 Starry Night, by Vincent Van Gogh (Netherlands) 1889 Starry Night It’s last call: Vincent brushes the hills tresses, blows out the village candles, appoints the night watch – a tough cypress comrade, and only then aims for the stars. His brush swirls in the thick of night - a thief’s key in a prison lock to unchain the celestial sea. Blazing blue and liquid gold sea gods lunging headlong – claws keen, tails mean, they gulp down the nocturnal mesh and splash trying to reach Vincent’s shore. A honeyed moon leads the tune and holds this enterprise together though its tides shift as we speak we can see stars breathe the night watch is fast asleep. Ekaterina Dukas Ekaterina Dukas lives in London. A graduate in Philology and Philosophy, she is interested in the history of arts, ideas, culture and universalism, going back to Sanskrit sources. Considering poetry as human’s alter ego, she is an avid explorer of the metrical word. Former educationist, she is now a volunteer at the V&A Museum; and at the British Museum for the interactive program Hands On. Her creative acumen is attested in the authorship of the British Library publication The Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander, listed by questia digital library at position 9 in one of their periodical selections 16 of the best publications on illuminated manuscripts.
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 Walking the Cat, by Lorette C. Luzajic (Canada) 2004 For Decades Lady (she looks like me) walks her cat a burgundy and saffron striped monstrosity cooling sliding through evening on rough pavement tethered to woman by a rusty rope hanging between her pocketed hand and his frayed neck. Lady ambles up a street (it looks like mine) on long feet and scaly red legs. Her coat—a hybrid of green stripes teal raindrops pink squares—stirs in wind (just like my own). Her hair is a fog-ridden mess through which no sun could shine (myself, I’ve seen no sun for decades). Her lips turn down unhappy clown style and like some deep sea fish she has no eyes. If she were me or I her I (we) would not see the watercolour sky streaked primrose and lemon drop and marine blue either. Nor would (we) hear the petals crunching under (our) feet like an ocean of violets on their way to shore. t.m.thomson t.m. thomson’s work has most recently appeared in West Trade Review and Borrowed Solace and will appear in The Voices Project and Pensive in the upcoming months. Three of her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Awards: “Seahorse and Moon” in 2005, “I Walked Out in January” in 2016, and “Strum and Lull” in 2018. She is the author of Strum and Lull (2019) and The Profusion (2019), which placed in Golden Walkman’s 2017 chapbook competition, and co-author of Frame and Mount the Sky (2017). She has a writer’s page at https://www.facebook.com/TaunjaThomsonWriter/  Congratulations to our ten Best of the Net nominees for 2020! The Ekphrastic Review proudly nominated these ten writers for their outstanding contributions to ekphrastic literature. Best of the Net awards are annual literary recognition awards for poetry or prose published online. We are most grateful to our prize nomination committee: Laura Cherry, Kari Ann Ebert, Carole Mertz, Dr. Queen Sarkar, and Alarie Tennille, for their tireless commitment to this important cause. Best of the Net 2020 Josephine, by Lewis Braham https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic/josephine-by-lewis-braham Second Plum, by Tricia Marcella Cimera https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic/second-plum-by-tricia-marcella-cimera Landscape With the Fall of Icarus, by Suzanne Craig-Whytock https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic/landscape-with-the-fall-of-icarus-by-suzanne-craig-whytock When You Lose Your Mooring, by Kyle Laws https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic/ekphrastic-challenge-responses-toyen The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Deijman, by Janiru Liyanage https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic/the-anatomy-lesson-of-dr-deijman-by-janiru-liyanage French Pumpkin Soup, by Laurie Newendorp https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic/ekphrastic-responses-anne-vallayer-coster Carry Along, by Kari Nguyen https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic/ekphrastic-challenge-responses-barbara-danin Suicide’s Note in Turquoise, by Shruthi Shivkumar https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic/suicides-note-in-turquoise-by-shruthi-shivkumar Pondering Rothko, by Sandi Stromberg https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic/ekphrastic-challenge-responses-mark-rothko War, by Alarie Tennille https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic/ekphrastic-challenge-responses-toyen  Landscape with Charon Crossing the Styx, by Joachim Patinir (Belgium) 1520-1524 Patinir: Charon Crossing the Styx (1520-1524) As clean and ribbed as a virgin brandy cask, unseasoned brining barrel for black or green olives, the ferry’s far too small to keep the thronged, unceasing dead out of the drink. There’s barely room for Charon — bulky, tall, and in the buff — his passenger unfazed by the looming shore, where Cerebos raises the scent of the damned and humps his back, his tail as bald and long as a rat’s. The soul aboard the boat is a masterpiece of unconcern: no bigger than a boy, slight body turned from the jagged, hillside fires, his face devoid of eleventh-hour remorse, though Hade’s mouth gapes and frowns like a carnival funhouse. Aaron Fischer Aaron Fischer worked for 30+ years as a print and online editor in technology publishing and public policy. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in After Happy Hour, Briar Cliff Review, Five Points, Hudson Review, Nervous Ghost, Sow’s Ear, and other publications. His chapbook, Black Stars of Blood: The Weegee Poems, was published this past summer. He has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes as well as for Best New Poets 2018 and won the Prime Number Magazine 2020 Poetry Contest. Christine Keeler after Girl on a Chair, photograph by Lewis Morley (Australia, b. Hong Kong) 1963 Nothing like a burnished throne the chair she sits on, just a knock-off of the Arne Jacobsen Model 3107 bought for five bob in a sale at Heal’s . And no Cleopatra she, instead a cut-price price red top nymphet, a little tart about to help bring down a government. Besides, she sits less like a queen than a Hollywood cowpoke, straddling the seat the way Jimmy Stewart might have in a Hollywood cow-town saloon after cutting in on the bad guys’ poker game. She was nineteen. Nineteen, and on the day the photograph was taken she would have made her way through Soho, a district she must have known from working topless at Murray’s in Beak Street, to the Establishment Club. The Establishment Club, oh, the irony of that! Would she have understood? Third floor up then. Lewis Morley, the photographer, waits for her in his studio with the film men and the money men. Perhaps she was late. She’d signed contracts for a film of her short life and wicked ways. She’d bedded crooks, Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for War, and, oh yes, Captain Yevgeny Ivanov, naval attaché at the Soviet embassy in London and a spy. She’d shaken the Establishment all right, but not the club downstairs, the other one, the real one. Lord Hailsham, losing his rag, has told the great British television viewing public that “a great party is not to be brought down because of a squalid affair between a woman of easy virtue and a proved liar.” Well, here she is, Christine Keeler, the woman of easy virtue, nineteen years old and supposed to be getting undressed. Supposed to be getting undressed, but now she doesn’t want to. She’s signed papers to the effect that she will get undressed. Now she doesn’t want to? The film men and the money men must have wanted to know why not. It isn’t as if this would be the first time. In some ways the whole thing, the thing the red tops have styled “the Profumo affair”, begins with her naked, skinny-dipping in Lord Astor’s outdoor pool where she, unwitting Aphrodite, is surprised by John – "please call me Jack" – Profumo. Profumo is with his wife, but still gets Christine’s number and in no short while Christine herself. But today, in the studio, she would prefer to keep her clothes on. And this is a problem because the men of film and money want the flesh their pounds have paid for. Morley clears the studio; he talks to Christine about an idea he’s had, explains how he can shoot her naked and yet not let anybody see a thing. He’s a real gent. He even turns his back while she undresses – though in all the interviews in all the years that follow she’ll insist she kept her knickers on. The photographer introduces her to the chair. The chair is her shield. The chair keeps things clean, clean the way Max Miller’s jokes are clean. The smut, if that’s what it is, is in the mind or here the mind’s eye of the beholder. The shape of the back of a five-shilling chair says it all. The letter-box slot irregularly hacked out to fend off copyright complaints allows for thoughts of What the Butler Saw – or, in this case, didn’t. Still, Christine is just nineteen, a kid, awkward before the camera, self-conscious. She tries it this way, then that, that way, then this. Then this. Then this, the very last frame left on the roll of film, almost an accident, that catalyst for so many transfigurations of the everyday into art. And that’s that. The film she had her photo taken for never did get made. May became December, as it always must, and Christine went to prison after pleading guilty to a charge of perjury. What money she’d received she said she paid to lawyers. Her story long continued with lots of sad but never even a single happy ending. She died in 2017. The photograph survives and in it so does she. A little awkward for ever now, or for as long as a photo can be for ever. The girl photographed on one of the floors above the Establishment Club, the girl who shook the other Establishment club, the girl who was nineteen, is