 Lady Macbeth, by Elisabet Ney (USA. b. Germany) 1905 Elisabet Ney Visits Me at Hot Yoga Asheville Halfway through the hour with Britt, a popular instructor with an eclectic playlist, I’m visited by Elisabet Ney whose sculptures I viewed this summer in Austin, Texas. I ask what she’s doing here. Because you can see me. And because she never sculpted yoga postures, Elisabet wants us to work together: I’ll transmit to her visions of students, she’ll sculpt them and this will bring us both joy. I send her down dog, water wheel, bridge pose, cobra, warrior one, warrior two, reverse side angle, mountain, pyramid, pigeon, child’s pose, happy baby, and my favourite the beautiful bird of paradise. She renders each in Italian marble, smooth and white in the soft yoga light, the room begins filling with dozens of figures, I’m amazed by how quickly she works, but most amazed by their life-like magnificence, as an interesting saxophone flows through what is now an annex to Elisabet’s Austin museum. Lee Stockdale Lee Stockdale has won The United Kingdom National Poetry Prize and other prizes. His debut poetry collection, Gorilla, was brought out by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in 2022. He lives in the Western North Carolina Mountains.
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 Massacre of the Innocents, by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (Hapsburg Netherlands) 1565-1567 The Appropriation of Brueghel I. Hapsburg armor storms the Flemish village in search of young boys to satisfy the order to kill. Double-headed eagles scour in both directions. No one can escape the scrutiny. Parents plead in vain. II. The routine was always the same. Prof. C strode into class just a minute before start-time, arms full of loose papers. She insisted someone open a window for fresh air, no matter the weather. She taught medieval German literature and Norse mythology. In the days before classroom computers, she introduced our small class of German majors to the art of Pieter Brueghel the Elder. She presented him as a German painter. III. Bringing Spanish rule over the Dutch, say Brueghel’s bristles, is no different from the Massacre of the Innocents. The Spanish have hired German mercenaries. IV. In Brussels, I rush to the Brueghel exhibit in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Oldmasters museum. I cannot leave Brussels without paying homage to Brueghel. “I found him,” I want to shout to Prof. C, long since deceased. Brueghel’s style pulses community portrait. V. Prof. C claimed this Flemish painter for Germany well before Germany occupied Belgium in the spring of 1940. Despite a birth record registered in Croyden, England in the summer of 1933, despite her appearance as a British immigrant on the SS Veendam to New York in 1952, presumably to begin attending the college where she would later teach, Prof. C had a thick German accent. VI. Like Brueghel, she focused on the minute, the small moments and made them seem important and vital to a larger environment. Open the window, breathe the air, become anyone you want to be. Barbara Krasner Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks and three novels in verse. Her work has also appeared or is forthcoming in Nimrod, Michigan Quarterly Review, Paterson Literary Review, Rust + Moth, The Vassar Review, and other journals. She lives and teaches in New Jersey, and can be found at www.barbarakrasner.com.  The Scream, by Edvard Munch (Norway) 1893 Crossing the Bridge As he walked by the fjord, I saw Munch pause to draw a breath, Unbeknownst to him I was, the bridge between life and death. To take him to the great beyond, to guide him to his end, accompanied him two faceless fiends, death disguised as friend. The lake turned black, the sky blood red, painted a picture of demise, I saw the face of unease turn to gaping mouth and hollow eyes. Death gave him a shout, a silent wailing scream, a stab of fear, a pang of angst, the pain of unfulfilled dreams. Then all at once it left his side. What caused this change of plan? Could it be that fate had erred, and sent for the wrong madman? Time erased most memory, of the scream and ghostly face, In his mind’s eternal asylum, his torment made its place. Fleeting visions Munch rendered, with oil and palette knife, And that expounds how near death gave birth to The Frieze of Life. Neal Dastoor Neal Dastoor is 17, a grade 12 science student from Mumbai, India. His interests are chess, reading and math. He won second place in Ekphrasis-II, a student competition held by the O. P. Jindal Global University, India.  