Growing The Ekphrastic Review has turned into one of my favourite projects of all time. I couldn't have imagined the enthusiastic response from readers and writers when I started it up just two years ago. 

The writers, artists, and readers here have together inspired each other to great heights, new ways of seeing, and wonderful relationships.

I understood that Ekphrastic would be something to which I gave my time, and that in turn, it would give me inspiration, poetry, and connect me to amazing writers. None of us are here for money.

That said- and here's that big "but" - there are times when money would be nice. 

Other than my time, for which I am rewarded in the ways mentioned above, Ekphrastic doesn't cost me much. But there are some web and maintenance fees and I would like to do a bit of promoting with postcards I can distribute at the various art and literary events I'm part of.

If you enjoy reading The Ekphrastic Review, consider sending a gift through Paypal to theekphrasticreview@gmail.com.

Since I would rather give you something than ask for presents, consider buying one of my small artworks off of Etsy. All sales through Ekphrastic will go towards maintaining and growing Ekphrastic. 

Writers and readers here ALWAYS receive a 25% discount on my small works at Etsy. The coupon is:

EKPHRASTIC25

ETSY LINK:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/LorettesArt

Don't hesitate to contact me to ask any questions you have about the artworks.

Many thanks,
​Lorette

Mass

Isn't it funny the way light plays,
how hiding it inhabits other faces and
sheds like skin, clings save for my skeleton
shell. I am left with scraps only,
the dripped leavings of ancient candle.

Maybe I could fight for morning light.
Maybe I could filter the blue hour haze,
rearrange my gaze beyond empty glass,
even momentary glimpse another ending.

Would I own the outcome? Recognize
this quality of light? I fear blindness so
downward glance to spite the dawn.

Still sun will rise above hurt feelings and
leave me shadow slouching, let me to
my work, my private war waged over
tabletop, elbows stabbing. Silence another
casualty– I am not immune to sleep
walking, to nightmare games.

I could hang myself on this hand,
surrender to solemn requiem, fingers
finding prayer in the starved darkness.

Emily Reid Green

Emily Reid Green's poetry, creative non-fiction and flash fiction have appeared in publications including: Skipping Stones, Common Threads, The Font, The Linnet’s Wings, Khroma, Gravel, and Skive Magazine. An unabashed bookworm and avid knitter, she lives with her family in Toledo, Ohio.

Study  Guide:  “The Fall of Icarus” for Ms. Hansen’s English 9 Power Slide 7

• What is the subject of the painting?  (Hint: It is not Icarus)

I like the ploughman’s head pointed 
down to earth just like his horse looks
down to see where to  step.  Everybody 
says look up, lift your gaze, look ahead, 
see what’s going on when ploughing 
the earth up for spring planting.
If he doesn’t look down he won’t see 
a big old rock that might bust his blade, 
and then what’s the horse good for?
I like the plowman’s shirt.

• List what the various people (ploughman, shepherd, fisherman, crew) are doing.

They’re all going about their business, 
Though I don’t know much about the 
Businesses.  Haven’t you noticed, 
nobody notices what everybody 
else is doing isn’t that what we notice?

• Identify the event that is going unnoticed.

The guy with the red head who points. 
He’s not about to jump into and save
The poor nincompoop, he just wants to point,
Like the guy who says I’m just a monitor,
He’s the monitor who sees a boy falling,
With wings of hot wax and charcoal feathers. 
But maybe he just sees two legs in the ocean.  
The other day I read about a body pulled
Out of the lake and nobody helped him out.

• Other than his father, Daedalus,  who will mourn Icarus?  Base your answer on evidence in the painting, not conjecture..

As soon as that leg sinks below
Everybody’s going to turn around
And just keep on doing what 
They were doing before the
Big tragedy, though no one
Really thinks it’s a big tragedy.
Maybe even the painter didn’t
Think it was such a big tragedy,
Maybe he just had some extra
Red paint he wanted to get off
Of his brush, who really knows.

• Based on the evidence in the painting, what is the artist’s view, or attitude, about Icarus falling to his death?

Well, a lot more things are noticed 
By the artist, for example he likes
White cliffs, and white clouds, and
White sunlight, and white sails and
White sheep and white shirts and 
White towns but he did a pretty
Good job with a couple of dabs
Of red, where did he get that red?

DeWitt Clinton

DeWitt Clinton is Emeritus Professor at the University of Wisconsin—Whitewater, and lives in Shorewood, Wisconsin.  He continues to write and publish short creative non-fiction and poetry in in Wise Guys: An Online Magazine, Negative Capability, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Verse-Virtual, New Verse News, Peacock Journal, Ekphrastic Review and Stark: The Poetry Journal No. 1 which featured a “shortlisted” poem for the Wisehouse International Poetry Award.  ​

Handmaid

Tending,
fingers raw, for
I’ve scrubbed, scoured and mopped all
but my brow,
as she soaked.
Eyes closed, head back,  
hair a glowing stream of sunset
running over the side
of the porcelain
gleaming from my morning’s work.
She is done now,
with her Sunday bath,
and these raw-rubbed hands
must survive
the indignity
of a fiery forest of knots.
Taming, tending, touching –
these are my skills,
my art.
For touch
is the work
of the handmaid.

