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Negative Space, by Jay Jacoby

6/30/2021

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Picture
Reclining Figure, by Henry Moore (UK) 1935-1936

Negative Space
                                 
“Sculpture is the science of the hollow and the bump.” Rodin

“Sculpture is the science of the hollow and the bump,” Rodin
Look how he has made me
 
without edges
flowing from 
with 
in 
on 
out
of the earth
like streams 
hills and hollows
like the tree from which I came
hewn shaped scraped
                                                    
Look at the nothing
that is my core
the empty hole 
around 
between
that is
hunger 
and possibility
You are drawn from 
the whole to the hole
the form is only the shell 
holding the hole 
 
Look at how he has made us

​Jay Jacoby

Jay Jacoby is a happily retired English professor having taught for most of his career at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.  He now lives in the Western North Carolina mountains and is able to focus  energies on creative writing.  His writing has appeared in several journals and he has four new poems coming out soon in an anthology, Barricaded Bards: Poems from the Pandemic (March 2021, ArsPoetica, an imprint of Pisgah Press, LLC) .
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Colossi, Sheila Lockhart

6/29/2021

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Picture
Archeological Reminiscence of Millet’s Angelus, by Salvador Dali (Spain) 1935

Colossi

we walked away from town at dusk 
red sand already darkening around us
you wouldn’t let me take a torch
said eyes would get accustomed to the dark 
soon neon lights were out of sight
and the pale horizon faded

clouds turned violet like fresh bruises
and when the moon appeared its beams
turned hollows into pools of indigo 
made sand glow like polished copper
I worried about snakes

then we heard the sound   you held my hand
it’s only the wind you said but I was fearful
two black shapes loomed out of the darkness 
impossibly tall against the night sky
I sensed in them deep suffering
like all the sadness in the world   

one was pierced through its chest  
just as you in your soul’s darkness
were later to be pierced 
and the wind blew through the holes
like someone moaning

Sheila Lockhart

Sheila Lockhart is a retired social worker and lives on the Black Isle in the Scottish Highlands. She is a member of the Moniack Mhor writers’ group and Suffolk Poetry Society. She has been published in Northwords Now, Nine Muses Poetry, Twelve Rivers, the StAnza Poetry Map of Scotland, The Writers’ Cafe, Words for the Wilds, Re-Side and The Ekphrastic Review.
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​On The Lady and the Unicorn Tapestries, by Clela Reed

6/28/2021

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Picture
Touch, The Lady and the Unicorn Tapestries, artist not known (France) C. 1500
Picture
Taste, The Lady and the Unicorn Tapestries, artist not known (France) C. 1500
Picture
Smell, The Lady and the Unicorn Tapestries, artist not known (France) C. 1500
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Sight, The Lady and the Unicorn Tapestries, artist not known (France) C. 1500
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Desire, The Lady and the Unicorn Tapestries, artist not known (France) C. 1500
Picture
Sound, The Lady and the Unicorn Tapestries, artist not known (France) C. 1500
​On The Lady and the Unicorn Tapestries

After the six 15th Century tapestries commonly regarded 
as allegories of the five senses and a sixth sense of the heart.

                                                               The Cluny Museum, Paris
​
​I. The Encounter 
        
After the pious saints and tokens of war, 
dulled paint, tarnished metals in exhibits 
below, the tapestries, huge and glowing, float  
in the dimly-lit room at the top of the stairs.
They astonish. How delicious to frolic 
with brocaded ladies, with bright flowers 
and beasts and birds! Though enchanted, 
I sense beneath the posed scenes, 
implications. 

​
II. The Monkey
 
In only four of the six is the monkey allowed.
The artist knew well to mind the traditions,
hierarchy of senses being sacred and known.
Thus, the noble Sight and Sound, 
gateways to God,
could not include this creature of sin.
He serves as our proxy, 
this foolish debasement in near-human form.
But see him relish the berries of Taste
and the pungent carnation of Smell! 
 
And notice his stare over the shoulder, 
encountering us in his naïve boldness, 
at center-front in Mon Seul Desir as though 
to see our reaction to this puzzling tableau,
to tattle a tale back to artist and weaver. 
His mischief expected, of course. 
 
