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On the Steps
watch it unroll from the ball tucked in a pocket, offer a length to a child who will entrance the queenie-cat, now they are spun up with us too as we stand on the stone stoop in the oldest doorway in Cullercoats and the mistress with her basket stops to watch us loop wet light into the house-haps we’ll wear in winter or bundle up in chests, paper-wrapped and saved for days still coming.
with it not even on her hip but suspended while she pretended to examine some darning -- or knitting, he never knew the difference and the girl thought it a lark to switch since she’d been twisting the nets since discovering her hands -- they laughed at him after, if still flattered, having posed for the chance to have his laundry, but how weird it’d later feel: value put to their labour, extra pennies added to the sale of the fish the men hauled in, those moments on the steps entertaining the village guest not gone to the head nor wasted when after, he hired you for some small task, or if you brought along your handiwork and he said you could hold it while he painted. Angela Williamson Emmert Angela Williamson Emmert lives in rural Wisconsin with her husband and sons. Teotihuacán Heather met Andrew Saint-Fleur, III. over a bottle of gin at a fraternity party at Stanford. He was finishing a law degree, and she was in her last year of anthropology in the college. Some months later when he proposed, she gave him a practiced smile and accepted. She was relieved. With the idea of marriage came direction, though her mother had other ideas. “You have a degree, now. You can do whatever you want,” her mother said when her oldest daughter showed up wearing the engagement ring. She walked back and forth, gesturing with both hands for emphasis. “Get a job, see the world. Why do you want to waste yourself on a frat boy?” “I want to be married.” “Oh, that’s foolish!” her mother cried. “You’re smart and pretty! You can have anyone you want, do anything you want.” “I’m not that pretty,” she said. “Besides, he comes from a good family, and his job pays him more than I could ever make.” “You don’t have to marry into a holier-than-thou family to earn a decent living. You can make your own way in life.” This was a standard phrase of her mother’s with good reason. After the death of her husband, she had moved to California, raised three children alone—gone to work, cooked countless tuna casseroles, patched hand-me-downs—and became a person Heather could only admire and never imitate because she knew her own limitations. Now each week her mother and her gaggle of friends got together to do yoga and talk about empowerment. She was like the neighbourhood gypsy, all in flowing, soft, purple things and shawls smelling of patchouli left in the air wherever she’d been and wandered away. In a rare outburst, Heather said, “I want a good life for me and my children. Getting married is the only way that could ever be.” “I see,” her mother said gently. “If you do marry that man, I just hope it’s not for the sex. It wears off in no time.” Heather was horrified. Drew was nothing like her father, a good-looking farmhand who’d proposed to her mother in a field on bended knee, a beer in one hand and an engagement ring in a paper bag in the other. Sex was not the reason, but money was. It was only part of a more complex set of circumstances, a collage of pieces that formed a picture of how she imagined herself to be. The role of sparkling hostess of dinner parties, luxurious lady of the mansion, a woman of taste and refinement—they were all within her and waiting for the right opportunity to shine. Everything she’d ever wanted was now within reach, and it looked nothing like the small, plain life she had growing up. Stability was another reason. She loved him enough, she thought, and didn’t want to struggle the way her mom had. Marrying Drew would realize this dream. In the waning months of her senior year, she left the engagement ring at home for safekeeping and treaded carefully through narrow passageways and ruins in southern-central Mexico, part of a university-sponsored excursion for anthropology majors. Digging with a trowel or a pickax in an ancient ceremonial centre, she and other Americans worked alongside students and professors from the University of Guadalajara. At first, she barely tolerated the hard labour, the sweating bodies of strangers, the dirty nails and the bruises. Quickly the work became natural and methodical, and when she found broken cookware from commoner households of Mesoamerica, the others hugged her and treated her to dinner