Stained Gown Eyes rimmed and rosy, shimmering with tears. Her comely beauty luminesce, dimmed under watchful eyes. White roses yet to bloom, tiara of bud spring. Misery too sinking, heed the whispering masses. The languid bride held out a pale hand, doomed to her fate of bonded rings. A corset of rope constricting her, As candle wax dripped onto her stained gown. Caitlin Suol Walenciak Caitlin Walenciak is a young writer and student living in Michigan, US with her family and two dogs. She enjoys long runs on trails and reading books in her free time. Caitlin hopes to publish more of her creative writing.
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At the Well Beneath a water-hued landscape that distracts the way the thirsts of life pull our eyes from God, the Samaritan woman, stopped while filling her water jar by Jesus, his unusual request for a drink, stares at the ground in front of her full bucket, considering his words, the living water. Jesus sits by the old well, two fingers raised as if blessing her bowed head. Oh, to be her, to recognize the glory of God in a basic request. I also say Lord, give me this water, for the world makes me thirst managing many demands and I too, long to be blessed. Elisa A. Garza Elisa A. Garza is a poet, editor, and writing teacher of students from elementary age to senior citizens. She is now teaching writing workshops for cancer patients and survivors. Her full-length collection Regalos (Lamar University Literary Press) was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Elisa’s chapbooks include Between the Light / entre la claridad, and The Body, Cancerous, forthcoming in 2025 (both from Mouthfeel Press). Her poems have recently appeared in Southern Humanities Review, Ars Medica, and Huizache and one was recently on exhibit at The Health Museum in Houston. The Weight of the Carapace Heavy, and the colour of lead, my body is spine-fused to an amber carapace. I am startled by threats in murk, and my eyes, bulging like a turtle’s, hear the rustling brush like curses on wind, words snagged in Gambel Oak. I thrash like panicked wings. I crawl close low-slung things, dirt and fern and ivy. Behind bound tree roots, I am naked beneath the weight of my shell, and I wear it, not my Achille’s shield, but host’s gold charger, aware of the looming fracture to each scute. With a free hand, I serve fruits: mangos, grapes, pomegranates, and pears— All are fed, living and dead, as my prayer— holy, holy—rises from my mouth’s censer— pieces me away, unafraid. Lindsey Royce Lindsey Royce’s poems have appeared in periodicals and anthologies, including the Aeolian Harp #10 (forthcoming), #8, #7, and #5 anthologies; Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts (periodicals and anthologies); The Hampton-Sydney Review; The New York Quarterly, Poet Lore, and The Washington Square Review. Her poems have been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes. Royce’s first poetry collection, Bare Hands, was published by Turning Point in September of 2016, and her second collection, Play Me a Revolution, was published by Press 53 in September of 2019 and placed for an IPPY Award. Her third collection, The Book of John, was published in April 2023 and was a finalist in The Feathered Quill Book Awards. Also, The Book of John received an excellent Kirkus review. She lives in beautiful northwest Colorado. Editor's Note: We recently discovered that a favourite writer, Paul Hetherington, widely known for his prose poetry and prose poetry scholarship, has a wonderful ekphrastic prose poetry collection from 2016. Ekphrasis is a recurring literary interest of Paul's, and this gem of a book imagines a gallery and a variety of experiences there. Paul says, "the gallery that the book walks the reader through is a notional construct rather than an actual place, drawing on artworks from various countries and art museums." He wrote it during a residency in Trastevere, Rome. Paul references a range of artworks in these poems, often multiple pieces inside each one, as well as the general experience of the museum. The images shown have been chosen by TER, drawing from the many possibilities in the poetry. Some have been curated from Paul's general descriptions as illustrations, for example, one poem references Dutch still life in general and we show a particular piece by Floris van Dyck. We are grateful for the chance to show a selection of the poems in The Ekphrastic Review. Second Room (Perambulation) For minutes at a time we stand in different postures, trying them on for size. Anonymous men and women look back with oddly captivating eyes, yet they do not see us. In Caravaggio’s rendering, John the Baptist sits inside an abstract dream. Young though he is, he might be considering Salome. As he does so, lovers’ portraits beguile old walls like a confusion of memories. Hundreds of beautiful gazes and clothes. The Etruscan Sarcophagus of the Spouses is delicate in its reassembled terracotta. The figures look towards eternity, reaching for vanished wine. Main Corridor The meandering feeling in these corridors suggests there are too many depictions of the ideal—religious iconography supported by kneeling donors; courtly love; chivalric and civil grace. The poor are almost nowhere, performing bit parts in fields or as dark- faced executioners. Or they’re an aside in someone else’s conversation—servants who wait on the princely couple; witnesses to the righteous who have declined to ruin them. Fragility is the contrast between varnished gazes, damasked finery and the Baptist’s severed head. Salome looks puzzled. What is it to stand in perpetuity proffering an image of the famous dead? Eighth Room (Special Exhibition of Dutch Paintings) When you stumble on flagstones I seize your arm. We climb marble steps, feeling their old weight in our legs. As we enter, there are a hundred crowded Dutch paintings showing seventeenth-century fruit and meat. The ticket seller’s playing Bach’s inimitable Cello Suites, but the sound’s so low I query what it is. The largo speaks of Spain, where we listened and were entranced; where we sat on a balcony as you offered counsel. I’m reminded that affection’s often like this—a helping hand, music no-one expects. Someone says right words and the aftermath enthralls—like a painting one could eat. Ninth Room (Perambulation) I’m standing quietly and a painting speaks—of how there were floods for nearly a week and not far from here the Tiber rose. But, after all, a tour’s arrived and a guide’s instructing her group: "It’s neat how he’s painted her feet." They move on and I examine again the Virgin with crucified child. Desert sun bakes the blue of her grief—it’s almost all she knows. And grace she carries; divinity that dies; the world’s long heaviness. She’d hold him forever if time would stand still. She’d let him go if she could. Tenth Room (Perambulation) Believing in this past is no longer possible. Not with so many depictions of Saint Catherine’s broken wheel or the painterly zeal of righteous crusades—the meek inheriting loss’s deep umber. It’s a visual hagiography writ large, that afterwards our dreams irritatingly repeat. Yet Giorgione’s tempest makes of today’s storm an urgent poiesis and parable and the suffering Madonna strangely understands contemporary grief. Everywhere we look—implausible lies, improbable truth. Postcard: Santa Maria del Popolo In Santa Maria del Popolo Saul is gasping on his back. Words enter his body like creatures; he embraces his interrogator in armfuls of puzzled air. Belief, knowledge, trust collide as light is taken from his eyes. His groom looks on uncertainly; his horse steps forwards, exiting the frame. Caravaggio suggests there’s no way back from such extremity—which his crucified Saint Peter underlines. "Beware of what you know," the paintings say. Postcard: Capuchin Crypt The crypt is a delicacy of design; air remembers blood that lodged here. Shrugged dances of shoulder blades are Angels ceaselessly trying ascent. Rooms are full of smiles, each one a death’s head. Sing they say. Drive to eternal love via bony congregations. Take a hand that aggregates phalanges and metacarpals; feel its broken hold, leading into byways of knowledge; enshrinements of the body’s first geography. That bay of the skull; this coastline of rib. These bones stood up, fixed by intention. Now they are white noise. Eleventh Room (Small Annex) A twelfth-century scroll shows The Tale of Genji in aristocratic red and gold—and green "like sea grass steeped in brine." Outside in a Japanese Garden a thousand watery fingers are tapping on stone, as if counting centuries. Congregating koi are bundled scarves; autumn leaves spread like brocade. Genji’s thoughts are constellating pines and a sleeved river’s foam. At Nijo the Lady of the Orange Blossoms has moved into the east lodge. Genji remembers the speech of Akashi fishermen, as incomprehensible as birds. Paul Hetherington