 Ruined Farm, House in B., by Otto Dix (Germany) 1917 Too Often the Subjects of History and Epics I quit portraits for a time, no longer painting men in blue suits, their haberdashery barely detectable suggestions of plaid, women with bangs, tendrils or both, gazes never intimate or immediate, always focused on distant possibilities. My attention shifted to landscapes, ruined farms, on the cusp of collapse, red planks of barns gashed by factors beyond the tiller or planter’s control like drought and war occupying history and epics always turning the earth ashen or brown. Gina Ferrara Gina Ferrara has five poetry collections: The Rooted and Recurrent, her sixth collection, is scheduled for publication in late 2026 by UL Press. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Callaloo, The Poetry Ireland Review Tar River and The Southern Review and was nominated for a Best of the Net and a Pushcart in 2024. In 2025, she was appointed Poet Laureate of Louisiana. Since 2007, she has curated The Poetry Buffet, a monthly reading series in New Orleans.
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 The Return of Persephone, by Frederic Leighton (England) 1891 Why the Naughty Boys Persephone’s lovely bare foot slips on the red rock and she finds herself tumbling through a chasm opening up below-- Oh, why is it always the naughty boys who draws us with their heat, she thinks. A flurry of flower petals follow her descent; like leaving a bread crumb trail back home. Above the ground, she hears her mother Demeter calling her name, Per-per-per-- seph-seph-seph-- onee-onee-oneeee-- Each syllable reverberates in the far-away sky like a flock of birds sent—and failing-- to save her. After the earth’s hellish fissure, what opens next? Her heart splitting in two like the seeded pomegranate he forces upon her, or her thighs reluctantly welcoming a god who doesn’t understand the word no? Six months is not forever, she tells herself, less time than it takes to fully bake a baby. More time than it takes to conceive, but she shrugs away that thought. She and her husband reach a compromise: annual visits to her mother are allowed, as long as he gets to stay below. Her mother waits. Robin Michel Robin Michel is the author of the full-length poetry collection Beneath a Strawberry Night Sky (Raven & Wren Press 2023) and is the winner of the Jessie Bryce Niles Poetry Chapbook Contest for Things Will be Better in Bountiful (Comstock Review 2024). Her poetry appears in many print and online journals, including Unbroken Journal, Gordon Square Review, and Passionfruit Poetry. Robin served as a fine arts program coordinator and / or docent in public schools for over fourteen years.  Echo No. 25, by Jackson Pollock (USA) 1951 Refrain She wants this relationship to work out—the others complained she never opened up. At least with this one her door is ajar. He’d like to get to know her, he said. He’d like to get to know her. He said, “Tell me your darkest thought, the one you won’t say aloud.” Her brain scrambled ideas: a Jackson Pollock painting. Question marks on the inside of her eyelids. Questions mark her insides. Eyelids twitch as ears listen to echoes of his voice prod and provoke, the sound, a horse kick, smacks her loin and flank. Was anyone worth this inquiry? Was anyone worth this? Inquiry, invasion, inquisition more like. Now the low moan of closing, a scrap of promise defects through the gap, exit the last gasp of possibility. She shuts the door on him. She shuts the door on all of them. Karen Moulton Karen Moulton is the author of three chapbooks: One Year Ago Today and Other Poems of Revelation, NOW, and The Unpartnered Wife. She’s had work published in Rattle and SLANT: A Journal of Poetry. She is a retired teacher who taught in Key West, Florida, Shanghai, China, and Taipei, Taiwan. She lives in Flippin, Arkansas, with her husband, Ken Forman, and their dog, Darwin. Much of her recent work centers around Ken, Darwin, and the constant surprise of living in the Ozarks. She discovered ekphrastic poetry through online classes taught by Barbara Krasner.  Appalachian Scenic Highway, Linen Era (1930-1945) postmarked 1941 Penmanship For the young person who stood staring blankly at the old postcard the message on the back could have been written in a foreign language. Maybe a form of shorthand or it could be encrypted, perhaps an ancient glyph whose cypher has been lost, certainly a long-ago language now impossible to comprehend. But I remember school days spent learning to write in cursive practicing the joining of letters to create a flowing script patterned after the alphabet in cursive hanging on the wall. The postcard with its words elegantly and painstakingly written from edge to edge whether ornamental or elegant, conventional or personal in style, is now in need of a translator. Dan Hardison Dan Hardison is a writer and artist living in Wilmington, North Carolina. His writing has appeared at Calliope, The Wise Owl, Cattails, DailyHaiga, and other print and online journals. His illustrated self-published book Quietude is available from Lulu Press. His work can be found at his blog Some Tomorrow’s Morning, http://www.danhardison.blogspot.com and on Instagram @windscapestudio.   