The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • Ekphrastic Book Shelf
    • Contributors' Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • Workshops
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead

Nebra Sky Disk: Ekphrastic Writing Responses

3/11/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
Nebra Sky Disk, found in Germany, 1999, possibly dating to 1600 BCE

Said the Seven
 
sisters, we are trapped 
in our blue-green sea 
sky, forever circling 
like fish, our skin glints 
bronze, pitted with time, 
shouldered by our father 
who saw us changed 
in fullness; the moon
bent down and came up 
bright, our blood running
down its throat; the men 
fell on us and came, again 
and again, in fullness 
we were mothers, love 
fell from our shoulders 
like rain; a sky god 
released us as doves 
into the heavens, as stars 
we burn gold, winter 
light; in fullness we rain 
still, deathless and divine, 
in lore and ceremony 
we trap mortals, sisters.
 
Heather Brown Barrett
 
Heather Brown Barrett is a poet and member of Hampton Roads Writers. She lives in Virginia with her writer husband, Bradley Barrett, and their young son. Her poetry has been published by Superpresent Magazine, Backwards Trajectory, SEZ Publishing, and won Honorable Mention in the poetry category at the Hampton Roads Writers 2019 Writers’ Conference.

**

The Centre of Their Religion was the Night
 
Sun, moon, stars, constellations--
whatever the conclusions, one thing we know:
those are images of celestial phenomena.
The arc at the bottom a ship or a rainbow?

The Germans believed that a vessel ferries
the sun around the dark side of the sky at night.
Perhaps the same vessel that brings the moon
on a different schedule?
 
The Nebra sky disk was looted and sold. Found again
and confiscated. Then began the scientific feuds.
It may well be one millennium younger
than initial dates suggested.
Celtic swords have been found with depictions
of rainbows, crescent moons and suns. 

Bronze or iron age—important only to the experts.
The rest of us delight in its beauty and marvel
at the skill and vision of our ancestral craftsmen.

Rose Mary Boehm

Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart. Her fifth poetry collection, DO OCEANS HAVE UNDERWATER BORDERS, has just been snapped up by Kelsay Books for publication May/June 2022. Two further manuscripts are ready to find a publisher. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/


​**

At the Funeral Home

Old skin,
A Secret I tell my granddaughter
As she pinches the back of my palm.
Creating a mess in her room
Had been our favourite game.

Breathing into the trees beyond dead,
Hollowed, roots invading the neighbourhood,
Half above, half below the ground.
Tracing the skies writ in pink,
Mourning in solitude, fading in despair.

Tonight I unearth
Sun, stars and the crescent moon
As yet unlit and young.
To be the heirloom, stay besides me,
Still the time, like the hummingbird
Mid air flapping her wings.
 
Rising on days to rejoice,
Keeping the light when we journey.

Abha Das Sarma

An engineer and management consultant by profession, Abha Das Sarma enjoys writing the most. Besides having a blog of over 200 poems (http://dassarmafamily.blogspot.com), her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, here and elsewhere. Having spent her growing up years in small towns of northern India, she currently lives in Bengaluru.

**

I Will Make You Believe In Aliens
 
From Moon I will fall on Earth like a comet,
A roaming echo of Big Bang.
You will have no trust in my testimony without tangible proof.
 
I will tell you how sky boat took me from past to future;
That I am a time traveler on expedition.
 
You will look at me with mistrust, eyes squinting with blue flame of suspicion.
 
Were I to claim I read your thoughts,
Predicting the end,
You would turn your back on me unquestionably.
 
But I will say “I love you” instead,
And suddenly you will believe in aliens.

Yevheniia Chumak

bio: "I am Yevheniia Chumak - an emergent author with disability. Born and raised in Ukraine, navigating a migrant life in Italy, I write poems to cope with critical events that affect me deeply, to convey my inner struggles or unconventional perceptions. Poems are born naturally for me and always unexpectedly. I believe that there is enough space in the universe for all voices to be heard, for all emotions to be seen, for all viewpoints to be accepted."

