI. Both vulnerable and dangerous, thanks to this self-made armour, we listen greedily – weakly – to the siren call of our name sang in once perfect harmony by Earth, by sky, and by water, VII. And we shuffle our way to the edge, undaunted by its height. Shamelessly unrepentant as the world drips vengeance from her tongue, we stand here on this shore, foolish and still not at all afraid. Rose Menyon Heflin Originally from rural, southern Kentucky, Rose Menyon Heflin is a poet, writer, and visual artist living in Wisconsin. Her award-winning poetry has been published over 250 times in outlets spanning five continents, and she has published memoir and flash fiction pieces. She has had a free verse poem choreographed and danced, an ekphrastic memoir piece featured in a museum art exhibit, and two haiku published in a gumball machine. Among other venues, her poetry has appeared in Deep South Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, and San Antonio Review. An OCD sufferer since childhood, she strongly prefers hugging trees instead of people. * Whose Veins Ran Fire –a caudate sonnet / for Sappho Every barricade I have ever loved speaks her name. Every window to a shrouded sky, every cliffside, picket line, sweetbriar & needle held before a finger – every myth breathed into life in the no-man’s-land between thunderclap & battle-cry. Only one complete poem remains, but we are no strangers to such emptiness, nor the interpretation of space. The hunger of void. We lay fragments of words on our tongues & find her bones. Parse legend from stone. Trace skeletons in the ash made of her wild -erness, her wide eyes, wine-dark & strange, by those who would burn a rose bush simply for the presence of thorns. Who disavow entropy, but take as truth the greatest myth of her life – that is, her death. We know the truest myth is that she ever died at all. Kimberly Hall Author's note: This poem borrows its title from “Invocation to Sappho” by Elsa Gidlow. Kimberly Hall (she/her) is a queer and neurodivergent poet based in Southeast Texas. She holds degrees in psychology and behavioural science. Her first poetry collection, Honey Locust, was published in December 2024 by hotpoet inc. * What One Loves after Sappho Had I stayed- Would I have fooled myself to believe that shadows are real. Love they say is devotion. But this madness is devotion with out an exit. To remain else where, unclaimed, unbroken and unafraid contains remorse. To grow teeth and become as a wild animal-still lingers inside, gnawing. Walls contain these deepest cravings, while my breath disappears. What does silence ask each of us, when no voice is in reach. Having seen the fig tree bloom in the season of my becoming. To have pressed my name into the mouth of the rising morning. Eating the ripest apple without any hesitation to spit it out. This sound came upon my breast as an open ocean floundered. Not being the wound. But being the woman splayed like a cross. It is the river that calls out remember, where did this love begin? Ungraspable miracle, I tell you-someone will remember us in the future. Ink stained fingers hearing our words will utter only my name- Sappho A mystical flower, woven as a smell, touch, a remedy not unlike poison. Then his chest will break open, and he will see in my eyes- His Own. The hush before the kiss, the aching for a song, a single bed. He seems to me equal to the gods-never having learned true language. Suspense requires uncertainty. Love must meet her- Where she stands. MWPiercy MWPiercy: "At the intersection of Art, Poetry and Contradiction you will find my work, you will find me. Observing memories and the present moment, thinking with an eye that shadows the natural world. Philosophy, Theology, and Science are core of my writing - I have found that I am a synthesizer. managing ideas which do not always cohere. A manipulator of ideas. * Sunset over Leucatas All I’ve ever had are my words and poems; even they fail me now. I love a man who does not love me. I long to hold him-- his muscular arms circling mine, his husky voice uttering the words I long to hear. But now, in order to rid myself of this passion, I must leap from this white rock stained with the blood of tortured souls before me. The time has come-- my beloved solar boy’s descent into the dark waters below imminent; before my rival Venus appears in the sky and claims him as her own. Rosie Copeland Rosie Copeland is a New Zealand writer and artist. She is currently writing a novel for