 Mediterranean, by Nicolas de Stael (France, b. Russia) 1952 Postcard from Antibes  StevieB. StevieB. (Stephen McDonnell) writes lyric poems shaped by mystical and erotic experience, where queer eros opens onto the divine. A late-blooming poet, he began writing in his sixties, apprenticing himself to Rumi, Whitman, O’Hara, Ginsberg, and Anne Carson. He lives among the farmlands of eastern Long Island as an erotic mystic, anchorite, and healer, watching what reveals itself. ** An Uncertain Sea Ghazal on Nicolas de Staël’s Mediterranean, 1952 The artist, de Staël, wrote "I know that my life will be a continual voyage on an uncertain sea." Then at 41 jumped to his death off a high building, ending his continual voyage on an uncertain sea. The vertical and horizontal lines, the grid-geometry in Mediterranean-- military formations his blood tree: generals to the Tsar of St. Petersburg, a war in the Baltic, a political voyage on an uncertain sea. Orphaned after the Revolution, his parents dying in Poland, one can't now not see his medius terra, a holiday landscape empty of people, only a small boat on a calm hopeful voyage on an uncertain sea . Pink seafront villas and blue water, jazz later taught him sound has a colour -- but hear the sound of loneliness now, two separate colours, never touching, each on their own individual voyage on an uncertain sea. His painting, uncertain, caught between abstraction and figuration -- asks the viewer to fill in, to focus, and find meaning, but mostly to feel, to feel, stepping fully into the artful voyage on an uncertain sea. De Staël's impasto, layered, thick striations. sediment marking the past, his palette knife piling it on, post-war, like covering up history to discover beauty, our beautiful voyage on this uncertain sea. With paint his landscape gives the luminous light of the Mediterranean, a sur le motif, our eyes catch the light de Staël's eyes caught and his hands take us on the mystical voyage of his uncertain sea. Poet, you too, love that blurry line between - the thing in the landscape giving ambiguity, maybe de Staëll's boat ran ashore a dark certainty, and he chose leaving -- a final voyage, forever an uncertain sea. Lisa Powell Lisa Powell, retired, living in Portugal, 90s MFA, 30-year-slave to American higher education. Recently published in Rattle Poetry (Poets Respond/Ekphrastic). A long time ago, before children and working for survival, she had poetry published in The Birmingham Poetry Review, The Alaska Quarterly Review, Red Rock Review. ** Bleaching the Dark The sun is hot enough to melt the sky Into the softness of the azure sea; The tired listless form of former me Is now a mist of vaporizing I. The sun is hot enough to melt the air Into the molten semblance of a street; And you, like me, are melting in this heat-- A noontime dream about a solar flare. The sun is hot enough to melt the dark Into the lovely yellow and the pink; We don’t exist, and, therefore, cannot think-- A bleached-out mystery, impasto spark. Iryna Hall Iryna Hall immigrated from Ukraine in 1997. She is married, has three children, lives in Utah, and writes while managing multiple sclerosis. ** I Woke in a Different Bedroom I woke in a different bedroom 5:55 AM I whisper hello, hello, hello Float out the window The balcony beckons Light is here Light in my veins Fresh new glow sharp I’ll bring last night with me And that tan face, and that tan shoulder Asleep inside the windows I’m pleased with out here The bougainvillea Light in the sky The turned wood of the bannister All I see is sea, sea, sea Foreign rooves, plaster walls This blue sweet air So bright it’s a sketch burning my eyes Soon I’ll go into the brilliance Get coffee Bring back one Say it was nice and move on Try a museum Throw on big white sunglasses Stroll the lucent swash Or that face will wake and smile And I’ll laugh Bllu Bllu’s favourite T-shirt says "I'm Your Man." She studies Creative Writing at Middlesex Community College and helps run the Community Garden. Her short story "Panic is Coming on Strong" was published in the Dead River Review 2025, and her poem "9 Sentinels Sonnet" published and performed at Art on the Trails the past summer. She writes by night and gardens by day. In between, she hikes with her family, listens to music, and studies history. ** Long Summer's Day
