 Untitled Photograh by Samuel Zeller, via Unsplash. With a Name Like That, Melissa Weinman Could Be some meteorologist foretelling your barometric future on tonight’s late o’clock news or the middle contestant on a gameshow that’s spewing lucre, lucre, lucre or the five-time-Emmy- nominated supporting actress who plays the smirking coroner who finds the bullet lodged deep within the brain matter then, ping, drops it into a jar as a lead detective and sidekick crack wise, but is the artist who covered a 60” x 36” canvas in 1998 with Clare of Assisi, the same Clare named patron saint of television forty years earlier by Pius XII because she could still picture Mass on one of her four walls even when she was too ill to be anything but a dying couch potato. Live-studio-audience applause to you, Melissa Weinman, for the way your Clare cradles a tiny, rabbit-eared TV in her palms for it shows how sacred Love Boat reruns can be in the right hands. Live-studio-audience applause to you, Melissa Weinman, for the way the screen behind her left shoulder depicts a mysterious monkey climbing a transmission tower for it indeed foretells the coming of an entire cable destination fixated on the hijinks of all creatures great and small. And, most of all, live-studio-audience applause to you, Melissa Weinman, for the second screen behind your Clare’s right shoulder which bears the image of a firing squad in deep winter because it reminds us all how a firing squad in deep winter has been the parting gift for too many unlucky contestants on that show that only airs on The History Channel. Bill Stadick This poem was written in response to Melissa Weinman's painting, Saint Clare, the Patron Saint of Television. Click here to view the painting.
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 Sel Portrait, by Andy Warhol (USA). 1966. Surface
“If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at my films and paintings and me. There’s nothing behind it. That’s all there is.” -Andy Warhol It is all surface, isn’t it, the thin blue silk of the sky, an oak leaf’s chlorophyll production line, the unblinking eye of the pond? When I was as shallow as an undergraduate could possibly be, I peeled off from a field trip to Soho galleries to visit The Factory; my friend and I nearly identical in our veneers: ironed hair, wheat jeans, black sleeveless shells, our unwavering scorn of the outside world . . . . It was dazzling, every surface painted silver: the walls, ceilings, tables, chairs, bathroom fixtures, like walking into a roll of aluminum foil. And Andy—thin, spectral, white blond hair, black sunglasses, nearly wordless. Mostly, he just was, the zen of non-being, the art of perfect detachment. And we were mute, too, inarticulate in our youth. We knew what it was we didn’t want, but not what we did. Now, all these years and lives later, the twistings and turnings of many roads— some macadam, some asphalt, some stone— I can’t remember her name, just how straight her hair was, how it hung down her back like a bolt of cloth. In the untidy closet of my heart, I think about what we put on, fashion, facade, how many layers we need between our skin and the rest of the world. Barbara Crooker This poem was previously published in Barbara Crooker's book, Line Dance (Word Poetry). Barbara Crooker is the author of nine books of poetry; Les Fauves is the most recent. Her work has appeared in many anthologies, including The Bedford Introduction to Literature, Commonwealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, The Poetry of Presence and Nasty Women: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse. www.barbaracrooker.com  Girls on the Bridge, by Edvard Munch (Norway) 1901. Girls on the Bridge
Three of them on the bridge. Given a chance whom would you date? Her, in a green dress, watching the fleeting sun? Or the one in a straw hat, looking straight ahead? Or maybe the dirty blond staring at water? Flawlessly white houses on the shore. The girls in bright clothes. The tall green tree and its reflection. Will they stand there any longer waiting for someone who has the courage to step into the fading picture? Boris Kokotov Boris Kokotov was born in Moscow, Russia. Currently he lives in Baltimore. He is the author of several poetry collections. He also translated selected poems of German Romantics and contemporary American poets to Russian language. His original work and translations to English appeared in Adelaide, Chiron Review, Entropy, Shot Glass Journal,and The Lake, among others.  