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

An Ekphrastic Christmas Selection

12/25/2020

0 Comments

 
Editor's note: These are some of the selected entries for the Christmas Isn't Cancelled contest. There will be another showcase of entries next week, and the winner will be announced and awarded in the early new year.
Picture
Return From the Woods, by Giovanni Segantini (Austrian Empire) 1890



Otherwise

Before you write a poem about my life
in some frigid, unnamed place – 
how I leave my house at sunrise 
in my shabby unlined coat
to chop wood, heft it
onto a crude, splintery sled,
tow it through the snow, 
build a small fire in my small house
to cook a small pot of soup – 
 
write about your own.
 
Write how you bully yourself out of bed
at sunrise, put on leggings and a fleece, 
and run around the reservoir, 
listening for birdsong but hearing only cars.
Write how the soles of your feet 
blister, how the wind whips your lungs
and singes your eyes.
 
Write your small house,
where you sit in a hard-backed chair
and stare at a black and white box
for three hours. Write 
how you stay in one position,
your face immobile but your fingers
twitching and clicking, desperate 
to tease out meaning.
 
Write how you neither speak nor smile,
how at five o’clock, you collapse 
the box and go into the kitchen,
take out the cutting board
and vent your anger on the cucumbers
like a woodcutter wielding an axe.
 
The only difference between you and me
is that you could have chosen
otherwise.

Shira Atik

Shira Atik is an award-winning poet and a Hebrew-English literary translator. In 2018, she and sculptor Alice Kiderman co-published Stone Word, a book featuring nine of Shira’s poems alongside the sculptures that inspired them. Her poems have been published in Poetica Magazine and The Ekphrastic Review, and were displayed at the Beachwood Jewish Community Center and the Nature Center in Shaker Heights, both in Ohio. 

**

Return From the Woods

Although she's not tired, Gretel stops, drops the reins. The toboggan she has pulled for miles glides over the crust of snow, bumps her calves, knocks loose a dusting of green needles from her shoulders, a cone of gray hair from her cap. She stares at the village, its low slung roofs, the yellow lights that shimmer from this window, that. No smoke billows from any chimney. They haven't changed, still cold, still hungry, still living by dim candlelight. She wonders who might notice her return. The father, the mother could only be dead. But surely someone remembered – Hansel, Gretel, the girl, the boy, their journey into the ravenous wild? 

Something black flaps in the church belfry. Crows? A new priest drunk on wine and winter fumbling up the spiral stairs to ring the vespers bell? Did the people pray anymore?

A weight of bread bulges in Gretel's coat pocket, presses against her thigh. She pulls it out, bites into its brown sweetness. It tastes of smoke and ginger, witches and brothers, sin and cinnamon. It sucks at her teeth like sour fruit and jelly. Oh, the village. They would only understand salt and fat, never sugar or skin, incest and lust, witch and boy, boy and girl, girl and woman. It was how they lived, safe and warm in a magic cottage, all appetite and answer, touch and pleasure. These people in those dirty dwellings only knew pain. 

They bore so many children for the oven. 

“Why are the children the ones we always sacrifice?” Hans had asked once.

“Because they are so delicious and fat?” The witch had answered.

Who grew tired of the dirty kisses first, the squall of birth, the cloying odour of mother's milk? Meat made them all angry. Hans said he was tired of picking out the bones. The witch's spices grew bitter and exotic. Gretel found herself wandering away, never bringing back the mushrooms or the wild strawberries she found. 

Hans would not chop the wood anymore. The witch refused to bring in the water, choosing to fill their cups with supernatural wine instead. They all grew gaunt, moral, quick to argue about what was wrong, what was right. Hans succumbed first, his eyes, his mouth wide open as if screaming. The witch died in her bed, a smile on her lips, her sweet wine staining her sheets, her wand tangled in her tresses. 

Gretel grieved for awhile, but then she turned a rock into licorice, the river into marzipan. She transformed a bear into a tree trunk, snakes into branches. She stoked the witch's ovens again, but made only nut pies and raisin bread. 