Lisa Conquet 

Lisa Conquet was lucky to grow up in NYC --  a place that mirrors her spirit, energy and mix of cultures. The city fed her soul and her love of words. As a copywriter for a Madison Avenue ad agency, she utilized her psychology degree to entice consumers, then went back to school and turned the tables. Now she is a psychotherapist who uses poetry to help her clients.

After “The Broken Column” 

Poetry
[poh-i-tree]
 
verb
 
1. to unbind insecurities, torment, pain and annihilation.
2. to purge;
3. to clarify;
4. to make new.
 
related forms
 
Poet:
I knew I was a poet when I found the only person that ever
understood me is a dead painter.

Lindsey Thäden

Lindsey Thäden is a recent winner of New York's 2016 #PoetweetNYC contest. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Philadelphia-based Apeiron Review, eleven40seven, New York Metro, Passages North and Vending Machine Press, which is e-published from Sydney, Australia.

The Whiteness of Bone 

White on white. Was a time I wouldn’t 
have seen it, a little snort bursting 

from my nose, up-tilted, at the greyish-
white square, askew on the cream ground. 

Suprematist Composition, 1918, indeed, 
war’s end, and that is all Malevich could 

come up with? So much nothing, a long 
Sunday, hours mounded like dune sand, 

the upward slog, the endless back-sliding. 
Then, I was all noise, rushing to get somewhere, 

not realizing the deception of motion, 
Self always shrouding like the linen skin 

of a dressmaker’s dummy. Now I know: 
this as far as far as I’m going, this the end 

of my leap, all the time in the world 
to explore the gradations between pearl 

and cream, paper and bone, milky and 
opalescent. The dead in the trenches, bone 

white against the bleached scroll of years. 
The pitted surface, the brushstrokes, the 

canvas poking through, plenty for the eyes 
of one grown old enough to glean.

Devon Balwit

Devon Balwit is a writer and teacher from Portland, OR. She has two chapbooks forthcoming--'how the blessed travel' from Maverick Duck Press and 'Forms Most Marvelous' from dancing girl press. Her recent work has found many homes, among them: Oyez, The Cincinnati Review, Red Paint Hill, Timberline Review, Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Trailhead Review, and Oracle.

Resurrection of the Bird

It will fly into the oblivion it knows
rather than the one it doesn’t
willingly, composed, at ease,
as if returning home
the prodigal child of the sky
forgiven at last
conceived in a whim of light
absolved by the sun
reconciled with its destiny
as certain as the stars        
so far from land
it doesn’t know its way
it waits for resurrection
as its primal right.

Neil Ellman

Neil Ellman, a poet from New Jersey, has published more than 1,000 ekphrastic poems in print and online journals, anthologies and chapbooks throughout the world.  His collections include chapbooks devoted exclusively to the works of Paul Klee, Matta and others.

The Replicants in Question
                                            "Every angel is terrifying." 
                                             —Rilke, The Duino Elegies

What’s this? Deckard asks: not who.

Clever bit of exposition, to reveal the quarry
to us and Deck together, let him query Bryant
for us, our proxy, blue membrane
of smoke haze rising between them.

Nexxus 6. Each description straight
from dimestore pulp, a reduction
to function, the body’s brute
uses. The heads, factory fresh,
spin as in a shop window. Skull-capped,
mute and gazeless, a sameness.

No snake tattoo, no shock of white hair,
no hate love fear anger envy yet.
Transformation, the interpreted world: time
cut off as failsafe. And if
the machine doesn’t work?

Flight, light: Deckard narrows his eyes.
Spinners flare out their flame-red haloes.
The score recalls its daring first notes --
a kestrel keening— 
then falls.

Jan Bottiglieri 

This poem is from the author's in-process manuscript addressing the 1982 Ridley Scott film Blade Runner. Envisioned as a sort of "poetry commentary track" for the film's Final Cut version, the poems address the movie's themes of memory, the body, and what it means to be human by weaving screen action and imagery with personal memory, interpretation, and a splash of Rilke.
​
Jan Bottiglieri lives and writes in Schaumburg, IL. She is a managing editor for the poetry annual RHINO and received her MFA in Poetry from Pacific University.  Jan’s poems have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies including Harpur Palate, Court Green, Bellevue Literary Review, and Rattle. She is the author of the chapbook Where Gravity Pools the Sugar and the full-length poetry collection Alloy. Visitjanbottiglieri.com.