Cinderella Doesn't Live Here Anymore, by Barbara Graff (USA). Contemporary. Click image for artist site. Shoe and Tell Under the illuminating eye of the Cyclops sky, Is a spotlight showing a scene from a story untold—a sequel: She parks her shoes at the bottom of once-barren beanstalk, now heavy with pareidolic budding branches, spiraling up and down, like a descending dragon and a scurrying squirrel. The slippers, satin and not-glass, are now soft and unbreakable retired vehicles of a tired maid. Each to her own, one facing East, the other ogling the moon. no longer working to impress with a perfect fit, No longer awaiting a foot-seeking prince And no longer that small. Wear and tear expands the stiffest leather, and calluses the thinnest skin. Roula-Maria Dib  Stone Lion, Prague, Wallenstein Palace, photograph by the author, Martin Rocek. The Sadness of the Stone Lion The black caves of his eyes echo picks prying, hands hauling, wagons jarring, chisels chipping (among gargoyles and angels), ropes swinging him, stern and majestic, to guard a palace gate. Then soot poured into his eyes and smoke-soured rain eroded his vigilance, and children’s fingers polished his nose. I will pass, but I will outlast you. Martin Rocek Martin Rocek is a string theorist living on Setauket, NY. He teaches physics at Stony Brook University. He was born in Prague and in addition to his own writing, translates songs and poems from Czech into English.  The Writer, by Lorette C. Luzajic (Canada). 2019. Attention Editors and Writers,
Help us spread the word about The Ekphrastic Review! If you love ekphrastic writing or The Ekphrastic Review, please mention us on your Facebook writing groups, and in your journal, magazine, or newsletter. Let everyone know about ekphrastic writing and the tremendous ekphrastic talents we showcase. If you'd like to talk to us for a write up, quote, or interview, contact editor Lorette C. Luzajic here. Thank you!  Woman Leaving the Psychoanalyst, by Remedios Varo (Mexico, b. Spain) 1960. From the Notes of Dr. Carlos G. J., Psiquiatra Patient Number: zweizweidreizweisiebenocho Patient Name: Blackbird, Blackbird Date of Assessment: 13/13/20XX History Patient missiled through the window sans appointment. Graceful flutters, like chloroformed butterflies. But herky jerky landing. Patient knocked over my coffee then squawk-cried. Seemed overly apologetic. I maintained flat affect. I gestured the patient to take a perch. Patient continued to apologize until she asked “Are you the devil?” (note: transference; patient is difficult). Folded wings over breast, like a casket sleeper. I then asked my secretary for the intake forms. Description Patient is birdshaped with a labyrinthine gait. Indiscernible wingspan, Phoenix-like but introverted and shockbrowed. Aquiline attractive, showbird beauty, though plumage disheveled and dirty and missing in scarshaped patches (note: avian trichotillomania?). Eyes and beak perpetually half-open, though eyes otherwise auburn and beady and thousand-yards-away. Treatment Progress I. Interview What brings you here today? I don't know. You can't help me. I'm sorry, that was vulturistic. You seem nice. But you can't help me. Ever since I hatched the galaxy has imploded. I've been trying to unhatch but the pieces of eggshell are now cold so I had to grow layers of feathers. (note: attachment issues, possible separation anxiety; mother did not sufficiently regurgitate during formative years?) Tell me more about these layers. Safety. If someone gets close I peck them away. Even if I want them close. Safety. Do you get lonely? (note: This is a trick question. Birds don't get lonely. They're birds.) Yes. Utterly. I sometimes get tempted to go up to the cumulonimbi but every time I've been there everyone's so cumulonimbic. I want them all but don't. Like engorged cocks in lead cotton candy. Patient squawks apologies for the perceived vulgarity then flies into the corner. Our therapy does not resume for another seven months (note: patient is difficult; Axis II?) Follow up interview reveals patient builds nests out of poetry magazines (note: hoarding/OCD?) and only has sex during somnaviation. She says it would be like floating (note: dissociation) if not for her already being airborne. So instead “it's like being dead” (note: nymphomaniacal Cotard's?) II. Free association Ice Womb. Bat. Splinter Free will. Savannah Porn. Man Threat. Chthonic Dictionary. Masturbate Safe. Bird Help. Perturbed Dictionary. Scabies Beauty. Beauty Hell. Help. Test assessment: Failed. (Note: Patient is difficult.) III. Self-assessment Please rate your level of physical discomfort: [] Cero/Voidtouched [] Uno/A splinter that has become gangrenous and wannabe-tumorous [] Dos/First epidermal layers abraded; soul completely abraded [] Tres/Shadow aspect complains of stomach pain, begins to fear the ego and thinks it should don a romper [x] Cuatro/Romper or no, you've reached full tenebrosity [patient handwrites note: “NEVERMORE”] Rate your attachment to reality: [] Attached and grounded. [] My arms/wings remind me to deny myself. [x] This body is a cataclysm that I witness from a safe distance. [] covfefe Rank the following needs by order of importance (from 1 to 7): 0 – Sex 0 – Food 7 – Love 0 – Shelter 7 – Acceptance 7 – Safety 8 – Education IV. Arche/atypical Assessment Pick and choose from the following; how many flavour combinations can you unlock?! Event Figure Motif la tormenta el chiflado el apocalipsis la migración la virgen el diluvio la vida el diablo la mexicanidad el matrimonio el héroe la autoría V. Dream analysis Tell me about the last vivid dream you had. I'm inside the night's core. It's clear but there's an overvoice made of someone's shadowed backbone, like spinal fluid and oil slick. I'm