nineteen always. Today, the chair she sat on sits unoccupied somewhere in the V&A, catalogued, possessed by the nation. The image of the girl who sat on it is in the National Portrait Gallery. They should hang her – and at the time many, including a lot of women, thought they really should have hanged her – next to Charles II’s mistress, Eleanor Gwyn. “Let not poor Nelly starve,” he’s supposed on his deathbed to have commanded his brother, the Duke of York. No one ever said anything as kind for Christine. Someone should have. She was only nineteen. Clive Collins Born in Leicester, England, but now long resident in Japan, Clive Collins is the author of two novels, The Foreign Husband (Marion Boyars) and Sachiko's Wedding (Marion Boyars/Penguin Books). Misunderstandings, a collection of short stories, was joint-winner of the Macmillan Silver PEN Award in 1994. He was a shortlisted finalist in the 2009 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. More recently his work has appeared online and in print in magazines such as Penny, Here Comes Everyone and terrain.org. Carried Away and Other Stories is now available from Red Bird Chapbooks.  Click on image to view or purchase on Amazon. A Review of Prose Poems: Βιβλίο Άλφα Prose Poems: Βιβλίο Άλφα Saad Ali AuthorHouse UK, 2020 Click here to view or purchase on Amazon. Saad Ali’s latest book titled Prose Poems: Βιβλίο Άλφα follows upon earlier three volumes from him, i.e. Ephemeral Echoes (2018), Metamorphoses: Poetic Discourses (2019) and Ekphrases: Book One (2020). There is thus a substantive body of verse available to identify the main features of his poetry, and appreciate the development of his art in terms of style as well as content. The first three books reflect a deeply considered view of the art and craft of poetry. His poems reflect a dialectical relationship with life, nature, religion, philosophy and politics. Saad Ali has developed an unmistakable personal imprimatur in all of his work which enables his creative signature to be easily recognised. This itself is a considerable achievement. He has emerged as a poet with a distinct world view and a distinctive voice to express the same aesthetically. In this essay, I wish to examine his latest work in the perspective of continuity and change. I believe the present volume reflects the poet’s development as a thinking individual as well as a literary craftsman. I see elements of intellectual and poetic growth which I believe need to be highlighted. Saad’s poetry to date stands unabashedly grounded in a world view based on his erudition and cogitation. It is the world view of a Homo philosophicus poeticus, a term he frequently employs in his verse. Broadly speaking, I interpret his world view as one based on naturalism, reason, the cyclic nature of existence, and the conception of selfhood as a product of the mind. In this perspective, phenomena are characterised by dualisms and dichotomies. His verse abounds in echoes of abstract themes like Absence/Presence, Nothingness/Beingness, Mind/Matter and Permanence/Transience. These subjects appear in the poetic texts as thoughts, musings, meditations often expressed epigrammatically. The dualism consciousness is something structural in the texture of his work. However, in the present book, I perceive a sea-change that is both subtle and pervasive. There is a shift away from the earlier passionate commitment to abstractions expressing philosophical and existential themes, especially those highlighting dualisms and dichotomies. We now perceive a palpable narrowing down, even bridging of those dualisms and dichotomies through his creative process. In the past there are oscillations between the extreme ends of dualisms and dichotomies. But in the present poems, I see the poet endeavouring at a creative synthesis, leading to a fresh balance and blending of life’s binaries. The shift involves a change from a largely philosophical self to an essentially aesthetic self, able to harmonise the dualisms at the experiential and existential levels. In this way, the concrete and the abstract have been brought together in the book in hand. This book contains poems divided into five categories: Accounts of the Human Condition, Instances of Affection and Romance, Political Messages, Philosophical Reflections and a part labelled as See Ye Around, which carries both the Epilogue and the Prelude. For the purposes of illustrating the shift in focus from the abstract to the concrete described above, I will take up the poems in the parts dealing with human condition and philosophical reflections because of their greater relevance in this regard. The very first poem in Part I is titled ‘Transition’ in which the poet makes a significant announcement: "I’m finished with the choir of the metaphysical and I’ve begun the symphony of the physical." Thought is still important as "the mother of inventions" ("The Message"), but the language of abstractions is no longer allowed to shape the substance of poetic discourse: "I’m done with allowing metaphors and allegories taking liberty with