Self Portrait #3, by Elaine de Kooning (USA) 1946. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Self Portrait #3 Elaine de Kooning American 1946 I’ve often wondered about self-portraits and how artists depict themselves and the images that surround them. This portrait says so much by showing so little. And you look like you have a secret, or some hidden knowledge foreign to the rest of us. Is this room real? Real, like you use the room and the items placed are not just props? Art is like life, we can't always tell what's a prop. Maybe you sketch here, maybe you don't. But that chair doesn't seem steady or comfortable. The oversized cushion wants to spill off of it. It looks like a chair that lives in a corner, unobtrusive. You pulled it to the center, placed a cushion on it that was meant for something else and called it a seat. And it has no back. Was that the style of the era? And there's no place to put your sketchbook or your coffee cup, like a table. I see a square one, with skinny wooden legs. Without a table, wouldn't you knock that cup with your foot? I would, and all the coffee would spill out over the edges, over that nice shiny floor. And isn't shiny! How do you have time to buff a floor? I guess you would do it if it was important to you, but still there has to be dullness somewhere in a well used floor. The wall hangings are meaningful to you, I would imagine. Something from your past, something that holds memory, Something you would like people to surmise about you but not really know. The fabric tapestry, my guess, you picked it up in a 2nd hand store in Brooklyn. You keep it simply because you like it. And you...stylish. Your oversized sweater and flowing trousers show how slender you are. That's for real, I've seen your picture. The sweater is what gives the room its warmth. And the feather-did it drop from a stuffed owl and no one ever thought to pick it up, or maybe it was placed there purposefully, by you, as a reminder of how fleeting things are, how the wind can take you anywhere. Cristie Newhart Cristie Newhart is a writer and yoga teacher and has been a faculty member at Kripalu Center for Yoga for over 20 years. She exudes equal parts warmth and wisdom as she makes some of yoga’s deeper philosophical aspects engaging and accessible to modern-day practitioners. She is a deep lover of poetry, art, nature and all forms of expression. Cristie lives in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts.  Automat, by Edward Hopper (USA) 1927 In the Automat Edward, paint another figure in the Automat, paint me. It would be simple, if you could, to paint me sitting on the chair that's vacant in the foreground. I'd be a vaguely modeled patch of blue just coming from the office late at night still in my business suit and tie. I'd turn my back to you and be anonymous, no face, no hands to draw. You wouldn't have to change a thing. Of course, the table must be shared, there's only one. Perhaps the lady wouldn't mind, since even when we're all alone, hope has room for two. You'd leave her with her hat on, and I'd keep mine on, too. I'd not attempt to catch her eye beneath the down-turned brim, nor help her to remove her coat, and certainly the glove could stay, just for coffee and a stranger. I'd sit as still and silent as the bowl of fruit in shadowless autonomy of cross-beams cast from unseen ceiling lights. I'd gaze into the background and I'd see reflected lamps articulate the outer darkness through the glass of the window's unsilvered mirror. S. P. Kerce Mr. Kerce is a peripatetic American now retired and living in Berlin, having arrived by way of Los Angeles, Chicago, Munich, Athens, and Lynchburg, Tennessee. Along the way he has been writing poetry.
Ragged Psalms: Mutual Interview, Rebecca Weigold and Lorette C. Luzajic Ragged Psalms Rebecca Weigold and Lorette C. Luzajic Cyberwit Books, 2026 Click here to view or purchase on Amazon. Lorette C. Luzajic: Tell us about your relationship to visual art. How did you become interested in ekphrasis? How does the art feed your poems and your writing practice in general? Rebecca Weigold: My introduction to The Ekphrastic Review several years ago was my initiation into the wonderful world of ekphrasis. I found the art to be compelling and the writing, magical. Art soon became the primary inspiration for my writing, as well. As someone who struggles with mental health, poetry based on art is as therapeutic for me as gardening may be to someone else. When I consider a painting, it is as though I have an inner dialogue with the artist as therapist, challenging me to examine my thought life from other perspectives. A centuries-old painting can give new context modern-day experience. I almost