Las Meninas

the point of the painting
to which the eye is drawn
sends backpackers hiking

mystics in search of
what is real and what is false
as if they were oak

framing the painting
cutting lines around truth
as if by being

still we could witness
brush strokes and splinters and by
using reason reason

there is a point
at which we know the smudge
is on canvas, not
on the lens through which we see


Las Meninas

a mirror is a garden
gives back light not caught
in colour            a garden growing daughter
the daughter caught curious   she
let herself laugh               we see
her without her knowing            without
letting herself ourself    be known,    we

see garden grow not
at all      always same dressing always
same glass of water        always same
not seeing           same
not sure of self                 indefinite

the garden's upper third framed by frames, paintings
he finished before           paintings
he let stay growing           stay
unfinished         let stay not let
go           the slant third unseen
comes into view              step back
the garden          step
back       the taste of self grows in the garden
stop seeing a garden
see a mirror instead


Phillip Barron

Phillip Barron's first book of poetry, What Comes from a Thing, won the 2015 Michael Rubin Book Award and was published by Fourteen Hills Press. Elsewhere, his writing appears in New American Writing, Brooklyn Rail, Janus Head, Orion, Saw Palm, and Radical Philosophy Review. He is a member of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and served as the 2012 editor of Squaw Valley Review.

Ekphrasis: The Mowers (When Hearts Beat as One)

There are times you long
for the sepia'd world.
The gentle shift
of the swinging blade
cutting cleanly
the tall, falling grasses
rhythms aligned:
your pounding heart,
salty rivulets running
to the point of
your clockwork elbow
the sound of
her labouring breath
behind you
tall backed, beautiful
in her gathering
beautiful in her releasing
the sweet smell
of the ripe and fallen hay
beautiful in the glance
over your damp shoulder
and catching the air around her
alive with dust, pollen
every mote afire in
the low, late and golden sun
and you, cutting cleanly
when this is all the work
there is to do in the world
to swing true, keep your rhythm
cut cleanly, gather quickly
hearts beating, ahead of
the coming, the darkening
the ending sky.
There are times we long
for our sepia'd world
but do we ever know it
when we are in it.

Ryan Warren

Ryan Warren lives with his family in the San Francisco Bay Area. His poetry and other writings have previously appeared or are forthcoming in Lost Coast Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Mindful Word, Anchorage Daily News, U.S. 1 and Plum Tree Tavern.

The Guardian at the Gate

Spawn of the arcane, glutted, she sprawls upon the sands
of mythos. As victims, star-crossed lovers, outcasts,
we have all seen the traces of these nether lands.
Sphinx-like, besotted, she lays among the bodies dashed.
 
A pixie smith has cast her silver chains, retained her
inside this mystic plane, stained her hide vintage rose.
Among the cards on the table, it is plain; she purrs.
Do you know what she knows; guess, a riddle she poses.
 
Protection sought from life's trials is at her command.
But, few coupled or single have journey past her grasp.
Unknown, to the unschooled, their senses unused, banned,
Christendom, the sacred fecund grail has miscast.
 
From Hatshepsut's visage, bound to Sekhmet she's sworn
beware, beware The Chariot's card once it is drawn.

Deborah Guzzi

Deborah Guzzi is a healing facilitator. Her new book The Hurricane is available now through Prolific Press. Her poetry appears in Magazines: Existere - Journal of Arts and Literature in Canada, Tincture in Australia, Cha: Asian Literary Review, Hong Kong, China, Eunoia in Singapore, Latchkey Tales in New Zealand, Vine Leaves Literary Journal in Greece, RedLeaf Poetry, India and Travel by the Book, Ribbons: Tanka Society of America Journal, Sounding Review, Kyso Flash, The Aurorean, Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, Liquid Imagination, The Tishman Review, Page & Spine and others in the USA

The Song of the Lark

Red light is a song, string solo,
fiddle melancholy; somebody’s sunset
waltz tipped arrowhead, let
the shaft fly.
 
Dull circle plod of seasons—grow and die,
and grow, and die, and oh, and eye,
and you, and I--
 
tunnel vision. Look up sudden! Rough
as furrow, always-bare feet, grabbed and shook
hooked look look! --
 
There’s a horizon, and a shade of redgold sunhold
never seen before. The string pricks,
the bow skips, and here I am, come
 
home to myself, this stupid joy, this buzz-
numb hope, struck dumb with singing, singing.

LeighAnna Schesser

LeighAnna Schesser is the author of Heartland, forthcoming from Anchor & Plume Press in June 2016. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Mothers Always Write, Rose Red Review, and Kindred, among others. LeighAnna earned her M.F.A. from North Carolina State University. She lives in Kansas with her husband and two children. She writes at leighannaschesser.wordpress.com.