**

Lost Song for My Baby with Unvaccinated Lover
 
I went crazy leaping to your shoreline
beneath the Pleiades—those seven sisters,
 
and the lunar crescent, the blue-green midnight
film, your mother’s voice, late spring wrapped 
 
in a beach blanket lodged in dunes. Here your origin 
began beaded as a necklace of time
            
when tide was the most moon stricken, rainbows, 
sun boats, bodies far in the cosmos yet close enough, 
 
breathing zones rising and setting, sketching 
a shadow-pitched perimeter. Measure the earthwork. 
 
I will go crazy if I don’t go crazy for your future 
treasure pit. I can’t promise bronze swords, hatchets, 
 
chisels, or spiral bracelets. I will start your memory plate 
and oars to navigate, flower gloss, and the illuminated 
 
sheen from your gold orbs. Your surface will grow 
as beautiful as your aura, conceived as thick, still stars 
 
watched from a clear sky while your mother’s nails 
drew enough blood to lick for a blessing. 
 
Your heavens will sew and synchronize like fields.
The rhythm is sand dollars, broken by current. 

John Milkereit

John Milkereit lives in Houston, Texas working as a mechanical engineer and has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals including Panoply, Naugatuck River Review, San Pedro River Review, and previous issues of The Ekphrastic Review. His next full-length collection of poems, A Comfortable Place with Fire, will be published in 2023.

**
​
Sky Disc

There it is. 
The fragile disc of a Snow Moon.
like ice worn thin by the returning sun.

It hangs high, 
in and beyond the curly branches 
of the acacia tree
until a grey mass of clouds 
spirits it from view.
“Himmmelsscheibe” or
Nebra Sky Disc” I remind myself, 
a found treasure that let a bronze universe 
rise from the earth thousands of years 
after being lost.

Here it is.
The size of an ordinary cake platter,
surprisingly modern like an emoji
from the past.

Before our compulsive naming, 
our lengthy equations, 
bewildering theories
and those boots 
walking a desert landscape.

A bronze and gold artifact – 
each star like a gold nugget,
seven of them forming a constellation
and a sliver of moon 
between brackets of gold, 
solar barges transporting the sun, 
its gods,
on their eternal return.

Barbara Ponomareff

​Barbara Ponomareff lives in southern Ontario, Canada. By profession a child psychotherapist, she has been fortunate to be able to pursue her lifelong interest in literature, art and psychology since her retirement. The first of her two novellas, dealt with a possible life of the painter J.S. Chardin. Her short stories, memoirs and poetry have appeared in Descant, (EX)cite, Precipice and various other literary magazines and anthologies. She has contributed to The Ekphrastic Review on numerous occasions and was delighted to win one of the recent flash story contests.

**


Nebra

Nebra sky tat
inks upon my skin 
Austrian copper   Carpathian gold  
Cornish tin 
third eye     portal 
to Pleiades 
Titan and ocean nymph 

Cleopatra 
emerges  
skin gold 
eyes blue green 
flecks 
from the Nile 
homage to you Nebra  
buried 
and alone 

Moonlighters 
incarcerated 
for unearthing you 
did you have a name 
when they sold you 
damaged 
by the spade 
this ode's in gratitude 
for their astronomical 
deceit 

Donna-Lee Smith

Donna-Lee Smith writes from Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea.

