fierce eve, will you choose to be fierce now and in becoming fierce be free this restless mess is for keeping not culling this weight for wanting not mocking when mocking will end you and me eve, will you choose to be fierce with belt on your back nine times and soap on tongue and snake at jaw unjam your pasted-up mouth and roar and in roaring be fierce and free give yourself over to the ease of the effort this door is not theirs to lock when stealing the key and locking will end you and me and eve, where you feel yourself empty there are bodies within you yet thrown yet cast yet shaped eve, are you listening all fragile mess and pushed-down soul be the thing pushed down be the ache in the neck of the earth for this is our atlas the myth we’re in this holding onto things and holding things up it’s a way for old men to keep you—us-- held in and eve, when you’re subtle and an unseen flame there’ll be veins to purge and a future to ripen and mocking to kill and masks to shed and there, eve you’ll be art we’ll find a plinth for your mess to be read eve, will you choose to be fierce now Angie Contini Angie Contini is an experimental interdisciplinary artist and writer living on Gadigal land (Sydney), with a PhD from the University of Sydney (2018). Specialising in the connection between art, nature and health, Angie works across a broad range of media, including photography, music, collage and poetry. Her work explores themes of mythology, ecology, time and identity through the joyous styles of surrealism, absurdity, burlesque and ornamentation, with a rabid curiosity to harness and celebrate the ever-unfolding delights of sustainable arts practice. For more about Angie’s work visit: W: angie contini portfolio Instagram: @angiecontini
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Magritte’s Apple Explains It All One glance at this canvas and I knew the answer to the conundrum troubling my heart: Why in the twenty years since she has left this earth, has my mother not visited me in a dream? Dreams, those moments when the conscious mind relaxes when life’s everyday reality joins with matter deep inside bridging that line between the known and mystery-- in that land of dreams I’ve often watched met, even talked with my grandmother, father, aunts, and son. All of these beloved departeds have spoken to me, my son has directly addressed me more than once. Only my mother has never appeared. Never even walked across my mental stage as a cameo. Occasionally, I admit, I worry that perhaps she doesn’t visit because I did not love her enough in life for her to remain connected. But how can that be, when I know I loved her then and still love her very much? In life, we laughed and argued, had much to say to one another. I wear her jewelry, cook her recipes, , chuckle over her sayings, and, regularly, even though its been twenty years, when I open the drawers of her wooden vanity, the aroma of Youth Dew wafts up to meet me. Now, Magritte has helped me understand. My mother does not need to wait for night, for dreams to return. She fills my days in many ways. She does not come in dreams because she has never really left my waking moments. She fills the room of my consciousness, my crisp green apple of a mother, larger than life—even in death. Joan Leotta Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. She loves to write ekphrastic poetry.
Paul Hetherington This prose poem was inspired by Francis Bacon and his work, including these pieces: https://www.francis-bacon.com/artworks/paintings/three-studies-male-back https://www.francis-bacon.com/artworks/paintings/triptych-0 https://www.francis-bacon.com/artworks/paintings/study-self-portrait-3 https://www.francis-bacon.com/artworks/paintings/crucifixion Paul Hetherington is a distinguished Australian poet. He has published 16 full-length collections of poetry and prose poetry, including Her One Hundred and Seven Words (MadHat, 2021), the co-authored epistolary prose poetry sequence, Fugitive Letters (with Cassandra Atherton, Recent Work Press, 2020), and Typewriter and Manuscript (Life Before Man, 2020), along with a verse novel and 12 poetry chapbooks. He has won or been nominated for more than 30 national and international awards and competitions. With Cassandra Atherton, he is co-author of Prose Poetry: An Introduction (Princeton University Press, 2020) and co-editor of Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry (Melbourne University Press, 2020). Our new ekphrastic prompt is up. Click here or on image for challenge details.