me"; and "I’m done with imitating myself … ." The mellower vision I speak about is best conveyed in the poem titled "The Hanuman Langur," which, in my opinion, is also "the human langur," continually hanging, switching, migrating and immigrating from one realm of experience and thought to another in search of significance. There is an important caution found in the text against "excess." The Pen and the Tablet in this poem are symbols of a deeper and higher experience the poet is heir to. One of the finest poems in the volume titled "Poet and Poetry" speaks of a poet’s unique role in seeking meaning equally in nature and people, and of making sense of "oxymorons," "juxtapositions" and "amalgamations" of life’s experiences. The centrality of experience melding memory and aesthetic sensibility is delicately expressed in the poem called "Self-Portrait" where the poet’s early infatuation in Kashmir is described as a landmark in his "pilgrimage to Self." It results not in highbrow philosophical abstractions but in a marvellous blend of everyday emotion and poetry, blending the feelings of loss and joy. One of my favourite poems in the volume is "Mind and Heart." The poem’s beauty lies in its epigrammatic expressions of the mind/heart relationship. For example: "Heartbreaks are good. They put the mind in its place," and further: "Heart is art; Mind is poetry." But in the end the heart/mind dualism is resolved existentially through a living experience "at the mill of the mind and heart." It would be remiss to conclude that the shift in the poet’s perspective towards experience means a total disconnect with the earlier themes of philosophy and life. Those themes continue to be important, but the difference lies in the way they mould and shape the poems. Nor is there any let up in the vision of compassion which has informed his work like a permanent presence. Thus, poems in Part III and Part IV continue to take up these theme of cruelty, injustice and oppressions and are evidence of continuity in the poet’s development. Abstractions too still matter. His two powerful renderings of Iqbal ("The World") and Parveen Shakir ("Circle") are a validation of the more abstract formulations close to his heart and art. Iqbal’s poem is essentially philosophical and underscores the need for an esoteric inner vision. Parveen Shakir’s poem illustrates a cyclical view of life and its suffering. It should be compared with Saad’s own poem titled "Decay," which highlights the inevitability of things as captured in the telling phrase ‘flow becomes inert’. Another significant poem in this volume on the theme of inevitability is "Truth is Beautiful." It recalls Paul Gauguin’s famous questions: "Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?" The answer in Saad’s poem comes in terms of love’s tender solace howsoever tenuous, and the song of the "bulbul" even if it becomes a wail in memory’s extensive cage. One is not always sure about the beauty of abstract truth, but the human experience cited in the poem is certainly beautiful. This brings me to the subject of the prose poem as an art form in the eyes of Saad Ali, the poet. The prose poem emerges as a major mode of expressing and realising this creativity. I see this shift in terms of form as a major development. It is intimately connected to the fresh focus on the experiential aspect of human life as a source of creativity and indeed of aesthetic fulfilment. This book of verse is full of odes to the form of the prose poem, which the poet has come to accept as his main mode of expression. It is no coincidence that his romance with the prose poem is accompanied with embracing poetry in terms of physical human experience rather than philosophical abstraction. The poet is at pains to explain the poetic process in a number of pieces in the book. In the "Prolegomenon" he wishes to inform his reader "What a prose poem is and isn’t." He sums up the difference in terms of becoming "direct with existence and life." This new orientation to direct experience without interference or interceptions is effectively taken up in the poem "Look! There is a Poem!"—apropos Bill Traylor’s painting Brown House with Multiple Figures and Birds. The poem closes with the lines: "Bill, you painted the poem. I’ve penned your painting." Their borders are erased, and poetry and painting become interchangeable from the standpoint of Art as a unifying vision and an all-embracing creative force. "There is a thin line between the abstract and the concrete," says the poet in the "Prelude’"placed at the end of the book. The prose poem is to be celebrated on this count, but it also constitutes his declaration of his new poetics: "I am done with being concise … and I am starting with being comprehensive- i.e. long and loose-fit poems" ("Transition"). Saad Ali expresses a deep sense of delight in embracing the prose poem. I think a good parallel of his feeling is Chapman’s joy on discovering Homer afresh. No discussion on Saad’s poetry would be complete without mentioning his fundamental view of Art as a source of joy in