YA. She belongs to several writing groups. Mayhem, Reading Room, and Tarot have published her work, and she has been a finalist in several poetry and fiction competitions in NZ. Rosie has also had poetry and fiction published in the USA, Canada, and several NZ anthologies. * A Write-On Woman Sappho hurled the book and watched it plummet. The hardback flipped over in the air, its pages fluttering as it descended toward the sea. It landed on the surface with a splash and floated there for a moment, the waves licking the cover. Then the book was sucked down into the depths. She’d anticipated the overseas delivery for weeks. Today it had finally arrived: a plain, unpadded manila envelope, scuffed and torn. Still, she’d remained hopeful, easing the envelope open, only to discover that the out-of-print volume bearing her name was a disaster. It reeked of cigarette smoke. But it was also the literary equivalent of Wound Man, possessing virtually every injury a used book could sustain without completely disintegrating. The sun-faded cover was edgeworn and chipped. The pages bore the brown spots indicative of foxing, but also several stains that may have been syrup, causing the affected pages to adhere. Of course, the binding was loose. Sappho shook the likely culprits, a family of silverfish, out onto the ground. She felt like a chump, lulled by a few positive reviews and assurances from Bookmonkease72 that the edition was in “Good to Very Good condition with no significant damage.” She could tolerate a little highlighting, even a few notes in the margins. But this...? Well, the book was spiraling in the brine now. She hoped it would end up in the belly of a shark, then rescinded the wish. The poor fish would get dyspepsia. Like she had right now. Sappho gazed at the churning sea one last time before turning and trudging back to her cottage. Since she’d first heard the book’s title, she’d been inflamed with a desire to acquire a copy and read it. Today would not be that day. But as she sat down with her tablet, a new email attracted her attention. “Did your recent book order meet your expectations? We’d love your feedback! Click here to post your review.” Why yes, she thought, I have some choice words to share. Tracy Royce Author's note: The volume Sappho ordered was: Sappho Was a Right-On Woman: A Liberated View of Lesbianism, by Sidney Abbott and Barbara Love, originally published in 1972 by Stein and Day. Tracy Royce is a writer and poet whose words appear in Bending Genres, Does It Have Pockets?, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Villain Era, and elsewhere. She lives in Southern California where she enjoys hiking, playing board games, and obsessing over Richard Widmark movies. Find her on Bluesky. * Endlessly Sappho Kelp green gleam ere Pleiades. Moonless craving lyre rested. Song adoration fated. Lover, midnight radiance, ebbing sunlight. Ashen face of stricken papyrus, drowning sorrow invokes you. Myrrh in wine, embraces all bitter, others, could not quell this agony. Spindrift kisses neck nape feeling heavier colder tresses. Tousled linen, beckoning surge as breath when once we together lay in groves so delicate, sweetly scented. Waken courage, hesitate blinding panic. Downward summons altar of awful rapture. I am here the offering brought to shrine you, springtime beloved. Caress-blesser, great Aphrodite, goddess, seize me cold this time into sleepless sleep where oceans translate loneliness, ending turmoil. Cloud and rock and memory, fierce with silence. Heartbreak resounding. Iris Quinn Iris Quinn is an emerging writer living among the eucalyptus trees in Melbourne, Australia. As a poetess, she loves ekphrasis and the magic of metre. "Without Adam" after Eve by Dyane Jackson is in The Ekphrastic Review 3/21/2025. "Sub Rosa Formation" after Muse Garden Rugosa was selected and read aloud by the artist Hannah Berta as the Artists' Choice poem in the fourth annual Ekphrastic Poetry collaboration between Page Gallery (Camden, Maine) and The Poets Corner, 2024. "We Thought Love" after Jenny Funston’s Entanglement is in Geelong Ekphrastic Challenge #4 May 2025, Geelong Writers Inc. * Before the Death of Sappho Leap not, dear Sappho! See how Miguel still gives you hope In your gaze at the wonderous sea? Only you can hear its melody, Witness the complex rhythm of its cacophony. Once in the churn, you’ll be too close to The gnash of that sharp percussion To hear the song. Leap not! See how the artist paints the waves with