Gretel looks at the village again, thinks of turning back. The people will probably throw her in a pit, hang her from a tree, stone her, burn her. Still she wanted to tell them of the house, its impossible arches, its sugar windows, its bitter flavour. She wanted to tell them of its promise and its lie. Yes, God walks its passageways, but the devil walks right beside Him.

Gretel puts the bread back in her pocket. It's no lighter than when she took the first bite. She picks up the reins, wraps them around her shoulders, and trudges on. The wood piled high in the toboggan behind her writhes, kicks like a child waiting to be born.

Nan Wigington

Nan Wigington lives and works in Colorado's capital city. Her flash fiction has appeared in Pithead Chapel, The Ekphrastic Review, Gordon Square Review, and in After the Pause. 

Picture
Gray Tree, by Piet Mondrian (Netherlands) 1911

Weathering 
​

Tree is life is of life. The cluster of branches, once taut and new, now deconstruct, vault, and radiate in  complicated patterns from the graceful bending of the central chord. 

A spirit of presence protects and secures the trunk and its spiral ballet from sailing unrooted into  winter’s dark storm. Instead it grows wings, sweeps through the glimmering grey, a radiant snowdance  holding the world’s naked grief in its arms. 

We silently offer a benediction, conferred with gratitude for what continues to nourish the days. All the  earth and its creatures flowing through seas of fury. Beseiged by the crosswinds of collapse, but still  singing and sparkling amid the sheltering choreography of boughing trees. 

the questions 
become listening 
surrender

Kerfe Roig

A frequent contributor to The Ekphrastic Review, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new from her residence in New York City.  Her poetry and art have been featured online by Right Hand Pointing, Silver Birch Press, Yellow Chair Review, The song is..., Pure Haiku, Visual Verse, The Light Ekphrastic, Scribe Base, and The Wild Word, and published in Ella@100, Incandescent Mind, Pea River Journal, Fiction International: Fool, Noctua Review, The Raw Art Review, and several Nature Inspired anthologies. Follow her on https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/(with her friend Nina), https://kblog.blog/, and http://kerferoig.com/

**

Prelude No.4 in E minor
 
Frédéric Chopin - Prelude in E-Minor (op.28 no. 4) - YouTube
 
If I could arrange your organic form to music
it would be the powdered chalk of Chopin
rippling in ivory skies, arpeggio spine
curled like an umbilical cord, life-giving,
the rounded belly of seed, a gift to ground,
roots teeming with the furrow of ancient scales.
 
I hear your voice, primal tones a warning
as December fog settles on bough and bark.
It is lighter than lark song composed at dawn,
lighter than tip of brushed wing tracing grain.
I feel its pull, the hang of its damp like
discarded wrapping left to rot in wood.
 
There is an odd stillness to the air.
It is that moment before stone hits lake,
this planet poised on semi-breve of imbalance.
The very shape of you sketchy, twisted,
trapped in the grizzled topple of time,
your silvered lustre reduced to ash.

Kate Young

Kate Young lives in Kent with her husband and has been passionate about poetry and literature since childhood. Over the last few years she has returned to writing and has had success with poems published in webzines in Britain and internationally. She is a regular reader of The Ekphrastic Review and her work has appeared in response to some of the challenges. Kate is now busy editing her work and setting up her website. Find her on Twitter at @kateyoung12poet.

Picture
A Christmas Carol, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (England) 1867

To Art As Carol We Are Drawn

From richly simple instrument
a melody is heard
as lullabye to Mary's child,
acknowledged as the Word...

We sing in peace the Child to sleep
as message we proclaim
of alleluia to our Hope
now given flesh and name.

The message etched beneath in frame
makes clearer the intent.
The voice unheard is beauty seen
in patience brush has spent
to clarify the sapphire  eyes

in upward thoughtful gaze
and lips that also seem as gem
of hymn's unending praise...

that sings in peace the Child to sleep
as message we proclaim
of alleluia to our Hope
now given flesh and name.

And love adorning floral wall
as art within the art
enables eye to peer within
the soul of sacred heart...

...and sing in peace the Child to sleep
as message we proclaim
of alleluia to our Hope
now given flesh and name.

Portly Bard

​
Old man.  Ekphrastic fan.

