Salieri, after a performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute
at Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden, October, 1791

The cheap seats love the man.
Each night he lures them from slogging streets
into the pomp and pageantry of fairy tales
with music that makes the angels cry.

They love the oboes courting flutes, bassoons    
entwined in clarinets; strings outracing
trombones, trumpets, tubas, horns
toward kettledrums shuddering the boards
beneath their feet. They care not for scores
or virtuosity. They want delight—
magic doors, scenes that fly,
finales—and more, und mehr.

I hide behind red drapes high
above the crowd, and watch them watch
the note-barrage shooting from his fingertips.  
And when the coloratura soars
toward F above high C, I catch them catch
their breath before their “Bravos!”
seize the chandeliers where magic drips
from candle wax. The pulse-throb
of the aria vibrates my skin.
I want to cry. Divinity has voice.

But when the curtain falls
the deafening applause unhinges me.
“Encore! Encore!” reminds
this lesser child of God,
he’s fated second-best.

Heaven-hurt, I never could compose
so many notes across a page;
never could raise a mundane crowd
above its seats as that little man
with fire in his fingertips.

by Carolyn Martin

Previously published in Carolyn Martin, Finding Compass (Portland, OR: Queen of Wands Press, 2011). Used with permission of the author.

Carolyn Martin is blissfully retired in Clackamas, Oregon, where she gardens, writes and plays with creative friends. Since the only poem she wrote in high school was red-penciled “extremely maudlin,” she is still amazed she continues to write. Her poems have appeared in publications such as Stirring, Persimmon Tree, Antiphon, and Naugatuck River Review. Her second collection, The Way a Woman Knows, was released in February 2015 by The Poetry Box, Portland, OR.

And Simply Read

But if the body were a kind of book…
                                              Karen Fiser

Imagine it as a rectangle,
small enough for a hand to circle,

lift from the table, slight enough
to bear from chair to bath,

to steady on the rim of a tub,
to skim to the end of

leafing ahead to the obvious
while around you steam rises.

Or suppose a more complicated plot,
one that prods you to locate

the chapter on desire, intention
in the author, one you could explicate.

Lay that one beside you on the bed.
Let it fall open of its own accord
                    and simply read.

by Wendy Taylor Carlisle

Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of two books, Reading Berryman to the Dog and Discount Fireworks (both Jacaranda Books). Her most recent chapbook is Persephone on the Metro, (MadHat Press, 2014.) For more information, check her website at www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com.

The title of this painting collage is from a line by Haruki Murakami, in his short story "Lederhosen," from The Elephant Vanishes.

"Brightly Coloured" an illustrated poem by Ariel Rainer Fintushel, is a response to Chagall's autobiography, My Life.   

Ariel Rainer Fintushel currently lives in Los Angeles, California, writing and making comics. Ariel is working on a book about a female skydiver from the 1900s, and has recently been published in Baltimore University's Welter, Dali's Lovechild, Shabby Dollhouse, and Defenestrationism, with a poem forthcoming in Bop Dead City.

                                                             An Iceberg Lived     

                                                              In Twillingate
                                                              I rented a house
                                                              on the North Side
                                                              with threefold dormer windows
                                                              watching over
                                                              a picket fence cradled
                                                              lilac tree      

                                                               In spring
                                                               the upstairs bedroom
                                                               felt like a ship at sea
                                                               floorboards sloped
                                                               to the east window
                                                               where, in the harbour,
                                                               an iceberg lived

                                                               In winter
                                                               the ocean current
                                                               corralled a herd
                                                               of jagged ice pans
                                                               and the house walls,
                                                               undefended,
                                                               allowed the north wind

                                                               Cold swept up
                                                               the staircase            
                                                               snow grains lashed
                                                               the windowpanes
                                                               and the old house, glacial,
                                                               became a tomb
                                                              
                                                               Timbers shuddered
                                                               day and night, and
                                                               wretched
                                                               I left my coat on      
                                                               went to bed after supper                                                                                                         
                                                                                                                
                                                              In summer
                                                              I moved house       
                                                              abandoned  
                                                              the vagrant dust wisps
                                                              plugged kitchen sink, and
                                                              ajar garden gate                                                                                                   
                                                                                                                  