“My painting, behind its appearances, its violence, its perpetual plays of force, is something fragile in the good, sublime sense.” Nicolas de Staël's December 1954 writing to his dealer, Jacques Dubourg When the sunshine doesn't feel like an obligation and the phone doesn't ring or ping or ding, the sublime boredom that sublimates between "to do" and "done" (but is neither!) is a simple, fragile side-step of the violent force of the perpetual "should." Cameron Rockelein Cameron Rockelein is a lifelong New Yorker and current elementary school teacher who misses being the one to receive creative writing assignments. He aspires to write more about nature, social justice and the state of our society, the queer community, mental health, and love. ** Blue Do you recall those two white walls side-by-side to a brilliant cerulean eye? I have not forgotten the scent of jasmine that rose in that evening of a setting sky, the terrace where wine-glasses reflected the calls of birds from groves of lemons arrayed as if the Mediterranean sun had scattered rays of light like a diamonds. Silence descended upon us as moon, stars bathed a horizon of rooftops, windows, in a sapphire light - flooded the terrace that edged more closely to the silent sea. * Blue Again Blue the sand, the waters, the walls. Now - blue the memory. Perhaps, the only true blue is formed from white space, which does not bend truth. Or, it is a blue of sea foam, of a chicory lined field, a mourned worn shirt. Remembered dreams are blues of moments that follow me down, that keep me on this path where an artist’s whim may turn blue to white. Or, do I deceive myself in this refracted light? Pat Kabra Pat Kabra is a nascent writer, professor and a former diplomat. She teaches at the George Washington University in DC and has published poetry in the Yellow Arrow Journal and the Beltway Quarterly. ** Cyprus Blue I remember our visits to Limassol, its muted buildings, its stone and sand beaches, its gentle waves. Against the Mediterranean-- a blue so blue it makes me wonder if I ever knew what it was. Have I really ever seen it? The island always seems to contrast itself-- pubs and shops next to stretches of beach, large ships in the distance. I remember, then forget, the feel of the air, and then I’m reminded when I return as we’re apt to do. I’m married to Cyprus as much as to a Greek Cypriot, the modern and the classic melding together in a temple of all of my memories. Anne Graue Anne Graue is the author of Full and Plum-Colored Velvet (Woodley Press, 2020) and Fig Tree in Winter (Dancing Girl Press, 2017). Her work can be found in Sundress Publications Best Dressed Blog, Verse Daily, Poet Lore, Spoon River Poetry Review, Rogue Agent, Gargoyle, Unbroken Journal, River Heron Review, Crab Orchard Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Putnam County, New York and is a poetry editor for The Westchester Review. ** The Mediterranean Sea “I'm glad I am a woman who once danced naked in the Mediterranean Sea at midnight.” Mercedes McCambridge I sit on my chaise lounge, recalling my past. The Mediterranean’s still a soft blue as I do remember it; lovely and vast. But the dark sapphire sea of midnight comes through in only my dreams now, and I feel recast as that agéd woman who stares at the view and wonders if this trip might well be her last. To dance nude again there? Oh, how I’d love to. RJ Clarken RJ Clarken has been published in Writer’s Digest, Möbius, Asinine Poetry, USA Today Online, and Measure, among other publications. She was Editor-in-Chief of Goldfinch, the literary journal for New Jersey’s Women Who Write, and she is the author of the books Mugging for the Camera (humorous poetry) and Penny Wishes (young adult novel.). For several years, she served as the judge for the Writer's Digest Annual Writing Competitions Rhyming Poetry contest. She is currently a member of the James River Writers, the Chesterfield Poetry Collective, and the Poetry Society of Virginia. ** Tender as a Blunt Lattice of a frequentative verb. Long ago they used lacquer remover, upbraiding in opposition. In discontinuity there is weakness-- they drip continuously as we forever square them down across an older album. Tender as a blunt stick and can expand with an inch apart, accord faster than desired. Came an endless expanse beyond its full seemingness since. * Translucence as a Retort Maximize light reflection from the urgent business of beauty itself. Morning raising of eye was the glimmer gliding of beautiful metaphysical conceit, factored pink with indignation. Its allies standing square along the seaside— reappoint your height. Flattering swingy skirt giving translucence as a retort, sat there nude next to that sight to make double sill soft. Natural illumination… Loyal Poem Loyal Poem is a harpist and a remote viewer. She lives in Los Angeles, California. ** I Saw a Man. In the