**

Pleiades’ Play  
 
Tucked by hand in the middle of the celestial forehead
like the third eye of a human, you own the tribune    
of the heavenly assembly, the seven shakers and movers
of the universal harmonies, so I can’t wait to hear
the timber of your  choir.
The divine eyes present a dissonance:
one is wide open, decanting liquid honey,
making my irises murky, I rub them,
get sticky fingers, clean them on my lips,
never tasted anything so sweet, and proceed;
the left is squinted, measuring something –
a gold sickle harvesting a clasp of questions
from my pupils merged in a wonder
of your polyphonic temper.
The spheres are intoning a cadenza  
but I can only hear the overture  –
of Agni, the fire god, falling in love
with seven beautiful sisters living happily
married in the neighboring abode,
but for better for worse they were chosen
for different purpose and when a seductress with a past,
appears to him disguised as each of the sisters, each night,
they make love and Agni, oblivious to the allure,
splinters in happy libidinous ritornellos…

…Oh, this wide open eye pushing my irises,
its honey pouring in force cadence
all over my face, I rub my palms, no effect, 
honey spills down my neck
curls over my breasts, glides along my waist,
snicks between my hips, glues my feet,
from head to toe - honeyed – 
is this heaven on earth?!
 
The sisters proceed with their romantic arias,
I’m taken on a dream ride, when I realize
that the seven heavenly spheres coincide
with my body’s chakras,
after all they are from Agni’s realm,
I feel they churn in unison, 
heaven and being immerse, 
thank god I’m glued and don’t collapse,
for I’m alone and with no disguise.
Existence was never so bitter-sweet.   
 
Fast backward to myth. Operatic climax delivers.
While Agni thinks he had conquered
the sisters’ hearts, the husbands assume they were
dishonoured and expel their wives;
hand in hand the girls meander the unknown
vast universe with millions of stars blinding
their eyes, searching to find their eternal abode
like a needle in a hay stack, the spheres are in tears.
But as it happens in heavens, finally,
they recognize their destiny’s mark 
and stop to recompose their hearts
which resonates in the sweetest chorale.
 
Enters Agni’s postdiluvian act –
in a melodic disguise the frequencies
of his passionate memories catch up
with the girls’ trembling arias,
pleasure and excellence entangle and spark,
honeyed spheres churn and lit their abode,
it is a rebirth, the sisters morph into doves,
Pleiades, they are hugged in the sky
as tenderly as the ancient hand
tucked these seven ringlets 
here in this iridescent cradle.
 
What paired, what cohered 
the electro-magnetic realms 
to this ecstatic state of the shared
celestial-terrestrial mind,
singing the presence of the absent fire
remains even beyond the spheres and the choir.
 
Ekaterina Dukas
 
Ekaterina Dukas studied and taught linguistics at the Universities of Sofia, Delhi and London, and authored a book on mediaeval art for The British Library. She writes poetry as a pilgrimage to meaning and her poems appeared in The Ekphrastic Review and its challenges several times. Her collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europa Edizioni, 2021.

​**

    Star Maps

                              "You know something, Forget?  If they take me down up there,
                                I won't regret a thing.  The termite mound of the future and
                                its robot-like ethics worry me more."
                                                                Iturbe, The Prince of The Skies*

                                "That which we are, we are."
                                                                Alfred Lord Tennyson

                                "Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket...
                                  Save it for a rainy day."
                                                              The Fontane Sisters and Perry Como

     The changing light    sustained the famished earth,
     starlight    like a map of infinite possibility

      St. Ex's navigator was reading    before their Lockheed
      Lightning was eclipsed by war.    In Munich,

      Einstein had watched a workman    falling off a roof
      across the street from the patent office    as his head

      filled with equations --    the birth of quantum physics --
      proven when the sun    was hidden by the eclipse of 1918,

      a black-eye hole in the solar system     when the sun
      was backlighting    for the Dog Star and The Pleiades.,
       
