These Throwback Thursday poems and flash fiction from The Ekphrastic Review archives take us through a transformation in place and space. They remind us that we cannot turn back to be who we were. We are gone. It would be like grasping at a shapeshifter. But this is not a dark place. If you’re like me, reading these ekphrastic pieces might make you might feel as if anything is possible, as if a trap door has opened and now is the chance to stretch it wide open. After reading them, I went outside. The wind picked up, a misty layer over Lake Michigan disappeared, and the sun came out, making everything clearly visible. ** Tending (Blue), by Michelle Kraft A flash fiction piece inspired by a photograph of a skyspace by James Turrell: “peering from the corner of her eye at the eternal blueness above” https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/tending-blue-by-michelle-kraft ** Three Tanka After Monet, in Irish and English, by Gabriel Rosenstock Three lovely tanka in translation on love and natural beauty. https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/three-tanka-after-monet-in-irish-and-english-by-gabriel-rosenstock ** Solace, by Laura Ann Reed A poem inspired by a photograph of Water, by Naoko Fukumaru: “Tiptoes from shadow into light” https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/solace-by-laura-ann-reed ** Lot's Wife, by Brendan Todt The writer speaks to the artist Helen Frankenthaler in this flash fiction piece. https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/lots-wife-by-brendan-todt ** Mother With Two Children, by Erica Goss A beautiful poem inspired by Mother With Two Children, by Egon Schiele: “I posed them flesh against flesh” https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/mother-with-two-children-by-erica-goss ** Threshold to Coyoacan Plaza, Mexico City, by Maia Elsner Pass over the threshold between two places in time in this calligram inspired by a photograph. https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/threshold-to-coyoacan-plaza-mexico-city-by-maia-elsner ** On the Water, by Ashley Mabbitt A mother-daughter relationship and an immediacy that drops us into a scene by a harbour. https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/on-the-water-by-ashley-mabbitt ** One Viewer’s Response to J. Francis Criss’s Detroit, Waterfront, by Bill Waters J. Francis Criss’s Detroit, Waterfront imagined in this poem where “streetlamp and freight crane are children’s toys” https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/one-viewers-response-to-j-francis-crisss-detroit-waterfront-by-bill-waters There are almost eight 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 occasional Throwback Thursday feature highlights writing from our past, chosen on purpose or chosen randomly. We are grateful that Marjorie Robertson shares some favourites with us on a monthly basis. With her help, 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 10 or so 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, or a pull quote line from the poem and story, 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!
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Frida Kahlo: Inside and Out One Frida is the interior woman. And one Frida is the exterior. One Frida wears a lace blouse of myriad frills; these cut hundreds of dark spaces on her front which run into one another like a maze. And one Frida wears a silk blouse of lapis lazuli blue, banded gold down the shoulders and across the middle. The sheen off it catches and keeps the eye at the surface. One Frida has frills of blouse up to her chin, hiding her neck entirely. And one Frida bares her neck as if it were a pillar, flaunting its orange muscle. One Frida has stripped open her heart; we gaze into its chambers, down its dark hollows. We just can see the heads of channels that disappear into her body. Blood the heart held securely, as if never to let go, seeps onto her front. And one Frida has a whole, red heart, its smooth muscles massed together, no drop of blood to be seen. One Frida wears layered sleeves like hanging flower heads that cloak her arms modestly to the elbows. And one Frida bares arms that look like solid gold. One Frida wears a dress predominantly of white, colour of the untouched and the pure. Blood from her cut artery has stained it in two spots; no more intense a red could have coloured the fabric. Flowers, smaller than those spots, dot the rim of her dress. Their close, shy faces come in shades of blood red; many lie half-hidden in the dress's folds. And one Frida wears an olive dress, bunched tightly over her thighs; her spread knees press firmly against the fabric, more prominent, we believe, than if they were bared in the open. One Frida holds the scissors that cut open her heart, a thin, long artery she had worked from the flesh dangling on its steel tip. And one Frida holds a gold-rimmed miniature of her husband, poised in her fingers like a small coin to be admired. An artery coils about her arm like a binding strap. One Frida looks at us quietly with reserve as if moved from a thought of her own just a moment ago. The blush in her cheeks shows against her light face. And one Frida looks outward confidently, ready to meet our eye. Firmness marks