Thomas Bewick, Four Boys Playing in a Church Yard, 1797
The small must take the older stones as steeds And be satisfied: Marble slabs a hundred years old are half played out From years of charging. In this row of five, The first and fourth pitch and buck and stumble. They are broken nags That some day soon will fall. Only the middle two (Marking no doubt the younger dead) Are still straight backed, And so become the stallions of bigger boys, who push. Like this, the four knights ride: Three with straight wood swords And leggings made Of cast off pots and pans. Two have cone-shaped hats Made from the skin of lambs. All follow the handsome boy, No doubt the sexton’s son. It is he leads the charge, In black clothes that fit tightly, And with no socks And with a goose-winged plume. He blows a tinhorn, leaning forward, gripping on. And they are come: Sallying forth across this lawn of uncut grass and crabgrass Where the death’s head fawns in the dragon-claws weeds. Behind the first, the second boy posts in the saddle. And in his left hand, he grips invisible reins. Baggy flannel clothes, blackish loafers show He’s poorer than the rest. Face gleaming like a beaver in the sun, He is their Galahad, And sees the line of foes coming on And sees a Grail beyond the leaning graves. The third boy sits upon an ebony stone With wooden shoes and in a coachmen’s coat. The hat he wears is a thing a father gives, A tradesman’s thing. Beneath its brim, his crabapple’s face blows Ready to be old, Ready to serve Ready to tend a neighboring herd, but not today. Today, he spurs his black stone on And squints to see And says he sees All he is told there is see. Behind him, behind them all, The smallest of the four sings out: The shortest, the youngest, Whose tombstone rears and wags. Who has led him into battle without shoes? Made him a new knight with such short legs? Sexton son? Poor boy? Or would-be hired man? Today, he rides his steed to the bone. Tomorrow, in the early hours of the morn, (Before the other bigger boys have come) He’ll climb a better one. 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 Reivew, 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 Magazineand one my 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."
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Pedernal Ghost Ranch Georgia O’Keeffe paints prolifically peace, serenity enwraps her Will God uphold his bargain? O’Keeffe claims purple hued summit capturing the mountain she loves with each brush stroke “It’s my private mountain. God told me if I painted it often enough I could have it.” Georgia O’Keeffe Veronica Hosking is a wife, mother and poet. She lives in the desert southwest with her husband and two daughters. Her family and day job, cleaning the house, serve as inspiration for most of her poetry. She was the poetry editor for MaMaZina magazine 2006-2011. "Spikier Spongier" appeared in Stone Crowns magazine November 2013. "Desperate Poet" was posted on the Narrator International website and reprinted in Poetry Nook February 2014. Silver Birch Press has published several of her poems after first accepting "Rain Drops" in the Half New Year poetry collection July 2014. Veronica keeps a poetry blog at http://vhosking.wordpress.com
Bathsheba, Bathing She doesn't know King David watches, doesn't know his lust — blind to her virtue, her marriage. I serve this most beautiful of women, make the water warm, the soap fragrant. I pour sweet oil between her breasts, watch it drip on thighs and belly. She is wed to Uriah, away at war, but she’s lonely for men's praise, looks often in the basin to measure her own beauty. I fear the king's desire. Their eyes meet, and I know his will is hers as well. God will smite them in their coupling. What will become of me who keeps their secrets? Are my loyalties to king or God or to my mistress whom I love as David loves her, as Uriah loves her. My secrets must remain more secret still. Sarah Russell Sarah Russell has returned to poetry after a career teaching, writing and editing academic prose. Her work has been published in Kentucky Review, Red River Review, Ekphrastic Review, Misfit Magazine, and Psaltery and Lyre, among other print and online journals and anthologies. She has won awards from Goodreads, Poetry Nook, and is a 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee. She blogs at https://SarahRussellPoetry.net. The Catlin Staircase, Smithsonian American Art Museum
