Self-Portrait with Black Background I carry the world on my back, a cup and flask to drink, bread that will not weight me. I carry the clear Finnish light to save its summer flame. I dispose of what I can until the face is plainly empty, till I behold the road, its fork, the small steps tread. I set cornerstones to anchor paint to more than earth, even if at times it is myself. I remove details like brush cleared from the spruce forest. Study my face as if stranger-- cleft of chin, salmon cheeks, cloudberry lips, pale skin. Background dark-dark-dark like the infinite winter night. At the edge of Helsinki Harbor, I set down the world. I rinse my visage in the Baltic Sea. Sharon Tracey Sharon Tracey is a writer and editor and author of the poetry collection, What I Remember Most Is Everything (All Caps Publishing, 2017). Her poems have appeared in Egg Mom Review, Tule Review, Common Ground Review, The Ekphrastic Review, several anthologies and elsewhere. sharontracey.com
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For Cornflowers to Sing Blue must be stolen. There must be purple plums, cherries, telling us blue insists on the flower. The silence of the jar must be the centre which grows the painting, Unlatches stillness, resists composition, detonates the seasons. For cornflowers to sing each line must scar its making. There must be light and the idea of a window. In each fold of creamy linen, blue corners crouching under the table. For cornflowers to sing they must be fallen. Blue slalom. White grave of the table. Susan Fealy This poem was inspired by Brett Whiteley's Still Life With Cornflowers. The image above is a placeholder. Click here to see the painting. Susan Fealy: "I am a Melbourne-based poet and clinical psychologist whose love for the visual arts sometimes finds shape in ekphrastic poems. My poems have been published widely in Australian journals and anthologies, appearing in Best Australian Poems in 2009, 2010, 2013 and 2017. Others have appeared in the United States, Sweden and India. My first collection Flute of Milk (University of Western Australia Press, 2017) won the Wesley Michel Wright Prize and shortlisted for two other literary awards. In 2017 presented on Ekphrastic poetry (one of an international panel) at Poetry on the Move, Annual Conference of the International Poetry Studies Institute, University of Canberra." Caravaggio’s Jigsaw: The Burial of Santa Lucia I see it again now, worn thin by time. My neat saw will carve my painting to a thousand pieces. A million solvers will feel the fury of the russet featureless echoing vault, still sounding its chorus of desolation, while below, spotlit as was my trademarked pride, the hulking workmen dig the grave, growling. This will be easier, the white light on the swathed arse, shoulders of hard muscle heave, while the pale body lies or floats, throat cut for her faith, waiting in the void. No challenge to match the pieces here for lonely souls and families fearing conversation. Snugly, the arms, faces, staffs and robes will fit each other; the tumbled, broken mournful crowd re-forming, re-assembling. Just as I intended. Kate Rigby Kate Rigby is a part-time poet and part-time historian, living in Manchester and luxuriously dividing her time between researching for the National Trust, creating displays in a historic library, and reading (and less frequently writing) poetry for her own pleasure. Kate has had poems published in journals such as Antiphon, Scrittura, Cannon’s Mouth and this month she appears in an anthology of Manchester poets writing about Peterloo. Lecture on Ekphrastic Poetry (NYC 2017) An unpromising room in an unpromising city library, a jumble of lost umbrellas, the serenity prayer taped across a crack in the wall, one corner torn free. The slide projector’s brilliant blank square fills with Breughel’s peasants at their galumphing round, while the poet reads aloud Williams’ “The Dance,” then Marianne Moore’s Flemish tapestry, “envy worn down by obsession,” Charity riding sidesaddle on an elephant. Walcott on Watteau. Milosz and Hopper. Donne’s spooky “Witchcraft by a Picture” paired with a portrait of Rembrandt’s young wife, Saskia, graced by a circlet of flowers in her hair. How strange, when the lights came on, to see we were still sitting in that shabby room. Aaron Fischer Aaron Fischer spent 30+ years in technology and trade journalism and as an online editor at a news and public-policy website. His poems have appeared in Adelaide Poetry Review, After Happy Hour, American Journal of Poetry, Briar Cliff Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Crosswinds Poetry, Naugatuck River Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and Tishman Review. He has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize, as well as for Best Poetry 2019. His chapbook, Black Stars of Blood: The Weegee Poems was published in 2018 by Main Street Rag. Madam Tachlitzky Mourns Her Husband She keeps her Cashmere shawl wrapped round her shoulders day and night, breathes the smell of mountain pine, snow and goat, father’s willow workshop, mother’s roti and most of all him. Addicted to flu-strength pills, she sits confined in her room, moping and sighing. Her eyes, once lit up with joy, now feel like weights pulling her down, heavy with tears, framed by falling grey waves. Her mind spins. She can’t wrap herself up enough. Where is the promise of warmth? She fingers the heft and weave, knots and folds, the sometimes fibrous beast of their marriage, claw marks, rips, darns and then that final tug unravelling. Ruby