Prefers to craft with sole intent
of verse becoming complement...
...and by such homage being lent...
ideally also compliment.
Picture
Dreamer of Dreams, by Edmund Dulac (France) 1915

​Stealer of Darkness
 
I Stand on the edge of beauty.
To the East, Uluru clothed in night-shadow
a whisper of Outback breath fresh on skin.
 
I cut artificial light from screen.
My stealer of darkness lies, naked in shame
diminished by the spectacular.
 
I tilt, neck at 45 to gaze at upturned cave.
It descends, sprinkles its cosmic dust,
starburst blaze from tip of wand
 
and I am drawn toward dome,
lost in its spirals, its violet freckles
random patterns of pinwheel-spin.
 
Sirius conjures Ursa Major, the hunt,
her constellation pinned in time
her bears weightless in a veiled sky.
 
Orion is wearing her indigo smile, it is
splattered across the sheer expanse of space,
leaving the shape of me       floating

Kate Young

Kate Young lives in Kent with her husband and has been passionate about poetry and literature since childhood. Over the last few years she has returned to writing and has had success with poems published in webzines in Britain and internationally. She is a regular reader of The Ekphrastic Review and her work has appeared in response to some of the challenges. Kate is now busy editing her work and setting up her website. Find her on Twitter at @kateyoung12poet.

**

Sorrow’s Creation

With chilled hands she learned
how to shape bears, make art in spite of pain.
A set of three she made for me,
and every day since her death
I see them, sitting next to my poetry
and a set of Shakespeare’s plays

the mother protecting her cubs.

Some days I remember her swollen wrists
gnarled fingers kneading dough into life
forming clay the way a white dove might
flap her wings on window panes.

“Art from tragedy,” she would say,
and I see her still, a maiden fair
in white flowing dress, daisies braided in her hair.

She breathes her vows in a puff of cloud
amidst a pink orchard’s promising spring.
The young prince’s love glistens cold and sharp,
concealing winter’s frost, icicles hide in the trees.

But as all heroes do, she shapes her sorrow into art.

Sandra Frye

Sandra Frye is the author of two memoirs, African Dreams, about serving with the Peace Corps in Africa from 1969 to 1971, and Fatherless, the story of her unique childhood in the 1950s and her yearning for a traditional family. Recently she published her first book of poetry titled Leaving Lessons. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she loves to write in coffeehouses. She’s a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, a retired high school English teacher, and mother to four sons.

**

Abandoned                                                    
 
She’s been lost
Long enough to forget
There was ever anything else
Standing there like her own ghost
Like a pillar of snow against snow
White on white, a trick of vision
The shadow left after the flash
Of too bright light
Impossible and true as any fairy tale
The shadow of some old memory
The shape of some forgotten miracle
Fragile and defenseless
And yet safe enough
Flanked by great white bears
As though they were her dogs
Outside barefoot
In nothing but a dress and veil
Gauzy as falling snow
Everything bleached the pale
Blue and white of ice
But her red mouth
And the blood red heart
She holds out so tenderly
Like an offering
Cradled in her hands

Mary McCarthy

Mary McCarthy is a retired RN, who has always loved writing and the visual arts. This has made Ekphrastic a particular favorite for her own work, which has appeared in many journals and anthologies,  including Earth's Daughters, Praxis, Third Wednesday and The Ekphrastic Review.
Picture
A Christmas Carol, by John Leech (Britain) 1843
​How Heavy is Regret?
 
How heavy is regret?
Can it be weighed post death
like a liver slathered on slab,
drowned in the paddle of its own blood?
 
In the hover between now and next
I pray for that flash of life,
that fast-forward spin of  "best bits"
promised by soothsayers and priests.
 
Instead, I toss and turn,
fold into the pages of my soil,
coiled like a worm in earth
hoping to pinken in reincarnation.
 
The scales wait, sure as sunrise,
colours balanced in cause and effect.
I feel its mass, the press of it,
regret, heavy as this leaden lid.