always find a thread of commonality between the artist or the art and me. Lorette C. Luzajic: Many of your poems are deeply imagined, taking the reader into a life outside of yours and theirs. Tell us about what the process is like for you when you take on another history or persona. Rebecca Weigold: At times, the process of writing an ekphrastic poem is like drawing from my past in theatre. I sometimes think of the artist or subject in a painting as a character on the literary stage. For example, the subject of my poem, “Aria for Aloise,” is the artist, Aloise Corbaz. Aloise was schizophrenic and lived in an asylum. Her dream of being an opera singer inspired my poem based on her colourful drawing, Star of the Paris Opera. As someone familiar with mental illness, I channeled Aloise through that perspective. Having experienced a stay in a psychiatric institution, I understand how she may have yearned for the power to change her destiny from that of grim isolation to something exotic and grand. Artists like Aloise, especially those oppressed or subject to mental illness, deserve their art to be seen and their stories heard. I hope that through this poem in some small sense, I got to help Aloise be memorialized as the opera star she always wanted to be. Lorette C. Luzajic: Other poems are very personal and candid. Does writing or sharing these intimate pieces feel vulnerable or empowering? Rebecca Weigold: I do struggle with vulnerability. It may take weeks to get a poem on the page that is profoundly personal. Certain poems, admittedly, feel risky to share. Sometimes I submit a finished poem before I make peace with the fact that it may disappoint. But ultimately telling certain truths is empowering. Releasing it to the world is freeing and in that, I find empowerment. Lorette C. Luzajic: Many of your poems explore spiritual faith with a very honest range of emotions, combining questioning and certainty, celebration and confusion. Does writing poetry resolve this relationship for you? Does communicating your deepest questions and experiences bring you closer to God and to others on their journey? Rebecca Weigold: My hope is that someone resonates with something in my expressions of Christian faith--the things I am sure of, or the things I am not. My certainty, as well as my questioning. I don’t know if the cynical aspect of my poetry necessarily brings readers closer to me, though. Calling God “fallible” may offend some, as may my poem “canned christianity,” which is an indictment of what I have heard called American “churchianity.” On the other hand, I feel confident there will be readers who identify. But that’s where loyalty to self comes in. Something must ring true to me, even if I feel unsure how it will be received. And as far as questioning and expressing confusion of my faith in my writing, I know God can handle my doubts, fears, and cynicism, and that is what matters to me most. Lorette C. Luzajic: Is there a poem that was particularly challenging to write? Tell us what happened behind the scenes. Rebecca Weigold: My heart is heavy with unwritten poems about my dad who passed away in 2019. Unresolved grief has made it impossible to write them right now. This frustrating, unmet longing has led to periods of creative drought. During one such episode, I used that time to write, “the female poets, captive of a vengeful mage,” a poem about writer’s block. I had remembered you telling me some time ago to give writer’s block the middle finger. I took that advice and that’s exactly what I did. Happily. Sometimes I just need to ride out the process knowing, eventually, the poem longing to be written will work its way out. In this case, mine just hasn’t yet. Lorette C. Luzajic: What was your experience like working in collaboration with another poet? Can you share some of the challenges and benefits in the process of putting a book together with another writer? Rebecca Weigold: Your initial invitation to collaborate on this book was an incredible honour. I have always admired you as both writer and mentor. Working with you was freeing and fulfilling. This being my first book, your guidance gave me permission to ignore anticipatory anxiety and fear of rejection. A mutual goal gave me clarity of purpose. I have some ADHD qualities and, had I been working on the book alone, it may not have materialized. So, the sense of accountability to someone was imperative. It kept me writing. The process was an exciting learning opportunity as well as endearing. Sharing my anxieties and accomplishments--including the celebration and confusion of my Christian faith mentioned earlier--with you, brought us closer as writers and dear friends. I also want to mention that your contributions to the book absolutely wowed me. For example, the sensory details of the poem, “Golgotha,” with its references to the blood “you can’t imagine,” and “the weeping,” truly resonated with my core convictions. Likewise, the phrase, “the second substitute