in a local town. This pleased her enormously. That was how she met Carlos. Within one day of their first meeting at the dig, his face seemed to mirror hers, and their voices combined in a familiar harmony. On weekends at night she and Carlos went out with the other diggers—talking, laughing and telling stories. While they danced, they shared secrets. By day they explored outside the city places covered in trees, covered in birds, and on a break in digging, they took to side streets where scents of chocolate mixed with cinnamon or pepper with chilies came from open windows, and people called to the diggers to come in and eat. On the day she was to leave Mexico, he was waiting for her outside the university dormitory. In darkness, the rain, incessant against the windshield on the highway since leaving Guadalajara, had changed into quiet drizzle by the time they arrived at Teotihuacán. With a single mission, they climbed the Pyramid of the Sun, rising above stone tombs of ancient ancestors. A liquid dawn appeared on the horizon while in deep shadow of the ruins they held hands. Finally, morning came luminous and blinding. The warmth of late spring crept over the land. A sudden blade of wind blew through her hair, and she shivered. They looked at one another. Miraculously, after all they’d been through, his face had not changed, but perhaps their hearts would break from loss. This thought played out in her mind. He must have understood because he cooed, no, no, and held her, smoothed her hair and touched her face. “Carlos,” she said. He kissed her for the first time, the only time. When they parted, he gave her a book of Mexican poetry. On the inside flap, he had inscribed the words, Joy is a stream that flows from the mountains of primeval sorrow. The falling tears of the great Inca Creator, Viracocha, are drops of rain falling to the earth. Sorrow is the source of life itself. When Heather returned to the States, Drew’s mother, Mrs. Saint-Fleur, hosted a garden party to announce her son and daughter-in-law’s new home, only two blocks from their Victorian mansion. Several wise investments and tax breaks had made her wealthy in-laws even wealthier. Though they feigned modesty, Heather recognized the supreme confidence they held in their ability to control their world and understood it to mean a great deal more. Those at the party who were unaccustomed to privilege—she and the servants, she imagined—were excluded from discussions of money and intimate conversations of property and tax shelters. Still, in her renewed hopefulness, she reserved judgment; though she had kept her mother from coming by saying it was a small gathering of his side of the family. To her friends, her good fortune was astounding. Life had dealt her a succession of achievements that they’d only dreamed was possible—marriage to a wealthy man and now a home to call her own. There had been no effort, Heather told them. It was meant to be. Some things are like that. She hadn’t told them how she’d molded her appearance and opinions to reflect Drew’s tastes. For the party, Mrs. Saint-Fleur had spent all day in the kitchen, orchestrating the selection and placement of food to best enhance visual presentation. The spread was magnificent— gorgonzola cheese, pesto spread, and smoked salmon with capers—food she’d never tasted, but was excited to try. Mr. Saint-Fleur raided his own stock of alcohol, carefully choosing the Courvoisier, an old scotch, and an assortment of Sauternes and dry red wine. To his wife’s horror, he pried their guests with his favourites. Heather had no complaints about her in-laws. The Saint-Fleurs regularly hosted extravagant events, including the wedding, at their expense, and she was grateful to be free of worry over money, a feeling she’d rarely experienced growing up and getting through school on loans and a part-time job. Drew Saint-Fleur, her husband, strode toward her with a highball in hand and began speaking, almost shouting at her, beckoning her wildly, slurring his words and saying, “Baby, come here, come here.” For a moment, she could not hear him and merely observed him as a stranger, distant and unconnected, and wondered momentarily why she’d married this man, of all people, a guy who’d been arrested for DUI, though that was a few years earlier with his fraternity brothers and nothing had happened since. Drew’s mother intercepted her son and silenced him with one harsh word, “Now!” She led him indoors, he with an amused look on his face. Heather did not care about Drew’s occasional public drunkenness. She could accept rare binges in social settings for the sake of a good