                                                              But I dreamed
                                                              of islands and icebergs
                                                              parlour doors
                                                              that opened to
                                                              sea water, and     
                                                            
                                                              Years later
                                                              I returned
                                                              to find the threefold
                                                              dormer windows
                                                              boarded
                                                              fence broken     
                                                              tree wilted,  
                                                              the house diminished
                                                              withered
                                                              more alive
                                                              shining in
                                                              my dreams  

 Joan MacIntosh

Joan lives in St. John's, Newfoundland and writes poetry, fiction and essays, paints and journals. Her poetry has been previously published in TickleAce, Leafpress, Newfoundland Herald, and other publications. She finds that simple visual images find themselves in poetry and paintings and often discovers haiku through journal writing.

I Want to Be An Insect
 
I want to be
anything but the thing I am
an insect first
and last to live
even for just a day        
in a post-apocalyptic world
without a human sound
a soldier in an army of the ants
a worker for the queen of bees
to fly (with wings my own)
to crawl (not on my knees)
to suck the nectar of a god
or be the god of butterflies
I want to be anything but
the bug I am.

Neil Ellman

Neil Ellman, a poet from New Jersey, has published numerous poems, more than 850 of which are ekphrastic, in print and online journals, anthologies and chapbooks throughout the world.  He has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and twice for Best of the Net.

Aree’s Abstract

“To encourage spots and blobs he tugs the ear forward, towards the canvas. So, very sadly, the design the elephant is making is not hers but his. There is no elephantine invention, no creativity, just slavish copying.”   -  Desmond Morris, Daily Mail, February 21, 2009
    