who stood in for us,” from your poem, “Judas,” articulated a powerful truth. These are just two examples that illustrate why I hold your writing in such esteem. Lorette C. Luzajic: What’s next for Rebecca Weigold? Rebecca Weigold: I am thrilled to have completed this project alongside you! What an absolute accomplishment and delight it was working together. The goal for my poetry is to contribute writing that resonates with the reader and offers fresh emotional insight. I want my poems to be prismatic, something impactful in a multi-faceted way. I hope to carry the momentum from this book forward in pursuit of my next project, whatever that may be. It means exploring more art, straying even further from my comfort zone, and taking more risks while staying loyal to myself. It is my hope what I have to contribute to the world of ekphrastic poetry continues to be of value to lovers of ekphrasis.  Rebecca with Ragged Psalms. Rebecca Weigold: Is there a poem in the book, Ragged Psalms, that was autobiographical in nature and especially painful to write? Lorette C. Luzajic: A lot of my poems are autobiographical. If some camps subscribe to the belief that “mature” poems should never be about the poet, I hold the opposite view. While imagined events, or someone else’s experiences are also crucial raw material for writers, the most important stories a writer can tell are her own. It’s one feat to make up a love story or death story, another to put your pen in someone else’s shoes. It’s another thing again to hold space for your own true stories. It can be difficult and painful to put yourself on the page, but it connects you deeply to your readers, and vice versa. When we read someone’s real experiences we enter into a profound relationship with them. Not that every poem should just be a rant or diary venting. But it can be really tough to be honest with yourself. All true poems and stories are embellished, altered, or composites, what they call “poetic license,” rather than word for word accounts of something. But even so, sharing one’s own heart, the painful, embarrassing, petty, mean, stupid stuff, all of it, brings a certain vulnerability and authenticity that fosters intimacy between writers and readers. It’s a kind of connection that can hold up a mirror, as we are less alone than we think when we go through something that requires writing about. There are many subjects that have been difficult to write about over my lifetime, but perhaps the most difficult one is my relationship with my mother, and the impact of her dark reign on my family. Even as an adult of 54 years old, almost two years after her passing, I am still terrified of her. “The Mask” is a fictional piece, but its heart is true. I don’t have a brother who was in the theatre, the premise of the vignette. But the effect of the maternal character on the people in the poem is true. “Swan Sisters” is much closer to actual events, recounting a memory of childhood with reasonable accuracy. Of course, being an adult now, with many years of therapy, and many other experiences related and unrelated to this one, gives me/the narrator the gift of context. The poem is about the self-absorption, theatricality, and triangulation tactics of a person of "the dark tetrad," the way her children are mere pawns in her drama, and how she must pit them against each other to compete for her love. The benefit of hindsight is that even if the wound feels fresh 40 years later, the writer is on to her, no longer a victim in the game she’s writing about. Writing a poem like this is, of course, cathartic, but perhaps the most important thing about such a poem is that it is true, and there are countless others out there who know this very archetype and scenario that I am writing about here. Rebecca Weigold: Which of your poems in this book holds the most personal meaning to you and why? Lorette C. Luzajic: “Mrs. Luzajic as Hebe” is a kind of “life flashing before your eyes” poem, reflecting on mortality, the experience of fighting breast cancer, and a lifetime of memory fragments, a poem for a poet friend who was fighting cancer, too. This is triply poignant because it is in a book written with you, who went through this battle right before it happened to me. Thinking about how cancer is everywhere, in one’s self and in one’s closest friends, is really overwhelming and frightening. But the poem is about the important things I learned: friendship is everything, and comes in unusual, unexpected ways and different forms. It’s a poem of gratitude to have friends who carry me, and for being able to see that every day is a gift. Rebecca Weigold: I love the poem, "Mindemoya," about time spent on Manitoulin Island. How were you inspired to write this poem with its rich and lush imagery based on an abstract colour woodcut? Lorette C. Luzajic: The cows in this artwork reminded me of the experience of seeing so many cows on my visit to the island, ambling through their routines. I was