Paul Hetherington is a distinguished poet and Professor Emeritus at the University of Canberra, Australia. Among his 47 creative and critical books, edited books, chapbooks and artist books, and numerous scholarly chapters and articles, he has previously published 18 full-length collections of poetry. His poetry has appeared in more than 70 anthologies and has won or been nominated for over 50 national and international awards and competitions, including Pushcart Prize nominations. He won the 2021 Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize and the inaugural The Marion Halligan Award (2024) for Sleeplessness. He is co-founding editor of the international online journal Axon: Creative Exploration. With Cassandra Atherton he co-authored the authoritative Prose Poetry: An Introduction (Princeton University Press, 2020). On Opportunity, by Niccolò Machiavelli (Florence, 1469 - 1527), translated by Julie Steiner2/10/2025 On Opportunity, by Niccolò Machiavelli (Florence, 1469 - 1527) “Who are you, endowed and adorned with more heavenly grace than mortal woman’s due? Why fidget? And your feet have wings. What for?” “I’m Opportunity, perceived by few. The reason I keep moving? I’m on one foot. (And stand atop a wheel -- that, too.) My flying can’t compete with how I run; my wings, though, boost my feet’s efficiency to blinding speed -- en route, I’m seen by none. I keep my hair in front, where it can be spread out to cover me from chest to face, so when I come, none recognizes me. The back part of my head lacks any trace of hair, so people scrabble uselessly when I’ve passed by -- or turned, if that’s the case.” “But tell me: coming after you, who’s she?” “Regret. Take careful note! Get this down pat! She’s kept by those who can’t keep hold of me. And you yourself, while wasting time in chat and occupied with idle thoughts’ demands, don’t see, poor soul, and don’t yet fathom that already I have slipped right through your hands!” Niccolò Machiavelli, translated by Julie Steiner ** Capìtolo dell’ Occasïone “ Chi sei tu, che non par donna mortale, di tanta grazia il ciel t’ adorna e dota ? perchè non posi ? e perchè a’ piedi hai l’ ale ? ” “ Io son l’ Occasïone, a pochi nota ; e la cagion che sempre mi travagli è perchè io tengo un piè sopra una rota. Volar non è ch’ al mio correr s’ agguagli ; e però l’ ale a’ piedi mi mantengo, acciò nel corso mio ciascuno abbagli. Gli sparsi miei capei dinanzi io tengo ; con essi mi ricopro il petto e ’l volto, perch’ un non mi conosca quando io vengo. Dietro dal capo ogni capel m’ è tolto, onde in van si affatica un, se gli avviene ch’ io l’ abbia trapassato, o s’ io mi volto.” “Dimmi : chi è colei che teco viene ? ” “ È Penitenza ; e però nota e intendi : chi non sa prender me, costei ritiene. E tu, mentre parlando il tempo spendi, occupato da molti pensier vani, già non t’ avvedi, lasso ! e non comprendi com’ io ti son fuggita tra le mani ! ” Niccolò Machiavelli ** Author's note: "The Florentine diplomat and philosopher Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469 - 1527 CE) is best known for authoring a primer for opportunistic, non-hereditary “princes” to seize and maintain power. But in addition to his political analyses in prose, he composed plays, songs, sonnets, and capìtoli (poems that imitate or parody Dante’s terza rima meditations). Machiavelli’s “Capìtolo dell’ Occasïone,” translated here, is an adaptation of Epigram 33 by Decimus Magnus Ausonius (c. 310 - c. 395 CE), but Machiavelli omitted the introductory lines that establish Ausonius’s Latin version as the ekphrasis of a statue. The grisaille image of Opportunity and Regret (a.k.a. Occasion and Penitence) depicted by Andrea Mantegna’s school in Mantua (https://thumb.tildacdn.com/tild3862-6664-4466-a265-333236656233/-/resize/920x/-/format/webp/opportunity_01.jpg) was painted around 1500, as a recreation of the artwork that inspired Ausonius." Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego, California. Her poetry has appeared in Literary Matters, The New Verse News, The Able Muse Review, Rattle, Light, The Asses of Parnassus, and American Arts Quarterly, among other venues. She recently embarked on her third decade as an active participant in the Eratosphere online poetry workshop (www.ablemuse.com/erato). Laurel, a Ghazal Hanc quoque Phoebus amat—Ovid, Metamorphoses Phoebus, you never stopped loving her, did you? Her fingers, her face, still appear in your dreams. You still feel her grasping your fingers; her face flashes before you at night. (How she looked, like an arrow, straight through you, as honesty does.) There are times when you hear how she’d sing, her sweet face all sinless and solemn, not knowing that anyone heard. You recall how serenely she’d touch just your cheek or your forehead, and finger your face as softly as flakes of a winter’s first snow. And remember how mornings, her kisses would taste like the springtime itself? As you lingered, you’d face her and wonder at something so perfect: the magical curve of her waist; the delicate hairs on the back of her neck—and your hunger effaced every thought but to love her. Ten centuries later, her limbs reaching skyward, she stands with her toes rooted deep by a slow, backwards stream, where her face is concealed by branches and shadows. After she left there were others-- Dryope, Stilbe—but soon they discovered you couldn’t stop bringing her face back to mind, and wondering how is it going to end? You still visit the vale to gather the leaves for your wreaths, and keep thinking her face might appear, but it doesn’t. At sunset, the wind turns the fragrance of laurel from memory into eternity. Vesper now blinks. Turn your face from the chasm of Tempe and think of how love never fades. Just as years leave their traces on trees, with their permanent rings, you’re enfaced. Timothy Sandefur Timothy Sandefur is an attorney and author in Phoenix, Arizona. His book of poems, Some Notes on the Silence, was published by Kelsay Books. Other poems in The Ekphrastic Review: Louis Sullivan: https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/louis-sullivan-by-timothy-sandefur Casey Baugh: https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/new-york-city-haiku-by-timothy-sandefur Cast of a Dog Killed by the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius, Pompeii, c 1874 Ellie had drawn that dog from a photograph many times. She'd drawn a lot from photos: a ceramic bowl - a receptacle - titled Vessel, caked in river mud before firing and thus also alluding to "vessel" as in "ship"; Marlon Brando in The Godfather; a Weimar matchseller with the matchboxes in a tray around his neck – a haunted waif. Old photos mainly, like the one of that dog, taken in Victorian times; old photos with subjects aching to reach forward as if in mute appeal to the present. All flawed subjects, she'd realized: a ship foundered (or primitive bowl); a mobster soiled by iniquity; a ragged-arse to whom society would never offer prospects. After favourable first impressions, she realised that her drawings from photos looked just like the photos themselves. They had not moved the image on. So, apart from the self-congratulation at having created a passable likeness, it had been frustrating. Drawing from life, even when it was inanimate, she found difficult. It were as if the subject could get up and walk away or, if a person, grow impatient with her endless markings and revisions or berate her for spying on them. Humans and animals, anyway, never kept still; not still enough for her to complete her drawings. Most times she crumpled the results into balls and tossed them in the bin. But, in a photograph, her subject was a prisoner, completely under her control. It would never abscond out of anger, fear, or impatience; its "gloating'" over any frustration she felt would be imaginary. In such cases, a photographed object, human and animal or not, would personify the inviolable, albeit defenceless against her exasperation. It watched her fail, withdraw, and return for another attempt. That Pompeiian hound, petrified in its anguish, was doubly imprisoned: first by lava flow, then by the photographer's lens. The lava had made a sculpture of it; the photographer had photographed the sculpture; and she had tried to draw the photographed sculpture. That lapidary dog, so lifeless yet so alive in its torment, was a work of art. After trying to draw it for the nth time she began to feel sorry for it, for the way it had waited so often and so long for her to capture its essence. On the day she was ruminating on all this, her husband agreed to pose for her naked – or "in the nude," as he put it. She hadn't wanted to ask. But she had. He was watching the TV. "Why not?" Harry said, without looking at her. Anyone who knew how much and for how long her marriage had been idling might have thought her suggestion a desperate attempt at revival or acceleration. She thought that