Warrior Queen   

I sing your praises 
Warrior Queen,
red hair badged with blood, 
mouth a howl of rage 
in blue tattooed face 
as you roared into battle 
on your chariot, 
javelin leaping 
from your hand.

Was there ever an epitaph for you?
Bards scorned the written word -
shameful not to have it by heart,
the mead hall of the Iceni destroyed.

We have only your conquerors’
story, those who 
stole your inheritance 
gang raped your daughters
flogged you to the bone. 

Tall as a man, your glance could kill,
a mass of tawny hair reaching your hips, 
voice harsh as a raven
your battle cry terrified.

Your vengeance was like the Furies. 
They say you called on Andraste,
War Goddess of the Celts
your hands rising to the heavens
in ecstatic appeal,
a sacred hare under your cloak. 

You rallied
over a thousand warriors,
you were politician, 
strategist, tactician, 
Queen of the Celts 

At the last
Eighty thousand of the enemy fell,
 for the loss of only four hundred Romans
so Tacitus tells us.

channelled into chaos 
by the Roman war machine. 

He said you took poison. 
You probably did.

You were never going to paraded 
through the streets of Rome
enslaved and shamed.
 
What would you have thought 
of your statue high over London, 
icon of the British Empire 
a layer of red scorched earth 
deep under your chariot wheels?

Sue Mackrell 

Sue Mackrell is a grandmother, gardener, poet and writer from Leicester, UK who loves art in all its forms.  Many of her poems, short stories and non-fiction historical pieces have been published online and in print, including in Agenda Poetry, Bloody Amazing, (Dragon Yaffle) and currently in Whirlagust (Yaffle) and The Dawntreader (Indigo Dreams.) Highlights have been having her poems displayed in Ladies’ toilets in Leicester as part of a Wee Poems project and winning an Archaeology Festival Haiku prize – the most lucrative 17 syllables of her career! She is extremely proud to have poems already in The Ekphrastic Review  

​

The Four Daughters of Edward Darley Bois        

Each child takes her post: The youngest, Julia, age four, on the carpet, an over-dressed doll lying in her lap. Might as well be a baby. She believes it to be a baby, and here are the clues: the tender touch, her hand on the doll’s shoulders, her in-turning feet that create a protective box around the doll. Her straight cut bangs are the sign of a petite trooper, white dress, black tights and shiny patent leather shoes. The doll is a message to her sisters, mine, mine, mine, not yours, while she eyes the mother hovering outside the frame…

On the left, is Mary Louis, age eight. A bright light shines on her too. She’s old enough to wear a white pinafore over her maroon dress, hair falling past her shoulders, though half her face is in darkness. But why? Will she be an in-between girl, patient enough to have her bangs touched up with a curling iron, but still uncertain about who she is. Maybe she’s thinking, you’re such a baby, Julia, you’ve still got a doll. Her best defence.

In the rear, two seven-foot Japanese-blue vases flank the opening to a dark hallway. Upside down, they might be the shape of a woman. Here they are merely vessels, nothing inside but darkness. Daughter Jane, age twelve, is also an in-between child. She faces the painter head on. Normally she likes to hover in the background, accepting her status, not quite as smart as her older sister. Ah, but she has whimsey. She knows how to tease her siblings, pulling the sheet out from under a sleeping sister, for instance. Or stealing her mother’s lipstick and tying socks on the family hound dog, while he sleeps. Grrrr, she growls close to its ear. The animal jumps, prancing like one of Santa’s reindeer. 

Florence at fourteen is the eldest and tallest, also standing in the hallway. She leans against the enormous vase, shadows from the hallway nearly engulfing her, except for a thick slice of pinafore, a slightly dingier white. She’s been waiting so long—the most ambitious, most likely to be trusted and yes, maybe a little bossy. She tolerates her siblings, but occasionally explodes will you please go away, leave me alone. She needs to get out of the house and begin her own life. She can hardly contain herself, imagining travel—France for the first time, reading alone on the train to Paris. Maybe, she’ll kiss that boy who’s always peering in their windows, hanging out in their tree. Good practice for someday falling in love. 

