The Bottles Dan is in the backyard in the late afternoon, his wine carafe that was once a milk bottle sitting empty now on the blue tablecloth even though he was supposed to wait for his wife. What the hell. He can decant some more wine, twist off the cap, and pretend it’s the good stuff. The radio is playing some jazz tune he can’t recognize but likes. In the time it takes for him to step into the kitchen to unscrew the cap so it will be ready for when Marci gets back from teaching class, two things happen. The first is a rat climbs into the milk bottle, and the second is the announcer says troops are being sent into Vietnam. Dan, who saw Ardennes, who was stationed in Seoul, who has been to so many other places with names he wants to forget, has been following the news for months now and has been waiting for and dreading this moment. They will not want him this time at his age, but he still feels like that little rat trapped in glass with the cheap smelling wine. The animal must be coated in it. It is upside down and scratching around, stuck in its greed for whatever calories might cling to droplets. Dan clicks off the radio and grabs the bottle, feeling the struggle inside of it. His first thought is to throw it as hard as he can against the corner of the garage, watch the little bastard struggle in the shards, but he can’t somehow, so he walks it back to the alley, and holds it over the other side of the fence upside down. When it doesn’t fall out immediately, he pats the bottom like it’s ketchup, and when he hears the creature land with a squeak and then move off, he tosses the bottle in the trash can, goes back to get two glasses and the wine, and waits for Marci to get back home so they can get the long quiet weekend started right. John Brantingham John Brantingham: "I was the first poet laureate of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park, and my work has been featured in hundreds of magazines and in Writer’s Almanac and The Best Small Fictions 2016. I have eleven books of poetry and fiction including my latest fiction collection Life: Orange to Pear (Bamboo Dart Press). I teach at Mt. San Antonio College."
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Fuji-Viewing Snow everywhere, making white hats for each roof glistening in early sun-- Ribbons of snow caked under the eaves of the teahouse-- snow festooned on trees, an extra layer to Fuji’s cloak under a clear sky-- and there in the open terrace some morning to-do among the five figures warmly cloaked. I am listening hard like that one tree cupping its ears to hear as one lady points, another looks back to see if the other looks-- not at the sacred mountain— but at the birds. I imagine if she predicts longevity, luck, love Fuji-san will chuckle under his cape. Kitty Jospé Kitty Jospé enjoys the challenge of bringing art alive through words. Docent at the University of Rochester, Memorial Art Gallery since 1998; MFA Pacific University, 2009. Her work appears in many journals, anthologies. Kitty will have a sixth book of poems appearing in 2021 from FootHills publishing. Where Are You, God? The Romans looking with pleasure on the devastation they have visited on the vulnerable represent all who kill and destroy for the sake of power. The mother whose arms are raised to heaven, her voice crying out in pain and protest, is any parent whose children lie dead at the hands of terrorists and tyrants. The mother’s robe is stained with her son’s blood. Her eyes ask Why? Where are you, God, you who promised to protect your people? Look at my son’s feet. Just yesterday they ran and skipped through village streets. Look at these knees that knelt to worship you. His hands once wrapped around my neck, but now his neck is slashed. His blood runs across the small ear that loved to hear the chanted prayers. God, how I can still believe? Wilda Morris Wilda Morris, a widely published poet, is Workshop Chair, Poets and Patrons of Chicago. Her latest book is Pequod Poems: Gamming with Moby-Dick, published by Kelsay Books. Her blog at wildamorris.blogspot.com features a monthly contest for other poets. Winslow Homer’s Sharpshooter Homer knew the horror of a war not at all civil that marked the start of modern war unfair. A captain described the job of sharpshooting: “only to watch and kill.” Stationed in tall pines, a sharper’s telescopic sight could kill one mile away. Sometimes a soldier, gathering firewood, abruptly fell dead. “With everything as silent as the grave here would come one of those rifled balls and cut a hole clear through you.” Winslow Homer’s Near Andersonville Homer was among the few who grasped that the Civil War had three sides, that slaves stood at a terrifying brink shirts of grey or blue could not define. This woman at the doorway stands on more than one threshold, and she is thinking, thinking, thinking about her difficult world-- as, in the background, Reb soldiers, their red flag drooping on a windless day, march a long line of Union prisoners towards the hell hole of Andersonville-- a shift in plot that does not, for the prisoners or this worried watcher, bode well. Winslow Homer’s Home, Sweet Home Irony’s at home here. Ever so humble, indeed, are the tiny tents of residence, where a pair of soldiers sadly listen to a regimental band, discernable in the distance, play the most popular of songs. The soldiers’ thoughts wish away the war, as they hear and re-hear the bitter sugar sweet chorus sound and repeat. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. Winslow Homer’s Artists Sketching in the White Mountains Landscape artists must be part of what they see. Homer’s wry joke here gives us a line of daubers in the midst of White Mountains-- each nattily dressed but not at all a picturesque, or sublime, intrusion on the scene-- each with easel, palette, and umbrella-- unlovely against a lovely horizon of clouds, mountains, and flowers. The last of these sketchers is Winslow himself with his characteristic hat and mustache and his name signed on the backpack behind him. That this is an occasion for painterly camaraderie as much as artistic productivity is evident on the far left where a bottle of wine nests in a stump cleft, coolly awaiting the sun’s set. Winslow Homer’s Bridle Path, White Mountains Back from Paris, Homer chose a new path. A woman riding high in White Mountains becomes his largest canvas, and a place to pose a newly special friend. He sketched a tourist on the trail. In studio, his model is Helena on a chair. On canvas he lends her a special glow. She is for him the fairest of the fair. She likes Winslow and loves his wit and knows he sets her on this trail to star in a tenderly affectionate drift of thought: a bridal plan, that is, far from what she wants from her master in art. She knows this rocky ride may break his heart. Joseph Stanton Read our interview with Joseph Stanton about his ekphrastic book, Moving Pictures. Joseph Stanton’s poems have appeared previously in The Ekphrastic Review, Ekphrasis, Poetry, New Letters, Harvard Review, Antioch Review, and many other magazines. He has published more than 600 poems in journals and anthologies. His six books of poems are Moving Pictures, Things Seen, Imaginary Museum: Poems on Art, A Field Guide to the Wildlife of Suburban Oahu, Cardinal Points, and What the Kite Thinks: A Linked Poem. His other sorts of books include Looking for Edward Gorey, The Important Books, Stan Musial: A Biography, and A Hawaii Anthology. As an art historian, he has written about Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Edward Gorey, Maurice Sendak, and many other American artists. He is a Professor Emeritus of Art History and American Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Information on his most recent ekphrastic book can be found at: https://www.shantiarts.co/uploads/files/stu/STANTON_MOVING.html Click here or on image to access the current ekphrastic writing prompt and the instructions and deadlines. Enjoy! THROWBACK THURSDAY PICKS FROM ALARIE TENNILLE April is National Poetry Month in the U.S. (my home) and in Canada (home of The Ekphrastic Review). It’s also my birth month, though I arrived a week and almost four centuries after William Shakespeare. To simplify my search for throwback picks, I thought I’d share a few favorite poems from past Aprils. I didn’t realize how recent the celebration is — National Poetry Month was established by the Academy of American Poets in 1996 and observed since 1999 in Canada. ** Time Slips – Laura Engle http://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic/time-slips-by-laura-engle Short and sweet – I’m always impressed when a poet can say so much in so few words. “Time slips…fades and flops.” While it “looks like a towel thrown over a rack,” Engle also captures the sound and motion of a fish flailing about when pulled from the background sea. ** Space Station Crew Sees Lots of Clouds – Marc Alan Di Martino https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/space-station-crew-sees-lots-of-clouds-by-marc-alan-di-martino Beautiful view. Great contrast between advanced technology and a child’s delight in birthday cake. We enjoy the frothy, descriptive delight, then are caught off-guard by pollution (“chemical-sweet”) and the great yearning we carry away when we get to that last line. ** Painted Hands – Michael Gessner https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/painted-hands-by-michael-gessner The combined power, the cave painting of hands still reaching out to us with Gessner’s message, makes me think that perhaps ancient cave paintings were