visiting an old friend on this magical island in northern Ontario. The power on the whole island went off while I was there. I’m such a city slicker, in contrast to my friend. I panic when the lights go out for five minutes or the phone battery dies. But my friend lives practically, prepared for emergencies. So the poem that came out was about friendship, and about those different personalities in a specific setting. That day, there was nothing to do but watch the cows and slow down, and the poem captures what we see when we slow down to contemplate our surroundings and the blessings we have already. Rebecca Weigold: As an award-winning mixed media artist, how is creating your ekphrastic poems like creating collages? Lorette C. Luzajic: I’ve come to realize lately that everything I do and am is a kind of collage process. It’s even the way I cook, eschewing recipes and following impulse and creativity: throwing a bit of this and a bit of that into the pot or salad bowl, contrasting with an unexpected seasoning or some fruits or seeds. Whether with words or images, I gather fragments and pieces, and put them together. The resulting juxtaposition presents possibilities and considerations from that particular combination, and then the pieces move again and show up in other stories, trying a new narrative on for size. Over time, my body of artworks has shown that there are motifs and symbols and themes that I return to over and over, imagery that mean something to me, and to viewers, that turns up in different scenarios repeatedly, cats, forget-me-nots, sacred hearts, hands, ducks, Frida Kahlo, candy. I notice that my stories and poems manifest this same phenomenon, recurring symbols and characters that weave in and out of different narrative possibilities. Rebecca Weigold: Your story, "Marguerites," was selected for Best Microfiction 2026. Congratulations! I am fascinated by the phrase, "...an underlying thrum, something novel and neon wrestling at the staid gray seams...." This particular language and the sensual image of marguerites gives a fresh new way of looking at the complex relationship between three people. How did you write about so much happening subtextually in such a concise story? Lorette C. Luzajic: Thanks so much. This prose poem was conjured straight out of the painting, of a woman smoking alone at a breakfast table. The subtext was palpable, tense with emotion, and I tried to capture that. I always see a painting as an invitation to go behind the scenes and find out more about the art and artist. Sometimes the poem or story is about what I find, and other times my own memories or imaginings end up in the drama. The painter, Elin Danielson-Gambogi, struggled with an affair that her husband had with a friend of hers, another artist. I imagined the painting in light of that conflict, something so personal and yet we all grapple with relationships, desire, choices. I didn’t want to say too much in this particular piece, so I let innuendo do the talking. Rebecca Weigold: In your poem, "Walking After Midnight, you describe a scene: "Oh, there were times I felt as if I had no eyes at all, only heart, sleepwalking, feeling my way from one precipice to another." Have you ever felt this way about the writing process? Lorette C. Luzajic: I think the fact that I feel too much is both the strength and weakness of my writing. Many writers are highly sensitive, oversensitive one might say unkindly, and from that very quality are driven to process and make sense of things through writing. Feeling things so intensely gives a writer the ability to notice and the drive to give a narrative to the drama or assign some kind of meaning to everything that happens. I don’t shy away from any emotion or experience, whether ebullient and joyful, or painful; I cop to my darkest fantasies and most embarrassing excesses, and I think that makes for rich and authentic poems that people can feel and relate to. It also gives me the tendency towards over-sharing, over dramatization, and heavy-handed sentimentality or related blunders. So yes, in a way, I feel this way about the writing process all the time! I hope what I have learned with time and experience is a little context, and to temper the intensity of the heart with complexity, motivation, contrast, and reason. I fear that’s not always the case, but I am a work in progress, like we all are. Rebecca Weigold: What do you hope is the take-away for readers of this book? Lorette C. Luzajic: This collection is a journey with a friend- you. A dialogue with art and with each other, a bond that shows the way different writers and personalities can take the same raw material and themes and reveal very different ways of thinking about them. Writing together is a kind of intimacy and a window into how friends, writers, strangers, might all experience the same subjects from a very different perspective. I hope those readers who find their way to this book will simply witness for a moment the things we have witnessed, feel the things we felt, and perhaps join the conversation by writing their own poems about art, illness, family, love and faith.