concealing behind his nonchalant reply the sense of something sparking repeatedly in the air was Harry picturing a Zippo with a worn plug of flint or too low on gas or both. She couldn't recall when she last saw him without clothes on. She didn't mean the nightly and early morning view in passing when they undressed or got ready for breakfast and work. But not even that of late: for a while – well, a couple of years – he'd been turning in an hour or so before her. He was asleep when she entered the bedroom that night. Not wishing to disturb him, she didn't switch on the light, but relied on what light seeped in when she left the bathroom door ajar. It was enough for her to look at herself, a spectre in the tall mirror, and wonder if her changed shape had placed her former one beyond recall. Did he agree to "sit" for her knowing there was little prospect of his nudity or nakedness leading to anything? She realised her body had been overtaken or taken over and left changed, probably for ever, though not in an instant and not with her obviously contorted with fright and trepidation. No – feelings like that were stored below the surface and kept to herself, not shared with Harry or anyone else and, she guessed, put down by him to moodiness. She was indeed moody and seemed successful in dealing with it. She did deal with it. He'd ask her if she was OK and she'd always say Yes, which he probably accepted as a token of what was needed from him to guarantee her independence. Harry posed for her one Saturday morning. Neither of them had work and they'd both slept on. "Let's do it," he said. "The nude thing." He swung out of bed and adopted the pose of Rodin's The Thinker as a joke. "The Thinker doesn't wear boxer shorts," she said. They could hear next door's kids playing outside. The sound always sounded like a reproach, someone else's progeny as emissaries, their voices disembodied and carried on the wind; but she never shared that with Harry. They went into the sitting-room and he sat, relaxed and not thinking, in an upright chair away from the window, the shorts discarded. "How do you want me?" he asked. She told him to sit forward, as if alert, with hands on knees. After a few seconds, she began drawing half-way between frontal and side-on. She saw how much he, too, had changed; or, rather, she saw something she knew but had never pondered. It were as if he'd agreed to produce incontrovertible evidence of irrevocable change. In the evening art classes she attended, students were told to look intently at an object and draw as they looked, as if looking would reveal something to them. Well, it had been fun. Her drawings of him naked, nude, could have been anyone. She'd captured his soapsud hairstyle but obliterated his facial features with firm diagonal strokes in parallel, relegating them to shadow. "You haven't flattered me," he said, referring to those unwanted migrations of the flesh. It wasn't meant to be a criticism; in fact; it sounded like an admission that revealed a truth hitherto unspoken. He turned in early that night, as usual. She retrieved the wedding photos from the second album, the photographer having convinced them that retro black-and-white portraits were the coming thing and provided two sets. She homed in on a picture of them both – it wasn't a "white" wedding anyway – and touched Harry's face. She began drawing it, revelling in its complex lack of gradations, the fissures that opened up, in pure light and dark, such expectant happiness. Nigel Jarrett Nigel Jarrett is a leading Welsh writer, a former newspaperman and a double prizewinner: the Rhys Davies award and the inaugural Templar Shorts award, both for short fiction. He's had eight books published, including in 2023 his fourth story collection, Five Go to Switzerland. In March 2024 his second poetry collection, Gwyriad, was published by Cockatrice Books. His story, Our Man in Beauvais, based on the work of Rodin, appeared in The Ekphrastic Review. He writes and reviews for Jazz Journal and Acumen poetry magazine, among several others, and was formerly chief music critic of the South Wales Argus. He lives in Monmouthshire. Get your submissions in! Deadline is Feb 20! It's not too late to enter if you haven't. Instructions follow. Send in the Clowns: an Ekphrastic Circus The rise of the circus over 200 years past inspired an incredibly vast and varied world of visual art depictions. Painters were attracted to the rich array of themes and interesting