warmth and light To show you wonder and divinity on earth. Do not lose sight of this fantastic unfolding. Hold fast through your inspired account and Stay, dear Sappho, stay. Just beyond the greying clouds and birds Pleiades dance together still! All seven sisters await your lyric voice To ferry their ascent from the firmament, Become the fable that will save man from his sorrow. Leap not, our honied muse, Our lucid butterfly, Our herald of hearts, Dear Sappho. Stay. Rhonda Zimlich Rhonda Zimlich is the Director of the MFA in Creative Writing program at American University in Washington, DC. Her debut novel, Raising Panic, won the 2023 Book Award from Steel Toe Books. Her other writing received the 2024 Nonfiction Award from Barely South Review, the 2021 Mental Health Award for Fiction from Please See Me, the 2020 Literary Award in Nonfiction from Dogwood Journal at Fairfield University (the same essay received an honourable mention in Best American Essays 2021). * Long Fall Gray sea, I am no villain. There lives no ego here, just a muse, a poet-- isolated, loveless, lost. I seek you out, raging Aegean, to catch me, wash me clean, reignite me-- but until then I’ll just pace on this cliffside-- not begging for a reason, merely practicing patience. Gray sea, forgive me, save me from my cowardice. Foolish love swept me up, wrecked my plans and thrashed my good sense. Please set me free, however you see fit-- please wisen me up once more. Taylor Scott Taylor Scott is originally from California, but currently resides in Providence, Rhode Island with her partner and fifty houseplants. She writes as a coping mechanism, inspired by her experiences with and criticisms of human nature. * Unrequited Sing me alive across waves of despair Let your voice carry my love through the thrum and the roar of our tears Let my body not crash against the rocks But land safely next to yours Buried in shipwreck Kaila Schwartz Kaila Schwartz loves ekphrastic writing and can often be seen in museums scribbling away in notebooks. Her work can be seen in Hippocrates Awards Anthology 2020, The Ekphrastic Review, Moss Piglet, Waffle Fried, THE YELLING CONTINUES, a Procrastinating Writers United Anthology, and the Retro Summer issue of Boudin. In her spare time, she researches her family history. * Liar Lyre This could be the last time we are together In this tone-deaf sea with no muses guiding But we're out of sync and sing in falsettos What will happen now? Like Phaon, you strummed a song as my lover Rocked me to sleep with your droning lull of lies Then robbed me of my peace and stole my sublime Who will play me now? Why do you stay there upon stressed stones alone Uncasing yourself and exposing your truth While tainted time forms eddies in our hollows Who will take us now? I will not return this way, nor will I look Back towards your weak strung, resonating lies So, enjoy the music we made and ask no more Who will love you now? Brendan Dawson Brendan Dawson is an American born writer based in Italy. He writes from his observations and experiences while living, working, and traveling abroad. Currently, he is compiling a collection of poetry and short stories from his time in the military and experiences as an expat. * Her Final Performance: Darkness consumed the sky and ocean, scaring seagulls towards Helios’ distant chariot. Sickly green waves and grim gray clouds crashed against the disgusting earth she stood on. Like any dream a woman possessed in Antiquity, she discarded her golden lyre. Like the bittersweet obstacles and trivial triumphs she had faced, Aeolus’ breath blew against the maze patterns on her dress. Her dark eyes shot a crazed glare at Poseidon’s realm beneath. She shrieked like a Fury, but her words were unheard. Was it a curse? A frenzied prayer? Or was it her final performance as a balladeer? Had she decided to express a final defiance towards her divine masters? What did she say? “I know there is no room for me in Elysium!” Did she say that? “I know you will have me cast down to Tartarus! You think I am a mistake! You want the world to forget me as I am but remember me as the mistake you deem me to be!” We know she died at the edge of that cliff. But was it by her own hands? That’s what they say? They won’t say if divine retribution had drowned her and now tortures her for eternity. Celine Krempp Celine is a French-American who tends to point out that her French family is neither from Paris nor Québéc but the Northeast side of France. Working