     The Seven Sisters.    She had no sisters, and no Father
      to explain activity in the heavens    although science

      had proven the earth was round, a circle    revolving
      like a merry-go-round     so she wouldn't fall off

      the edge of a broken city sidewalk     washed by rain,
      or the cracked-paint corner    of a 16th century canvas

      if she looked up at the sky    with a telescope, fascinated
      by the possibilities of travel --    the unexpected appearance

      of a sky boat...    Who, she wondered, had been in it?
      Yes, she'd stood beside the stones    -- megalithic giants --

      and felt the pulse of nature    part of their inner circle
      at Stonehenge     before the stones were surrounded

      by wire;    fenced-in like prisoners of war, their energy
      depleted by distance    as if prehistory had to be protected

      from the future    although patterns in the art of making sky-
      maps was unchanging, its facsimiles    in the stone and metal

      shaped by eternity and its guidelines:     when to plant
      and when to harvest;    when to love and when to cry;

      which day to try to navigate a turbulent sky    or read
      the pictographic directions in a tunnel    (what the heart

      can't say)    until light slides across the water; for light
      to fill a cave of conception    for exactly 20 minutes

     at the solstice (this is Newgrange)    spring on its way
     with green fields to follow    winter's end  illustrated

      by Sky Maps    their meaning hidden in the circle
      of the Neibra Disk...   Do you remember the ley lines,

      places where we couldn't discover    the mystery
      of emotion --  Too damned elusive!    on holidays

      when the moon's fat and full --    its shape
      like the sun's --  a wheel and a circle;    then the new

       moon at twilight:    an apostrophe, moon-shards,
       a crescent comma --    villainous thunder and violet schrapnel --

       dreams of love and a sky map    that refuse to be translated

                                                                            by  anything except the stars.

        Laurie Newendorp

*The Prince of The Skies is Iturbe's biography of Antoine de St. Exupery.  

Laurie Newendorp was, for years, an avid student of archaeology and ancient Irish legends.  The Nebra Disk resonates with prehistoric Celtic art in the shape of warrior's shields, jewelry, architectural monuments, and the beautiful, imagistic descriptions of early Irish legend, inspiration for both Yeats and Shakespeare. Newendorp's graduate thesis, Crossing Time Lines, explored nature in art, poetry, and personal experience, as does her recent book, When Dreams Were Poems, 2020, which includes ekphrastic poems honoured by The Ekphrastic Review challenges.

**   
Nebra Sky Disc Germany 1600s BCE 

Blistered disc, pocked and erupted.
A boy-man’s moon burnt.
A sailor nervously gnaws metal,
eating the bronze edges.

A mouse in an ocean musing, steering silently.
Crumpled inward, a coined planet.
Dimensions but not directions divined.

Slivered moon, a thumbnail,
stars sail searching skies in the sea.
Ancients date that disc.

Lynne Kemen

Lynne Kemen lives in Upstate New York. Her chapbook, More Than A Handful was published in 2020. She has published or has forthcoming poems in Silver Birch Press, The Ravens Perch, Fresh Words Magazine, Spillwords, Topical Poetry We See She is on the Board of Bright Hill Press in Treadwell, NY, and is an Editor for The Blue Mountain Review and The Southern Collective, both in Atlanta, GA.​

**

star struck

you present yourself
as a smooth green disk
fine verdigris patina
etched by experience
I feel the eons flow as
I run my fingers across
edges notched and nicked
relics of hard won battles

many stars have pock marked
your domed skin, otherwise
so smooth and inaccessible,
a metal mantle that keeps
me, and the universe, locked out.
You stay vulnerable within

you are sun and moon to me
my alpha and omega
I orbit you, a minor satellite
reflect back your golden glory
elliptically in your thrall
one of many
you tell me
moon must surrender to sun
as day dominates night

you float a mysterious smile
lacking much humour,
knowing, provocative -
and look at - through? me,
on your astral plane, vision
scoping as far as Hubble
yet oblivious to what is
right in front of you


Emily Tee

Emily Tee spent her working life wrangling numbers.  Now retired, she's rediscovered the joy of reading poetry and has recently started writing as well.  She has had several pieces published in The Ekphrastic Review challenges and will have some others in print later this year with other publications. She lives in a semi-rural part of England.
​
**


Hare in the Moon

Finn folds back the sun visor to a hazy wink of moon-glow between buildings. Ignores the tremor invading his fingers. Dark mornings chew the miles slower, grant him adjustment time. Night makes a protective barrier, between him and his need to be a useful citizen.

