Nighthawks

Midnight again. I came here last Thursday,
and the Thursday before, and so to my grave.
The couple—lady of crimson 
and man of gray—talk only about their latest
purchases: new washing machine, teal fridge;
not about their foreclosure.
                                                      And I, 
bowler hat propped just above eyes and ears, 
sink into hours when light evades dawn and dusk. 
Now silent, the couple gives vacant witness to
the server stacking plates. I hear the street’s
murmurs, the ragged sigh of the man…

At one point, my wife and I would swim
by our lake house, water lacquered 
like this cherry wood counter. No stale air:
the cigarette smoke that lingers here;
no empty shopfront. We had rural New York,
our property that spread capacious across 
lake and lush hills. But that was years ago.

Here in the diner, a pane of glass seals us off. 
Soft light dissolves before it can touch night.

Alexander Lazarus Wolff
​
​Alexander Lazarus Wolff's writing appears online in The Best American Poetry website and Poets.org, and in the North American Review, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere. A recipient of an Academy of American Poets prize, he teaches at the University of Houston where he is the Inprint MD Anderson Foundation Fellow and assistant poetry editor for Gulf Coast. You can read more of his work at www.alexanderlazaruswolff.com.

Cézanne at Bibémus Quarry

Limestone suits me--
the way it rumbles on about scale and time--
fissured, fallen, gouged, 
but not done. My thin washes 
stave nothing off, 
brushstrokes broken 
by green broken 
by broken ochre rock.
 
The quarryman, 
that tiny slip of flesh, bakes
in earth’s red oven. I forget 
what formal need he fills. 
His neck must ache like mine 
from staring up. At what?
 
The soil’s persistence, 
the chaos of gray in those clouds,
a few streaks of shrubbery, 
rosemary, thyme. Thank god
for the Aleppo pines. 
 
Twisted and pulled by sun, 
they scorn me 
with such an air of distinction.

Ruth Hoberman

Ruth Hoberman lives in Newtonville, Massachusetts.  Since her 2015 retirement from Eastern Illinois University, she has published poems and essays in various journals, most recently in Salamander, RHINO, Mezzo Cammin, and SWWIM Every Day.  

​

​A Professional Beauty (Madame X)
 
It was the strap that aroused ire, 
not a sartorial slippage, but a moral one. 
Sargent fixed it and kept you in his studio
an artist scalded by bad reviews.
He could stand before you sighing,
admiring the curve of your right arm,
lithe as the neck of a swan.
He could sink into the depths
of your dress, tease the fine 
chestnut curls at your neck,
admire your white skin,
pearl-soft as inner conch.
You were his, at least on canvas. 
 
Like Sargent, I stand before you, 
transfixed by your sharp nose, 
sharp enough to scent out 
social opportunity. 
Sargent set your pose, which seems 
to refuse the viewer, offering 
no more than the sight of you. 
That might be enough, but I see 
a professional beauty leaning back, 
one swift glance over her shoulder 
before she lifts the inky skirts 
gathered in her sinister hand.

Karen G. Berry

Karen G. Berry lives in Portland, Oregon, and works as a professional copywriter. She is interested in micro-societies, the strange and secret lives of children, and the heroic nature of everyday living. Karen's poetry has been published by Rust & Moth, Parks & Points, The Gilded Weathervane, Hot Pot Magazine, Subprimal, Panorama, Ekphrastic Review, and many other journals and anthologies, online and in print.  

Blind Night

night has a hollow interior
where everything's soaked
in absorbent black ink
every particle of air
that clamors against
light's abandonment

night looks for light
any glimmer in an oil stain
or in black glossy fabric
and the tip of a match
that causes and ends in ash
banked in a fire pit

night catches the glint
of an old watch's hour hand
painted decades ago
with radium that was wet 
from the lips of girls
moistening their brushes

some nights streaking lights
form dots in a puzzle shape
to be connected by lines
drawn by the eyeless mind
but all of these with us
fall in a cosmic black hole

night looks for what is light
not knowing what it is
like the eye's black pupil
even the lashes are black
night gasps and blinks
startled by recurring dawn

Royal Rhodes
​
Royal Rhodes is a poet and retired educator who lives in a small village in rural Ohio. He enjoys listening to Classical music and reading poetry, ancient and modern. His poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, including previously The Ekphrastic Review and its challenges, for which he is grateful.

In the Unspecified City
                              
Caught in traffic, with the oncoming night 
erasing the street signs.

Shopkeepers locking their doors, 
stepping out onto sidewalks
strewn with stark headlines and grime.

Carving the air, the blade of a siren.

The purple-black biblical sky
like the city’s inverted shadow.

Under a yellow umbrella, two passers-by 
are laughing.

Longing, such extravagant longing 
for that kind of banter.

It occurs to me that we are still
circling the sun.

Laura Ann Reed​

Laura Ann Reed is a Contributing Editor with The Montréal Review.  Her poems have appeared in seven anthologies, including Poetry of Presence II, as well as in numerous journals. Her most recent work is forthcoming in Illuminations. Her forthcoming chapbook, Homage to Kafka, will be published in July, 2025. https://lauraannreed.net/
​

​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.

​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.

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)

“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).