the eyes of Catlin Indians on the Chinatown stairs drove down upon us like horse breath there we saw Bow and Quiver whose nose and brow and mouth snarled like the boar tusk hanging from his neck he wore feathers dyed in bull’s blood and shells like giant Comanche moons on the stairs we saw Persimmon Gap when the horse hooves rained down upon the desert a mile wide cloud of Comanche we saw the Osage who had fought the Iroquois a thousand years and who broke the plains like floodwaters carving canyon from the east marched the civilized tribes of Cherokee and Chickasaw and Seminole of Creek and Choctaw who learned letters and law and shame from north east and west they descended the paintings quaked along the banister and sang of pox and cholera and of where the dead built caves in the earth where the horses would not tread they sang of dead men and dead buffalo and the betrayal at Adobe Walls and as they sang their lips smoldered and the plains wept buffalo blood while your braids wept Chinatown rain J.R. Forman Editor's note: The George Catlin Staircase is a curved stairwell at the Smithsonian Museum that features a display of the artist's portraits of North American Indians. Catlin was moved to document vanishing peoples after being moved by an encounter with a First Nations man when he was a child. His countless portraits of people and their surroundings provide us with one of the largest pre-photography records of native North Americans. You can see the staircase by clicking here. J.R. Forman is a lecturer in English and Liberal Arts at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Dallas and his B.A. from St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His poetry has appeared in Ramify, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and A Packet of Poems for Ezra Pound (Clemson University Press). Figures on the Seashore A woman must start at the sea, swim up out of depths of creation, to deserts, high plains, mountains. Each landscape is further from her natural self. The ascension requires effort, rising up to what could be the fall of one pine to another just below a peak the narrow trail leads to. In San Isabel Forest, above Beulah-- where women hang paintings in a cafe, and no one comes to a spring opening because of snow—there's a staccato beat of woodpecker in the clutter, hazardous if fire would begin, but the top is clear with smooth stones as the disjointed limbs on Picasso’s seashore. Kyle Laws Kyle Laws’ collections include This Town: Poems of Correspondence with Jared Smith (Liquid Light Press, 2017); So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press, 2015); Wildwood (Lummox Press, 2014); My Visions Are As Real As Your Movies, Joan of Arc Says to Rudolph Valentino (Dancing Girl Press, 2013); and George Sand’s Haiti (co-winner of Poetry West’s 2012 award). Faces of Fishing Creek is forthcoming in 2018 from Middle Creek Publishing. With six nominations for a Pushcart Prize, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., and Canada. She is the editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. Saint Joseph and the Boy Jesus
The boy Jesus is guiding his foster father, holding his hand as they walk along a path of stone. Joseph is not old, not white and bewildered, his face still has a rose blush and his hair is thick and black, but his shoulders are weary, so weary and his face downcast. Above the pair, the sun is descending as gathering winds bend the pines. Jesus, a soft, glowing boy of ten, topped by a halo of gold spikes, his face like an angelic girl, his tunic a flowing pink, leads Joseph calmly toward the viewer. Soon they will step out of the picture. In the last year of my father’s life, we made a pilgrimage to Fatima. In the dry, August mountain air, José Christiano, weary with cancer, turned to me and asked, “What shall I pray for?” We paused before the Holm oak tree, faltering with age. Years before, my pastor told me Joseph died with Jesus by his side, with Jesus holding his hand. “Pray to Saint Joseph for a good death,” I said, and held his hand, not like the cherubic boy Jesus, but like a beggar asking for change. Josefa de Óbidos painted Saint Joseph and the Boy Jesus a few miles from the pine wood shack where my father was born. Josefa’s father taught her to paint the soul in every face. My father searched a lifetime to find the face of his soul. After the onset of illness, Josefa’s father came to depend on her, and here his story ends. History will not tell us more. Did she hold his weary hand as they walked down the path, the winds threatening and night falling? Roberto Christiano Roberto Christiano is a prize winning poet and short story writer whose work is continuously published. He has won two back to back poetry prizes from Writer.org for his seasonal poems as well as the 2010 Fiction Award from The Northern Virginia Review. His poetry has been anthologized in The Gavea-Brown Book of Portuguese-American Poetry. His short plays have been produced at the Source Theatre in D.C. Port of Leaving, a poetry chapbook, is available from Finishing Line Press. website: robertochristiano.weebly.com Mask
is metaphor what we seek for what we hide is fear of imperfection seen through eyes that do not match searching for metaphor to fit what we seek but cannot find Lorette C. Luzajic John Hicks is an emerging poet: has been published or accepted for publication by: I-70 Review, First Literary Review – East, Panorama, Midnight Circus, Sky Island Journal, and The Society for the Preservation of Wild Culture. In 2016 he completed an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska – Omaha. He writes his poetry in the thin air of central New Mexico. |
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