But how cruel is his bondage in Touch!
As the lady fondles 
the horn of the tamed unicorn 
and grasps the patron’s banner, 
he sits disheartened, chained to a stone, 
his fellow ape in a belt of confinement.                                        
And other animals, too—the genet and dog                                        
and the fox—all collared, subdued. 
                                                    
Only the soul-symbol heron flies high, 
free from the cuffed falcon, 
and the pheasants 
upon which courtly vows are made, 
arrive freely on time. 
Rabbits scamper in abundance. 
Beneath the nuptial perfection of the orange tree--
chaste blossoms and ripe fruit together--
the lordly lion turns to us with a smile.
 
And what of the Lady, solemn, distracted?
Eyes wary, 
she poses weighted with thick robes, 
trussed with chains, 
held with stones. 
               
III: The Four Trees

Of course, the artist would use four trees 
—four seasons, four directions, 
four humors, four winds--
Symbolic meaning understood, 
balancing compositions 
with calming green against 
rampant fields of scarlet.
 
The holly was a given--
long standing for the coy unicorn
and the moon in the waning half of the year, 
but also for the passion of Christ 
with its thorn-spiky leaves,
its blood-red berries,
and in its winter greenness,
unending life. 
And the oak, too, was required.
Ever the tree of the lion,                                                                  
the king of the forest, the sun
in the waxing half.
These two bore the heavy load                                                      
of oldest legends, deeply felt
in Druid blood. 
The orange tree was symbolic perfection                                                    
for those panels that hinted at marriage,
white blossoms, full-fleshed fruit:
the chaste and the fertile.
 
But the fourth choice is a mystery. 
Why the pine? 
True, its whirling cones 
held pregnant seeds. 
(Some carried these as charms.)
But other trees wield procreation magic.
Why not the birch with her healing magic, 
powers of conception?
Or what about the yew and the willow
with their rebirthing and moon magic?
The chestnut’s chastity, the elm’s fidelity?
Medieval hearts adored these trees.
 
The artist chose the pine.
The reason, perhaps, is not of the flesh, 
but of the soul and the mind.
See in the sixth tapestry, Mon Seul Desir, 
how the pine, along with the most-holy holly,
anchors the opened tent, 
the heart, internal sense revealed.
 
For the pinecone base bespeaks the “third eye,” 
enlightenment’s center, and its needles held 
the scent that dispels guilt. 
Burn them to purify the home. 
Bathe with them for magical cleansing. 
 
And so the pine signals the lady’s sanctity.
She can allow her soul’s display,
guiltless after serving the lusty senses,
properly enlightened 
at the dawn of the Renaissance. 

IV: The Flowers

Fields of flowers—millefleur--
in peak bloom. The April violet, 
the June rose nod at once full-blown 
in a season that could never be.
Separately woven with no distance confusion, 
each discrete flower claims its sovereign worth.
For this garden of love: periwinkles, roses,
and pink carnations for wedding crowns. 
Gillyflowers for constancy, 
forget-me-nots for sincerity. 
 
But the garden is sacred, as well, 
and belongs to Our Lady, the Virgin.
She summons the watchful unicorn
with the purity of white roses,
with love, red-rose rich as Christ’s blood.
Lilly-of-the-valley, foxgloves, columbine, 
daisies, and violets are her flowers, 
as all would have known,
and thrive in each tapestry field.
 
Warming cold walls of ancient castles,
the tapestries contented hearts 
both romantic and saintly 
with flower-strewn meadows of red.
 
V: The Hands

The ladies’ hands have no knuckles, 
no tendons, no blood. 
Vaporous like those of elongated saints,
pure like the wings of small doves,
they yet perform earthly tasks, 
caressing the horn of the adoring beast, 
twining flowers into a lover’s chaplet, 
playing the organ.
Fingers pluck sweets from a bowl 
and make a dainty perch for the bird.
 
All moves illumine pleasures, 
pleasures served to others.                                                                
One lady touches but is not touched.  
One feeds but does not eat.
One fashions a flower wreath for another
but does not (like the monkey)
savor the heady fragrance 
of carnation and rose all about her.
One offers music for the listeners,   
another, a mirror for the unicorn, and finally, 
after opening the privacy of her heart, 
the lady’s hands in the sixth panel
cast aside all delight 
in her own possessions
in her own pleasure.
 
 And then she is wholly the servant 
whom the artist, the designer, 
the dyer, the weaver, 
and the patron 
expect her to be.
 