The painting denies what happened before and after this sitting: There was a first son by Isa Boit, also named Edward, known as Neddie, after his father. He suffered from severe mental retardation and was living in an institution. At one point, the couple made the heartrending decision to emigrate to Paris or stay in Boston to near him. They must have settled on the unfortunate fact that their son didn’t recognize them, and could not communicate. 

John Singer Sargent’s painting is large, a perfect square, the girls held in place—islands of their own—each of them meant to be equally important. If we drew a line from the youngest to the eldest it might carve out the letter Z. A long path to maturity for Julia, less so for Mary Louisa and Jane, and then Florence at the head of the three. Critics have called the painting “wooden,” or “psychologically unnerving,” or “unsettling.” Or, as Henry James saw it: “a happy play-world…of charming children.” Which is, in my opinion, the creepiest description of all. 

None of the four daughters depicted in the painting married. The eldest, Florence Dumaresq, died in 1919, aged 51. The second born daughter, Jane Hubbard Boit, had suffered a nervous breakdown and never completely recovered. Her father was concerned that she would end up in a mental asylum like his first-born, Neddie. She improved and in fact, went to live on her own in a Paris apartment. She died in New York State in November 1955, aged 85. Mary Louisa Boit, the girl who stood alone on the left of Sargent’s painting, looked upon as the prettiest of the four girls, died in New York in June 1945, aged 71.

Julia Overing Boit, the youngest, emerged as a talented watercolour painter. Often her letters contained small watercolour sketches. The work was displayed in many exhibitions. In March 1929 at the Copley Gallery in Boston, sixty-six of these watercolours were exhibited. She died in February 1969, aged 91.

What might have been interesting, a second chapter, where the girls relax into their actual selves, a mixture of early childhood and nearly adult. The daughters all agreed to turn over the painting to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, where they are imprisoned today.

Sarah Gorham

Sarah Gorham’s recent essay collection is Funeral Playlist from Etruscan Press. She is the author of Alpine Apprentice, shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein Award, and Study in Perfect, selected by Bernard Cooper for the AWP Award (both University of Georgia Press books.) Other books include Bad Daughter, The Cure, The Tension Zone, and Don’t Go Back to Sleep. Grants and fellowships include the National Endowment for the Arts, three state arts councils, and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Media coverage included Salon, NPR, Utne Reader, Slate, and Real Simple. She co-founded Sarabande Books, inaugural winner of the AWP Small Press Publisher Award

 
​Harbinger
 
In 1941, Grant Wood could not 
have missed the impending fires of world war
on the way. You can see it in the green
sky here: a tornado coming. A plot
of ground dark as new graves. Is this farmer
planting or digging? Seeding or mourning?
 
Townspeople going about everyday
life —clotheslines and lawnmowers. Pearl Harbor
just months away. In Europe, shirtless men
like this one dying in showers. Someday
                           soon, he’ll wear Army green.

                                   
Maman

after Louise Bourgeois, Tate Modern 2007
                              
Inside the straddled legs, I’m catapulted back
against the fortress of my mother’s corset;
 
under the glass ball sac, on threadbare chair, 
her creature, safe from the reach of pouncing limbs 
 
that grab my siblings to bang heads. Mid shrieks 
I swallow horror, silence my inner scream,
 
and let betrayal, the habit of glancing past, 
embed as inner canker. Bound to escape ten heads
 
jammed in a family web, to vamp myself
I’ll turn to missile, fuelled by fission.

