Judging the Paintings: The Laundress, Greuze

This little laundress is charming, but she's a rascal I wouldn't trust an inch.
– Denis Diderot’s response at the Salon of 1761

What they see is what they hope to bed,
not the maiden, but the maidenhead:
the milliner, the factory girl, laundress,
rascals all but ready to acquiesce
to gentlemen of taste, to men well-bred.

Just so this laundress—fingers chapped and red--
would be a naughty romp for spirited
old roués. They fantasize they might possess
what they see.

Something quickens that lay lately dead
between their withering thighs. She lies outspread
and pert, this working girl, this sorceress.
They rascally remove her cumbrous dress
as voyeurs do. Then gleams, without a thread,
what they see.

Janice D. Soderling

Janice D. Soderling has published hundreds of poems, short stories and translations in international journals including Rattle, Literary Bohemian, Rotary Dial, Ghazal Page, Wasafiri. Work is forthcoming at Modern Poetry in Translation and in The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology published by Lamar University Press.

 
Artist Manifesto  

blue october and the blue dress   lime green and blue cheese     cracked pepper and pink salt      black olives and white wine      carmenere and lithium       little esther and edith piaf    polka dots and stripes   apples and oysters     pat condell and steve martin   mozart and michael jackson   johnny cash and rhett butler   cigars and play doh    sterling silver and turquoise   peeling paint and rusty doors       matthew mark luke and john    shalimar and red lips bluegrass records and big machines    cilantro and sriracha   world war two and marshall mathers     mommie dearest and marilyn monroe    combines and colour fields   culture and couture   paradise and purgatory   the marchesa di casati    magritte and miro    john bender and gentlehands terabithia and robbie joe    cornell’s boxes and flea market treasures     vintage nudes and ephemera    the secret history and  nancy drew mysteries african masks and indian beads   bosch and breugel   methamphetamine nightmares   eternal mourning   silver springs and new orleans   voodoo and the crying game   old hymns and amazing grace    spring and fall and the red wheelbarrow    lilacs and forget me nots     tea and oranges that come all the way from china    the wind up bird and pick up trucks     star child and harriet the spy   ketchup and hamburgers   diamonds and bombay sapphire  a heartbreaking world of staggering genius and the heart is a lonely hunter   the stories of the street   blue jeans and billie jean    severed heads and suicide     sociopaths and freedom fighters    nighthawks and mannequins   blood sucking monkeys from north tonawanda     the black dogs and orange cats    black pearls and cora pearl     sailors and psychonauts    invention and ativan    demian and demian   king david and the king    cleavage and campbell’s cans    wonder woman and the vivian girls  camille paglia and sister wendy  the blind assassin and walking the dark   jughead and kramer and adrian mole    the queen and the rook   churchill and history  bradbury and the future    crazy for you and the angelus    new york and lake charles    war and peace    freedom and reason    cocaine and sunglasses    a man who can be counted among the great loves of my life     the salamander and the rabbit    cowboy angels and when bobby sang the blues    true friends and girls with narcissistic personality disorders    ten of cups and five of pentacles    strawberry island and rapa nui    clandestino and caravaggio  candy hearts and u.f.o.s   e.e. cummings and oscar wilde   medusa and yemaya    mermaids and men    lucinda and miller    warhol and wonder sickness

Lorette C. Luzajic
 
 Lorette C. Luzajic is an artist and writer in Toronto, Canada.  This creative prose piece is from her book Truck, and Other Thoughts on Art.
 
 
 
 
 

A Night in Paris

Your chin on my

beehive.

Your hands like the

ends of snake

tails entwined

in the small of

my back.

No need

to pull. I leaned

easily into

your need.

 

The piano yielding

to the sax, which

carried our hunger.

Your legs knew

me when they

nestled against

mine pretending

to dance.

Rose Mary Boehm

A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and a full-length poetry collection (TANGENTS) published in 2011 in the UK, her work has been widely published in US poetry reviews as well as some print anthologies. One of her poems was chosen for Diane Lockward’s 'The Crafty Poet'. She won third price in in the 2009 'Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse' (US), was semi-finalist in the 'Naugatuck Poetry Contest' 2012/13 and has been a finalist in several Goodreads poetry contests, winning it twice: in October 2014 and January 2016; a new poetry collection is currently in pre-production for publication in 2016 the US.

Jasper Johns’ “Corpse and Mirror II”
 
from underground I look     up I see shore
or sky     I breathe air
 
or not this     is the curve
of my rib    arrow
 
of my scapula
I am broken      slate scattered
 
one lip touches      another they
are mine     they are ours
 
the key      to this map
its starburst of directions
 
billowing north wind     its broken

and intersecting        rivers and roads

Elaine Mintzer

Elaine Mintzer has been published in a number of journals and anthologies including Cultural Weekly, Rattle, Silver Birch Press, Lindenwood Review, Cyclamens and Swords, and Voices Israel.  Her work was featured in 13 Los Angeles Poets. Elaine’s first collection, Natural Selections, was published by Bombshelter Press.  She writes and teaches writing in Los Angeles.

7 ÜBER 7

2% of the text covers n% of the area code
1 colour roll call lull
2 fonts seize front and size

1 subject dialed 7 lines
2 verbs surged 3 times charged 1 tip
3 directs reported 4 objectified indirects

4 definite arts defeated 3 indefinite listicles
5 propped up prepositions plus 2 preppy propositions
6 missing punctuation marks found hidden in 1 space
7 adjectives advertised against agency and anatomical agendas

Matthew Hittinger

Matthew Hittinger is the author of The Erotic Postulate (2014) and Skin Shift (2012) both from Sibling Rivalry Press, and the chapbook Pear Slip (2007), winner of the Spire Press Chapbook Award. He received his MFA from the University of Michigan where he won a Hopwood Award. His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, has been adapted into art songs, and in 2012 Poets & Writers Magazine named him a Debut Poet on their 8th annual list. Matthew lives and works in New York City.

Borodin
 
Will never again raise his baton,
But the orchestra plays
Tashkent, Bukhara, Samarkand.
 
Wind is a thread
Hanging
From distant mountains.
 
Steppe grasses hiss
And sand,
More sand, blows.
 
A pony waits,
Feet together,
Head down.
 
Dusk drifts
Like a violet scarf
Across day's face,
 
Hush, hush,
Quiet,
Still.
 
Here at time's end there is
Salt
But no tears.

Robert Walton

This poem was previously published at Fictionique.

Robert Walton is a musician with several dozen published poems.  He says: "My novel Dawn Drums was recently awarded first place in the 2014 Arizona Authors Association’s literary contest and also won the 2014 Tony Hillerman Best Fiction Award.  Barry Malzburg and I wrote “The Man Who Murdered Mozart”, published by Fantasy & SF in 2011."