 Cuevas de las Manas, Argentina, 7300 B.C.E. Photography by Marianocecowski, 2005. Painted Hands
Here is the human touch without which no thing could be said to exist. In the old caves--Chauvet, or say Cueva de las Manos--hands follow contours of rock to describe themselves in stencil and print, with chalk and charcoal, with polychromatic ochres, and always with some touch of pink. The ancients used slick swells of stone walls and ceilings to give the impression of moving upward in the flickering light, often found in recesses absent of any forms of human life as if yearning had no body. The images of open hands, hands held high, a universal sign we might otherwise find in the elementary school, or say out on an open highway, a conscious act of attention, a reaching out, trying to touch something, as if their owners wished to offer some impression of themselves, their yearning, or to invite others, future hands, to join them, a community, as if they did not wish to enter the unknown alone. Michael Gessner Michael Gessner has authored 11 books of poetry and prose. His work may be found in American Literary Review, The French Literary Review, The Kenyon Review, North American Review, Oxford Magazine, rue des Beaux-Arts (Paris,) Verse Daily, The Yale Review of Humanities in Medicine, and others. For additional information, please see https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/michael-gessner or https://www.michaelgessner.com/
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 Christina's World, by Andrew Wyeth (USA). 1948. Windblown
There is a woman in a browning field of summer wheat and somewhere a radio is playing her favourite song to a window shutting for the evening. She is in a pink shirtdress with black dirt beneath her fingernails. Her hands are rough, the kind from time spent running them against every shade of wood grain. The kind of rough of humming in your sleep with nobody in bed beside you to hear. Maybe she is hypnotized by the high noon light or maybe she is suffocating in the whitecaps of gold. Or maybe she just wants to be left alone, and I’m not sure it makes any difference. The stickers in her hose turn her pale ankle skin into plowed acreage. Her body a scarecrow. An exhibit. Her dark hairs rattlesnake through the wind until the farm is a dollhouse under a magnifying glass sky. She accordioned to the ground at some point, idyllically, with a haystack at her back, as if this were a painting, as if this were something any of us have a name for. 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.  View of Shroon Mountain, Essex County, New York, After a Storm, by Thomas Cole (USA) 1838. Burn This Beauty
On a warm March night, I take my kids to the playground. Emily doesn’t want to go at first, complaining that she’d rather stay inside and play on her Kindle, but it’s all I can do to make Jonathan and Nathan put on their boots and jackets before they run out the door. Once we get outside, the moist air pulls at us. We leave our small yard, hemmed in by a rusty chain link fence. The streetlights are coming on. As Emily and Nathan ride their bikes up the street towards the schoolyard, I feel my neck tense up. There’s a lot of traffic a block away on Detroit Avenue, and ambulances scream by late at night. I remember coming here a few years ago and finding junkies shooting up in the plastic playground tunnel. I made my kids leave immediately, ignoring their pleading cries. Recently, the school fenced the lot, fixed up the playground and added a toddler area, and it’s gotten safer. Tonight, a full moon hangs in the sky. The patches of ice on the spongy playground surface spider web and snap as we walk. I play “monster” with the kids, running after them as they squeal. As it gets darker, Nathan does a strip tease, first unzipping his jacket, then taking his arms out, and finally throwing it on top of the slide, where it stays. This winter, we’ve had many 50-degree days like this, and even when I tell them not to take their coats off, it’s hard to stop them. It’s completely dark now, but the kids don’t want to leave. They jump on the snow piles left by the plow. Jonathan falls in a crater and I rescue him. Later, seeing Thomas Cole’s “View of Shroon Mountain, Essex County, New York, After a Storm,” I notice the two Native American men hunting in the foreground, their red headdresses blending in with the autumn New World landscape. The one standing in front holds a musket, the snout poking up through the understory of the forest, and I feel my neck tense up again, at the dangers of a warming planet. Lee Chilcote Lee Chilcote: "My poetry has been published in Great Lakes Review, Oyez Review, Steam Ticket, PacificREVIEW, Kaws Mouth and other publications. My essays have been published in Out of Line, Muse, Riverwind, Whiskey Island, Belt and the books Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology, The Cleveland Neighborhood Guidebook, A 2016 Race Anthology and Cleveland in Prose and Poetry. I have also written for Vanity Fair, Next City, Planning, Agence France Press, Belt and other publications. My chapbook, The Shape of Home, was a finalist for two poetry competitions and was published by Finishing Line Press in 2017. I completed an M.A. in English and Creative Nonfiction Writing from Cleveland State University in 2002, where I was awarded the Leonard Trawick Creative Writing Prize for nonfiction writing. I'm cofounder and director of the nonprofit organization Literary Cleveland, whose mission is to create and nurture a vibrant literary arts community in Northeast Ohio."  The Japanese Warrior Vase, by Odilon Redon, (France). 1905. What We Need