Prue Chamberlayne

​Prue Chamberlayne grew up by the river Severn and lives in London and the Aveyron in France. After feminist comparative social policy, biographic-interpretive research, and a rural project in Uganda, came poetry, with a collection Locks Rust in 2019, and a corona chapbook Beware the Truth that’s Manacled with erbacce-press in 2022, on the psychic underworld of racial experience, particularly regarding "whiteness." She has a ready a pamphlet Love’s Pendulum on inter-racial love and parenting. A forthcoming second collection is called Lizard Looks. Recent journal acceptances include Dawntreader, Green Ink Press, Galway Review, Wild Court. You might like https://poetrywales.co.uk/prue-chamberlayne-on-how-she-writes-a-poem/.

Lost in Kandinsky
 
Start anywhere: a purple curlicue
bisecting an arc
of barbed wire, suspended in sky-blue
and yellow nebulae. Plunge with your eye
through vortices
of paper cut-outs, whirling ostrich feathers
and stenciled mitochondria. Golf tees, neckties,
succulent speared olives
orbiting rainbows
of wrinkled cellophane: the whole fiery glitter
leading inevitably to that red throb
of war in the corner. With its tangled kites, its rotors
spewing ribbons of hemoglobin, the mandala’s
big-bang windmill
inhales all but one charioteer
who escapes. See where he’s headed: Psychedelia,
where polka dots float
like embryos - through the permeable
stained-glass membranes
of a heaven
with no vanishing point.
 
David Southward

This poem first appeared in Stoneboat Literary Journal.

David Southward teaches in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His collections include Bachelor’s Buttons (Kelsay Books 2020) and Apocrypha, a sonnet sequence based on the Gospels (Wipf & Stock 2018). David is a two-time winner of the Lorine Niedecker Prize and in 2019 his poem “Mary’s Visit” received the Frost Farm Prize for Metrical Poetry. He resides in Milwaukee with his husband, Geoff, and their two beagles. Read more at davidsouthward.com.

Join Ekphrastic editor Lorette for a very special four week course in June, as requested by the ekphrastic community.

Lorette is an award-winning, internationally collected mixed media artist. In this online course, you will discover the history of collage and mixed media, view the work of luminaries practicing today and through history, learn about composition and colour in relationship to mixed media, understand tools and adhesives, discover themes and inspiration for your own projects, and, of course, create, create, create. 

This will be a fun and playful program and time of discovery, whether you are brand new to collage and art, or a professional artist.

​Hope you can join us!

A Son's Fate

l.
The newly married couple, decked in fine clothes and laurel wreaths, climbed into the chariot as the young woman walked up alongside. A fresh wreath on her own head, she raised a hand beneath the other woman's as she took the reins to the horses.

"You have great occasion to be glad, sister," Ariel told Thetis, the woman in the chariot. "The prophecies favor you and your new husband Peleus. The word is your son will be stronger than his father. What an amazing thing when you consider Peleus himself is descended from Zeus."

"I hope it will be as you say," Thetis said. "A strong and able son can prove an outstanding athlete or soldier and the pride of his family." Then tensing, she added, "Of course, these gifts from the gods can be problematic. I have heard there come caveats and snags nobody anticipates."

"Now that is no way to think of the blessing you have. The prophet couldn't have been clearer: your son will stand out among men. He's to be an example inspiring others to greatness."

"I know. But however great anyone is, they meet with trouble in life. Nobody knows all things. We make mistakes or reach too far, being less than perfect. A son can fall prey to any number of difficulties." 

Beside her, Peleus darkened, scowling. "Let's not think so grimly. We were married just now. We have the ride to my country home awaiting us and two weeks in seclusion there. Everything that should bring happy thoughts."

"You may be right; I could be over-thinking things."  Thetis fell quiet; her sister gave her a modest smile, and Peleus reined in his scowl.

Right then, the musician for the wedding reception, who had come alongside the horses, struck an air on his lyre. The music seemed the right kind to send the pair on their journey; in its flowing chords, it gave the idea of easy motion along open roads. But in it sounded a hectic countermelody; strings plucked quickly hinted at struggle and fitfulness. The young musician performed the piece with care despite its inconsistencies, his face serious and intense.