characters of the circus. The colourful props, epic entertainment, harrowing feats, and beautiful women were irresistible subjects for many artists. The circus, of course, also had its darker side, its underbelly crawling with strange power exchange relationships, the display of differently abled human beings for profit, abuse of animals and women, and more. This colourful tapestry of psychology and spectacle was and is fertile ground for artists and writers, too. The new contest at The Ekphrastic Review is Send in the Clowns. We have curated more than NINETY fascinating paintings and other artworks, chosen to invite your writing to unexpected places. You can write poetry, flash fiction, or both, inspired by any of the artworks in Book One or Book Two. Be inspired by the characters and scenes in these paintings, by the art itself or the artists, or the subjects of the art, in any way that you want to interpret them. The purchase of one ebook of circus images serves as entry fee for the contest ($10CAD or approx. $7USD). You can choose book one or book two or both. These images can serve your ekphrastic practice through the contest and beyond, providing endless inspiration. We will publish a selection of finalists in The Ekphrastic Review. One poetry entry and one flash fiction entry will be declared winner in that category. The winning poet and winning flash fiction author will receive $100CAD. Rules 1. Write stories or poems inspired in any way by any of the artworks in the Send in the Clowns ebooks. Art can be from book one, book two, or both. 2. Submit up to three poems or flash fiction entries. You can enter as many times as you wish, with three entries for every $10 entry purchase. (For example, if you get both books one and two, you can enter six works.) 3. Poems and flash fiction 1000 max including title. 4. Deadline is midnight, eastern standard time, February 20, 2025. 5. Submit entries to [email protected]. 6. Put your entries in a Word document, together. Don't put your name etc. on the document. 7. Include a 100 word bio with your submission. Include your order number with your submission as well. 8. Include CIRCUS CONTEST in the subject line when submitting. 9. Please include the name and artist of the painting that inspired the work, noted along with every poem or story. 10. Please tell your friends and peers about this fabulous contest. We can't wait to be inundated with amazing circus stories and poetry! Send in the Clowns: an ekphrastic circus book one
CA$10.00
A curated collection of 45 plus artworks on different aspects of the circus theme. Book one of two. Welcome/Burl It’s not the wracking wind one would assume brings about this shape, not the sculpting flow of water either, the way that can model stone given enough time. No. It’s actually confusion on the cellular level, a tree’s own growth deranged by some distracting presence, parasite or infestation. Not unlike an itch scratched at until it is a wound, then a scar, then simply something of the wood itself, of its form and flesh. It sings somehow something more than the monotone ring upon ring of the straighter trunk material. This eloquent moment of melody, silent, complex. Is it that the irritation is forgotten finally? Does some kind of acceptance come about in the end? House of Opinions The phone mounted on the wall next to my father’s place at the kitchen table. He’s talking with his father, a Democrat since Roosevelt came along with the WPA. Grampa built bridges, dug ditches all through The Great Depression. I only hear my father’s side of the conversation: Richard Nixon and a concept called “Peace with honor.” They talk a long while, my father raises his voice at times. “Dad, Dad! I’ve three sons. I want this war over and done.” It's twenty years later and I’ve come to dread the sound of the telephone ringing. Always the same time of night, same topics we covered the last time. Everything wrong with the current (Clinton) administration. He tells me he loves a good debate. An exchange of ideas he calls it. What I hear is pain. Cowboy Oil Weather had its way with the paint once more blatantly red, white, and blue. Sheet metal rusted through those places it was joined together. Neon long gone, not even power to the lamps meant to light that cowboy bronco busting a bumblebee. Central Equipment bought the land more than twenty years back. At first they simply didn’t bother with tearing the old sign down. Then they got to liking it, that