Hieronymus Bosch Finds Himself Unable to Sleep He walks through the landscape of his dreams. Lucifer is falling the town engulfed in flames. The River Dommel is gray and fast. He asks the question - is humankind beyond redemption - but cannot find the answer. In the devil’s kitchen a toad wears a nun’s habit. A sinner, chopped into small pieces, sizzles in her frying pan. Another slowly roasts over a spit. There is a fruit press and grindstone. One hand escapes. He follows the path of the river, crosses a bridge. Hears his children calling. The air is full of the breath of dragons. Marjory Woodfield Marjory Woodfield is a New Zealand teacher and writer. She’s been published by the BBC, Mudlark, Orbis, The Pomegranate London, The Ekphrastic Review and others. She's won the New Zealand Robert Burns Competition, and been placed in the Hippocrates Poetry Awards Yeovil, Ver and John McGivering writing competitions. She's currently recipient of a Cinnamon Press mentoring bursary and winner of the 2021 Flash Frontier Winter Writing Award. Skins The creature: You will never agree on what I am but within my pelt I know myself. And I know this: I’m the wildness you keep close to love, or use, or slaughter. I’m the darkness in the center of your vision always looking back at you. The son: They say I am neither one nor the other. On shore they take my measure, skinning me with their eyes. Yet between white father and red mother, between bow and stern, between dawn and nightfall, between our setting off and our destination-- who is so fortunate as me? The father: This is my true liberty: the canoe, the paddle, the gun. I thrust myself onward; I sleep within the arms of one they call sauvage. Do you think I don’t perceive the years to come will flay me? Though I glide through open water I’m also in the snare. The rifle: I have peeled the fowl from the air and now I rest. You barely notice me in the middle, shadowed beneath the heart. You don’t see how you wait, your flesh wrapped tight around you, to hear my voice report its harsh decree. The furs: We are outsides turned in upon ourselves. We are hidden scrolls-- the story of what happened, the script carved by the knife. We are the price that is paid in a world we can’t imagine. The river: Water and sky together: consider my surface a skin dividing what is one. Past islands, eddies, snags, I slide past stealthily as time. I am the highway that takes you to the moment that always arrives. Anne Myles Anne Myles is Professor Emerita at the University of Northern Iowa, where she specialized in early American literature. She recently received her MFA in poetry at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in the North American Review, Split Rock Review, Whale Road Review, Lavender Review, and other journals. She lives in Waterloo, Iowa. Join us online Saturday afternoon for a workshop on ekphrastic approaches. Are you a writer who loves art, but you're not quite sure how to use it to inspire your poetry or flash fiction? Or maybe you're just looking for some fresh approaches to ekphrastic writing to switch things up. Join us Saturday afternoon online for a workshop on ekphrastic approaches. We will talk about different ways to let an artwork take us into story, and how to get ideas for our poetry and fiction from a variety of styles of art. We have other workshops coming up, too, including an introduction to ekphrastic writing, wine and art write night, and love stories. Our workshops are lively discussions, supportive, and inspiring. Click on the workshop buttons below for more information or to sign up. "The Ekphrastic Review ekphrastic writing workshops have helped me begin writing, again. The art and prompts are interesting and inspiring, and the writers are fun and supportive. I've taken four workshops and plan on taking more!" Marjorie Robertson Beneath the Deerstalker Cap Here we have, in short order and close proximity, as they often were, the principal characters of one of the best-known detective series in English literature, tales of the exploits of the great crime-solver Sherlock Holmes, that inimitable, indomitable, irascible but always intriguing man of genius, and man of many disguises, who is (not supposed to be) seen here, gumshoeing incognito as a common labourer, perhaps wandering through the market on his way to a tavern after a long day’s work, and yet his superior camouflage becomes superfluous when it is betrayed by the obligatory lighting of his pipe—or is this, in fact, an intentional act to reveal himself (an act designed to appear as if unwitting) in order to provoke the slightest hint of obvious attention from the woman at the left, whom he knows to be his arch-nemesis, of equal but dark genius, Professor Moriarty, also in disguise, pretending to steal a book in order to provoke the slightest hint of obvious attention of Sherlock Holmes, whom he knows must be snooping about in some form or other, but