"The music to set us on our way, don't you think?" Peleus said, a pressing edge to his voice.

"It seems," Thetis said. But now the music stirred her, she thought again of the prophecy. What danger is my son supposed to face?, she asked herself. Could I protect him if I knew what it was? The musician strummed, and Thetis, yet thoughtful, turned aside.

A youth, one of Peleus's family, came now and stood before the horses, waiting to see the chariot head outward. In his new robe and cap, he appeared a comely, fine young man, his face unusually alert. Thetis fixed a considerate eye on him. He may become as remarkable and handsome as Peleus, she thought. But I wouldn't have him grow up and meet a man's challenges. The world seems ready with harm for us all once we get there. 

Thetis was roused from her thoughts as Peleus struck the backs of the horses with the reins. Their chariot started toward the road, leaving behind Ariel, musician, and boy.
​
II.
The war had its own wild order, Thetis learned after her son Achilles fought at Troy. A man, fleeing over a field, could find that his enemy was suddenly at his heels, spear raised, ready to cut him down. Having no time to lose, the soldier who'd fled would turn halfway around and have to fight the other man just so. If he had luck, he could raise his shield and spear high as he battled. He would hope desperately, however, for a companion to come charging to aid him, anticipating always the fatal blow.  

Some other soldier, who feared an onrushing enemy, might kneel, praying his shield would protect him. He knew his simple wish might do no good. But then his friend would arrive, spear raised, and the tables turned. His foe, once confident and sure, would be put to the same despair he had been.

Another soldier, who had an opponent running his way, would crouch behind his shield, knee suddenly hard to the ground. His companion would rush forward, spear above the shoulder, ready to charge the foe. But this friend would see the enemy, snarling, spear and kill the first soldier who had crouched low. Pulling his weapon free, the enemy would go then after him, when he had come only to save his friend.

Cries and howls shot through the field as the men fought, struggling, dying. And amid the conflict, men charged on horseback, wielding spears high. As their horses reared, they brought death to the infantry everywhere on the ground.

In recalling the tale of Troy, Thetis pictured the men at combat, one made to kneel, another crouched behind a shield, some other half bent in turning, and realized how easily violence overtook them. When Achilles failed to keep his guard, the enemy struck, right at his heel; the luckless oversight cost him his life. 

III.
On the anniversary of their son's death, Thetis, her husband Peleus beside her, sent their finely horsed chariot down the open road. The two had arranged to visit her sister Ariel and her husband Damian for a stay at their country estate. Thetis had hoped they'd enjoy the good midsummer weather that had overtaken the region as they went. Yet the two passed along the road in the quiet, sober mood she knew too well from home. In the months since their son died, Peleus had become a troubled man, his old. firm attitude gone. She awoke at night to find him sitting up, eyes open wide and tearing, in their great bed. She would ask, concerned, what the matter was, but he'd shake his heavy head and say, "I don't know." In this strange mind, Peleus would go lost from home, too. She would discover him, wandering their fields, starting down some path then another, as if he were searching for someone. Their son, she told herself. In going down the road now, Peleus, saying little, staring blankly around them, Thetis wondered what could she, or anyone, do to rouse him from disaffection.

The two pulled into the drive before Ariel's home in mid-afternoon. Her relations were out by the portico, ready to receive them, Ariel in a plain, dark dress, Damian in a noble robe of black and red.
"Welcome again, sister and brother," Ariel said, stepping forward as Thetis brought the chariot to a halt. "I hope you both had a pleasant journey."

"Pleasant enough in this fine weather," Thetis said.

"Good. We will have the servants look to your chariot and horses, and your belongings once they arrive." Then Ariel grew quiet, the colour in her face fading as she studied her sister.

"What is it, Ariel?" Thetis asked.