already ekphrastic, art and poetry in one, at a time when written words waited far in the future. ** Hitchhikers in Mississippi, 1936 – Lennart Lundh https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/hitchhikers-in-mississippi-1936-by-lennart-lundh The poet’s love of words shines through in this beautifully descriptive poem. “The trees have forgotten summer” sets the tone for bleak winter and the even bleaker Great Depression. Although the photo makes us feel gloomy, the final line offers hope. ** One Viewer’s Response to Todd Klassy’s 4 Round Bales – Bill Waters https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/one-viewers-response-to-todd-klassys-4-round-bales-by-bill-waters “In a cloudless landscape / everything but the sky/ looks small,” and Waters understands that anything longer than three short stanzas would seem cluttered. He strikes the perfect balance between looking and seeing. ** Horizons – Roy Beckemeyer https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/horizons-by-roy-beckemeyer We are born knowing nothing that has come before us. Here the poet helps us sees new horizons, layers, and cycles. It’s wonderful to read the caption about a reptile footprint and leap to the single front leg of a backhoe. ** Man on a Bench – Edward H. Garcia https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/man-on-a-bench-by-edward-h-garcia This art-poem pairing appeared in the first April of TER (2016). I remember it because we have a museum guard created by Duane Hanson at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art here in Kansas City. This is a quintessential ekphrastic poem, inviting viewers into the art. The man on the bench won’t scoot over, / invite [us] to sit down,” but Garcia makes the invitation. ** The Autopsy – Mary McCarthy https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/the-autopsy-by-mary-mccarthy I’ve been reading and then writing for The Ekphrastic Review for over five years, and Mary McCarthy’s name was one of the first that jumped out at me as a regular favorite. Here she combines her love of poetry and art with her knowledge of medicine. She’s a registered nurse and deftly explores what we can learn by careful observation, what we may feel we know, and what we can only guess. Alarie Tennille is a longtime, regular contributor to The Ekphrastic Review. She is a valued prize nomination consultant for the journal, and has been a guest editor for our bimonthly challenges. She has won a Fantastic Ekphrastic award for her considerable contribution to the journal and to ekphrastic literature. 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 above: 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. Along with your picks, send a vintage photo of yourself! I Wait for Your Text at the Bar Around the Corner She’s used to the dash & the bitters, to the mouths who want it dry or dirty. She’s become a master at the shake & strain, blends it or gives it a twist on command. I sit on my stool and watch. She leans over, fills a glass held by a wink mixed with a smirk. Her eye contact -- unbroken, bold — double dog dares him to ogle. He declines, finds the wood burl of the counter suddenly fascinating. I stir my Bloody Mary, check my phone. I imagine her as a child like you, cherry blossom arms spread wide, eyes zeroed in, learning to spot. A wild wisp of a girl constrained in leotard & ballet slippers, absorbing the lesson. Let your arms and legs breathe / use broad sweeping strokes. -- Hold your focus steady / eat up all the space you can. — The incantation would weave itself through the centre of your belly, through each extended limb, each tip of your tiny fingers, up & out, through the crown of your head until you turned without becoming dizzy — spinning & spinning like a lid twisting off a jar. Perhaps you and she would’ve been rivals, vying to possess the breadth of the stage. Perhaps you’d have relinquished your spot, her need superseding your own. I order another drink. Wonder if you left him as planned. Check my phone. Kari Ann Ebert This poem was the Winner of the Crossroads Ekphrastic Writing Contest, 2019. Kari Ann Ebert is the Poetry & Interview editor for The Broadkill Review and the Project Director of Downtown Dover Poetry Weekend. Winner of the 2020 Sandy Crimmins National Prize in Poetry, the 2019 Crossroads Ekphrastic Writing Contest, and 2018 Gigantic Sequins Poetry Contest, Kari’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Mojave River Review, Philadelphia Stories, Main Street Rag, The Ekphrastic Review, and Gargoyle as well as several anthologies. She has been awarded fellowships from Delaware Division of the Arts (2020), The Shipman Agency (2020), BOAAT Press (2020), and Brooklyn Poets (2019). |
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