 Rebecca and Lorette  Star of the Paris Opera, by Aloïse Corbaz (Switzerland) 1954 Aria for Aloïse (An Opera in Two Acts) 1. Sing, Aloïse! Step out of your confinement, adorned as Alceste in pink pastel peplos; daisy garland crowns your saffron rivulets and a floweret falls to your breast. Glorious magenta lips give rise to verse, mezzo-soprano of Teatro La Fenice; gold phiale in hand bears tokens of your love for Admeto: pink sapphire, blood-red garnet, encore lapis, intermezzo tourmaline, and candlelight topaz. Non, ce n’est point un sacrifice, you sing No, it’s not a sacrifice, and trade your life for his, as curtains fall. Generale whose hand is at your breast, guides you to gondola; you drift away from the pali da casada as applause echoes down ancient stone walls, frolics with moonlight on the Grand Canal. Geraniums and Jasmine plunge from windows. Handkerchiefs fly from balconets. O Mio Aloïse, sing! Raise your arias, release them like a flutter of pink doves. 2. Sing, Aloïse! Step out of your frigid bath, emerge from your clamshell asylum and into 1809 Paris as Giuseppina in the Theatre des Tuileries; nude Venus in headdress of Myrtle and shells, with chorus of harmonious rosettes swung across your bosom, hung about your waist. With eyes like sea stars, lift your arms and project contralto song from Rosière lips. Your face flushes with power as you warm marble into flesh, present Galatea to Pimmalione and curtains fall. You are the laurel-crowned goddess on the Emperor’s badge d’honneur; he gifts you a kiss of French blue diamond, carries your portrait in his pocket as you sway into crowds and headlines with fanfare. Empress Josephine in royal gold brocade lavishes you with rubies. O Mon Aloïse, sing! Raise your arias which dance like water nymphs, transform into flickers of damselflies. Rebecca Weigold  Conscience, Judas, by Nikolai Ge (Russia) 1891 Judas You are the shadow in the shadows, pacing the bleak and barren pits of the desert, looking for your soul. It spilled out of you, right here, under the tree that could not hold you, where your guts unspooled in the beaks of birds. Just after you sold Him for thirty pieces of silver, the one you betrayed descended into that same darkness, on another tree that did not hold. Then, He ascended to his throne. Was it in time to save you? Oh, despised one, you were the disciple that he loved. Was repentance too late for redemption? Will there be another kind of mercy? You were the second substitute who stood in for us, the one whose sins we shared. The one who killed Jesus, because it was us. And what terrible destiny for all, had you had not fulfilled yours? We are all Judas, aren’t we now, easily bought, easily sold. We all have you inside the deep recesses of our hearts, Judas. Even your name whiffs of tainted meat and treason. Lorette C. Luzajic  The Wanderers, by Barbara Krasner, Shanti Arts Publishing, 2026. Click on image to view or purchase on Amazon. Thoughts on Barbara Krasner’s The Wanderers Opening this book is to seat yourself at the table with beauty and the ultimate wealth of true human company. Throughout the poems we experience everything from the bewilderment of emigration to the deepening of family bonds and friendships to the relentless reckoning with implacable illness. Krasner travels places and events both public and private, stopping to explore the hearts of people in the poet's life as well as from history (it was a particular treat to find a reference to Crown Prince Rudolf). Krasner's trajectories lead us from the baby Moses in the meditative, penetrating opening poem, "Sister Miriam Sets Him Afloat and Wanders," along avenues of art and poetics to Rembrandt, to the Russian shtetl, to the Lower East Side, then off we go to France - and so many places in between. Every poem is layered with attention to form, grounded with images both tangible and elusively beckoning - and yet also completely fresh every word along the way. Some lines I loved: "We lost our voices in troop dust" “…an umbrella useless against the golden drumbeat of time . . .” "We were the star-studded canaries, voiceless . . ." I could easily cite 100 more. But then there are poems from which I'd find it futile to extract any one line, such as "Tashlich at Bath Beach, Brooklyn, 1910." The poem offers a surprising illustration of how deep and yet ordinary redemption can be, and the gift of absolution of one another within nature. These poems are wrought of both the simple and the grand: wheat fields, alleyways of the Jewish quarter, the NYC subway, zoological gardens in Germany. And Krasner shows deftly that beauty cannot be complete without its lesser-appreciated ingredients - displacement and loss: of country, of security, of complete health, but never quite of loved ones. Time and again, the true opulence Krasner