Kate Young

Kate Young lives in Kent with her husband and has been passionate about poetry and literature since childhood. Over the last few years she has returned to writing and has had success with poems published in webzines in Britain and internationally. She is a regular reader of The Ekphrastic Review and her work has appeared in response to some of the challenges. Kate is now busy editing her work and setting up her website. Find her on Twitter at @kateyoung12poet.
Picture
January Moon, by George Ault (USA) 1914

January                                                          
 
Winter’s dark heart
When all the lights of celebration
Have gone out
And we face a long fast
Before the next resurrection.
The world is silenced, sealed over,
Reduced to black and white,
Nothing growing
But the ice on the water,
The snow piling up against our doors,
While we persist, thin and hungry
For the first sharp greens of spring,
For the ice to groan and break
And let the waters rise
Furious 
And wild with joy.

Mary McCarthy

Mary McCarthy is a retired RN, who has always loved writing and the visual arts. This has made Ekphrastic a particular favorite for her own work, which has appeared in many journals and anthologies,  including Earth's Daughters, Praxis, Third Wednesday and The Ekphrastic Review.

​**
​
Bob Ross Territory

if only Bob Ross was here
he would be towering above the easel
appraising this canvas
determining what needs to be done
with soft words of encouragement
to a reaching out audience
perched on their sofas
ingesting his every word

his utensils in the right hand
limited palette in his left
perspective from perception
happy little trees from his imagination
blending very few colors
prime, secondary, tones
at every single stroke
with the subtly of a sorcerer

opening doors wide to the eager
into barns of the boondocks
feet deep in pristine snow
awaiting to be overpainted
alla prima rediscovered
all within thirty minutes or less
smiling wide to the camera
as if Bob Ross was here

Alun Robert


Alun Robert is a prolific creator of lyrical free verse. He has achieved success in poetry competitions across the British Isles and North America. His work has been published by many literary magazines, anthologies and webzines in the UK, Ireland, Italy, South Africa, Kenya, USA and Canada. Since 2018, he has been a member of The Ekphrastic Review community particularly enjoying the fortnightly challenges. He is a member of the Federation of Writers Scotland for whom he was a Featured Writer in 2019
.

​
Picture
Two Oxen in Winter, by Maud Lewis (Canada) by 1970

​Maud At The Door

Maud resides in a farmhouse
as we’re chained up outside.
She’s warm.
She’s secure.
We’re Nova Scotia cold,
minus 30 or lower.

We can’t stand motionless
for a single minute more.
I’m frozen.
I’m bored.
Been here for an hour,
possibly two at her door.

Maud walks round her canvas
after opening up the door.
She turns her head
this way and that.
Loads up her camel hair brushes
then takes the oils off.

It’s not as though we’re being paid,
twin sister.
Another bale of hay wouldn’t hurt.
Wouldn’t break the bank account.
But now she’s tutt-tutting,
tells me not to move.

Maud says she’ll be done soon
now Everett is back.
He still stinks of gutted fish
through clothes, hands and head.
He does chores round their house.
Expect he’ll clean all her brush.

Alun Robert

Alun Robert is a prolific creator of lyrical free verse. He has achieved success in poetry competitions across the British Isles and North America. His work has been published by many literary magazines, anthologies and webzines in the UK, Ireland, Italy, South Africa, Kenya, USA and Canada. Since 2018, he has been a member of The Ekphrastic Review community particularly enjoying the fortnightly challenges. He is a member of the Federation of Writers Scotland for whom he was a Featured Writer in 2019
.

​**

Tea With Tennyson


I like to tell people that when we first met, I was unmoored. At the mercy of the wind and waves, the push and pull of the moon’s tides. But, that’s not really how it happened. There was no open water. No raft. Just ripples in my tea as I blew against its fevered surface. 

At the coffee shop, curled up in my favourite orange chair by the window, I tried to catch the warmth of the afternoon sun on my nose. My toes tucked under my legs, I perched my cup on the coffee ring collages left by those before me.

​I saw you before you walked in with your hands in your pockets. You were whistling, but I couldn’t hear the tune. The wind picked up and the leaves on the sidewalk gave chase around you. A young girl wrapped in a brilliant red scarf peeked up from her hot cocoa and waved hello. You smiled and waved back. Her chilled cheeks sprouted into a smile. A half moon filled with happiness and promise. I smiled too.