an existence with Sisyphean connotations. In the "Prelude," the poet exclaims proudly and with a palpable sense of satisfaction: "But I have a story to tell, for sure." That joy is evident also in poems like "Poet and Poetry": "You and I, we’re all poets." And: "It’s life but unlike any other life, life of a poet is." Among a number of poems celebrating his joy in writing poetry are "Composing Art" and "Critique," in which he says: "There are no poets, only poems." And finally one must mention the poem "A Conversation between a Poet and a Painter," which is really a celebration of poetry as an authentic aesthetic experience, at once human and humane. This book marks a milestone in Saad Ali’s intellectual and artistic development. It reflects a transition from the universe of abstractions to the world of the concrete. It coruscates with wit and imagination, irony and satire, as well as compassion and humanism. It continues to reflect his forte for reflection and meditation, and transcends beyond to capturing the undulations of human existence. These poems have been conceived in a spirit of joyfulness and a profound sense of fulfilment. I have no doubt that Saad Ali’s verse will be a source of joy and fulfilment to all serious connoisseurs of poetry. Ejaz Rahim Ejaz Rahim was born in Abbottabad, Pakistan. He is a Senior Civil Servant (Retired). He earned his Masters Degree in Development Studies from the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Netherlands and MA in English Literature from the Government College, Lahore, Pakistan. He is a poet and an author of over twenty books of poetry including: I, Confucius and Other Poems (2011), That Frolicsome Mosquito Our Universe (2014), Through the Eyes of the Heart (2014), et cetera. He holds the honour of Sitara-e-Imtiaz by the Government of Pakistan for his contributions to the English Literature and Literary Scene in the country. Currently, he resides at the foot of the Margalla Hills in the Capital, Islamabad, with his life-long partner. Saad Ali (b. 1980 C.E. in Okara, Pakistan) has been brought up in the UK and Pakistan. He holds a BSc and an MSc in Management from the University of Leicester, UK. He is an existential philosopher-poet and a translator. Ali has authored four books of poetry, which include: Ephemeral Echoes (AuthorHouse, 2018), Metamorphoses: Poetic Discourses (AuthorHouse, 2019), Ekphrases: Book One (AuthorHouse, 2020), and Prose Poems: Βιβλίο Άλφα (AuthorHouse, 2020). He is a regular contributor to The Ekphrastic Review. By profession, he is a Lecturer, Consultant and Trainer/Mentor. Some of his influences include: Vyasa, Homer, Ovid, Attar, Rumi, Nietzsche, and Tagore. He is fond of the Persian, Chinese and Greek cuisines. He likes learning different languages, travelling by train and exploring cities on foot. To learn more about his work, please visit www.saadalipoetry.com.  Four Withered Sunflowers, by Vincent Van Gogh (Netherlands) 1887 Girl Viewing Van Gogh Picture a pubescent girl staring at Van Gogh's painting sunflowers she ponders her choices was asked to write something anything in response to a picture she chose "sunflowers" she writes about the golden colours then has nothing more to say she doesn't even notice the artist's name she would drive him wild with her full bosom her careless disregard of his masterpiece with her heavily mascaraed eyes which do not notice anything outside her own private, teenaged perimeter she doesn't know who painted this enigma or anything about the torment of his world but she does have one good line for him "crinkled edges, looking limp, but somehow, still alive" and I fire right up when I see that line so full of possibilities so cogent that it leaves me wondering if after all I have missed something here what does she really know of starry, starry nights but right now she dreams only of her fake Adonis, the one she plans to meet at the water fountain when next she excuses herself for the bathroom Ah youth, that one line really tired her out I suppose, she's already moved on leaving poor Vincent behind though I suggest it would make a great poem. Susan Morse Susan Morse has lived in California, in rural Maine, and she moved to the Willamette Valley of Oregon in 2016. She has a Masters degree in Literacy Education from the University of Maine, Orono, and completed a summer internship for the Maine Writers’ Project. She taught English/ Language Arts at the middle school level before retiring. She is a member of the Oregon Poetry Association. In the Hush, her first chapbook was published in June 2019 by Finishing Line Press. Individual poems have appeared in various journals including Cream City Review, The Mom Egg, The Aurorean, Amethyst Review, and The Willawaw Journal. The Wake after The Wake, by Mark Tansey (USA) contemporary Cleaved by the moon, it’s sigh breaking starless water. And the smeared waves are taut and pliant, strident as Cary Grant’s coiffure. Sleepy-drunk you fall silent and watch the way your champagne rocks with the sea, how the bubbles make acrid supernovas against silver glare. A punting boat pushes by and four small faces disappear into the night same as tipped ash from the circle of slow smoked cigars. A joke is told. The table laughs and heaves. A glass falls, miraculously bounces, is caught by the bars of the salt-worn balcony. David Dykes David Dykes is a poet based in Medway, Kent, England. He has produced three chapbooks, most recently Small Emperor Moth about the bug of the same name. He has been published in 365 Tomorrows, Scrittura and Thanet Writers among others. David has performed across the UK including the Faversham Fringe Festival and Watchet Musical Festival. With his partner he hosts poetry performance night Big Trouble and produces the podcast Little Riot.  