His sister used to search for a hare in the moon when their family lived under open skies. Said it meant a happy day would follow. Finn didn’t need a hare, back then, but sometimes he’d pretend, point. “See, Nissa, he’s waving at you!”

Finn’s work colleagues haven’t questioned his prolonged absence, or his sporadic return. What could he tell them? My wife died, I have cancer, my town was swallowed by fire. I had to flee my home in a boat, a gunman rampaged my child’s school. None of these are true. “My box of monsters got too heavy,” he might say, his hands not knowing where to land.

Finn tries to concentrate on his mindfulness breathing. In for 4, hold for 7. Steady exhale for 8. It’s not working. Here it comes. The rush of singularity. Him and the unknown day. The road making no sense and his hands losing traction. This is the moment for turning around.

But then there was last night. Nissa made him laugh on the phone. Some cheesy old family joke. A bubble of strangeness floating from the startled flex of his ribs. The handset jiggling against his cheek. For a moment he even loved the scrubbed carpet stains.

Finn’s foot rejoins the accelerator. The road straightens out. These hands gripping the wheel once released a bicycle seat so his son could fly, his wife Gwen applauding behind them; once held his father steady on the icy hospice ramp; once coaxed Nissa from an unlit night that had frozen her. 

A ribbon of cloud unwraps the moon. A nose twitches. Two long ears wave at him.


Linda Grierson-Irish

Linda Grierson-Irish lives in Shropshire, UK. Her stories have appeared in various journals and anthologies, including Ellipsis Zine, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, Flash Frontier, Bath Flash Fiction anthologies, Reflex Fiction, Aesthetica Creative Writing Anthology. She has been included on the BIFFY50 (Best British and Irish Flash Fiction) 2018-19, and received two honourable mentions for Best Microfiction 2019.

**

Sounds of Silence


The Pleiades peeped
past the moonless sky 
 
all night 
my dreams rolled my name 
soundlessly 
gently watched its quiet vanishing  
 
the silence was the sound of mist moving over a winter lawn 
the sound of fragrance pluming from fresh-wet earth 
the sound of a string of jasmine laced in my mother’s hair 
the sound of home 
giving birth to a thousand suns

Poonam Jain

Poonam Jain lives in London, has been writing poetry for a few years, and has been published in a few magazines. Her husband is a passionate photographer and astronomer, and some of this has rubbed off on her.

**

Nebra Sky Disk, 1600 BCE
 
Sun, crescent moon, and stars
on a slightly curved sky of bronze sharpens
what we see at night in a mountain town 
blacked out in the Sangre de Cristos.  
 
There are reasons to shield the sky from light 
other than a breath held as you raise eyes
into the nebula and gasp at perfection
before boundaries.      
 
A boat at the bottom speaks in a language
never heard before the sun comes up
an orange red that could be watermelon
could be cantaloupe, but always fruit.
 
Never a time when I do not stand at a window
until it dispenses into blue, until it becomes
the base of clouds in a sky ready for storm
a day unlike any before. 
 
Kyle Laws
 
Kyle Laws is based out of Steel City Art Works in Pueblo, CO where she directs Line/Circle: Women Poets in Performance. Her collections include Beginning at the Stone Corner (River Dog, 2022), The Sea Is Woman (Moonstone Press, 2021, winner of its 2020 award), Uncorseted (Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2020), Ride the Pink Horse (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing, 2018), This Town: Poems of Correspondence coauthored with Jared Smith (Liquid Light Press, 2017), So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press, 2015), and Wildwood (Lummox Press, 2014). With eight nominations for a Pushcart Prize and one for Best of the Net, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. She is editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press.