her strongly coloured face. The Fridas form a great contrast, and it brings out the best qualities in both. We would not know the lace blouse of one to be as delicate unless we saw the solid blue and gold of the other's. We could not admire the neat heart of one as much unless the other had not stripped open her own. To appreciate one Frida lets us appreciate the other. They are bound together in that sense; we are sure of it as much as the women's obvious differences. Just note the artery about their shoulders, letting the blood of one flow into the other: they are one life. See how the two, equal in stature and dimension like the truest pair, hold hands as they sit side by side: they make one self. Norbert Kovacs Norbert Kovacs lives and writes in Hartford, Connecticut. He loves visiting art museums, especially the Met in New York. He has published stories recently in Blink-Ink, LIGEIA, and MacQueen's Quinterly. His website: www.norbertkovacs.net. Lamia to the Soldier Even the lady in me deliquescences into a girl on her knees under the fleeting brush of your ridgeless skin. Yes, I am starved, imprisoned from human touch to the reminiscence of caress as an evacuation from me. I am an apostasy in each encounter or a fallacy draped in serpentine fluidity held in the arms of a thicket. The viridian forest is not a gentle lover it’s violence pushes inwards into me through my every flickered movement. Bark grates the ophidian glabrousity bruising ivory of underbellied skin which has transformed into entire arms. In the grace of your presence where I have shed my armour of scales now, you shed yours. Anika Niyah Panda Anika Niyah Panda is an emerging high school poet and writer from India. She has been recognized by the National Children’s Literary Festival for her endeavour in short story writing in 2022 and hopes for more. Laocoön Strive to resist the will of the gods, priest, Bend your honest words against their fatal deceit And strain your improbable musculature Against the layered coils of the sea snake, Coated with the slime of the deep, studded with Barnacles that rip your flesh, Pouring in the brine, As the rings of muscle constrict your legs, abdomen, torso. But leave your eyes open, And your ears uncovered; See the swelling faces and hear the cracking bones Of your sons, Paying with their young lives for your righteousness. The serpent squeezes out the last of their breath and spirit Then pulls back into the sea, Dragging you with him, While the water fills your mouth, But not your lungs, Which are already forever closed by the serpent's vice. And the last thing you see, As the fading light penetrates the Retreating surface of the vinaceous waters To reach your narrowing scope of vision Is the great horse, Winking at you as it rolls into the city. Brian P. Quaranta Brian P. Quaranta, MD, MA, is an Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology at Duke University School of Medicine, and a Faculty member of the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine. He has an MA from the Shakespeare Institute at Stratford-upon-Avon, and a certificate in Theology, Medicine, and Culture from Duke Divinity School. Recent courses taught include Medicine and Human Flourishing, Narrative Medicine, and Plague Literature: Ancient and Modern. Research focuses on how literature can help to form patient-centered physicians. He has published poetry in Practical Radiation Oncology, The Christian Journal of Global Health, and Carmina Magazine (forthcoming). Out Hedda Sterne’s Window, 1956 I wonder how she narrowed her gaze, softened the edges of her vision, and fixed her stare before it was broken again. Is this evidence of that focused eye? A frame beyond girders, beyond glass. The pane and panel, the steel bones crosswise, and the brittle crusts of New York wearing sunlight like dandelion blush. Does the city speak its own name in creaking metal and the monotone coo of trucks moving in reverse? Here, there’s none of that. Sound is frozen, but vibrancy is played out in depth, in artifact. There is a metropolis of people here but they’re all implied. Lives caught as a suggestion in dark and pale strokes of empire. Was there anyone behind Hedda, anyone who, were they to step forward, would enjoy being captured in crisp lines? A friend, patient and calming, leaning against a cracked white pillar, leafing through old issues of Vogue. Perhaps it was a disheveled lover snoring softly, half concealed by flowered sheets and sharp morning shadows. Or maybe it was the same unspoken millions, trapped in canvas upon leaning canvas in earlier versions of their own world. Aspiration and status shot up through dark blurred lines, a gray sprawling growth awash in its own cold stillness. The scalloped mirror of a slow river brushed smooth, reflecting only blue sky. C. Zeeck This poem responds specifically to New York, by Hedda Sterne (USA, b. Romania) 1956. Click here. C. Zeeck is an educator living and writing in Chicago. Pet Duet It's hard, dear Goldie, when we're still like this, in one long line. I'm bored. I want to play! In silences like these, I do so miss my past existence, rushing through the day. I lived in burrows, with my family, enjoying frisks and scampers through our home! Sometimes we'd bicker, pick a fight or three, yet no one ever left the herd to roam. I'd like to leave this herd. They're just no fun! They only want to show me off, a fad. I'm not allowed to burrow, race or run. It makes me mad, I tell you, Goldie. Mad! ** Dearest Guin, it is hard, I agree, when we’re still, for I miss my old life, just like you; oh the freedom! I’d fly and I’d perch and I’d trill, all the things that they say I can’t do. You’re a fad; I’m a symbol, I eat thistle thorns – makes folks think of the terrible crown; yes, the one thrust on Christ, sharp as Satan’s own horns, though I also enjoy thistle down. So they muse of the Passion, salvation and all, and decide that I’ll make a good pet; but my soul is attuned to my friend’s squeaky call – let’s escape! You and me! Off we set! 