"It's that you're here today. You know today's the day Achilles passed. I remember when you and Peleus were married, I had been that excited in the prophecy over your son. He was supposed to overpower anyone else." Ariel dropped her eyes, her body stiffening.

Thetis understood her sister's pain. Ariel knew she had read more into the prophecy than there was. She'd seen the promise of strength fail of invulnerability. There were dangers none of them had predicted nor Achilles avoided. She knew Ariel wished now she hadn't encouraged her to think otherwise. But knowing as much herself before Troy had proved meaningless, Thetis found. For Fate had run its course, taking her beloved son Achilles, and offered her no way to prevent it. Any word of caution she'd given proved futile, and she suffered his loss as only a mother could. Of anybody, she had suffered. Today was different, however. For seeing Ariel suffer at the thought of his death, Thetis felt that, of all the horrible things that had happened, her sister's regret, at least, didn't have to be if it were put in perspective.

"You need to think he fought bravely," Thetis said. "He belonged among the most valiant men Achaea sent to Troy, strong as the prophet said. When he died, he went down like so many others in battle. We cannot re-write those events however we would like."

"But not mourn them?" Ariel said.

"Certainly mourn. But it would not be right to go on at it this long since his death. I have felt there is a limit to that mood. I knew it when I started feeling I was losing my own life to a memory. I didn't want to go on anymore as if I also had died. Don't wear yourself down in sadness either, Ariel. It is stronger for us to accept; we move on easier."

"I will try to since you tell me." Thetis saw resolve come into her sister's face at these words and trusted her to do as she said.

Damian, who had stayed by the horses as the women spoke, came forward now, tall staff in hand, toward Peleus. "Noble brother, Peleus," he said, "let me welcome you. I hope your estate is flourishing again this summer. I would be glad to hear about your orchards and fields as we walk together." He extended a hand to motion his guest from the chariot. 

Peleus had attended quietly on the words between Ariel and Thetis, his face losing the aloof withdrawal that had marked it on the road. Perhaps Thetis's idea of moving on had hit well, for he stepped from the chariot, eyes holding back tears, to stand beside Damian, his noble friend. 

IV.
The poets offered an exciting retelling of the events at Troy, Thetis found. They spoke of the soldiers in neat combat, each man outfitted in crested helmet; before them, splendid patterned shields, held tight and firm. They said the men charged the field, eager to fight, spears raised over the shoulder. On meeting one another, opponents tensed in anticipation before they took the dramatic, decisive stride forward to attack. The narrative flowed from such details in due course, rousing and, as it seemed, splendid.

Recitals of the tale became great events in themselves. Nobles walked miles from home to hear one. Youth rode their horses to far estates where a poet was to speak. The men gathered quietly around each silver-tongued poet and listened rapt to his every word for hours. In hearing the many scenes from the war, of soldiers rushing the field, of their commanders sparring, more than one listener imagined that, though time might be running onward, they were looking over its shoulder and seeing the great events of another age and place as if they occurred now.

Thetis heard the poets give their versions of the remarkable tale and tried to imagine the war as they made it seem. She was encouraged by their claims that Achilles may have cut through and leveled his enemies at no risk to himself. The idea that soldiers fell without pain or agony pleased her, too. She would have been glad to hear her son had passed realizing only a sense of triumph in helping take Troy. But it wasn't like that, she knew. Brilliant stories can mislead however exciting they feel. Ariel and Peleus had trusted the prophet's words, and it had lead neither to good results.

As she observed more of her countrymen listening to the tale of Troy, Thetis realized their hearts grew warm with the idea of war. She heard nobles, stirred by the combats of Ajax and Menelaus, say they'd be happy to organize men against the country threatening their own. Youth from her neighbours' families practiced their horsemanship, speaking of when they might charge fields of men. From the distance of peaceful life, combat seemed a thrill and an easy temptation to heed. But Thetis thought the people who understood the pain and horror in war, as she did, might stop men from realizing any new one. Fate lost its free hand if you learned from history, she had discovered, confronting her own loss.