woo tints her lips and cheeks this afternoon, at least she’s made an effort today, but she won’t don her bangles or bindi again. No more silk sarees. No jasmine wreaths. His Indian parakeet whistles, waits in silence, but no one replies. Helen Freeman Helen has been published on several online sites such as Ink, Sweat and Tears, Red River Review, Barren Magazine, The Drabble and Sukoon. She loves reading The Ekphrastic Review and now lives in England after many years in the Middle East. Tumbleweed (after Edward Hopper and Hart Crane) Like her, we make our tentative calculations Based on the wireless weather forecasts; Rain on the window, bullets from tommy-guns Fired in some vintage gangster movie. For we can still feel the threads of family, Of home, the drone of telegraph lines Across the prairie and the trail of tears, The wall clock ticks, the radiator hums Through emptied caverns of bus stations Close to midnight, this fugitive goumada Sweetens her fifth espresso And clocks the headlights in the lot. Like her, we finger what’s left of the wad To delay the doom of the inevitable burn - The hammer’s click, the barrel’s swivel, Crow calls through falling leaves, The slice of a spade in soil. And yet the quiet stillness of the automat, The swirl of undissolved cream Suspends, for now, the weight of Omertá, Grief that comes with a game called vendetta. Like her, who fidgets with her spoon, Framed by the surge of a dark window A highway of lamps leading away We prepare to change one alias for next, On a pulp novel quest through the wilderness. Bob Beagrie Bob Beagrie is a poet from Middlesbrough and a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Teesside University. He has published nine collections of poetry, most recently Leasungspell (Smokestack Books 2016), Remnants (Knives, Forks & Spoons Press 2019), and This Game of Strangers (Wyrd Harvest Press 2017), his tenth collection Civil Insolencies is due out from Smokestack Books in December 2019. Vanitas after Luigi Miradori Wellcome Trust 2013 exhibition, Death: a self-portrait. A baby’s skin shines bright against black, front-lit. He’s naked, asleep, sprawled on his side. His fair curls tuck behind an ear. He’s dimpled and creased, his cheeks are full and pink. His navel dents his stomach. His hips rest on a red cushion, velvet, braided. His upper arm tangles in white silk. His elbow points out. He almost hugs a darkened adult skull, eye sockets black. His head lies on its crown. His face kisses its forehead. Without the skull he would fall, wake, wail. Maxine Linnell This poem is from This Dust, published by Soundswrite Press. Maxine Linnell is a poet, novelist, editor and creative writing teacher based in Rothley, UK. Vanitas was part of a series of poems about the sudden death of her son in 2010. Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrastic! We feature some of the most accomplished influential poets writing today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is Potato Theatre, by Toyen. Deadline is January 24, 2020. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination. 2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. Have fun. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include TOYEN WRITING CHALLENGE in the subject line in all caps please. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. Do not send it after acceptance or later; it will not be added to your poem. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. We are sorry about these technicalities, but have found that following up, requesting, adding, and changing later takes too much time and is very confusing. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight, January 24, 2020. 9. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! Lucrezia as Poetry He’s torn the poems from your pen, hurled them, storm-wrapped, at your head, a crown of thorns, lightning blue, berry-bruised, and spiked with laurels. Mouth stained silent. Eyes black sloes that fix only him. A cold bed. An empty room. He found you clothed in shadows, trochees leaking from your lips, ink dripped from hesitant hand onto salvaged sheet. He sees, ah yes, Lucrezia as Poesie. Now you must stand, murderous, to be rearranged, bilious ribbons writhing on your sleeve. A finger, rapier poised, flicks the sharpened quill. One strike, one stabbing verse could end it all. He paints your book closed. Sheila Lockhart Sheila Lockhart is a retired social worker and lives on the Black Isle in the Scottish Highlands with her partner and two Icelandic ponies, tending her garden and writing poetry. She has been published in Northwords Now, Nine Muses Poetry and The Aldeburgh Gazette. Funeral Mask from Mycenae once thought to be that of Agamemnon There was someone who lived, who ate bitter olives, fish pulled from the Adriatic, garlic, onions, sesame. And when he died a son took a sheet of gold, raised the hammer, beat the shining metal into the topography of the face-- eyebrows in a shallow arch, broad cheekbones, downturned mouth, closed eyes—every blow driving his father deeper into history. Ruth Bavetta Ruth Bavetta is a poet and artist whose poems have appeared in Rattle, Nimrod, American Poetry Review, Tar River Review, North American Review and many other journals and anthologies. Her books are Fugitive Pigments and Flour, Water, Salt (Futurecycle Press), Embers on the Stairs (Moon Tide Press), and No Longer at This Address (Aldrich Press). She has been a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. |
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