    Aree watched her mahout approach: his long metal hook resting on his shoulder, his gnarled, leathery face pinched in a scowl. He grabbed Aree’s ear and led her past a young elephant tied up between four wooden posts. Dried blood covered the elephant’s face, and his trunk hung low. As the mahout passed, he swung his hook in a lazy, half-hearted motion striking the elephant on his back. Aree had been “broken” like this too long ago. She turned her head away so as not to lose resolve for her planned insubordination.
    The mahout led Aree through the bamboo forest which shrouded her grim accommodation from tourists. Next, they walked down the tunnel, one side clear plastic glass, the other side a cinder block wall wheatpasted with prints from Van Gogh, Munch, Picasso, Klimt, Hopper, Homer, and others. Aree once had a young mahout who’d talked about those paintings as he led her down this chute, a daily, 100-yard art education.
    The tunnel opened up into a larger paddock. Aree approached the easel set up there and faced the steel-cable fence and the tourists beyond it. The mahout grunted and handed her a paintbrush loaded with black. She hated the necessity of this, that despite her aspiration and talent, she wasn’t physically able to pick up a paintbrush without human help.
    Aree heard the familiar low-level chuckle from the audience. The mahout tugged her ear. A small nail hidden in his palm dug into her skin and guided her to the starting point on the canvas.
    She painted the same thing every day: two elephants trekking through a field of flowers. She used simple, representational outlines for the elephants, short brush strokes for grass, and specs of color for flowers. The mahout’s hook hovered above. His nail tip pinched the back of her ear and guided the arc of her lines.
    Aree recognized the paintings on the cement tunnel wall as comedy through juxtaposition. How many human painters were there? She assumed many. Only a population rich with artists would laugh at the folly of an elephant trying her hand at this lofty human endeavor. Extrapolating from the small sample of human work she’d seen, she imagined a near infinite number of artistic styles and longed to create something of her own.
    Aree had never seen a field of flowers like the one she painted daily. Her compound looked raw and dusty. The captive elephants imprisoned with her wore their plight in the form of complex, wrinkled, scarred, and fragmented faces. Deep, severe lines. Picasso’s cubism mixed with the dark outlines of Van Gogh’s trees.
    The mahout tugged down on Aree’s ear, a signal for her to complete the downward slope of her subject’s trunk. Instead, she closed her line to make a small rectangle. The mahout mumbled, then smacked her back with his hook. He tore the paper off the easel and hung a fresh sheet. He grunted, reloaded the brushed, handed it to her, and pulled her ear hard, his nail digging into her skin. Again, Aree began the slope of the trunk, then made the sharp right angle of a rectangle. The mahout struck her three times.
    She wanted to paint a piece that showed the depth of her experience. She’d already composed it in her head and needed materials and space to realize her concept.
     The mahout reached to tear off the paper again, and Aree swung her trunk and pushed him out of the way. He stood back wide-eyed looking at her from shoulder to toe as if noticing her enormous size for the first time. She added several more lines, the amalgamation of rectangles began to form an elephant face refracted and reimagined. The mahout yelled and raised his hook high. Aree kept painting and stomped her foot twice hard and heavy. The ground shook. The mahout quieted. The crowd gasped. She reloaded her brush and made dark, heavy lines.
    She felt the mahout approaching from the side. She turned to face him, and while instinct told her to trumpet a great sound of warning, she didn’t want to drop her brush. Instead, she grunted and made a sudden move with her head as if she were about to charge. The mahout froze giving Aree more time with her canvas.
    She worked furiously knowing others would soon rush in, beat her, sedate her, or dole out whatever punishment deemed appropriate for an elephant breaking from realism and delving into abstraction. She didn’t have time for the self-critic. Instead, she marveled at the waterfall of shapes spilling down her paper, hard edges that together made the gentle slop of an elephant’s trunk. Her subject’s eyes looked wise and hard between her clean, angular lines. She heard murmurs from the visitors beyond the fence but stayed focused on her work.
    Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw seven men approaching. They carried rope, hooks, a dart gun, and an electric prod. If she could finish painting the head and face of her portrait, that might be enough. A few simple lines suggested the outline of the body already.
    The men surrounded her. She stepped back and looked at her canvas. In it, she saw all her influences — the posters she passed daily, her life experiences — and she was satisfied. Next, she felt a jolt of electricity shoot through her.
    She’d once heard a trainer say an elephant has 40,000 muscles in its trunk, and she thought how this elaborate interwoven systems of nerves and small muscles had to be more complex and nuanced than human fingers. In those 40,000 muscles Aree imagined potential for new techniques, new brushstrokes. Now, with the pulse of the electric prod, her trunk muscles stiffened, and she dropped her brush. A sharp pain pierced her neck and she turned to see a man lowering a dart gun. A moment later, the tranquilizer took effect. Her legs gave out. She sank to her knees, and her vision blurred.
    A man threw a canvas bag over her face. With much effort, Aree lifted her head and pushed the bag from her eyes with her trunk. She took one last look at her work. Her mahout took the paper off the easel and looked at it quizzically. Then, he tore it in two, the sound an audible end to Aree’s experiment in abstraction. She gave in to the tranquilizer and let her head fall back to the ground. She wondered if there were any artists behind the steel cable fence with enough empathy to understand what she was feeling.  

by Theodore Carter

Theodore Carter is the author of The Life Story of a Chilean Sea Blob and Other Matters of Importance (Queens Ferry Press, 2012). His fiction has appeared in several magazines and anthologies including The North American Review, Pank, Necessary Fiction, and A capella Zoo. Carter’s street art projects, which began as book promotion stunts, have garnered attention from several local news outlets including NBC4 Washington, Fox5 DC, and the Washington City Paper. www.theodorecarter.com

Le Comte St Genois: Christian Schad

Le Comte can fool us, French Lieutenant in a tux,
his sleek hair, blinding pocket square, his ladies’
lethal kohl-eyed stares, their bodies visible
through gauzy peau de soie, pink leaves, are sexy,
rose et vert.  They have, this group, three noses
from which to look down on us.
Behind them, Paris, Berlin, any New Objective city,
lurks and looms.  They stand apart and glow.
Are they translucent, shining, meant
to gather an admiring view, or are they vacant
and transparent, prisoners of their hauteur and ennui.

by Wendy T. Carlisle

Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of two books, Reading Berryman to the Dog and Discount Fireworks (both Jacaranda Books). Her most recent chapbook is Persephone on the Metro, (MadHat Press, 2014.) For more information, check her website at www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com.