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, The Dirigible Balloon, and a local Morris dancing group. Other interests include art, film, and photography. The Place of the Skull (after Jacob Lawrence’s John Brown Series, #1, 1977) By the cloudy road, outside the gate, near the city, trinities abound: hair in three sweat- soaked shanks hanging down; a nail—diagonal of light, and so, so long—for each wrist, and one for both feet; the blood branching three streams from one source. If Golgotha, the hill in the background, is “the place of the skull,” then the cross is what emerges from or pierces the throat. No faces. Not Christ’s, not the centurion who utters, Surely this is a righteous man, the son of God, and can’t watch anymore, not yours, not mine not any shambled one of us passersby. ** Homefront (after Jacob Lawrence’s John Brown Series, #2) 3 rifles 4 pikes on the wall 5 children at the table swearing to serve what I swear to serve all our heads are bowed eyes our closed hands clasp such darkness in our clothes our weapons’ handles the table and the cover of the bible with its red-edged pages but this scene’s crux is surely the violet twilight through the open doorway the coming dusk the colour of pike blades in cold air light and the thin winter tree: when one branch breaks the other two fork ** Skirmish Ground (after Jacob Lawrence’s John Brown Series, #9) only the broken and gouged studs of walls roof beams no roof three steps leading up to no door no one at the golden table no body in the chair no food on the plate but blood is everywhere on the floor in the yard and the mountains beyond with one massive cloud in the clean blue sky ** The Cutting Light (after Jacob Lawrence’s John Brown Series, #19) There are no faces to be seen, only their cutting light among coils of night sky like wave swells, in the sweeps of clay sky scattered with sparks, from the blood-dirt beneath the bodies we do not see, only that cutting light: 21 spines of blaze, 21 sticks of lightning, 21 lines uprising the dark, 21 shafts jaggeding, 21 frozen slashes, 21 sun shards, 21 chips of scorched ice, 21 scalene triangles, 21 star-fragments, 21 moon-lit clippings of ocean waves, 21 burning clippings from a child’s drawing, 21 directives glowing, 21 contraband hopes, 21 mounted seething embers, 21 eyelash sacrifices, 21 bones flashing righteous, 21 gifts of cleaving, 21 pinpoint lines sliced by slicing, 21 glints in this abyss, 21 pikes hidden then revealed, 21 faces not to be seen, hidden and thus revealed. ** Fireglow (after Jacob Lawrence’s John Brown Series, #21) Clothed in night, as fireglow fills the background, the cross he holds is red and far out of square, his hair a scrawl of black and white, and although his head slumps, the hood remains upright. There is no face to be seen. Andy Fogle Andy Fogle is the author of Across from Now and seven chapbooks of poetry, including Arc & Seam: Poems of Farouk Goweda, co-translated with Walid Abdallah. He’s from Virginia Beach and the DC area, and now lives with his family in upstate NY, teaching high school. He was the recipient of a 2021 Individual Artist Grant from Saratoga Arts to write poems related to abolitionist John Brown. www.foglejunk.squarespace.com Another Way to Fight Eighty-five years after Guernica the news no longer comes in black and white. Russia’s first incursion fizzled from world headlines in barely a week. But it wasn’t contained. Eight years later, one month and a day after tanks crossed the border, Invasion of Ukraine blasted around the globe to San Diego, into the bedroom of Andres, a fourth grader home on a sick day, through his prodigy mind and fingers into a nine-by-twelve-inch sketch, to be confided in his mom as she stopped by to check on the silence, and was finally captured on a four-by-five-foot canvas in the living room, bullets flying at soldiers and civilians alike, now on display in New York with five hundred fifty prints for sale so the Klitschko Foundation can dry the tears that soak the blue and gold flag that flies above fists that will never fall, whether or not they retain a body to call their own. Becky DeVito This poem was inspired by Invasion of Ukraine, by Andres Valencia, discussed at 1.40 in the video. Click here and scroll down to view. Becky DeVito is a psychology professor at Capital Community College in Hartford, Connecticut. After working her way through trauma by writing poetry, her doctoral dissertation investigates the ways in which poets come to