The new challenge is up. Click on image above for details.
0 Comments
The Grieving Mother It's winter outside the window, winter inside the room. The walls are empty except for one small painting of the child. And the mother without her child stands at the sill. The floor is bare and cold. She has labored at the business of picking up the pieces death leaves behind. She has scrubbed the floor until her hands were raw, prepared the whole house for guests, strangers to her heart. She has worn the plaster mask of her polite smiles and faux thank yous until it has worn thin and brittle. She has made and remade the beds in his room with precision for there is nothing else she can do. Crisp corners folded closed, white open-weave blankets stretched tight like muscles, sinew, thoughts reaching. Through a haze it is clear there is something more, something missing, something beyond the looming bare and blackened branches against the snow, beyond the frosted panes of glass where the child once played, where bulbs she and the child planted once bloomed, something floating in the high ceilings, trapped in the crevices of the plaster tiles of fleurs de lis and flourishes, like a whisp of smoke from a fire just put out or the mist of an apparition. There in those tiny spaces is the child's voice telling stories between bedtime yawns. The mother knows they are there: the spring bulbs, the vision of the child skipping rope under the bellies of the trees, the small voice full of wonder, but they are hidden, blurry, muffled memories just outside her grasp, just outside her grief. She can't look anymore, not at the pillow where he slept, his picture on the wall. She can only stare at her empty reflection echoed in the bleak landscape outside the boy's window. She can only wait for the spring and hope those bulbs will bloom again. Julene Waffle Julene Waffle is a NYS public school teacher, a writer, a business owner, a wife, a mother of three boys, two dogs, and three cats, and more fish than she can count. She loves nature and feels at home among the trees. She earned degrees from Hartwick College and Binghamton University. Her work has appeared in several journals such as La Presa, The English Journal; River, Blood, Corn Literary Journal; The Nonconformist, the anthologies of Civilization in Crisis, Seeing Things, and American Writers Review, and a chapbook entitled So I Will Remember. Ο πειρασμός Ο πειρασμός είναι μονάχα ένα όνομα για μια τροπή απρόσμενη στο οπτικό πεδίο: ο Άγιος ίπταται, στα καλογερικά του, τα ετεροχρονισμένα μαύρα, έχοντας αφήσει πίσω του τα βράχια και τ’ άφυλλα δέντρα που, στον χλωρό νου της ήπιας υπαίθρου, ειν’ η έρημος, η αλλόκοτη απομόνωση της Αιγύπτου. Με μια μετατόπιση τεκτονική, αδιόρατη, η Τοσκάνη, γαλήνια κι εμπορική, απλώνει σαν μπουγάδα τη χλωρίδα της στον Άρνο. Ανάμεσα στα δύο αιωρείται ο κύκλος του δαιμόνιου, με το πράσινο της σαύρας, το κόκκινο του βράγχιου, με λέπια και ακάνθους, πλόκαμους στο χρώμα του φυκιού, πτερύγια. Ο ανοιχτός πρωκτός ενός δαίμονα γυρίζει ανάποδα τη φόδρα του κορμιού μπροστά στον μαύρο ήλιο: ολόγυρα, το συγκεχυμένο συντακτικό της ανατομίας, σελίδες συγγραμμάτων σε μια συναρμογή που συγκροτεί το τερατώδες, η πτήση η ίδια αντιφατική με δεδομένη την καταγωγή του ανόσια ιπτάμενου στο χθόνιο. Στη μέση του στροβίλου, ο Αντώνιος, χλωμός, σαν να ’χει μόλις ξυπνήσει από όνειρο, υπομένει τα επίμονα χτυπήματα του ασυνειδήτου του, το όργιο χρωμάτων που σαρκάζει το ράσο του, το παράταιρο όλων των πραγμάτων, την εισβολή από το μέλλον του υπερρεαλισμού, το σύνολο των διαταραχών που απαιτεί η αγιότητα. ** Temptation Temptation is only a name for an unexpected turn in the visual field: the Saint flies, in his monkish, out-of-date black, having left behind him the rocks and the leafless trees that, in the green mind of the mild countryside, is the desert, the grotesque isolation of Egypt. With a displacement that is tectonic, invisible, Tuscany, serene and mercantile, unfolds its flora on the Arno like so much laundry. Between the two, suspended, lies the cycle of the demonic, with the green of the lizard, the red of fish gills, with scales and thorns, tentacles in the color of seaweed, fins. The open anus of a demon turns the lining of the body inside out before the black sun: all around, the confused syntax of anatomy, pages of treatises in a splicing that