points to is the unbroken thread of loving others, keeping the living near, or finding traces of those missing through memory, hope, or misgivings. Krasner is also adept at offering the reader a distillation of narrative and sensation. One example is hearing breath in tandem with silence in "The Labyrinth"; another is the near-synesthesia in the prose poem "In Transition," where in addition to the visuals painted onto the page, we can hear and see elements not directly named yet somehow evoked: scraping insects hovering, sunlight and heat changing over the course of the poem's narrative time. The section Tabula Rasa is where spirals come full circle but remain in movement, in the concentric contraction and expansion of Krasner’s identity and poetic spirit/sensors as she shares her personal experiences with illness. Gripping to read among others are "Rest Awhile," "Caravaggio in the ICU" and "Pemphigus Haibun." And BRAVO also to Shanti Arts Publishing for lush reproductions of the artworks included - a truly wonderful book, not to be missed. Kalliopy Paleos Kalliopy Paleos studied contemporary American poetry at SUNY Brockport. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize as well as Best Microfiction for 2026 and completed her third full-length novel translation from Greek. Poetry and prose publications include 10 by 10 Flash Fiction, ERGON Magazine for Greek-American Arts and Letters, and Flash Boulevard. She is currently trying to improve her cooking, but it’s not going well. Her favourite place for time travel is the 18th century.  Barbara Krasner    This poem was published in one of the Ekphrastic Challenges. Sharing a Cappuccino with You after The Angel of the City, by Marino Marini (Italy) 1948 Dear Frank, the Frick’s been redone, doubled, you can climb that grand marble staircase now into their bedrooms, see how they lived with the paintings: Adelaide’s boudoir, Pompadour’s cherubs playing scientist, philosopher, artist. As for your Horse and Rider, they’ve cleaned the room, the light’s brighter, more diffuse. I had to ask three guards where it was hanging. Imagine. I missed it on my first pass. But Frank, it isn’t so spectacular. I think you were flattering Vincent, the poor innocent, making him a dashing soldier, and Rembrandt over Marini, really? You snob. You always did prefer the lithe boys, the dancers, not my rough, unruly men: fat, hairy, balding daddies I’d gladly take home. See what I see: Marini’s man, round, stocky, arms flung open, face to the sky, joy breaking from him, a kind of guardian of Venice, but no horizon, only sky, enemies falling away, his blunt, shameless power rising, his ecstasy carried forward in the stiff-necked horse. He could guard my city any day. You must know this: Peggy would unscrew the penis, hide it in a drawer when the nuns passed on the Grand Canal for their holy days, for blessing by the Patriarch. Frank, there’s a café now, bright as a garden room, smoky mirrors, lacquered red chairs, a fresco circling the ceiling, inspired by Bellini, so far from the desert of St. Francis. Cutlery and dishes clash, steam hisses from the espresso machine, coffee, butter, sugar in the air. I’d share a cappuccino with you. We’d sit in that bright, noisy room, all that warmth and air, we’d dish, fast, a little cruel, a little in love with everything, feed our hungers, tell each other what’s new, what isn’t, while the city goes on without you, and still, with you in it. StevieB. StevieB. (Stephen McDonnell) writes lyric poems shaped by mystical and erotic experience, where queer eros opens toward the divine. A late-blooming poet, he began in his sixties, apprenticing himself to Rumi, Whitman, O’Hara, Ginsberg, and Anne Carson. He lives as an erotic mystic anchorite among the farmlands of eastern Long Island, watching what reveals itself. A Painting by Barnet Newman (all red) The crippled curl, Wheeling in our twisted wombs To be flung naked, Startled, On a bed of rocks. You, stranger, come forth In Broad day, Large with light, on eagle wings. Spanning Space Not space at all But all space. The dark eyes He has overrun with Blood. Flaring ladders Across the four-fold prism Of our weighty lids Where once we caught Grasshoppers. How dare he stretch A canvas Across the sun! Marilyn Kurtz Marilyn Kurtz, Ph.D, was an adj. Professor in the English department at Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York. She received her doctorate from The City University of New York, with a dissertation [Virginia Woolf: Reflections and Reverberations American University Studies Volume 119 of American university studies: English language and literature, ISSN 0741-0700 Publisher: P. Lang (1990)]. She lives in Nassau County, Long Island, New York. She edited and wrote for magazines and was co-poet of the week on Poetry Superhighway and featured in Poetry Pacific. She has passed on her learning to her students, who appreciate her. |
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