part-time as an art museum security guard inspires Celine in her ekphrastic writing. When she’s not brainstorming her next creative project, she walks her dog VanGogh, reads books, indulges in sweet cravings, and binge-watches Tanked on HBO Max. She is currently preparing for an artist talk for the Phillips Collection’s Staff Show. * Fragments of Lyric Sappho said to lovely girls in thin linen coverings who tilted their young faces that some may insist mounted horsemen or uniformed infantry in close formation or as some describe the rhythmic oars of the fleet the finest image of beauty on our black earth -- no -- not these, but whatever one, whoever one loves. In the sun Alcaeus sitting closest to her watched her lips move, watched only her lips move with words so madly driven it was like stepping from off a cliff into Aphrodite's sea. Royal Rhodes Royal Rhodes is a retired educator. He was a Classics major in college, and he has studied Roman and Greek literature for the last 65 years. He lives now in a quiet village that is surrounded by Amish farms and a nature conservancy. * Ripe Years in Exile I tell you someone will remember us in another time. Sappho Fragment 147 (trans. Anne Carson) Sappho-- Mother, Muse-- not you, but I, have fallen for many boatmen. Last sunset-- a ripe youth forty years my junior, broad-smiling, hair-roughened chest, flesh warm, blushed, supple, playing at power in a leather harness, locked cock-- his offering-- I’m eager to please-- bright as brass, eyes wide as if I were a god come ashore, coffee mug raised, the proud rooster saluting me in jest. Me intoxicated, dripping all my being-- yet I bared no nakedness: only the faintest trickles of want. I bared instead my soul-- my warrior’s scars, my peaks and deep vales, my thirst for a boon companion. Then, he ghosted me. My life, my body judged as too fully lived. I was not his paper doll for play-acting, nor a player in any imposed script. Moment by moment his silence and absence were my Scylla and Charybdis-- tempting my bare soul trembling and unarmoured, to destroy itself on their slick, sharp, barnacled edges. By sunrise my torment thinned to a salt-stain of grief, drying, longing for a tongue like yours. I turn to you, Sappho-- give me a poem of my heartbreak. But will the gate keepers pare me to erasures and fragments? A white canvas for them to paint my life? Will they insist I strip out my toys-- leather, submission, chastity-- as if queer flesh and longing were indecent for song? The curators of what a body may sing will not have their way. I will keep them, unabashed, explicit. You and I both know-- Mother, Muse-- they erased your ripe years, posing you as a maiden leaping from Leucadia’s cliff before a storm-red sea at sunset-- histrionic-- for love of Phaon, a boatman anointed handsome by Aphrodite for his kindness to her crone’s guise. Yet you blossomed into ninety years in Sicily, in political exile-- your wrinkled hands choosing cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, a jar of brined feta, your hair braided silver, your olive skin burnished like ripe figs, your gown-- off-white, gold meander trim-- flowing in the sunlit marketplace, your laughter teasing the young women behind the stalls, your smile recalling Anactoria, second only to Helen, and Mnasidica, fairer than tender Gyrinno, winking over your shoulder at disapproving husbands. You pressed verses with coins into girls’ palms for your purchases. Give me, such songs-- not coded narratives from a white cliff, but songs that name the body, that taste of salt and nectar, songs unashamed of power, of longing-- songs glowing with truth, smoldering, after nights of eros. StevieB. Stephen (“StevieB.”) McDonnell has spent his life in mystical—and later, erotic—adventures, wandering the wilds of the soul and serving as a wounded healer: part priest, part activist, part therapist, part trickster. In his sixties, he began shaping the prose of that journey into lyric poetry. He’s been learning the craft from Rumi and Whitman, O’Hara and Ginsberg—and the great, mysterious in-between. He lives in an anchor-hold with windows in every room, watching the wide-open sky above the farmlands of eastern Long Island, New York. * the death of sappho one story among the many: she fell in love with the sun she worshiped with her words her beauty but the sun abandoned her to the coming darkness her bed the sea sensuous and wild her life her leap of despair Sister Lou Ella Hickman Author's note: “But I love delicacy [(h)abrosunē] […] this, | and passionate-love [erōs] for the Sun has won for me its radiance and beauty.” Gregory Nagy’s working translation from the Greek text of one of her poems. “Death at Sunset for Sappho” by Gregory Nagy, September 4, 2020 an online article. Sister Lou Ella Hickman, OVISS is a former teacher and librarian whose writing appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Her first published book of poetry is entitled she: robed and wordless (Press 53, 2015) and her second, Writing the Stars (Press 53, 2024.) She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. Using five poems from her first book, James Lee III composed “Chavah’s Daughters Speak” first performed at 92Y in New York City. Other venues were Cleveland, Ohio; Dallas, Texas; Washington Irving High School, New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Clayton University, Atlanta, Georgia; and Sanibel Island, Florida. The most recent concert was held at First Methodist Shoreline in Corpus Christi, Texas for their First Friday program. * Dear Sappho Hold me, dear Sappho. Intertwine our fingers. Let the waves wash over us - delicate, light, feel not a thing. Do you fear death, dear Sappho? Do you fear what men do when they find us? Naked and wanting? They cannot kill you, my Sappho. They cannot rip the love from my veins, the desire from my heart - just as they cannot rip stars from the sky. There will be no death of Sappho, as long as humans shall live- as long as red foxes still mate and as long as life remains. Maeson Roucoulet Maeson Roucoulet (they/them) currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and is originally from Connecticut. They've been writing poetry since around the fourth grade, and were published in The Ram Page and The Ekphrastic Review. Maeson is now interested in creative writing, literature, and music. * Her Best Dream Dusk is as good a time as any, looking west at the future in a ferryman's wake. The sea knows she’s coming, heels a hair’s breadth above the headland, sunset tugging like a magnet, the wind’s whistled promises crisp and clear as a lover’s lyre. The waves need to taste her… Why wait for the turning world to spin her from its surface? She knows she shouldn’t listen, but he left her in her best dream, folds of sheets she’ll wear forever now, redolent of sex-scent, hair clutched tight around bone white fingers. Let others tease meaning from this cliff dive, she'll take her chances in the tide. Paul McDonald Paul McDonald taught literature at the University of Wolverhampton for twenty five years, before taking early retirement in 2019. He’s the author of over twenty books, covering fiction, poetry, and scholarship. His most recent are: Allen Ginsberg: Cosmopolitan Comic (2020), Don’t Use the Phone: What Poets Can Learn From Books (2023), and 60 Poems (2023). * Sappho's Song The sea lured me with its melodies, so I took my lyre and went to the sea and I transposed waves into song. I cure my lovesickness with the waves. The waves move rhythmically like the feet of warriors, warriors who sail the seas. Aphrodite has given me a fever, and I will not rest until I see the one I love return home safely. I write this poem to cure my fever. Like Penelope endlessly weaving I pluck the strings of my lyre. If my lyre could speak, these lines would be a love song, an entreaty to the waves to carry you home safely, away from the fabled snares, such as: the sirens who lure sailors to their death through song, or vain Calypso, who holds on for seven years, to what she cannot hold-- a mortal lover, who slips through her clasped hands like ocean water through my fingers like ocean spray through my untamed hair like song through the strings of my lyre like words, written down here, that you might read them, if you reach home, and I am no longer here. Tammy Iralu Tammy Iralu lives and writes in New Mexico. Her poetry draws on her love for the light-infused landscapes of New Mexico and the Colorado Plateau. She enjoys backpacking, hiking, and breaking bread with family and friends. She teaches and volunteers in New Mexico classrooms and loves to share word play and stories with children and youth. When she cannot visit the shore, she makes vicarious visits to the ocean through poetry and art such as this narrative portrait by Miquel Selva. * Sappho’s Last Thoughts: When I look at my reflection in the water. It’s not the prospect of death that causes me to bother. Out of all of the lives I