The First Photograph

                                         …or more specifically, the earliest known surviving
                                       photograph made in a camera, was taken by Joseph
                                       Nicéphore Niépce in 1826 or 1827.

As a child, I would place icicles in my mouth and expect
the rest of my day to taste blue. The cornflower
sheen on the pewter plate of the first photograph ever taken reflects
oil-slick light so well I cannot even tell what I am
looking at: daguerreotype or the glass of a window punched out
of its frame. No point-and-click, but a process
involving mercury vapour and the right kind of light.
To be first is to be fact: if it is cold enough, an icicle will fuse
to the bluebells of fingers. Fact: I am iodine and I am sensitive.
Another fact: the first polaroid I ever took was of the bruised
sky and it developed slowly, the reactive chemicals and light
sensitive grains blooming just like my favourite hydrangeas after winter. 
​
Kat Lewis

Kat Lewis is a candidate in poetry at the University of Idaho where she has served as managing editor and reader for Fugue Literary Journal. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Meadow, High Desert Journal, The Superstition Review, Santa Clara Review, and elsewhere. She lives and teaches in Moscow, Idaho.

The Pushcart Prize panel committee has nominated Mary Jo Balistreri's poem, "Gabriele Munter Paints Her Lover," in The Ekphrastic Review! 

http://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/gabriele-munter-paints-her-lover-by-mary-jo-balistreri
​
​Congratulations to Mary Jo! 

Widow
 
Following the death of her husband, artist Susie MacMurray created a dress made entirely of pins.
 
You’ll find me glittering in doorways,
waiting, like a bride, to snag everyone’s eye.
 
As a bride, I stood through countless fittings,
knew the hopeful calculations of the measuring tape -
 
now I’ve taken shears to dreams, watched beads
of blood swell and break on the fingertips
 
of those who re-stitched the seams. Watch me
thread my way across the room. In my wake,
 
a shivering train, the clicking grief
of one hundred thousand adamantine pins.
 
From a distance they’re glossy with light,
lie like a pelt. Touchable. Come closer –
 
held in the smooth weight of each head,
a fleck of memory, the tight edge of a tear.
 
Victoria Gatehouse

This poem was first published in Mslexia.

Victoria Gatehouse is a Yorkshire-based poets whose work has featured in numerous magazines and anthologies. She originally trained as a scientist before working on her MA in Poetry from MMU. Victoria is particularly obsessed by the garment sculptures and installations of Suzie MacMurry who’s work she first encountered during a poetry course at Manchester Art Gallery. She has a pamphlet forthcoming with Valley Press and does voluntary work as a Library Ambassador for Calderdale.

Garden of the Painter at Saint Clair, 1908

Under the cool blue slats 
of palm trees, a table 
and two empty chairs;
an invitation to come and sit
in this luminous paradise,
perhaps with morning coffee
as the sun squeezes lemon
light through the scaffolding,
Or perhaps with a glass 
of wine in late afternoon 
as grapey shadows
lengthen, stain the ground.
There are purple and yellow
iris in the foreground, colours
laid down in long strokes,
the way the foliage slices
the light.  We’re not there,
of course, but we could be,
even if it’s just the garden
of our dreams.  Here, paint
has stopped time in its blue
and gold tracks. And these
flowers keep unfolding.  

Barbara Crooker

This poem is from the author's book, Les Fauves, C&R Press, 2017.

Barbara Crooker is a poetry editor for Italian-Americana, and has published eight full collections and twelve chapbooks.  Her latest book is Les Fauves (C&R Press, 2017).  She has won a number of awards, including the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships.  A VCCA fellow, she has published widely in such journals as Nimrod, Poet Lore, Rattle, The Green Mountains Review, The Denver Quarterly, and The Beloit Poetry Journal. website:  www.barbaracrooker.com