Tintoretto’s Annunciation

She wasn’t thinking of babies at all, before
a beefy Gabriel dive-bombed her rackety room; 
Outside, her almost husband sawed and planed,
joined mortise to tenon, slid dovetails into place.
Time enough when they were properly wed.
She was just reading, puzzling over prophets
and all the great reversals of fate they promise:
tyrants tumbled, the ragged, downtrodden raised.
When would all this levelling happen, and how?
Then the brute angel barged in; and in the air
a chain, a garland of babies, babies, babies –
how could one woman ever welcome so many?
But it was just one, her baffling son, she must bear.
She pictured the timbers falling from Joseph’s hand.

Veronica Zundel

Veronica Zundel is a non-fiction writer and graduate of the Poetry School/Newcastle MA in Writing Poetry. Her poems have been published in  Other Poetry, Magma, The Alchemy Spoon and various anthologies, used in an OU foundation course and broadcast on Radio 2. She has won the Barnet Open and Cruse Lines competitions and been a finalist in the Mslexia competition. She lives in London, UK.

Purple Brown (by Mark Rothko, 1957)
         —after William Carlos Williams 

Someday, I 
hope to have 
been able to say, I have eaten
just as much as the 
soul needs, tasted enough plums
of joy and suffering, accepted that
precarious balance, a feeling you were 
able to plum and muster in
the heart’s cloister, the 
body’s generator. No icebox
for you but something warmer and 
stirred in thin washes and across scales, which
steeped in the aftermath of rainstorm, and you 
who could plumb a line deeper, were 
you among the early risers, probably
sensing a holiness in the early hour and saving
seconds of time for 
yourself, long before breakfast.
Will god forgive 
the human tendency to dwell on “me”--
our trials and trespasses while they 
of other histories slip past us, and were 
we awake or did we only dream delicious
thoughts? I see a field suffused with plum, so
radiant that I linger, the chapel quiet, the children sweet
and still asleep. There is something I have lost and
I have come to find it. We harbor dreams and so
we hope. We gather what we can against the cold.

Sharon Tracey

Sharon Tracey is the author of two poetry collections, Chroma: Five Centuries of Women Artists (Shanti Arts Publishing, 2020) and What I Remember Most is Everything (All Caps Publishing, 2017). Her poems have appeared in Radar Poetry, Lily Poetry Review, Pirene’s Fountain, The Banyan Review, Terrain.org, SWWIM, The Ekphrastic Review, and elsewhere. sharontracey.com

There are almost seven 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 moving forward, Marjorie Robertson wants to share some favourites with us on a regular basis, monthly.  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 [email protected].

Let's have some fun with this- along with your picks, send a vintage photo of yourself too!

Creativity. Community. Conversation. 

That's what our workshops are all about! 

Discover new ways to engage with art during our fun Sunday sessions, where we gather as a community to write together.

Click on image above for more information about this week's workshop and an upcoming session on the marvels of Magritte.

18 Canoa
with grateful appreciation to Lino Tagliapietra*

I
Perhaps at first you do not see the shadows 
underneath the delicate glass fish suspended
out of water, 
                           tapered like a rainbowed flock 
of mythical birds--
                                       shadows whisper
back memories fashioned by alchemy 
of  blown glass

II
Endeavor** is a perfect verb for working with glass--
No one but the glassmaker understands the 
Delicate alchemy of heat, molten glass, the
Emotional nature of glass blowing— imagine
A slender strand  pulled into being, like a
Venetian gondola for the Festa della Sensa***
Opulent colours, diamond-cut into shape for a 
Ritual reminiscent of a water parade. 

Reflection is a perfect word for glass and memory.
Emotions rise looking at the suspended 
Flotilla— flying flock of birds, sweep of
Light shimmering like a school of fish—an
Expectation waiting to
Celebrate the beauty of a community.
Tapered ends stretch out like hands, suspended
In stillness, as our eyes explore— see 
Overhead, the connected fishing lines, bait of boats,
Notice their shadows cast in the imaginary waters below.

