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Building the Ships, by Gary Chapin

7/23/2023

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Picture
Building the Ships, by Nicholas Roerich (Russia) 1903

Building the Ships

I admire these men too much.
When these men get off work
They gather in barracks
to drink and talk about everything except
the ships they are building.


And if one of them tries, another will say,
“Evgeny! Do we have to talk about work?”

 
They are competent to an erotic degree.
They use hand tools that were
made by other hand tools
to build things that float down rivers,
that carry men to wars, or goods to trade.
Or fish? Are these fishing boats?
I don’t know. The builders know,
and the painter knows, and maybe
what they know is true.

 
I want this to be true.
I want a world that gives us compositions like this.
Where the planks of wood are rendered by layered
tranches of effulgent browns and golds.
Where there are seven ships with dragon prows,
and two dozen men with white tunics, red hats,
and suggested faces.
Where the shapes cohere
even if they are abstract,
even if there is no content
or meaning to glean.

 
I would step into this image
painted by a mystic wanderer
romantic liar priest
of corrupt emergent
beauty.

 
If the men got off work --
if the men ever get off work
one of them would say,
“Evgeny. The painting is over, let’s drink.”

 
If the men get off work, the painter
will not drink with them. He can
only admire them from a distance
because they only exist at the distance

he paints them.
 
Somewhere in the paint
the builders have language and song
and names. But that’s the only place.
And I can’t see it.


Gary Chapin

Gary Chapin is an educator, advocate, poet, and accordionist living in central Maine (US) with his wife, Sunshine, and four cats. Ursula is his favorite of the cats. He's written one very amusing book about education, and is a writer and editor of MuddyUm, a humour publication on Medium.

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Autumn Grasses in Moonlight, by John Tessitore

7/22/2023

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Autumn Grasses in Moonlight, by Shabaka Zeshin (Japan) c. mid 19th century, before 1891

Autumn Grasses in Moonlight
 
These darkened leaves and
grasses on a paper screen
 
shadow a graceful gathering 
 
of cicadas with folded wings
clinging fast to silver stems
 
waiting to resume their songs
 
waiting, silent and still until
the moonlight passes over
 
and the night spreads its cover
 
just as I have been waiting 
all along, quiet and withdrawn
 
for my moment of freedom
 
*
 
Sometimes the ink will bleed
the rhythm of the water
 
and everything washes together
 
Sometimes the ink 
defines a structure 
 
and divides the seen from unseen
 
I hoped my script
would sing like the cicada
 
I hoped my cursive
would shine like silver
 
I hoped to earn
the graces of this paper
 
I hoped to keep a language 
for my dreams

John Tessitore
​
John Tessitore has been a journalist and biographer. He has taught history and literature at colleges around Boston and directed national policy studies on education and civil justice. He serves as Co-Editor Across the Pond for The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press. His poems have appeared in a variety of journals and he has published five chapbooks and a novella available at johntessitore.com.
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The Lonely Bartender, by Amanda Gattshall​

7/21/2023

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Picture
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, by Édouard Manet (France) 1882

The Lonely Bartender

The atmosphere in the bar bubbles and fizzes
like the champagne that flows from bottles to glasses.
People are everywhere; drinking, talking, laughing.
They constantly mingle and share small talk and yet
no one bats an eye at those working the bar.
However, I do. I lost my friends in the shuffle, so
I go up to ask for a drink. The first woman who sees me
approach asks: what’ll it be? with a tired look in her eyes.
I say I don’t know for sure and ask what she likes best.
She’s confused at this answer, looking down at the flowers
pinned to her bosom as if they knew the answer. No one
had asked her that before, I think. A Manhattan should suffice,
she says, as her hands swiftly assemble the simple drink.
I reach into my pocket to give her a tip, and her hazel eyes watch
but she signals for me to stop. It’s on the house, she whispers
as a blush enters her pristine face. I nod in thanks, holding
the drink delicately, and I turn back to the mingling crowd
hoping this woman working the bar gets noticed again.

Amanda Gattshall​

Amanda Gattshall is a senior at Flagler College studying Coastal Environmental Science and Creative Writing. When she is not conducting research out on the water or jamming out to video game soundtracks while writing stories, she also loves playing D&D with her friends or curling up with a good book and a warm cup of tea. She was recently a featured speaker at her college's Baccalaureate Ceremony, and she is spending her last semester as an editor for FLARE: The Flagler Review. To read more of her work, more of her poetry will be in the upcoming Spring Issue of Outrageous Fortune.