A Little Night Music, by Dorothea Tanning (USA) 1943 What I Wanted What I wanted was the sun: last night she pulled it up the stairs, too heavy to survive for long. This house plays sounds. The howling of a dog, too quiet to be real. A shuffling, voices, once a sneeze. She will not let me go outside. Her hair is up. Her eyes are down, a girl made utterly of No. Something moving in another room. A child, exclaiming. A sentence, cut off halfway through. My skin is icing over. Why have they undressed me while I slept? I cannot feel the warmth of day. Footsteps up the stairs. A soft wind, moving slowly in the shadows. The open door is streaming gold. Her ribbons trail like shrivelled stems. The sunflower is withering, and what I wanted was the sun. Clare O'Brien Previously PR to a politician and PA to a rock star, Clare is now trying to finish her first novel somewhere on the west coast of Scotland. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in magazines including Mslexia, Northwords Now, The London Reader, Lunate, The Mechanics’ Institute Review, The Cabinet of Heed, Nightingale & Sparrow and in anthologies from The Emma Press and Hedgehog Poetry.  The Dying Slave, by Michelangelo (Italy) 1513-1515. Photography by Jörg Bittner Unna (Germany) 2014 Michangelo’s Captive I wished to photograph a beautiful man sculpted by Michelangelo, afraid I would forget him if I did not, for he had no story, no name. But I turned away. I had the feeling I should not be watching our guide’s pleasure; he knew nothing about the work’s history but exclaimed over the marble as a singer praises the beloved. His face was a study of amazement—that such a being could exist in the world, his luminous form revealed every day to someone like you or me or him, a tour bus driver posing as a cultural authority, relying on the fact that no one in his group spoke French to conceal that he was making up what this painting or that sculpture in the Louvre was “about.” Never mind that proper names are perfectly recognizable, or that one romance language sounds very much like another. We stood before the Esclave mourant, dying into eternal life. The Captif. And we were captivated by that white vision of slavery. Not by an assault. Not by the historical experience of tribes conquered by the Romans. We were caught up in what Michelangelo knew about the body. About fantasy and bondage. And the man, the model—May he have enjoyed the wine, the bread soaked in olive oil, and the eye of the master, intoxicating as any drug given to calm a victim before sacrifice. May he have loved the hands that adored him, that memorized him, that altered him and memorialized him in marble. One of his arms is held high, bent at the elbow, hand behind his head, and the other caresses his chest in a gesture of exposure and self-love and sensuality so palpable that it is difficult to see that there are carved straps holding his raised arm behind him and that what he pushes upward is not a tunic but leather bindings that might have secured him to a post or pillar. Here, he is tied to nothing but our gaze and the sunlit air. He is so proportioned and positioned, his face so peaceful, his hair in such even waves. He might be half-stretching at the studio window, his body somewhere between dreaming and waking, bone and muscle bearing weight, bound only to the law of beauty, its balance of line, the more curved and the less straight, a natural form that leaves the eye desiring nothing beyond what is there and there and not there. Michelangelo Buonarroti was a perfectionist. Also a man famous for leaving things unfinished. Perhaps beauty is always unfinished. So, this captive, undone. His right foot, toes spread, barely emerges from the stone that bears him, the block the sculptor delivered him from. Dana Sonnenschein Dana Sonnenschein lives in the woods in New England, where she teaches online at Southern Connecticut State University; she’s been documenting the wildflower season on Instagram and making her four cats very happy over the last few months … because they know nothing about the pandemic. Her publications include Bear Country, Natural Forms, No Angels but These, and Corvus. Recent work appears in The Matador Review, The Prachya Review, Algebra of Owls, Permafrost, and Terrain.org’s Dear America anthology. |
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