Kitty  Jospé
​
*There are 18 elongated boat forms (canoa) that are suspended in the air by steel cables.  Battuto cut, is made with a hard diamond edge. https://www.cmog.org/audio/tagliapietra-endeavor-513
** etymology: , middle English: the sense ‘exert oneself’  to do one’s utmost
*** Feast of the Ascension https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festa_della_Sensa
​
​MA French Literature, New York University; MFA Poetry, Pacific University, OR. Art Docent (Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY) since 1998. Since 2008, Kitty has been moderating weekly poetry appreciation sessions and occasional presentations on art and word.  (Since March 2020, these are conducted by zoom.)  Known for her contagious enthusiasm, she embraces the joy of working with language, art, and helping others to become good readers of poems, people and life. Her work is in 6 books, published since 2009 and in numerous journals and anthologies. Her latest book, Sum:1 is available from FootHills publishing: http://www.foothillspublishing.com/2021/jospe.html

Dwelling in Delight
 
The more you study delight, the more delight there is to study.
                                                                                                   Ross Gay, The Book of Delights 
 
The majestic maple’s 
changing colours 
shout look at me
in a way that makes it 
impossible not to grin 
even as some docile
despair gathers,
like old socks, 
around the ankles. 
 
Where the house meets
the dirt, some wriggling
red worms line up 
in the dappled yellow
of a new day.
This abode holds
what matters most
and ignores the barking
coming from the side yard.
 
Wayward joy contains 
the realness of things,
but holds the kindling 
lightly so oxygen can 
whisper to the flame
resist — be stubborn 
in your gladness. 
The wind throws a fit,
but this domicile stands. 
                       
In the before now,
this home was enveloped
by clouded uncertainty.
Even when the sky sang
the lapis of a lagoon,
the discordant melody fell flat,
tumbled in one ear, 
out through the lungs.
But today, this dwelling shines.
 
In childhood, mirth and misery
appeared as angry antonyms
on the playground and on Looney Tunes. 
But they’ve always lived in the 
same house, just different floors. 
Even when life sings a sorrowful 
song, don’t be confused. 
Turn on the lights and 
study delight. Do this.
​

Mind Metropolis 
 
While birds build nests, we write alphabets of their trees.
In skyscrapers, the steel beams, like massive twigs,
envelop and protect us in a vocabulary of shelter, place. 
The hills and valleys of the metropolis create shadow, 
refract the warm light like gleaming mountain lakes. 
 
Dichotomous childhood tales of urban and rural rodents
highlight only distinctions, but I have seen sunrise-painted skies 
evoke magic in the mountains and from urban balconies.
We can be lost, found, saved or forgotten everywhere we go. 
 
Can you recall the exact tones and tunes of traffic or ocean waves, 
a moment’s particular echoes and silhouettes at dusk, secrets felt 
in alleys and neural paths – scents of coconut lime treats.
 
I have heard roosters crow in mountainous Monteverde and
in a Saigon hotel room, high up above the bustling streets. 
And in half-sleep notice the newborn sunlight on my morning sheets.
All our places leave inner souvenirs – traces of coastal saltwater in our genes.
 
Some boroughs and bogs we can only visit again in our heads.
But a known quality of radiance can peek through in unexpected ways,
a minds-eye homecoming to a specific street, a morning in a drafty kitchen.
All those particles of ash and smog, smells of wet soil and peat
form a now of then, the cyclical motions of wash, rinse and repeat.

Was the grief worth the poem? No,
but you don’t interrogate a weed
for what it does with wreckage.
For what it’s done to get here.
                                       Hala Alyan 
 
To Get Here
 
It’s vertigo, plain and simple –
the sky spinning under my toes,
the same feet that touch
summer grass and pavement heat.
 
Where are you from?, they say. 
We are from a house of longing, a garden 
full of flowering weeds, where Persian 
green, black and goldenrod meet.
 
Grief congeals in the lungs, 
while the past coats the hips,
but it’s the shin bones that splinter 
in the escape, fuse together, never quite heal. 
 
Though you walk with a limp, the paintings
and poems rush from your fingertips. 
Small shoots of caper spurge and wild carrot 
emerge triumphant, weeds in name only. 
 
It costs too much to leave the rubble,
arrive from across oceans, or even from 
another side of town. From the compost pile, 
improbably, roots grow toward the night sky.
 
Ellen Skilton
​
​Ellen Skilton’s poetry has appeared in The Dewdrop, Cathexis Northwest Press, The Scapegoat Review, Dissident Voice, Philadelphia Stories, Red Eft Review, and The Dillydoun Review. In addition to being a poet, she is an excellent napper, a chocolate snob, a swimmer, and lives in Philadelphia with Zoomer (her dog), Katniss (her cat), and some lovely humans.