Clela Reed 

Clela Reed is the author of seven collections of poetry. Recently Silk (Evening Street Press, 2019) won the Helen Kay Chapbook Prize and then the 2020 Georgia Author of the Year in chapbook competition. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has had poems published in The Cortland Review, Southern Poetry Review, The Atlanta Review, Valparaiso Review, The Literati Review, Clapboard House, and many others. A former English teacher and Peace Corps volunteer, when not traveling or shooing deer from her garden, she lives and writes with her husband in their woodland home near Athens, Georgia.
 

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The Yellow Room, by Diane Fahey

6/27/2021

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The Yellow Room   

It will forever be 
October, twenty-eighteen,
in this corner of my house

where a hung calendar displays
The Chinese Screen by Margaret Olley,
set in her heaven-on-earth living room

with a doorway into a further room,
blue-walled, below its window,
steeped in silver, a figured jar.  

In the near room, an offstage 
window offers its broad 
slant on things, emblazons

the ochre-and-gold at the screen's centre,
falls on a flank of yellow wall,
the daybed's vined, flowered coverlet

and, with only one cup, the coffee set,
its grooved whiteness
a provocation to shadow.

How many times, over the many years
was this yellow room 
conjured through paint, to become

witness and archive of
a life lived in art,
and of the life of art itself: 

here, the headlong anarchic whirl 
of Matisse's round of dancers   
counterbalancing   

the inturned calm, the storied   
mystery, of the Chinese screen
with its pavilions, its robed figures

and a beyond of islands
on a blackly shining sea.
When evening comes 

the room, no longer captive 
to sliding shadows,
knows the solace of music –  

its geometric airiness,
its aqueous flare-and-shimmer.
Then, humdrum pleasures,

and the sustenance, ease  
that enable the long moment of
a whole life.

Soon enough, sleep's erasures,
the neon shock of dreams,
whatever kind of rest is given

until first light reaches in 
to place its touch upon
the things darkness saves for us.

Diane Fahey

This poem was long listed for the Peter Porter International Poetry Prize in 2019. It is from Diane's forthcoming poetry collection, The Glass Flowers.

Diane Fahey is the author of thirteen poetry collections, November Journal the most recent. She has won major poetry awards, and has received literary grants from the Australia Council. Her poetry has been represented in over seventy anthologies. Diane holds a PhD in Creative Writing from UWS. dianefaheypoet.com
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American Gothic, by Chris Sparks

6/26/2021

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Picture
American Gothic, by Grant Wood (USA) 1930

American Gothic by Grant Wood (USA) 1930

Oh – the blessed joy of hardship
Clothed cantankerous – rigorously stitched
To itch the hide with gritted guilt
Our skin so tight as if to snap
Or tear if emotion should appear
To crack at half a happy smile
We stand cold stoned still for 
The long hard mile – while
We keep it shut – hold it in – 
The lust – the sin – the wetted
Tongue or pouty lip shrivel at the lover’s kiss
Stand rigid frigid – silent as God’s angry angels
Shady subtle shifts of air – stealthy 
Sly and ancient old – knives out
Swish swish – skinning souls

Chris Sparks

Chris Sparks is quite an old person but new to creative writing. He comes from East London but has ended up in Sligo Ireland. For many years he worked as a political theorist. Now he finds that (weirdly) every dark thing that what once was theoretical seems to be becoming actual. So, for his sanity and soul, he has decided to come at things from another angle and this is why he writes poetry.


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Cherry Bones, by Carolyn R. Russell

6/25/2021

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Picture
Woman Standing by a Tree, by Pierre Auguste Renoir (France) 1866

​Cherry Bones 

Judging from the angle of sunlight playing with my cat, Taro, I’ve had a bit more sleep than I am usually able to manage. I wake up in sections, stretching on the expensive mattress my kids insisted I needed; they were right – rising is a lot less painful than it used to be pre-the-something-o-pedic. My hips take the longest time to cooperate, and because I need them to sit up, I thank them first. They’re not perfect but they’re the original set, and that’s more than a lot of people my age can say. I am grateful for every part of this body for what it continues to give me, and for what it hasn’t. At least not yet. So, I start each day voicing my thanks out loud, a ritual Taro has come to believe is Taro-centric. She thinks most things are. 