life the rest of the year. Her mother-in-law, on the other hand, intimidated her. “Jennifer…oh, heavens, I mean Heather,” Mrs. Saint-Fleur summoned her as she might one of her servants with a distracted wave of the hand. Mrs. Saint-Fleur had no memory for names, which didn’t seem to bother her. She was impossibly groomed and seemed capable of strolling through a hurricane without having a hair slip out of place. She’d learned that this woman had no fear of even—in her mother-in-law’s words--the most vicious attacks on my character by a small cadre of women at a local Rotary Club meeting. Her mother-in-law had responded in her usual way, flashing a brilliant smile and suggesting the offending individuals had misunderstood. Heather wished she could be more like her. She felt a cool hand wrapped around her wrist and thought she could overpower this woman, if she had to. “Come with me,” Mrs. Saint-Fleur said. “I want to introduce you to Mrs. Garamond— who has momentarily disappeared—there she is—because she’s from Pennsylvania, which isn’t far from your home in … Where are you from?” “Illinois,” she said. “You grew up in a small town,” the woman said and laughed in a way that let Heather know she felt sorry for her. Heather felt the stab of insult and distractedly fished a tissue from her purse. “Have I offended you?” Mrs. Saint-Fleur said and waved her hand as if waving away a fly. “But you’re family,” she said and leaned in to embrace her briefly. “As I was saying, Mrs. Garamond is from Pennsylvania and is the second cousin of Drew’s high school sweetheart, Julia, who spent most of her childhood here, which is how we know her parents. Julia’s father and my husband worked together in real estate for many years and to this day do everything together, play golf, go to the investment club meetings and so forth. We all thought for certain they would eventually marry. Then that awful McCoy boy stole her away. Broke Drew’s heart. He’s still very sensitive.” Drew’s mother paused to retrieve a mint from a flat, gold case she kept within reach. An awkward moment passed, and Heather said, “We never talk about that.” “ Of course, you don’t,” Mrs. Saint-Fleur said, snapping the case shut. “But I am certain you will be kind enough to humour him when he gets in one of his sour moods.” She understood perfectly her future mother-in-law’s tacit message. No reconciliation would be possible with this woman who seemed intent on directing her daughter-in-law’s new life. Without some kind of agreement, even her home would be no sanctuary from the unceasing prodding only a few short blocks away. She felt a wave of fatigue wash over her. “You look pale. You should lie down.” “I guess I am tired,” Heather said. She retreated to the salon where she lay on the chaise-longue. The draperies had been pulled back, affording her a view of the action on the patio and in the yard. Mrs. Saint-Fleur strode about, gesturing around the yard, no doubt speaking about her possessions. Never one to discuss ideas or politics, she could be overheard talking about people—whether they were upstanding or trash—and things—vacations, cars, clothing. Anything that could be bought was an opportunity for boasting. Arrogance veiled in an innocuous discussion of money. Heather took pleasure in gazing at the lush yard lined with reddish terra cotta lanterns the Saint-Fleurs had picked up on their annual trek to Mexico, or Mayheeco, as Mrs. Saint-Fleur was fond of hearing herself say. As in, we went to Mayheeco and for an entire week sat on the beach under blue canopies drinking margaritas. Mexico. In Heather’s chest, anticipation rose to the edges of her teeth and to the tips of her ears. Teotihuacán. Her mouth formed the word without a sound. City of the Gods in the far-flung countryside. One of her mother’s platitudes—things people say and don’t follow—came to her then: The thing you resist is the very thing you need to find the courage to do. Courage was a thing Heather had seen, but not experienced. When her brother organized rights protests and marched in the streets of Washington, D.C., she knew she was witnessing courage. When her sister became a high school history teacher in Chicago, she knew it was courageous, too. But she wasn’t like them. What did she know of great courage? It took all her resolve to have a graceful conversation with her mother-in-law. Her courage in Mexico had been without thought, as if being there was meant to be. Where had it gone? After the party, the feelings stirred by her mother’s warning grew. Sadness weighed on her, yet she remained firmly reconciled to her commitment. She cared