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In the Grass, by LeeAnn Pickrell

7/20/2023

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Picture
Two Girls on a Lawn by John Singer Sargent (USA) ca. 1889

In the Grass

Two girls on a lawn so soft
the one in black sleeps
her head cradled in her bent arm
the other in a ruffled white dress
props herself up on her elbow 
rests her head on her hand

As a girl I’d lie in the grass to study the clouds
Or swinging bend back over the seat
to turn the world upside down
inhaling the sharp scent of freshly mown grass
stained hands and knees

Years ago I told my brother
as we drove through hills of tall grasses
that I always dreamed of running barefoot through the grass toward someone
and he replied on the verge of divorce cockleburs hurt

Two girls on a lawn napping
a study of white and green and black
not of grass and its stickers 
how even through fabric it scratches

LeeAnn Pickrell
 
This poem was first published in Eclectica.

LeeAnn Pickrell is a poet, freelance editor, and managing editor of Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche. Her work has appeared in a variety of online and print journals, most recently in Loud Coffee Press, Atlanta Review, and MacQueen’s Quinterly. She has a book forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. She lives in Richmond, California, with her partner and two fabulous cats.

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Two Workshops Coming Up- Join Us!

7/19/2023

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Picture
Picture
Two amazing workshops coming up. Join us!

Still Life: Mining the Painter's Pantry is an ekphrastic discovery workshop on Zoom. 

The centuries old painting genre of still life is an audience and collector favourite. What is it about a bowl of fruit or an old vase that we find so compelling? 

For writers, the humble pantry paintings are actually a goldmine of inspiration when we look more carefully. Still life paintings were historically chock full of symbols of both status and spirituality.

In this workshop, we will learn a little bit about the history of still life paintings, dive into their historic symbols, view classic and contemporary creations alike, and stretch our imaginations with some creative exercises to generate ideas and poems or stories. We will also look at a few poems born from still life artworks.

Tuesday August 8 2023 from 3 to 5 pm eastern time.

**

Surreal Women:  Join us on Zoom on Friday August 11 to relax in the company of other writers. 

We will be looking at a variety of artworks by women surrealist painters and using them to inspire our stories and poetry. 

This is a casual, interactive, generative workshop, with a bit of background history but focused on creative exercises and community.

You can bring your favourite beverage to sip whether it is Shiraz or orange pekoe.

Surreal Women: an ekphrastic wine and art write night

CA$30.00

Join us on Zoom on Friday August 11 to relax in the company of other writers.


We will be looking at a variety of artworks by women surrealist painters and using them to inspire our stories and poetry.


This is a casual, interactive, generative workshop, with a bit of background history but focused on creative exercises and community.


You can bring your favourite beverage to sip whether it is Shiraz or orange pekoe.

Shop

Still Life: Mining the Painter's Pantry for Poetry

CA$35.00

Still Life: Mining the Painter's Pantry is an ekphrastic discovery workshop on Zoom. We had this workshop a couple years ago and have been asked about giving it again, so here it is!


The centuries old painting genre of still life is an audience and collector favourite. What is it about a bowl of fruit or an old vase that we find so compelling?


For writers, the humble pantry paintings are actually a goldmine of inspiration when we look more carefully. Still life paintings were historically chock full of symbols of both status and spirituality.


In this workshop, we will learn a little bit about the history of still life paintings, dive into their historic symbols, view classic and contemporary creations alike, and stretch our imaginations with some creative exercises to generate ideas and poems or stories. We will also look at a few poems born from still life artworks.


Wednesday, February 26 from 4 pm to 6 pm Eastern Standard Time.

Shop
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Homestead, by Robert Gibb

7/19/2023

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Picture
Homestead, by John Kane (USA) 1929


Homestead

Bird’s-eye, as in mid-flight, midair 
And slightly upriver, 
The bridge in the foreground 
And its watered-down reflection 
Parallel to the picture plane.
The sky fluffed up with clouds. 
Not quite Giotto’s God’s-eye view
In which the world gets seen 
From all sides. Homestead 
Is crowded rows of houses, 
Steel mills billowing 
Identical plumes of smoke,
Bent level toward the horizon--
One of his vernacular,
Detail-driven landscapes,
Description like composition
A way to lead the eye around it,
Taking in the features
Of the “industrial sublime.”
Scumble and glaze came later.
Here the world is local colour,
The way he first applied it,
Painting scenes on the sides 
Of boxcars during lunchbreaks
At work. A job he’d likely 
Thought of while brushing in 
The slow freights he’s strung 
Along either side of the river. 
He’s got its slurry just right,
And the massive scale 
Of the open hearths, pikestaffs
Of the blast furnace chimneys.
1929. The economy 
About to tank as if in another country.