constitutes the monstrous, flight itself a contradiction given the descent of the blasphemously avian in the cthonic. In the midst of this whirlpool Anthony, pale as if he has just woken from a dream, bears the persistent beatings of his unconscious, the orgy of colors that mocks his cassock, the incongruity of all things, the invasion of surrealism from the future-- the sum total of disruptions that holiness demands. Antonis Balasopoulos Antonis Balasopoulos was born in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1970 and is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Cyprus. He has published two volumes of creative prose and aphorisms (Through the Loophole and The Book of Brief Reflections), three poetry collections (Multiplicities of Zero, White on White and The Book of Creatures) and a collection of short fiction (The Cube and Other Stories), all in Greek. He has also translated Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, W.B. Yeats, Louise Glück and Ezra Pound. His poetry, fiction and translations have been published in several printed and online periodicals in Greece, Cyprus and the UK. The Castle at Chermomor; or, The Troubador's Song The stone wall stands so tall, for a moment he sighs and considers returning to town, when a memory comes, of her beautiful eyes and her figure so graceful in gown, then he sees a firm foothold, determines to try to make true on the promise he swore: ‘I shall sing to my Love of my love till I die, then my spirit sing love evermore!’ He embarks on the climb, scales the uppermost heights, and peers down into grand garden grounds, lustrous lawns, beauteous blooms, clothed in moon’s languid lights, and the guards on their stern midnight rounds, but they do not glance up as they march swiftly by, and he tunes to the flowery floor: ‘I shall sing to my Love of my love till I die, then my spirit sing love evermore!’ He descends among lime limbs to crouch in long grass, then steals slowly alongside box hedge, as soft lavender lemon balm southerlies pass, with the scent of the far sea and sedge, then he hears distant waves breaking hungry and high and he calls to the warrior roar: ‘I shall sing to my Love of my love till I die, then my spirit sing love evermore!’ He approaches the tower door, made of oak beams, yet ajar for his flight up the stairs to her turret room, till now viewed only in dreams but inspiring a thousand cantaires, then he sings to his sweetheart until he is dry and he whispers: ‘How I thee adore! I shall sing to my Love of my love till I die, then my spirit sing love evermore!’ F.F. Teague F.F. Teague (Fliss) is a copyeditor/copywriter by day and a poet/composer come nightfall. She lives in Pittville, a suburb of Cheltenham (UK). Her poetry features regularly in the Spotlight of The HyperTexts; she has also been published by The Mighty, Snakeskin, The Ekphrastic Review, and a local Morris dancing group. Other interests include art, film, and photography. From the Watchbird Estrela after Sleeping Boy, by Odd Nerdrum (Norway) 1992. Click here to view. How many times, the bird wondered, gazing out to the sea of unplacatable clouds, will I have to escort this one? Already more lives than he’d been taught these mortaled energies could have. He’s had to acknowledge that lately they’d been turning around more quickly: birth, life, transition—or as they like to call it, death—here for a minute and back at it again, hungry to jump into the fray of time and space. Perhaps, he thought, his class in transitional transportation had been minus a chapter—it had been the year of that new instructor with the long bones of light cascading from his circlet of time. Come to think of it, the light in this one’s cradle is pretty similar, drenched, it seems, in a skin of light rain. No matter, it’s part of the job—clarity or not—and so Estrela keeps watch until the clouds flatten and the shifting begins. Long ago, he accepted (not easy, by the way, even here) it’s not his to understand, just witness—and yes, it’s true, clean things up a bit. Recently, they’ve been bringing things with them although the instructions clearly state the photo of your wife, the wedding ring, the hidden box of jewels and the pile of unread books, your favorite sequined dupatta, the scrumptious deruni with the so-sweet berries, none of it will be of use here. Oh, good, he thinks, here it comes. The stripping, the cool flat line, the boat. I can take my break now. After, of course, I remove the gun. Again. Annaliese Jakimides Annaliese Jakimides’s prose and poetry have been published in many periodicals and anthologies. Her work has been broadcast on NPR and Maine Public. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize, it has also been cited in national competitions, including the Acadia Prize, the Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize, and the Maine Literary Awards. Her essay “I Tell Henry the Plate Is Red” is included in the anthology Breaking Bread (Beacon Press, May 2022). She lives in Bangor, Maine. www.annaliesejakimides.com Bring The Ekphrastic Review to your local by Zoom! By now you have heard about our online writing workshops. And we hope you'll join us for a few the great workshops in the lineup- we have Ekphrastic Flash Fiction coming up, Wine and Art Write Night, Sunday Sessions, and will be adding many more. But why not bring The Ekphrastic Review to you? Lorette will join you as a guest speaker on the joys of ekphrastic writing, tailoring a workshop or course to your needs. She has done online appearances, workshops, and full courses with various university creative writing classes, the Bath Flash Fiction Festival, Hong Fook Mental Health Association, and more. Contemplating visual art and writing about it is fun, therapeutic, creative, and expansive. It is for professional writers and English lit students, but also for teens, senior centres, churches, museums, hospitals, community centres, cultural centres, and more. Lorette will create a program with your audience in mind, curating art and conversation around the needs of your participants. For example, if she is working with a particular art gallery, selections will be from that collection. Workshops can be single session or in series. Reasonable rates/flexible to your budget. Contact Lorette at theekphrasticreview@gmail.com. Put GUEST WORKSHOP in subject line! We would love to connect with and inspire your community! Not sure where to bring the Review? museums art centres art galleries art school/art programs classrooms (college, university, high school) libraries book clubs senior centres church groups recovery groups community centres cultural centres institutions (mental health, hospitals, addiction recovery, etc) wine club young writers groups associations etc. ** Lorette C. Luzajic is an award-winning, internationally collected visual artist in Toronto, Canada. She has a degree in journalism but always gravitated to creative writing. She loves writing from or about art, and her ekphrastic poems, essays, and stories have been widely published, as well as winning first place in a contest, being nominated for Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and four times each for Best of Net and the Pushcart Prize. In 2015 she started The Ekphrastic Review, a site that has grown into the world's flagship ekphrastic journal, and an amazing community of writers worldwide. For many years, through the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health hospital, Lorette has been teaching art in person and online to communities with lived experience of mental illness. She also hosts regular workshops online through the journal, and has done ekphrastic courses, workshops or presentations at the University of Singapore, Trinity Western University, Hong Fook Mental Health Association in Toronto, Bath Flash Fiction Festival, and more. She also teaches ekphrastic flash fiction intensives with Meg Pokrass, and much more. Blind Men and Elephant i. Blind men, blind men! Every year the blind men come to climb and grab and poke. They argue and litter the yard with their sticks! ii. I hold the world on my shoulder, fingers reach into canyons, a continent rests against my cheek. It is no small thing, this elephant world. iii. I am awash in a waterfall of hair. Parting the strands, I feel for a ledge on which to rest but find none. If you tell me this waterfall is a tail, Then I think the elephant must be a great mountain lake. iv. In ten lifetimes I could not put my arms around this pillar. v. Swinging loose from the sky, this elephant-thing soars and wraps itself around me as my fingers meet on its far side. A strange bird, indeed, that flies without