When you wandered in, the bells on the door broke into song. A winter ballad of your arrival. One I had never heard before. Ringing in hope and truth. Ringing out sadness and doubt. A sweet serenade that unexpectedly gathered me in its arms and held me tight. Ringing, clanging, chiming, and wild. You looked at me. You smiled. And, I was adrift no more.  

Sarah Wolsey

Picture
Madonna on a Crescent Moon in Hortus Conclusus, by unknown artist referred to as Master of 1456 (Italy) 1456

Our Lady of Toil and Trouble 

Whose breath? She hides her divinity in fragments of spirit. The garden wall encloses both inside and  out, expanding into the unseen, the realms of retreat. The rose and the lily. 

Doves weep golden ghosts into the distances between stars. The crescent conceals the ephemeral, the  misbegotten regalia of repose. Hands raised, hands resting. Whose volition? 

The turmoil of why and the needs of limitations. Her compassion flows like water, like light, reflecting  the purity of the fallen. Our capacity for sorrow exceeds all hurt. 

the passion of doubt-- 
who are the seekers? lodestars 
are always shifting

​Kerfe Roig

​A frequent contributor to The Ekphrastic Review, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new from her residence in New York City.  Her poetry and art have been featured online by Right Hand Pointing, Silver Birch Press, Yellow Chair Review, The song is..., Pure Haiku, Visual Verse, The Light Ekphrastic, Scribe Base, and The Wild Word, and published in Ella@100, Incandescent Mind, Pea River Journal, Fiction International: Fool, Noctua Review, The Raw Art Review, and several Nature Inspired anthologies. Follow her on https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/(with her friend Nina), https://kblog.blog/, and http://kerferoig.com/
​
Picture
Mari Lwyd Custom, Welsh Post Card, by 1918

​Welcoming

By Welsh tradition, hobby horse
of man beneath and more on course
from house to house in Christmas tide
for food, and drink, and warmth inside

as acting troupe and minstrel choir
auditioning for modest hire
well knowing they will be denied 
until thee times at least they've tried

beseeching strangers some have said
to mimic night of Mary's dread  --
her faith so often turned away
in search of place to humbly lay

and change the course of heaven's earth
where those unknowing gave her berth.

Portly Bard

​
Old man.  Ekphrastic fan.

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

​**

Mari Lwyd 

Is not the spectre of death always waiting, a bedazzling skeleton disguised with ribbons and glittering  lights? So tempting. So close to the journey that has no map, no clear end. Can you reason yourself out  of following it to the Otherworld? 

The young men sing their challenge. The ghostmare waits to hear what reply is given. Will it save the  souls of the house and its inhabitants? The lamp throws shadows into the night, blending with the  dusky dark. Who can resist the pull of the starlit sky? 

When does the song move beyond play, beyond a simple exhange of melody and rhyme? Who can say  how thickly the spell becomes woven and which words will break the enchantment, returning both sides  to a simple exchange of seasonal festivity—a drink, a treat, goodwill? 
​

We meet in the cast of the hidden moon-- 
the silences challenge us to complete. 
Who carries the ghost that shadows the tune? 
The silences challenge us to complete. 
Ashes to ashes they say. But the bones-- 
the silences challenge us to complete. 
Questions ring out reft by darkness, undone-- 
Answers brew bitters—unswallowed, unsung.

​Kerfe Roig

​A frequent contributor to The Ekphrastic Review, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new from her residence in New York City.  Her poetry and art have been featured online by Right Hand Pointing, Silver Birch Press, Yellow Chair Review, The song is..., Pure Haiku, Visual Verse, The Light Ekphrastic, Scribe Base, and The Wild Word, and published in Ella@100, Incandescent Mind, Pea River Journal, Fiction International: Fool, Noctua Review, The Raw Art Review, and several Nature Inspired anthologies. Follow her on https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/(with her friend Nina), https://kblog.blog/, and http://kerferoig.com/

​
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    The Ekphrastic Review
    Picture
    Current Prompt
    COOKIES/PRIVACY
    This site uses cookies to deliver your best navigation experience this time and next. Continuing here means you consent to cookies. Thank you.
    Join us on Facebook:
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture



    ​
    ​Archives
    ​

    March 2023
    February 2023
    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
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015

    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