Why shouldn’t flowers look like clam balloons on strings, like coral fireworks surrounding blue eyeballs? Why not golden strawberries, a yellow sickle on a bed of maroon? They don’t exist, Madame Hohnloser said, but who died and made her god of all things growing? They may not yet be discovered, or evolved. Perhaps we may simply need them to exist in the face of so much sorry predictability, so many machines, so little room to walk freely. Maybe this is why the Samurai on the vase is smiling. Surrounded by colour, he refuses not to dream. J. Stephen Rhodes Poems by J. Stephen Rhodes have appeared in over fifty literary journals, including Shenandoah, Tar River Poetry, and Texas Review, as well as several international reviews. Wind Publications has published his two poetry collections, The Time I Didn’t Know What to Do Next (2008) and What Might Not Be (2014). He has won a number of literary awards including two fellowships from the Hambidge Center for the Arts and Sciences, selection as a reader for the Kentucky Great Writers Series. Most recently, he won First Prize in Still: The Journal’s annual poetry contest. He holds an MFA from the University of Southern Maine-Stonecoast and a Ph.D. from Emory University.  Czech Man Called Up for Work, photography by Zdenek Tmej (Czechoslovakia) 1943. Zdenek Tmej, Czech Man Called Up for Work, 1943
Because of you, we won the war. Communiqués sent to save Kursk Offensive Go un-dispatched and lie On the desk whose top covers your lap Like an afghan. The phone that rings Breathes with the voice of Goering Crying with the news of new warplanes. Still In your 19th-century mustache and cap Slouched with eagle of the Reich, your head rests Caught in the stag’s antlers of your hands. What are you dreaming about? Girls with wine and baskets, no doubt. A mother’s voice like a shout of birdsong. She is calling you, and you are a boy again Wanting to follow the girls with their wine Into an apple orchard. Anyway, You never liked work, or Hitler, And you are too old to start. Andrew Miller Andrew Miller: "I am a poet, critic and translator with over eighty publications to my name. My poems have appeared in such journals as The Massachussett’s Review, Ekphrasis, Iron Horse,Shenandoah, Spoon River Review, Laurel Review, Hunger Mountain, Rattle and New Orleans Review. In addition, I have had poems appear in such anthologies as How Much Earth, Anthology of Fresno Poets (2001) and The Way We Work: Contemporary Literature from the Workplace (2008). Finally, I am one of the co-editors of The Gazer Within, The Selected Prose of Larry Levis (2001) and the author of Poetry, Photography Ekphrasis: Lyrical Representations of Photography from the 19th Century to the Present (2015). These many publications have come with a number of awards for my poetry. Four of my poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, three by Ekphrasis Magazine and one by Yemassee, and in 2002, David St John chose my poem “Hello My Lovely” as the best poem for Runes’ Magazine’s Mystery Prize. Additionally, in 2004, 2005 and 2006, my manuscript The Flesh of the Parables was short listed by the National Poetry Series and by Tupelo Press. I hold a PhD from Copenhagen University on the subject of ekphrastic poetry and photography."  from Symphony series, by Shallon Fadlien (Canada, b. St. Lucia) 2016. Abishag
1 Kings 1:1-4 And then there is Abishag who cherishes the king -- he won’t touch her when she bathes him with bay leaves, singing his psalms or teasing with tent refrains on the queen and that old affair; he won’t touch her full breasts full under the wet blouse and her hips clinging to the soaked skirt and one mischievous bay leaf on the tremulous curve of the world -- he won’t look when he stands in the tub, shaking with cold in his bones desiring in his blood as she towels him with wool from Lebanon -- later, he won’t interfere with her when they sleep on each other and she warms him with her hot body under the quilted Shunammite coverlet — Abishag, the tender. John Robert Lee John Robert Lee is a Saint Lucian writer. His Collected Poems 1975-2015 was published by Peepal Tree Press (2017). Shallon Fadlien is a Saint Lucian artist who lives in Oshawa, Ontario,Canada.