wings! vi. You say this creature lives, but I feel no fur, no feathers, no scales. Does blood run through this stone? Does its heart pump? vii. It was no small feat, scaling this mountain. But now I straddle its wrinkled peak. This is the world as the priests teach it: Vast and craggy. But where are its trees? Where are the rivers to run in its furrows? viii. Blind men, blind men! Every year the blind men come to climb and grab and poke. They argue and litter the yard with their sticks! Flying Geese, Grazing Deer Geese fly beneath us as we carry our bundles across this chasm. Far below, clouds like glaciers creep through the trees giving us a false security. On the far cliff, grazing deer: One eating the grass, the other watching the new season arrive. Measuring a Pine Tree This tree bores into the earth like a waterfall pierces the river, searching under the surface for rocks to caress. Even the three of us embracing its trunk are not enough to welcome the tree. We could tell fellow travelers of this holy visit, but they follow their own road seeking other miracles. This Wind This wind would rip the cloak from my shoulders, uproot the willow, tear the boat from its mooring. This wind would pull the grass out of the river, snap masts in the port, scatter houses. Yes, my friend, the wind would do all these things, but is content to send you chasing your hat along the path. Where the World is Born Here is where the sky takes root in the earth. Here is where the world is born. See there: on the bush above the falls, a drop of dew squatting on a leaf. Bill Siegel
Bill Siegel lives in the Boston area. Recent publications of his work appear in Naugatuck River Review, JerryJazzMusician, Rust+Moth, Rabid Oak, and Blue Mountain Review, among others. He has also contributed to the anthologies, Indigenous Pop: Native American Music from Hip Hop to Jazz (Univ. Arizona Press), and Beyond Lament: Poets of the World Bearing Witness to the Holocaust (NorthWestern Press). He is currently working on a collection of poems inspired by Japanese woodblock prints by Hokusai, Hiroshige, and others. Blue Whale of Catoosa A few years past pearl and a year short of coral; there’s no traditional gift for a 34th wedding anniversary. One retired zookeeper crafted an 80-foot-long blue whale from concrete and pipe for his wife who collected miniature whale figurines. Old Blue still swims in a little pond off Route 66: slide spouting from his side, diving platform perched on his raised tail, jaunty little baseball cap. Whales are the grand pooh-bahs of planet earth. Tongues as heavy as elephants, blood vessels so wide you could backstroke through them. Old Blue’s massive open-mouth smile welcomes visitors inside. Children’s laughter echoes from all eighteen porthole windows. Whales’ resonances can rival jet engines and have continued to amplify as grunts of maritime traffic and groans of glacial melting block calls from reaching would-be lovers. Divers report feeling these songs more than hearing them. And isn’t that the sure sign of a successful gesture of love? Not a thing smuggled from the bottom of the sea but a bellow loud enough to attract attention across the ocean, the Mother Road. Still, whales don’t mate for life, or even for gestation and no matter how grand, a one-night stand won’t satisfy voracious human standards for true love. Daily intimacies sustain us, gobbled up like six tons of krill. 34 years of morning coffee, knowing just how much creamer. No need for words. Jolly Green Giant Orphaned by his parent company but beloved by his adopted town – Minnesota Daily On the final day of Blue Earth’s Giant Days festival, children follow size 78 lima-bean-green footprints downtown for a mid-summer parade. The 55ft gardener, resplendent in his verdant tunic, models, as always, atop his 8ft base with staircase. Summer vacationers pose for pictures between his legs. We wish for children to believe in the delicate magic that rarely breeches our own somber flowerbeds, having traded the security of frayed blankets for the predictability of reason and logic. Vehicles heading to Yellowstone and the Black Hills are coaxed from strict velocities, yielding to back-seat appeals and driver curiosities. Children are our best excuse to make bad time, bow to the unbeatable clock--a logical reason to pull off the highway in