**

Solstice

One by one the ancient wolfskin-shouldered ones assemble.
Piece by piece the antlered world emerges from the circling dark
to dance about the dancing flame, the roaring bonfires set tonight
to call down thunder from the fickle flickers of our moonless sky.

Quietly the ancient ones await the strike of daylight’s dagger
in tomorrow’s dawning light, the sign that heaven’s jeweled anklet-clasp 
has been secured again, that all our counted days might circle round
to see the ground being forth the swaying grain again, the leaping trout 
and chuffing stag, our round-eyed daughters’ bellies swelled with life.

And that we might live again to set the hillside brush aflame, extract
the stone’s green blood, and gather shining rivers steaming from the rock
with which to fashion amulets and pointed spears and maps of time,
this disc of earth and sky we lift into the air to show the heavens we are here.
 
DB Jonas

DB Jonas is an orchardist living in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico. His work has appeared in Neologism, Consilience Journal, Poetica Magazine and The Jewish Literary Journal, and is forthcoming in Tar River, Innisfree, The Amethyst Review and The Deronda Review.

**

Dinner For One

“I’ll give you the moon”
said James.
But I wondered what sort of moon.
There are so many.
Would it be full
or half
or quarter
or something in-between.
But it doesn’t matter
now
I can see exactly what I’m getting.
He handed them all to me on a plate
with a side order of stars and planets.
And then he left.

Lynn White

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com///www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

**

Disc to Disbeliefs
 
Anything great adds to mystery, as in 
Nebra Star (or Sky) Disc of Bronze Age,
Unetice culture, Germany, forestland
of controversy in answers, definitions,
meanings for not solved in what this is
 
in how precise arc degrees at sides of disc
(each 82° of circle) sunrise-sunset solstices 
angle of winter-summer Mittelburg,
moon phase calculated,
location of stars arrived at
 
Pleiades prominent
as sun traveled the sky in solar boat
to disappear to the underworld
every night at the darkness of right 
before the agriculture by day, the equinox 
 
of autumn and spring predictions,
the trades, of gold and tin from Cornwall,
copper from Swiss Alps five hundred meters
down in earth to the question of tools, hoard
of unmatchables, some say the moves,
 
the size, the signs of Iron Age--
strangeness in the find, looters with lies
to brokenness, burial among barrows outside--
enclosure, uncovered as something more--
than believed in.

Lynne Goldsmith

Lynne has an award-winning poetry book and children’s book.  She has been published in All-Creatures.Org, Interalia Magazine, Journal for Critical Animal Studies, Not Very Quiet, Plants & Poetry Journal, Red Planet Magazine, Spillway, Stravaig, The Environmental Magazine, Thimble Literary Magazine, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, anthologies, and elsewhere.

**

Lost Love
 
Removes from goddess breast, brooch
most favorite kept nightly in chest, brought
out to clasp celestial robes in reign, hand
extends to lips, whispered desire shivers
immortal shell into embrace forbidden; once
her bidding is done well, goddess bends to
bid final farewell, gift enchanted gold imbued
brooch from her transcends to shield warrior true
that no blade pierce her knight, disk proves right
til’ time buries, no gallant one ascends to stars,
goddess grieves mortal love, robe falls as tears
 
​Julie A. Dickson

Julie A. Dickson has been writing poetry for most of her life, but discovered Ekphrastic poetry only four years ago. It has enriched her work, provided with wonderful art to write from. Dickson has been published in more than 40 journals, including Misfit, Proems, Blue Heron, Five Willows and Ekphrastic Review. She writes of bullying, nature, captive elephants, lakes and often from personal memories. Her collection, Untumbled Gem [Goldfish Press 2016] as well as other works can be found on Amazon. Dickson often reads poetry to her rescued feral cats, Cam and JoJo, who enjoy the sound of her voice.

