Shepherdess Bringing In Sheep He died and, in despair, she took over the farm. She put on a cheerful face when feeding the chickens, coddled each seed when planting the corn, and cursed the plow when her dress or apron caught iron. Her sadness abated when calling the sheep who ran to her bleating for her caring caress. These furry beasts were her family now. Hope helped her open the gate to greet their curious faces and not to think about the rickety fence she didn’t have time to repair or her life framed by the pallor of her lonely abode. Charlie Brice Charlie Brice is the winner of the 2020 Field Guide Magazine Poetry Contest and is the author of Flashcuts Out of Chaos (2016), Mnemosyne’s Hand (2018), An Accident of Blood (2019), and The Broad Grin of Eternity (forthcoming), all from WordTech Editions. His poetry has been nominated for the Best of Net anthology and twice for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Atlanta Review, Chiron Review, Plainsongs, I-70 Review, The Sunlight Press, Anti-Heroin Chic, and elsewhere.
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The new ekphrastic writing challenge is up!
Don't forget that the challenges are now posted in "Ekphrastic Writing Challenges" in the menu item above. Click here, or on the image for the instructions and full post. We will continue announcing them here in the main journal thread as well, to avoid confusion. Join us! Wind from the Sea after Wind from the Sea. by Andrew Wyeth (USA) 1947 Hundreds of dead hands – some sounding as names on living lips some known to no one moving air – cut, planed, and placed the pine and plaster straight lines and depth that conspire to hold wavy glass through which distant conifers serrate the skyline. The field of gale blown grass rolls where parallel tracks beckon motorists touch the smell of the saltwater’s edge. Perhaps Christina’s feet before the shriveling of nerves and muscles creaked the dusty cut nailed steps to hang hand me down curtains resurrected from the parlour asserting her order in angular unused space beneath split slate shingles shielding her and Alvaro from Noreastern blows. Lace panels unravel through winter dusk decompositions and summer solstice swelter – for all thread human spun be doomed to untwist – through decades of imprisoned air until 1947 when the odd artist, their neighbour Betsy’s beau and summer sojourner, determined to sketch the dormer window’s divinity where one could step beyond roof and peer from panes into nude air. August sun wringed the wooden walls until this decade’s lone attic visitor, sweating amid cobweb tapestry and paper wasp palaces, dropped his sketchpad to dance to the plain gable window facing the Atlantic’s edge, then raised the fly specked sash above dead moths and shriveled bees. The sting and scent of the sudden seabreeze billow the rotting fabric – languid birds embroidered by long forgotten fingers explode and abstract into life. Insect detritus disappeared as that wind chewed a portrait of frail Christina crawling free against the ceaseless indifferent tics and tocs of tides in water and sky into the fledgling eyes of our image thief who swelled beyond the truth the moving air’s genius trapped in the skull of line and light and shadow. Anything more than the nothing his brush added would belie his muse’s beauty. Tyson West Tyson West has published speculative fiction and poetry in free verse, form verse and haiku distilled from his mystical relationship with noxious weeds and magpies in Eastern Washington. He has no plans to quit his day job in real estate. He is currently the featured USA poet at Muse Pie Press. Tanka, by Saad Ali Frequent contributor Saad Ali contemplates Dali and his mother. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/tanka-by-saad-ali ** Digging Up Dali, by L.E. Goldstein Poet L.E. Goldstein digs up a Dali artwork many of us haven’t seen. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/digging-up-dali-by-le-goldstein ** Couple with Their Heads Full of Clouds, by Mary Lou Buschi Poet Mary Lou Buschi makes magic in just a few words. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/couple-with-their-heads-full-of-clouds-by-mary-lou-buschi ** Mad Minerva, by Steve Klepetar Steve Klepetar tackles mythology and Dali in the earliest days of The Ekphrastic Review. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/mad-minerva-by-steve-klepetar ** Mrs. Dali Takes a Bath, by Katherine Huang Poet Katherine Huang contemplates Dali’s wife. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/mrs-dali-takes-a-bath-by-katherine-huang ** Forever Dali, by Aline Soules Aline Soules remembers the impact of an artwork she saw in person. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/forever-dali-by-aline-soules ** The Lopsided Ticking of Dali’s Clocks, by M.J. Iuppa M.J. Iuppa writes about one of the world’s most recognizable paintings. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/the-lopsided-ticking-of-dalis-clocks-by-mj-iuppa ** Drawers, Slips, and Slits Jungian scholar Dr. Roula-Maria Dib takes apart and puts back together The Anthropomorphic Cabinet. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/drawers-slips-and-slits-by-roula-maria-dib ** Lullabye of Uncle Magritte, by Boris Glikman Surrealist flash fiction writer Boris Glikman is inspired by Michael Cheval’s artwork inspired by Dali and Magritte. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/lullabye-of-uncle-magritte-by-boris-glikman ** (she)ll on the shining sand, by Tricia Marcella Cimera Our poetry judge for the upcoming Bird Watching contest has been with us since the beginning. Here is a poem on a Dali sketch in collaboration with Walt Disney. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/shell-on-the-shining-sand-by-tricia-marcella-cimera ** There are almost six years worth of writing at The Ekphrastic Review. With daily or more posts of poetry, fiction, and prose for most of that history, we have a wealth of talent to show off. We encourage readers to explore our archives by month and year in the sidebar. Click on a random selection and read through our history. Our new Throwback Thursday feature will highlight writing from our past, chosen on purpose or chosen randomly. You’ll get the chance to discover past contributors, work you missed, or responses to older ekphrastic challenges. Would you like to be a guest editor for a Throwback Thursday? Pick up to 10 favourite or random posts from the archives of The Ekphrastic Review. Use the format you see below: title, name of author, a sentence or two about your choice, and the link. Include a bio and if you wish, a note to readers about the Review, your relationship to the journal, ekphrastic writing in general, or any other relevant subject. Put THROWBACK THURSDAYS in the subject line and send to theekphrasticreview@gmail.com. Let's have some fun with this- along with your picks, send a vintage photo of yourself too! Lorette, The Ekphrastic Review Russian:
РАДИОАКТИВНАЯ ЗОНА (на тему картины Анри Руссо «Спящий цыган») Помогите, человек проглотил звезду! На песке пустыни с посохом на весу, не дождавшись, что вынесут и спасут, пульс неровен, на боку застыл. Он теперь другой. Лев, его альтер эго, блюдет покой, а нуклиды владеют его водой. Он бездомен. Из далёких стран прибывает взвод обучить бродягу музыке новых нот, но цыган упал. Видно, не найдёт след кочевья. У бродяги отроду нет жилья – не жалеют близкие и жена, не тревожит громкое: «Вот и я!» час вечерний. Здесь живут невнятные племена. Нам чужими кажутся их имена, может, и у них где-то там война – не завидуй. Наглотавшись звёзд, надышавши след, и без нас повымрут – сомнений нет, но сюда доходит незримый свет в лучшем виде. Идеальный выдался полигон. И солдат доволен – отличье он получил – и дальше, траншею вон в поле роет. А цыган лежит – неприятный тип! От него остался дагерротип. Зарисовка. Кадр. Дигитальный клип. Полароид. ** The Radioactive Zone “Help! The PID* swallowed a star. On the desert floor with the cane pressed to heart not expecting to be saved or carried out, pulse irregular, on his side unmoving, he’s changed, possessed. Alter ego, the lion, guards his peace. Nuclides aren’t stable. Heavy water breaks. He is a barren hobo. Over.” Here comes a squad from far lands or stars to enlighten the thingy, to teach him sounds of the novel notes yet he’s on the ledge, desperate to locate the lame traces of peripatetic world of his. No yurt or wife - who needs such life, no one cares whether he has lice or lost his voice. His pathetic cry doesn’t shake the air. Those who live in desert are flaky tribes. Their names are weird, they must be at war. Nothing to envy, nothing to muster from. They’re bloated from their diet of starry dust, they blow in awe on frozen glass, they’re scarce. Packed with own invisible light, they’ll die with no help from us. Overall, the site’s ideal for explosions and tests. The soldier does his best, decorated and praised. He will dig his crest, and the gypsy … Let'em rest. The grist for the mill, the photo-op, maybe he’s inbred. We never liked him to begin with. Maybe he’s a poster. A gypsy imprint. A study. A frame a minute. Galina Itskovich *PID – a person in distress (cop lingo) Galina Itskovich Galina Itskovich graduated from the Hunter College School of Social Work. She practices psychotherapy, teaches, translates and writes poetry and prose in two languages. Her work appeared in The Write Launch, Harpy Hybrid Review, Poetica, Asian Signature, Unlikely Stories, Cardinal Points, Former People, Global Insides, Contemporary Jewish Writing, and elsewhere. She is the author of one book of poems (in Russian). Galina Itskovich lives in New York City. Visitors Alkaline, how the air hangs as they descend. Like blood to taste, a central void they fill in me. That summer I precipitate, edgy as my father’s calves. Yearlings grown long-legged and rangy. No longer seeking soft chucks beneath chins. I whisper them