Norbert Kovacs

Norbert Kovacs lives and writes in Hartford, Connecticut. He loves visiting art museums, especially the Met in New York. He has published art-inspired stories in The Ekphrastic Review and Timada's Diary. His website: http://www.norbertkovacs.net. ​

She Remembers
 
The room.
One wall, one desk,
one chair where she sits,
one flame that spreads
light on the handwork
she tends to.
The fine, even stitches
that bring her pennies.
The persistent thought.
Will I have to rip out
the work? Start again?

The light on her white blouse,
her skirt darkening away from it,
her feet on a foot warmer,
the skirt like a blanket holding
in the warmth,
the rest of her frozen,
her tightening muscles.

The clink of the coins
in his right hand—more
than she’s made all year--
the weight of his left hand 
on her shoulder unbidden,
his winey breath polluting
the air with every wily
word, the whine of his voice.

The moment that voice 
grows sharper, when the hand 
tightens. Small things 
remind her. 

Stephanie Pressman

A graphic artist and lifelong poet, Stephanie Pressman earned an MA in English from San Jose State University, taught writing at community college, and is the editor of the small press, Frog on the Moon. She served as co-editor of Cæsura and americas review. Her work has appeared in both print and online journals. Her poem “Self” was a finalist in The Ekphrastic Review’s 2021 Women Artists Contest. Her long poem Lovebirdman appears in an illustrated volume available on Amazon. Currently, she is working on a volume of ekphrastic poetry featuring women artists, many of whom she was unfamiliar with before beginning the project.

After Manet’s In the Conservatory, 1879

It’s not what he might have said--
We must visit Mother soon,

or I’ve taken a mistress, you see--
nor is it his pettish tone 

she’s grown so used to. 
It’s how he leans over her

like a proprietor his merchandise,
gesturing with a manicured finger

at her wedding band. 
Freesias whisper 

over her other shoulder. 
If only he would cease speaking…

Wild ginger and lady ferns exhale,
wilting the feathers in her hat.

She no longer admires
her furled, silly parasol, 

the way she’d fanned out
her skirt on the bench.

The cinched-in waist 
of her tulle dress makes her woozy.

She’s removed one tawny kid glove--
to do what?

She looks past the glass panes
toward a moon rising 

wafer-thin, translucent, 
almost full.

​Debra Kaufman

​Debra Kaufman's most recent poetry collections are Outwalking the Shadow and God Shattered. She has written many monologues and short plays and five full-length plays, most recently Seeing Light. Music, dance, community, books, movies, and watching birds in her back yard are sustaining her these days. A Midwest native, she has lived in North Carolina for over thirty years.

​Masterwork
      
It’s done at last. My muscles all complain
from four full years of working under strain.  
I climbed on scaffolds where I had to crane       
my neck to paint this vaulted, vast domain.
Assistants were inept and proved a bane;
I was the only one who could sustain
the vision and the toil and the pain
to bring to life the sacred and profane
mass of figures the ceiling would contain, 
where God and Adam, at the centre, reign.
I’ve painted God a white-haired man, humane,
as he imparts the spark of heart and brain
to Adam’s hand: the precious free rein
to set one’s sights, to struggle, to attain.

Barbara Lydecker Crane

This poem won First Prize in the Modern Sonnet category of the 2024 Helen Schaible Sonnet Contest.

Barbara Lydecker Crane won the Sonnet Crown prize in the 2024 Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Contest, Honorable Mention in the 2024 Frost Farm Poetry Contest, and was a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize in 2017 and 2019. Able Muse published her fourth collection, You Will Remember Me- illustrated, ekphrastic sonnets in the voices of portrait painters throughout history.  She enjoys making and looking at art, travel, and her family, which includes four fast-growing grandchildren and one near-perfect husband: he does not read poetry.