blue, I saw a man and he raised his fist at me. The colours of the bruise, so cheerful, they blend with vibrancy. It led me to believe, perhaps, he raised his hand to greet— to welcome, in his robes so white, like a Sunday morning meet. Jessie Leasure Working in a loose-realistic style, Jessie Leasure uses acrylic and drawing materials to convey emotional content drawn from personal experience and her resulting creative writing, most often poetry. To this end, she employs the human figure’s incredible capacity for expression in her visual art, especially through body language. She balances specificity against ambiguity because nuance conveys more than absolutes. She is represented by NoMa Gallery in Ocala, is featured in many private collections, and has exhibited in shows and galleries throughout the state of Florida (USA). Currently, she maintains a Florida-based studio, teaches art full-time, and is serving as the Director for the Lecanto School of the Arts. ** Tesserae The Lotus Eaters Linger here a time, lotus sweet as honey. Languish a lifetime, Sweeter than honey. Languish … Polyphemus Blinded by No Man, derided by every man, I petition the gods for justice! Aeolus Idiots! What idiots! I fed you, gave you safe passage. “Fare thee well,” I bade you. But you've loosed the Gale of the World! Now begone and perish in the depths! Circe We tarried happily while his men rooted in the mast. But for one year only … Witch that I am, I sensed that he was already bewitched by the sea. Tiresias in the Underworld Brave sailor, You’ve crossed a sea of blood. Now, attend my words carefully! The Sirens Fool! Chained to your ship, you merely traded one fate for another. But our bright song will chase you down all the years. Calypso The wind has told me a story and now I’m hot for this fellow who spilled blood at Troy and made himself a name. Speed him here, you, I have a gift he won't refuse. The Phaeacians Friends, I owe you my life. I would tarry, dear friends, gladly tarry. Yet I long for my home, for dear Penelope and my own hearth. Argos Master! Master! My master! Telemachus I expected that my father would be someone nobler-- not this scarecrow. Penelope My darling, when I heard your voice for the first time in decades, I looked up to see the face of a stranger. Odysseus Here’s the truth: I became an occasion for lies—theirs and yours and even my own. I forgot who I was. Now I wander grim Hades, shade of a shade. Grove Koger NB: Tesserae are the small pieces of stone or tile that make up a mosaic. Grove Koger is the author of a readers’ guide to travel narratives, When the Going Was Good; a collection of poetry, Not; four collections of fiction, including Ancient Afternoons and Sun Dogs; and a collection of poetry and fiction, Out of Idaho. He lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife, poet Margaret Koger. ** walking over blue tiles of water with waves i knew walking over blue tiles of water with waves i knew i got off in antibes my cap d’antibes the small train car mixed wet blue outside sky and waves i tripped in the sand and dust that blew across the tracks almost a streetcar size train and i think the chairs were plastic nobody cared about the straps hanging as if stars dragged against foreheads and hair but i remember the sand and walking barefoot in the last of the very last of summer drawn into shore and curling around the point you can’t see all the way around or too far except up and out to sea and the only thing left the light of the end of summer and star colored wind in waves let’s dance i said because i finally had come a few dollars in francs for the slow train with pensioners and family from le havre too cold to ever warm again but coming to kiss the sun weeping the smiles in eyes blessed for a few days for forever for now and for later like one seed of the coast from de stael mike sluchinski mike sluchinski drives on roads paved by el shaddai and hopes you'll all get ekphrastic as you want to be. thank you to the ekphrastic review for the fresh poetry and i'll take mine with double cream and sugar if i can. ** Messenger My lips are frosted peach and my face is raised to the sun, hands resting on soft wood. Silk feathers against my calves, and I inhale warm scents of sea breeze and new croissants. A glorious surge of aqua enters my heart and lifts me from my feet, and like a lover swinging me in a dance, I am airborne. Plates clink and rugs flap beneath me; I swoop over and dart into spaces of privacy and busy work, selecting a line of aprons and dish cloths to alight upon. I shake my head under a speckle of sunlight, and