sad old face, that wistful song of a bygone place not even quite singing any more. I was sorry to learn someone’s started to repaint the thing, they mean to maybe even get the lights working again. I think it’s a mistake. The other night it was just me and my TV and I found myself watching Simon and Garfunkle singing the songs that made them famous fifty years ago. Their voices were shot, their friendship still plainly strained. Two old men. But there was a sweet brokenness there that I would never want to fix. Thank you, Avita The hospice nurse who’s come to the loft because Denise has fallen says she grew up in the same town we lived in way back when. Her grandmother raised her there. And I think I remember her, too. A shy little girl. We got her in trouble giving her Halloween candy against Grandma’s strict proscription. They lived just two doors down, rented from the same woman. I thought, at the time, that the grandmother was unnecessarily hard on the girl, a cruel scold. I say nothing now and doubt our kind nurse remembers. She cleans the wound with water and explains that there’s often more blood than damage with cuts like this one. This will heal, she says, I promise you. City Shapes I’d never seen a helicopter hold so perfectly still as on that night I was walking the way I always do along Suffolk beside the canal. I think it was some water main broke down toward Father Morissette. Fire trucks and squad cars all there with nothing to do but watch the water rising. A large bald man in it up to his knees was looking like he was somehow to blame. His bare arms lifted slightly from his sides, his hands balled into fists. And that chopper. It could have been painted on the sky. Four pigeons up there on a telephone line. The moon was full. I stopped and just stood there for a little while. It was like we all expected to see something. Something different. Kids running about taking none of it seriously. And just for a moment I did not feel so all alone in this universe. Tom Driscoll Note: These poems are from a visual art exhibition, Living in America, at Loading Dock Gallery in Lowell, Massachusetts, October 2024, a poetry convergence. Tom wrote the poems to works shown in the exhibition. Tom says, "Once again and always, thanks go out to poet Stephan Anstey (the propellant force behind the poetry convergence every year) and to the artists at Western Avenue/Loading Dock." Tom Driscoll is a poet, columnist, and essayist who lives and works in Lowell, Massachusetts. Driscoll’s poetry has appeared appeared previously in The Ekphrastic Review as well as Oddball Magazine, Abraxis Review, Scapegoat, Paterson Literary Review, and The Worcester Review Mayan Afterlife After cremation will my bones become part of the soil, earth’s new life? Like a Mayan ritual. Remains of the dead, they believed, become precious seeds that carry progeny, fertilize earth. They created clay ancestral figures, and the maize god modeled from waist up, centered in a leaf on a short stem, to grow like flora after they die. Used as whistles practically, they summon folks to celebrate their lives. * I imagine my return to earth as a blooming flower, dahlia nestled in a bower of oval-shaped leaves, green on top, auburn underneath, open in daylight, closed at night. Like prayer plants, they preserve my petals with subtle fragrance, keep me fresh, as I appear in blossoms of radiant magenta, born again into life, I soar, much more colourful than before. Mary K. Limberg These artworks were viewed by the author at the exhibition, Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Mayan Art, 7th-9th Century, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022-23. Dr. Mary Lindberg’s work explores links between art, music, dance, literature. Her chapbook, The Tang of Glue, appeared in 2006 (Puddinghouse); prize-winning poems in Beloit Poetry Journal, Gallery&Studio, among others; several ekphrastic poems in River of Stars (Artists Embassy International, 2022) She contributes often to Waterways. Winner of the Grand Prize, Dancing Poetry Contest (2021). Her nonfiction essays consider 9/11 (PEN award), and William Hogarth’s art and the London theatre. For an NYU English doctorate, she studied at Oxford; and, earlier, Eastman Music School. She was a tenured Associate Professor, California State U., Northridge, and UCLA Mellon Fellow. |
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February 2025
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