pursuit of a fiberglass goliath, grinning above the tree line. On Giant’s Eve, parents stay up late with quarts of weatherproof paint, custodians of wonder, sowers of seeds, again and again, heartened by the sprouts. Lady’s Leg Sundial The founder of the of Sun Aura Nudist Resort argued in a Northern Indiana court that the constitution doesn’t decree citizens must wear clothes: My Country Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty. The subsequent owner erected a 63ft high-kicking lady’s leg properly angled to cast punctual shade upon a red, white, and blue pedestal. Convenient for the wristwatchless naturalist. Spectators are welcome to gawk at the plexiglass and plywood Rockette-style sundial. The rest of the 300 forested acers (including the heart-shaped lake) are Members Only. There’s something exact about submerging in the element of the world, embracing your whole body as both instrument and ornament, playing cribbage and pickleball without constraint. Around Saint Patty’s, Sun Aura officially kicks their season off with an Erin-Go-Braless mixer. In preparation, colonists repaint the sundial’s slender gam fully exposed to the warmth of mid-day sun. Mammy’s Cupboard Fried chicken, collard greens, and bake beans are served (after tours of antebellum mansions made famous by Gone with the Wind) inside the hoop-skirt of a 28-foot, red-brick, bandanna-wearing, southern mammy. Tuesday through Saturday, waitresses stack plates, clank silverware, and slice famous banana caramel pies, under cypress support beams salvaged from a bulldozed cotton gin house. In the 60s, management softened the red of her cheeks, unhooked her horseshoe earrings, ceased running ads that proclaimed: Mammy’s vittles will nurse chil-uns now aged into good ol’ boys and gals. Recent owners restored her crumbling arms and serving tray, refurbished the arched windows of her housedress, claiming the blueprints more O’Hara-esque. Frommer’s advises checking all political correctness at the door. They’ve lightened her complexion, rebranded as kitsch— a throwback to the Golden Age of Hollywood. But nothing revises half-empty breasts, the cries of empty-bellied infants. A young master asleep in his crib, milk dribbling from his satiated mouth. Igloo City The proprietor envisioned his remote motel as an arctic Wigwam Village with guests quartered in an 80ft snow hut instead of concrete teepees. Nowadays, travelers pull over to take a leak, peak at the crumbling infrastructure. One man’s pit stop is another’s unfulfilled dream. Snow conceals weather-beaten urethane and crude graffiti. Fifty-eight dormer windows frame rugged Alaskan mountain-views from the inside of unrealized rooms. Halfway between Anchorage and Fairbanks it’s easy to imagine warm lights projecting from each boarded-up opening, coarse laughter from the bar. Would-be lodgers, bellies full of black coffee, heading off to Wonder Lake. Reeling-in postcards of the 42ft Santa Claus in North Pole. Denali cascading through their fishing nets. Despite zoning men equipped with red pens, he was steadfast in the belief that his happiness depended on more sheetrock for a personal penthouse suite. Even from the top floor, he couldn’t see the snow for the flakes, actuality for fantasy. Igloos are solidified by cycles of chilling and thawing. When occupied, temperatures can reach a balmy 60° even when its -50°, body heat moonlighting as a furnace. Like a dream, an igloo will dissipate when permanently inhabited. John Wojtowicz John Wojtowicz grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery in the backwoods of what Ginsberg dubbed “nowhere Zen New Jersey.” Currently, he pays the bills as a licensed clinical social worker and adjunct professor. He has been featured on Rowan University’s Writer’s Roundtable on 89.7 WGLS-FM and several of his poems were chosen to be exhibited in Princeton University's 2021 Unique Minds: Creative Voices art show at the Lewis Center for the Arts. He has been nominated 3x for a Pushcart Prize and serves as the Local Lyrics contributor for The Mad Poets Society Blog. He is the author of Roadside Attractions: a poetic guide to American oddities which can be purchased on his website: www.johnwojtowicz.com. John lives with his wife and two children in Upper Deerfield, NJ. The Roman God of Agriculture Saturn eats his son’s head first, next