in a masquerade unknown to him at the moment? This spy-versus-spy story is yet another which will inevitably be revealed to us by the very able and affable physician and raconteur Dr. John H. Watson, who is standing with his cane under his arm (not just a walking cane carried for style, but a necessity to aid his gait due to a war injury in his youth) who, in his present, intent concentration on another author’s detective story (fiction, of course, unlike the factual accounts he writes of Holmes’s incredible successes as a protagonist in pursuit of perpetrators), may or may not be fully aware of the Professor’s attempts to tease Holmes out of his camouflage, but will eventually fill in all the blanks of the story before it is published. Meanwhile, Dr. Watson himself is being intently scrutinized by the adequately competent professional to his left, Inspector G. Lestrade of Scotland Yard, often called upon by Holmes to play a useful role when four hands are not adequate for the task, who realizes that the woman on his left may indeed be the notorious Professor Moriarty whom they are trying to catch in the act, “in flagrante delicto,” that is to say, to catch him red-handed without being red-herringed by him once again. Dr. Watson would sometimes describe the inspector, in print, as “a little sallow rat-faced, dark-eyed fellow” and “a lean, ferret-like man, furtive and sly-looking”, but would also give him credit for being “one of the best detectives at Scotland Yard,” (not necessarily including that this is chiefly because Holmes regularly allowed the Inspector to take credit for the cases which Holmes himself had solved). And encompassing all of these players, ever present, but visible only in the background, is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of four novels and fifty-six short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes. Not all of the great detective’s tales have been told, including the one for which this sketch was created, which may make this one of the most fascinating of those few Sherlock Holmes mysteries never resolved for our satisfaction. Ken Gosse Ken Gosse usually writes light, metric, rhymed poetry full of whimsy and humour, but has selected a prose format for this ekphrastic story. First published in First Literary Review–East in November 2016, his writing is also in Pure Slush, Home Planet News Online, The Ekphrastic Review, and others. Raised in the Chicago suburbs, now retired, he and his wife live in Mesa, AZ, with rescue dogs and cats underfoot. One Summer Day While walking through the woods one summer day, he glanced along a river, clear and bright, saw bubbling notes like dappled fish at play, and dashed them off that night by candlelight. Meandering down coniferous-scented trails where chickadees and tree frogs made such noise, he didn’t hear a thing except the scales and chords and cadences that were his toys. He couldn’t hear the leaves in the aspen thickets, the deer flies buzzing round his graying hair, the sound of countless madly rasping crickets, nor the peals of far-off thunder in the air. Yet who can miss those leaves, that summer breeze, that river rushing through his symphonies? Martin Elster Martin Elster finds contentment in long walks in the woods or the city and writing poetry, often alluding to the creatures and plants he encounters. His poems have appeared in Astropoetica, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, The Centrifugal Eye, The Chimaera, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, The Road Not Taken, and others, and is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee. A full-length collection, Celestial Euphony, was published by Plum White Press in 2019. This is our second year nominating for Best Small Fictions Anthology by Sonder Press! "The Best Small Fictions is the first ever contemporary anthology solely dedicated to anthologizing the best internationally published short hybrid fiction in a given calendar year. Now in its sixth year of existence, Best Small Fictions features the best micro fiction, flash fiction, haibun stories and prose poetry from around the world." Please join us in congratulating our nominees! ** The Great Wave and Katsushika, by Duncan Leatherdale https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/the-great-wave-and-katsushika-by-duncan-leatherdale Proserpine, by Cassandra Atherton https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/five-prose-poems-on-rossetti-by-cassandra-atherton For the Ride, by Patience Mackarness https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-writing-challenges/selected-challenge-responses-garabet-yazmaciyan Premonition – Meg Pokrass https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/premonition-by-meg-pokrass Clotho, by Ilona Martonfi https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/clotho-by-ilona-martonfi |
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