                                                                         *** 

I sit at the edge of my bed and grab some woolen socks from the basket that hangs off the wooden headboard. This is the most irritating part of my day. My feet have never been anywhere close to pretty, and the past twenty years have not been kind to them. More disturbing than the way they look is their increasingly sinister unreliability. They have a tendency to seize up or go numb when I least expect it, that is, when I forget to remember their intermittent treachery. They are my anatomical problem children, and, I admit, it’s a struggle to love them. Especially when just putting on a pair of socks can be so tedious; my toes balk at the necessary contractions, and the rough, calloused skin of my heels catch on the soft alpaca Nordic designs my youngest daughter favours. I sportscast the process for Taro, who listens closely while quietly attending to her own velvet paws. 

                                                                        *** 

When I am able to stand, Taro performs figure eights around my ankles, her tail flicking at the damp flesh behind my knees. She ushers me towards the hallway, then leaps ahead. As I shuffle into the kitchen, Taro jumps onto the countertop where she stalks the electric can opener. Unlike a lot of cats, she never feigns indifference. Taro is an unabashed lover of life, a Zen master of moment-to-moment mindfulness and grace. I have been a most willing disciple.  

                                                                        *** 

I’ve been saving some fresh cherries for this morning’s breakfast, a treat I enjoy both for their sharp sweet flavor and for the memories they conjure. When my girls were little, they’d called the stems ‘the cherry bones.’ They’d wash them in apple cider vinegar and collect them in a special jar. When they had a decent amount, and when my eldest declared that it was time, they’d bury them in the backyard under our copper beech tree. Always the same spot. Nothing has ever come up. On fine days, though, Taro and I pick our way through the bright shade of the tall green grass and check. Because why not?  

                                                                        *** 

Taro watches me abandon the dishes in the sink without washing them. I don’t mind leaving them dirty, and I know she doesn’t either; she likes to poke at them when she thinks I’m not paying attention, hoping I’ve left something good for her to chew on. I feel unusually tired, kind of a bit wavy, actually, and I sit back down at my place at the end of the long farmer’s table. My middle daughter will be along soon. I think I’ll ask her to check my blood pressure. She’s a veterinarian, not a doctor; we always enjoy trading jokes about the medical care she gives me. I’m wondering what we’ll make for lunch when a jagged blade tears at my side and I call out for Adrienne, now ten years gone, and m... 
​
                                                                        *** 

Taro is licking my face, the part that’s not mashed up against the chilly Mexican kitchen tile carefully chosen for its beauty and affordability when our house was in the planning stages. I’m glad of its cool comfort. I’m flat and feel like I’ve been pasted against one of those outlawed playground spinning saucers, but I’ve nothing to hold onto. I’m just whirling, afraid that if I lift my head from the floor, it’ll stay still. I may choose to linger a bit, right here, and rest my cherry bones. 

Carolyn R. Russell

Carolyn R. Russell is the author of In the Fullness of Time, a dystopian thriller published by Vine Leaves Press in 2020. Her humorous YA mystery, Same As It Never Was, was released in 2018 by Big Table. The Films of Joel and Ethan Coen, her volume of film criticism, was published by McFarland & Company in 2001. Her poetry, essays, and short stories have been featured in numerous publications, including The Boston Globe, Flash Fiction Magazine, Club Plum Literary Journal, Ekphrastic Review, Reflex Press, and Dime Show Review. She holds an M.A. in Film Studies from Chapman University, and has taught on the college, high school, and middle school levels. Carolyn lives on and writes from Boston’s North Shore.
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New Ekphrastic Prompt is Up!

6/25/2021

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Picture
Peace, by Marian Spore Bush (USA) 1938
The new ekphrastic prompt is up! Click on the image for details and instructions.
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Throwback Thursdays: Summer Days, with Jennifer Met

6/24/2021

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Picture

Summer Days
 
As we pass the summer solstice’s longest day of the year, I am playing frisbee with my children after nine pm, reading without table lamps, and reevaluating the colour match of my carpet to my couch. I am acutely aware of the balance between day and night, and more importantly, the quality light that summer affords. 

While compiling a list of summer poems, I came across this poem Liminality, by Janina Aza Karpinska. The poem was posted with a painting of a night scene, but the original inspiration was a sunny afternoon picture. Suggesting night instead of day changed a woman’s moment of dining alone from a scene of confidently stopping to smell the flowers, to an isolating, cold, stark, disconnected and lonely portrayal that didn’t quite match the words. While both show a woman who "holds the space between arrival and departure" (the new woman is even still in her coat), the painting changed my participation in the scene from joining an inviting table to a voyeuristic discomfort--from a beaded curtain to an exposed, gaping darkness, from smirking sunglasses hiding the woman's thoughts to an unknown blank pane hiding me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it and this ultimately prompted me to make two lists—one for summer night poems and one for summer day poems. 