Golden Day, photograph by Joan Leotta (USA) contemporary The Golden Day My friend, on seeing my photo of dawn’s bright gold spilling into our pond, pouring over the grass in waves until it splashes up to meet my window, told me she loved the photo and to “enjoy your golden day.” Indeed, even without such a glorious dawn it is easy to think of our son’s birthday as a golden day, be thankful, even filled with joy that this dear boy was in our living world for nineteen years. I was nervous on that day about the planned cesarean bringing him into the world before he was necessarily quite ready making him a Wednesday’s child because that was the surgeon’s preferred day to extricate him from my womb. As soon as he stepped into our world everything shone brighter-- for my husband, for our daughter, his sister, and for me—indeed, a golden day. Nor do I recall the weather on the day his spirit strode ahead of us into Paradise, a golden day for him, leaving a space in our lives that we fill with tales of remembered joy, looking forward to rejoining him there one day—a golden day. PS: Were you looking for a date for my golden day? I did not include one, so you can take the rich aura of such a day and make it yours, today, or any day. Joan Leotta Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. She performs tales of food, family, and strong women. Internationally published as an essayist, poet, short story writer, and novelist, she’s a 2021 and 2022 Pushcart nominee, Best of the Net 2022 nominee, and 2022 runner-up in Robert Frost Competition. Her essays, poems, CNF, and fiction appear in Impspired, The Ekphrastic Review, Verse Visual, Verse Virtual, Gargoyle, Silver Birch, Yellow Mama, Mystery Tribune, Ovunquesiamo, MacQueen’s Quinterly and others. Her poetry chapbooks are Languid Lusciousness with Lemon and Feathers on Stone.  Snail Ashtray, by Francesca Fuchs (USA) 2021. Image courtesy of the artist. Click on image for artist site. Snail Ashtray you see saturation almond-shaped lip painted a very faint shadow the white edge on the bulge dots, dashes, and dark shifts saturated divide the ground speckled light feels tender head raised oval hat a curve-like, creamy, wavy hair fragment tucked under the edge egg ears dappled warm-white metallic eye shape fired shades of blue flat nose protrudes a coil-rolled clay body as if thrown into ripples reattaches carefully curves elegantly feeling my way back and forth touching the unsteady slanted surface arriving at mid-centre sides slightly straight pressing a perched peanut bowl hollowed oval your big heart a portal of reflection a dark turquoise aqua-green-glazed dripping pot a fairly intense hue-- which is surprising satisfyingly good. Kathi Crawford Editorial note: This poem is written with words culled from the artwork descriptions by Francesca Fuchs in the exhibition how a rock is all about surface, at Inman Gallery, Houston and Serious and Slightly Funny Things, Art Museum of Southeast Texas. Kathi Crawford is a consultant and coach based in Houston, TX. After decades of serving as a human resources leader, in 2008 she founded People Possibilities, LLC. For most of her career, she focused on business writing as a part of her job. She returned to writing creatively in 2017 and is particularly drawn to writing poetry and flash creative nonfiction. Her work has been featured online and in print. You can follow Kathi on Instagram @kathicrawford or LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathicrawford/.  Rock Cradle, with Gray Floor, a wall painting that pulled around the perimeter of the space, by Francesca Fuchs (USA) 2021. Image courtesy of the artist. Click image to visit artist site.  Train in the Snow, by Claude Monet (France) 1875 [The Train Pauses] "All experience is an arch wherethrough / Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades / For ever and for ever when I move." Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses" Dragon’s tail flips out, arches to the edge to bend our gaze, A rickety picket fence Drawing us in to witness, from the side of This snow-slain scene, at the perimeters of that yet untravelled world Trees stand tight, arrows braced Forking the soiled air Man in black, Russian fur hat A signal man, to keep paths apart, stop a watch He remains turned away, a frozen moment Pinned in that arc, an expectant gesture over white Like a suitor waiting For a powdered face to lift and glimmer Or with eyes smudging as the haze clears The others, families and traders, Arrive and leave in steady quick strokes, busy at the living fringe of Beginnings and endings, evenings and dawnings The dragon, the red-eye special, waits steaming Smog merges with sky, sky with sullied snow, Grayscale The train transfixes, bestial head lowered, Dazed, prognosticating Eyes weeping weary, googling Headed unalterably ahead The snow drips persistent, industrious, into the tracks. The trees bristle still at the billowing fumes A cat is sitting somewhere waiting for its meal. Jay Bond Australian who returned in 2020 to her city of birth, Melbourne, after a few decades teaching in Asia and the United States, now refocusing on writing. Published writer of poetry: Luna and Meanjin magazines, early 1980s; more recently Argotist Online Poetry, Fevers of the Mind Online, Poetica Review, The Ekphrastic Review and the Melbourne Poets Union Finding My Feet Anthology.  Vita Sackville-West on Her Wedding Day, photographer unknown. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons. The Mountain of Myrrh A wedding is a curing ceremony. The priest formally disarms the dark of spooks, red teeth and loneliness, but the secret the rest of us know is that white satin is so frail, and fate the guest that's always hungriest and thirstiest. My ears quiver like tuning forks to these spells and pledges. I feel us all conjuring safety and charmed zones, a field of honey for the pair because these young know nothing, nothing. Furiously we spin from straw a favorite saint crowning each bedpost, a grenadier with sword guarding the door, huge wingspreads of anonymous angels unfurling warmth and light over the baby steps of the couple. May they take care of their lives. We can only hope. But this morning through battering rains you couldn't stop with a train, cathedral stone flowered into Song of Solomon beauty. And at the night dance we saw the bride's ordinary human hair turn to a mane of stars. Margaret Benbow Margaret Benbow's poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, The Georgia Review, Poetry Hall and other magazines. Her first collection won the Walt McDonald First Book award, and was published by TTUP. She has recently finished a second collection.  Vercingetorix Throws Down His Arms at the Feet of Julius Caesar, by Lionel Royer (France) 1899 Vercingetorix Arverni chief of Celtic blood before your smoking Gallic hilltop fort aflame. A hopeless dream of druid rule restored condemned your kin to Charon’s dark domain. Besieged and trapped when you expelled your weak. Your old. Your women. Wailing children starved. Between a putrid pride and Gaul’s defeat, they died to feed their chieftain’s honour guards. A wicker man—a shameful heart concealed by shining armor faced the legions’ standards. A fine display when you threw down your shield. Now count the Celtic corpses, caged commander. Arverni chief, the fate you earned awaits-- a Roman triumph, chains, and Hades’ gates. Dave Day Read Dave Day's poem to a Fayum mummy: https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/leuropeenne-fayum-mummy-portrait-by-dave-day Dave Day is an attorney from Honolulu, Hawaii, where he lives with his lovely wife and daughter and an incredibly noisy bordoodle. Dave is a numismatist focused on the currency of the Russian Empire, Soviet Union, and post-Soviet states, and views coinage as a unique way of understanding history. His poem about a Ukrainian opera singer turned soldier, "The Lives and Roles of Vasyl Slipak," is a 2023 Pushcart Prize nominee. How to be a Star or a Dictator with More Than Just Fifteen Minutes of Fame, by Jocelyn Ajami5/18/2024  Mao, by Andy Warhol (USA) 1972 How to be a Star or a Dictator with More Than Just Fifteen Minutes of Fame The art of consumerism (or is it communism, I forget) is well understood by the capitalist entrepreneur who hammers you with slogans and images, devouring your brain with stentorian decibels and relentless repetition. This is how you shape and sell a star. If you grasp for power, embellish your spare charisma with a tint of red lipstick, blue eyeshadow and rosebud blush to detract from your drab demeanor, your dull green apparel. Affirm your celebrity with splashes of color. This is how you sell personality, soup cans and ideology, hamburgers and tyranny. Become a seductive, persuasive commodity. Place millions of prints over mantelpieces, kitchen sinks, playgrounds and bedrooms. Hang billboards from skyscrapers, temples and grocery stores. Initiate a bombardment of video clips and blither. Paint a giant canvas, large as a museum wall, because bigger is better and louder is supreme. Give yourself a ten foot head, so it never has to swell. It does not matter if you are homely or good looking, saint or sinner, chairman or pawn. It does not matter if you build bridges or destroy lives, ban beef and burn books. What matters is the shine and polish, the insistence of the stroke. You must amplify, multiply and promote with trickery and gimmickry. You must propagate and promulgate until you master the cudgel of ubiquity. Jocelyn Ajami Jocelyn Ajami is an award winning painter, filmmaker and poet. She turned to writing poetry in 2014as a way of connecting more intimately with issues of social conscience and cultural awareness. She has been published in several anthologies of prizewinning poems. She is presently working on a manuscript of ekphrastic poetry based on masterpieces from the Art Institute of Chicago.  Don't miss out on this upcoming treat with the incredible flash fiction luminary Kathryn Kulpa!
Sunday, June 23, 2024 from 3 to 5 pm EST. On Zoom. The Ekphrastic Review is thrilled to collaborate with Kathryn Kulpa, a luminary of flash fiction and an editor at Cleaver. This session will be a generative writing workshop using images and word prompts to inspire new flash and microfiction. We will meet a number of redheads in various paintings through art history and reflect on the ways they were viewed as either special or dangerous. We will explore interesting ways to incorporate characters with red hair into our flash fiction, thinking about stereotypes and how to shatter them, symbolism, and more. Join us! |
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