gorges on an arm. The child hangs in Saturn’s grasp, naked and limp. The corpse doesn’t look childlike, with muscles defined as if already grown to manhood, but the story goes that Saturn ate his infant children. Look at his eyes with irises, bullet holes within the sclera. He stares stupidly into his wild haired future fueled by the tang of vernal blood and consumes his only happiness. At the Museo del Prado, surrounded by gold trim and black lacquer, Saturn crushes warm bones in his maw before us in real time, but we swear we’d never do something so gross, and move on, once again. Melinda Thomsen Melinda Thomsen is the author of Armature from Hermit Feathers Press, and her chapbooks Naming Rights and Field Rations are from Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in Rattle, New York Quarterly, Poetry East, Tar River Poetry, The Comstock Review, among others. She lives in North Carolina and you can find her on Twitter at @ThomsenMelinda or at www.melindathomsen.com On Bhat Bhat Boy likes to point out that his mother Jean was a cleaning lady and his father Roger a spy. All I know is that they were welcoming and kind when they took me in as a lodger. I had just returned from my mother’s funeral in Europe and would start the third year of my art history studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, as a “mature matriculant” from the Netherlands. Their eldest son, Gary, was a gifted physics student (and is currently a Professor at Bath University) and young Ian was mainly drawing maps or decorating an antique doll’s house. He and I became friends for life when he discovered I had added a double toilet to the doll’s bathroom, in the shape of the little plastic thingie one kept one’s contact lenses in; it had two lids, thus making the perfect toilet. For dolls. Ian (now Bhat Boy) would come to my room and we would talk about art. He was a great listener and enjoyed leafing through my books. Much later, in an interview, he said that our conversations had been important to him when he was deciding on his own future in art. The evening prior to my leaving Canada to continue for an MA in Paris, Bhat and I had an official date. In restrospect it was one of the best dates I’ve ever had. First, Bhat produced a bag of sticky toffees, then we went to the park and climbed trees which he said he had “carefully chosen for me”; we were called down by a grumpy gentleman who thought we should behave. When he drove off we immediately climbed up again, just to prove a point. We played football with a pine cone and studied the pond life. I was thirty-eight, Bhat was thirteen. After Paris I settled down in Bern, to work in an art gallery. Much later, when Bhat studied in Florence, he would come up for long weekends. I gave him healthy meals and we visited the Swiss museums. On one occasion, in the city of Lucerne, we stopped in the old town to look at the shop windows. Standing in front of one of the city’s many chocolate shops we discovered a life-size crib with a baby bear fast asleep and insects crawling all over it. All made of chocolate, of course. The one and only time I have seen a grown-up man with tears of laughter running down his face. Lots has been said and written about Bhat as an artist. For me, what keeps our friendship going in spite of the geographical distance, is his delicious sense of humour, his golden imagination, his generosity. And sometimes, unexpectedly, getting a sense of the man he has become, down to earth, no fool, very caring and very brave. I love him to bits. Elsa Fischer Elsa Fischer comes from the Netherlands, studied Art History at Carleton University, Ottawa, lived and jobbed on four continents and currently lives in Switzerland’s capital where she is a “yelpie” rather than a “woopie”. She tries hard to convey her love of poetry to the natives and is a member of a workshop for expats. She has two pamphlets in the UK and poems published in magazines and anthologies. She endeavours to age with grace. Read Elsa's poem about art by Bhat Boy here. Elsa was a finalist in our Ekphrastic Sex contest. Read her work here. |
The Ekphrastic Review
COOKIES/PRIVACY
This site uses cookies to deliver your best navigation experience this time and next. Continuing here means you consent to cookies. Thank you. Join us on Facebook:
Tickled Pink Contest
April 2024
|