I am reminded of this today as I read another poem: Dusk at Baie des Anges, 1932, by Barbara Crooker. Seeing things “in a different light” is a cliché because of its surprising, yet undeniable truth—light changes our impressions of what we see. Does it reveal truth? Maybe, but is a summer dress viewed indoors any less real than one in “natural” light? No, but the setting’s light does colour our emotions about what we are seeing. As a companion to my Summer Nights list, here is a list of Summer Days poems.

However, just as summer nights invite dream and illusion, we find an abundance of light does not always reveal an underlying warmth, happiness, or even clarity.

Jennifer
 
**

Come Spend Summer in the Girl Cave, by Sarah Carleton

We might think of a “cave” as dark and dank, but the cave in this poem offers a colorful and inviting respite from our daily secrets and lies. Here, girls can take a break from keeping ourselves and our spaces mess-free and from worrying about what our husbands don’t like. A perfect summer vacation poem.

https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/come-spend-summer-in-the-girl-cave-by-sarah-carleton​
 
**

The Yellow Kite, by Gennady Katsov (translated by Nina Kossman)

Travel with the yellow kite, like a passenger, into summer reveries.

https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/the-yellow-kite-by-gennady-katsov-translated-by-nina-kossman
 
**

The Language of Light, by Siobhán Mc Laughlin

The quality of summer light is akin to a religious experience, but “is it enough?”

https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/the-language-of-light-by-siobhan-mc-laughlin

**
 
Old Home, Ogunquit, ME, by Liz Hutchinson

A wonderful poem on women whose faces are worn smooth being ever bathed in light.

https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/old-home-ogunquit-me-by-liz-hutchinson
 
**

Las Flores, by Laura Chalar

A summer house is haunted.
​
https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/las-flores-by-laura-chalar

**
 
Swimming Lesson, by Jo Taylor

Swimming lessons may be a quintessential summer experience, but, from both the child’s and mother’s point of view, they are a difficult experience.

https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/swimming-lesson-by-jo-taylor
 
**

Mademoiselle Boissiere by Sarah Russell

The secret life of an old maid in her summer memories.

https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/mademoiselle-boissiere-by-sarah-russell
 
**
​
Persistence of Memory, by Akshaya Pawaskar

The emotion dripping from this poem is a perfect take on a very recognizable painting.

https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/persistence-of-memory-by-akshaya-pawaskar
 
**

Chagall's Poet with the Birds by dl mattila 

A traditional Shakespearean sonnet with rhythm and rhyme used to great effect, this poem offers a nod to nostalgia.

https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/chagalls-poet-with-the-birds-by-dl-mattila
**
 
Claude Monet, Grainstacks in Bright Sunlight, 1890, by Grace Marie Grafton

As summer comes to a close, readers can console themselves in the capture of its golden light in this poem.
​
https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/claude-monet-grainstacks-in-bright-sunlight-1890-by-grace-marie-grafton

**
​
Jennifer Met lives in a small town in North Idaho. She is a nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology, a finalist for Nimrod's Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and winner of the Jovanovich Award. Recent work is published in Cimarron Review, Nimrod, Ninth Letter, Superstition Review, and Zone 3, among other journals. She is the author of the microchapbook That Which Sunlight Chases (Origami Poems Project) and the chapbook Gallery Withheld (Glass Poetry Press). More at www.jennifermet.com.


Picture
Jennifer Met.

​Call For Throwback Lists


There are  six 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 new Throwback Thursday features highlight writing from our past, chosen on purpose or chosen randomly. 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 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, 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!
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Poetry After Gregory Crewdson, by Charles Malone

6/24/2021

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An Eclipse of Moths

when I first see her pale skin
and the dark art of her tattoos
I am uncertain how much of her 
beauty belongs to her youth
how much to her nakedness
to parts of her which will depart
or parts of her which will linger

around her, upholstery left to weather
a fifth of a fifth of bourbon still
in the bottle, tires stacked on tires
each ruined thing made poorer
in contrast to the source of light
her friends in casual awe of breasts
a wealth made richer
by these decaying reminders of
what is the opposite of intimate