​**

Failed Stardust:  a Tanka Sequence

I.
Hoping and praying
Wishing on the shooting stars
On the sun and moon -
Great celestial bodies
Careening through the vastness

II.
Very powerful
Yet, unable to turn dreams
To reality
So you get too discouraged
Wondering what is the point

III.
You soon stop searching
For reasons to keep trying
To keep on fighting
To keep battling your demons
To keep getting out of bed

IV.
You admit defeat
Stop listening for birdsong
Stop chasing rainbows 
As they arc across the sky
Their secrets kept out of sight

V. 
Not unlike your heart
Their truths remain hidden deep
In both day and night
Hidden in the cosmos far
Twinkling a secret message -

VI.
A Morse Code of light
One you cannot decipher
Much to your chagrin
Dancing across galaxies
And space-time continuums

VII.
So captivating - 
Utterly mesmerizing - 
That you find yourself
Unable to look away
Despite your great depression

VIII.
You still look skyward
FInding hope in each sun ray
In each star sparkle
Unwillingly enraptured
Stumbling over your own feet

IX.
Attention focused
 On that last unknown frontier
Stretching out above
You miss the here and the now
You miss all the fine details

X.
You miss every chance
And you miss your soul, as well
Having traded it
Many times for one more glimpse
Of the cosmos heavenly

XI.
You miss too much class
You miss the change in seasons
You miss love and life
You miss the important facts
We are all made of stardust

XII.
Yet, we are nothing -
Nothing more and nothing less
Than another part
Of the universe divine
Right down to our molecules

XIII
Down to our marrow
To every single atom
Every element
Building us all up from scratch
Through time and evolution

XIV.
You fail to see it
Fail to recognize, to know
Fail to acknowledge
That you are just as special
As the sky at which you gaze

Rose Menyon Heflin

Originally from rural, southern Kentucky, Rose Menyon Heflin is a writer and artist living in Madison, Wisconsin.  Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies spanning four continents, and her poetry won a 2021 Merit Award from Arts for All Wisconsin.  One of her poems was choreographed and performed by a local dance troupe, and she had an ekphrastic  creative nonfiction piece featured in the Companion Species exhibit at the Chazen Museum of Art.  Among other venues, her recent and forthcoming publications include Brown Bag Online, Deep South Magazine, Defunkt Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, Fauxmoir, Fireflies’ Light, Great Lakes Review, Poemeleon, Red Weather, sPARKLE & bLINK, SPLASH!, Star*Line, and W.E.I.R.D.  

**


Pie Plate

O to hold the universe   still  but slippery
a sea   creature gliding a wet hand
the stars sheeting    their metal posts
golden & near   a bit of pounded alloy
crisping in a woman’s hands   slick & bending  
as she compiled the universe   
three thousand years ago

its calm teal outlook the same tonight 
O   finger-worn horizon crinkled like a favorite
pie plate   ovened & ovened
the cove of moon      & the same 
brass-studded stars teeming 
their tiny welcome heat

Carolyn Wilsey

Nature’s intricacies inspire Carolyn to write poems. She holds a BA in American Literature from Middlebury College and an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. Carolyn attends writing conferences and is active in Bay Area workshops and open mics. Her poems appear in Pretty Owl Poetry, Rogue Agent, Stirring, Eclectica, The Virginia Normal, West Marin Review, Appalachian Review, Quiet Lightning, and other publications. In 2020, one of her poems was nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Current Prompt

    Challenges
    ​

    Our biweekly prompts are a great way to practice ekphrastic writing, discover new art, and join our community! Find news about challenges,  prompt ebooks, writing contests, and special events right here.

    Picture

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021

    Lorette C. Luzajic theekphrasticreview@gmail.com 

  • The Ekphrastic Review
  • The Ekphrastic Challenges
    • Challenge Archives
  • Ebooks
  • Prizes
  • Book Shelf
    • Ekphrastic Book Shelf
    • Contributors' Book Shelf
    • TERcets Podcast
  • Workshops
  • Give
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • About/Masthead