Robert Gibb

Robert Gibb is the author of Sightlines (Poetry Press, 2021), his thirteenth full-length poetry collection, winner of the 2019 Prize Americana for Poetry. Other books include Among Ruins, which won Notre Dame’s Sandeen Prize in Poetry for 2017, After, which won the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize for 2016, and The Origins of Evening (Norton, 1997), which was a National Poetry Series selection. He has been awarded two NEA Fellowships, a Best American Poetry, a Pushcart Prize and Prairie Schooner’s Glenna Luschei and Strousse Awards. A new book, Pittsburghese, has won 2023’s Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from Michigan State University Press.



​
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Scarlet Ibis, by Margaret Kiernan

7/18/2023

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Picture
Scarlet Ibis, photography by Philip Milne, 2011. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) via Flickr.

Scarlet Ibis

Red birds turn dark as twilight falls, the day lost its colour, drifted into darkness. Beyond the town’s granite statues, birds fly homewards over the football stadium billboard, blazing neon above the field, where odd shoes lie like fish on a market day slab. Air filled with the smell of gunshot assaults my nose. In the south-west corner of the sky, Venus is rising to shine, beckoning wayfarers’ home to the night. I recall fields of gold, crops spread out across the land, flower posies in little girls’ hands, the smell of apples lying in the winter loft, safe. Morning will bring the feathers red again.

Margaret Kiernan

This prose poem was written in response to The Nursery of Ibis, by Daria Petrilli (Italy) contemporary. View it here.

Margaret is an Irish author and writes prose and poetry. She is widely published in journals and magazines and on-line, in four continents. She is a 2023 nominee for The Best of The Net Award for a second year running. She is listed in the Contemporary Women Poets in Ireland, at University College Dublin. Her background is in Human and Social Rights advocacy. She is an activist. She writes policy papers on Inclusion and Diversity. Her hobby is painting, in watercolour and acrylics. Her work has been exhibited.
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Beach at Bastad, Paul Gustav Fischer,  Denmark, 1902, by Rae Brooks

7/17/2023

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Picture
Beach at Bastad, by Paul Gustav Fischer (Denmark) 1902

Beach at Bastad, Paul Gustav Fischer,  Denmark, 1902

The tide leaving slowly as the sun dries the beach, we found a small dingy, red and white, just where the tide meets.
That’s our dingy, and this is our beach.
Not really. But the encroaching moss and piles of drift wood tell me no one else knows, so it’s ours for now.
Time is taking our dingy, ammophila surrounding our paradise, creating a puzzle in the sand. No matter, our paradise is here for now.
She leans forward on her towel, knees curled to her chest, one arm massaging her neck , mesmerised by the storm far at sea. She is peace, she is silence. Mine for now.
I’m not watching the storm, I sit perched on the edge of our dingy, I watch the wind dance through her hair, the sand swirling around her toes, I’ve never felt envy for the elements before.
We stay for now, for as long as we can. Silence and paradise. Just two girls at the beach of Bastad.
​
Rae Brooks

Rae Brooks is an avid pet owner who recently completed a course in creative writing and was drawn to poetry in most of its forms.  


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Mona Lisa, by Clint Margrave

7/16/2023

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Picture
Mona Lisa, by Leonarda Da Vinci (Italy) c. 1503-1517

Mona Lisa (1503)

Everybody’s always talking about your smile, 
but nobody ever mentions
how good you look
for your age.

Clint Margrave

Clint Margrave is the author of several books of fiction and poetry, including Lying Bastard, Salute the Wreckage, The Early Death of Men, and most recently, Visitor. His work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Rattle, The Moth, Ambit, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. 
​

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Installation, by Helena Feder

7/15/2023

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Installation 
 
Like a land down under? I said to my friend 
who lives in Australia, our faces drawn 
into two of several oval holes positioned
to frame and multiply inside a black box, 
a metaphor expanding animals of current
alternating in reflection, blue-red-green 
receding past astonished expressions. 
 
Yeah, Karl said, I feel at home, his phone 
out to record our double neon hydra. Later
we’d look at the screen and wonder how he got
the photo without dropping the device inside,
smashing lights and choreographed mirrors, 
setting off alarms as shards fly into our eyes. 
Fuck, he’d have yelled, fuck, over the noise 
and chaos of panicked guards, and I’d have  
only a moment to focus one good eye 
on the darkness we knew was there.
 
Helena Feder
​
Helena Feder is the author of Ecocriticism and the Idea of Culture (2014/2016) and many articles, essays, interviews, and poems. She is the editor of several journal issues and two books: You Are the River (NCMA 2021) and Close Reading the Anthropocene (Routledge 2021). She is Associate Professor of Literature and Environment at ECU, and currently working on her first book of poems.
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