new insights through the process of drafting and revising their poems. Her poetry has been published in bottle rockets: A Collection of Short Verse, The Ekphrastic Review, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Ribbons: Tanka Society of America Journal, and others. She is currently working on a novel series. Join her on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Sources referenced for this poem: Chase Contemporary, Forbes, The New York Times, Robb Report. Nevertheless, The Blue Rhythms of Evening August 24, 1909 Dear Miss Beatrice, Yesterday before we met in the evening, I planned to tell you about my new position at Simpson’s Photography Studio, but once we were together on the beach, I forgot all the moments before then. “How peaceful it is,” you said and pointed to the horizon. We both seemed to breathe in the stillness, so different than the rush and clamor of the city. I wanted to tell you then how glad I was to see you, yet suddenly all I could do was nod and answer, ”Yes, truly. Peaceful.” Just then as you raised you hand to adjust your hat, such a lovely hat, I feared the breeze might carry it away. And quite the worrier I am, I feared you might also be lifted out over the blue. Now I remember in the fading light of dusk, you too seemed worried. Perhaps your job? The hours must be tiring at The Inn now in this busy season. Or is it your mother’s health? I am deeply sorry I did not ask about her, except to say I hoped she was better. I believe it was then you placed your hat carefully in the folds of your skirt. “I am glad we are here.” I cannot recall whether I said that first or you or both of us together. The vast blue of the evening was all that remained to be spoken. I will think of us often as we were yesterday at dusk. And hope we will meet again soon. In friendship, Theo Edwards P.S. My job at Simpson’s is merely in touch-up. Nevertheless, a beginning. I will say more when we meet, that is if you would like. Theo ** September 8, 1909 Dear Mr. Edwards, It is so kind of you to write and ask about my mother. She is slowly improving, and I hope to take her to the sea one day. Perhaps the fresh air might restore her the way it did me that evening we met. How strange that you worried the breeze might carry my hat and me away because, I must tell you, at some moment that evening I felt myself floating away yet in quite a peaceful sense, as though I could rise above the day-to-day cares. As I write this now, I feel the peace of that moment, but also a sense of peril. I cannot say why for sure, perhaps my mother’s failing heart, or the distance between now and then, an uncertainty about what lies ahead. Please do write me about your job at the photography studio. Such a wonderful opportunity. Coincidentally, yesterday I received a post from my cousin Emily who works in a photography studio in Washington. One owned by two women, sisters Clara and Alice Rigby. Quite daring. One day I want to understand how cameras capture a moment. Is it just film and magic? As Mr. Eastman has said: You press the button, we do the rest. But I wonder, is it not more, can it be both what is recorded and what cannot be seen? A moment we feel, like the blue rhythms of the waves that evening by the sea. I do hope to meet again soon. But if by fate or chance, we cannot, I shall remember your kindness. And your straw boater hat, so charming and--I am not sure what word I want. Careful? Yes, charming, and careful like the gentleman who wore it. I only wish I’d told him this when we were together. Your friend, Beatrice Gardner Kathleen Thomas Kathleen Thomas is a nurse and educator who focuses on bridging the creative and healing arts in her practice. Her work has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and has most recently appeared in MoonPark Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Splash!, and Sleet. Sometimes she teaches creative writing to children, and they always share their love of dinosaurs and moonbeams with her. Our new contest is on the theme of water!
We are thrilled that editor Sandi Stromberg will choose the winner and help choose the finalists. This ebook contains 50 artworks on the theme of water to inspire your poetry, fiction, and CNF. The Nitty Gritty 1. Ebook is $10 Canadian dollars. It is yours to keep and covers your contest entry, too. 2. Deadline: July 5, 2023 3. Subject Line: WATER 4. Submit up to five pieces, whether poetry, flash fiction, nonfiction prose, or a combination. You can submit as many times as you wish. Another ebook purchase is your second entry, and so on. 5. Use one Word document for all of your pieces. Do not include your name on the document. Entries are read blind. 6. A selection of entries will be published on site. From those, a first place winner will be selected. The prize is $100 CAD. 7. Limit is 1000 words. 8. Your poem or story must respond to one or more of the artworks in the Water collection. You can respond in any way you are inspired to. Your work can be about the artwork or artist, or it can be inspired in any other way, such as by theme, subject, memory, or anything else. 9. Submit to theekphrasticreview@gmail.com. 10. The decision of editors and judges is final. |
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