sometimes into sleep. Still, they trample all that’s green here, scuttle only at the sky, the widening toxic turquoise bands. Thirteen and promised nothing. I wake alone, grind my nails down to nubs. Learn the smear and curl of a land I own. The sin of days when I fold myself paper, leave the fields to their fallow and rot. Nights that expand, fill the shapes as I prune them, the curled-close warmth of family ghosts. No one minds now whether I absorb minerals. If I turn the taps and coat my tongue copper. Sink in whole wasted tubs of it, soften ma’s slips leftover in drawers. I’ve aged in metal since they left. Practice patience each full moon, wait for them to stake their claim. I’ve been told they are choosy. That they seek out the young. Prefer long hair, unremarkable lives. That in the end they’ll want only the perfect, the smooth and sinless, clean and cured. Come August, I bloom strange curves on my chest. Sleep in small doses on new-marked sheets. Ma warned me once. Taught me how to beat out rust that furls beneath me as I sleep. I dream of tongues and a language like roads, crossing over again in my mind. I practice turning my voice to music. Its many tones draw dogs like prey, attract insects angry with heat. In fields the calves swallow me, a fist’s many muscles. They learn to follow the way I call them. I could call them down into the gulch, leave them for their thirst that is my own. Now each night I lay a sheet. A note addressed to the ones who’ve gone. And when they descend, I will be ready. My face a polished stone, emptying into a space ahead. My hands that have plowed and turned the fields, have left some mark on a planet behind. Shannon Cuthbert Shannon Cuthbert is a writer and artist living in Brooklyn. Her poems have been nominated for three Pushcarts, and have appeared in journals including Hamilton Stone Review, Ligeia Magazine, and The Oddville Press. Her work is forthcoming in Thimble Literary Magazine, Across the Margin, and Unearthed, among others. After the Tear Gas When the military tanks rolled in spraying tear gas, Rose escaped through the market, the souvenir wrapped tightly in her palm, thinking of the woman. Did she manage to get up from her sales table and run? Earlier that day near the cathedral in Lima’s plaza, she had met the Peruana wrapped in wool. Rose traded her a few dollars’ worth of soles for a roly-poly figurine, the size of a small guava, earth-brown, formed of clay. Rose was enchanted by the little madonna, round as a seed, polished as a worry bead, face tilted skyward, eyes wise; charmed by the fecund belly caressed smooth by the vendor’s pensive thumb. After the tear gas, Rose imagined the Peruana wiping her weeping eyes, reaching for her comfort, to find it gone. Did she surrender her solace when it passed from her hand? Teresa H. Janssen Teresa H. Janssen lives in the Pacific Northwest where she tends an orchard, teaches, and writes in a variety of genres about nature, social issues, and spirituality. She can be found online at: teresahjanssen.com. She Stands Next to Radha The eyes of Radha meet the eyes of Shyam, the epitome the quintessential embodiment of shringaar. And yet, they are enveloped by twilight melancholy, the last rays of light disappearing into an endlessly dark void. A love that could not be realized, not in this world. Krishna contains everything, he is everything, there is nothing but Krishna, But even Krishna’s heartbreak pales in comparison, To hers. That pain is one even Krishna could not rectify. She watches the lovers, her eyes dead with longing. She has no name, no identity. Before that divine pair, who would even spare her a second thought? She does not long for Him. She does not even see Him. There is room in her heart for only one, Radha. Her only solace lies in the tremble of Krishna’s hand, the knowledge that in this lifetime, He must leave, because the world needs Him. In this lifetime, her love, though unrequited, can survive. Radhe-Shyam and their eternal love are known to all, venerated. Her love is perdu, only a distant memory. She stands next to Radha, invisible, unseen, erased. Pooja Joshi Poet’s note: Raja Ravi Varma is known to have brought to life stories of Indian mythology and history unlike any other artist. Krishna was an avatar of the greatest of Hindu gods, Vishnu. In the epic Mahabharata, he falls in love with Radha as a young man, but has to leave her behind to fulfill his duty. Despite the futility of their relationship, they remain the definition of ‘true love’ in Hindu mythology. Though Krishna never married Radha, they are known and worshipped to this day as ‘Radhe-Shyam’ (Shyam is another name for Krishna). In this poem, rather than focusing on the main characters, I imagine what might be going through the mind of Radha’s handmaiden, who is typically ignored in discussions of Varma’s painting. Pooja Joshi is a poet currently working as a management consultant in Atlanta, GA. On a less boring note, she is also a