notice a round sad woman peering at me, a bowl of beans half-picked resting on her soft patterned belly. I give her a dance and create her own special song, “Drink from this beauty! Bask in this earth bath!” A tear appears on her cheek. “I love you I love you I love you,” I sing and scatter her bean ends lying at her feet. She gasps and smiles; the bells ring and I am lifted again. Suddenly, a hand on my shoulder, and I hear him say, “Let’s go check out this town, why don’t we?” I frost his cheek with my kiss. Alice Bridger Alice Bridger is a creative nonfiction writer whose topics stem from a significant range of life experiences related to Generation X, addiction, grief, and parenting, yet with a twist of humour and humility. She is a newly retired college administrator who is finally able to pen the stories that chased her during her commutes to and from work in Los Angeles. She now lives in Orange County with her partner James and a cat that acts more like a dog. ** Village of de Stael Rising from the sea, I remove my goggles, look at the shore with my astigmatic vision, at the hill, at the paper squares taped there in sun bleached colors, at outlines of black squiggles, at the sea-blue sky above filled with birds I only hear. I wade to the beach, dry off, set my glasses on my nose, paper squares morph into the homes and buildings of my Mediterranean village. Lenora Rain-Lee Good Lenora Rain-Lee Good lives in the desert of Washington State. Her latest chapbook is Saying Goodbye to Thomas, published by Finishing Line Press. Her poetry has appeared in online and print anthologies, including Quill and Parchment, Shrub-Steppe Poetry Journal, and The Ekphrastic Review. Her favourite poetry quote: “A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.” —Robert Heinlein ** A Dying Sea, in Three Panels I Iceberg buildings square black-water-gouged shores. Naive blues play peek-a-boo. II Those turquoise pockets belay the artist's fears of time. That closing arm. III Around this shrinking sea, mauve smears, clay flecks--someday all bodies will shut. Brennan Thomas Brennan Thomas is a Professor of English at Saint Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania, where she teaches creative writing and media studies. She has published short fiction and poetry in various online magazines, including engine(idling, Rue Scribe, and Right Hand Pointing. ** Is Knowledge a Virus? The longer I gazed at this image the more my enjoyment increased. Looked again after this learning this artist took his own life at age 41, after unrequited love, by jumping from his apartment’s terrace on March 16 of 1955. This painting is dated 1952. How does that knowledge make a difference? John Lake John Lake lives in a small town in northeastern Washington State. ** Reflected Light At noon, Mediterranean sunshine Burns your shadow until it shrinks To fit the soles of your feet. If you let the warm sea lap your toes, It could draw out the darkness beyond the abyss Into the hadal depths that birthed it. Yet you stand apart. You don’t notice your shadow grow, Beginning where you end. Like you, it spurns the sun and the sea. It mimics your every brushstroke, While you replicate life without living it And immortalize distorted sunlight on restless water. Grace Braeburn Grace Braeburn is an Australian writer of historical fiction, short stories and poetry. To find out more, please visit her website (gracebraeburn.com). ** Surviving Aphrodite Reader if you see Aphrodite near the Acropolis a shock of red hair rosy lips breasts inviting a hand to cover her pudenda she’s Aphrodite Pandemos waiting on the south slope to see if the honey you came for will sweeten your day. Pandemos and her crew—Pan to flute pipe dreams Eros Cupid’s bow and arrow Peitho’s wine cups all ready to single out anyone who may fall prey. If you sit in a cafe and wait for your perfect love near Dionysiou Areopagitou 15 Acropolis Museum you’ll remember this street where Venus Aphrodite intends to seduce him before he even sees you. Margaret Koger Margaret Koger was raised on an acreage near the Snake River after electricity came to rural Idaho but before her parents could afford to buy her a pony. She survived and moved to Boise, where she attended Boise State University and went on to pursue a lifelong career in education. Her first collection, What These Hands Remember, celebrates family life as well as the likes of frogs and four-leaf clover. Her second, the award-winning If Seasons Were Kingdoms, shares the richness of the “braille of clean air” in Idaho and beyond. In her latest collection, Until Fall, Koger