for Drew—a watered down sensation, not the ardent clarity of love—had taken the vows and promised herself to leave behind all selfish acts from that time forward. Each day she would start again and try to rouse herself to be a better wife and person. As if to cleanse her spirit, she sent the book of Mexican poetry from Carlos to her sister for safekeeping with other pieces of girlhood—her beauty contest crown, fairy tale books from childhood, old photographs. To her amazement, sending away the cherished objects of her past like scraps of paper blown in the wind only frustrated her efforts. Her heart remained painfully remote. At first, Drew reacted with concern and patience to the changes in her temperament. He told her, “You’re so listless. Are you depressed?” She told him she was happy. “Maybe you’re ill,” he suggested. She said she felt fine. “Maybe you’re pregnant,” he tried. His concern slipped easily into complaint. She was too passive, almost bored, in lovemaking. She’d stopped cooking for him on weekends when their cook had time off. Hunger was foreign to her, though he took her out to eat at gourmet restaurants. She was shrinking before his eyes. There was definitely something wrong with her. At night she slept fitfully between exhaustion and wakefulness, dreaming of a passionate reunion with Carlos surrounded by palm trees and tropical blooms. She surprised him by wrapping her arms around him from behind and pressing her face into his damp neck, coloured a high burnished sheen. His nape smelled of lime and warm, sweet grass, hers of coconut and passion fruit. She wasn’t shy. She didn’t feel guilty. When you’ve found someone under the coarse, laborious conditions of a dig, you toss out fear and regret. You have a bond few could understand. He ran his hand through his dark, curly hair and rested his head in her lap where she stroked his cheek. She dreamed of him looking up at her eyes calmly and curiously, as though at a placid pool of blue water, contemplating something shiny within, something like a treasure he wanted to have and cradle in the palm of his hand forever. There they recounted faithfully everything they’d experienced since they last met. Every exacting, unpredictable moment. Whenever she woke at dawn, she rose from her husband’s bed and looked out at the bay from on high. She could still recall standing in the ether of the great Pyramid of the Sun. The clear blue of the sky, vast like an ocean, and the russet skin of Carlos, as permanent and real as the earth itself. One day after Drew had left for work, she went to the Mission District, a section of San Francisco she’d never seen before, something her sister would have done without hesitation and something she would never have done before Mexico, before Carlos. The story, if she met anyone they knew, however unlikely, was she was planning a special meal for Drew and had to go to that neighbourhood to find the right ingredients. No one would doubt the dedication of a wife. Along each avenue, around each turn, she expected to see Carlos. Instead she discovered vibrant murals, music bouncing out of the open windows of passing cars and shopkeepers peppering one another with jokes. The unexpected newness of the air—auto repair shops and next door a tienda latina, the tangled odors of engine oil and cooking beef and dry, pungent spices—quickened her heart. As she wandered, the fragile honeycomb of her memory of Mexico began to rattle. Panic rose in her throat. If she could not conjure the feelings of Mexico into reality, that time with Carlos could be reduced to something in the past, a brief period in the timeline of her life, a footprint on the beach entirely wiped away by foam and water. Perhaps it wasn’t real. It was all just a game she’d played in her head, not unlike her adolescent imaginings of a mythical prince. On a corner, a crowd had gathered in a parking lot where a Mariachi band dressed in charro suits and enormous hats was tuning instruments. The music began, and the people threaded out of the crowd to dance. The happiness, the dancing, the strumming guitars—it was exhilarating! She danced with a stranger, and they laughed. An hour passed, and the sky began to mist. She was covered in rain, covered in wildness, and she felt the nearness of Carlos. The music stopped. It was time to leave. The people dispersed, and she followed them reluctantly to the street. The sunshine returned. For some time, she wandered, disheveled and grinning, the embodiment of her joy like a blaze for all to see as she stopped in shops to buy ingredients for her husband’s special meal. Eventually, she did not