Baptism of the Neophytes

Weight of water, heavy as light:
as if light, liquefied, tear-streamed
down his face, made his knees
two pale fishes. Head submissive,
hair a net awash with weighted light,
the way it seems to travel both over
and through―water on and in, merging
and drenching, seen and unseen, Holy Ghost
embracing the adopted son.
 
What is wet is alive—thirst, primordial birth.
Our cups runneth over. The mirroring face
of the waters, eye of the world, breath-fogged,
Spirit-breathed. Void and firmament,
chalice on a stem. To ripple the still surface
of substance seeming solid, but with infinite give.
 
Novice, naked and neck-bowed, be submerged
in the grave of the Christ, receive his blood,
blood-brotherhood, blood washing away blood-
guilt. Enter the floodwaters in the gut
of the Ark. Be born eternal in a second womb-
water. Harbor the bloodbeating heart, the heat,
holy, holy—drink it down like water-mixed wine.
Wine was water, once, and was made new.
So you. Hold your finite breath—dive deep.



LeighAnna Schesser

LeighAnna Schesser is the author of Heartland, forthcoming from Anchor & Plume Press in June 2016. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Mothers Always Write, Rose Red Review, and Kindred, among others. LeighAnna earned her M.F.A. from North Carolina State University. She lives in Kansas with her husband and two children. She writes at leighannaschesser.wordpress.com.

Monet’s Garden
 
                             A garden is not what you think…
                                                             Elizabeth Philips
 
 
Bad day, fevered, queasiness
running the length of my body
like long wet spider threads.
I imagine being back
in Giverny, bending over
a Japanese peony
breathing out instead of in,
dying into pale red folds. It’s
 
a June day, yellow, and buzzing,
with a faint whiff of pike
rising off the water lilies.
Bent over that peony, feeling
small like Toulouse-Lautrec,
his nose buried in a dancer’s skirts.
 
From the vantage point of a bee
I’m a surrealist
in an impressioned garden.
The lime trees across the way
are relieved they don’t
have to give bloom to me.
And the sky is the last blank page
in a coffee table art book.
 
A sick man means squat
in Monet’s garden:
petal dropped
                              petal lost.
 
p.s. colourful as it may seem
        this is an example
        of negative thinking, a waste
        of technicolour and sweat
        better to dream about jesus
        jumping out of a birthday cake
        of someone named veronica
        swallowing my house keys
 
       imagine
 
       if I’d been feeling positive
       picasso and his blue machete
       would have wrecked the place
       all those self-pitying flowers
       severed from their stems

Barry Dempster

Barry Dempster is an award winning poet, short story writer, novelist, editor, and writing instructor. This poem is from his book, The Burning Alphabet (Brick Books, 2005), which was a finalist for the prestigious Governor General Awards. Used with permission of the author.

 

The Night Watch
 
Walk with me
through the night.
Too long have we been
disacquainted with it,
too long have we been blinded
by LED screens
and peep show signs.
I want to know silence again.
Besides,
I haven’t seen the moon in ages –
and you could be my excuse.
A dubious honour – you say
with a deadpan face.
Alright then – we can pretend we’re on patrol
like Rembrandt’s “Night Watch”
a long way from home.
I used to laugh at those men
oblivious as they are to the angels
enveloping them in a two-person aura.
But that’s the thing –
you can only see the angels
when you’re outside the frame and looking in.
And so –
if there be angels out tonight
we will not see them
we will not know.

Anca Rotar

Anca Rotar is a Romanian-born writer of poetry and fiction. She was driven to writing by her love of stories and verse, as well as by an ever-increasing fascination with mysteries and the unknown. Her biggest complaint is that there are too many interesting things in the world and hardly enough time to discover them all.
http://ancaspoemsandstories.wordpress.com

Magnolia Grandiflora

Like a languid
girl the blossom
reclines
 
on a swirl
of plush red
velvet.

Framed by
glossy green
sepals,
 
the ivory
petals unfurl
revealing
 
the stamen’s
nubbly pearl.
The cut stem
 
has already begun
to shrivel,
to curl.

Bonnie Bishop

Bonnie Bishop's chapbook, O Crocodile, came out through Finishing Line Press in 2009.  Her book Local Habitation was published by Every Other Thursday Poets, a long-running poetry workshop of which she has been a member for several decades.  She has been interested in ekphrastic poetry for many years, using visual prompts in her own teaching and leading a workshop at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts for teachers on writing ekphrastic poems.  This poem is from a series called "American Wing," based on 19th century paintings in the MFA.