claims ”Only poetry / never lies,” as she invites readers to appreciate how nature, our beautiful but temporary home, belongs to everyone. ** At Sea a Haibun for Nicolas de Stael Sequestered in a studio, staring out a window, a painter reflecting on a life of loss seizes crimson, slathers on stone a single square. Stretching another up, another across, like the rooftops of places where people make breakfast, make love, make mistakes, make their mark on the world, drips drizzles like rain. Adding boxes of ochre, beyond them the sky, the sea, through windows of worry, a painter remembers children, parents, partners, splashes corners of darkness. The sky is singing, the sea is remembering, the painting is done. Donna Reiss Writer, editor, teacher, bookmaker, and mixed media/paper artist, Donna lives in Greenville, South Carolina, where she is a member of the Greenville Center for Creative Arts, the Guild of American Papercutters, and the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Follow her on Instagram @dreissart ** To Nicolas de Stael Regarding Mediterranean You seek from mind the fine detail in forms suggesting peaceful place where sea and river's end prevail at shoreline time has carved by grace of constant motion you omit from surface of your brightened blue in vista you have softly lit by sun from vantage out of view that still extends the warm embrace so sensed as gift of greater source that gave to empires holy face as proof beheld of tethered course that humbled fledgling intellect contrived in cosmic genuflect. 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. ** Mare Nostrum Putting the sea into words feels impossible without music, the melodious break of waves on rocks older than time itself Time itself is a man-made construct, invented to track phases of the moon. I use it to track the days since I lost what I knew. I dreamed of the Mediterranean, knowing she was one of many sisters, yet she alone could saturate the world with salty tears steeped in song- I heard her crying at the siege of war, choosing sides through her tides, tortured that the bodies and blood would serve as sustenance for her children, right or wrong. I lost what I knew and she sensed it, suddenly she went rigid, then covered me head to toe with one great wave, saturating me where I sat, bent knees and clutched feet on her packed-sand shore- My child was on the other side of the world, she needed me. I gasped when the sea subsided, her musical breath now breathing only peace. The Mediterranean seizes the hearts of people floating in her water, seeking something greater for their lives The salty sea that lifts them, floating them along, perhaps also deliberates their fate, deciding with wisdom as wide as her shores lie, who would live and who would die. I wonder how she chooses over all the noise. A Tsunami of hope rushes through my body, the azure and grey foamed liquid releasing my fears. When she unleashed her power all one can do is submit to her godliness. Until all I really thought of now was love, a universal acceptance of time limiting my journey but never the Mediterranean's plaintive, tearful song. The 1965 The 1965: Debbie Walker-Lass, (she/her) is a poet, collage artist, and writer living in Decatur, Georgia. Her work has appeared, (or is forthcoming) in Lit Shark, The Avon Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Collaborature, The Rockvale Review, and Green Ink Poetry, among others. Debbie was proud to be nominated by TER for the Best Small Fictions, 2024 anthology. Jahzara Zamora Woods is a young poet that has recently published her first book, My Lamp Is On The Floor, available on Amazon. She has had several published poems, and she performs in Open Mic poetry readings in and around Atlanta. Jahzara and Debbie write together as “The 1965.” They have several publications or upcoming publications in both The Ekphrastic Review and Collaborature. ** Thirteen Thoughts about de Stael’s Mediterranean 1 I am always looking for blackbirds-- I see them everywhere. 2 The ones I see most are crows. 3 I rarely write about mountains or beauty but I know water skies and edges well. 4 My mind is a cave of mysterious passageways. 5 Sometimes everything appears to be supernatural-- iridescent and reflective as a crow’s wing. 6 I am always looking for a sea and a boat on which to sail to the place of the ladder to the moon. 7 A waystation where I can wait for starwings to carry me into the Otherworld. 8 But why am I so restless and dissatisfied? My problems are trivial, really, invisible inside the mirror of the universe. 