know how, she found her car and drove home. At home her days were divided into daydreams and household distractions. Her husband’s voice, like a wooden bell, barely caught her attention. Finally, she conceded to his demands and went to the doctor, who prescribed lithium for a brief time to lift her apparent sadness. The peaks and valleys of her moods became like gentle backcountry roads, those safe spaces of home. To her relief, the sour taste the drug left in her mouth diminished her husband’s desires. Shortly after another doctor’s visit, she learned she was pregnant. Her pregnancy was greeted with zealous joy by her in-laws and quiet congratulations by her mother, who added, “You will now be bound to your husband permanently as if you were in chains.” For the first time in Heather’s life, the opinions of others mattered little. Pregnancy had made her special. It was something she was doing on her own, something brave she alone could do. No one else could have this baby for her. Her newfound self-confidence changed her. Whenever she entered her mother-in-law’s home, she floated in gracefully and announced her decorating plans for the nursery, the type of delivery she would have and the girl she’d hired to help with the newborn. So convincing was she in this role that no one told her what to do, and this pleased her enormously. Her confidence ebbed and waned, a circumstance her mother-in-law seemed to exploit to her advantage. Heather calmly retreated into thoughts of the baby to conjure her own contentment. She had her sister return the box of treasured things and grew content in remembering her childhood—before marriage, even before Carlos—and in knowing that it would never change. Marjorie Robertson Marjorie Robertson is an essayist, novelist, short story writer and multilinguist. Her first novel, Bitters in the Honey, was a semifinalist in the 2014 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Writing Competition. Currently, she is working on another novel titled, The Gleaners. Her other interests include creating art + text, studying how visual and sound affect the written word, and teaching writing to English language learners and the 1.5 generation. Ariadne Ariadne, daughter of King Minos, helped Theseus slay the Minotaur at the heart of the Cretan labyrinth and then fled with him and the fourteen young Athenians marked for sacrifice. En route to Athens, Theseus abandoned her on the isle of Naxos. Nearing home, he then forgot to change his sails from black to white, the prearranged signal that he had survived his mission of destroying the Minotaur. Later, Ariadne married Dionysus, who afterward joyously tossed the bridal wreath he had given her into the heavens, where it became the seven stars of Ariadne’s Crown. Ever since the tongue-cut Philomela wove her tale into a tapestry and sent it to her sister, women, silenced, have spoken in such ways. And Ariadne may have been a weaver. It may have been some yarn from her own store she wound into a ball to help her lover defeat the Cretan maze. So it is fitting that a needlewoman should honor Ariadne with her work, a labyrinth of interlocking stitches in seven by seven squares: seven for the fair Athenian maidens, seven for the doomed Athenian youths, seven for the labyrinthine courses, and seven for her crown. I like to think that Theseus still loved her and grieved for her beneath his darkling sails. I hope that she found joy with Dionysus, who made her crown of stars. Across the center of the piece a spiral is subtly pierced where ends of stitches meet and softly shadowed by a misty purple against the rose and gold. It seems to wheel through mythic time, connecting our lives with those of all the women who have gathered up their life force and their courage to tell what must be told. Deborah Bachels Schmidt Read another ekphrastic poem by Deborah here. Deborah Bachels Schmidt has a chapbook, Stumbling Into Grace, forthcoming from Orchard Street Press. Other publication credits include Blue Unicorn, California Quarterly, The Ekphrastic Review, The Lyric, and The Poeming Pigeon. A Pushcart nominee, she was recently awarded first prize in the Sonnet category at the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition. Brooklyn Aubade I have never seen 7th Avenue like this: from your window, all the bricks bleached orange, white curtains gone gold. It’s years past curfew, and I tip-toe still. Whole city’s sleeping, same as you, but for me the mourning begins: Remember when I took you to the uptown Whitney? So you could see how I sit, watching the Hoppers as if they will wake when everyone turns quiet, caught