flying. Gravity is a bad memory. I'm scared that if I stop flying I'll wake up and waking up means you die. There's another bird here. I used to love this bird. He's a vulturehawk. He's terrible. I love him. He wants to fly with me and I want to fly with him but I don't know how his wings will fit in this cage. No. We're not in a cage. What rhymes with 'cage'? Age. Rage. Gauge. Wage. Mage. Disengage. Page. Stage? Stage. Yes. Stagestagestagestage. Ohnonono. We weren't flying. We were dancing. (patient paces about the office corner, rests her head contra the palatable wallpaper collapse) I don't have wings, do I? What good are these glass candy legs? I can't fly. Why did you make me think I could? You all make me believe things that aren't real. You're all the same. Please commence your dreamscape. What happened next? I woke up and I was a character in a book. And so are you. Let me go. (note: more transference; projection; patient is difficult; patient walks out of the office and rubbishes a wayward soul into the rubbish and never comes back) Final Diagnosis Ruffled raven is actually a young woman with erisian hair and heartstrings. Treatment Plan Start on SSRI cocktail in bird feeder. Recommend extended bed rest and high gluten diet. Take away her keys. Don't countertransfer. Pray. Edwin Alanís-García Edwin Alanís-García is the author of the chapbook Galería (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2019). His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Acentos Review, The Kenyon Review, Periphery, and Tupelo Quarterly. He received an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University and is currently a graduate student in Philosophy of Religion at Harvard Divinity School.  View on the Wissahickon Creek with Figures, by James Peale (USA). 1830. Sanitarium on the Wissahickon There is a stretch on the Wissahickon “with some of the most magnificent forest trees of America, among them which stands conspicuous the liriodendron tulipiferum,” Poe wrote. When I ask a local arborist about a shoreline which might host a dense population of the tulip poplar, I am told this tree is abundant throughout the Wissahickon Valley. Nonetheless, I suspect a profusion of them along the rock out-croppings south of Poe’s entry point. The tulip poplar may exceed 120 feet in height and has been known to live 450 years. I begin to suspect these may be the same trees Poe admired and that I am now in their company just as he was in theirs. Michael Gessner This piece is an excerpt from "Sanitarium on the Wissahickon," an essay originally published in the Edgar Allan Poe Review. It also appeared in the collection, On Location, Essays of Place, (Echo Arcade, 2014). Michael Gessner has authored 11 books of poetry and prose. His work may be found in The American Journal of Poetry, American Literary Review, The French Literary Review, The Kenyon Review, North American Review, Oxford Magazine, Poetry Quarterly (forthcoming,) rue des Beaux-Arts (Paris,) Verse Daily, The Yale Review of Humanities in Medicine, and others. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/michael-gessner or https://www.michaelgessner.com/  Girl With Playing Cards, by Irving Penn (USA). 1950. Girl With Playing Cards Cool in the shade of a white parasol the girl with porcelain skin rests on a swathe of soft, sun-lit sand - hair veiled in julep-green chiffon, lips and nails painted vermilion, eyes hidden behind black-winged glasses, she unfurls an alabaster hand, draws from a Gauloises spreads out a fan of Canasta cards plays them close to her chest. Jane Salmons Jane Salmons lives in Stourbridge in the UK. Currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing, she has had poems published on The Ekphrastic Review, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Lake, Algebra of Owls, Amaryllis and various other webzines and journals. In addition to writing poetry, she enjoys creating handmade photo-montage collage.  Purple Night City, by Meghan Tutolo (USA). 2015. Click image for artist site. College Roommate You glued matchstick boxes together, idly painting windows through which its denizens could see out onto their world, safe in the knowledge that outside eyes would just see paint. It took only a week before I built the house I grew up in, barely a month before my desk was monopolised by my home town, yours growing fungus-like hidden on a large sheet of cardboard tucked away under your bed. Our towns’ desired conquest, conglomeration. Your houses took on my hometown shade, my buildings bridging neutral spaces, open ground. By Christmas, we were a city full of windows through which we let ourselves look safe knowing that others would just see paint. Mark Ward Mark Ward is the author of Circumference (Finishing Line Press, 2018). His work has been published in Poetry Ireland Review, Assaracus, Tincture and many more, including some anthologies. He is the founding editor of Impossible Archetype, an international journal of LGBTQ+ poetry. He blogs erratically at http://astintinyourspotlight.wordpress.com |
The Ekphrastic Review
COOKIES/PRIVACY
June 2026
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