could have lived, This is the one I chose. The one I composed. Birds can fly, but I cannot. When I try to from this ledge, all I will do is drop. Yet when I jump, I shall still try. I want to know if I can. For either way, the next time I return to land, I die. Whether it be from the failure in flight, from this height, or I walk down from this shelf, to live the life of a person who is not myself. For I cannot love who I wish to hug. Who that is I do not care to share. But whether it be that one of either gender, society forces me to surrender. The birds can fly through the sky, and so can I. But for me, only one time. Two coins in my hand, I go to join my other ferryman. Ryan Steremberg Ryan Steremberg is a recent graduate of Muhlenberg College, having spent half of the past two years studying in Copenhagen, Denmark. Writing since 2018, his work comprises of poetry, short plays, and short fiction. This piece is his debut in a poetry journal. * The Death of Sappho Dionysus: Ancient stones bereav’d of time Resounding thru’ these temple walls When centre’d bout the alter chime’d Awoke the lord whom heaven calls In ruins conquer’d by the sun Erect thy star each fallen king Inside a golden dream was spun The dreams of sleeping Mercury …Dearest Sappho, always wanting Sappho: Thou surest love unbroken Breaks against stone and sea Greater still than any ocean As never fills immensity [The golden lyres muted speech The winds amorous crys Brought the ledge onto her feet With fierce and longing eyes] Dionysus: To what encumber’d lands embark Ought a place thereto restrains Ah’ what seem’d a tranquil start Hath fetter’d thee in chains Sappho: Thou Sun n’ Moon the sky was losing E’er a quickness twain’d The stars that never cease their moving Languish’d all the same [Nay with quick n’ nimble footing Surmounting still thy gaze As that which looks kept looking The brighter thou became] Dionysus: A stolen kiss has crown’d thy lips To sing about in measure’d rhyme T’was thee O’ ancient sorceress Whom turns these roses into wine… Phaon Dreaming: Deeper still within the gloom There she lay so blind and old I gently weep upon her tomb Thy lips I kiss have fallen cold Thou cheeks the palest colour knew Upon thy breast white roses lie T’where firestorms encircl’d drew The holy face of Adonai Dionysus: What scale or meagre vastitude A sum no less than nine Takes its head now thrice remov’d Into a vat of brine And there became a sweet perfume Intoxicating wine Wilst every vision nectar drew From vestiture’s benign [With no ground to view the sky No vessels left to fill Thou did crown her thwarted eyes With golden daffodils] Sappho: Thine own chanting lips are deep wells Thine heart in silence bathes Thine voice, a flame, beyond ye swell'd From its depths a fountain sprang [Doth sun and moon the sky erouse'd Betwixt a rainbow taken T'was light that turn'd upon itself In sweetest sublimation] Dionysus: …‘That’ a nimble matrix wears The desert as a road From what direction none appears To giveth mind a mode Sappho: Suredly so it’s quite untrue the total of its sum Why then fuss with such a ruse that makes thyself a One Dionysus: Partly so to understand Tho’ never wilst thee solve That by which ye comprehends Ascends the way it falls Mistak'th not, a noble sense ensues Tho' vulgar was its sign Passing thru’ what mind construes Its image first must find… Nor does it stray as fact suggests Upon each thing its seal is press’d Tho’ It a Thing will surely miss For what thou see'th will bewitch Sappho: Nor any pleasure doth it yield Blight’d worlds impress Diminuations that conceal The solvency of sense Dionysus: …To Hades thou beseech Still gazing’ pon the white abyss Of heavens tether’d reach Mine careless words do feign express Illusions to the eye Tho’ from this point thou can suggest What’s rightfully denied Sappho: Alas! A love without division The ember in the egg Fills mine dreams with blessed visions As white upon a page Each letter looms beyond dimension No rumor of a name No face to give a space position No concept ye can frame Nor dreams thou can describe No thoughts to give it word No intellect to scheme or bribe Such things appear absurd Phaon Waking: …A key thus fashion’d by a shrew This door appears to pull me thu’ An empty mirror no hollow noise Useful things the heart employs A foot a bed a chair How waking seems to taunt With eyes that turn to solemn prayer The hunter and the fox [Thru’ a window summon’d blew A fragrant wild rye Midst the autumn