Did you know? The Ekphrastic Review is one of the few resources that focuses on ekphrastic writing, that is, poetry and prose inspired by art. What makes us different? The Ekphrastic Review won't take submission fees. We will never litter our beautiful showcase for writers and artists with click bait ads on how to get rid of wrinkles or what celebrity gaffes you missed. We don't believe in taking any rights from our writers, not even for a moment. Writers are free to publish their works anywhere, before, during or after we do. Unbelievably, this is not the "industry standard." We also don't believe that work that has already been published should be dead wood for a writer- we are happy to share previously published works with a new and different audience. Did you know? We are now averaging around 3500 unique readers per week, and 15 to 20 thousand page views every week. And growing! That means our writers' poetry and stories are being read almost a million times each year. Did you know? Your editor spends on average two hours a day, every day, reading submissions, posting, arranging, organizing, corresponding, and growing The Ekphrastic Review. That's about one and a half work weeks in volunteer time out of every month. You can help support our maintenance and growth! This month's promotion is on several series of graphic poetry artworks on paper, by Lorette C. Luzajic, buy one get one free. These are $100 USD plus 15$ shipping, for a total of $115 for your choice of two. These mixed media works on paper come in a black mat. One pair is on its way to Michigan- thank you so much. View the works here, with instructions for purchase on Etsy, or through PayPal to [email protected]. View selection here: www.mixedupmedia.ca/painted-poetry-series.html Or, for a different selection, visit my ETSY SHOP- by using EKPHRASTIC as a coupon code at checkout, you will get a 30% discount on all artworks, and I'll know that sale was for The Ekphrastic Review. THANK YOU SO MUCH. You can also become a Patreon patron, supporting us for $2 a month or more. Click here. Or, you can send any size gift through PayPal to the address [email protected]. Thank you so much for considering a gift or an art purchase to help grow this unique platform for ekphrastic writing. I really, really want to continue building this remarkable project and community. Lorette
below: some Etsy selections.      Tomb of the Wrestlers, by Rene Magritte (Belgium). 1960. Tomb of the Wrestlers
When I stand undressed in front of you, you unshame me in that space, the home you are, every room red with Magritte's rose. What is mirage? How minds entwine & race, pull through walls like the warp of stars-- volume with no end, no containment-- hothouse in the abstract, inside, one florescent leap for the edge of alive. Tanya Grae Tanya Grae is the author of the forthcoming collection Undoll (YesYes Books), a National Poetry Series finalist. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, Ploughshares, New Ohio Review, Prairie Schooner, Post Road, The Los Angeles Review, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. Find out more at: tanyagrae.com  Still Life With Game, by Jean-Simeon Chardin (France). 1750s. After Seeing Chardin’s Still Life with Game (1750s) She ate once of wild boar, dark meat cooked to falling off the bone in red wine, onion and thyme. Plated on a silver truncheon, bathed in juices, decorated with sweet cherries, golden currants, carrots with leafy stems still attached, the air sang its ripeness. She ate, tearing pink and tender strips, brown-red juices staining the rough table, her hands and mouth coloured boar. There were no rules here; no white tablecloth, no silver or fine crystal, no upholstered chairs or chandelier, so she let the juices run down her neck, the front of her dress, onto the floor until undone. Bread became fork and spoon, she suppressed her desire to lick the plate and ate without speaking, but laughed well and loud and long, eager to shield her dish with her arm, to claim it, never yield it, keep it secret, the face in the mirror one she didn’t recognize as her own, but a wild thing. Summer Hardinge Summer Hardinge loves good stories and her Maryland garden. After teaching English for 21 years, she writes for herself and with her writing community. Summer is a certified Amherst Writers and Artists facilitator and gives workshops in the Washington D.C. area. To see her website [email protected].  Self Portrait, by Albrecht Durer (Germany). 1500. In Dürer
Once, Dürer won a prize for his hand which drew a perfect circle. Now we have the ring, horizon of fine line, and leaf, and limb, and faces like the sun of every morning for a year, a caravan of royalty going round to no place except to the beauty of its own grace in going on delicate camel legs and swaying wise men satisfied with their slow etching on the sky and strong ritual of colour. Slim fingers tapered to a point of a pen to a perfect line which filled a part of empty spaces for himself. Still the circle goes about a white ghost who found the bright corona and made it light the circle of the shadow he had been. William Greenway William Greenway’s newest collection Selected Poems was the winner of the 2014 FutureCycle Press Poetry Book of the Year Award. Everywhere at Once (2008), won the Ohioana Poetry Book of the Year Award, as did his Ascending Order (2003), both from the University of Akron Press. He has published in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Georgia Review, Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, Shenandoah, and Prairie Schooner, and has won the Helen and Laura Krout Memorial Poetry Award, the Larry Levis Editors' Prize from Missouri Review, the Open Voice Poetry Award from The Writer's Voice, the State Street Press Chapbook Competition, an Ohio Arts Council Grant, and was 1994 Georgia Author of the Year. He’s Professor Emeritus of English at Youngstown State University, but lives now in Ephrata, PA. |
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