classically-trained singer, an avid reader (and talks about books on YouTube and TikTok), enjoys traveling around the world, and dabbles in filmmaking. Her work has been published in The Bombay Review. Ars Poetica Imagine yourself a kingfisher, skimming the surface of a lake of the woods so placid you catch yourself bemused by the belted reflection whipping its wings below you. Bankside, your nest rests in cool mud somewhere among cattails and reeds. Your rattle declares your brilliance before you break the mirror with one last plunge. The gloaming casts wooden shadows on the far shore, impels you to your darkened hollow, beak empty. Some days offer little more than the grace of gazing inward. You settle in with your brood, shared warmth your only nourishment, and greet the welcoming pause of night with a flourish of want, anticipation for the scattershot light of dawn. Celluoid In the bleeding throng of dawn we cast aside our penchant for precision, deem what is real to be improvisation. Somewhere our mountain top gets lost-- cathedral spired cliffs thrust their silhouettes, scale daybreak like a slow dissolve shot in a John Ford film where our hero lingers off camera, asks how many suns we must chase before succumbing to serendipity, the wilderness of our longing gilded in an acetate morning beset with shadows. To see clearly is to grasp a whisper. Freehand Given the choice, how would you enter the space rippling between reeds: drift with morning mist torn from a lover’s journal-- bloom like a black ibis fishing a parchment fringe-- bleed like a brushstroke hanging in the folly of margins. What space to enter comes easily, how to fill it takes a lifetime. Landscape 18.4 Whose lone sail carries the boat through sheets of rain, black skies looming? Whose hands guide the rudder through choppy waters? This is the sky breaking. This is after the storm. Lighthouse a mere shadow on the peninsula, landfall a dream. The wake swallows up memories like ink spill in linen. A hard edge bears the night little leniency. A sailor squints in mist, drifting with a calm, heavy-handed yearning. Skeletal What wild creatures haunt our childhood dreams-- lanky, leggy, gathered hip-hinged beneath a waxing moon. Plotting, plodding, they roamed open fields as we slept unaware. Only in dreams did we dare dance with such devilish beings intent on dragging our souls into Satan’s lair. Or so we were told by Baptist grandparents who tucked us in, held our hands, prayed to a god that lingered somewhere in shadow, prayed that we sleep safely until morning. By the time we grew old enough to trust our doubts, these creatures—whose only sin was a longing for our world to see virtue in their otherness-- have left us. We yearn, cling to a past dimly lit, wondering if they still lurk in hillsides, too murky, too foreign for us to trek alone in the blue bruise of night. Chuck Salmons A native of Columbus, Ohio, Chuck Salmons is a poet and currently President of the Ohio Poetry Association. His poems have appeared in several journals and anthologies, including Pudding Magazine, Evening Street Review, Common Threads, The Fib Review, Red Thread Gold Thread, Everything Stops and Listens, and Poets to Come: A Poetry Anthology in honor of Walt Whitman’s bicentennial. His chapbook, Stargazer Suite, was released in December 2016 and is available from 11th Hour Press. His second chapbook, Patch Job, was published by NightBallet Press in 2017. He won the 2011 William Redding Memorial Poetry Contest, sponsored by The Poetry Forum of Columbus, and has garnered awards from Ohio Poetry Day. Most recently, he is a recipient of a 2018 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for his poetry. Chuck regularly gives readings throughout Ohio, both solo and as part of the poetry trio Concrete Wink. He also leads workshops for various groups and audiences. Learn more at his website: chucksalmons.com. Alice Carpenter's inky, rich monotypes have a visual depth and pictorial strength that belie size. Her unique technique and handling of her media evoke an invitation into scenes that combine memory and presence. The tactile physical presence of her monotypes have affinities with some of the early drawings and etchings of the contemporary master Brice Marden. Along with showing in many regional venues, recent national recognition includes selection into the Butler Institute of American Art Midyear National Juried Exhibition (2015, 2016, 2018 & 2019) as well as the Monotype Guild of New England National Juried Exhibition in 2018. Learn more at www.alicecarpenter.com. We are over the moon about the amazing podcast for The Ekphrastic Review, dreamed up by Brian A. Salmons. He is the vision behind TERcets and also the voice- treat yourself to some fine poetry!
The new episode features .chisaraokwu, Kip Knott, and Eileen Ivey Sirota. Check out the first four episodes at the TERcets Podcast link in the menu above, or here. |
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