​**

Red Star Express

where globalization and blue collar 
diverge, where paint peels, where summer 

smells like sealcoating and cut grass, 
we listen to a shopping cart

rattle against the cracks in sidewalks,
we hear a baby’s cries and the shoo, shoo, shoo,

at the intersection of voyeurism and empathy
the street lights hum, when the venn circles

of exploitation and love create pointed oval
ellipses — shaded with nostalgia, with memory,

with future — we listen to sparrows hatching 
under the a.c. A car rumbles to a stop 

and the boys joke and shame each other
as they ride their bicycles past the fire

you know you want to fuck her
flush-faced, rolling through the intersection 

of youth and something else, rolling
—he doesn’t know if he can ever tell them--

rolling over poisoned soil where you can be sure
the all quiet brick factory is/was westinghouse

**

Redemption Center

shirtless before
gap-toothed vertical 
blinds of a punched-in-the-mouth 
storefront, Queen Anne’s 
lace cautiously judges ribs
and belly, a blue bicycles’ 
broke spoke abandonment
causes you to wonder
what contemplation
is possible when--


then wiggle your toes
in the twin caves of too-big work boots
on the shore of a red
petalled parking lot puddle
after the rain
you take a breath and know
crabapples are blossoming
nearby—is this enough—close 
then open your hands
redeem, redemption 
then those tricky prepositions
from and for

**

The Taxi Depot
​

oh god, the rain
you say during
the fragrant 
moment it reaches dirt
water softens
not yet soaking
fabric, and we
are woven
by the smell
detergent meets dandelion
and tonight
we will gather 
on the grass
beneath the water tower
watch the persieds 
and defy gravity

**
​
An Eclipse of Moths

we arrange what no one else wants
recreate the space in our homes
where we ought to but can’t
feel comfortable, where all the furniture
suggests we might be at ease but 
heavy smoke and tired tones of voice
place the room itself out of reach
a coffee table, an ottoman, a sofa,
the sky and shelter from the sky,
we drag the armchair over gravel
asking does it look right here?
how ‘bout here? until we are tired, bored 
with the escapade, you tell her 
she looks beautiful, she says 
with an uncertain degree of tenderness, 
that you look hurt, then
hands stroke the side of your head
fingers in your hair along your scalp
light spills from your lips
and you float up into the air

​Charles Malone

Author's note: "In 2020-2021, the photographer Gregory Crewdon’s images offered me a way to travel when I couldn’t. A chance to meet people, or, remember. Each photo is an invitation to ekphrasis, persona, lyricism and other ways of attending to their experience. In all, writing to them became a way to make in answer to my inability to make. Sometimes, I returned to the same image and wrote again. The troubles, joys, and doubts of my own places and people, my own “here,” were held up to my imagination by this remarkable work and I am grateful."

Charles Malone is a poet and teacher in Kent, Ohio. His full-length collection Working Hypothesis is out with Finishing Line Press. And his chapbook Questions About Circulation was selected for publication by Driftwood Press as part of the Adrift Chapbook Series. He edited the collection A Poetic Inventory of Rocky Mountain National Park with Wolverine Farm Publishing and has work recently published or forthcoming in Hotel Amerika, The Best of Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac, The Sugar House Review, The Dunes Review, and Saltfront. Charles now works at the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University coordinating community outreach programs.
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Harlequin's Carnival, by Maximilian Heinegg

6/23/2021

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Picture
Harlequin's Carnival, by Joan Miro (Spain) 1925

Harlequin’s Carnival     
           at the Joan Miro exhibit, NYC
            

Into the mute music I went, 
my eyes became my ears.

Waltzing the welcome, 
room to rediscovered room, 
each canvas a ladder to an eclipse, 
a mountain’s black triangle 
beside the swirling red 
joy-path, & inside, the festival:

a guitar as an infant sees it,    
& beneath the sky’s tracery,
blue-black eyes spiring 
within circles, sporadic birds  
that dot & dovetail what might 
be birds, & better than paint 

tucking lovers in a night sky,
without gravity. How can the sky 
not be entire, this conscious blue 
the seed of my dreaming?

Maximilian Heinegg

Maximilian Heinegg's work has appeared in 32 Poems, Thrush, Nimrod, The Cortland Review, and Glass: Poets Resist, among others. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, won the Sidney Lanier Poetry Award, and been a finalist for the poetry prizes of Crab Creek Review, Cutthroat, Twyckenham Notes, December Magazine, Rougarou Journal, and Asheville Poetry Review. He is a high school English teacher, as well as a singer-songwriter whose records can be heard at www.maxheinegg.com
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