in the night hawk’s stare? A shadow will shrink. A door will give way. Anne Duncan Anne Duncan is a poet from Brooklyn NY currently living in Seattle WA as she pursues her PhD in English from the University of Washington. She holds a BA in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University, and her literary reviews can be found in 32 Poems and Bone Bouquet. She is an amateur visual artist, with a creative and scholarly love for ekphrastic literature. Kandinsky's Diner: Check, Please! a Collaborative Poem the waitress suggests toad in the hole — I order fruit salad instead the unmistakable smell of burnt toast a tippy table catching the salt shaker before it falls a slice of cheese on the filthy tiled floor and a soda straw looking out the window greasy rain three plates in the waitress’s hand — check, please! Zee Zahava and Bill Waters Zee Zahava (stanzas 1, 3, 5) Bill Waters (stanzas 2, 4, 6) Bill Waters is a longtime writer of short poetry and compressed prose. He also runs the Poetry in Public Places Project, a Facebook / real-world group interested in creating and promoting poetry in public spaces to increase the richness of everyday life. Bill lives in Pennington, New Jersey, U.S.A., with his wonderful wife and their two amazing cats. Zee Zahava was born in the Bronx but has lived most of her adult life in Ithaca, New York. She was the Tompkins County Poet Laureate in 2017 and 2018. Her book of short poems, here i am, was published by wildflower poetry press in 2017. Smile Down from Raphael’s Canvas, Lamb of Wrath (January 1937) Улыбнись, ягненок гневный с Рафаэлева холста, - На холсте уста вселенной, но она уже не та... В легком воздухе свирели раствори жемчужин боль В синий, синий цвет синели океана въелась соль... Цвет воздушного разбоя и пещерной густоты, Складки бурного покоя на коленях разлиты. На скале черствее хлеба - молодых тростинки рощ, И плывет углами неба восхитительная мощь. ** Smile down from Raphael’s canvas, lamb of wrath, that canvas the lips of a cosmos that’s not what it was. In the pipes’ light air, let the pain of pearls diffuse as the salt gnaws at the ocean’s bluest of blues. There are sapling groves on cliffs that are drier than bread, and the stormy calm that creases your knees has spread; the colour ransacked from the air, with a cavern’s depth, about its angles sails the sky’s exquisite strength. Osip Mandelstam, translated by Alistair Noon Author's note: Opinions vary on exactly which of Raphael's various pictures of the Madonna and child this poem directly responds to The Holy Family with a Lamb of 1507, now in the Prado in Madrid, was suggested in the memoirs of Natasha Shtempel, a teacher who befriended and supported the poet and his wife Nadezhda. Like Rembrandt, Fine Chiaroscuro Martyr (February 1937) Как светотени мученик Рембрандт, Я глубоко ушел в немеющее время, И резкость моего горящего ребра Не охраняется ни сторожами теми, Ни этим воином, что под грозою спят. Простишь ли ты меня, великолепный брат, И мастер, и отец черно-зеленой теми, - Но око соколиного пера И жаркие ларцы у полночи в гареме Смущают не к добру, смущают без добра Мехами сумрака взволнованное племя. ** Like Rembrandt, fine chiaroscuro martyr, I’ve fallen on times of faltering speech. Neither these soldiers nor this guard the thunder above has abandoned to sleep will keep my burning rib this sharp. Forgive me, magnificent brother, the father of darkness, its shades of blackening green, but the eye in the falcon’s wing, old master, and the midnight harem’s gleaming caskets trouble the tribe that the dusk has alarmed with its skins, for the worse, and no kindness is seen. Osip Mandelstam, translated by Alistair Noon Author's note: At the time of the poem’s writing, the painting was on display in the Voronezh art museum and was attributed to Rembrandt, but it has since been identified as the work of Rembrandt’s contemporary, Jacob Willemszoon de Wet the Elder. That Supper Fell for the Wall (March 1937) Небо вечери в стену влюбилось - Всё изрублено светом рубцов, - Провалилось в нее, осветилось, Превратилось в тринадцать голов. Вот оно - мое небо ночное, Пред которым как мальчик стою: Холодеет спина, очи ноют, Стенобитную твердь я ловлю - И под каждым ударом тарана Осыпаются звезды без глав: Той же росписи новые раны - Неоконченной вечности мгла... ** That Supper fell for the wall and vanished inside it, grew brighter, grew thirteen heads: it was all a great chipping and chopping of light. Here it is then, my night sky, and before it I’m poised like a boy whose back runs cold, sore-eyed. I catch this vault that deploys the untiring thuds of its ram to mete out that fresco’s new wounds: headless stars crumbling off in the span of the lasting and unfinished gloom. Osip Mandelstam, translated by Alistair Noon Author's note: The poem refers to Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, a convent in Milan. Due to environmental conditions, the mural began deteriorating immediately after completion and has been the subject of conservation work over the centuries, not all of it helpful. In 1652, while the mural was no longer visible, a doorway was constructed through its lower part. Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938) spent three years in internal exile in the central Russian city of Voronezh together with his wife, Nadezhda Mandelstam. He would often visit the city's art museum and wrote several ekphrastic pieces, drawing not only on famous paintings as here but also Greek pottery art and a contemporary fresco. He died in the Gulag. Alistair Noon's translations of Osip Mandelstam (Concert at a Railway Station: Selected Poems) appeared from Shearsman Books in 2018. His own poetry has appeared in two collections (Earth Records and The Kerosene Singing) from Nine Arches Press, plus a dozen chapbooks from various small presses, most recently QUAD (Longbarrow, 2017). He lives in Berlin. Redacted Note: When Rudolph II acquired Breugel’s painting, he had all references to his atrocities in the Spanish Netherlands painted over, including the slaughtered children. From a distance, the painting plays tricks on us – a lively village in winter, Carnival perhaps – and would remain just that, until we choose to stand two deep and inspect the detail. A wall of cavalry is enjoying the warmth of its horses’ flanks, lances erect in ritual indifference to the little families trapped on all sides like dammed water. Mercenaries boot down doors. Old men kneel in the snow, barter for mercy. But why is this woman weeping over a mound of ham flitches? Or a mother shielding her pitcher from a soldier’s blade? How well those despots understood the shocking power in a small body. How easy it is to blot out. It becomes a compulsion to find them: the babies who float on the edge of visibility. They begin to surface from under the varnish. A goose, grabbed by the neck, is not entirely goose. The hacked pig, not simply hog. Their tender bones lie silenced under earthen pots, cloth bundles, a gaggle of frantic poultry. Only the grief goes on. Claire Booker Claire Booker lives in Brighton on the south coast of England. Her poetry pamphlets are The Bone That Sang (Indigo Dreams Publishing) and Later There Will Be Postcards (Green Bottle Press). Her poetry has been set to music, filmed, displayed on the side of buses and published widely in literary magazines and anthologies, including Magma, Rialto, and The Spectator. She was awarded a Kathak Literary Award in 2019. Emily Green, English teacher at Maumee Valley Country Day School, submitted these ekphrastic works from her teenage poet students, on their behalf. The Woods Follow my voice, into the endless woods, where the wolves howl and run-- where the moon seems to shine forever-- the night never ending. Follow down the quite stream to where all you can hear is the bubble of the stream and the singing frogs, there you will find the old mama bear, do not fear her. Follow her, for she hears and sees all, she knows why you’re here, even if you do not. Mackenzie Phillips ** In the Moment Stay here, in these moments with me Watch the patch of flowers bloom before us, Don’t let your mind wander through the Deep blue walls. Let it stay here, Thrive in the sunlight, Let it roam free and take whatever branch of life it chooses, So you can be here, In the moment. Stay here in time with me, I know the past keeps shooting you down, Like an archer ready to start their day But if you let that arrow sink into your heart, You are destroying all of the branches on the journey You could have had. The things, you could have done, could have seen But you can only reach those things if you let your mind stay here with me. Sydney Abercrombie How It Began Fame -- is not how it began. Millions -- do not see, the struggle -- inside. But grey is our life, as grey is our picture. Children hide on our shoulders, to escape the inevitable Boulders -- of life. in the way now, maybe one day, they will see -- that this is not, how it began Lila Weiner ** The Gray Beginnings We all know what gray is We all have walked with the wind pushing us back With our shoes split just enough to make us trip We all understand how gross the gray really is But some of us know it more Some of us woke up in