9 I wonder where it is located and what version of the riddle of life resides within. 10 Is it heaven or abyss? Can you measure it with time? 11 One direction is much like all the others. There is no number for between. 12 Everything is on the edge, but of what? 13 Has Crow been there? Did he ask the questions? or did he provide the answers? Kerfe Roig Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Her poetry and art have been featured online by Feral, Pure Haiku, Collaborature, The Chaos Section Poetry Project, and The Ekphrastic Review, and published in The Anthropocene Hymnal, and The Polaris Trilogy. Follow her explorations at https://kblog.blog/. ** Mediterranean after Nicolas de Staël I There are paintings I admire for their simplicity and directness -- geometric squares and oblongs, abstract cityscapes, in primary colours, skylines without contrails. Urban blocks like cereal boxes, the hands that held the spoon now contort an empty bowl. II But here's another take, still standing here, wrestling with my lack of attention -- Mediterranean blue, from the same era. Hotel blocks, or are they seaside houses and swimming pools -- or is it the coastline? III The palette knife puts down slabs of paint, light, space, heat shimmering into abstraction, my attention slipping into memory -- my 60th birthday, Portugal, the world melting like an iced cake, candles still lit, still smoking, where I drift in thoughts of holidays, past and present, and yet to come. IV Only the held breath of standing still, eyes fixed while the room moves past me, arrives on the canvas that never looks dry but always fresh -- your face cracking like a lead mirror beneath a frozen tear, for a single outline of a smile, rubbed out years before, the people and faces you cared for, who you'll never set eyes on again. Bio Mark Andrew Heathcote is a support worker for adults with learning difficulties. His poems have been published in various journals, magazines, and anthologies, both online and in print. He is from Manchester and resides in the UK. Mark is the author of In Perpetuity and Back on Earth, two books of poems published by Creative Talents Unleashed. ** What the Grid Remembers The sea did not come to me in waves. It came in rectangles -- this blue, cut and set beside that blue, as if colour alone could hold a coast together. Between them, black threading like a suture, like something torn was told to heal in a straight line. At the centre, one rectangle refuses color, pale as a page no one has written on, or one that has been written on and erased so many times the paper gave up keeping score. I keep circling back to it. Not because it is empty but because it is the only shape that admits it doesn't remember. Everything around it insists -- the blue insists on ocean, the ochre insists on cliff and afternoon, even the pink insists on something softer that happened once, on a wall or a body, though the paint won't say which. Only at the edges does the grid loosen its grip. Color goes gray there, unsure of its own borders, bleeding past the black seams into a white that isn't blank so much as tired of being told what it used to hold. Out here the black lines give up their discipline, go thin, go gray, go missing altogether -- and the memory doesn't end so much as stop insisting it was ever whole. Maybe this is what the sea does to everything it keeps: holds the shape of a coast until the holding is the only shape left, and even that goes soft at the edge of the frame. Lynne Kemen Lynne Kemen is the author of Shoes for Lucy (SCE Press, 2023) and More Than a Handful (Woodland Arts Editions, 2020). Her work has appeared in One Art, The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen's Quinterly, and elsewhere. She received a 2024 Pushcart Prize nomination and serves as Editor/Interviewer for The Blue Mountain Review. She lives and writes in an 1830s farmhouse in rural Delaware County, New York, where she shares her property with a murder of crows, one of whom she has named Edgar Allen Crow. https://lynnekemen.com/ ** Driven to Abstraction I wanted to go to Greece and see the Parthenon, meander through the winding streets of white stucco and blue-roofed buildings. But my steroid-swollen limbs didn’t allow it, and I buried my immunoisolation in abstraction. I wanted to go to Spain and practice goat yoga in Málaga, climb narrow rock staircases. But my COVID-clotted lungs left me breathless in abstraction. I wanted to go to France, because it’s France. Lounge around Nice like Matisse, open French doors to the salt of the sea, bobbing boats, cawing gulls. But I’d never seen Paris, and I picked my priorities in Champs-Elysees and Musee d’Orsay abstraction. One day I will travel to these places, dip my fingers in the Mediterranean, marvel at colour-blocked pastel buildings, imagine myself inside a de Stael painting. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner's recent ekphrastic collections include Poems of the Winter Palace (Bottlecap Press, 2025), The Night Watch: Poems (Kelsay Books, 2025), Insomnia: Poems after Lee Krasner (dancing girl press, 2026), The Wanderers: Poems (Shanti Arts, 2026), and the forthcoming The Appropriation of Brueghel (Shanti Arts, 2027). She lives in New Jersey. Visit her website at www.barbarakrasner.com. ** Last Call we sit, you and I, in the mottled heat of now, reminding each other to stay, present, and not let the shadows of yesterday, challenge our fragile infrastructure, the peace-treaty, the open negotiation, to navigate our way through the next few days, the week, until we satisfy our curiosity, and depart in the arrivals lounge we sit, you and I, savouring the bride of the wind, wondering how an azure beacon can bring on the blues, how dare we, mortals, crack open the wounds in the eye of Olympus, and our tears form the rain the land so desperately needs, and our cries bound around each stark white witness, and the paint blisters like our hearts we sit, you and I, in silence, fires still rage, and our reservoirs are now dry, our blurred vision mocks up watercolour stories, colours melt into one another: our wedding, our child, our passion in our dance; and our hands are close, yet continents divide, and our skin can taste, but we dare not touch, for salt tortures wounds Zachary Thraves Zachary Thraves is a writer and performer. His poems have been published by Broken Sleep Books, Juste Millieu, Nitrogen House, Asylum Magazine and at Poetry Worth Hearing, as well as contributing to The Ekphrastic Review. His plays have been performed in competitions and festivals across the country; in 2023 he created a one-man fringe show exploring his experience with bi-polar, and in the same year won best actor for portraying Charles Dickens. Zac also co-hosts a podcast. He lives with his partner in East Sussex. Find him on Bluesky @28hary. ** All the World’s a Stage Along the French Riveria, where azure sky slips into cerulean sea, a couple lounges on beach chairs, umbrella drinks ready to be sipped at an emotion’s notice, the drama of unconventional thespians in the last act of a tragedy. This play had it all: death, war, starving artist, a fall from grace, a savior rushing in to support him, meager and elaborate mise-en-scènes from Russia and France. The climax came months before this tableau as our tragic hero painted nudes of his nubile lover. His infatuation complete. Hers not so much. Success and recognition didn’t balance his performance. Divorce and rejection overpowered our protagonist. Here we witness a last attempt to stir the passion that became as diluted as his paints. His soft-voiced entreaties mingled with the surf’s susurrus, something his indifferent lover heard as white noise, ignorable. All through the night he endeavored to evoke the elusive nature of sand and sea, of love and loss. On his canvases, with gauze and cotton, as if bandaging an open wound, he sought to cache the concoction of freedom and salt air that filled their lungs when once they walked the shoreline. His was a life of contradictions: abstraction, figuration, refusal to be defined, self-loathing, fame, husband, father, lover. Simple props, pastel boxes charred with ashes of depression and insomnia, stacked like steps, like the stairs he climbed from studio to terrace, his lines committed to memory, his blocking perfect as he made his final bow, stage fading to black. Karen Moulton After a teaching career spanning 39 years and two continents, Karen Moulton finds herself retired in the Ozarks where her heart belongs to a man, a dog, and the natural beauty surrounding her. Since moving to Flippin, Arkansas, seven years ago, she has taken up birding, photography, native plant gardening, painting, making jewelry, and other creative endeavors. She is the author of three chapbooks: One Year Ago Today and Other Poems of Revelation, NOW, and The Unpartnered Wife. Her work has been in Rattle, SLANT: A Journal of Poetry, The Ekphrastic Review and is upcoming in The Marbled Sigh, Rat’s Ass Review, and The Resprise. ** Haiku de Stael in exile Mediterranean blues Sounds evoking the hues Donna-Lee Smith Blessed with chromesthesia, de Stael connected sounds with colours.
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