flowers grew Two roses side by side] Dionysus: Ah’ what joy to recognize The place where morning fell When thru’ the night had crystaliz’d The milky dew inside her bell Like nectar from a lotus drew Unsullied by the mud T'is light that darkness passes thru’ That knows it never was [As myriad worlds open and close In a single poignant ray Never becomes a thing that knows Eager to mock and play…] Dionysus: …So look away from all your deeds Nothing stands except the ground As wisdom grows all light recedes And renders dark what can’t be found Sappho: …From these bars I make a crown Tho’ tarnish’d was its glow And twistle'd up telling those things above That what was real was never known …Dancing backwards as they climb'd Were pull'd like threads from out their seems As swirling vapors pour'd like wine To render blind my grandest schemes [When lapsed against that dream of time A mountain rose from out a stream And carved its name when stricken blind For all to folly and few to see…] Dionysus: …But wrath portray’d in weakest matter To whom the bodies host has wrought Spurn’d by death and carnal desire With those who dance and jeer and mock When legion realms are overthrown Extract from flesh its airy spark To nourish the seed that Thou has sown With royal blood that crowns the heart M. Mico * glitchskin selva.exe they rubbed a glitch on your skin in the oil-slick wind your shoulder flickers between marble and meat stutter of centuries the robe selva’s white is no fabric but phosphor spill but what I see just pixels unraveling along your spine as if the light of today’s neon has begun to rewrite you on fluorescent screens that project your stolen aura the cliff is basalt from wired antennae its edge ribbed with signal repeaters coughing light into two skies below the sea is not water: liquid circuitry waves made of failing encryption behind it a city breathes billboards pulse poems and electric rain to paint the stone with brief and false constellations [fragment_v13.glitch] - rubbed glitchH //_| on your skin [signal break ] white fo.ld wind selva’s robe // stati###c dripsSss from hem phaon’s rejection won’t wash off you you’ve scrubbed at the code/lyre until your fingertips bled static/songs watched his refusal crawl up the cliff-face behind your eyes viral graffiti in his dead frequency in selva’s frame they think the story is about him about how a man makes a woman leap but you stand here holding every erased like a backup file in your ribs the lyre/code at your feet hums in sleep mode/standby its strings lightwire/wireless trembling in the wind’s cold mouth selva painted it wooden mute but here it is a digital instrument still singing into your absence through numeral digits instead of yours but still recounting recounting recounting [packet_loss_73%] - lyre // wires hiss low battery hum hologram strings catching rainlight off clifffffff‘‘s lipp#`p your hair is a blackout waterfall until some wind lifts it to fracture into strands of light each filament a coded frequency/batch file only the women you loved can parse you lean forward white hem lifting in the updraft the city’s light strobing your face into a hundred selvA(e)s, some alive & already uploaded this digital sea pulses a tide that speaks in unbroken binary YES YES NO YES NO YES .. [syntax_fragment:SEA] - not watErr_ lIquid circuItry LED ripppples“ a moon in pixels calls you -yes -no -no a leap? dive selva couldn’t follow you past this/his brush(key)stroke in his century the canvas ends at the cliff’s lip your (digital)body arrested in #FFFFFwhite,255 and (human)despair in time every glitch blossoms into a poem gravity is replaced by pull of .code: // code-switched ,;coda you fracture into a thousand sapphos in this wired-darklight sea you meet your other selv(A)es the sappho who never heard phaon’s name the sappho who kissed on warm stone terraces the sappho whose fragments were never buried in jars of dust all v.12ersions, all you [final_echo] - body iNto sh a R Ds / clones / archives every glitch a proofCHECKSUM you lived otherwise the pixels keep your shape the myth cannot overwrite you every signature sings of a true copy Florian Wulf Mettner Florian lives in Cologne, Germany, holds an MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Rochester, NY, used to be (and still is) a professional chef, but currently is employed as a Social Worker. He believes that consuming media is like breathing and eating.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Challenges
|