the gray We saw gray stars in the sky And we noticed gray flowers blooming in the gray grass that should have been green All of our good, gracious things were gray from the beginning Addie Henderson The Epistle Your green walls annoy me, the way your ceiling chips is unsettling, and that mirror, it’s like you’re purposefully making me look deranged. Behind your doors, you hide dusty old board games that haven’t seen the light of day since we had a Shar-Pei running wild through your rooms. The way your heater kicks on in the night irritates me, it irritates me so that I force myself to think of it as white noise. And what is your deal with the air conditioning? In the summer it’s like you’re trying to turn me into an icicle. It was already pretty cold in there to begin with. The way the giraffe sits and stares makes me anxious like it’ll never stop being. When I pull the doors of your cupboards the creek, but they don’t budge. In the morning the vinyl floor tiles follow me to the carpet. I grab a piece of day-old pizza and I sit, and I wait, the wax drippings and the smell of sawdust engulfs me. I wrap myself in a red blanket and sigh. Mornings wrapped in a red blanket are safe. You’re supposed to wrap me in your warmth like the sun on a Florida beach. But your green walls and old license plates watch me like they’re from Antarctica. Margaret Ciminillo Kopf Invocation Lush green fields of grass, The calls of many bluejays and crows reveal themselves to the open ear A tipped over bike, one wheel still spinning, A child’s shoe- buried halfway in the sandbox A watchful eye, peering through blinds. A dog running wildly- barking at everything. what the child sees- they see wonders. but why do we let those wonders getaway? all those forgotten dreams childhood toys left to rot where does the wonder go? It hides in the corner of your eyes, all you have to do is look for it. Noah Taylor Nighthawks A coffee store In the corner standing out Within containing those who not want to fall asleep Or maybe have a child wailing in the night Containing those wanting coffee A supplement that throws away your lack of energy The worker dressed like a blank canvas Looking jubilated to be able to serve coffee and drink it He serves to the customers of the store The woman The man And the other man Within sits a woman Dressed in blood She stares a sandwich on her right Thinking of the baby that awaits her at home Her eyebags telling it all The alertness she must have to be a mother Her other hand although holds the hand of a man The man dressed in a suit and a hat His features could cut glass The jawline and nose both sharp Yet he still radiates pleasure to be in the coffee shop On his nightshift break using coffee to keep himself awake Sitting far off Back turned sits another man His face is like the illuminati Unknown So his reason to throw off tiredness will never be known At the end of the day The man wearing a blank canvas Enjoys helping The woman The man And the other man Cure their tiredness Shrishte Baskara A Letter From a Dark Place You keep me in the dark, secluded from daylight You promise you mean no harm though harm is your only means You claim to be protecting me, hiding me from the outside world. Now I feel you’re who I need to hide from You save me from the pain when you are its true source You insist you’re stopping them from hurting me, but the knife is in your hand. You break me down so they don’t have to. The only difference: I let you Riley Husain Anxiety Standing Surrounded by strangers But still feels alone. His breath on my neck boils my bones Eyes plotted my back Like a predator to its prey I stop to realize there is no good way Lizzy Brown The New Age The dawn of a new age is near, Growing closer and closer, bigger and bigger. Rising up into the sky, a sea of murky darkness and Past ages discoveries. These towers, along with these mountains that Swiftly increase height and range with every new thing Every new idea. Those mountains, Those towering mountains extending higher and higher Scraping their fingers across our past, and possibly our future, Will be conquered. The dawn of a new age is near, Its tracks crossing over every destination, Its towers rising higher and higher Its towns, with all of those people, growing larger and larger, Won’t be stopped. Can’t be stopped. The dawn of a new age is near, Its horizon glowing with New ideas, new faces, new people. The dawn of a new age is near. And you are part of it. Noah Batista |
The Ekphrastic Review
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May 2024
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